[p2p-research] gotta read this

[Edward Miller]

Michel,

While I would agree with Ryan's general take on the matter, namely, his
disappointment with the apparent schizophrenia of the US, which has been the
primary driver for technological, social, and economic innovation for most
of the past century. However, I do have some differences other certain
points.

First, I would disagree that the US is different on a state-by-state basis.
The world is a much smaller place because of communications technology and
in my extensive travels around the US, including such out of the way places
as Alaska, the striking thing I have noticed is the homogeneity of our daily
life. The cultural differences are mainly superficial. Alaska might use
snowmobiles to use McDonald's drive thru, but that isn't exactly a
qualitative change. We Americanize everything. We have Taco Bell and Panda
Express and the Washington Redskins, but they all use the same models that
Ray Kroc developed 50 years ago.

I think the core-periphery model applies very well to the US in the sense
that the rich and the poor, the "liberal" and the "conservative," tend to be
diffuse and often in very close proximity to each other in a scattered sort
of way. If you look at detailed electoral maps and income maps of the US,
the variation is striking. Hyde Park, where Obama is from, and where the
University of Chicago is located (the institution which claims more Nobel
Laureates than any other in the world), is just blocks away from Englewood,
famous for having higher murder rates than Iraq.

Another piece of the puzzle is cyberbalkanization, a term coined by one of
Obama's most hated (read: best) "czars," is to blame for much of it. Even
Glenn Beck commented on this, though without using the term. Because of the
exponential increase in media outlets and discussion groups, including this
one, there are now thousands of mini echo chambers each talking past one
another and becoming further and further estranged from one another. We pick
and choose exactly which sources we want to view, and filter out anything we
don't wish to see.... with RSS and tagging we can even filter out stuff from
within our preferred sources. One of the effects is all the loony conspiracy
theories now gaining traction. Yet the geographical locations of each of
these cyberbalkanized groups look about the same as those electoral maps,
income maps, etc. They are diffuse.

I notice after watching extended amounts of MSNBC, CNN, and FOX that I
become terrified of the sorts of things which David Michael Green is talking
about. However, this week I haven't watched television at all and merely
used my narrow online media sources and RSS feeds, and my attitude is
entirely changed. I no longer feel an urgent desire to stock up on guns at
least.In fact, my thoughts on a lot of these types of things have been all
over the map lately, and while I wouldn't want to project this onto my
fellow countrymen, I do tend to think this is part of our current zeitgeist,
or collective consciousness, or what have you. We are at the brink of deep
structural change.

Yet, one fact which remains is the astonishingly low amount of political
interest and participation on the part of the general public, and it seems
the political hysteria may in fact be only in intellectual circles. Voting
rates are very low. While cable news generally gets a couple million viewers
per night in total, our nation's population is close to 300 million. We are
very distracted and deluged by media, video games, facebook quizzes,
twittering, texting, and such.

Of course this is both a natural flaw of human beings and a creation of our
educational system which, as The Big Crunch article which Paul linked to
argues, is structured to polish the "gems" and discard the vast majority of
the "dirt."  It is a good example of one of the many tipping points which
are happening simultaneously, along with structural unemployment, the
unenforceability of intellectual property, skyrocketing healthcare costs,
Open Source, etc etc etc. In systems-theoretic terms, we are at the cusp of
bifurcation.

It seems that the 2 Party System, unless some truly outstanding Republican
figures arise, will simply have to crumble, and we may end up as a
single-party system or multi-party, but this is the least of the changes
which will be occurring simultaneously.

I think the educational system described by the Big Crunch paper explains a
lot about why the US is where it is, and since an informed electorate is the
most crucial aspect of any functioning democracy, we are going to be in big
trouble if we can't come up with a radically new educational paradigm.
Intellectual self-defense is the most crucial skill in the age of
cyberbalkanization. We need critical, reflexive people to make informed
decisions as citizens, consumers, and entrepreneurs.

My generation, the Millenials, were raised in those strange years between
the fall of the Soviet Union and 9/11 when our nation was completely
unmatched on every possible measure, and there appeared to be absolutely no
existential threats. Politics consisted of endless play-by-play coverage of
the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Yet, my generation was also forced into
political awareness with the shock of 9/11. Relatively speaking, we have a
keen social consciousness according to most statistics (volunteerism, public
service, etc), and were the first generation to grow up with computers.

Perhaps there is some hope in this generation, and the growing alternatives
to both markets and governments, as embodied by the P2P movement. Perhaps
the paradigm shift to this will be as bloodless as the overthrow of
Encyclopedia Britannica by Wikipedia. Not too many molotovs in that
revolution, from what I hear.

Yet, it isn't inconceivable that the nation could fracture or collapse, but
considering the statistics, I can't imagine many geographical borders larger
than a few square blocks that would contain homogenous
cultural/political/social views. I really think what we are seeing will be
unprecedented, and likely very strange.

If Factor e Farm or something similar takes off, perhaps Panarchy will take
off, as they seem to be hoping. Though I doubt it could remain an
evolutionarily stable state for long. Natural Selection will continue to
select for virulent systems and actually think Alexander Wendt's recent work
arguing that World Government is inevitable makes a strong point... or at
least elucidates the structural properties which make higher levels of
organization likely (and even desirable).

The EU seems like it may be closer to adopting the Lisbon Treaty, but even
this model isn't really the future we seem to be heading toward. We will
likely see more distributed non-state actors, global guerillas, open source
revolutionaries, resilient communities, and so forth, but they will also
almost certainly form transnational coalitions to create mutually agreed
upon organizational apparatuses and alliances at both regional and global
levels.
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