Presented at 2010 NMC Symposium for the Future http://www.nmc.org/preso/8051

1. NMC Symposium for the Future 2010-10-20 Collaboration for Good Futures Mike Linksvayer Creative Commons / Collaborative Futures Photo by asadal · Licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 · http://flickr.com/photos/68242677@N00/2117153416/

2. Thesis & Outline Collaborative Futures = (increased probability of) Good Futures ? (your participation matters)

3. How this talk came about...

9. Aside: very brief re licenses and Creative Commons

11. HQ in San Francisco

12. Global network of 100+ affiliate organizations Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

14. Legal and technical tools enabling a “Some Rights Reserved” model

16. Media is more diverse and at least a decade(?) behind software

17. Six Mainstream Licenses

18. Public Domain Tools

19. Lawyer Readable

20. Human Readable

21. Machine Readable (License) <rdf:RDF xmlns=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#&quot; xmlns:rdf=&quot;http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#&quot;> <License rdf:about=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nl/&quot;> <permits rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#Reproduction&quot;/> <permits rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#Distribution&quot;/> <requires rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#Notice&quot;/> <requires rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#Attribution&quot;/> <prohibits rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#CommercialUse&quot;/> <permits rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#DerivativeWorks&quot;/> <requires rdf:resource=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#ShareAlike&quot;/> </License> </rdf:RDF>

22. Machine Readable (Work) <span xmlns:cc=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/ns#&quot; xmlns:dc=&quot;http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/&quot;> <span rel=&quot; dc:type &quot; href=&quot; http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text &quot; property=&quot; dc:title &quot; > My Book </span> by <a rel=&quot; cc:attributionURL &quot; property=&quot; cc:attributionName &quot; href=&quot; http://example.org/me &quot;> My Name </a> is licensed under a <a rel=&quot; license &quot; href=&quot; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ &quot; >Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>. <span rel=&quot; dc:source &quot; href=&quot; http://example.net/her_book &quot; /> Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a rel=&quot; cc:morePermissions &quot; href=&quot; http://example.com/revenue_sharing_agreement &quot;>example.com</a>. </span>

23. DRMfree NOT! Computer must help not handcuff! “ DRM Voodo” by psd licensed under CC BY 2.0 http://flickr.com/photos/psd/1806247462/

24. Public licenses (e.g., CC) enable mass collaboration in communities (e.g. Wikipedia) and across legal entity boundaries (e.g., Open Access, Open Educational Resources, Free Software) (end not so brief aside)

25. Back to how this talk came about...

29. About Collaborative Futures ...

33. Could the book sprint methodology be extended to non-manuals, i.e., less structure implied by subject?

34. How about a book sprint starting with only two words: Collaborative Futures ?

35. A recipe for the perfect meta-collaboration? Or a recipe for certain collaboration fail?

40. Arbitrary lessons and curiosities...

41. Whenever a communication medium lowers the costs of solving collective action dilemmas, it becomes possible for more people to pool resources. And “more people pooling resources in new ways” is the history of civilization in…seven words. —Marc Smith, Research sociologist at Microsoft

42. “Sharing is the first step”

43. “Web 2.0 is bullshit”

44. “This book might be useless”

45. “On the invitation”

46. “Open relationships”

47. “Sharing is the first step”

48. “Problematizing attribution”

49. “Can design by committee work?”

50. “Can design by committee work?”

51. And lots about the future...

52. A recipe for the perfect meta-collaboration? Or a recipe for certain collaboration fail? A: Selection of book sprint participants a confounding factor, or rather a factor in success (twice).

53. Good Futures Note: This may seem like cheerleading. There is an opportunity for a good critique of free collaboration and the “net” in general. Please take it up! Also note: This section is just me, not Collaborative Futures

54. In Innovation, Meta is Max “The max net-impact innovations, by far, have been meta-innovations, i.e., innovations that changed how fast other innovations accumulated.” Robin Hanson (Economist) http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/meta-is-max---i.html

55. Collective Intelligence Meta innovation?

56. Commons Meta innovation for Collective Intelligence?

57. $2.2 trillion Value of fair use in the U.S. Economy http://www.ccianet.org/artmanager/publish/news/First-Ever_Economic_Study_Calculates_Dollar_Value_of.shtml also see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7643

58. In Innovation, Meta is Max “We don’t have any idea how to solve cancer, so all we can do is increase the rate of discovery so as to increase the probability we'll make a breakthrough.” John Wilbanks, VP for Science, Creative Commons

59. Good Futures Also requires avoiding bad futures. Under-appreciated role of free collaboration?

60. Cyber terrorism (Cyber terror war on) Privacy breaches Loss of Generativity Lock-in Surveillance DRM Censorship Suppression of innovation Electoral fraud

62. Protectionism

63. Politics and power

64. Security theater and fear-based responses (driven by all of above, not just legitimate security issues)

66. Permit innovation and participation enabled by digital world even if not possible before (probably follows from above)

67. How building the commons (free software, free culture, and friends) helps

69. Security through obscurity doesn’t work

70. FLOSS encourages a heterogeneous computing environment

71. Free software and free culture both allergic to DRM and other mechanisms that sacrifice security to other goals

73. Free software and free culture both allergic to DRM

75. ... and the ability of all to participate

76. Peer production works against concentrated power — doesn’t require concentrated production structures and lowers barriers to entry

78. Commons work against three previous threats that drive security theater and fear

79. Can the success of the (digital) commons alter how we view freedom and power generally?

80. “The gate that has held the movements for equalization of human beings strictly in a dilemma between ineffectiveness and violence has now been opened. The reason is that we have shifted to a zero marginal cost world. As steel is replaced by software, more and more of the value in society becomes non-rivalrous: it can be held by many without costing anybody more than if it is held by a few.” Eben Moglen

81. “If we don’t want to live in a jungle, we must change our attitudes. We must start sending the message that a good citizen is one who cooperates when appropriate, not one who is successful at taking from others.” Richard Stallman

82. i.e., we can form collective intelligences instead of forced collectives ... and still “change the world”

85. Have a good idea of what we need to do to make it a good future

86. It is truly wonderful that creating free software and free culture has a side effect of facilitating [digital] freedom

88. A dominant commons makes many collective stupidity scenarios much less likely

89. Beneficial collective intelligence needs universal access to culture, educational resources, research ... in machine-readable form

90. So Collaborate! (and learn/experience so you can teach/recommend free software and free culture when appropriate)

91. Polyphonic voices / heteroglossia / CF contributors Thank you friends, and apologies for misrepresentations: Adam Hyde, kanarinka, Michael Mandiberg, Marta Peirano, Sissu Tarka, Astra Taylor, Alan Toner, Mushon Zer-Aviv