Just as the three quarters of oil engineers now agree that Peak Oil is in sight within the next decade (after that, oil production can only decline), can we also posit that we may have reached a moment of Peak Hierarchy, a moment in history in which it is no longer large centralized organizations that are most efficient or productive, but rather those that are organized as distributed networks and can draw on peer production communities?

This is the thesis explored by the P2P Foundation, a global network of researchers investigating the emergence of peer production, governance and property, showing how this new 'hyperproductive' mode of producing value is out-competing and out-collaborating traditional organizations. Such a change will have huge implications for society, business, and education. The election victory of Barack Obama, and his program of green capitalism, opens up, because it cannot succeed without huge strides in participation, the possibility of a 'high road' transition towards a peer to peer society, based on the voluntary aggregation of productive communities united around the creation of common value.

How would our society function, if GNU/Linux and Wikipedia were not just emergent, but the model of a new type of institutions residing in the core of our economy and politics?

Michel Bauwens will take us through the main concepts of P2P, such as Free Software, open source, open content, open innovation, peer production, free knowledge. As founder and president of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives, Michel is developing a conceptual framework aiming to explain these social processes and what it means for business, education and government.

As the seats are limited it is strongly advised to register at peter@waag.org.Please only register if you are sure to be present, otherwise other people won't be able to participate.

The event is organised by the Waag Society and the Free Knowledge Institute and is supported by Creative Commons Nederland.

About the Free Knowledge Institute
The Free Knowledge Institute (FKI) is a non-profit organisation that fosters the free exchange of knowledge in all areas of society. Inspired by the Free Software movement, the FKI promotes freedom of use, modification, copying and distribution of knowledge in four different but highly related fields: education, technology, culture and science. 

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons Nederland is a co-operative project of Waag Society, Nederland Kennisland and the Institute for Information Law. Creative Commons Nederland aims to develop and promote the Creative Commons licenses in the Netherlands. These licenses offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

About Michel Bauwens and the Foundation for P2P Alternatives
Michel Bauwens is an active writer, researcher and conference speaker on the subject of technology, culture and business innovation. He is the founder of the Foundation for Peer-to-Peer Alternatives and works in collaboration with a global group of researchers in the exploration of peer production, governance, and property. He has been an analyst for the United States Information Agency, knowledge manager for British Petroleum, eBusiness Strategy Manager for Belgacom, as well as an internet entrepreneur in his home country of Belgium. He has co- produced the 3-hour TV documentary Technocalyps with Frank Theys, and co-edited the two-volume book on anthropology of digital society with Salvino Salvaggio. Michel is currently Primavera Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and external expert at the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences (2008). He currently lives with his family in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

Network Civilization: Peer-to-Peer and the Rise of Green Capitalism
A lecture by Michel Bauwens about Peer Production

Date & time: 15 December 2008, 20.00 hrs 
Location: Waag building, Nieuwmarkt 4, Amsterdam 
Organised by: Waag Society, Free Knowledge Institute & Creative Commons Netherlands