Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue
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Loading ... This essay by Yochai Benkler and Helen Nissenbaum explores the relationship between commons-based peer production and virtue. The authors define commons-based peer production as “a new model of economic production in which the creative energy of large number of people is coordinated (usually with the aid of the internet) into large, meaningful projects, mostly without traditional hierarchical organization or financial compensation” (Wikipedia). They argue that these commons-based peer productions provide opportunities for virtuous behavior, and that this behavior, in turn, breeds more people enacting virtuous behavior thus changing their character formation towards more virtuous beings. This sounds complicated, but it’s really easy to see. They use a number of examples to show this. The one we’re most familiar with is Wikipedia. People contribute for the greater good of having full, informative entries. Users tend to use self-discipline in their posts. When people do things that are considered to be out of line with the goals of the site, there are ways to regulate that. On other sites, like our site here, there are ways of rating posts which determines what is interesting but also determines validity. Open source and free software are another example the authors talk about. No one owns the software products and people aren’t making money off their work. People volunteer their time (in varying degrees of time and effort) to contribute to these sites. There are a few studies on what the motives for people to contribute on particular sites are and the most common answers have to do with virtuous, selfless reasons. The outcome is often greater creativity because of the various sources and the passion put into the work. What’s also important is how they define and categorize virtues. The definition is very inclusive. Virtues are divided into clusters. Cluster 1: Autonomy, Independence and Liberation; Cluster 2: Creativity, Productivity, Industry; Cluster 3: Benevolence, Charity, Generosity, Altruism; and, Cluster 4: Sociability, Camaraderie, Friendship, Cooperation, Civic Virtue. The authors argue that commons-based peer production provides an area for these virtuous acts, including self-concerned and other-concerned acts. (I keep thinking about Marshall McCluhan’s the medium is the message.) Virtuous acts means more virtuous behavior, they suggest.In the end, they suggest that this technology is important for public policy. They include a quote by Alasdair MacIntyre: “Only in fantasy do we live what story we please. In life, as Aristotle and Engels noted, we are always under certain constraints. We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourserlves part of an action that was not of our making.” In terms of technology, we are constrained by what’s already here that we have to work with when it’s created by other people with that power. When we create our own technology, common-based peer production, we have the agency to have this our way. ”We’re beginning to practice new ways to be free and equal beings in a way that we were not able to do before,” Benkler says in his presentation The Wealth of Networks. That sounds pretty damn good to me. Here are some websites that are really taking the technology and using it for virtuous causes:
globalvoices.orgGlobal Voices aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore. 
 indymedia.org Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth.Â
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