In my opinion, the sharing economy has been feeding on and catering to some fundamental human needs and desires since the very dawn of civilisation. That does not mean it is not related to peer production. On the contrary, peer production reinforces collaborative consumption and the sharing economy. It does so in two main ways. It creates and evolves technological infrastructures which transform the scope of increasingly more activities and the context in which they take place, thus turning them into peer activities.
To illustrate, consider how users of P2P file-sharing networks have redefined the consumption of cultural goods like music as an essentially peer activity. Most readily visible, however, is the way in which peer production promotes the sharing economy by means of enriching the commons. If we think of the commons as a shareable economic infrastructure, then we can see clearly how peer production liberates the sharing economy from constraints long imposed upon it by exclusive property regimes.
George Dafermos from Delft University of Technology has been one of the few researchers specializing in the governance of free software communities and, thereby, has established more clear criteria for genuine peer production.
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