The Limits of Peer Production

Http://fredturner.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Kreiss-Finn-Turner-Limits-of-Peer-Production-NMS-3-111.pdf

Notes

• As Berry argues in his insightful

review of The Wealth of Networks, if networks ‘are indeed so wealth-generating, they will be co-opted into mainstream “industrial” ways of production.

• There is simply nothing to suggest that peer informational projects must be nonmarket

and nonproprietary, that other economic forces cannot leverage what they produce, or that they will not become part of bureaucratic systems.

• Indeed, many consensus scholars overlook the ways that a number of peer production

efforts have institutionalized processes that were formerly defined by freely-associating individuals. As Loubser and den Besten (2008: 2) argue, Wikipedia has increasingly turned to ‘administrators and bureaucrats’, along with a host of technical features, to help manage peer collaboration and ensure that the effort is sustainable.

• Furthermore, as Duguid (2006) points out in the

context of three open source cultural projects, peer processes that work well in the manu- facture of software may work hardly at all in other domains.

• Comparatively ephemeral peer

networks simply cannot concentrate and consistently deploy the resources that bureauc- racies can with their goal-oriented routines, professionalized staff, and stable operating procedures.

• Weber was clear on

this point, arguing that ‘precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, conti- nuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction, and of material and personal costs – these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic admin- istration’ (1998: 214). Indeed, it was these very qualities that Weber both admired and feared as the inescapable implements of the rational-legal order. Yet, the noted absence of these qualities in peer production efforts suggests that informational projects may face serious limitations in some social domains, unless they adopt more formalized structures.

• Rather, we wish to stress that peer production

is not as radically open in practice as it appears. Gatekeepers can subscribe to opaque governing norms and all too often these norms reinforce broader social patterns of dis- crimination and power.

• Looking at peer production through the lens of Weber, however, suggests that these

peer governance mechanisms may not be as liberating as many theorists suggest. The absence of formal rules, for instance, allows charismatic individuals to determine who is appointed or dismissed according to fiat.

• Yet many contemporary portrayals of peer production fail to account for the ongoing

importance of bureaucratic institutions in fostering and preserving knowledge that actually affords peer production. Indeed, Shirky (2008) argues for the power of ‘organiz- ing without organizations’ while ignoring the role that the university plays in his own analysis

• Moreover, precisely because it is voluntary and

usually temporary, peer production may not support the institutions upon which its own continued success depends

• Peer production in particular may undermine our private autonomy by extending

our professional lives into formerly private arenas.

• For many scholars peer production enables individuals to achieve a form of psychological Wholeness unavailable in ordinary organizational life