Float Like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Bee

[poliphilo]

A useful report on Newsnight last night made the point that government and corporations and the police are all hierarchies- and that puts them at a disadvantage when dealing with the free-form, leaderless protest movements that use the Net to organise. The protesters can get things done very fast. Someone posts a suggestion or a piece of information- and within minutes there are people gathering on the street. The State and the corporations and the police can't act or react anything like as fast because orders have to go up and down the chain of command. They're Patterson or Frazier or Foreman- big old ugly bears- and the protesters are Ali.

Comments

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Well, yes, that is true, but the advantage of a hierarchy might be that the senior people at the top deserve their status and can counsel the organisation on what a good decision looks like, whereas a flashmob just reacts on gut instinct without any consideration for the consequences.

However I am going to undermine my own argument by using the words "Jody McIntyre" "Metropolitan Police" and "BBC".

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's a large presumption that the people at the head of such organisations as the Met deserve their status.

Jody McIntyre was enormously impressive in that interview- and made the BBC's man look like a fool.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Hierarchies also have a different view of consensus. For it to be an organisational statement, everyone in the org should feel that they've had some form of buy in.

With a looser group, I can address 2000 people almost immediately and then act with the 100 that think it's a good idea.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I liked the way the mp emphasised it was our right to protest while not mentioning the governments' right to ignore.

[veronikos.livejournal.com]

Any Sage of whom we have any record whatsoever has testified to the hierarchical nature of creation and the universe. Things exist along an ascending-descending scale of a vibratory continuum. None who has been struck by the Thunderbolt of the Wise has yet come forward to testify of some kind of circle-round, leaderless, hand-holding kumbaya of equal voices.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

He was a smoothie, that guy. It felt like my bedtime so I switched him off.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

But human hierarchies are rarely hierarchies of merit or wisdom.

Or even competence.

[veronikos.livejournal.com]

Leaderless, human blob-collectives are rarely bastions of merit, wisdom, or competence, either. I suppose, then, that each of our comments says something about human nature, instead of something about hierarchies or leaderless blobs.

Actually, what I find most distressing is the banality of the report, itself. The thesis is little more than "It's hard to nail a jelly to the wall." That's not news to me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

There have always been mobs, and they've always had the ability to take authority by surprise; what interests me here and now is the role played by the Internet- and the way in which it gifts the mob with more intelligence- and ability to organise itself- than it ever had before. This is a new thing- and new things always interest me. Whether it is also a significant thing remains to be seen.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

It may also mean that it easier to rouse the usual rabble without much thought for the consequences. but in general, it is a good thing. Yay for You Tube in this context.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, but I think it's also possible the Internet may make for more intelligent protest. I don't know- it's such a new phenomenon. It's going to be interesting to see how things develop.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

The technology is new, but I think the advantage of spontaneous fluidity on the battlefield, so to speak, was formally described in Sunzi's, The Art of War, more than two millennia ago. He used flags to communicate by day and fire by night, but the effect is the same.

Broadly speaking, the tactics we are seeing are just a species of asymmetrical warfare. Properly deployed, it is as devestating against the police as it was against the British during the American Revolution, or against US forces in south-east Asia, or as it was more recently in Iraq and today in Afghanistan. Authoritarian command and control structures are inherently slow, stupid, and inefficient. These flaws are not always fatal, obviously, but they are unavoidable and when circumstances combine to make them exploitable the rigid hierarchy will invariably lose.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's going to be interesting to see how this develops. At the moment the London protesters are outfoxing the police- who respond with kettling and cavalry charges.