I’ve believed for a long time that the Internet is going to transform the structure of society, like the television, telephone, and printing press did before it. Like its predecessors, it offers new ways to acquire and present information and entertainment, new ways of communicating ideas and spreading culture. But the Internet has a unique trait that its predecessors did not: it’s inherently peer-to-peer.
What do I mean by that? Simple: the Internet is a dumb network linking together many smart peer terminals. Compare this with the telephone and television networks. The telephone network has peer terminals, but they’re dumb peer terminals. Each phone can only send and receive voice information. It can’t perform the same kinds of complex calculations your computer can, and all the “smarts” are in the network. The television network’s even worse – it’s not even a network of peer terminals. There’s receiver terminals (namely, your TV) and transmitter terminals (the TV stations). No matter how much you need to, your TV can’t serve as a broadcaster.
The Internet’s different. Theoretically, at least, everyone on the network is equal. The only real thing that separates the laptop I’m writing this on (or the computer you’re reading it on) from Booman’s server is what software it’s running and how reliable its connection is. If I wanted to, I could host something like Booman Tribune on my laptop. It wouldn’t be a very smart move, since it’d go offline whenever I closed the lid or walked out of WiFi range, but I could do it.
Despite attempts by various large corporate entities (notably, telecoms) to curtail it, this mentality’s spread to basically every corner of the Internet. The technologies that succeed are the ones that embrace the “end to end” or “peer to peer” principle. Sooner or later, those that don’t run up against a competitor that does, and they die. The peer-to-peer model’s even affecting software development. Instead of a few large companies writing all of our software, increasingly large amounts are being made by communities of developers working together and freely exchanging ideas. And making money off it. (Though it’s interesting to note that the Free Software movement precedes anything resembling the modern Internet by a good two years. Richard Stallman is a true visionary, and possibly the greatest genius of the 20th century.)
More recently, we’ve seen a drastic rise in user-created content sharing tools and social networking. Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace… All embody the end-to-end principle.
Ranjit Mathoda starts talking about how all this applies to politics, specifically Barack Obama’s campaign. It’s an amazing, inspiring read. From the look of things, Obama’s campaign has embraced the end-to-end principle in a way that even Howard Dean’s 2004 primary campaign didn’t. Why’s his ground game so good? It’s not because he’s got talented organizers working for him. It’s because his web site gives his supporters the tools they need to be self-organizing. It connects his supporters to each other without central organization or supervision from the campaign.
The one thing that stands out as disagreeable are Mathoda’s claims about message dissemination. That’s Oldtype thinking. The Obama campaign doesn’t need to exploit some emotional connection to a social networking site to pass on talking points, because it’s transcended talking points. Just as Kennedy transcended the techniques used to dominate the message in newspapers and on news radio, Obama’s transcended the techniques perfected by Karl Rove for dominating the message on television and talk radio. He is, as Mathoda correctly points out later, a “nonhierarchical collaborative leader inspiring autonomous individuals to cooperate for the sake of common concerns”. Why bother with talking points and centrally-organized rallies when he can seize on a matter of common passion between himself and his supporters – poverty, war, social justice, whatever – and give them the tools to promote it and take action on it themselves?
Reading further, I don’t know why he even bothered to include that bogus statement on talking points, since he correctly identifies the strength of this distributed intelligence a few paragraphs later when he begins talking about Obama’s plans for citizen involvement in the process of government. That section, in particular, is incredibly inspiring, and I strongly encourage everyone to read it as many times as it takes to sink in.
But what really impresses me? The impetus for all this distributed thinking seems to be Obama himself. This wasn’t cooked up by some committee of high-paid consultants in a back room, or concocted based on documented known good practices. This was created because Obama looked at the Internet and saw the same things as Richard Stallman. This is why the claims about Obama not having a plan are bogus. He’s not going into office with a meticulously detailed four-year plan for fixing all of America’s ills. He’s much more audacious and ambitious than that. He’s going into office with a plan to restructure America and make it fix itself, to make government smarter, more adaptable, and more responsive. He’s going in knowing he knows nothing, and prepared to harness the power of an entire country to learn, and evaluate, and decide as best he can.
This is why Obama is the only candidate who can fix the problems America faces today. This is why he’s come from a laughable long-shot to the inarguable victor. And I think those that write him off as business as usual, or condemn him as a “corporate” candidate, are going to be pleasantly surprised. Obama’s not winning because the system supports him. He’s winning because he’s beating the system at its own game.
The Newtypes are taking over. If we don’t win this cycle, we’re going to win the next one, or the one after that. We’re improving faster than our competition. Just look at the quantum leap from Dean to Obama. Things are about to get very interesting…
