Austin Henderson, Jared Harris

(A position paper for Critical Alternatives 2015 workshop W12: The Future of Making.)

The increasingly common creation of large, important, complex systems through “open peer projects” is a rich source of insight into the Future of Making. We should learn what has made open peer practices so effective, and apply those insights to Making. Our conclusion is that open peer production is supporting evolution of complex systems with powerful tools, and practices for collaboration, on- boarding of new community members, and capture and navigability of history. Our position is that the future of making should incorporate this framing and such tools. We believe that these practices can be applied beyond current open peer projects to make, in a better way, a better world.