Distributed Collaboration

Distributed CollaborationCCR 747:::S13

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Yochai Benkler

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Clay Spinuzzi

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distributed workcommons-based peer production

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[CBPP] depends on very large aggregations of individuals independently scouring their information environment in search of opportunities to be creative in small or large increments. These individuals then self-identify for tasks and perform them for a variety of motivational reasons... Practically all successful peer production systems have a robust mechanism for peer review or statistical weeding out of contributions from agents who misjudge themselves. (376)

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project requirements

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First, they must be modular ... divisible into components, or modules, each of which can be produced independently of the production of the others. This enables production to be incremental and asynchronous, pooling the efforts of different people, with different capabilities, who are available at different times (378-79)

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Second, the granularity of the modules is important and refers to the sizes of the project’s modules. For a peer production process to pool successfully a relatively large number of contributors, the modules should be predominantly fine-grained, or small in size. This allows the project to capture contributions from large numbers of contributors whose motivation levels will not sustain anything more than small efforts ... A project will likely be more efficient if it can accommodate variously sized contributions (379).

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Third, and finally, a successful peer production enterprise must have low-cost integration, which includes both quality control over the modules and a mechanism for integrating the contributions into the finished product (379).

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18,736,245editors

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What’s a commons?

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“Individuals produce on a nonproprietary basis and contribute their product to a knowledge “commons” that no one is understood as “owning,” and that anyone can, indeed is required by professional norms to, take and extend” (381-82).

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The tragedy of the commons

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nonrivalrous goods

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Factors for emergence of CBPP - p 369.

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Creativity and production models -

p 414

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Incentive & Motivation p 424

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Distributed Work

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Let us call this distributed work coordinative, polycontextual, crossdisciplinary work that splices together divergent work activities (separated by time, space, organizations, and objectives) and that enables the transformations of information and texts that characterize such work. (Spinuzzi, 266)

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Distributed work is the coordinative work that enables sociotechnical networks to hold together and form dense interconnections among and across work activities that have traditionally been separated by temporal, spatial, or disciplinary boundaries. Networks, not hierarchies, are the dominant organizational form here (though one does not preclude the other, and hierarchies persist in distributed work). Distributedwork is deeply interpenetrated, with multiple, multidirectional information flows. Yes, work may resemble a process, but this work is performed by assemblages of workers and technologies, assemblages that may not be stable from one incident to the next and in which work may not follow predictable or circumscribed paths. (268)paths.

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“Networks, not hierarchies, are the

dominant organizational form here.” (268)

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In this shift toward distributed work, negotiation becomes an essential skill. Trust becomes an ongoing project. Organizations become looser aggregations held together by alliances, and agility entails constantly having to work to reaffirm and redefine alliances (Alberts & Hayes, 2003; Atkinson & Moffat, 2005). Thus, rhetoric becomes an essential area of expertise; direct connections mean that everyone can and should be a rhetor (Carter, 2005). (271)

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What’s it really all about, Alfie?

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Jess:Now, I realize Spinuzzi is not talking about e-portfolios, but why can’t I? I also want to think about digital archives here. I’m interested in both of these things as mediums for reinvigorating learning and promoting writing and literacy, especially in community contexts. And they both represent possibilities within collaborative writing that defies spatial, temporal, and disciplinary constraints. ... This work is distributed—I have hard copies of books that have literally been shipped from England for me to digitize. This work brings together people from sociology and comp/rhet backgrounds; working-class writers; French and English speakers; college students and grown adults writing from their WWII experiences. Without the digital platform and the idea of distributed work, this experience would be impossible.

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The second point that I brought up had to do with what Spinuzzi says about surveillance. I love idea that we’ve moved from the policing of the panopticon to the communal and mutually participatory notion of the agora, where we collectively and collaboratively “monitor each other and ourselves” (270).

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I’m wondering though: When we think of authorship and collaboration, how possible (or even beneficial) is it to “monitor” ourselves? Where (or on what type of authorship) should we draw the line? For instance, is this democratic notion okay so long at it’s seemingly low-stake writing (e-portfolios, archives, etc?) What about in other genres and environments?

Another thing I’m thinking about but really don’t expect an answer to come up any time soon is: even though I advocate the uses of distributed work and authorship, how can we be attentive to both the local/specific and the transnational/global? Said another way, how can we find balance between the stable individual environment and a continually flowing network of disciplines, people, texts, and ideas? 

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What’s it mean for authorship?

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What’s it mean for ownership?

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