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"The power redistributions of the 21st century have dealt representative democracies out. Representative democracies are a poor fit to the challenges ahead, and 'rebooting' them is not enough. The future looks nothing like democracy, because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him."
HYPERPOLITICS (AMERICAN STYLE)
A Talk By Mark Pesce
Introduction
In his well-received talk at this year's Personal Democracy Forum (organized by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry), "digital ethnologist" Mark Pesce makes the point that "we have a drive to connect and socialize: this drive has now been accelerated and amplified as comprehensively as the steam engine amplified human strength two hundred and fifty years ago. Just as the steam engine initiated the transformation of the natural landscape into man-made artifice, the 'hyperconnectivity' engendered by these new toys is transforming the human landscape of social relations.This time around, fifty thousand years of cultural development will collapse into about twenty.
In presenting his ideas on "the human network" Pesce references the work of archeologist Colin Renfrew, that "we may have had great hardware, but it took a long, long time for humans to develop software which made full use of it"; and Jared Diamond's ideas in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that "where sharing had been a local and generational project for fifty thousand years, it suddenly became a geographical project across nearly half the diameter of the planet".
In the 21st century, it's time to "Fasten your seatbelts and prepare for a rapid descent into the Bellum omnia contra omnes, Thomas Hobbes' "war of all against all." A hyperconnected polity—whether composed of a hundred individuals or a hundred thousand—has resources at its disposal which exponentially amplify its capabilities. Hyperconnectivity begets hypermimesis begets hyperempowerment. After the arms race comes the war."
To understand this new kind of mob rule, it's necessary to realize that "Sharing is the threat. Not just a threat. It is the whole of the thing. A photo taken on a mobile now becomes instantaneously and pervasively visible on Flickr or other sharing websites. This act of sharing voids "any pretensions to control, or limitation, or the exercise of power".
Pesce concludes that "the power redistributions of the 21st century have dealt representative democracies out. Representative democracies are a poor fit to the challenges ahead, and 'rebooting' them is not enough. The future looks nothing like democracy, because democracy, which sought to empower the individual, is being obsolesced by a social order which hyperempowers him."
Read on.
—JB
MARK PESCE is an expert in social media, best known for his work blending VR with the Web to create VRML, the distant ancestor of Second Life. Pesce is an author, teacher, inventor, and well-known media personality in Australia. For the last four years has practiced "digital ethnology," studying the behavioral, cultural and political changes wrought by the new technologies of sharing and communication.
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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge252.html#pesce
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ARTICLE OF NOTE
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CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
THE CHRONICLE REVIEW
August 1, 2008
THE SCIENCE OF SATIRE
Cognition studies clash with 'New Yorker' rationale
By Mahzarin R. Banaji
On the morning of July 14, the Internet was clogged with discussions of the latest New Yorker cover depicting a Muslim Barack Obama and a terrorist Michelle Obama in fist-bumping celebration before a fireplace in which lies a burning American flag, while above it hangs a portrait of Osama bin Laden...
...It is not unreasonable, given the inquiring minds that read The New Yorker, to expect that an obvious caricature would be viewed as such. In fact, our conscious minds can, in theory, accomplish such a feat. But that doesn't mean that the manifest association (Obama=Osama lover) doesn't do its share of the work. To some part of the cognitive apparatus, that association is for real. Once made, it has a life of its own because of a simple rule of much ordinary thinking: Seeing is believing. Based on the research of my colleague, the psychologistDaniel Gilbert, on mental systems, one might say that the mind first believes, and only if it is relaxing in an Adirondack chair doing nothing better, does it question and refute. There is a power to all things we see and hear — exactly as they are presented to us.
For decades, psychologists have described the "sleeper effect" — the idea that information, even information we might reject at first blush, ends up persuading us, contrary to our intention, over time. That often occurs when the content of the message (Obama=Islamist) and the source providing the message (The New Yorker trying to be cute) have split off in our minds. When satire isn't done right, as in the case of the Obama cover, the intended parody easily splits off from the actual and more blatant association. The latter then has the power to persuade over the long haul, when conscious cognition isn't up to policing it. Communicators of mass media should be alert to that, so that decisions about particular portrayals are based on knowledge of their full impact, and the justification for the supposedly sophisticated cognitive function they serve offered in light of such basic knowledge. ...
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http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge252.html#mb
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