The efforts to subvert society using ICT noted in the earlier post Extremists, and noted again recently in Mobocracy, use traditional marketing techniques not very different than are used in legacy media. It is a broadcast model which attempts to persuade and frighten mobs to get them to give money, vote and riot at set times and places to gain power.

There is another, more insidious, method of subverting society that claims legitimacy because it contrasts with the marketing approach. It uses a distorted version of what Robert Conquest called "the Periclean need for debate", the exchange of views prior to making decisions, the truly valuable part of democracy that results in consensual rule. This second method of subversion variously calls itself deliberative democracy and collective rationality, but it could as easily be called brain washing, as it was in the past. For example:

A random, representative sample is first polled on the targeted issues. After this baseline poll, members of the sample are invited to gather at a single place for a weekend in order to discuss the issues. Carefully balanced briefing materials are sent to the participants and are also made publicly available. The participants engage in dialogue with competing experts and political leaders based on questions they develop in small group discussions with trained moderators. Parts of the weekend events are broadcast on television, either live or in taped and edited form. After the deliberations, the sample is again asked the original questions. The resulting changes in opinion represent the conclusions the public would reach, if people had opportunity to become more informed and more engaged by the issues.

The defects in this approach are numerous and obvious. The selection of issues, the control of briefing materials, the selection of "experts" and politicians, group pressure and group dynamics that always cause information cascade, the "trained moderators" and public exposure by broadcasting these "deliberations" on television are tried and true methods for brainwashing individuals and groups. People can be caused to reach any desired conclusion no matter what their starting point when they were independent, diverse and decentralized. It completely destroys social wisdom.

Even if we postulate benign motives for those doing the brain washing the group is dumbed down, directed to a narrow set of possible conclusions that the organizers were capable of understanding. The larger the society, the more destructive the consequences. But benign motives are the least likely case. Even if it began that way the power to control society would inevitably be taken over by those with less benign motives. Such concentrated power is an irresistible draw for wrong doers. Every pile of power, money or dung draws parasites.

Most things don't need to be done and are harmful if they are done. A sufficiently diverse group will most often agree to disagree and go their separate ways to pursue their several objectives independently. Some will prosper, others will fail and most will muddle through. They will all learn from their experiences and be better for them. Many will learn from the experiences of others and be even better for them. Over time the diversity of efforts are a discovery machine that achieves far in excess of the brain washing approach, even in the unlikely case where the brain washing has benign objectives. More knowledge is created and at a faster rate.

Given that this is a discussion of effective uses of ICT an analogy to parallel computing systems is apposite. Most interesting problems are not computable in the usual sense. They may never "halt", reach a definitive conclusion. The brute force attempt to consider all cases and choose the best approach gets stuck on some of the cases which take an infinity of time to compute. A way around this is to divide the task up, have many computers each consider different cases. Some of the computers will get stuck but others will report back promptly. All of the computable cases will soon be computed and the stuck cases can be rebooted to break the loop.

It may be that one or more of the apparently stuck computers would have reached a conclusion if given more time, and that their conclusions would have been superior. How much time? How superior? We can't know. What we do know is that problems that were otherwise intractable can be analyzed at least in part and that decisions based on those analyses are superior to other methods. In time computers will get faster and clever analysts will invent better algorithms that together are able to push the analysis further. Live and learn.

The real power of ICT is not in finding more efficient ways to do old fashioned things. In politics and governance it is neither the marketing approach nor the brain washing approach, it is the parallel approach. The power of ICT is in enabling new approaches. The discovery machine has always been in operation since localities were separated by distance and so time. The sharing of results from their social experiments were delayed and only ever partial. For example, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the French were obsessed with flying machines, but lacked insight into how to make them. They had a few balloons and other contraptions that did little or failed completely. In 1903, after some years of careful experimentation in isolation, and with little funding, a pair of American bicycle mechanics trying something wildly different from what the "experts" were doing succeeded. Still, it was years before the French learned these lessons, did not occur not until the bicycle mechanics had sufficient fame and a business plan that took them to Paris to demonstrate and sell their work. Within a year the French were able to match and surpass the American methods.

Social arrangements and governance are far more difficult to communicate than engineering insights. Both the speed of communication and the bandwidth are limited, and experience is a difficult thing to communicate even face to face. What ICT enables is peer-to-peer communication without mediation, without "experts" or carefully selected propaganda materials. The results cover the full range of possibility, everything from the grossly stupid to the brilliant, as well as every perversion, mental and social disorder, and their opposites. Everything, all the time. Most of it has no name, has never been dreamed of by experts or included in their canon. Much of it is nonsense but it is certain that both the best and the worst are outside expert opinion and recognizable to all.

The issue is trust. Do we trust ourselves to make good decisions, to recognize the "right thing" and do it when able? Or must we be ruled by philosopher kings who decide for us, even if they conceal those decisions with the Chinese menu trick, giving us a choice among predetermined dishes and so the illusion of liberty? The world has advanced to its present state because the discovery machine worked by default. Isolated societies experimented because it was not possible for all of them to be dominated by anyone. Distance was too great. Some failed, some prospered. Slowly, information of both success and failure was shared and discoveries spread around the world to the benefit of all.

All along there have been megalomaniacs dreaming of world conquest. Some tried. All failed. Thankfully. But they continue to spring up like weeds in the garden and each new discovery inflames their lust for conquest. Those who seek to use ICT to dominate ever larger swathes of humanity are the latest incarnations of those old conquerors. We can do better. Their lust for power is not in our best interests. Though some of us may fail, blundering along with private or local enthusiasms that are easily seen to be demented in hindsight, others will succeed spectacularly. Both the experiences of success and failure are valuable knowledge that others can use to do better in their efforts.

Practice sales resistance. When the movement types come around peddling their wares, joke them off and continue to pursue private and local enthusiasms in an independent, diverse and decentralized manner. This isn't selfish or uncooperative behavior, it is doing your part to contribute to social improvement, doing your bit as part of the social mind. It is the least selfish and most cooperative thing you can do. Though you may benefit from your efforts the news of your success, your discovery, benefits all.