People 2.0 : Shadows in the Water

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!–Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress–to assist the work,
Which then was going forward in her name!

– William Wordsworth on The French Revolution

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You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

Hunter. S. Thompson on The Cultural Revolution

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I don’t sleep. Not normally. I might miss something… on the internet.

So what I do is I watch documentaries until I’m no longer conscious – and I’ve been learning about The English Revolution recently… during/in the wake of which there was a flourishing of fringe-sects, eg:

Adamites, Anabaptists, Barrowists, Behmenists, Brownists, Diggers, Enthusiasts, Familists, Fifth Monarchists, Grindletonians, Muggletonians, Puritans, Philadelphians, Ranters, Sabbatarians, Seekers, Socinians

The Diggers were the prototype of today’s Urban Agriculture movement. The Ranters characterised (for propaganda purposes or not) as out of control, sexually abandoned hedonists – a portrayal of which can be seen in the marathon slightly tarty movie “The Devil’s Whore”.

Anything was possible.

They were crushed. You can immediately recognise them though – revolution in the air, and suddenly everything is possible… bliss it is… before the microcosm of human-nature recreates The Possible in its own image… and reality descends; Ego and Desire, hand in hand…. and often worse than before. Oliver Cromwell had powers more extreme than the Kings he got rid of. The French Revolution became a bloodbath… 1969 became 1985.

So anyway. There’s a preamble. Where are we now?

Web 2.0. Anything is possible. Everything is possible… and sure things are a-changing, but just because the medium of human communication has changed, and is knocking the “the meagre, stale, forbidding ways” sideways, human-nature is also reasserting itself, here and there.

I watched in horrified, disappointed, fascination as Factor-E farm imploded into acrimony and weirdness back in August. Seems to be going strong again now, and the evidence has been deleted – but I know what I saw, and I’ve seen it before. Autocracy. Reminds me of a boss I had once – he thought he was a hippie but he was really a control-freak. The same old human failings reflect out in the wider organisation.

There has been a similar (as far as I can make out) schism in the Freecycle movement in the last month or so with the UK branch separating from the US branch – with the British rebelling against autocracy of their colonial masters across the Atlantic.

Digg is controlled by a handful of power-users, Reddit has become so self-referential that 60% of what hits the front page is just Redittors talking about themselves, Wikipedia participation is falling… with 60%? Of new edits being revoked by what appears to be a controlling clique.

And so on.

Maybe these are growing pains… maybe we’re just learning how to organise ourselves – but I think we’ve been here many many times before. I think that the initial gushing optimism of 2.0 is coalescing into macrocosmic reflections of human-nature, and some of it is ugly.

Still… the sunlight of consciousness etc:

This insight is absolutely vital – to counteract this:

The trap: 1
The trap: 2
The trap: 3

Control-Systems vs Platforms is another axis of Hierarchy vs Network… and the the social patterns that coalesce out of the network are not necessarily, inherently democratic. We need to learn how not to fuck things up. Please.