IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 49

ISTOCK/WILDPIXEL

Mediating Social Interactions

A

dvances in information
and com mu n ic at ion
tech nolo g ie s ( IC T )
have fueled the rise
of the peer production community, a
type of socio-technical system that self-organizes to deliver products or services created in a
distributed manner. These novel modes
of production, examples of which in clude such successful projects as Wikipedia, GNU/Linux, or Project Gutenberg,
defy the expectations of standard organizations - they open rather than
enclose knowledge and they motivate
contribution through social rather than
monetary incentives. Optimists reveling
in these new possibilities for collaboration forecast that peer production will
take over standard companies and
reduce existing inequalities thanks to its
ability to unleash the innovative potential of individuals and social groups in
an unprecedented manner [1]. Yet, what
is called "peer production" often entails
a variety of social structures and activities that do not have much in common.
Some of these - crowd labor for example - have little potential to change the
existing patterns of hierarchical, closed
organizations. We argue here that what
distinguishes those peer production systems that have the potential to revolutionize economies from other ICT
mediated collaborations are the values
that such systems embody, pursue, and
promote (such as openness, equality,
or freedom).
In social systems values can be promoted and enforced through social
norms, laws, market mechanisms, or

SEPTEMBER 2017

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a r c h i t e c t u r e [2]. In physical space
architecture is the physical limitations
imposed on behavior; in virtual life
architecture is the hardware and software mediating social interactions. By
describing particular examples we show
how certain values can be embedded in
the code providing necessary functionalities and affordances to the social
system that grows on this code and coevolves with it. We point out the weaknesses that such peer production
systems might display and which exploitation might lead to increasing inequalities rather than suppressing them. We
conclude by describing one quality of
peer production systems - collective
agency - that we think is crucial for
their competitive advantage over standard organizations.

Values
Values are one of the main drivers of
human behavior. They motivate individuals' actions to pursue desirable goals
and they serve as standards and criteria
for evaluation [3], [4]. Even though psychology and sociology recognize that
human behavior may be motivated by a
whole spectrum of values (such as happiness, security, or equality), in the context of economic production it is mostly
monetary motivation that is discussed
and studied.
The Internet (and other ICT) has
enabled people of similar motivations to
interact directly with each other and
deliver products through contributions
motivated by their system of values in a
cost- and time-effective manner. This led
to the outburst of peer collaboration in
which the importance of non-monetary

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

49
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017
