P2P for People Not Profit
January 1st, 2007Howard Rheingold of Smart Mobs expresses his optimism over many-to-many communication:
My optimism about the potential of the generation of digital natives is neither technological determinism nor naive utopianism. Many-to-many communication enables but does not compel or guarantee widespread civic engagement by populations who never before had a chance to express their public voices
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Big corporations are taking notice of p2p applications and hardware and positioning themselves to cash in on these latest technologies. It is up to us to defend our space online and secure a voice for everyone.
The majority of youths may have in fact “created as well as consumed online content,” but we cannot forget about those who are denied access. There are still significant portions of the population being left out (in this country, not to mention the rest of the world). In America, while most people have access to the Internet in some manner, only 42% have broadband at home.
Access to this communications revolution must still be purchased, and those left out are those traditionally oppressed and disenfranchised.
I think the two main questions are 1) Who has access? and 2) Is the access creating meaningful communication?
The first one seems straightforward although not easy. We must bring access to those left out.
The second one is much harder to ensure. There are some positive signs among the user-created content of MySpace and YouTube, but not enough to support the level of social organization required to enact meaningful change. As long as these hierarchical giants rule the Internet, profiting off of user-generated content that is confined to a rather narrow scope, while promoting all but the weakest connections based primarily on consumer preferences, the trajectory for change will remain low.
I believe that in order for p2p communications to enable this “widespread civic engagement,” we must prioritize those efforts that emphasize meaningful and organic peer-to-peer connections as opposed to those organizations most interested in profit (e.g. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.).
It is likely that Web 2.0 companies concerned with spurring positive social change will be unable to fund themselves with ads. Remember, the profit model of Web 2.0 media companies resemble that of traditional media companies. They are selling a product to a customer; namely they are selling audiences to corporations.
Not all audiences are the equal though. Corporations like MySpace are looking to attract an impressionable, consumer-driven audience. On the other hand, audiences that think for themselves and create organic content and connections are less vulnerable to such corporate propaganda and thus less valuable for advertisers.
Again, a certain scope of content creation is permissable. So you can write about teenage romance or post a video of a funny prank. But take something like Indymedia or Narco News, who both support viewpoints that would never be allowed in traditional, mainstream media. They don’t have advertisements, but even if they allowed them, what kind of company would want to advertise their? Certainly not the high-paying ones covering the pages of MySpace.
Nevertheless, a p2p website that could create such an audience would assuredly have to remain free and open to all users. I believe these spaces either have to be organized as a non-profit (e.g. Wikipedia), or owned and funded by the users in some other volunteer manner.
In 2007, we must shift our fanatic like attention from the latest Web 2.0 darlings to organizations seeking actual progress instead of profit.