Community care becomes intelligible as infrastructure the moment the analytic lens shifts from the isolated household to the dense and interwoven networks that make collective survival possible, because no dyad, no family, and no domestic arrangement has ever functioned independently of a broader ecology of reciprocity, shared knowledge, distributed labour, and collective risk management that…
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History is written by the winners, which is why Luddite is a slur meaning “technophobe” and not a badge of honor meaning, “Person who goes beyond asking what technology does, to asking who it does it for and who it does it to.”
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Luddites weren’t anti-machine activists, they were pro-worker advocates, who believed that the spoils of automation shouldn’t automatically be allocated to the bosses who skimmed the profits from their labor and spent them on machines that put them out of a job. There is no empirical right answer about who should benefit from automation, only social contestation, which includes all the things that desperate people whose access to food, shelter and comfort are threatened might do, such as smashing looms and torching factories.
The question of who should benefit from automation is always urgent, and it’s also always up for grabs. Automation can deepen and reinforce unfair arrangements, or it can upend them. No one came off a mountain with two stone tablets reading “Thy machines shall condemn labor to the scrapheap of the history while capital amasses more wealth and power.” We get to choose.
Capital’s greatest weapon in this battle is inevitabilism, sometimes called “capitalist realism,” summed up with Frederic Jameson’s famous quote “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism” (often misattributed to Žižek). A simpler formulation can be found in the doctrine of Margaret Thatcher: “There Is No Alternative,” or even Dante’s “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Hope — alternatives — lies in reviving our structural imagination, thinking through other ways of managing our collective future. Last May, Wired published a brilliant article that did just that, by Divya Siddarth, Danielle Allen and E. Glen Weyl:
That article, “The Web3 Decentralization Debate Is Focused on the Wrong Question,” set forth a taxonomy of decentralization, exploring ways that power could be distributed, checked, and shared. It went beyond blockchains and hyperspeculative, Ponzi-prone “mechanism design,” prompting me to subtitle my analysis “Not all who decentralize are bros”:
That article was just one installment in a long, ongoing project by the authors. Now, Siddarth has teamed up with Saffron Huang to launch the Collective Intelligence project, “an incubator for new governance models for transformative technology.”
https://cip.org/whitepaper
The Collective Intelligence Project’s research focus is “collective intelligence capabilities: decision-making technologies, processes, and institutions that expand a group’s capacity to construct and cooperate towards shared goals.” That is, asking more than how automation works, but who it should work for.
Collective Intelligence institutions include “markets…nation-state democracy…global governance institutions and transnational corporations, standards-setting organizations and judicial courts, the decision structures of universities, startups, and nonprofits.” All of these institutions let two or more people collaborate, which is to say, it lets us do superhuman things — things that transcend the limitations of the lone individual.
Our institutions are failing us. Confidence in democracy is in decline, and democratic states have failed to coordinate to solve urgent crises, like the climate emergency. Markets are also failing us, “flatten[ing] complex values in favor of over-optimizing for cost, profit, or share price.”
Neither traditional voting systems nor speculative markets are up to the task of steering our emerging, transformative technologies — neither machine learning, nor bioengineering, nor labor automation. Hence the mission of CIP: “Humans created our current CI systems to help achieve collective goals. We can remake them.”
The plan to do this is in two phases:
Value elicitation: “ways to develop scalable processes for surfacing and combining group beliefs, goals, values, and preferences.” Think of tools like Pol.is, which Taiwan uses to identify ideas that have the broadest consensus, not just the most active engagement.
Remake technology institutions: “technology development beyond the existing options of non-profit, VC-funded startup, or academic project.” Practically, that’s developing tools and models for “decentralized governance and metagovernance, internet standards-setting,” and consortia.
The founders pose this as a solution to “The Transformative Technology Trilemma” — that is, the supposed need to trade off between participation, progress and safety.
This trilemma usually yields one of three unsatisfactory outcomes:
Capitalist Acceleration: “Sacrificing safety for progress while maintaining basic participation.” Think of private-sector geoengineering, CRISPR experimentation, or deployment of machine learning tools. AKA “bro shit.”
Authoritarian Technocracy: “Sacrificing participation for progress while maintaining basic safety.” Think of the vulnerable world hypothesis weirdos who advocate for universal, total surveillance to prevent “runaway AI,” or, of course, the Chinese technocratic system.
Shared Stagnation: “Sacrificing progress for participation while maintaining basic safety.” A drive for local control above transnational coordination, unwarranted skepticism of useful technologies (AKA “What the Luddites are unfairly accused of”).
The Institute’s goal is to chart a fourth path, which seeks out the best parts of all three outcomes, while leaving behind their flaws. This includes deliberative democracy tools like sortition and assemblies, backed by transparent machine learning tools that help surface broadly held views from within a community, not just the views held by the loudest participants.
This dovetails into creating new tech development institutions to replace the default, venture-backed startup for “societally-consequential, infrastructural projects,” including public benefit companies, focused research organizations, perpetual purpose trusts, co-ops, etc.
It’s a view I find compelling, personally, enough so that I have joined the organization as a volunteer advisor.
This vision resembles the watershed groups in Ruthanna Emrys’s spectacular “Half-Built Garden,” which was one of the most inspiring novels I read last year (a far better source of stfnal inspo than the technocratic fantasies of the “Golden Age”):
And it revives the long-dormant, utterly necessary spirit of the Luddites, which you can learn a lot more about in Brian Merchant’s forthcoming, magesterial “Blood In the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech”:
This week (Feb 8–17), I’ll be in Australia, touring my book Chokepoint Capitalism with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We’ll be in Brisbane tomorrow (Feb 8), and then we’re doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next are Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!
[Image ID: An old Ace Double paperback. The cover illustration has been replaced with an 18th century illustration depicting a giant Ned Ludd leading an army of Luddites who have just torched a factory. The cover text reads: 'The Luddites. Smashing looms was their tactic, not their goal.']
Watching the video of Henry Jenkins and reading “Collective Intelligence and Online Communities”, I was reminded of the online community I was active in in middle school and how it helped me learn, experiment, and form friendships. As a kid, I was really into reading “chic-lit”, books intended for young girls such as Gossip Girl, The Clique, A-List, etc. I got so into it, I started going on online forums dedicated to these book series. There I found other young people who were interested in practicing their writing skills. Together we created our own websites, where we collectively wrote fan fiction-type work about girls in boarding schools. This practice of writing together, is also known as Role Playing or RP. We would each write a paragraph as a character and this would move the story along. Vanesa Gámiz might refer to this activity as, “practice-based learning”. We were dedicated to becoming better writers. We learned from each other, were inspired by each other, were held accountable to each other and because we had so much fun doing it, we did it voluntarily. Every day after school I ran home to the computer, dialed up AOL, and in spite of the slow internet connection, I wrote for hours with my online friends.
The skills I developed there were invaluable. Collaboration, experimentation, plot and character development, website building among others. I credit these forums to becoming a better writer. This online community also served as an entryway into other online communities I got involved with later in life. In my early twenties I became involved with the “alt-lit” scene on Twitter, a group that consisted of experimental social media poets. I went from following cool writers on twitter, to befriending them, to hosting readings with them to traveling to poetry festivals with them. This community has published my work, curated me into museum shows, workshopped my in-progress poems as well as given me lifelong friendships.
It’s bittersweet to admit that these two online communities have influenced me just as much if not more than any of my K-12 education. Why was so much of my learning happening outside of the so-called place of learning, school? Why is this often the case? It begs the question, are schools set up to deny students the real tools needed for learning (agency, creativity, experimentation, collaboration, collective intelligence, self-driven inquiry)? If so- how can we change that? I believe the tools and projects of media literacy are an essential part of the solution. In order to start engaging students, it makes sense to start with what they already engage with and it’s up to us as teachers to figure out what that is.
Humans are social animals who like to communicate and copy each other. But key to this collective intelligence is flexibility and a little non-conformity.
When it comes to making decisions, most of us are influenced to some degree by other people, whether that’s choosing a restaurant or a political candidate. We want to know what others think before we make that choice. Humans are social animals. So social that we can rarely be independent of others because of our propensity for copying behaviour and communication – also known as social learning. Humans copy each other every day. You might buy the latest trainers because they’re really popular, even though you have no idea how good quality they are. And then you might share that information, perhaps posting a review on social media. This can induce “smarter” purchasing decisions because usually, if a product is popular, it seems less likely it would be of be poor quality. So sometimes social learning can improve our decision making.
In times of emergencies and crisis, a fundamental issue that operates alongside the crisis is our ability to communicate and have access to timely and accurate information. With the rise in the capabilities in Web 2.0 and our continual and ever-rising use of social media sites, we have as noted previously seen rises in citizen journalism as well as the crowdsourcing of information and social mapping.
In discussions with Ping Lo, The ABC’s national social media coordinator during the both the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires and 2011 Queensland floods she discusses the challenges of balancing providing both timely and relevant information to their social media followers.
“It became evident to the broader organisation that employing well-organised social media could have a profound impact in an emergency situation.” (Lo, 2012)
Citizen journalism: Where average citizens have become more active in the creation and sharing of user generated content to form information on current affairs.
Crowdsourcing: In this context, crowdsourcing seeks to gather information and data on current events and crisis situations by sourcing it from third parties such as people in real time.
Social Mapping: A way of using data collated from various sources to map locations of events, services and other important information in times of crisis.
I will draw upon my own experience for a moment during Snowstorm Jonas, a blizzard that hit NYC in January of 2016 and battered much of the East Coast. Being an Australian in a snowstorm is the perfect example of a fish out of water; I had never even seen snow before I went to the USA let alone being in the middle of a blizzard.
We had both run out of data and could only rely upon Wifi to get accurate and up-to-date information, in the terminal our flight was due to depart there was no free Wifi available! This situation highlighted to me our reliance on technology to get access to information, although the mainstream news gave adequate updates we struggled to find information that was specific to us.
Although I am not comparing what happened to us in NYC to what occurred in Kenya in 2007 but when Ford (2012) discusses mobile (50%) and internet (10%) penetration in Kenya I feel I can comprehend the situation a little more. With no mobile or data services available to us for a period of 16-20 hours and no access to accurate information in this time it felt like a blackout.
Ford’s (2012) concerns on verifying and authenticating information drew a lot of curiosity for me, because, as she discusses if it is up to one person to authenticate and verify information you create another gatekeeping scenario. If people are untrustworthy of mainstream media sources because of the prominence of news selection bias, you run the risk of creating the same kind of disparity towards projects such as Ushahidi.
In Macnamara’s (2013) article he relevantly points out that (full quote posted in previous post) Pierre Levy’s notions of the ‘collective intelligence’ has become an even-footed challenger to the long standing ideal of professional intermediaries or ‘gatekeepers.’ I believe this is because our awareness and opinions of traditional media conglomerates is changing, and when receive real-time updates from either media outlets or the general public they feel more authentic.
Macnamara (2013) also introduces the idea that there is a rise in apomediation, or apomediaries that act as agents to help us bypass the gatekeepers of information. Torrey (2016) explains the term by breaking down the prefix ‘apo’ which is Latin terminology to mean ‘to stand by,’ the apomediary will stand by you and guide you through disseminating information that you seek on the Internet.
I think that inaccurate reporting during live news exists no matter what platform it is delivered by, we have seen evidence of this during the manhunt for the real Boston bombing suspects. It only took a few hours and the power of the internet (namely reddit investigators) to deliver both the incorrect and correct suspects.
Some questions to get you thinking about your own ideas and opinions in the matter…
Do you think the importance of current and up-to-date information trumps the importance of ensuring that the information is authentic or verified? Think of this in an event like the Haiti earthquakes.
Time is everything in times of genuine crisis, but does access to immediate information make us more impatient?
Is apomediation helpful in access to information? Or does it make us less independent on being able to do our own research?
References & Bibliography
'Boston Marathon bombings' 2014, Wikipedia, viewed 10 January 2017, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombings>.
Ford, H (2012) 'Crowd Wisdom', Index on Censorship, vol. 41, no. 4, pp. 33-39.
Glance, D (2011) The future of news: crowdsourced and connected, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2017<https://theconversation.com/the-future-of-news-crowdsourced-and-connected-4276>.
Macnamara, J (2013) Google’s map of North Korea stirs social media passion and tensions, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2017 <https://theconversation.com/googles-map-of-north-korea-stirs-social-media-passion-and-tensions-11858>.
Madrigal, A (2013) #BostonBombing: The Anatomy of a Misinformation Disaster, The Atlantic, viewed 10 January 2017 <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/04/-bostonbombing-the-anatomy-of-a-misinformation-disaster/275155/>.
Poblet, M & Casanovas, P (2012) Crowdsourced crisis mapping: how it works and why it matters, The Conversation, viewed 10 January 2016 <https://theconversation.com/crowdsourced-crisis-mapping-how-it-works-and-why-it-matters-7014>
Postetti, J & Lo, P (2012) The Twitterisation of ABCs Emergency & Disaster Communication, Australian Journal of Emergency Management, Vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 34-39
Torrey, T (2016) Apomediation and Apomediary – Definitions: New Model of How we Find Health Information and Understand It, Verywell, viewed 10 January 2017 <https://www.verywell.com/apomediation-definition-2615145>.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
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Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Community care becomes intelligible as infrastructure the moment the analytic lens shifts from the isolated household to the dense and interwoven networks that make collective survival possible, because no dyad, no family, and no domestic arrangement has ever functioned independently of a broader ecology of reciprocity, shared knowledge, distributed labour, and collective risk management that…
Anti-capitalist Buddhist praxis IX: संघ / Saṅgha (collective) as insurgent form beyond state and market logics, prefiguring non-extractive organisation
संघ / Saṅgha (collective), when approached not as a sociological aggregation of individuals nor as an institutionalised religious body but as a dynamically self-organising field of सम्बन्ध / sambandha (relation) grounded in the mutual recognition of प्रतीत्यसमुत्पाद / pratītyasamutpāda (dependent origination), reveals itself as an insurgent form that operates orthogonally to the dominant logics…
