Peer Production

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Syllabus


April 21

Although the point may seem obvious now, one of the Internet’s most powerful attributes is how it can facilitate the social production of information or computing. From the earliest experiments with dividing memory-intensive tasks amongst different computers, to modern efforts to crowdsource solutions to challenging or urgent problems, peer production is a major benefit from our networked world. And it raises some interesting questions of both Internet control and production theory: How much hierarchy and control is needed to produce? How good is the material that peer production creates? Are there types of things that should not be produced by the crowd? What are the risks to producers and society inherent to peer production?

Joining us this week is Berkman Fellow SJ Klein.


Assignments

Assignment 4 is now due on April 28th, but they will be accepted if turned in today. You can submit your assignment here.

Readings

Development from the edges
Development as a crowd
  • if you’re not familiar, you may want to spend a little time looking at Wikipedia’s entry on Seti@home.
Crowd intelligence

Optional Readings



Videos Watched in Class

Links

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Andy 15:12, 7 November 2013 (EST)


I usually prefer to attend class via the live streaming session because our conversations are brilliant and I learn a lot more, and can contribute much better in that interactive situation. The class has been brilliant.

That said, I've just had a work emergency come up which means I may not make the live portion.

I wanted to post a memory about SETI@Home... I remember joining in 1999 and had the app running on my computer, 24/7, for YEARS! I always thought it was the coolest collaborative effort utilizing desktops across the globe. I didn't care whether it found anything or not, I was always mesmerized by the data scrolling across the screen. Yes, it didn't take much to bedazzle me back then... :)

I started traveling more, and switched from a desktop to a laptop somewhere around 2002-2003 and that ended my SETI installation. I never got around to installing it again.

Also.

Speaking about innovation and technology, I think one of the biggest things to have hit the globe is 3D printing. While still a bit expensive, it still allows people to get into markets and innovate products and inventions almost immediately upon perception rather than struggling with finding someone to build their prototype, let alone finance it.

Eric Von Hippel wrote about an example of how users want to modify their own products, which was spot on. I remember watching an episode of Shark Tank where an inventor had built an electrical connector and had even used 3D modeling to produce a prototype if I recall correctly. I thought that was just about the coolest thing ever. How far technology has come that anyone, anywhere, can create products and services from nothing but their imagination and problem solving.

Another inventor created an auxilary handle for a snow shovel, again, using 3D technology to prototype it. This one I have a link for: http://blog.nextfab.com/join-the-shovelution-from-a-rapid-prototype-to-shark

We have to love the era we are in right now.

ErikaLRich (talk) 12:20, 21 April 2015 (EDT)


Hey all, I'm screening the NYT at work this week and came across two articles that I thought would be relevant to share here:

Fighting homelessness with smartphones (a case for why technology has become a basic need): http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/upshot/fighting-homelessness-one-smartphone-at-a-time.html?abt=0002&abg=1

Europe formally challenges Google's dominance in web searches: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/international/european-union-google-antitrust-case.html

Enjoy!

Kelly.wilson (talk)

Thumbs up for Zittrain Video

I usually post quite late, just before class, in case I think of something profound. Today I am posting early, firstly because experience has taught me profundity is unlikely in the hours remaining, and secondly to leave enough time that you might follow my thumbs-up for the Jonathan Zittrain Minds for Sale Video in the Optional Readings section of today’s assignment page. It is a little over 90 minutes, but I wish it were longer. It illuminates many of the questions I wrote in the margins of my notes on the other readings.

I was particularly interested in the discussion about the unusual world we are creating for ourselves as we begin to employ diverse human resources to perform tiny increments of work in return for pennies, points in a game, or nothing at all. Zittrain touches on the many imaginative ways that peer production, including the gamification of peer production, is employed. He asks whether our children will spend their leisure time making a few more dollars on their phones, rather than being a part of real/live activities. It is a fascinating discussion, very well presented.

I highly recommend venturing into this optional reading activity even if you don’t usually go there. If this subject area is at all interesting to you, Zittrain’s video is worthwhile.

Gary Brown (talk) 20:14, 20 April 2015 (EDT)

In honor of peer production I would like to mention that I was inspired by Gary Brown’s post.

Gary, thank you so much for highlighting the “Minds for Sale” video. I agree that it does fill in the blanks and weave together themes from other reading. Zittrain offers a variety of examples of peer production in which communities work together under limited policies and control to benefit the public good. One of my favorite examples was the X Prize. I read about the X Prize in an advanced economics course at Pepperdine while working towards my MBA. Just like in Hergeaux’s Wikipedia experiment, or “Public Goods Game” individuals participating in the X Prize may forego their own financial gains in the event that their social image may be boosted. We can see also, just like in Creative Commons, individuals participating in the X Prize give up “right, title, and interest” to their work. Yet the potential benefit to both an individual company in charge of that specific X Prize, and public at large, can be monumental.

Batjarks (talk) 14:18, 21 April 2015 (EDT)


While reading Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation, particularly the passage about windsurfing, I was reminded of the first in-depth article I read about Twitter. I started my own account in January of 2009, but I rarely used it until that summer when I read an in-depth article about it in Time magazine. The article described how Twitter users – not the software team – developed the concept of the hashtag, as well as trending topics. Since that time, these innovations have more or less come to define Twitter as we know it. I specifically remember a quote likening Twitter’s use innovation to a group of people buying a toaster and transforming it into a microwave. This article was directly responsible for my increased usage of Twitter. At a time when Facebook was making sweeping changes to its platform, often to the dismay of its users, the idea of Twitter’s user-based innovation felt refreshing, democratic, and empowering.

What I was feeling is similar to what Yochai Benkler described about Wikipedia: that it has given us "a way of looking at the world around us and seeing the possibility of effective human cooperation, on really complex, large projects, without relying on either market or government processes” (of course, Twitter itself relies on the market, but its users do not necessarily). I was also struck by James Surowiecki’s arguments for the wisdom of crowds. I often fall into a trap of thinking that large groups succumb to the lowest common denominator or develop a mob mentality. However, the way Twitter users make use of hashtags should constantly be reminding me of the opposite. Consistently over the past several years, users have redefined media narratives that have traditionally excluded certain voices. For example, the #yesallwomen and #blacklivesmatter hashtags have given voices to women and African Americans and have launched conversations around gender and race in society in productive ways. It seems like I constantly hear about how the Internet makes us secluded, narcissistic, and vapid, so it was encouraging to read about the ways large numbers of users contribute to the public good through peer production.

Beccalew (talk) 12:05, 21 April 2015 (EDT)

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