Comments on: On Lanier’s Digital Maoism

By: Podnosh Blog : High Fibre Podcasting » Archive » The Tyranny of Online Crowds - beyond Crazy Frog?

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 07:27:20 +0000

[...] There are a lot of recent examples of collectivity online. There’s the Wikipedia, which has absorbed a lot of the energy that used to go into individual, expressive websites, into one bland, master description of reality. Another example is the automatic mass-content collecting schemes like DIGG. Yet another, which deserves special attention, is the unfortunate design feature in most blog software that practically encourages spontaneous pseudonym creation. That has led to the global flood of anonymous mob-like commentary. On the face of it he has a point.Â Crowds can be stirred, or manipulated, to act in ways which later may appal or shock the individuals involved. If we believe that collective action online is possible – and that it can make a ‘real world’ difference – then we have to worry about online mob action. In my opinion Crazy Frog is one proof of how mass psychology and technology blight our lives. In the piece linked above he’s repeating his work from earier in the year which received this response from Confused of Calcutta All this is about individuals working together. Not the technology. What the technology does is reduce the barriers to entry, reduce disenfranchisement;Â reduce the search costs and connection costs; allow the conversations to persist and be searchable and findable; provide a rich context; have low maintenance costs; where relevant, allow people to work in small groups bringing their communal, often amateur, expertise to bear on lots of small problems. We musn’t forget a couple of other things. [...]

By: John Dodds

John Dodds — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 11:47:46 +0000

Whilst I revel in the many conversations I’m having in disparate groups and whilst it is undeniable that new ideas are co-created and honed quicker than ever before, I still have to remind myself that all these conversations collectively involve a relatively small proportion of the population.

When you step back into the offline world, it is startling to see how slowly the vast majority of new ideas are disseminated.

By: Dan Merritt

Dan Merritt — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 05:55:34 +0000

I found the article and comments I read interesting, however I think the real problem pointed out by the article is not that the ‘collective’ does not always have the right answer, which of course it always does, but rather that the collective always has both the right answer(s) and the wrong answer(s) and we have not found any real reliable method of telling them apart except individual expertise and judgment.
I do think that the relatively new digital media has opened the discussion ( of anything) to a much wider field of individuals than ever before within a lifetime. Throughout most of our history it took decades to widely disseminate an idea and several lifetimes to discuss it, edit it, push it back out to the world and finally get to a point where a large percentage of those concerned were satisfied with the thought as currently expressed. This collective editing timeline has been shortened spectacularily. It is hardly surprising that we are not sure about validity of this incredibly speeded process. We can not even guess how long it now takes to ‘stand the test of time’.
But now as before all we have is the collective’s response to the insights of individuals who have been in turn guided and inspired by the voice of the collective. The only thing that has changed is the breadth of the editing base and the speed of the editing response.

By: Stephen Smoliar

Stephen Smoliar — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 01:59:59 +0000

JP, you can probably guess from some of my other comments that I tend to side with Lanier on this one; but, hopefully, you have recognized that my favorite expression in any debate is, “Yes, but …!” My rule of thumb (which I like to think of a cynicism with a smile) is: If you provide an opportunity that is so simple that any idiot can use it, then many (if not most) of them will! As far as I am concerned, this rule applies to Google (as anyone who has ever observed search behavior over a large user population will confirm); and the ease-of-use of both wiki and blog technology means that neither of them is immune. The only remedy can be found in nineteenth-century advice:

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
-John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.)

This citation can be found at:

http://w.eternalvigilance.org/about.shtml

This blog is an excellent example of vigilance in the name of rich conversation, making it a Maxwell’s Demon to counter the effect of entropy, which is the subject of many of my Cassandra-like warnings. Keep up the good fight!