[p2p-research] New version: Technologies of Flocking

[Michel Bauwens]

done here at
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/technologies-of-flocking-in-iran-and-elsewhere-lessons-to-learn/2009/07/06

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 6:11 PM, Jaap van Till <vantill at gmail.com> wrote:

> James or collegues at P2P Foundation: can you
> put this on the site, open for everybody to read??
>
> Very much thanks, and please send me the URL so I can twitter it around
> :-))
>
>
> *Technologies of Flocking*, by  Jaap van Till, NL, version: July 4 2009.
>
> "*Only from the heart can you touch the sky." Jalal ad-Din Rumi, Persian
> Poet*
>
> No, they could not twitter Ahmadinejad out of his presidential palace, but
> the Iranian netizens did surely demonstrate that the internet is mightier
> than the pen, to paraphrase the famous 1839 sentence of Bulwer. A new and
> wired middle class is waking up. There are now 34 million women in Iran, of
> which more than 70 percent is below thirty years of age, who have shown on
> the net that after 30 years of this regime that they no longer want to be
> treated as objects. Out of respect for them it is interesting to take a
> closer look at what is happening online and why. Some things have realy
> changed irreversibly in Iran and the netizens there deserve a monument for
> that ((see illustration)).
>
> So the heavy use [1] of Twitter birdtweets (short messages) by Iranians and
> ex-patriates showed how much social and political impact networking
> technologies can have besides the commercial  and economic impact of
> Internet technology we discuss on the Arch-Econ list of Gordon Cook.  Social
> media is more than just a "nifty" thing now. Real people connected to real
> people are changing the world. This short paper tries to give a bit more
> perspective on (1) what civilians can do with net-tech during rebellions and
> (2) how they organize themselves to empower themselves and eachother.
>
> You surely will have noticed [2] from the post-election (June 12) protests
> and turmoil in Iran that the combination of on the spot cell-phones and
> photo's and films on the Web may in some instances be more effective than
> kalashykovs and axes against demonstrators. This fast communication of short
> group-messages is a handy way of sharing info  and synchronising actions and
> demonstrations. At first the authorities had not noticed this social network
> and thought that they had blocked the demonstrators by taking out part of
> the internet and the sms traffic in Iran. The authorities tried to stop the
> flow of information out of the country from cellnets and webpages in every
> way they knew of. And still the images get through. It is not wise to tell
> too much about how this is done but part of the parallel worldwide internet
> paths are kept open by volunteers that installed proxies [3] faster that the
> authorities could stifle them. The massive use of simple and powerful
> technology in the hands of the people (aka ppl) turns out to be unstoppable.
> As are the shouts of the slogan of the 1979 revolution from the rooftops at
> night.
>
> This has been done before, and every time ppl have found another clever
> tele-communication system to co-laborate p2p and to bypass government
> info-blockades to the outside world.Information technology changes the
> balance of power between civilians and rulers. Each time they surprised and
> baffled the authorities by audace and unstoppable technology. Some examples:
> (the net tech shown was often used in combination with other tele-tools and
> many other old fashioned and proven mouth-to-mouth links are present
> everywhere)
> a. The Pirate Bay movement and political party in Sweden: blogs from the
> courtroom and a clear rebel messages.
> b. Blogs from disaster sites by those present being better informed and
> faster than the media reporters.
> c. Belgrade, Internet Radio relayed from Amsterdam.
> d. Gdansk Solidarnost: Walky-Talky radio links and donated faxmachines.
> e. Vilnius: FidoNet dial-up email linked bulletin boards + international
> links and CNN Satcom.
> f. Mexico Zapatistas: Citizens Band radios
> g. Moskow countercoup against Gorbachev was defused by the NREN networks
> h. Bucharest : the TV & communication tower was constructed to be
> defendable but the rebels where inside.
> i. The present Iranian clergy rulers overthrew the Sjah regime in 1979 by
> .....audio tape distribution.  Every week the Ajatollah Khomeini in Paris
> recorded a sermon which was
>    smuggled to Iran on a audiotape with for instance Elvis on the cover.
> Then these tapes where copied and copied and copied until every mosque tower
> in the country
>    could sound it on the loudspeakers for all in the country to hear.
>
> *What are the recurring patterns from all these uprising cases*.
> As a scientist I do not automaticaly sympathise with every protestor or all
> these movements described,  but what appears is: massive unstoppable free
> flow of relevant messages that show reality by and between those present and
> bypass the authorities and invalidate the official broadcasted version of
> what ppl are supposed to see and think. The central officials are often
> faced with a dilemma with openness and would rather isolate the rebels: to
> block communication channels would harm the publicity, command &
> control links of the state too and would harm education and economy. So what
> is happening that can make a few thousands of twittering young boys and
> girls in Tehran so important?
>
> Long before Internet, ICT and telecommunications started be be in such a
> vital infrastructural position, the visionary Ted Nelson already described
> [4] the liberating effects personal computing and messaging would have.
>
> j. In the early 2000's young volunteers of the Open Society Institute [5]
> helped to establish new economic, social and cultural lifeflows in the
> former USSR countries with the help of computers and networking. George
> Soros, its maecenas, was certainly conscious of the powerfull role of young
> professionals using linked PC's can play for a post dictatorship open
> society.
>
> *So what happens during the use of these powertools*.
> Recently Clay Shirky explained very clearly the shift in communication
> patterns from 'central' to 'lateral' in a spectacular recent speech [5] on
> TED, as far as I know before the recent turmoil in Iran, and he did see this
> trend coming in his book [6]. While the established view of many
> people about Internet is that is a new *vertical broadcasting to the ppl* (I) medium
> for PR, news, high attention celeb gossip and commerce; side by sides with
> classical *one-way* distributionchannels advertisements, newspapers and
> TV; a much more signficant role is discoverded by two-way vertical dialogues
> (II) of authorities and companies with citizens, clients. Not a bad idea to
> talk to your subordinates, what?! A famous demo of the power of dialogue was
> the sudden shouting back from the audience gathered to hear yet another
> lenghty monologue from Ceausescu on December 21 1989. He was baffled. What
> now in 2009 takes and took many by surprise is that a third form of
> communication: horizontal/lateral collaboration (III) between ppl is a much
> more potent stuff. The essential change from I and II is that now the
> communication is not only between controlaholic rulers and individual
> citizens but the latter organize themselves ad-hoc into close knit
> groups/teams which we can call "flocks".
>
> k. The Obama pre-election campaign heavily used telecom and internet for I,
> and II,  but exploded with bottom-up success in III "grass roots Community
> Action". This campaign surprised many with the power it had of mobilisation
> of voters and end-user innovations. Obama did not only talk *to* the ppl
> and *with* the ppl but they locally* flocked together* into strong teams
> with lateral P2P  links between themselves. Bands of new middle class
> activists/ troupes that clustered/ coagulated around certain tasks and
> issues with the help of internet networking and by finding
> volunteer-specialists who could help solve problems.
>
> What these flocks do is P2P value creation. Groups of professionals and
> connectivists, each of them very good at something with unique skills and
> knowledge interconnect at a site and/or online to design something, solve
> problems together or create new idea's or concepts by synergy from mixes of
> available idea's or skills. Working network relations are more important
> than ego or position. A very successful example of this is the networked
> assistance for small communities in emerging countries organized by
> NABUUR.com [11]. On a larger scale this synergy happens in new value chains
> between specialised small companies in the new network economy. Problematic
> is that "managers" and bureacratic planners are in this new (III) context
> less relevant or at least not at the core of the primary process anymore.
> Often they fail to grasp what is going on. Clueless. Or if they do try to
> simplify, linearize and freeze the new living complex, nonlinear and dynamic
> situation by imposing even more control and red tape, which puts them in a
> parallel bureaucratic universe of 'nowhere men' which may fade away sooner
> or later.
>
> *The power of flocking via networks*
> Broadcasting has a network effect in the sense that for the maker of the
> publicity and for instance the state propaganda (see (I) above) the value of
> the medium (1:N, one to many)grows with the number N of readers/viewers
> (eyeballs). This is Sarnoff's Law V ~ N = 1+1+1+1+ ...., which is additive,
> and in some cases of celeb fame addictive. Communication (1:1, one on one
> dialogues) between N people  grows in value for the network provider as N *
> N-1 = N squared, So it is stronger and more valuable than broadcasting N.
> Content is not king !! This is Metcalffe's Law. A better version on this law
> is the Odlyzko-Tilly's Law: V ~ N * Log N.  And state dialogues with
> citizens (II) are also valuable but only N to 1 which is also additive. The
> third networking law is that value for the participants themselves is
> growing by being able to be part a number of tribes or flokcs at the same
> time on- and offline which was defined as Reed's Law which is Value ~ 2 to
> the power of N, which is the amount of flocks you can be member of / or not
> at the same time.  I have defined a fourth law in which the value for each
> participant grows with N ! of unique and different participants and idea's !
> you can collaborate with is a number of combinations [8]. Van Till's Law of
> synergy by networkcombinations: Value ~ N ! = N * N-1 * N-2 * N-3* ......*1.
>  To summarize for those who start see dizzy when confronted with math
> formula's, the above simply says that propaganda and topdown control (I)
> only grows in power additive 1+1+1..., hence their craving for mass
> audiences. And on the new side of network society value for each participant
> grows multiplicative by connecting flocks of unique and creative
> professionals (III) who can organise themselves. Their combined network
> power is stronger!!
>
> *Network power grows by leaps and bursts.*
> One of the first scientists who studied the emerging phenomena of the
> coming "information society" was the enlightened prof Tom Stonier. In a
> groundbreaking paper [9] he
> (double logarithmic) charted the teledensity, then fixed telephone lines /
> 100 inhabitants, in a number of countries versus the average BNP.  These two
> are highly correlated and show a remarkable range of different incomes and
> teledensities. But what is more important that countries which over the
> years broke though the threshold of 20 phonelines/ 100 inhabitants all
> changed regime. Stonier stated "no dictator can survive for any length of
> time in communicative society (III) as the flows of information can no
> longer be controlled from the centre (I)" In this paper he did rather
> precisely forcats the fall of the USSR around 1990. He later explained that
> the teledensity was just a measure of a new middle class of Wired "knowledge
> workers" appearing, or what we now would call the online highly educated
> young creative class alive on bandwidth. in fact dring an interview one of
> the generals in Moskou who tried and fail with the countercoup (g) said that
> he was baffled by a totaly new type of workers/activists on the streets:
> young knowledge workers!. So a certain density of internet & cellphone
> connections must be present to make the transition on a wider scale in a
> country. So the process of renewal is discontinous once thresholds are
> crossed. And on the charts of teledensties of cellphones and FttH there will
> be serveral such distinctive thresholds in flocking behaviour. And the
> transitions are unstoppable.
>
> *No new network society innovation without rebels.*
> Wether vested parties or companies like it or not these transitions do
> appear in various breakthrough disruptive innovations as well and also
> businesses start to think in terms of co-creation of new products and
> services in a process which is driven by black swan rebels and activists.
> Prof. Rao of Princeton University wrote an interesting account of these
> activist movements in his recent book  [10]. Rao quotes the advice a famous
> American social community organizer Alinsky (1909 - 1972) gave to rebels
> active in mobilizing communities to act in common self-interest in the form
> of five rules to link hot causes and emotions:
> 1. *Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it*. The
> opposition must be singled out as the target and "frozen".
> 2. *Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.* It is almost imposible to
> counterattack ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition, who then reacts
> to your advantage.
> 3. *Never go outside the experience of your people.* When an action is
> outside the experience of the ppl the result is confusion, fear and retreat.
> 4. *Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy*. Here you
> want to cause confusion confusion, fear and retreat.
> I think it can hardly be a coincidence that both Barack Obama, now Prez of
> the USA and Hillary Clinton, now Secretary of State (minister of foreign
> affairs) both where students of
> Alinsky, so they will be I assume very much aware of flocking network power
> all over the globe.
>
> So cellphones and internetconnected laptops are not politically neutral
> stuff, in the hands of the emerging class of young flocking netizen
> professionals they will be more powerfull than destructive men with
> motorcycles, clubs and axes. Thus the little birds will not only twitter and
> tweet but will also flock in networked groups and then they will suddenly
> swarm up high above all of us.
> I wish you good connections.  vantill at gmail dot com
>
> [1] Mindblowing *#IranElection*<http://twitter.com/search?q=%23IranElection>Stats: 221,744 Tweets Per Hour at Peak - during the demonstrations in the
> streets of Tehran and other cities.
> [2] Stelter, Stone "Web pries lid off Iranian Censorship"
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/23/world/middleeast/23censor.html?_r=3&ref=global-home
> [3] TOR (anonymity network): instructions on how to make proxies.
>
> http://www.information.is-the-coolest.com/index.aspx?q=Tor_%28anonymity_network%29
> [4] Ted Nelson, "Computer Lib/Dream Machines", 1974.
> [5 ] Jonathan Peizer, The dynamics of technology for social change-
> understanding the factors that influence results: lessons learned from the
> field, 2006, iUniverse.
> [6] Clay Shirky: "How cellphones, Twitter, Facebook can make history" Video
> on TED.com  http://tinyurl.com/kwf2xd  filmed May 2009, posted on June
> 2009
> [7] Clay Shirky, "Here comes everybody - How change happens when people
> come together", Penguin 2008
> [8] Jaap van Till,  "Netwerk ver-bindingen voor samen-werking in
> co-laboratoria" ( in Dutch), pdf and interview on
> http://www.wtr-trendrapport.nl/bijdragen/18/   2008.
> [9] Tom Stonier, “The Microelectronic Revolution, Soviet Political
> Structure, and the Future of East/West Relations,” The Political Quarterly,
> April–June 1983, pp. 137–151.
> [10] Rao, Market Rebels- How activists make or break radical innovations",
> 2009, Princeton University Press
> [11] Siegfried Woldhek at  http://www.nabuur.com
>
>
>
>


-- 
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