<span>Hi Ulises,<br><br>Thanks for that very interesting challenge.<br><br>I do not think it is a matter of idealizing peer governance. My stance is the following: 1) first of all to simply observe that the distributed format is emerging everywhere, very strongly, and may be poised for social dominance; the empirical stance 2) to acknowledge that particular aspects of peer production and peer governance represent social and political advances; the value stance; 3) and that hence, it is valuable enough to be promoted, the praxis for change.
<br><br>All of that does not obviate the need for critical self-assessment, the fourth, critical stance that you bring. This means that we acknowledge the weaknesses of the new practices, its limitations, and the new problems it creates while solving others.
<br><br>Your challenge concerns the latter, and I think it is very valuable and true. The danger of plural monocultures is indeed real, and this is why I think, that we can not have a totalitarianism of the commons, but rather need plural economies and political systems. The key issue is therefore about the interfaces between peer producton and other economic forms, and between peer governance and other political forms. Can we devise some meta-regulation that allows society to intelligently choose between the three modes of production, governance and property that are available to it (as well as the fourth, i..e. traditional gift economies still surviving that could be revamped).
<br><br>Another thing I would add is the need to distinguish between decentralized networks, where coercive power is still identifiable in the hubs; and distributed networks, with voluntary hubs; where power is rather 'hidden' in the design and protocof of the systems (Galloway). The question here is whether we can design more effective for autonomy and diversity.
<br><br>I think that nodocentrism, in the sense of self-selected nodes that could tackle governance problems, is not bad by itself. It can be remedied by making sure that the networks is diverse and participatory. Are you familiar with approaches such as demarchy, as global solution, or sociocracy, as local solution, to exclusivity problems? What I'm trying to say is that peer governance is not such a blind promotion of network rule and formats, but can be a critical research and advocacy combined, that is well aware of its limitations.
<br><br>It's the kind of research we try to monitor at the topical pages here at<br><a href="http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Governance">http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Governance</a> <br><br><br>Ulises:<br>
<br><br>If peer governance refers to the way peer production is managed,
what is being *managed* as p2p networks interface with democracy?
Surely, just because peer governance is not representational in the way
democracy supposedly is, it does'nt mean it lacks a political
character. In my own work, I have tried to articulate a 'political'
critique of the network as a model for organizing social reality,
specially as it concerns the mediation of the relation with our
immediate environments. I won't go into a lot of detail here, but my
critique concerns the 'nodocentrism' that eliminates the value of
anything that is not plugged in to the network (see for instance <a href="http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/12/networked_proxi_1.html" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">http://ideant.typepad.com/ideant/2006/12/networked_proxi_1.html
</a>).
My fear is not that peer governance will replace representational
democracy (as you suggest, this is not likely to happen because we are
talking about apples and oranges here), but that it will influence
'democratic' governance by introducing its own epistemological
exclusivity in the form of nodocentrism. Hence my concern about the
affordances of the master's tools.</span>