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."
Raises the obvious question (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's hope resistance isn't futile.
Why? As far as I can tell this would be a good thing. If everyone in an army is making decisions then they aren't as likely to engage in risky behavior or unnecessary violence. The analogy is to how many have argued that the US has become more warlike as it has lost its draft, so that people favoring war are no longer in any serious risk of being called up. Nothing in the summary seems that negative, and a brief skim of TFA doesn't seem to indicate much actually negative as far as I can tell.
How revolutions eat their children (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a classic way to run a resistance movement. Mao, Marighella, the IRA, al-Queda, etc. It works fairly well in the early phases. As the revolution advances, tighter coordination is necessary. This leads to centralized leadership. In the end, there's a Stalin or a Castro.
The US is one of the very few countries to get a stable democracy out of a revolution. That's not what usually happens.
Who gets punished? (Score:4, Interesting)
Inevitably, we can imagine that if groups like these actually existed, one would eventually engage in a war crime of some sort. When that happens, who would be punished? The ones perpetrating it? The people who voted in support of the crime? Those who were aware of it? The entire group?
Switzerland (Score:5, Interesting)
That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.
You might think that yet Switzerland has a democratic system which is the closest I have seen to the "everyone votes on everything" idea and yet is an incredibly stable country. I think part of the reason for this is that people get to decide things at the local level which makes for strong communities since they have a sense of control. Certainly you don't seem to get the usual sense of powerlessness caused by the politicians listening to rich special interest groups and trampling all over society in their hurry to get that money.
Bullshit that should not concern anyone. (Score:4, Interesting)
I was an army medic, and can tell you right off the bat this idea is bullshit it several different directions. First, no army ever could or would fight this way. The notion of the egalitarian army with no leadership is not really different from a mob. An army works because of the top-down nature of command. In order for all the so-called soldiers to 'vote' on decisions, they'd all have to know what's going on. Otherwise they're voting without having any clue as to what effect their votes might have. There is neither the time, nor the capability, even with this so-called "advanced" communications they're supposed to have, to brief EVERYONE, so either you're going to be wasting time informing everyone then debating everything, getting nothing done, or you're going to have people who don't know what's happening making decisions, either with NO intel, or with undigested and probably misinterpreted intel at every step.
As for the commo, people cannot in my experience, concentrate on more than one conversation at a time. Try it some time if you don't believe.
As for the cockamamie idea of having everyone tend to the wounded... the modern US military has as its new doctrine that every soldier learn basic medical skills. This has actually been the case for years, maybe decades, but recently the expected level of medical proficiency (of all soldiers) went from "buddy-aid", like applying field-dressings to wounds and cooling someone suffering heat-stroke, to every swinging dick being Combat Lifesaver certified. However, that course is about a week long. When I went through, Combat Medic School (Healthcare Specialist Course, MOSC 68W1O) was about 16 weeks long, which was followed up at my unit (as presumably any of my fellow CMS graduates deploying to war as I was, and maybe even ones who weren't,) also attended something called CMAST, Combat Medic Advanced Skills Training, which included performing procedures on a cadaver, and a doing a few other things I'm not permitted to reveal. Then on top of that months of on the job training doing the actual job.
A real functional army waging a war doesn't have the TIME to train every soldier to be a Combat Medic, let alone train them in the 200+ other specialties an actual, real army needs to wage any kind of war.
This... is it a book? This article, or what it references, is sheer mental masturbation, a fantasy that a bunch of soft little fruit-cakes playing games and pretending to be an "army", scoffing at conventional forces demanding to know who their ring-leaders are, is fucking ridiculous. You might as well write a book about people spreading their fingers wide, and flapping their arms and FLYING. It's a fucking joke.
If you're having trouble understanding what I mean, imagine if you went brain-dead tomorrow, and your various body-parts decided to vote on everything you do. Your penis would (assuming you have one) veto every vote that doesn't involve stroking it. Your back would insist it needs to rest, and lay in bed all day. Your stomach and your mouth would agree you should eat, but your hands would demand to know what's in it for them. Your teeth would refuse to chew anything without a guarantee from your hands that they will be brushed and flossed after eating. Teeth appeased, your epiglottis would complain that the body should make up its mind about what they want it to do, open to lungs, or open to stomach, and would start hiccuping to show its displeasure. In short, you wouldn't have the level of agreement and cooperation to be able to so much as stagger into the bathroom and take a shit. Just like what such an army as described in the story would do, without any central leadership and authority.
Re:Kind of like democracy today? (Score:4, Interesting)
>We would do *nothing* else all day long except vote on issues we would barely understand.
Bull, nobody would force you to vote on every issue, and one of the fundamental principles of direct democracy philosophies (such as socialist libertarianism, anarchism and the like) is complete decentralization. That is - no nation states, you'd vote only on issues in your own small community, and the decisions taken would affect only that community.
People would vote on the issues they care about, which with modern tech is already a minor burden and will only become easier and smaller in the future - and those who don't care/ are not informed about the issue won't be affected at all (not even by having to vote).
What anarchist philosophies teach is that everybody has a RIGHT to an equal say on all decisions that affect them, not that they have a DUTY to use that right.
Re:GLORIFY! (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea of a decentralized "army" is pretty ridiculous
You may want to read up a bit on how the anarchist militia organized in the spanish civil war. E.g. before going on a mission, squads would elect a squad member to be the leader for that particular mission.
Re:Kind of like democracy today? (Score:4, Interesting)
Any socialist libertarian or anarchist will tell you that specialization of roles is not a disruption of equality.
Specialization will produce a position of power if your skillset requires a high investment to acquire it. High investment will make these specialists rare and not easily replacable, which they can in turn use to gain power.