The War On Spontaneous Global Organization
The Internet has allowed anyone to partake in the massive coordination of human effort that has been historically reserved for Pharaohs... and the Pharaohs are upset that their monopoly on human effort has competition. This impulse to engage in "spontaneous global organization" is the most promising aspect of the Internet, however, various channels that frequently nurture such organization have been under attack. Here is a list of fronts within the Pharaoh's war against spontaneous global organization:
- The Code of Conduct battles in open source have injected unneeded political polarization/dialectical confrontation among key communities of internet infrastructure, primarily, Linux communities. Open source has been the first and most influential examples of spontaneous global organization in the modern world.
- The Gawker infiltration of 4chan, a culture that had produced the Anonymous brand (Which was hijacked by state actors after Chanology) resulted in the purging of 25,000 comments from /r/gaming for violating the payola of pop untouchables. The Anonymous brand showed the world that people across multiple identity categories (racial, gender, national, religious, etc.) can come together without a leader or a plan to affect cultural affairs en masse.
- The bogus rape charges against Julian Assange to suppress Wikileaks. Wikileaks showed that like-minded individuals can utilize the Internet to convince the politically disillusioned to leak information from their powerful positions.
- The NSA's silent usage of zero day exploits, especially heartbleed and Juniper backdoors. SSL has been a staple in secure communications that spontaneous global organization requires, prompting both Americanand British governments to demand its regulation.
- The highly coordinated and prolonged culture war against the gaming community. Gamers from all over the world reflexively eliminate identity lines and spontaneously organize to solve challenges within a gaming world.
- The Federal Reserve cannot regulate BitCoin, and so, the Group of 30 believes BitCoin to be evil. BitCoin has demonstrated that it might be possible to do away with the clearing houses and the trust problems associated with central banking through a clever usage of spontaneous global organization.
To the uninitiated, each of these fronts appear to be unrelated to the other. However, when you frame each involved technology and community within the context of suppressing spontaneous global organization, you can quickly see how they are related... and how they are being attacked by powerful banking, authority, and cultural entities. Unfortunately, each targeted actor has a very large surface area to exploit which is only made larger by the assumption that they alone they are under attack.
One might argue that social media allows for spontaneous global organization, which is true. Therefore, I should refine my definition to eliminate confusion. There are certain "spontaneous" organizational manifestations that are authorized, such as the entirely predictable schema of identity politics. (Black vs. White, Male vs. Female, Red vs. Blue, and other examples of false dichotomy) These breeds of schema utilize a considerable amount of effort to appear spontaneous and global, but this is nothing more than hacking morality via minimal effort photo opportunities. With the heavy individual curation of social media to promote filter bubbles and echo chambers, social media exacerbates the illusion that the content one experiences is part of a larger spontaneous global organization when, in reality, it is not.
The spontaneous global organization I am speaking of does not engage in identity warfare. In fact, the first thing such organizations sacrifice is identity. This provides a significant challenge for the post-war leadership as their entire model of rule requires the infinite exploitation of identity. Therefore, it will be important to develop sociological and governance theorems that explore how rule of law can be established in a world where labor and creativity can spontaneously appear and then vaporize. Otherwise, the powers that be will continue to waste energy and assets in suppressing the culmination of such a world.