What's a "peer"?

[skreutzer]

It looks like in the context of peeragogy, there's a specific but also relatively vague notion of what a peer is.

There are many types of groups. A group is a generic concept for defining arbitrary boundaries of who is in and out, and how those inside relate to each other, and how the inside relates to the outside. These boundaries don't need to be fixed/strict, but it would become pointless to speak about a "group" if it's identical to the implicit group that already includes everybody. Some groups are internally structured hierarchically in terms of power/control, others have carefully designed procedures in place of how to exercise power (the control is in the procedure), and there's a whole bunch of other metrics/dynamics apart from power/control that can be set up differently (money flows, distribution of work, mindshare, sympathy, etc.). "Peer" probably means that there is an outside that doesn't apply peer principles, but the peers inside a peer group are all equal as in sovereign (over their own matters/actions), not as in similar/identical.

Modern peer theory is of course heavily influenced by the nature and architecture of computer networks. However, before that, the "peer review" at universities and in academic journal publishing is already a good example of what the term probably means, as the researcher submits his work for review by his/her "peers" who are supposed to be "equal" researchers in the same field just like him/her. At another time, the researcher having his/her paper reviewed by his/her peers may participate in the review of somebody else's submission, potentially by one of his former reviewers. To establish some equality, the reviewers can be all anonymous, so there's less/no interference for the decision based on sympathy/disregard, position, reputation, personal benefits/favors or similar.

In practice, in a group of self-sovereign, independent peers, some effects are not unlike anarchy (which isn't chaos or the absence/lack of power/control, but the refusal to accept unjust power/control, so in a meritocratic way, what actually happens gets constantly re-negotiated/challenged). However, peer principles aren't identical to anarchy, as the latter political concept mostly addresses the physical space, in which group members are hardly ever "equal" in the sense that they may be independent of each other, as a result of the scarcities that are present in the physical world of time, matter and location.

Digital and computers are different however. Before and besides the Internet, there have been many other networks for transmitting information, be it the telegraph or the telephone, or the networks of banks or airlines, digital and non-digital. In contrast, the kind of computer networks the ARPANET/Internet/LANs belong to have some very interesting features of systemic architecture designed into them, which contributed significantly to their success over all the other network types, and this is too where we get the modern peer concept from.

In the early days of computing, there wasn't any standardization of components and protocols, every machine more or less a separate project in the domain of electronics. Wiring these together and make them talk therefore was naturally a huge challenge. There's a lot of not well known background around J. C. R. Licklider, Robert W. Taylor, Douglas C. Engelbart, and historically, I want to also include Paul Otlet and Vannevar Bush. Practically, BBN Technologies (Bolt Beranek and Newman) was tasked with the implementation, from where we get this great piece of presentation:

    https://archive.org/details/ComputerNetworks_TheHeraldsOfResourceSharing?start=220 (from 3:40)

in which Robert E. Kahn explains the main systemic tool for managing complexity, to abstract/hide the details away with the help of interfaces. Also, from the Turing test, if the interface of communication are just the bits (electronic signals) that go over a wire in the wall, all the other network users and machines are just as equal peers as oneself, because all they can do and what they look like is, too, just a bunch of bits that come back and are received. If all network participants agree to be equal and use the same digital encoding of information for data transmission, it's pretty difficult to have one party gain power/control over what the other peers can encode, what they can and can't talk about. Furthermore, on the physical and logical level of the transmission over wires, as the architecture is designed to allow communication packets to use different routes, there's no central node that could block a transmission. With strong asymmetric encryption (as implemented in HTTPS), the nodes between sender and receiver don't have the power to read/spy on the data message payload or alter it. All of this doesn't mean that there are special machines involved for special purposes, that network operators wouldn't gain power over other participants by (legitimate) control/power over their own activities combined with their sheer size which starts to make other parties dependent on them, that bad actors can try to ruin the party for everyone with acts of vandalism, that the governments of the world try to have a say and dictate what the technology can and can't do, that it matters a whole lot how your wire in the wall (the "last mile") is set up, and if the user chooses voluntarily to get into many artificial legal and technical dependencies on the level of data lock-in, software functionality or service offerings. Still, it remains important to realize/recognize that in the digital context, cheap electronics and our particular network architecture means that there's no participant in the network that holds some special privileges or authority over what all the other participants may or may not do. Peers each decide for themselves, with whom else they want to engage, and how.

With the network, it's already very apparent that this peerness is deliberately designed into the technical architecture of digital data transmission, and this aspect alone has several conceptual layers of its own. Just consider the OSI reference model - and likewise, it's not too farfetched to assume that there are many more layers to be found higher and lower (for example: what about the electricity that powers the transmission and digital encoding, contractual obligations, social norms/expectations, etc.), for which one might as well ask if the groups that exist on these other levels are based, designed and operating on peer principles as well. Most of the time, they may not, because it's relatively difficult to establish and protect an equal status (not just in theory, but also in effect!) for all of the participants, which is naturally found in non-physical, virtual of information encoding. Nonetheless, from the example of computer networks, some methods can be learned for introducing more peerness to other domains: designing open standards/protocols for interactions allow peers to adopt and change/expand them, and who isn't adhering to these and instead runs his/her own incompatible operation, already self-excluded him-/herself from the peer group by not speaking the shared language. Once using the shared languages (there can be many in parallel), these can be adjusted, but only in ways that don't grant certain participants special power/control over the other group members. Practically, if a party tries to introduce new modifications that would award itself or some other parties a certain advantage, but not some other members of the group, the other participants may simply refuse to accept these changes, and even if the former large group splits off into two that disagree on these changes and use different standards, these are still two separate groups of peers, within which the peer members remain equal amongst each other.

Typical examples for the effects of actual peerness can be found in

    https://archive.org/details/STEAL_THIS_FILM

    https://archive.org/details/StealThisFilmII (don't miss the footage: https://footage.stealthisfilm.com/browse)

    The Pirate Bay – Away From Keyboard

One doesn't necessarily agree with the approach of these copyright pragmatists ("pirates"), but because of the truly peer-based network, they're in effect no different in control and power than law enforcement, Hollywood, you or me, which too all count as a single node of one, no matter if there's a multi-billion company or the government of a state behind it or just a kid with a computer, each with just a single vote, each enabled to do the very same kind of actions, without a way to permit one party and restrict the other.

Now, what does this mean for peeragogy? In what way and on what levels do peer principles apply?

[Charles Blass]

Stephan! This is marvelous.
I suggest we use it almost as is, in the 4th Handbook edition.

[Joe Corneli]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 at 16:03, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

It looks like in the context of peeragogy, there's a specific but also relatively vague notion of what a peer is.

It's easiest for me to say a bit about the "theory," and then work my way back to how things work in the project.

In some versions of the paragogy principles, the 3rd principle is:

iii.a "Peers are equal, but different."

Another version says:

iii.b "Peers provide feedback that wouldn’t be there otherwise."

I'd have to dig to figure out why there are two different versions of this principle!  But they're both pretty nice descriptions.

To flesh it out a bit more, this principle is meant to replace, or complement, the 3rd principle of andragogy, "Adult learners enter educational settings ready to learn." Because maybe they enter ready to learn, and maybe they don't.  Let's not assume they are all the same in this regard (iii.a).  Your post about 'lurkers' is relevant.  Furthermore, how can they learn unless there is 'difference' to learn from? If learning was the default, then we wouldn't need to talk about it or think about it.  So we need to identify the sources of feedback that are not there by default (iii.b).

The principle is then operationalised by this strategy:

iii.c Work with real users.

The gist of it is that paragogical praxis happens in real contexts that are nevertheless outside of or 'para-' to existing institutions. For example, with current students that might mean on TikTok rather than Moodle. 

But another level of thinking here is to make this immediate within experience, and ask:

iii.d What are some different perspectives on what’s happening?

Now, we are no longer looking for an abstract definition of "peer" but are engaging ourselves as peers right here in the shared context we are in.  So we can explore the experience of being "peers" within this context, phenomenologically.

From this point of view, it's easier to say what it means to be a peer in the peeragogy project.  Right away, we have different perspectives on this.  That's the starting position.  "What is a peer?" will hopefully *not* have one final agreed answer.  Still, practical things like participating somehow, being respectful to others, and signing the CC Zero waiver to contribute material to the handbook are all potentially relevant.

In the specific context of the handbook: once material is added, anyone who has signed the waiver can change it (we are equal in this regard).  But other people who haven't signed the waiver can also change it in their own copies or use it in some other context, so they are also equal (in a slightly different regard).

However, there's a lot more to being "peeragogical" than just contributing material to the handbook: it's about a process of shared inquiry, respect, and an effort to learn from everything that happens, including failure.

There are many types of groups. A group is a generic concept for defining arbitrary boundaries of who is in and out, and how those inside relate to each other, and how the inside relates to the outside.

Here maybe "equivalence relation" is a relevant abstraction.  Would we say that Angela Merkel and Queen Elizabeth II are "peers" or that Angela Merkel and Boris Johnson are "peers"?  Maybe neither, maybe both, maybe the question is silly.  As you say we can be "arbitrary".  The more interesting thing would be to look at the natural equivalence relations that arise.

"Peer" probably means that there is an outside that doesn't apply peer principles, but the peers inside a peer group are all equal as in sovereign (over their own matters/actions), not as in similar/identical.

Again, with the Handbook as an example, there's an aspect like this, but we also try to extend as much as we can to people who are not inside the group.  Really, peeragogy is meant to be for any group that wants to learn anything.  This gives us an ideal to work towards. 

Modern peer theory is of course heavily influenced by the nature and architecture of computer networks.

For me personally, they only had an indirect influence.  I was interested in "commons-based peer production", which happens to show up very transparently in computer networks, but seems to be preceded in non-computer networks, as you say:

 

However, before that, the "peer review" at universities and in academic journal publishing is already a good example of what the term probably means

... let's think also about how well peer review actually works.  It's a chance to get feedback, and a kind of shared inquiry, but it's also quite competitive: filtering things in/out of the publication.  Practices of "open peer review" might be more effective way to support learning (look at how they do it in the Journal of Peer Production).

 

...group members are hardly ever "equal" in the sense that they may be independent of each other, as a result of the scarcities that are present in the physical world of time, matter and location.

Probably this is where iii.b came from, since it brings learning to the fore rather than just incidental difference.

Still, it remains important to realize/recognize that in the digital context, cheap electronics and our particular network architecture means that there's no participant in the network that holds some special privileges or authority over what all the other participants may or may not do. Peers each decide for themselves, with whom else they want to engage, and how.

That does seem important.  Contrast it for instance with something like the House of Commons, where not just anyone can participate, where representatives may not actually do what their constituents want, and so on.

With the network, it's already very apparent that this peerness is deliberately designed into the technical architecture of digital data transmission, and this aspect alone has several conceptual layers of its own. Just consider the OSI reference model - and likewise, it's not too farfetched to assume that there are many more layers to be found higher and lower (for example: what about the electricity that powers the transmission and digital encoding, contractual obligations, social norms/expectations, etc.), for which one might as well ask if the groups that exist on these other levels are based, designed and operating on peer principles as well.

I like the term "peerness".  It reminds me of "wholeness", a favourite term of Christopher Alexander.  I think the two are related in the peeragogy project, since participation as a peer relates to the whole.  This is maybe less likely in technical networks, since participation in the network can be machine-like or self-serving.  Furthermore, as you've mentioned electricity: 'natch, this is also networked, but it's historically along a "broadcast" method rather than a "p2p" method.  That's changing.

One metaphor that occurred to me recently is that "relationships are like software for humans, running on a distributed architecture."  Things like hardware and protocols have something to do with these human relationships, but I think just as often they reify or encode inequality.

Practically, if a party tries to introduce new modifications that would award itself or some other parties a certain advantage, but not some other members of the group, the other participants may simply refuse to accept these changes, and even if the former large group splits off into two that disagree on these changes and use different standards, these are still two separate groups of peers, within which the peer members remain equal amongst each other.

Such "forkability" is a pretty limited corner case for distributed control.  (I agree with what you said somewhere about distributed version control being a huge innovation: that's based not just on the ability to fork, but also the ability to merge.)

One doesn't necessarily agree with the approach of these copyright pragmatists ("pirates"), but because of the truly peer-based network, they're in effect no different in control and power than law enforcement...

Though as I understand it, the peer-based nature of the network is increasingly at threat, not from pirates, but from what we could call "privateers".

 

Now, what does this mean for peeragogy? In what way and on what levels do peer principles apply?

I hope my inline replies give some ideas!  It could be interesting to describe the flows, networks, and so on inside peeragogy using more technical language.

I was reminded a bit of Simondon's essay on "Technical Mentality".  Pulling out the key points:

1. The subsets are relatively detachable from the whole of which they are a part.

2. If one wants to understand a being completely, one must study it by considering it in its entelechy, and not in its inactivity or its static state.

[compare iii.c]

https://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia07/parrhesia07_simondon2.pdf

(Not required reading by any means, but I'm happy to discuss that essay along with other points above.)

[Joe Corneli]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 at 20:58, Charles Blass <charle...@gmail.com> wrote:

Stephan! This is marvelous.
I suggest we use it almost as is, in the 4th Handbook edition.

Hm... I agree that the post is valuable but I'm inclined to poke a bit more.  A start might be to complete this form:

(1) Review the intention: what do we expect to learn or make together?

(2) Establish what is happening: what and how are we learning?

(3) What are some different perspectives on what’s happening?

(4) What did we learn or change?

(5) What else should we change going forward?

[Joe Corneli]

On Sun, 1 Dec 2019 at 16:03, 'skreutzer' via Peeragogy <peer...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

In practice, in a group of self-sovereign, independent peers, some effects are not unlike anarchy (which isn't chaos or the absence/lack of power/control, but the refusal to accept unjust power/control, so in a meritocratic way, what actually happens gets constantly re-negotiated/challenged)

Another quick comment here is that the term "meritocracy" was introduced in a satirical essay:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

Your point above seems consistent with the view of the person who introduced the term:

"It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit. It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others."

It's a bit funny that the term "meritocracy" was introduced to describe such hardening, and here you are using it in a way that challenges the same result!

[skreutzer]

Really quick on this one, about meritocracies: the physical and virtual space are fundamentally different and nature, different rules apply, it's dangerous to compare and translate from one into the other. My attempt to reflect a little on peer principles, especially the modern notion as observed in digital, is not about the physical world. On the network, there's nobody who can appoint other network participants for job carrying out a job, every peer may evaluate merit differently as observed from actions/behavior, social "class" is arbitrarily self-selected and not exclusive (meaning, that there can be many different groups and classes, as everybody in there is still just an equal peer, so everybody can create his/her own classes, which happens based on merit/action in comparison to those who don't do what a given class does), and every peer is equally capable and not restricted/excluded from just doing what existing classes do, so even if one isn't allowed to join a particular group on the potentially non-peer social level, by simply being equally able to do what the group/class does, based on individual peer merit, one can easily start another class/group based on de-facto action, and maybe even surpass what other self-selected, arbitrary peer groups were doing based on the skill, capacity or resources of their participants. On the technical, architectural level, there's no power/control/hierarchy designed/implemented into it which would conceptually make one peer or a peer group or an entire class of peers any better off than all the others.

[skreutzer]

The initial description assumes that there is a scarcity of positions, that somebody or a group appoints a new member to join their class, that they decide beforehand what they consider to be with merit (instead of the de-facto as-is action which will prove its merit by more action, not via prior projection/analysis), and these mostly because in the physical world, it's hardly ever equal peers, as the class or group is likely in exclusive control over some scarce resources, to which they can grant or deny access with their decision. In the virtual world, everybody can become a de-facto class member by simply realizing the merit through action, and it doesn't matter what other peers or members of a class think about it, nor can they deny anybody else from simply doing the same things they do, from having equal access to all the things they have, so the merit is more about actually investing the effort, acquiring the skill, etc., and one would automatically become de-facto a member of this or that class, not via some official appointment by somebody else (who would be that, if everybody is equal peers?).

[Joe Corneli]

Yes, point very much taken!  Application of these ideas *within* the peeragogy project can follow the same logic (and, thus, be inspired by the way other p2p networks work, as you have been writing about).  In my paper about paragogical praxis, I talked about being inspired by real utopias: I think this goes in the same direction.

Even so (with me there’s usually a ‘but’... I love to wrangle) — let’s also be aware of the embeddedness of these utopias within *another* broader ecology & economy, with path-dependent constraints. Thus, we could in principle build an alternative to Facebook (GNU Social or otherwise), but we would do so, initially, within the shadow of the current Facebook.

There was another even-more-real-world example in The Intercept recently, about a policy in Brazil that protected small parts of the rainforest, but which is being undermined in the age of Bolsonaro. The utopias exist in tension with dystopia, in this case.

I think we must strive to move between the two perspectives. To use a metaphor, there’s prayer and meditation on the one hand, and charity and righteousness on the other.