“U.S.
Preparing for a Long Siege of Arab Unrest,” the front page of the New York Times proclaimed. The tragic
killings of American diplomats in Benghazi, Libya and the spreading of unrest
throughout the Muslim world “may presage a period of sustained instability,”
the article warned.
Welcome
to the new networked world. Strong regimes once controlled the streets by
controlling the flow of information. Now, the anarchy of openness that is the
Web replicates itself in the streets.
The
open Internet which helped the Arab Spring blossom has this time delivered
death and destruction. An incendiary video that normally would have had the
effect of a tree falling in an empty forest now races around the world
masquerading as if it were relevant.
New
communications technology has done it again. For 600 years new network
technology has challenged social stability by reshaping the nature of human
interaction. At one time the inability of ideas to travel was a source of
stability. That all changed when printing technology created the original
information revolution. The network of 15th and 16th
century printers churned out books, pamphlets, and broadsides that took ideas
and opinion on the road. In the mid-19th century the railroad accelerated
that road-trip by introducing speed to the distribution of information. Then
the networks of the 20th and 21st centuries turned on the
electronic afterburners to make the flow of information widespread and
instantaneous.
The current upheaval
over a stupid video is the latest manifestation of the Rule of Network
Change: that new technology replaces old
structures before it is sufficiently mature to provide the requisite stability.
It is no wonder that throughout history new networks have produced new wars as
society struggled to find new bearings. Europe was plunged into 150 years of
war after the printing press propagated ideas challenging the Holy Roman
Empire. The American Civil War was the bloody consequence of the railroad and
telegraph dismantling the geographic isolation that had allowed one section of
the country to maintain its “peculiar institution.”
The physical insulation
provided by geography has always been the first victim of a new network. The
ideas of Martin Luther were not new, for instance; but previous innovative
thinkers lacked the ability to meaningfully distribute their ideas beyond a
local area. Just as the printing press propagated Luther’s ideas across the
geography to literally set Europe ablaze, so is the Internet providing scope
and scale to ideas and information that were formerly physically constrained.
The distribution of a video was once limited by how many copies of the physical
product the producer could afford to make and mail in the hope someone would
notice. Today worldwide distribution for stupid cat videos or stupid religious
videos requires only network access.
The openness of
the new network overcomes the structural controls developed over time to oversee
the flow of information. While this is positive when it ends the information control
of repressive regimes, the same technology also means bypassing the controls
once exercised in a free expression environment as well. The New York Times’ famous motto, “All the
news that’s fit to print,” assumed an editorial role in determining fitness. To
make the front page of the paper, or the radio or television newscast, required
passing through the eye of not one, but two needles. The first was a decision
about credibility and relevance, the second was the limited physical space
available in the newspaper or newscast. The new network has made these tests
quaint artifacts of a bygone era.
The new network is
one without any needle eyes. Content vetting has been delegated to the consumer,
and physical scarcity no longer exists. Google, Facebook, YouTube, or any of
the Internet’s information sources are collectors
of information, not curators of
information. “Fit to print” has been removed from the information equation. And
when YouTube reportedly receives 72 hours of uploaded video every minute (!) not only is there no
space limitation, but also the concept of information curation is simply
overwhelmed.
The history of new
networks is the story of how prevailing practices ultimately were forced to
yield to the new realities of increased interconnection. In retrospect the
changes imposed by history’s networks appear evolutionary and logical. In
reality, they were chaotic periods of upheaval, pain and displacement. Amidst
this chaos, however, these periods were eras of such great opportunity creation
that historians end up giving them special appellations: the Reformation and
Renaissance (printing), and the Industrial Age (railroad and telegraph). We
have named our era the Information Age as though it is already in the history
books. The violence in the Arab world, however, reminds us that we are living
in the chaos and confusion of an historical period that is far from
concluded.
In every previous
network revolution new practices have developed to balance never-imagined
technology with ever-required stability. Certainly, that will be the ultimate
outcome with our new network as well. History makes it clear, however, that the
path to such a solution is neither swift nor painless. We are moving from an
ordered and hierarchical world controlled by hierarchical networks to a world
in which distributed networks disperse power in a disorderly manner. With that change
comes the need for judgment and acceptance, as well as flexibility and respect –
whether the recipient is ready for them or not.
