The Hivemind Singularity 277
An anonymous reader writes "Alan Jacobs at The Atlantic writes about a book called New Model Army (NMA), which takes the idea of Anonymous — a loose, self-organizing collective with a purpose — and adds twenty-five years of technological advancement. The book's author, Adam Roberts, 'asks us to imagine a near future when electronic communications technologies enable groups of people to communicate with one another instantaneously, and on secure private networks invulnerable, or nearly so, to outside snooping.' With the arrival of advanced communications tech, such groups wouldn't be limited to enacting their will from behind a computer screen, or in a pre-planned flash mob; they could form actual armies. 'Again, each NMA organizes itself and makes decisions collectively: no commander establishes strategy and gives orders, but instead all members of the NMA communicate with what amounts to an advanced audio form of the IRC protocol, debate their next step, and vote. Results of a vote are shared to all immediately and automatically, at which point the soldiers start doing what they voted to do. ... They are proud of their shared identity, and tend to smirk when officers of more traditional armies want to know who their "ringleaders" are. They have no ringleaders; they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps, and when they need to negotiate, the negotiating team is chosen by army vote. Each soldier does what needs to be done, with need determined by the NMA which each has freely joined.' Let's hope resistance isn't futile."
Crowdsourced medicine is the future! (Score:4, Funny)
God knows that if I'm suffering hypovolemic shock concomitant to massive war trauma, I want nothing more than the wisdom of the crowd!
Stupid hierarchical medical profession: all of my comrades can Google "How to start an IV" and hit up the Wikipedia page on exploratory laparotomies. Hell, I bet there's an instructables on how to install a Wittmann patch. Oh wait, I already feel confident/competent enough after seeing the Wittmann Patch [wikipedia.org] Wikipedia page.
Excuse me, I'm off to check the eHow for "How to scrub in for surgical procedures"...
Re:Kind of like democracy today? (Score:5, Funny)
We would do *nothing* else all day long except vote on issues we would barely understand.
Sounds like what most politicians already do.
Re:Wont you think of the lobbyists? (Score:5, Funny)
they will all be out of a job
Recycled as astroturfurs?
Re:GLORIFY! (Score:5, Funny)
As long as they don't march on my lawn.