Power
An agents's ability to control another agent, determine a process or control a resource. It is different from influence.
It is important to realize that the p2p movement erodes or tries to eliminate instituted relations of power and to destroy hubs. In other words, p2p is essentially about doing things together based on value-based relations, not on power-based relations.
Definition of power
Instituted power
From Multitude Manifesto
- Institutional power is one’s ability to affect someone else's life, granted by formal rules within an organization, or in society at large. It is the power of a policeman to arrest you, and the power of a judge to put you in prison. It is the power of your boss to hire or to fire you from your job. Assuming that the rules have a rational basis and are based on sound ethical considerations, the exercise of formal power is usually framed, but that doesn’t eliminate the abuse of power, which is the exercise of someone’s will beyond the provisions of the instituted power relation. Rage, nepotism, physical and psychological abuse, are all symptoms of abuse of instituted power. An abuse of power can be exercised through the application of unfair rules, through a voluntary misinterpretation of rules, through malicious manipulation of facts (or evidence) to construe an apparent violation of rules, or even through the non application of existing rules (ignoring the rules).
OVNs are organizations that try to eliminate instituted power relations through the creation of permissionless collaboration spaces that are regulated through formal protocols, which constitute (economic) games. People are in our out of the game based on how well they play the game, not based on someone's will that decides who should be in our out of the game. When it comes to planning and allocation of time on tasks, OVNs rely less on planning and more on stigmergy.
Dimensions of power
To be completed - see Multitude Manifesto
Framework for ability to exercise power
Exercising power is an action. We need to analyze action to understand how the exercise of power is expressed.
Four phase model of action
- Propose: delineate the options on the table
- Decide: select the preferred option
- Execute: put the selected option into action
- Evaluate: analyze the impact of the executed action
Power relations and information
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Power and economy
- With respect to the economic axis (horizontal in diagram 1 above) the question that emerges is whether the network economy devolves toward p2p producing communities, or whether this network economy is incorporated into large-scale centralized corporations (netarchical capital or platform capitalism). If network economic power shifts toward a meshwork of networked communities and individuals (both local and trans-local), we can call this a citizen driven p2p economy. If network economic power is ensconced into large networked multinational corporations, we can call this netarchical capitalism. In this polarity, major corporations, like Google and Facebook, co-opt the potentials of the emerging p2p and sharing economies, and provide the infrastructure and networks for sharing and exchange, though suppressing and squashing its diversity and autonomy, while extracting surplus value from such platforms
Source: The Futures of Power in the Network Era, Jose M. Ramos, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Power and politics
- With respect to the political axis (vertical in diagram 1 above) the question that arises with the emergence of network politics is whether surveillance technologies, soft power and network control tilt in the favor of government, or alternatively tilt in the favor of citizens. If existing forces for surveillance and social control have their way, governments will increasingly collect large amounts of data on the lives of the average citizen. When a person becomes of interest to the state they can be surveilled and monitored, and effectively tamed. This condition would be one in which citizens lose their capacity for privacy, while government is increasingly shrouded in secrecy. If citizen movements for transparency and accountability have their way, then the inner workings of government are pried open for all to see, government transparency becomes the norm, and the citizenry tame government. Importantly, in this polarity, individuals retain certain rights to privacy.
Reference: The Futures of Power in the Network Era, Jose M. Ramos, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
External links
- The role of power relations in a p2p economy
- The Futures of Power in the Network Era, Jose M. Ramos, Queensland University of Technology, Australia