The multitude
This page was created on Apr 21, 2009 and was last updated on Dec 15, 2011
The multitude is able to actualize the full potential of the new and generative information technology. Moreover, new powerful ways of production are emerging within the masses.
The great majority of people are fundamentally good, otherwise corrupt governments would not exist! The trick of the tyrant is to make us fear one another so that he can justify his position as our protector. It goes even further then this, nowadays governments even try to defend us from ourselves.
t!b!
The new technology
The multitude applies the new information technology in a way which is dictated by its own condition. Because it is not bound to adopt any organizational structure in particular, and because the goals of individuals are very diverse, the multitude is able to actualize the full potential of this generative technology. Society at large becomes a laboratory of experimentation, and generative and multiplicative applications are embraced because the people in this segment of society have almost nothing to lose. It is worth mentioning that the domain of applications of any technology is vast, and no one can foresee it from the start. Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, failed to predict the opportunities introduced by the advent of the Internet, and was taken by surprise by Netscape's browser, as well as by Yahoo and later by Google in the search field. A tyrannical government doesn't have the luxury to freely experiment with the new technology. The applications it finds are well defined and very confined. For this reason, governments are forbidden by their own condition to benefit fully from the entire potential of the new technology.
The political power of the networked multitude
At the most fundamental level, the Internet gives the people real-time access to valuable information, bypassing the controlled mass media. Email communication disseminates this information through social networks, and helps in shaping and homogenizing opinions. Social networking sites and other collaboration and coordination Internet technologies help groups and communities to form around different reactionary and revolutionary ideologies. These groups are capable of producing high quality content, which will be distributed through very efficient delivery methods. There is a new culture emerging that opposes the old order, as well as the so called "new world order". We can sum this up under the awakening phenomena.
The awakening shifts the attention of a mass of people from random individual pursuits towards coherent politically engaged pursuits. We are now observing a transition from a digestion period, where the opinion of the awakened was shaped, towards the action period. This segment of society is now building plans for concrete actions, works out the logistics, and creates the infrastructure to support these actions. The call for action is getting stronger every day in the alternative media. Here again, communication, collaboration, and coordination Internet-based technologies are the engine behind these developments. On the ground, mobile technology is changing the balance of force between the police and the demonstrators. One-to-many mobile communication technologies, like Twitter, transforms a disorganized crowd into a coherent/coordinated mass. Other technologies, like Ushahidi, give demonstrators the ability to manage their actions in real time, with real-time input from the theater, great analysis power and efficient decision making methods. A group of individuals from Norway can now help organize and coordinate a popular uprising in Athens, Greece. The organization, as well as the actions carried out by politically engaged individuals and groups are becoming very complex. The new technology offers huge potential. This potential can be unleashed only by a very creative force, and requires great efforts and dedication. These necessary elements are found in abundance in the multitude. The masses, as never before, are now able to amass such powerful forces that no tyrannical government on this planet can contain. Events like in the Republic of Moldova, in China and Iran, and more recently in northern Africa are only the beginning.
The economical weight of the multitude
With the emergence of the new information and collaboration technology, we've witnessed the creation of a new kind of economical entity, one that can only exist at a very large scale. The most common examples are the Wikipedia and the GNU/Linux projects. Firstly, the success of these projects demonstrates that a broad-based decentralized organization can produce a highly complex output, which can rival the best efforts put together by one of the largest and most successful corporations like Microsoft. Secondly, considering the long period of existence of the aforementioned endeavors, no one can deny anymore the stability of such structures. These new economical entities only become stable if they receive input from a number of individuals above a critical mass. Their stability is a matter of statistics, the number of ill-intentioned individuals being greater than that of well-meaning individuals.
There is no theoretical upper limit to the size of these organizations. It seems that the bigger they are the more stable they get. There are other necessary conditions for stability, like a good set of governing rules and a "product" in which people, on average, find value and decide to contribute positively, but we are not going into details.
Many critics argue that these entities are not part of our economy and will never play an important role, because our society cannot rely on a bunch of hobbyists, contributing not even one hour per day. They also add that these people need to work somewhere in order to be able to contribute to open-source projects. Non sense we say! These critics are missing the point. For the first time in history the creation of value goes into the hands of the multitude, governments and corporations were dispossessed of their monopoly. The open-source projects are only one particular implementation of this general concept. We actually propose new economical models, where collaboration and participation are key. However, if our critics want to be taken seriously into consideration, they must demonstrate that there is no other possible implementation of a broad-based decentralized economical entity that can take over our economy, and become the norm of our modes of creation, production and distribution.
Soon, new economical entities will be able to tap into the vast creative reservoir of practically the entire society. Their organic and modular structure will confer them flexibility and adaptability. They will be highly efficient, greatly reducing redundancy by sharing resources. We believe that this new type of economical entity will outcompete the classical outdated and rigid centralized/hierarchical forms of organization. The economical power will be decentralized. This is not another utopia. We are already seeing these forces at work, shaping the landscape of our economy. It is important to note at this point that decentralization of production goes against the will of a tyrannical government, which aspires to a centralized system that confers effective control over the entire society.
Who will hold the key to power in the near future?
History is a flow of interactions between human communities, social classes, or even entire societies. Sometimes, these interactions are violent clashes that involve more that two entities, with no well-defined winners and losers. In fact, there is no naturalistic universal definition of success, only a subjective one. History is NOT just a chain of military victories or bloody revolutions! To predict the future we need to understand the history in its full complexity. During violent clashes, all the antagonist entities suffer changes. History is full of examples where technological, cultural and spiritual exchanges modified the conquerors as much as the conquered. Sometimes the looser is brought to the edge of extinction. Other times, the victorious can totally absorb and integrate the weaker one, inheriting some of its characteristics. Wars are violent interaction between two societies, not just between two armies. Revolutions are clashes between two social classes that rely on their respective resources, their collective knowledge, their capacity to plan and to organize collective actions, etc. The economy is an important factor contributing to the success of one community over another. In the case of internal oppositions, we are not talking about the entire economy of a country, we refer to clusters of economical activities that are mastered or controlled by different communities within the same society. The specialization and the concentration of some economical activities within particular communities leads to heterogeneity in terms of transferring potential into social power. Some communities become more influential than others and seize power. As potential and its actualized forms shift from one community to another, due the a change in conditions, the transfer of power can become violent process, taking the form of a revolution, a civil war, etc. Most societies stratify or segregate into social classes. For example, in the USA everybody is now denouncing Wall Street speculators, as well as bankers, for having accumulated too much power. The denunciation has an ethical, political and legal flavor. However, when we take a more objective look at this problem, we only see a very familiar pattern. These people master important levers of power. They hold a central place within the entire economy.
The industrial revolution was a clash between the landlords and the artisans. The later became the industrial manufacturers, the bourgeois. They changed society in their image, because collectively, they surpassed in potential the feudal landlords. They knew how to master the new forces of production offered by the machine. Their economical might was transformed into political power.
The broad patterns of history are not monotone, nor cyclical. There is a time arrow in the development of our societies, and knowledge is what engenders it. The finding of a new pool of natural resources would give some advantage to the discoverer, which would translate into a change in the balance of power, that could lead to some sort of cultural mixing. But there is no real social transformation without the emergence of new knowledge. A demographic explosion would also give some competitive advantage, but again, without new understanding and creativity social changes would not escape monotony. Within a static physical environment new knowledge introduces new potential. Knowledge is the motor of history!
Information and knowledge have become the most essential factors in economical development (see A. Stewart's influential article "Brainpower..."). Whoever controls the production, storage, organization, search, distribution and analysis of information and knowledge possesses an enormous power. It is clear though that classical corporations are insufficient in terms of production of knowledge and creativity. Innovation comes mostly from academic institutions, which have been greatly expanded in the past century. Knowledge and innovation are in the hands of the multitude. The Internet technology is deprofessionalizing knowledge activities. Knowledge becomes free, it reaches every curious and capable individual. Adding to this the collaboration and coordination capabilities offered by the new technology, we can say with confidence that the multitude holds the key to future prosperity!
Interesting tools
A list of tools designed with the Multitude philosophy in mind.
Hardware
Free network foundation: "An organization committed to the tenets of free information, free culture, and free society. We hold that advances in information technology provide humanity with the ability to effectively face global challenges. We contend that our very ability to mobilize, organize, and bring about change depends on our ability to communicate. We see that our ability to communicate is purchased from a handful of powerful entities. We know that we cannot depend on these entities to support movement away from a status quo from which they are the beneficiaries. We believe that access to a free network is a human right, and a necessary tool for environmental and social justice. We envision communications infrastructure that is owned and operated cooperatively, by the whole of humanity, rather than by corporations and states.We are using the power of peer-to-peer technologies to create a global network which is immune to censorship and resistant to breakdown. We promote freedoms, support innovations and advocate technologies that enhance and enable digital self-determination."
Freedom box: "We're building software for smart devices whose engineered purpose is to work together to facilitate free communication among people, safely and securely, beyond the ambition of the strongest power to penetrate. They can make freedom of thought and information a permanent, ineradicable feature of the net that holds our souls."
Software
Diaspora: "Diaspora is an open-source and distributed community of social networks run by users that enables you to own your own personal data, control with whom you share, and discover cool stuff throughout the Web". Currently in alpha state.
Join the Discussion or comment below
Although military victory cannot entirely predict the future state of the belligerent entities, violent clashes are an important motor of change, and need to be understood. The most important consideration is that behind the potential to project physical force, behind every army, there is a community, a society, an organized social body capable of developing knowledge and of actualizing potential. It is also important to realize that social characteristics, more than individual characteristics, are responsible for the outcomes of clashes.