Howard Rheingold Howard: "When power is decentralized, new opportunities arise for new types of collective action."
text messaging allows redistribution of memes to the entire phone book in two thumb strokes
characteristics:
- two technologies converging to make a third and distinct, which may even be attractive to segments that didnt even use the other two
- role of young early adopters/adapters
- PC in 80, Net in 90 -- Moores Law and other factors insure technologies evolve in their quantitative power that enable qualitative evolution
Volunteer grid computing (SETI, Protien Folding project) shows quantitative power of collective action. Science is a form of collective action. Decentralization of literacy & printing press enabling scientific and political collective action
Primitive reputation system of eBay (bi-directional nested feedback) works to form collective trust. Markets are a form of collective action (heterarchy is actually a better description). With trust (from 3rd party) I can engage in one-off transactions on the street (ride sharing example).
Location-based services leveraging social network-based reputation ratings. GPS coordinate-based newsgroups. RFID tags enabling information to be inserted into things (this is Saffo's long time ago prediction of unbiquitous sensors).
Available today: UPC bar code reader tied into Google identifies maker, lawsuits, political watchdog groups -- almost like decommoditizing the PR of CPGs.
Having this information changes the way you percieve the world, as well as those you go through the world with.
Political struggles over these technologies (DCMA, etc.) have to do with:
- closed systems trying to remain closure
- who controlls innovation (teenage hackers vs. Disney employees)
From the audience:
- Dave Winer interjects that we are inventing new monopolies (Google, how open a system will it remain, competition in what you can search for),
- someone else interjects the concern of decentralized mob rule -- Howard agrees there are scary aspects of this.
- Cory: We can build collective action, but we are not good at sustaining collective action. H: By short cutting the deliberation process it may negatively effect democracy
- Kevin's early example of collective overload when he included an email address for a ~94 FCC public comments generated 350k reponses
- Democracy by Disclosure book provides cases of how requiring corporate information disclosure leads to better compliance/performance, but collective action differs
- Kevin asks what historical mistakes can be avoided.
The core issue of how this threatens democracy or markets hinges upon how these technologies support existing social networks. If these are simply tools that can flow communication to the 12 closest people to the key political decision maker.
Demographic parallel with baby boomers timed with technology maturity are the big trends that make smart mobbery probable. Age impacts what generation of technology is primarily adopted...its kind of like how your favorite songs are the ones that were playing when you first fell in love...15 year olds are adopting mobile phones and instant messaging...leading to a huge demographic block that expects mobility, presence, and real-time connectiveness.
What I like about Howard's views how he is discovering key themes that may make the world a better place, and its something he obviously cares about. Also, places of political strife are where they need smart mob technology the most, and it just so happens that the lack of terrestrial infrastructure (POTS, CATV) are generating the wireless infrastructure in these places.
5:36:34 PM 
|
