I’ve never really understood what I perceive to be the ongoing resistance to accepting a neologism (What Is Wirearchy?) as representative of the apparently massive, and continuing, shifts in power and authority due to the decentralized architecture and now-omnipresent use of the Internet’s scale and capabilities.
Most often I have put it down to some combination or other of information overload, attention scarcity and a degree of learned helplessness or “the way things are is just natural” … which is the trope usually advanced by those who are higher-up in whatever social / institutional hierarchy to which they belong.
I keep testing the working definition of “wirearchy”, and checking as to its pertinence and usability with some other thinkers and practitioners whom I respect and trust. It still works for me.
However, I thought I’d dive into it a bit deeper, and see if there’s anything fundamental that is 1) not clear, and 2) perhaps missing.
.
.
Let’s work backwards, shall we ?
.
“enabled by interconnected people and technology”
.
Pretty straightforward, I think. Web 2.0 is participative, interactive, and increasingly the tools and services available are integrated or play together well through open APIs. And, there’s an ongoing trend towards “open everything”. I will always remember a conversation ( along time ago now) with Marc Canter in which he argued passionately for “open”. Here’s a descriptive blog post he has titled “How To Build the Open Mesh“.
His vision struck me as right then, and I still think he’s absolutely right.
As far as I know, crews are not being sent out to dismantle the Internet, and won’t any time soon. In the meantime, more and more people from different cultures, in different languages, are incorporating more elements of the Web into their daily lives and work.
The interconnected ecosystem of minds, hearts and information is still in its early and developmental stages, I think.
.
“a focus on results”
.
I see evidence of this dynamic almost everywhere I look. Whether developing an early draft of a business case, or speccing out an application, or launching a new marketing campaign, or leading the members of an interest group in some form of activism, say … we have gotten used to clarifying and describing the intended results, and so that focus accompanies the resultant network of energies as something gets under way.
.
“credibility”
.
We all know the famous line “On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog”. There’s a reason it’s famous, and that reason is because anonymity is a constant possible feature. If the Family Guy’s Brian the Talking Dog started blogging, how many people might assume it’s actually a dog on the Internet (I know, I know, but I am also reminded of the famous line “No one ever went broke underestimating peoples’ stupidity” (or something like that) ?
We have all witnessed the ongoing, and titanic, struggle between what is euphemistically called the mainstream media and the blogosphere / Web 2.0. Whether or not there has been major impact is no longer an issue … there has been, and there continues to be. There’s also no shortage of services that aim to help establish peoples’ credibility though I’d argue, from several different angles, that these services need to get better.
.
“trust”
.
Well, d’oh.
This is an issue that has been poked, prodded and examined in minute detail … often by the above-,mentioned mainstream media in connection with one of the latest Internet outrages. It’s almost always the case that the mainstream media neglect to mention that it seems to be just as difficult to trust someone face-to-face, in real life, in the course of the interaction in which you are engaged.
Of course, we fool ourselves all the time. I suspect that for many the bias towards wariness online is a vestigial leaning-on the familiar. That said, I do not want to minimise the need to pay attention and establish mechanisms and practices that allow you to establish some degree of trust with other people. There are now enough examples, and enough people who have practiced connecting and communicating online for us to understand 1) how essential the establishment of trust is, and 2) how we can go about it, on our own and with the help of a few emails, Skype / phone calls, etc. Living and working more “publicly”, for those of us online, gives us a retrievable and verifiable “track”.
.
“knowledge”
.
Aahh, the K word.
Yes, social interaction and exchange of information about a given issue (problem, challenge, assignment, task, project, etc.) leads to the construction of knowledge that can be put to use.
Exchanging and discussing is how humans have always created and used knowledge. This is not likely to change any time soon. The availability of the Internet and Web 2.0 tools and services make it, for the most part, easier than ever (hedging a bit here because of the issues of cognitive capacity, capabilities and the relatively rudimentary methods (still) we have for recognizing patterns, etc.).
.
“A dynamic two-way flow of power and authority”
.
Is there any real argument against this dynamic ? People have been seeing this coming for at least thirty years (and longer). Names that come to mind are McLuhan, Tofflers, Stan Davis, Stafford Beer, Doug Engelbart, Sherry Turkle, Manuel de Castells … oh, to hell with it, there are too many.
It’s arguably a cliché today to say that connected consumers and citizens at the business end of a computer mouse have more power than ever before.
We’ve seen this two-way flow (top-down, bottom-up) play out more and more often in politics, publishing, retail, education .. actually, in most aspects of our lives. We will continue to see it play out. The history of humanity has always been a struggle between the tops and the bottoms, and we should expect no different from the future. However, it seems clear that the fundamental design of the “thing” we call the Internet was intended to avoid, or endlessly route around, any real possibility of hegemonic control. The ongoing struggle over net neutrality is a good example of an important struggle … should the big telcos and countries’ governments win this one, we’ll be looking at a dark and cloudy future (in my opinion).
Re: two-way flow … some participants in an executive MBA seminar about wirearchy several years ago suggested that the definition should (or could) be amended to state “an n-way flow“. I’m still thinking about that one.
.
Please help me move forward on this. What am I missing, or what do I need to make more clear ?
.
Hi Jon
Of course you would expect me to dive in and to respond to your impassioned post on this topic :-).
We can repeat and re-present these ideas until we are blue in the face. I think there is a big ‘so what’ response to what might still be seen as theoretical ideas. Don’t get me wrong, I subscribe to Kurt Kewin’s contention that there is nothing so practical as a good theory ( in D. Cartwright (ed) Field Theory In Social Science; selected theoretical papers. Harper Row, New York. 1959:169). In my experience, many people do not.
And as you know, Stafford Beer is one of my intellectual heroes – eccentric and all as he was. His ideas were not widely appreciated outside of his coterie of admirers when I was looking at the practical application of his ideas nearly 15 years ago. His ideas are more relevant than ever, IMO.
What do these insights mean in practice? And for whom? To my mind, it is time to get a bunch of us together and translate these highly practical insights into simple, useable things (techniques, tools, methods …) that are going to address actual business challenges and problems.
That is what I mean by translating and re-framing. What do those assessing a context see happening now (or what are their multiple perceptions of what they think is happening)? What does this mean for strategic operations? Which of these ideas can be re-interpreted to help adapt ways of working and managing to fit the current context? How can these insights be made useable?
Time to put our heads together? btw, I agree with the ‘n’-way flow amendment.
Hehe … thanks for stopping by and commenting, Anne-Marie.
I agree with your points, and I would be remiss ( not that I want you to think that I think myself some sort of smarty-pants) that I have had the same dialogue before, both with myself and other friends.
Of course I agree with the maxim that there’s nothing so practical as a good theory. I don’t really have a theory here, per se, though when I look at my blog posts on the subject over the last 6 or 7 years, there are some responses to:
What do these insights mean in practice? And for whom?
and
What do those assessing a context see happening now (or what are their multiple perceptions of what they think is happening)? What does this mean for strategic operations?
I think the issue for me is two-fold … 1) the past posts need to be pulled together, edited in the context of questions such as yours, and packaged for accessibility (sounds dangerously like a book, yikes 😉
and
2) marketing of some sort, at which I am crap. I sound theoretical, heck, I am theoretical, although I think I’d argue that I have so much practical experience (the 11 years with Hay, followed by 5 or 6 of facilitation, OD, strategic planning, etc.) that I know what I am talking about.
I mean, who doesn’t know or at least sense that massive shifts are underway, and I think I used the word “cliche” to underscore that there are millions of people out there that understand, at least dimly, that some key aspects of living and working on the Web are great levellers.
I also think that there are way too many people jumping in already with the practical “how-to’s” without understanding some or many of the deeper issues (which some would argue happens all too often if not all the time in our go-go, marketing driven society, see Erich Fromm 😉
Anyway … all that to say that I know you are right. I won’t stop, this is my hobby for the next 15 or 20 years 😉
Re: “n-way” … I think that the question is, for me, a good example of some of the issues you raise. I do understand (and did immediately) what the student(s) were getting at, but with respect to flows of power in a social system, “two-way” with respect to the structural principles of a purposeful social system takes you to a different place than does “n-way”. The n-way is there, but that’s for me (to date) more the issue of personalisation (or mass customization as applied to people’s work and lives) whereas “two-way” means that there’s a top and a bottom to an organization (or an industry, or a society) … so, in a sense, one is macro the other micro, although that distinction is a bit too rough-n-ready (but it’s early and I still haven’t had my first cup of coffee).
Thanks for livening up my early morning a bit.
Oh, Anne Marie … is the second half of http://blog.wirearchy.com/what-is-wirearchy/“ rel=”nofollow”>this piece (expanded through case studies or outlined step by step) what you mean by “what do these insights mean in practice” or “for whom” ?
I mean I could expand on each of those areas in terms of what it means for an organisation in a networked environment, but that would be somewhat tedious and reveal that in some aspects not so much is different apart from the mindsets and attitudes whilst in other aspects the differences are radical.
As a generality, I think that many people understand that radical changes are perhaps, somehow, in the offing and many (at least those in charge) don’t want to be involved up to their elbows in all the hard work those kinds of changes entail.
That’s why, I think, there has been a spate of “paradoxically, the growing crises are good for the online, networked crowd”, because there’s more of a real excuse to do something differently tomorrow.
I think you’ve been clear. A couple of other questions concern me. Is this an ideal state? One to be desired? Is it a statement of fact? What does it compare to and/or replace? Is it a brand of economics that adjusts capitalism? Is it a version of or a replacement to democracy?
I blog on technocracy. It’s basically wirearchy with a penchant for noticing that resources are finite and that markets and price mechanisms aren’t likely going to offer moral ways of allocating resources. I’ve been frozen of late watching the world sort of disintegrate…not the popular meaning of the term but the word origin meaning of the term…literally to dis-integrate. If I’d critique wirearchy in any particular terms it is in the fact that this dis-integration is not accounted for. Why are we dis-integrating? Is it, as I suspect, the melting of boundaries? Is it something else…speed of information movement perhaps.
I find your blog to be one of the few worth continued careful reading. But I’m interested in evolution of social systems, so it’s a no-brainer for me. It’s the evolution part that seems left out at times…we’re too focused I think on static description of circumstance and not enough on the processes of change…the why, if you will.
Thanks very much, Ryan. Your points are making me think hard (at least it feels like that process is starting, on a saturday morning with a coffee).
You have offered at least a half-dozen meaty questions. Some of them I think I have addressed at least in part over the past several years here and there, in various blog posts … informally. But that response on my part begs the issue of a comprehensive and formal theory, I think .. which implies the book a reasonable number of my friends have been daring me to write for the last several years.
I think I might be able to do so, but I’m 1) lazy and 2) sort-of scared about the process. Maybe the fear creates the laziness, and vice-versa ?
Anyhow, I’ll come back to your comments over the next several days and try to offer some (informal) responses.
Thanks, both of you, for making me think and for the kind words.
Jon and Ryan
I have no doubt whatsoever that you have had the same dialogue before, both with yourself and other friends. Many, many times.
Jon, I think that Wirearchy is an inspired term that neatly encapsultes apparently major trends. Write your book!!
I really liked your questions, Ryan, one of which is:
“Is it, as I suspect, the melting of boundaries?”.
A colleague and I co-facilitate a learning network for senior executives. We have been exploring many of the boundary-transgressing consequences of global workplace trends. The topic for our next meeting is “Surviving The Global Cultural Mashup”.
Jon, thank you so much for your kind comment on my blog :-). You are a kind man. I carry on writing the blog regardless, even though I think nobody is reading it. Wittering away to myself – first sign of madness.
I would suspect the reaction to your ‘wirearchy’ is that it suggests an arrogance; that you want to announce a ‘new idea’ to replace old, while change _never_ works successfully in such a fashion; and that the technical emphasis in the made up word seems not solidly understood by you, and thus to be misplaced.
And here I stop. And thought about why I stop.
Why should I put real ideas out in a medium that steals them freely, as you stole Clay Shirkey’s nearby, with your ‘if it isn’t really wrong’ excuse?
There are other reasons just as good. If you want to make something in the world, do make something yourself, and invite others where appropriate who also make real contributions to real things.
The endless circular talk about how a big ‘safe’ conversation is going to create what we need seems pretty misguided.
Thanks for stopping by, Not really (the name not my intention with that sentence).
I suspect you’re right about the suggestion of some arrogance. I’m not sure I understand your point about “technical emphasis in the word”. I am not a technically-focused person (as in a programmer or systems architect or analyst), but I understand enough about technology, system design, programming and the technical components of applications and platforms to follow basic-to-intermediate level technical discussions. Let’s put it this way … I know enough to know what I don’t know, and who to look for with respect to what I don’t know.
Stealing ideas ? I quoted a small piece of an essay by Shirky (small enough, I think, to be considered in the ‘fair use’ domain) to emphasize / reinforce a point … and I have been writing about what I call ‘wirearchy’ and the related examples and dynamics for long enough that you could get into an honest argument about what came first and who said what when (first, second, as part of a circle-jerk, whatever … ).
I agree with your point about making something in the world … I’ve been working on it for a few years now, and have invited others at times … and your advice in that regard is appreciated.
I understand your point about “endless circular talk about a big ‘safe’ conversation” … you’d have to go off and read any number of blog posts I have written and pointed to over the past six or seven years to see that I have often been critical about the same attitude that you decry. I think there are some dangerous and dark elements of free-form free-for -all conversations, and it behooves any and all of us to understand what we are saying, why we are saying it, and holding accountability for our words and actions.
Why should I put real ideas out in a medium that steals them freely, as you stole Clay Shirkey’s nearby, with your ‘if it isn’t really wrong’ excuse?
You may have meant a recent blog post I swiped intact from Dave Snowden’s blog ? I am of the opinion he won’t mind ( I know him somewhat, socially let’s say). If he were and let me know, I’d rectify pronto.
Ok, Jon, and fair enough. In fact I stopped in to take the time especially just now on a wireless point, just to see what you might have said, and because I know I was a bit hard-line yesterday.
I think this was fair, actually, and respect the way you came back to it. Points not lost.
You’re right, I think (haven’t moment to look it up), that it was Dave Snowdon’s post, rather than Shirkey’s. I read them both in toto, and confused.
I was in fact circulating a little through your weblog, to decide if I was about to be unfair ;).
Good on you for thinking about the points. I’ll think from this end, and especially as I’d put Wirearchy on my Google Reader because you do bring up interesting topics that I like to watch for.
Must catch a bus. Good fortune there.
NR (may have to keep that name 😉
One more, with a minute to go…
This is what I had started in on, after the part I posted. It’s a complete enough thought in itself, but really it is a springboard. I wonder what you’ll find you want to do with it.
Let me offer it that way, and apologies it’s still in the quick tone of the original…
Begin quote:
As far as connecting being a ‘new thing’, well, in some ways it is. But have you considered that the _main_ reason for the current unpleasantness is the fact of connecting? We have since World War II given away work to other countries, accelerating as our ability to communicate grew. This has been a cornucopia for huge groups of humanity, which we could never generate with aid. And it has hurt us, very deeply now, because there has been not one shred of humane thought about balance.
End quote.
NR
Well, I hope this wasn’t too ‘shocking’, Jon.
If you see my point, as someone who has participated since the 70’s in things that helped in what we then thought of as the third world, I am trying to say first that we created a very effective way to contribute to bettering others’ lives — much more so than by ‘foreign aid’ of the direct sort alone. This is very laudable, even if it wasn’t fully done ‘on purpose’, though it may have been an agenda not talked about in certain administrations.
We do have to face the fact that we’ve mortally hurt ourselves, by not replacing the work that has been spread to cheaper participants by this very willful process that business had undertaken. It is a matter of the ‘lower costs’ aspect of capitalism going beyond increasing our welfare through easier buying of needs, and turning around and hurting because the ability to purchase disappears for more and more people.
I am deliberately not going farther in what can be said about this, because as mentioned, I’m interested what response will come to the statement of issues.
Thanks,
NR
I can’t say re: shocking, as I have been occupied with other things and only just quickly read the comment in my inbox without thinking much about it in context then.
But, this note now is just to say that I will read the above three comments carefully and come back to respond in the next several hours.
Sounds good, when you get to it, Jon. Thanks.
As far as connecting being a ‘new thing’, well, in some ways it is. But have you considered that the _main_ reason for the current unpleasantness is the fact of connecting? We have since World War II given away work to other countries, accelerating as our ability to communicate grew. This has been a cornucopia for huge groups of humanity, which we could never generate with aid. And it has hurt us, very deeply now, because there has been not one shred of humane thought about balance.
and …
We do have to face the fact that we’ve mortally hurt ourselves, by not replacing the work that has been spread to cheaper participants by this very willful process that business had undertaken. It is a matter of the ‘lower costs’ aspect of capitalism going beyond increasing our welfare through easier buying of needs, and turning around and hurting because the ability to purchase disappears for more and more people.
At a fundamental level I agree with the points you have articulated. I think some economists, systems thinkers and other assorted pointy-heads call this “the race to the bottom”.
I also think (just thinking out loud, really) that what you point out is one of the key results of the unintended consequences of treating unfettered unregulated capitalism (aided and abetted by ‘globalization’, which in turn has been enabled in no small part by all the ‘connecting’ that has been made available over the past 15 years or so) as a religion or the natural order of things, or the ultimate economic model.
A key aspect of the massive and multi-faceted problems we face are due (I think, opinion only) to a lot of propaganda that over the past two decades has made “business” into an unassailable mental model in the mainstream (until very recently), whereby of you question some of the accepted tenets of business you are shunned, ignored, seen as an “odd duck”, a socialist or a communist (all bad things in today’s North America). I should know .. I have the scars to prove it ;-).
I could go on (and on), but won’t. I hope I have understood the main gist of what you were stating / suggesting. If not, I hope you will let me know.
Hi Jon, and glad you could enjoy some skiing.
Good replies, and yes, I agree with the other co-dependency, with the religion of untrammelled ‘rational capitalism’.
Interesting possibly, I woke up this morning early with just this on my mind; or rather, the opposite, which was the idea that we finally enter now another age, where sensibility will come to be seen as only possible with a sustainability view instead.
To the degree that we are rational, it’s hard to say how this could ever not have been the plan, except that there are hundreds of years of history where people gained more by making narrower bets.
If you read through Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat, and Crowded, as I did on Sunday afternoon, perhaps there is something that brings this conception. He may be the first of the high-end chatter group to actually admit that a regulative approach by governments is the way to turn the green need into an economic advance. This is much closer to European thinking for a long time, but the US is as he says the place where leadership and action can really occur.
I take this as a generality about truly systemic economics and solution-building. The market is but one useful mechanism, and that anyone could think it could operate satisfactorily by itself must point out how blind we humans so often are, when there is the glut of one particular historic advance to lionize.
Now we have the concepts, and need only to open our minds with them. It is truly a comfort to lose that nagging sense that so much has been ‘all wrong’ by itself, no matter what it for a while obtained.
Well, for the way one mind seems to insist to work, anyway. Thanks for being a good sport here, Jon, and I hope it leads on to things. I’ll probably retire this handle, and maybe show up with another.
Best,
Clive
Thanks, of course, Not Really Clive, for stopping by and conversing a bit.