Today I attended two keynotes on the limitations of peer production by Stefan Merton and another on the social organization of peer production by Mathieu O’Neil(Which, it turns out, is not at all based on equelibrety and therefore ‘peer’ might not be the right word. I prefer distributed in this context.)Both presentations ended in truly passionate and enlightened debates. one central issue in both discussions was the relationship between peer production and the existing capitalist system.It’s a really long discussion, but I think that what we are experiencing is a transition from one way of organizing production to another. That peer production as a logic of organization rather than an ideology will eventually out compete the industrial logic on sheer effectiveness. That means that it really isn’t relevant to talk about peer production as opposed to capitalism. The way I see it peer production is what capitalist industrialism is evolving into as we speak.

It’s a matter of logic, not ideology.