The Israeli apartheid regime is falling

The Israeli-Palestinian problem has reached a point of no return. It is over for Israel, its apartheid regime is falling. What happened?

It is not governments who solved the Palestinian problem. A very complex global coalition of activist networks and NGO's, helped by some governmental institutions, academic institutions, independent private institutions, have debarked on the shores of Gaza. The Palestinian D-day was made possible by a powerful wave rising from the grass roots of society. Look at the tools used in this unprecedented campaign, in this pacifist war against a brutal, racist regime. The digital technology has its marks everywhere. The Internet was used to organize these networks, to gather resources, to coordinate actions, and to win the public opinion through a very well orchestrated and very creative (alternative) media campaign.  After a few failed trials in the Republic of Moldova and in Iran, the multitude movement has its first governmental victim. Who's next?

The Multitude Project was, and remains a member of the Free Palestine network.


By AllOfUs

Information flow and power

Ultimately, power in society boils down to the ability to influence people. We must not understand power only in its pejorative sense. Hitler had power and so did Mother Teresa. The most fundamental process involved in the creation and the projection of power is communication. One must exchange information with the individual(s) he wants to influence.

At the smallest scale, an individual can project physical power over another individual without having to communicate much, but here we are not concerned with individual-level physical power. At the societal level, the projection of military power, which is also a form of physical power, involves a lot of communication. The very fact that there is military power to be projected supposes some level of coordination and cooperation within that particular society, not only for the military act but also for military support systems. An army requires a sophisticated economy, central governance system and so on.  

What if the means of communication change suddenly in a society? How would this affect power structures?

In the pre-Internet society, the most effective means of communication was one-to-many, like the radio, the television, the book, the newspaper, etc. It is a direct type of communication, in the sense that the message can reach the target, in one step. But these broadcast-type, one-way, one-to-many communication channels are usually very costly to create and to maintain. In order to sustain them, they require central governance, and over time they eventually become corrupted (not serving the interest of the masses) and get monopolized. These means of communication are, by nature, non-democratic, because they are not within the reach of every individual and have a strong tendency to get subverted and used against the masses. In fact, there is an abundance of examples where mass media was used by the social elites to increase their domination and to further their own agendas. That in itself is an indicator of how important information and communication is in building and projecting power.

The new digital technology introduced new channels of communication, in parallel with the classical direct one-to-many. The particularity of these new channels (now called social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. ) is that they are NOT direct. They propagate through the population from one individual to another. The process is very similar to word of mouth, but it is greatly enhanced by the new technology (larger scale, involving much more individuals, transcending geographical barriers, transcending language barriers, more dynamic). The fact that these new communication channels are NOT direct, are almost free, popular, and democratic changes everything. This means that the multitude has a lot more control over the narrative. Information doesn't follow along predefined paths as in a hierarchical social structure. It bounces around within decentralized online networks that individuals freely form. The dominant narrative emerges from this chaotic process, rather than being carefully crafted at the top of the pyramid and distributed down in a controlled and direct manner. In this new context the hierarchical power structure collapses because the information pathways it normally uses are no longer effective.

The elites have lost their monopoly on direct mass communication, people get their information from alternative sources, therefore the elites' ability to influence directly is greatly reduced. Moreover, they have also lost the ability to shapes preferences via values, norms, ideologies.   


By AllOfUs

Corporate brands and the multitude social movement

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What is happening to brands under the multitude storm?

Why do corporations create brands in the first place? A brand is a complex, it is a construction meant to trigger feelings, emotions about some product or service, to trigger desire. It usually has a name, there is an image associated with it, a slogan, a story, values, some cultural elements, etc. During marketing campaigns all these elements are associated with the name and the image - a logo, so next time you see it, or hear the name, you "salivate". To put it simply, a brand is Pavlov's bell, and we are the dogs...

And how can you make a brand effective in increasing sales? There are branding specialists, not everyone can create a successful brand. A brand must stick. It must mark you in a significant way, it must be intrusive and create persistent associations. Normally corporations use sensitive cords, they follow general popular trends. A brand acts on an individual, but it is created as a tool for mass manipulation, as a social construct. The brand builder must understand the population it addresses. Sometimes they use sex, environmental issues, fear, good feelings, the desire to be powerful, ..., whatever ticks in that society at that time. So if you want your brand to work for your business you need a message that sticks and spreads, you need a powerful meme.

With the advent of the social media (Fecebook, Youtube, LinkedInetc.), corporations think that they can now use these new communication channels to increase the spread of their brand. So they changed their strategy in building brands. They make them viral. They realize that the population is now strongly interconnected, and that everyone is able to broadcast his own ideas. Therefore, if your message if effective enough, some people will spread it on behalf of the company, without even getting payed for it. Make the message funny enough, for example, put it on Youtube, and it will spread.

But there is a problem with that. Corporations don't control what people are sharing. Sometimes, somebody out there, in some circumstances, can take a logo and modify it. The new message can become even more powerful than the original one, more sticky, more pervasive, more viral. The marketing campaign of the corporation backlashes. It's message was hijacked. Every time people will see the logo of the company other feelings/ideas will surface, not the ones originally intended by the corporation.

What is the lesson of all this? You cannot say one thing and do another anymore. If you don't stand by your principles, which must be good principles, you are screwed. This brings back some ethics into the corporate world, for the time they're going to be around....    

Here's what I think about brands. It is becoming and old concept. In the Twitter era the reputation of a product emerges instantaneously from users of the product, which are connected and expressive. People share their experiences, and they are very effective in doing that by using popular buzz channels like G+, Facebook, Twitter, etc. The reputation of a product emerges in an instant and it is based on value, whatever that value is, functionality, a social cause, design, etc. Corporations have less power to manufacture an image for themselves. The image is given to them by the multitude, according to what they have to offer. This is the new reality, where the narratives are now controlled by the multitude.

See also the campaign led by Green Peace "Behind the logo"

By AllOfUs

Multitude movement against institutionalized elitism

In Russia, if you are working for some governmental agency you might get driving privileges. The traffic police can give you a permit to install a blue light on you car, which can also be a private car, and use it in case of emergency. The problem is that many other people (the ones with money and connections) can get this permit by bribing the police. In fact, there is so much abuse that it causes the traffic in large cities to be quite chaotic sometimes and, most importantly, IT KILLS. The population is fed up. With the help of modern tools for communication and coordination a massive popular movement (across the entire Russian empire) is rising against these elitist privileges, the blue bucket movement. Thousands of videos swarm the Internet showing people taping blue buckets on the top of their cars, to mimic the blue lights used by the elite. The police stops these cars to annoy the drivers but the law is not on their side, this aesthetic modification is totally legal. See more on the videos below.

The important lesson of this multitude action is that the awaken and empowered population doesn't take the abuse quietly anymore. The multitude is very creative in finding effective ways to communicate their discontent and to force the regime to change its practices. Every positive outcome of this type of action constitutes a reinforcing feedback, to further energize the multitude. We are witnessing the emergence of a new culture, the multitude movement is establishing itself as a dominant social force.

By AllOfUs

Empowerment

We are rediscovering the human potential. This is part of the multitude social movement. As we master the new tools provided by the new technology, empowering tools of communication, collaboration and coordination, we are realizing our potential. At this point in time we are witnessing a massive awakening. Gradually, individuals get together and build new alternative institutions, based on pure value, as opposed to status. New decentralized organizations will leave far behind hierarchical institutions constructed on individualism, elitism, competition, etc.
in reference to: The art of motivating employees - Holy Kaw! (view on Google Sidewiki)

How to invest in the future economy

This article is my answer to a post by Ian Bentley (May 20, 2010) on SICU, After we strip away all the crap ... where does the SAVVY investor put his money?
 
I say invest in natural resources and in humans. The first category doesn't just include established resources like oil, water, metals, etc... but also new ones under development like solar energy, high-tech materials, and others. The second category is not so easy to define. Let's start by saying to invest in innovative and hard working people who understand the new emerging society.


In my opinion, the entrepreneur of tomorrow is a community builder, a democratic leader, a good mediator, a giver, who understands how to cement strong synergistic relations, to create inter-dependencies, who knows how to empower, not only to motivate, and above all, one who believes in humans. Only such person can unleash the full creative and productive capacity of large masses, now strongly interconnected. Only such person can align the interests of thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of independent and empowered individuals.

I think it's just about creating the proper environment that increases creativity and productivity. In every epoch we did it with the means of that time. Economical entities are subject to evolutionary lows. They compete with each other, they rely on scarce resources, they "die", they "mutate", etc. I can conjecture that at every epoch we had an equilibrium, a stable ecosystem. The most creative and productive entities at that particular time were at the top, driving the society. Moreover, I believe that economical forces are stronger than human forces. It's the economy that shapes the human mind, not vice versa. The means of production of the epoch lock humans into a specific web of relations, institutions, which in turn shape the human spirit. We adapt to survive in the context, which is itself defined by things we don't control like the climate, resources, tools, relations we MUST forge to accomplish vital tasks, etc.

At some point in history, one could extract potential from a group of people with a whip and a spiteful God. These people had to be kept ignorant, their self esteem had to be destroyed. This was possible in a world where information didn't flow, where the levels of communication, collaboration and coordination between slaves were ineffective. The printing press made democracy spread. The whip was replaced with a carrot, and God with desires. The control did not disappear, it only got more sophisticated. The machine was also introduced. It offered tremendous production potential. Our relation to it completely changed the way we treat each other. People got more educated, but not to become independent, complete human beings. They got specialized, compartmentalized, functionalized for the new economy. They are still unable to understand the system they leave in, unable to communicate, to collaborate. They are still dependent. The corporation was the answer to this era, the most efficient economical entity. The system which could extract the most from a group of individuals, in concert with an intricate system of financial, political, and cultural institutions, ultimately shaped to its image. But it went too far, it destroyed families, it overworked almost everybody, it lobotomized 90% of the population... It spread almost to destroy its host societies.

The new digital technology brings the next big change. It creates a new climate. Never in human history a technology spread so fast, touched so many people, in such a short time. It is a popular technology, putting powerful tools in everybody's hands. It is a democratic technology, it doesn't discriminate on wealth, race, sex, culture... It enhances communication, collaboration and coordination. It empowers... This is why it is so potent. The massive change it is causing is just starting to become visible. What will be the wining economical entity emerging in this new context? Obviously the one capable to better extract creativity and productivity. This is the one we should invest in!

But this time the population will be informed, empowered, aware. How can you deny it? If the printing press raised the level of education and self awareness to this level, imagine what will the Internet do... Moreover, this technology, by the nature of the tools it offers, it naturally rewards the social beings, the ones who are open to share, to collaborate. Individualistic behavior is not punished, but it becomes less effective. Organic network-type organizations will thrive. Collaboration, openness, and sharing will replace protectionism, secrecy, and individualism. Not because messiah is coming back. Not because all of a sudden humans become spiritually enlightened. Only because a new economical context is emerging, in which these new values convey a better chance to survive. Yes, the world is going to get better, thanks to our technology, thanks to the human spirit who is always striving to surpass itself.

In very era, wicked individuals have tried to increase the cooperation of people within the organizations they've controlled, taking into account the human spirit at that time. After the communist revolutionary hype wore off, the masters of communist societies lost the cooperation of their subjects. These systems have collapsed. How are you going to gain the cooperation of the newly emerging human spirit? It all comes down to individual cooperation...

But there is also another thing. In times of transition from one social order to another entrepreneurs must be able to find new ways to get to resources. These periods are normally accompanied of financial and economical downturns, not necessarily because the needs of the people are reduced, but because the established financial and economical systems on which these societies rely are clogged. As new means production and exchange emerge, they interact with the old ones and introduce some degree of disorder in the entire system. Moreover, those who are in control of the classical means fight to maintain their control, which restricts access to resources to the new comers. The new comer must be skilled in finding alternative ways to access to resources, new ways  for funding, new ways to attract human capital, new ways to get to natural resources, new ways to market and distribute products. The new entrepreneurs in times of transition need to be skilled in the art of bypassing old established monopolies.    

I will invest in these people and organizations who are well positioned to thrive in the future I just described.

By AllOfUs

Social media, a deadly place for corporations

The starting point of this reflection is the fact that corporations are going full speed and head first into the new social media hype. They are using these new tools to engage the masses in the process of design, evaluation, and marketing. The goal is to understand the dangers corporations are facing in engaging the masses through social media. I am getting my "data" from different social media outlets (forums, mailing lists...) where executives exchange ideas on how to best use the new technology to gain market share and to increase profits.


The "2020 Social Workshop on Social Media for Non-Pofits" article bellow explains why the adoption of the new media will gradually kill the corporation. In this article I explore another class of adverse effects.



Two important observations

• companies don't control this new media (the social media)
• the message is spreading through multipliers or evangelists which are not part of the organization
  

The social media space can become a bloody battleground for corporations
No one controls social media. Anyone can spread his own ideas at very small costs. Anyone can pollute your message, anyone can directly attack you. Moreover, social media is not regulated like the classical media. You cannot sue Facebook because a group of people wrote negative comments about your company, and freedom of speech is applied differently on social media than on classical media. It is very possible to see social media becoming a battleground for corporations (individualistic and highly competitive entities, not very keen on sharing, openness, and collaboration), leading to a carnage. Because they can, because it is possible, and because it costs almost nothing, some corporations might choose to attack their competitors using social media. They can decide to take a hidden approach by inciting other entities to carry out the actions, for example to pollute their competitor's marketing campaign, to incite other groups to boycott their competitor's products by providing them with negative information about it, etc. Or they can take a more direct approach, putting themselves in front of their actions. Dirty fights are seen in classical media, I think social media is the perfect breeding ground for this sort of actions.

This is actually good news for those of us who don't believe in hierarchies (hierarchically structured private endeavors). Open and collaborative systems are now competing with classical hierarchies, in this new environment shaped by the new technology. The new technology rewards collaborative networks to the detriment of individualistic and overly competitive hierarchical organizations, because it naturally enhances sharing and cooperation. On top of that, it seams that this new environment might encourage hierarchies, that is corporations, to express their individualistic and overly competitive nature by killing each other on the open "piazza".

The same social media can be used by the public against a corporation
How can a corporation with a bad reputation survive against a swarm of activists behind its tail? As corporations learn how to use social media to increase their profits, activists also learn how to use the same technology to attack corporations. The question is, given the nature of this new technology, who can extract more potential from it? Who will benefit the most?

After thousands of years of social evolution good ethics still rules the world. Even though, in most cases, bad people are running our societies, good ethics is what keeps societies together, and these corrupt leaders go through a lot of trouble to convince their subjects that they stand on the right side. The Internet technology transforms the entire planet into a small village, in the sense that anyone has access to who you are and to your past. This is especially true for public entities like a corporation. It is hard to hide if you are a really bad guy. Until recently, in a large city, one could screw someone here and hide in anonymity two blocks away. That is because one could get away with it, because people didn't have easy access to who the identity of the individual. Thus, if the gains are larger than the risk involved the individual can repeat his immoral actions, and even get imitated by others. In a small village setting, everyone knows everyone else. If someone screws someone else once his ability to screw anyone else again drops dramatically. One's ability to extract advantages from his community diminishes after a bad move, because people will marginalize this individual. So everyone gets it: if you screw someone you'll be shunned, it's not worth it...

That's why crime is low in small communities, not because people are different there, but because good behavior is reinforced by the way people are constrained to interact with each other. In the small village context, reputation becomes a very important asset and it is measured against accepted ethical norms. The same regulating mechanism operates in a highly interconnected world, i.e. in a world with Internet. If a company knowingly sells an unsafe product sooner or later this will come out, and a few dedicated individuals can literally bring this company down. A few passionate individuals have the means to destroy its reputation using the same social media it is using to market its products. See the Boomerang, a new way to fight work related injustice, how one person can take on a corporation.

In my opinion, by transforming the world into a small village the Internet forces economical entities to act ethically, or at least according to what the majority perceives as good ethics.  


By AllOfUs

Towards Science 2.0

This is an initiative to harvest the new technology for scientific projects. Good start! Still a lot to be developed...

 The Research Cooperative was established in 2001 as an international, not-for-profit organisation (NPO).

Our mission is to support academic, scientific, and popular research communication in all subjects, languages, and media.

Go to their homepage.

See also the Discovery Network concept proposed by the Multitude Project.

By AllOfUs

2020 Social Workshop on Social Media for Non-Pofits

Check the SlideShare Presentation bellow by Gaurav Mishra. I find it very useful to understand the new technology and its impact on how we do business. But I also to take away another lesson: large corporations like DELL fully embraced social media and are actually benefiting from it. But here's my question: is the new social technology the Trojan horse of corporations? Is this the ultimate act of blind greed and desperation for profits that will initiate the demise of these hierarchies?

I believe that once social media penetrates into a corporation it brings with it a whole new culture, a deadly poison. This is the culture of sharing and collaboration, of freedom and autonomy, along with the realization that real value resides within the masses.

Business people are just realizing that in a context where you can gather and organize input from millions of individuals and engage them all in different types of activities it becomes more profitable to open the organization a little, to blur its boundaries. The argument is that if you have the means to engage a large number of individuals there might be a way to extract value from them, but first you need to invite them to your party, so you need to open your door.

Until recently, the prevalent model was that the corporation decides what people want, makes the product and pushes it to the market by manufacturing a desire for it. (Most products are sold based on desire, not on need.) Executives are now realizing that when the consumer is part of the design and the marketing process something magical happens and profits surge. The new technology makes this possible, offering very effective communication and collaboration tools. But to make it work, they need to create a hype around the product, which is now sold as a social cause, a story, an event, and to create a community around it. So the model is shifting, the consumer is part of the design and the marketing campaign, he's part of the process now. There is an open dialog between the corporation and the public, there is some sort of collaboration (implying reciprocity), or at list this is what the corporation wants YOU to believe. They want to make you feel as if you are contributing to something meaningful, because they need your input. They manufacture a community around a product because they want to trap your gregarious instincts with it, in order to get your cooperation to buy the product, to talk about it, and to contribute with new product-ideas. It works to a certain extent... The long-term problem is to maintain voluntary individual cooperation in a situation where the individual has other choices. At some point down the line people are going to wake up and smell the manipulation, especially if they have other points of comparison, other models bases on true reciprocity.

You cannot engage the people in your cause for a long time without making them perceive that they get something back. You cannot make a community without making a community. If you make a party but you keep all the goodies for yourself in a hidden room, sooner or later people will find that out and, because they have the choice, they will simply leave you and go to the another party. All this is based on individual choice and cooperation. People give (time, ideas, etc.) as long as they perceive that they get something back. Not necessarily material benefits, we are dealing with a multi-value system. If your community doesn't feel like one you cannot gain the fool cooperation of your crowd. But this is not the end of the story!

These executives smelled the money and, almost by reflex, they made the move, not realizing that embracing the new social technology, even to the extent they did, is incompatible with their very nature. You cannot be closed hierarchy and an open decentralized community at the same time! By adopting the social media DELL corporation makes the statement that there IS value in the multitude. People know what they need and they have good ideas in terms of design. The interconnected multitude is also good at evaluating the product according to a multi-dimensional set of criteria, taking into consideration functionality, ergonomics, ecology, safety, etc. The corporation engaging the multitude is forced to acknowledge this, it is forced to look into this matter by the success of others. This shift to the social business model is the first act of their demise, initiating a slow and precarious metamorphoses towards purely collaborative systems. Most corporations will not survive this transformation. At this moment, behind the veil of openness there is a lucid and manipulative mind, but after some time working with the social model executives will realize that there is much more value to be extracted from the multitude. They will eventually come to the conclusion that the best way to maintain a high level of individual involvement and cooperation within an open and diffuse organization is to give people a real sense of belonging to a real community. Is to invite creative and hard working individuals from everywhere to join the venture and to extract benefits from their involvement in proportion to their contributions. In other words, whose hierarchies who can survive the metamorphoses will become value networks.

But wait a second, economical entities only act in the direction of increased economical power. Who says that opening even more leads to greater economical power? (Notice that I don't use the word profit, we want to allow other types of economies to emerge.) You find the answer to this question here. See also open value networks.

We are just at the beginning of the business 2.0 phenomena. This technology that we call social is very young still. Corporations have already implemented new methods to improve their products and to boost their sales. Slowly but surely we will see emerging in parallel decentralized organizations of design and production, which will fully embrace the culture of sharing and collaboration, based on new economical principles. These new organizations will be able to enlist vast social forces because they will be able to convey the message to the participating multitude that their output belongs to them! These alternatives, although slow to emerge, will gradually take over the economy. Corporations will go through a metamorphoses to become open and decentralized, most of them will not survive this radical transformation.

Gaurav Mishra, I see you as a powerful and mystical shaman followed by a group of executives, greedy, power hungry, and selfish, all anxiously waiting for their magical potion. Instead you are giving them their poison and rejoice at their insane smile of happiness, not seeing their tragic faith soon to arrive.

2020 Social Workshop on Social Media for Non-Pofits

View more presentations from 2020 Social.

2020 Social Decoding Social Workshop

View more presentations from 2020 Social.

Internet and social revolutions

What is different about the Internet compared to other communication mediums when one considers the dynamics of social mass movements? A social movement is the alignment of peoples’ actions according to a new system of values, beliefs, or a new ideology. Before the movement becomes obvious to an observer, before one can notice a new behavioral pattern, it is necessary for the new values system to spread throughout society, and to be adopted by a critical number of individuals. Notice that there are two important components in this process: the spread of information and its acceptance by different individuals.

Concerning the first, there is no much else to say about the efficacy of the Internet technology in spreading information or about its supremacy over all the other means of communication. Not only that, but the Internet is inherently democratic, giving a voice to everyone, rich and poor.

The second component, the adoption of the new ideas, must be examined a little closer in order to reveal the impact of the Internet on social movements. Take two modes of communication: one-to-many and one-to-one. An example of one-to-many communication is a person speaking to a crowd, say Martin Luther JR. King giving his I have a dream speech. The most obvious example of one-to-one communication would be two individuals directly speaking to each other, a form of two-ways synchronous communication, or an individual reading a book, a form of one-way asynchronous communication between the writer and the reader. In both cases we have on one side the teacher, or the person spreading the new ideas, and on the other side the uninitiated crowd or the individual(s) receiving the new teachings. If we consider the receiver, we can easily accept the fact that his/her receptivity is influenced by what others have to say about the message of the teacher. In general, you have a greater chance to convince someone of anything if you are talking to this person alone. In a crowd, if the message is somewhat controversial, if it threatens only a few vocal individuals, their reactions can influence the way others interpret the message, by seeding doubts in their minds. The dynamics of the crowd can help the speaker only when a majority already accepts the message, because the general approval puts pressure on the skeptics who fill themselves rejected. But here we are interested in social revolution and the social movements that make it happen. We are talking about disruptive social changes, which almost always stems from originally controversial ideas. Well, most of the information consumed on the Internet is asynchronous one-to-one or many-to-one. On the receiver side we have one individual alone, which makes this individual much more receptive to the new ideas.

Social movements are much more dynamic today because information is usually transmitted through the Internet to a single receiver at the time, and also because the Internet is the most efficient medium of communication ever implemented. Moreover, the number of those spreading the information is also increased, as new adepts possess all the means (affordable communication tools) to become effective teachers. Furthermore, the Internet is not only a communication platform; it also acts as a coordination and collaboration platform. The growth rate and the coherence acquired by social movements today surpass the capacity of any means to suppress them in the arsenal of those in power.

by AllOfUs