Starfish and the Spider (continued)

The authors cover their principles of decentralization in Chapter 2.

Ideas like an open system does not have central intelligence and use examples of the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and Hurricane Katrina.
And how open systems can mutate. And Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems can survive destruction and attempts to control them.

“Since the Industrial Revolution, people had communicated by mail, telegraph, or telephone, but the Internet changed everything in less than a decade” and no one person is in charge of the Internet. There is no headquarters to be bombed, no leader to assassinate, and you cannot kill the Internet. “What if you destroyed half the Web sites on the Internet? It would still survive. What if you took away 95 percent? Again, the system would persevere – in fact, it was designed to withstand a nuclear attack.”

Chapter 3 covers how AT&T was broken up in 1984 to smaller utilities which were just mini-versions of the telephone giant. But then came the Internet and Skype for basically “free” phone calls all over the globe…..devastating for the old pioneering giants.

Then Craigslist which devastated newspaper classified advertising revenue by creating a P2P sense of “community.” The authors write, “Virtually everyone we’ve talked to who has used craigslist refers to the site as a community, a place from another era when neighbors would help each other out.”

Think of this new Web-based P2P “community” as being one dedicated to destroying something….like the U.S. or Israel or big oil or socialism etc. In the discussion of Craigslist, the authors write: “We realized that all along we’d been talking about how open systems are about the users, not about the leadership. In an open system what matters most isn’t the CEO but whether the leadership is trusting enough of members to leave them alone.”

Sooooo, Where’s bin Laden? Make any difference if a B-1 has sealed him in a cave or if he is dead of natural causes?

Brafman and Beckstrom seem to be indicating that a hands-off approach to providing the network (or a foundation like al-Qaeda) does better when the leadership launches the P2P idea platform and steps back. The U.S. Air Force “Aimpoint” report mentioned earlier seems to indicate al-Qaeda is truly a sort of Ford Foundation funding some projects and networking like-minded groups and individuals. A sort of Craigslist concept for terrorists. A P2P system without the spider head the U.S. seems to be chasing.

Add to this the Sun Tzu idea of “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake” and one can see how airpower is creating more enemies, and how in Pakistan millions of people are being displaced but the government cannot allow U.S. aircraft or people distribute humanitarian aid……….because these millions who have fled the battle areas blame the U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/world/asia/03helmand.html?th&emc=th

In the chapter discussion about browser wars, the authors write: “On the periphery were countless other individuals who would contribute patches. No one was really in charge, but the best ideas were the ones that got used. It was just like the Nant’an: you follow someone – in this case, use their patch – because you respect their skills and you like the results you get, not because the boss told you to.”

The next example is about Wikipedia as an open system. Started out as a simple idea of a “Nupedia” for children with peer review. “Derived from the Hawaiian word for ‘quick’ wiki is a technology that allows Web site users to easily (and quickly) edit the content of the site themselves.” And again the idea; “put people into an open system and they’ll automatically want to contribute.”

An interesting aspect of this was the Taliban capture of New York Times reporter David Rohde who escaped on 19 June 2009. The NYTimes and Wikipedia cooperated to keep his capture off the Internet because they believed the Taliban would be checking him out online.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/technology/internet/29wiki.html?th&emc=th
Chapter 5 opens with an example of the Quaker circle of Friends functioning in a starfish manner to tackle slavery. Again there are examples of the Apaches of the Southwestern U.S. deciding that “once brought into a circle, members were accepted as Apache – whether by birth, adoption or capture. That’s the thing about circles: once you join, you’re an equal” and “…most of us, whether we realize it or not, are members of a decentralized circle of one kind or another.” There is also a caution: “When circles take on more than 14 or so members, the bond breaks down.”

(As an aside to all this, let me interject something I learned when lecturing about Blasket Island literature. A barter community needs at least 150 people to survive, if the population falls to less than 100, it is failing. If fewer than 60, the community is doomed. This magic number of 150 is the average African village, and also the average telephone listings of a family, the holiday card list, and the Internet contacts in your e-mail program. So some scholars argue that as individuals we are still the barter village of 150 just spread across continents.)
Brafman and Beckstrom say since circles do not have a hierarchy, they develop rules and norms to remain in the circle. “As a result of this self-enforcement, norms can be even more powerful than rules. Rules are someone else’s idea of what you should do. (like the Pentagon) If you break a rule, just don’t get caught and you’ll be okay. But with norms, it’s about what you as a member have signed up for, and what you’ve created…..Members assume the best of each other, and generally that’s what they get in return.”

There is a mention of a catalyst – something that speeds up the inevitable action or as they write about chemistry: “…any element or compound that initiates a reaction without fusing into that reaction.” But as a person, a catalyst “isn’t usually in it for praise and accolades. When his or her job is done, a catalyst knows it’s time to move on.” A good point when thinking about Osama bin Laden and the thousands of troops searching for him……He never said he wanted to move into the White House or Buckingham Palace or even Motel 6 in Sunderland. Bin Laden was a catalyst, using the al-Qaeda system of the Americans to develop an international community of like-minded people willing to make sacrifices and take action for moral reasons.

“Leaders in top-down organizations want to control what’s happening, thereby limiting creativity….and most important(ly), centralized organizations aren’t set up to launch decentralized movements.” In the Sharp/slavery/Quaker example, “decentralized organizations were a rarity and entrance into them was difficult, but today the Internet serves as an open platform on the back of which a wide variety of starfish organizations can be launched. The Internet is a breeding ground and launching pad for new starfish organizations. Skype, eMule and Craigslist are among the many decentralized organizations that have been launched atop the Internet.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton is mentioned. While attending an anti-slavery convention, she was forced to sit in a segregated and screened-off area for women.
A few years later, she had the courage to suggest that women be allowed to vote. “In the months and years that followed, every respected newspaper in the nation (U.S.A.) blasted Stanton. ‘All the journalists,’ she wrote, ‘from Maine to Texas, seemed to strive with each other to see which could make our movement the most ridiculous.’” That last line reminds me of the Massachusetts congressman who wrote to his constituents condemning the “cowardly” attack on 9/11.

The authors have Stanton as the catalyst and Susan B. Anthony as the champion. And government made her a champion. When she showed up in Rochester, N.Y. and demanded a ballot, she voted and was arrested for the act…..this placed Anthony on the media stage. She drew massive crowds – mostly of women – and was later tried and convicted of a crime and fined $100 – which she said she never paid.