P2P Al­ter­na­tives for a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture

Symposium:

• ISEA2011: 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art

• Re-rooting Digital Culture: Media Art Ecologies

• P2P Al­ter­na­tives for a Sus­tain­able Fu­ture

• Michel Bauwens

Venue(s):

• Sabanci Center, Istanbul, Turkey

• Panel: Re-rooting Digital Culture: Media Art Ecologies

  Bauwens ar­gues for a provoca­tive dou­ble (hypo)the­sis, namely that for-profit pro­duc­tion based on pro­pri­etary knowl­edge is in­her­ently un­sus­tain­able, both at a micro, and a macro level, be­cause it is de­signed to ig­nore neg­a­tive en­vi­ron­men­tal ex­ter­nal­i­ties, and mo­bi­lizes many dif­fer­ent strate­gies, such as planned ob­so­les­cence, to achieve this end. By con­trast, com­mons-ori­ented pro­duc­tion that is cen­tered around busi­ness ecolo­gies work­ing with open com­mu­ni­ties, is in­her­ently sus­tain­able. Open com­mu­ni­ties have no in­cen­tive to de­sign un­sus­tain­able prod­ucts, and the busi­ness ecolo­gies work­ing with them, have to build their for-profit ac­tiv­i­ties on this foun­da­tion. In ad­di­tion, non-pro­pri­etary de­sign has a deep im­pact not just on the prod­ucts, but on the very ma­chin­ery of pro­duc­tion (through the de­vel­op­ment of open and dis­trib­uted man­u­fac­tur­ing) and on con­sump­tion (through prod­uct-ser­vice ecolo­gies that are specif­i­cally de­signed for sus­tain­abil­ity and re-use). In this pre­sen­ta­tion, Bauwens will un­pack the char­ac­ter­is­tics of peer pro­duc­tion that are trans­form­ing pro­duc­tion and con­sump­tion processes to­wards sus­tain­abil­ity.

Category:

• Panel