I wrote last week about the Indie Web: the way that the web has the ability to help us grow and connect as individuals in awesome new ways.

Here’s my latest entry in that story:

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved doing everything by bike. As a kid, the bike was my favorite way to get around, and to this day I use my bike daily to run errands and get places. I particularly love using my bike for actual tasks, not just for “going for a ride” — I think there is something natural and awesome about that, as I’ve written about before.

And I’ve also always been a bike hacker. I distinctly remember taking my first bike apart and spray painting it all different colors. My current bike is a 1970s racer hacked to become a fast city bike. It’s awesome.

So, bringing those two ideas together, along with what’s possible on the Indie Web, something great happened this week:

For a long time, I’ve wanted a cargo bike – these are regular bikes hacked to accomodate passengers and other loads. They’re super popular in Europe, in particular places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam. It seems so obvious to me that I should be riding my kids to school and to the park in one of these things. The fact that I don’t have one is majorly disappointing.

But, the problem is that they’re super expensive. Buying a brand new cargo bike from one of the manufacturers in Europe or the US can run upwards of $4k. And, there’s virtually no secondhand market for cargo bikes in the US — I assume both because they are relatively uncommon, and because once you have one you tend to hold on to it.

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to get ahold of one without dropping crazy dollars.

The other day I tweeted out my problem, and within five minutes was pointed to something amazing: Tom’s Cargo Bikes. Tom is a former muscle car builder in — where else — Portland, Oregon, who over the past few years has turned his attention to building custom cargo bikes. His bikes are amazing — choppers of all shapes and sizes, using entirely recycled parts. No two are the same. You can check out all of his bikes here.

And, rather than costing thousands of dollars, Tom’s custom bikes start at a much more modest $600. So, for my birthday this year (which is Sunday), we are all chipping in and Tom is going to build me a cargo bike.

For the past few days, Tom and I have been emailing about ideas, and when he’s done with his current batch of bikes he’ll start in on mine. It’ll probably end up looking something like this (but with a seat for the kids):

I am beyond psyched about this, and for so many reasons.

I’m going to end up with something way cooler than I could have ever imagined, I’m supporting a super talented craftsman who is building a great small business, and it’s costing way less than any of the alternatives.

Vive le Indie Web!

For the past two months, Frannie and I have been doing yoga. It’s a totally new thing for me. I was skeptical about it at first, but it’s been totally awesome and perspective changing. Even though I am completely inflexible and unaccustomed to all of the poses (and perhaps because of this), doing the practice and cracking open my body in new ways has really had a noticeable effect. I walk out of yoga feeling open, calm, confident, and clear.

There’s a lot I could talk about, but perhaps the idea that has stuck with me the most so far is the idea that we — generally speaking — walk around carrying an air of “subtle discontent”. This is the nagging feeling that there’s something wrong, somethin missing, something to get to (that’s not here), something more important to be focusing on, to be doing. If you think about it and try to notice it, you might be surprised how ever-present it is.

This tends to manifest itself physically in tension between the eyebrows. And a part of the yoga practice is noticing that feeling, releasing it, letting it melt away, and focusing on experiencing and enjoying the current moment.

For me at least — and I assume for lots of folks who are working hard and are generally under stress — this idea really hit home. I think there is also something related to this in being hyper connected and constantly checking our phones. Checking my phone, anxiously, habitually, for new emails, tweets, etc., is a certain form of this subtle discontent.

And I love the idea of noticing it, being aware of it, melting it away, and refocusing on the present.

Last night at USV, we hosted the latest of several recent meetups on the “Peer Economy”. We are in the process of organizing a number of companies and organizations that represent a certain sector of the internet economy in NYC, with an eye towards building a more formal coalition (perhaps in the model of San Francisco’s BayShare) at some point in the future.

As is to be expected, we spent the bulk of the discussion trying to figure out what it is, exactly, that ties us all together. I think there’s a pretty strong thread, but it’s not immediately clear how best to describe it. So I hereby invite you, the Internet, into the conversation.

So, as a thought experiment, how might you describe the common approaches and values between:

• peer-to-peer marketplace platforms like Etsy, Krrb, Skillshare, Shapeways and Zaarly;
• collaborative consumption networks like Airbnb and Carpooling.com;
• crowd-funding platforms like Kickstarter, Indiegogo and LendingClub;
• co-working and education/development spaces like General Assembly and the DUMBO Startup Lab;
• support networks for independent professionals like the Freelancer’s Union;
• communications and media networks like Twitter, Tumblr, SoundCloud and StackExchange.

At USV, we have a word for all of this, which is simply “networks”. That’s great and effective as an investment thesis, but it’s actually rather abstract as way of communicating the idea widely. In Steven Johnson’s recent book Future Perfect, he uses the term “peer network”, which is better but still somewhat problematic (as peer means “pier” to most people and “napster” to others). And our working description, as you can see, is “peer economy”.

Anyway, rather than try to “draw a box” around all of this — we instead attempted to (at Matt Brimer’s suggestion) focus on the center — on the core opportunities, values, and methods that all of these communities believe in and operate around.

The ones that stood out to me the most were:

• valuing creativity, self expression & individualism;
• increasing personal freedom through community support;
• creating economic empowerment;
• valuing authenticity and real human connection;
• built on trust (as developed within each community);
• and perhaps my favorite: Andrew Wagner’s “as New York as a slice of pizza”

In my world, I focus a lot on words like “innovation” and “networks” — but I think the thing that really stood out to me about last night’s conversation was the centrality of the human component. Empowering “real people” to do new and awesome things. To access new economic opportunities for themselves, while at the same time rediscovering community.

The idea that stuck in my head last night is about the “Indie Web” — what’s so interesting about the web and the networks of people on it is that they are at the same time individual & independent AND hyper-connected. The fact that we’re connected lets us be independent. It’s almost a paradox.

I like the idea that the web makes it possible to be an indie musician, dj or filmmaker, to be an indie craftsperson or manufacturer, an indie journalist, publisher, or even an indie scientist.

And what makes most (if not all) of this possible is the ability to be an indie entrepreneur, whether that’s through an open source project, a meetup, a web app, or even a venture-backed company (which is, admittedly, a certain flavor of “indie”).

The point is, that on an open web, we have the unfettered ability to make new things that enable people to do new things. Which is pretty awesome and exciting.

One of my favorite advocates for “open innovation” is Ed Felten. Today, Ed has a post up that looks at some of the positive recent developments in the “freedom to tinker” movement — from advances in cell phone unlocking, to the response to Aaron Swartz’ passing, to the Kiartsaeng case (which affirms our right to do what we wish with the stuff we buy) — and calls on us to see this as part of something bigger.

Reading through Ed’s bio is like taking a walking tour through the last 20 years of the fight between freedom and control in the tech sector. He has coined this struggle as preserving the “freedom to tinker” — that is, to disassemble, inspect, and explore the devices in our lives. On the surface it sounds like a somewhat silly or trivial idea, but it is in fact profound, and political:

The biggest enemy of the freedom to tinker is the “permission culture” in which anything we want to do requires permission from some powerful entity. Permission culture punishes us not for crossing boundaries or causing damage, but for acting “without authorization”—and it cranks up the penalties to make sure we get the message. Permission culture tells us that we don’t own the things we buy, that we are bound by contracts we have never seen, and that breaching those contracts is a felony punishable by years in prison.

What’s Ed articulates well, and which is such a difficult message to communicate, is that our default response when bad things happen is to clamp down on punishment and enforcement. In many cases (especially regarding technology) this may make us feel better, but it’s actually not effective, and in fact just makes things worse (emphasis mine):

Of course, there are people doing genuinely bad things with technology. There are real problems to be addressed, and real criminals who deserve punishment. But too often the response is not to focus prevention and enforcement on the bad acts and actors, but instead to expand the permission culture even more. We’re worried about elite foreign cyberwarriors; but the response is to impose years of prison time for accessing an unprotected website. We’re worried about massive copyright infringement; but the response is to tell people they can’t unlock their phones.

This is such a hard thing to explain (and to back up with examples). But it’s a super important part of effectively advocating for the kind of change we need. Frankly, I’m not sure the notion of “permissionless innovation” is something that resonates outside of the “open” tech sector. But I do think the idea of being free to tinker|do-whatever-we-want with the stuff we “own” is a notion that is profoundly intuitive.

I like Ed’s closing call for us to rally behind the freedom to tinker:

those who support different aspects of the freedom to tinker need to recognize themselves as allies. If you’re motivated by phone unlocking, or if you’re passionate about preserving white-hat research, or if you’re trying to protect the legality of a legitimate but disruptive product, what you’re really fighting for is the freedom to tinker. Even if you disagree about other political issues, you can be allies on this issue. Let’s use this moment as an opportunity to restore balance to the law.

Count me in.

This week saw the publication of two very thoughtful articles on the impact that networks are having on society, and what that means for the future of governance. The first was Catherine Bracy and Jim Pugh’s What’s Progressive About ‘Peer Progressives’? and the second was Om Malik’s Uber, Data Darwinism and the future of work.

Both get at essentially the same question: as more of our daily activities happen in a connected and networked fashion, what does that mean for how we govern ourselves?

Om asks if we’re ready for the hyper-accountable “data darwinism” that comes from living in a quantified society. Take, for instance, the Uber driver with a consistent record of poor customer satisfaction, who is unceremoniously dropped from the platform (and possibly,from the broader on-demand labor pool). Perhaps fair, but with a degree of abruptness that we’re not yet accustomed to.

Bracy and Pugh build squarely on Steven Johnson’s idea of Peer Progressivism and ask what government can do to help peer networks grow and thrive while still ensuring that basic rights are not passed over by market activity. Similar question as Om raises, but more focused on ensuring equal access and opportunity.

Both are getting at the same big idea: that web platforms are a lot like governments (as my colleague Brad wrote about several years ago). And in many ways, these platforms are ahead of the game (relative to some of our public institutions) in figuring out “Governance 2.0”.

Every one of these peer-driven, connected systems (from eBay, to Airbnb, to Uber and Lyft, etc.) has built — out of necessity for the creation of a functioning marketplace — internal trust, safety and dispute resolution systems. These systems, which are usually some form of reciprocal rating, make it possible for people to trust one another and do business together, and in general, these systems are super effective at achieving that goal. Almost by definition, they serve the interests of users of the platform (both on the producer and consumer side of a marketplace). And by and large, they are adaptive rather than prescriptive — meaning that by default I “have a shot” at proving myself in the marketplace, and then my reputation evolves as I do stuff.

But as Bracy and Pugh point out, this is not same thing as a publicly-run government. Each of these networks is a purpose-built community (either for-profit like the ones above, or nonprofit like Wikipedia or Mozilla), whose interest is in maximizing the productive or economic activity within the platform, not necessarily advancing or protecting other public interests. And, by and large, these systems are internally-focused and don’t take into account externalities (e.g., noise and foot traffic that neighbors of an Airbnb apartment might not like). And as Om points out, there is a lot of responsibility, and there are new forms of risk, in this hyper-accountable reputation-driven environment.

This raises all kinds of interesting questions for governments. How can they take advantage of the creative and economic opportunity that these networks present? How might they adapt these “2.0” models of governance? How can they create adequate space for new new models of doing business to emerge and prove themselves?

And most importantly, how can they ensure that the public’s interests are being met in this new environment (hint: it’s going to be different than how it’s been done in the past)?