[p2p-research] Fwd: New version: Technologies of Flocking

Mon Jul 6 11:55:50 CEST 2009

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kamran Ghassempour <kamran at ghassempour.com>
Date: Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: New version: Technologies of Flocking
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

Here it is Michel :

How P2P can lead to a revolution ? Iranian case study

Summary

This article will focus on the role P2P technology and ideas played in the
events leading to the iranian revolution of 1979 and how they evolved to
become the most important tools to enable the recent contestations in Tehran
following the disputed presidential elections.

P2P concepts have been part of the iranian society for decades and the way
iranians consider copyright and new tools is very different from western
people. This can be explained by lower income per capita and a willingness
to learn using all available tools. Following the recent post-election
rallies and the wave of arrests in Iran, traditional western media are
finally understanding that the new communications tools like blogs and
twitter are more important that traditional tools in a country where the
government controls every citizen.

Without becoming too optimistic, we will conclude by showing how these tools
are enablers of freedom for everyone of us with a need to challenge
established power.

Warning

Before starting to read, I must warn you that I am an Iranian having left
the country in 1984. My view is by definition biased but will be different
than most usual reporters on my country. My apologies but there is some deep
part of us about the country where we are born that we can not change.

The 1979 revolution and use of P2P tools

When you think about P2P, the first tools usually discussed are file sharing
tools like Napster, Bittorrent,.. but the concept of P2P is much broader
than the use of file sharing tools. It’s about the willingness to share with
others what we have. In the case of information, it’s of course easier
because we don’t lose the information we share. That’s why, I will start by
showing a few low-tech P2P tools available in the pre and post-revolution
Iran of 1970’s.

When I was a young boy in Tehran, our favorite hobby was copying audio
tapes. There was a full-blown community and organization sharing western
music (Michael jackson was  the most copied singer). We had no idea that it
was illegal and people used to share the music they had on magnetic audio
tapes. This is why most of households in Tehran had a tape reader and
recorder. This network for sharing audio information was later used in an
innovative way by supporter of Khomeiny to broadcast his audio messages to
people without access to government controlled media. This is P2P at its
early stages in Iran where people began to understand that there are ways to
broadcast messages against the ruling government by using every person’s
basic tools (audio tape copiers) and willingness to take some risk.

The two elements described above are important : basic tools and willingness
to take some level of risk. Today the same elements are present in Iran:
basic tools are now Twitter and blogs and the young generation is again
ready to take some risks.

The willingness to take some risk is also important. The tipping point of
the 1979 revolution was a rally where one person refused to move out when a
soldier ordered him. This is similar to current events where the first ones
refusing to stop their rallies despite orders by the police generated a
nation-wide movement of solidarity.

Another important P2P tool in the pre-revolution Iran was a copy machine.
People used to copy entire books because they were out of print or just too
expensive and this network was also widely used by many factions to
distribute unauthorized tracts and messages from leaders of the 1979
revolution.

How P2P tools evolved and their role in current events in Iran

It’s ironic to see the same P2P concepts evolve and be used against those
who started the 1979 revolution. Let’s have a look at these tools :

Blogs

I read somewhere that Iran is the country with most bloggers per capita in
the world. I can not prove it but I can imagine that in a country where
citizens don’t have the basic rights of communication and expression,
blogging becomes an important tool to be able to share in a fast and
anonymous way, ideas not always welcome by the government. I follow a few of
the active iranian bloggers inside Iran and am always surprised by their
courage knowing that the government can easily track and arrest them. One of
their most important protection mechanism is their number: It’s easy to
track 10 bloggers but no 10.000.

Twitter

I was amazed how traditional western media (CNN, BBC, ...) missed the events
happening in Iran and their importance because of their inability to use
Twitter as a major information tool. Just hours after the first rally and
the violent reaction of the government, iranian twitters were giving nearly
live coverage of events and for those able to select the right twitters and
use the right filtering tools, it was possible to follow the events live. It
took nealy two days before CNN understood the impotance of events and by
then, their reporters were obliged to remain at their hotel. The richness of
the information on Twitter contrasted with the emptiness of reports coming
from people in their hotel rooms trying to understand what was happening.

Anonymity and access

Unfortunately, once the government understood the importance of these tools,
they stared shutting down internet access and tracking people. That’s where
anonymous proxies and access to internet by alternative means (satellite)
becomes important. I think other important tools and P2P concepts will
emerge as the iranian government moves to control traditional wireline
access. For example, internet access by satellite and the possibilty to
share it by WiFi would be today the most effective way for iranian students
to keep their access and be able to share it with others.

Risk taking is more important than tools

As you can see, P2P tools evolved in Iran from audio tape and copy machines
to Twitter and blogs but there is something more important than tools : the
willingness to share even if it requires to take some risks.

This is according to me one of the pillars of P2P movement : from those
sharing their movies in France  risking to lose their internet access
because of the HADOPI law to young iranian students sharing pictures of
rallies on Twitter, they all take some level of risk against current
regulation just because they think the value of the information they have is
more than the risk they take.

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Kamran,
>
> sorry I have been stressed lately, as I was in between 2 trips  ...
>
> I am now in madrid and see only a empty draft page with your article ...
>
> did I make a mistake somewhere ...
>
> perhaps best is to send your article again, in word 93 format or email
> text, so I can correct it and publish it asap,
>
> Michel
>
>
> On Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:34 PM, Jaap Van Till <vantill at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Tnx for the compliment. I wrote and published it before i read your real
>> life story from the heart of a born Iranian!
>> i am just a simple scientist trying to understand what is going on to help
>> build more usefull future networks. For that we technicians need to know
>> what realy drives demand.
>> Your paper i got from Michel but it is read-only and that is what i did.
>> Hope the community in Iran will prosper again. I respect their courage and
>> was very moved by the Poem of a young woman at night on a roof in Teheran,
>> subtitked on YouTube.
>> Jaap
>>
>> Verstuurd vanaf mijn iPhone
>>
>> Op 5 jul 2009 om 12:05 heeft Kamran Ghassempour <kamran at ghassempour.com>
>> het volgende geschreven:\
>>
>> Jaap,
>>
>> Excellent article. If you want to discuss it, with pleasure.
>>
>> Kamran
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:11 PM, Jaap van Till < <vantill at gmail.com>
>> 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>
>>> 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>
>>> 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>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/>
>>> 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>http://www.nabuur.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
> http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
> http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
>
> Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
> http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
> http://p2pfoundation.ning.com
>
> Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens
>
> The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
> http://www.shiftn.com/
>

-- 
Working at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhurakij_Pundit_University -
http://www.dpu.ac.th/dpuic/info/Research.html -
http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI

Volunteering at the P2P Foundation:
http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net -
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com

Monitor updates at http://del.icio.us/mbauwens

The work of the P2P Foundation is supported by SHIFTN,
http://www.shiftn.com/
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