Peer2Politics

People have very different ideas about what’s exciting. I think companies don’t give enough credit to their own people, both in terms of their ability to decide what knowledge they have and what is interesting and not interesting to them and in terms of self-regulation. A big surprise for me is that in the open-source software world, this notion of self-selection takes center stage. You find that all the work, even the dullest work, gets done in the interest of finishing the project.

Through the case of the RepRap-based, Lego-built three-dimensional (3D) printing-milling machine, this paper sets out to discuss and illustrate two points: First, on a theoretical level, that modularity, not only in terms of development process but also of hardware components, can catalyze Commons-based peer production’s (CBPP) replication for tangible products enabling social experimentation and learning. Second, the hybrid 3D printing-milling machine demonstrates the digitization of material and the potential of digital fabrication. We show how the synergy of a globally accessible knowledge Commons as well as of the CBPP practices with digital fabrication technologies, which are advancing and becoming more and more accessible, can arguably offer the ability to think globally and produce locally.