#OWS (occupy Wall Street and the “Occupy” movement) have been widely discussed but not as yet in the context of a broader understanding of an evolving Digital/Information Society.
Castells and Wellman and his colleagues have argued that the Digital or Information Society (or in their term the “networked society”) results in social relationships characterized by what they call “networked individualism”
…It is the move from densely-knit and tightly-bounded groups to sparsely-knit and loosely-bounded networks.
Each person is a switchboard, between ties and networks. People remain connected, but as individuals, rather than being rooted in the home bases of work unit and household. Each person operates a separate personal community network, and switches rapidly among multiple sub-networks.
For them, the organic and multi-dimensional relationships of communities are being transformed into narrow digitally-enabled, highly individualized, networked relationships; perhaps most widely recognizable as Facebook “friend”-ings accompanied by Facebook “like”-ings as a possible substitute for shared community values and norms. Regrettably their analysis nowhere points out how these changes reduce the capacity for individuals to protect themselves from the on-going encroachments of an impersonal neo-liberal marketplace and particularly how it undermines the possibility of solidarity which in the past has proven to be the most effective basis for effective resistance.
According to Wellman and his colleagues there is a parallel transformation in the political sphere with
civic involvement … increasingly … taking the form of e-citizenship, networked rather than group-based, hidden indoors rather than visibly outdoors.
and
This move to networked societies has profound implications for how people mobilize and how people and governments relate to each other … But such e-citizenship also facilitates, and to some extent reinforces, mass society, with the individual in direct relationship with the state without the intermediary of local and even central groups. … the turn away from solidary, local, hierarchical groups and towards fragmented, partial, heavily-communicating social networks.
Certainly politics in the Information Society seems to have taken the shape prescribed for it by the marketplace—fragmented, concerned with short-term individualized interest maximization, personality-obsessed media saturation and so on. These changes in turn have been propelled by the forces of technology and the breakdown of established employment structures, education patterns, industry-based physical communities, even family and friendship ties under the avalanche of neo-liberal induced corporate and governmental restructuring, outsourcing, downsizing and so on.
Elsewhere I have critiqued this position as one that is profoundly pessimistic and depoliticizing and that it ignored the possibilities for community-based ICT-enabled resistance arising within the Information Society. I pointed out that while applications such as Facebook manifested these types of alienated and alienating individualized relationships (where individuals interacted with each other as fragmented and depersonalized “profiles” linked through these social media); I also suggested that such social frameworks could and would be countered through community informatics – digitally enabled communities networked both internally (as community networks) and externally (as networked communities).
It is not I think an accident that the Occupy Movement overall is characterized by processes of community formation enabled by Information and Communications Technologies both locally – site by site – and as a movement wide, mega-community rhyzomatically linking the individual sites electronically and through shared values. Tis emergent resistance is a result of the fusion of the local and global – interacting and being enabled both by face-to-face connections and electronic media – Facebook and Twitter certainly, but perhaps most significantly through technologies of presence in distance such as skype, online chat and streaming video.
What can be seen in individual sites are communities being formed – the articulation of common core values; the emergence of behavioral norms governing conduct within the community and between the community and its external environment; and the creation of systems for knowledge gathering, opinion sharing, decision-making and boundary setting; among others.
These emergent communities are internally networked – linking individuals via mobile phone, iPads, netbooks etc. to each other and into broader personal networks which aren’t permanent parts of the sites but which weave in and out following the vagaries of personal schedules and inclinations. As well, the individual sites are directly and more or less continuously digitally networked into other sites and sympathizers both locally and globally allowing for both physical absence and virtual presence.
For the Occupy-ers there is a very strong emphasis on both place and continuity. Rather than (as for previous such movements) focusing on individual events such as demonstrations is on the continuing occupation of a focal point of territory – a site. Individuals can thus find and integrate themselves into the evolving Occupy community allowing for very many individuals to come and go, achieving through slectronic means some degree of identification with the movement while still living their daily lives.
This focusing on the physical presence of a site is a significant step beyond the virtuality and externally imposed structuring of the set of digital connections of social media(ted) networks e.g. Facebook and allows for a face to face connection to support and deepen involvement with the overall movement. Thus the virtual connections (the “networked individualism” of a Facebook or an email connection) is superseded or even transformed into a more organic and deeper connection of shared values and norms through physical interaction at the site. This transformed connection can then be more easily maintained and where necessary mobilized through the much shallower and more fragile but continuous and distance-spanning technical capacities of electronic networks and social media.
A couple of other elements might be noted. Rather than focusing on specific events or demonstrations which are transient and ephemeral, the occupation of a specific site requires the creation of a variety of structures of internal management and governance all of which are the on-going elements of a community – food provision, waste management, security, education, governance and decision making, external relations/diplomacy, even in Vancouver – a lending library. All these are as necessary for a continuous occupation as they are for any other community. Notably one of the constant themes of the discussions and the placards is this process of community creation/recreation – often as in opposition to the imposed alienation of the contractual relations of work or formal education which participants experience as characterizing life in the modern era – a deft fusion of means and ends.
Another effect is the internal emphasis on continuity and even permanency. Thus the communities have the time, even the leisure to work through their internal processes in a relatively unhurried manner without the pressure of fast approaching crucial events. This allows the sites to take their time to be more democratic, inclusive and tolerant – allowing for broader group collaborative norms to hold sway while reducing the pressure for rapid (and thus almost inevitably) top-down decision making. This overall has the effect of preventing the emergence of a leadership cadre whose function is to move events along at a pace determined not by internal processes but rather by external exigencies.
Facebook or Twitter in this context become tools for organizing and making connections rather than being fundamental infrastructures of linkage and networks/networking as many have suggested (incorrectly I believe) underlay the events in Tunisia and Egypt. But importantly the social media create initial linkages towards community relationships. Once face to face connections have been established the social media remain useful for maintaining connections/networks beyond physical presence allowing vast numbers to remain “attached” even though the presence is mostly virtual but who nevertheless are available to participate as might be necessary or possible as events unfold.
These developments are perhaps the next step “up from Facebook”—integrating and using the social media tools that Facebook and the like provide but as elements in the re-construction of normative communities within urban environments and most importantly perhaps as a foundation for broader social action and transformation. The characteristic of place-based communities as resilient and persistent locales for education and nurturing become dynamic opportunities for the recreation of personalities not as fragmented profiles but as whole beings linked both organically and technologically with their fellows as well as into the larger world and most importantly being able to work outwards from the strength that such communities provide in a process of remaking and refiguring the world in their image.
Precisely what this emergent future might look like is not clear. But that this process has unquestionably begun, that it is globally dispersed but rhyzomatically linked, and that there is the rise of community as a step beyond networked individualism and as the basis for resistance and ultimately transformation in the corporate structures and exploitative processes of a neo-liberal dominated society now appears possible. And overall there is the need to recognize that the Information Society is not condemned to be a place of alienation, fragmentation, distancing and powerlessness but rather a more democratic and economically and socially egalitarian society can be constructed on a foundation of digitally enabled and empowered communities.
Brian Campbell
October 22, 2011
Thanks for this Michael. My thoughts are very similar although you have spent much more time working in this area academically. I think all activists should reflect on the emphasis on community-building. At this point, community is what is viewed as missing even more so that the particular oppositions to Wall St. and the economy.
Michael Gurstein
October 22, 2011
Tks Brian, ;yes, a lot of what we are seeing in the Occupy movement has to do with creating inclusive communities–notably including diverse strands of activists–environmental, employment, education and so on.
adrienneredd
October 23, 2011
Michael, I acknowledge your optimisim that this might be the case, but I am skeptical, based on my own experience of being an environmental activist in the late 1980s and early 1990s versus my work on the Obama campaign, attempt this year to become involved in the anti-fracking efforts in Pennsylvania, and early work on what will be the 2012 election campaign. My question is: how could this hypotheses be narrowed and a research design developed to test your ideas? I’d like to see any annotated bibliography on older paradigms of involvement versus digital-telecopresent involvement. ~ A.R.
Michael Gurstein
October 23, 2011
Hi Adrienne, thanks for your comments and suggestions. I think the idea of narrowing the overall framework into some testable hypotheses is an intriguing one and also the annotated bibliography looking at digital-telecopresence. Some but by no means all of this has been addressed in various ways within Community Informatics research but perhaps you be interested in initiating/joining a discussion on this on the Community Informatics Researchers e-list http://vancouvercommunity.net/lists/info/ciresearchers.
John Hawker
October 24, 2011
I joined one of the “Occupy groups” and very early saw this note to the organizers. I think it’s a warning to all “Digital Communities” that they risk alienating the communities they claim to represent. They can’t just be digital. At some time digital meets the real world.
I can’t help but agree with the author of the note below to the OWS organizers below, as it’s something I personally agree with myself.
Time and again I point out that PC/Internet use is the domain of a definable generational use. It’s heavy on age, income, occupation, education.
That puts OWS if it relies totally on a digital communications platform at risk of alienating many of the communities that have been hit hardest by Wall Street excess.
It’s where OWS needs to outreach to Unions and traditional marketing and communication platforms.
<<The reliance on email and the internet is, in and of itself,
exclusive. In my neighborhood, which is very racially and culturally
mixed, we can't use email or online resources to even coordinate a
neighborhood meeting, because at least half of our neighbors – perhaps
even 75% – do not use the internet on a regular basis. In fact, any
effort done by email guarantees that the associated meeting will be
all white when our neighborhood is only about 60% white. There is also
an income disparity between those who do and don't use the internet.
We need to be really aware of this. Those who don't use the internet
much are going to be much slower to become aware of the Occupy
movement and to gain understanding of it, which was the thrust behind
my "don't rush" input. Those of us who use the internet a lot, have a
different framework about time than those who don't. I'm still talking
to neighbors who have no idea what Occupy XXXXXXX is. To get through to
a critical mass of that population – one which has been most
oppressed, historically, and therefore deserves extra effort to make
sure they are represented – we have to think in pre-internet time
frames about building a movement. Moving at our speed will definitely
mean excluding their views. Hence, the nationwide conversation about
resisting the need to define the movement as anything other than
building solidarity within the 99%, for now.
As for how to get a broader swath of participation, I would suggest
working with outreach, direct action and the people of color groups
and asking them what could be done to make sure a plurality voices are
included. I imagine it needs some footwork. Willingness to go into
those communities via organizations who are doing work there. I know
that the community center around the corner from me has some computers
and teaches basics of how to use one. This would be a place to
coordinate an effort to get people in and get them on the computers
there or let them give input in writing. Some of the work of
connecting to these neighborhoods is underway by those groups, but it
would take someone who is focused on this project to ensure that there
is an effort to get people in those neighborhoods to participate in
it.
I am currently starting to talk to the working groups I mentioned and
to form a group who will work with them for the sake of developing
more solidarity statements, such as the one we ratified for the
Indigenous Peoples. It was powerful to have them respond in kind. It
will be a process. We need to go hear from people. Get a sense of what
they need to hear from us in order to believe that we would take their
views and concerns seriously and would make room for them to shape our
work. This can't happen in a week.
I wonder, if you're gathering things electronically, how will you know
whether the ideas collected are from an almost all-white point of view
or not? Are you collecting demographic information? And, if the
General Assembly votes on any resulting writing, but is 90% white
itself, how will we know if the writing sounds to people of color (I
use race as only one example of diversity) like something which speaks
to them?
I will let you know that I'm going to opt out of this google group.
I've given my input and have received hostile responses for doing so
and was then chastised for pointing out what it feels like to have
your words twisted beyond recognition. My views on the definition of
inclusivity, and the need to wait until we have it, are on record. You
all will do with it what you will.
I wish you the best of luck with your project.
Michael Gurstein
October 24, 2011
Very interesting letter and set of comments, which I certainly have a lot of sympathy with… I’ld be interested to know who and why the author was being criticized. Mike
John Hawker
October 25, 2011
Author was just an average citizen – not an internet person on fame etc.
They wanted to be part of the OWS – but obviously felt it was too internet centric.
John Verdon
October 26, 2011
Michael,
thanks very much for this post. I agree with your view on this. I’m a big fan of both Wellman and Castels and have used there research in my own writings. I think I have to re-integrate them into my current thinking on this.
Here’s some thoughts that are still draft but that I’m working on in relation to a concept of ‘knowledge governance’ to displace the dysfunctional concept of knowledge management.
I was greatly influenced by Manuel DeLanda a Deleuzian complexity philosopher (highly recommend his works) a great video is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50-d_J0hKz0
I’ve come to see that the ‘digital environment’ is an ‘intensive’ domain.
Intensive properties are the measurable domains such as temperature, pressure, density or connectivity. Intensive dimensions are important in that they are subject to a certain type of change referred to as phase transitions. A phase transition is a very dramatic type of change within a very narrow band of measurement. For example, if we track the change of temperature in a body of water starting with 99 degrees Celsius to 1 degree Celsius a significant range of temperature that presents very little change in the water itself. After such an extended observation of water at temperature we might feel very confident that the relationship was a linear one likely to continue unchanged. However, in the next two degrees – from 1 degree to -1 degree we see something remarkable – water becomes solid. Two completely different ‘substances’ are evident on each side of 0 degrees. This type of change is very difficult to anticipate unless we have already experienced it. It also represents a profound change in the conditions of change.
Another way to view a phase transition is through a bifurcation graph (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_diagram ). What we see on the horizontal axes is that the time/space from 0 to the first bifurcation is quite long (0 to 3), however from 3 to 4 the bifurcation become ‘uncountable’. My sound bite – ‘The distance from 0 to many is longer than from many to the uncountable.’
Phase transitions have very significant consequences in the social context in which they occur and they tend to be difficult to anticipate. For example, as human populations reach certain levels of density we see phase transitions in the possibilities for divisions of labour, and a corresponding transition if the variety and possibilities of exchange. Other types of ‘density’ can impact a social context with a relatively stable population density. The emergence of new types of communication ‘densities’ and new capabilities of connectedness such as the lowering of transaction (including search, coordination and communication) cost thresholds can also produce types of phase transitions. Transitions in the social conditions that enable new possibilities, and varieties of exchange.
The emerging ubiquitous digital environment sets in motion a phase transition – a change in the conditions of change (collapse of traditional costs underlying the efficiency of the ‘firm’ and hyper-connectivity). A fundamental impact of the digital environment is the onset of phase transition regarding the possibilities of the design of how work is accomplished. Ever since Adam Smith’s elaboration of the ‘pin factory’ we have known that economic prosperity and productivity gains are founded on the division of work into ever smaller units. Correspondingly the increase in population density of urban life has enabled the sustainment of ever more specialized work and workers.
The digital environment is enabling a progression into an era of almost costless hyper-connectivity enabling a hyper-division-of-labour with a requisite hyper-exchange producing a hyper-knowledge-metabolism.
The paradox of hyper-division-of-labor/hyper-specialization is actually hyper-interdependence. The more specialized we become, the more unique and the more dependent we become on exchange. As Kevin Kelly notes in “What Technology Wants” – individuals are likely to become happier when they can narrow their choices (specialization by following their ‘passion’) – but society as whole becomes happier by ever widening the range of choice (more people can individuate and narrow their choice to their own passion). The more dependent we become (networked individualism) on exchange the more moral we are forced to be – although in the process of individuating we may become less observant of our interdependence on exchange.
We are familiar with a long used terms of the information age/economy, the knowledge age/economy, the network society and more recently the digital economy. These all contain significant insights, but to understand a key impact of the digital environment Malone, Laubacher and Johns (2011) name this the era of hyperspecialization[1] (see also Chris Anderson’s ideas around Nicheing). Many sorts of knowledge work can be made more productive through the atomizing into complex networks of people able to provide in highly specialized competencies. For example, the job title of software developer obscures the fact that software projects involve the assemblage of many different specialists including design, coding and testing. Specialization improves quality, speed and cost as well as improving agility to deal with surges in scale and scope.
In fact, whole new types of time critical work becomes possible. Perhaps the biggest increase in productivity is a better use of people’s time enabling them to optimize the motivation when they can spend their time on the higher value work that only they as individuals can do – when we can turn to experts rather than reinventing the wheel. A caution to be aware of is that hyperspecialization may be vulnerable to the creation of digital sweatshops – exploiting workers for low wages and dull, meaningless work.
As a recent Gartner research publication has noted, currently 25% of work in organizations is non-routine and they predict that this will increase to 40% by 2015. As information technologies become better at automating routine knowledge and embedded in work processes the emphasis shifts to the real value that people add – analytical, interactive and social capacity to discover, innovate, team, persuade and learn. The implication is a much greater reliance on ‘one-of’ assemblages of talent and experience to deal with unique arising problems. Non-routine work will by definition tend to be more informal and therefore they will be unlikely to follow meaningful patterns. Process models will likely emerge as work progresses tending to be simple on-the-fly-sketch-ups’. Other trends include: Hyper-connection; Work Swarms and crowdsourcing approaches; and Person-centric work.
While the management challenge will involve in reshaping the organization and redesigning work processes based on how best to develop discrete work units related to corresponding types of expertise or knowledge as well as how to integrate work into a final product.
[1] Malone, Laubacher & Johns. The Big Idea: The Age of Hyperspecialization Harvard Business Review. July-August 2011. http://hbr.org/2011/07/the-big-idea-the-age-of-hyperspecialization/ar/1?cm_sp=most_widget-_-hbr_articles-_-The+Big+Idea:+The+Age+of+Hyperspecialization
Michael Gurstein
October 26, 2011
Thanks John for your very interesting comments…
I agree overall with what you are saying as a snapshot of how things are progressing/will progress assuming that current trends continue. (BTW you might be interested in https://gurstein.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/let%E2%80%99s-talk-about-a-digital-transition-rather-than-a-digital-divide/ where I make essentially the same point about a “digital transition” but in this case applied to Less Developed Countries :))
The point in the “Up from Facebook” post though, was precisely that I see the “Occupy” movement as attempting to resist the kind of hyper-specialization that you are pointing to… The “Occupy” folks are arguing that the neo-liberal economy underlies those processes which can be seen in such areas as food GMO’s, profit maximization processes in banking/finance, dehumanization of the workplace etc.etc.
The fragmentation of associations, employments, experienced education and so on (I use Facebook as a symbolic short-hand for this) is again precisely what I see as being physically resisted through the anchoring in physical territory and the reformulation of community in these “occupations”.
M
john verdon
October 26, 2011
Thanks for your reply. It is interesting that the focus of your reply seems solely focused on the limitations of specialization and seems to forget the other parts of tha paradox – exchange and inter-dependence.
I agree that there is a need for a generalist type of knowledge – both are not necessarily mutually exclusive I am both a specialist and generalist. In fact the way I see it, is that the more dependent I become on exchange – the more likely I am to encounter all sorts of new types of knowledge and people and the broader and deeper my general knowledge.
The problem with population constituted primarily with generalists is that there is no longer an embodied structure of inter-dependence – if everybody can produce everything they individually need – we loose the incentive to cooperate – it could have an unintended consequence of heightening competiton and/or isolation instead – actually producing more fragmentation not less.
Another way of framing hyper-specialization is hyper-diversity. The greater the diversity of an ecosystem or gene pool the more robust is the capacity to adapt – it is the same with hyper-specialization – as a deeper more effective search of a possibility space.
Framing the situation as fragmentation – is already to see the situation as the breaking apart. For me this is a less accurate frame than hyper-specialization-exchange-interdependence.
In relation to bottom up and the local-global issue is that these are consistent with my view. The ‘density’ of communication-transparency of the digital environment is what makes a more powerful ‘consciousness-awareness’ of interdpendence. I think the problem is our social constructs-structures are still be determined through an industrial frame – the isolated atomistic individual in a mechanistic clockwork universe. While laissez-faire free market neo-liberalism never got Adam Smith right and were in fact what Manuel DeLanda calls ‘anti-markets’ the resistances of the feudal frameworks to the underlying philosophical principles of ‘responsible autonomy’ of both democracy & market system (note I did not say Capitalism – because that is not really what Smith was proposing).
In a feudal society their were much fewer ‘was of being’ much fewer possibilities to answer “what do I want to be when I grow up”. Specialization, divisions-of-labor, new knowledge domains are all of the same fabric – expanding the territory of experience and knowledge and even of what a generalist can know.
The point of complexity is to act locally and here in the #occupy specialization arises as many hands make light work and people take on tasks – the homogenous group diversifies into special ‘organs’ – to gather, prepare food, to raise money, to prepare communication material, to arrange for medical, sleep, rest, etc needs. and on and on.
It seems to me that the main message of ‘we are the 99%’ is that the 99% want things to be more fair, more just, more equitable, more freedom-from-domination (as opposed to from interference). This is not about the ‘fragmentation’ of the what is – but about the unfairness of the way things have been divided (re-distributed upward), not that they should not be divided fairly.
The local efforts of all of these #occupy has been strengthened and sustained by the ‘awareness’ that the movement is more than local – that the local communities that are arising are also expression of a global community – we are the 99%.
That’s why I like the frame of specialization-exchange-interdependence – one can’t be without entailing the other two.
Thank you again Michael for the conversation.
john