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unhinged
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'in economics, the peril of the network is monopoly - where a competitive market comes under the sway of big corporations. in culture, the period of the network is conformism - where a competitive marketplace of ideas ceases to be so competitive, where the emphasis shifts to consensus. kevin kelly, in his enthusiasm, unwittingly conveyed the darker implications of his vision. he extolled the 'hive mind' - which is what happens when we get past our fetish for the author and give into crowdsourcing and wikis and the horselike tendencies of social media, when we surrender ourselves to the wise crowd. the hive mind was meant to describe a thing of beauty, humanity working in gorgeous concert. but really, who would want to live in a hive? we know from history that this sort of consensus is a plastic beauty, a stifling sameness. it deadens disagreement, strangles originality.
this is true of our politics. our era is defined by polarization, warring ideological gangs that yield no ground. division, however, isn't the root cause of our unworkable system. there are many causes, but a primary problem is conformism. facebook has created two hive minds - the hive always has a queen bee - each residing in an ecosystem that nurtures head-nodding agreement and penalizes dissenting views. a hive mind is an intellectually incapacitated one, with diminishing ability to sort fact from fiction, with a bias toward evidence that confirms the party line. facebook has managed to achieve consensus, but not quite as it promised. instead of drawing the world together, the power of the network has helped tear it apart. say all the ill things that can be said about our old ideas of genius and originality - none are worse than this.' - franklin foer
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171227
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