Location

Can be virtual (applies to digital / virtual resources) of physical (applies to physical resources and agents).

It is an attribute that specifies where to find things.

REA and NRP-CAS implementation

Work has been done on location using the REA (Resource, Event, Agent) ontology, implemented in NRP-CAS.

Resources are gathered into an inventory list. See example on Sensorica’s NRP. See also collection of spaces in the NRP. A lab (makerspace for example) is a spaceItalic text Resource Type. Resources have Location and other attributes. See for example a 3D printer.

Note that this past work on NRP-CAS has been followed with Valueflows and it is now implemented on Holochain, see h-REA. The idea with Holochain is to move away from centralized databases and have resources exist as composable building blocks on a global network. Thus, we are detaching resources from organizational contexts. Moreover, we are also playing with different property regimes.

This is also related to work on Identity and Profiles, also detaching identities from organizational contexts. Thus, Agents AND Resources are composable building blocks on a global network.

We see peer production as Agents swarming economic activity (innovation, production, dissemination / distribution etc. ), crowdsourcing (assembling) required Resources. This leads to what IoP calls production of open know-how. The NRP-CAS implements that as Recipes, which are chains of Processes with temporal dependencies. A Process is an input / output pattern, Resources go in, deliverables go out to feed the next Process.

There is also the notion of Transaction when it comes to material resources. If we treat them as composable building blocks in peer production, living as entities with their own identity on a global network, we need to take Resources outside of the organizational context to allow them to flow. In other words, de-silo Resources.

Thus, a 3D printer can be located at one makerspace, but it can be moved to another lab part of the network to be utilized in some project, under certain conditions, respecting a set of rules.

Accessing (using) the 3D printer and moving a 3D printer from one location / lab to another are transactions, which require credentials and perhaps some form of reciprocation (payment or other). These transactions can be recorded into a ledger.

So in this peer production context the Where is an attribute that can be changed through a transaction, as described above. It is not fixed to a location or to an organization.