We use this as a backbone of our analysis process for now, with the caveat written blow.
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Hello everyone,
We are in the synthesis phase and wanted to share with you a big update.
Peer production is a complex process. Based on the analysis above, we are trying to cluster and draw relations between problems, causes and solutions, which can lead to a more holistic approach for problem solving.
The complexity of the overall materials peer production process can be understood through the lenses of living systems and ecosystem-based theoretical frameworks. Both frameworks are valid and are to be seen as complementary, when it comes to the underlying structures that they reveal. We believe that a living systems approach is suitable for understanding types of agents and the ecosystemic approach is more revealing of relations among all the agents in a peer production system. The ecosystemic approach,which predominantly revolves around capitalist environment, operates within the p2p paradigm.
For the synthesis, we plan on using two canvases representing these two theoretical approaches, as a base layer, and overlay the problems, causes and solutions identified in the analysis phase. This will provide a framework for understanding potential interactions, from the relations proposed by the theoretical model.
Stay tuned, soon we will share the diagrams and looking forward to your inputs.
Creating working business models and contracts for distributed production is very important for a number of us in this community.
Somewhat selfishly, as a freelancer on the design/process side of distributed production (rather than production itself) I would very much like to understand ways for supporting my time working in this field.
Having looked at some of the work, it seems very focussed towards Sensoricaâs network model and also seems highly theoretical. I have looked somewhat into the value network that was presented, but I am somewhat unsure if this âvalueâ can be exchanged for money to buy bread and shelter in the external economy?
While I understand the need for theoretical long term aspirations. Does this work on business models and contracts also cover how members of this community can make a living in the short term?
The short answer is yes. We aim to study agency in materials peer production and what you mentioned is an important part. Going through our work, I noticed we havenât approached the dimension you highlighted.
Thank you for that and will make sure to include it. Please keep the comments coming in!
Hey again everyone,
Great news! we are currently synthesizing our tech workshop findings on Miro board.
The methodology used will be applied to the other dimensions we have already identified.
There is a lot to discuss and more to discover!
looking forward to having you dig in the main document and donât hesitate to request access to Miro if needed.
Please access this link to check the work done: peer into the future - IoP collaboration
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Hello and thank you for the recommendation,
We have included gaia into our database and we would like to inquire if there are any personnel we can directly contact to request collaboration?
Thank you
Another synthesis update
Lots of progress, we thought that living systems theory and ecosystems theory complement each other on building understanding from the input of participants during this workshop.
This is how our diagram currently looks - Waiting for your feedback on IoPA workshop 1 Report - Tech - Google Docs
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Hi @julianstirling,
I am trying to analyze your feedback⌠There are a few things in there.
First, the goal of this particular work that we are doing in collaboration with IoPA is to gather information from actors in material peer production and translate it into actionable language for IoPA, so that they can use it to build tools and standards that directly apply to this field. In some sense, youâre right, this is abstract, theoretical, because IoPAâs mission is to build standards and tools.
Another way to see it is this. We put the actors we engage with in these workshops in 2 categories: doers and enablers. Doers are people who engage in processes of production, perhaps they operate in a makerspace, fablab, or are part of a local community, perhaps using some digital tools for coordination. Enablers are people who work on IT infrastructure, process design, standards (like IoPA for example). As a freelancer on the process / design side, you are probably an enabler, unless you do hardware design, in which case you are a doer. During these workshops we take input from doers, we ask them to report on their activities and identify problems. These problems are expressed in terms that can only be understood in the context in which these doers operate. For example, one doer may say: âwe could not get funding for a specific hardware production actionâ. That is a statement produced in a specific context of work at a specific level of the ecosystem, a makerspace level for example. It tells us about a problem perceived at that level. Now this is not information that IoPA can directly work on, because IoPA is not in the business of funding makerspaces around the world. IoPA is also not in the business of managing finances of local makerspaces, it does not operate at that level. But if we look closely at the problem expressed by the doer we may understand that the problem is access to pools of funding across the world. Perhaps this doer operates in a makerspace located in a remote region where access to traditional banking is problematic. So this problem statement can be expressed in terms that can be directly addressed by IoPA as follows: âLocal fabrication facilities (makerspaces and others) donât have access to transactional systems with global reachâ. Then a solution can be formulated in a language that is actionable by IoPA at the level where it operates, the ecosystem level as such: âCreate a cryptocurrency transactional system that can operate even when a user is not always connected to the Internetâ. Before even starting to design such a tool, IoPA would ask the question: âWhat is the standard on which this transactional tool can be builtâ?
So what we are doing here is gathering of information at low levels, where the robber meets the road, and translating it up in a language at the ecosystem level, where it becomes actionable by IoPA. Wonder if @max_w @AndrewLamb @BarbaraSchack want to jump inâŚ
It is abstract, as you mentioned, because we are translating up at the ecosystem level. But once the solution is identified, developed and implemented, it comes down to the doerâs level, it all becomes relevant, tangible. Itâs the nature of the workâŚ
Where I do not agree with your assessment is that this is âfocussed towards Sensoricaâs network modelâ. As you can see in the First Report, we make the distinction between decentralized and distributed peer production. Decentralized peer production can be applied to what we call the 3rd Sector, where an NGO can be a hub in the production network, taking the role of coordination, facilitation, funding, etc. Look for the âNGO scenarioâ in the First Report. The distributed peer production is different and we associate that to the 4th Sector. The topology of the network is different, there are no essential hubs. We saw this mode of production during COVID, makers organizing spontaneously, producing and distributing stuff, way before NGOs had time to react. This may be what you associate with the OVN model, which is also Sensoricaâs model. The OVN model is an attempt to understand and describe what happens in distributed production. Thew model sits on a wiki that doesnât bear the name of Sensorica and anyone can contribute to it. To my knowledge, it is the most comprehensive attempt at structuring distributed peer production, but I may be biased, since I am a heavy contributor to it.
While I understand the need for theoretical long term aspirations. Does this work on business models and contracts also cover how members of this community can make a living in the short term?
I understand that you are looking for a way to make a living and you cannot see it in distributed production, 4th Sector. We can discuss about that. But I just want to point out that this work is NOT just focused on distributed production / 4th sector. So you can find inspiration from decentralized production / 3rd Sector.
I invite you to provide feedback on all our deliverables in case this distinction between 3rd and 4th Sector production is not clear enough. You can use the comments in these docs to suggest improvements.
One way to make a living out of this initiative is to feed on these reports and start developing new processes and tools that can help doers. You can partner with any member of IoPA in funding proposals that can pay development of some identified solutions. Your funding proposals will be targeting solutions that matter, viable solutions, since they have been identified via a sound process (the workshops). So youâre able to demonstrate the need of the solution that you are going to work on. This is much better than 99% of dev work out there, which originates in a vacuum, with no direct use from people in the field, but are just guesses of some devs, which are for the most part disconnected from the reality on the ground.
Workshop: Aligning Agencies in peer production - Social
Scheduled for week of 26 September - join on Calendly
A collaboration between Sensorica and the Internet of Production Alliance (IoPA).
Social measures are seen in organizations that use values, ethos, shared purpose, social norms, spirituality, rituals, recognition and reputation, as well as a mix of powerful emotions (fear, happiness, shame, âŚ) to align agencies and generate collaborative relations. They emphasize on building networks as communities.
The following organizations have been invited4th Sector, Plenty4All, Access To Land, AID, Arxterra, Careables.org, DIY Drones, e-NABLE, Ethos VO, Farm Hack, Galxe, GiveTrack, Gravity DAO, Helpful, Humaniq, Loomio, Nation of Makers, Neighbourhoods, Appropedia, OpenTEAM, ReputeX, Sew For Hope Kids, Stroud, The Fab Foundation, TOM, Toowheels, Grassroots Economics
Contribute to the Analysis and Synthesis for the workshop 2 - Economics
Organizations that predominantly use economic modelling to increase efficiency and reduce costs, generate powerful win-win outcomes in long-term and repetitive transactions. Perhaps they design and/or implement repetitive games, design models that generate interdependence, etc.
The following organizations have participated: 4th Sector, Sensorica, Valueflows, hREA, SEEDS Collaboratory DAO,
I am not so much saying that I personally need money right now (though another contract is always nice). I was commenting more in the abstract sense that I had hoped that the contracting work would consider business models for how designers and producers can work together and both put food on the table.
In the world of open source hardware of course producers do not need to pay designers. However, in our experience, even with significant information on the design, those looking to do production often require the time of the designers to help them develop their processes. I very much like the concept that anything that is infinite should be free. By this I mean that the digital design files can be copied an infinite number of times with no effort, it is right for these to be free. If you need a designer to send you a physical prototype, to get on a call with you, to consider your specific needs, etc then this is not free because the designers time is finite.
Considering these types of interactions is essential to any business models that the IoPA might suggest. Reading the report I am lost in all the OVN speak (I call it the Sensorica model as I have only ever heard of Sensorica using it). While of course Sensorica should put forward their model as a way to solve contracting that should to me be one of the options for the answer not a way to frame the initial question.
Personally I had hoped this work could provide clear guidelines in plain English that I could take to potential distribution partners. Without being tied into cryptocurrencies, AI-driven-governance, or complex new organisational frameworks. While these things might be a long term goal of some in the community. A short term goal I would think would be that we have advice for how people can contract now with minimal overhead or organisational restructuring?
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I understand.
Our mandate with IoPA is scoping. Therefore our work is exploratory. Sorry for not meeting your expectations. Perhaps you can suggest changes to the website to make that more clear. I donât want to disappoint people.
https://www.sensorica.co/products/iop-collaboration
You mentioned contract. I think that youâll find more interesting the workshop on Legal, scheduled 2 weeks after the one next week. During the workshop people do suggest solutions as a way to explore the solution space. The workshops are not about crafting clear solutions to specific problems. That would be idealistic. Often these solutions require specialized skills and time to he developed. But people will hind to existing solutions or to existing projects. So stay tuned for the next workshop, which will be specific on legal tools, legal contracts.
Note that the workshop reports donât have much practical value for doers. They are created for those who want to build solutions. Every report will have a summary section at the beginning, which can be interesting for doers. The rest is understanding whatâs going on.
In my opinion, we cannot jump to solutions in this space, because it is an new paradigm. Even if you use a traditional organization youâre still immersed in the new paradigm. Otherwise we would not be here discussing these matters 
Even if it is scoping. Would it not make sense to have short and long terms scopes. After scoping comes doing the work. If the scope is a huge paradigm shift with lots of blockchain and AI the chance of implementation in the short to medium term tends to zero.
I really think the human side of this matter so much more than all the futuristic technological gubbins. Who are the parties (doers in your lingo), and what relationship between them means we can all get paid. If we get that bit of the problem right we can bolt crypto-blockchain-smart-GPT-NFT-stuff to it at a later date if needed. We canât do anything if we canât sort out the human side.
I suppose what I am trying to do is advocate for the scope to be phased with advice for the human side in the first phase, and the tech stuff to be a later phase. Sort of like in OKH where discoverability was phase 1, and the more technically complex things came at a later date.
I feel the need to clarify this.
OVN stands for open value network. People use the expression network and even open network a lot. The term value is to distinguish a network engaging in production from a social network, focused more on building relations.
OVN refers to a type of organization. Any organization that is transparent (allows easy access to information) and open (allows easy access to participation) and doesnât have a set hierarchical governance structure, and engages in production is an OVN. Letâs see⌠The Bitcoin network is built on open source code and anyone can read the ledger; anyone can become a minor; the network produces a digital service, it doesnât have a set hierarchical governance, therefore the Bitcoin network is an OVN.
So all these decentralized blockchain creatures are all OVNs.
Yochai Benkler named this new mode of production commons based peer production. Thatâs the mode of production in decentralized and distributed material production, based on open source.
Verna Allee coined the term value network
Sensorica was created in February 2011 and built its model on these concepts, but the models already existed. We also added the term open to Verna Alleeâs expression, a decision that was made in Montreal, at a breakfast table with Michel Bauwens, Bob Haugen, Lynn Foster and myself.
Sensorica was inspired by these models and synthesized them, and translated them into the p2p culture, but Sensorica is very far from being the only OVN out there⌠It may seam that weâre pushing our agenda, but to be honest, I donât know of a better account of distributed material production out there. We are the pioneers in this field, so we created the language, because there was no language, we had to, might as well use it now, because in my opinion it is pretty clear and descriptive of this new world, these new possibilities. Having said that, feel free to propose another language if you think it better describes your reality, weâll make sure to insert it into this work.
I am complying a list of peer production network attacks. This is important since we are dealing with agencies in peer production and an agency problem is a situation where some agents are undermining a shared goal / purpose.
Feel free to improve it and provide feedback!
Reminder: Our efforts are about tools and methods for aligning agencies in peer production. In light of this list of peer production network attacks, we can say that our efforts are about diminishing the probability of these sorts of attacks on a peer production network. We are exploring 6 dimensions of possible action: Economic, Ecosystem, Social, Legal, Tech, and Standards. Take for example Legal, one can design legal contracts between agents involved in a peer production activity to decrease the possibility of some of these attack scenarios. But legal contracts are not effective in some cases of peer production, for example when a great number of actors are involved, and cannot affect all these vectors of attack at once. The idea if to design peer production networks that can effectively disable all these vectors of attack, by addressing them on multiple dimensions at the same time.
Summary of analysis and synthesis for the Tech Workshop.
During the gathering, participants were asked to report problems in peer production that they have experienced. Our analysis suggests the following categories of problems.
From a userâs perspective (those who make use of the artifacts of peer production), we heard: quality and safety concerns, reporting fake certification. These problems can be addressed at the local level (production node) by developing metrics for hardware effectiveness, quality, safety and methods for writing sound specifications. At the ecosystem level, by developing standards, methods for certification, building reference designs, using assertions to identify good models, developing insurance services and implementing peer validation mechanisms (feedback from users to developers / makers). We can infer deep causes of these problems as: lack of validation mechanisms, lack of quality and safety metrics and lack of assurance.
Related to agents involved in the process we heard: opportunistic behavior, trying too hard (or promising too much), unable to meet work requirements, freeriding. These local problems (production unit/node level) can be addressed by implementing and reputation systems. Technology can be used to improve trust at the local production level with digital identity, linked trust and smart contracts. Agents that offer support within peer production networks can also intervene by organizing educational events, help adoption of shared goals, implementing trust-building mechanisms. Agents that take the role of model drivers can put more emphasis on open collaboration and decentralized coordination, and implement coordination and intermediation roles. We can infer deep causes of these problems as: lack of reliability of contributors and lack of trust.
When considering the whole ecosystem, we heard: difficulty to work remotely (online collaboration), inadequate technological solutions, inefficient processes. These problems can be addressed by agents taking the role of support, by further developing inter-makerspace capacity, encouraging the use of cryptocurrency and AI, and developing better tools for online collaboration. We also heard communal challenges (related to ineffective community models) and organizational pathologies (related to ineffective organizational models). This speaks about aggregate intentionality, acknowledging the fact that local production nodes are not monolithic entities, but can have internal problems related to social and organizational dynamics. Model drivers can address some of these challenges by developing interorganizational capacity, empowering local communities, building resilience, emphasis on open collaboration and decentralized coordination. Another problem expressed was friction between the peer-to-peer and the institutional world (interface problem). This problem can be addressed at the model drivers level by building interferences between peer production and the institutional world. We can infer deep causes of these problems as: lack of sound community, organizational and economic models (existence of inconsistent hybrid models), lack of clarity into these structures, lack of transparency, weak P2P organizational identity or image, poor branding, lack of legitimacy, lack of a strong vision and mission in terms of ensuring high adherence to peer production principles and processes.
During the workshop three perspectives were identified for defining the space of solutions the the problems that were expressed by the participants.
- Resilience: Build alternative pathways, build redundancy into the system, so if one process fails another one can rapidly take over. The example of a missing component was given, and a process to replace that component with an equivalent was proposed.
- Immune system: The idea here is not to design filtering systems that keep bad actors out, but to design mechanisms that can rapidly correct the damage that they may cause and marginalize or discourage the bad actors in the process. Example given is Wikipedia, which is a pattern that matches permissionless processes
- Many-to-many and non-linear: A peer production ecosystem doesnât just exhibit binary transactions. Sometimes we have three or more actors involved in a process, for example a producer (makerspace), a user (a hospital) and a resource provider (NGO or Government). Thus aligning agencies in this context becomes more complicated.
Participants also expressed the need to detach themselves from traditional models and free creativity to design frameworks that are proper to peer production (eliminate bias related to learned and integrated models, move from hybrid models to native peer production models).
More here.
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This engagement process has gone deeper than might have been expected and several opportunities can come from this. It has got us to a stage where we have both methodological approaches, processes for inquiry, and domain insights. This makes us now ready to engage in specific practical problem cases. We can do detailed situational analysis, and understand relationships and the different rationales for the stances people take.
Sensoricans are already translating these findings into practice, setting up a service of local open source scientific instrument fabrication.
We can help with knowledge translation and contextualization, to help you digest the participatory findings in the documentation. Although the process and method findings are best experienced in terms of real strategic work. One way going forward, is to give us a specific problem and weâll explore solutions with you, based on these findings.
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@max_w as you work on the design document of the mAkE project framework to distribute a purchase order, take a look at the results from the technology workshop linked above, there are illustrations that reflect some of the conversations around roles and trust building.
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Hi @TiberiusB, thanks for the update. Can you describe what could be a âspecific problemâ?
Hi Barbara,
Sorry for the late reply. Hereâs an example of solution to a specific problem.
The context is PEP Master venture.
This open venture sits at the intersection of two open networks:
- Sensorica - hardware design and local production
- Breathing Games - computer game design and creation
The open venture produces an Artifact, which is a piece of hardware used as a controller of a computer game. This Artifact is currently used in a hospital with patients with cystic fibrosis. So the hospital is a Partner of these two open networks. The Artifact is NOT a product destined for the market, it is designed as open source and DIY.
Part of a new grant that we recently received, we are going to engage Health Canada to approve this Artifact as a medical device (regulatory approval). Now this is a long shot! Our strategy is to force the Government recognize distributed, material peer production (which is the process that produced the Artifact), by demonstrating the impact of the Artifact on public health - itâs real, it has inpact, you canât deny it, if you canât deny it you canât ignore how it is made and ignore those who created it.
Part of that process, we also need to present an economic model for sustaining the production of such Artifacts, with very high standards of quality and security.
This economic model is sketched here.
So we can present a whole analysis based on our learning in this Contracting and more initiative with IoPA : )
I hope I answered your question with an illustrationâŚ
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