6 ms·

Build network societies, not network states

62 points by laurex 2y ago

Steelkiwer 2y ago
[dead]
rohan_ 2y ago
there isn't really any meat in this essay. it's lazy, vague, and abstract. the reader is left still not really understanding what a network society is
- big-green-man 2y ago
  It's entirely a critique of a person and less so of the concept. And a weak critique as you point out, current american partisan talking points and "evil by association" insinuations via bringing up the political tribe of the article author's boogymen of the day. If you've read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (and more prominently, later, The Diamond Age) you get the concept of "phyles", voluntary association groups who govern themselves, arbitrarily decide their membership criteria, expect adherence to cultural practices, and have different types of safety nets for their members, basically, states defined by their people and not by their territory, enabled by networking and freedom of movement which is in turn enabled by advanced technology. The ideas of the critiqued person in this piece draw heavily from these ideas, and their writings are less so "one commandment states" and more so an exploration of the types of nation-like organizations that can emerge from some of the new technologies enabled by global networking and Turing complete computation. The critiqued individual predicts the collapse of the state as we know it today, where people are "owned" from birth and resources are owned and managed primarily for the continuation of state power. He sees this as a good thing, a thing that will finally empower human beings to choose their tribe, to form tribes as they see fit, to explore the merits of any and all ideas without taboo, to live their lives autonomously and ultimately live up to each of their own full potential. I generally agree with the premise and related concepts.
  - davidgay 2y ago
    I wonder how many proponents of this idea know that it's been done before? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Glarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Glarus - Protestants and Catholics had separate governments and tribunals in the same (rather small...) canton in the 17th century. The summary I read also mentioned that the death penalty required agreement from both groups - highlighting one of the obvious complexities of such a scheme. edit: a bit more detail
    - gsf_emergency 2y ago
      A link to the summary? This sounds interesting. While it sounds anachronistically enlightened (and very close to an actual historical example of what the TFA intended-- it's not very often that we harvest anything from "truth is stranger than [especially science] fiction")-- --the death penalty was applied against witchcraft in 1782?? On the whole Switzerland is (today) sort of a Heinleinian (but regrettably (or unsurprisingly?) not Stephensonian) SF setting: peak humanity in hillbilly country
      - davidgay 2y ago
        > A link to the summary? Sorry, it was in a museum - https://www.freulerpalast.ch/ https://www.freulerpalast.ch/, which doesn't look like it has that much information online.
        gsf_emergency 2y ago
        Gotta wait for our residential citation-fu master to dig that one out, then. A necessary but maybe not sufficient condition for the emergence of such governing structures would be that people grow up rejecting zero-sum status games (including) at the level of tribes. The stopgap solution, constitutional monarchy, fails, because,---? So, I'd say in Gladrus, you already had protestants living in close proximity to Catholics for a handful of centuries .. but the clincher v-a-v the asiatic cases eludes me. Ime the asiatic cases the "jesus nut" of the system (sovereign, policemen, yeomen, lawyers, judges, etc) are drawn from a single caste. Pace Manu. Makeup of the branches of government then becomes a emergent symptom. (Compare to western based systems of law.) Who formed the peacekeeping contingent in Gladrus?
sedatk 2y ago
s/network/
nickdothutton 2y ago
I only needed to read the last 2-3 sentences of this hit piece to determine its value.

62 points by laurex 2y ago

[dead]

there isn't really any meat in this essay. it's lazy, vague, and abstract. the reader is left still not really understanding what a network society is

big-green-man 2y ago
It's entirely a critique of a person and less so of the concept. And a weak critique as you point out, current american partisan talking points and "evil by association" insinuations via bringing up the political tribe of the article author's boogymen of the day. If you've read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash (and more prominently, later, The Diamond Age) you get the concept of "phyles", voluntary association groups who govern themselves, arbitrarily decide their membership criteria, expect adherence to cultural practices, and have different types of safety nets for their members, basically, states defined by their people and not by their territory, enabled by networking and freedom of movement which is in turn enabled by advanced technology. The ideas of the critiqued person in this piece draw heavily from these ideas, and their writings are less so "one commandment states" and more so an exploration of the types of nation-like organizations that can emerge from some of the new technologies enabled by global networking and Turing complete computation. The critiqued individual predicts the collapse of the state as we know it today, where people are "owned" from birth and resources are owned and managed primarily for the continuation of state power. He sees this as a good thing, a thing that will finally empower human beings to choose their tribe, to form tribes as they see fit, to explore the merits of any and all ideas without taboo, to live their lives autonomously and ultimately live up to each of their own full potential. I generally agree with the premise and related concepts.
- davidgay 2y ago
  I wonder how many proponents of this idea know that it's been done before? See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Glarus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_of_Glarus - Protestants and Catholics had separate governments and tribunals in the same (rather small...) canton in the 17th century. The summary I read also mentioned that the death penalty required agreement from both groups - highlighting one of the obvious complexities of such a scheme. edit: a bit more detail
  - gsf_emergency 2y ago
    A link to the summary? This sounds interesting. While it sounds anachronistically enlightened (and very close to an actual historical example of what the TFA intended-- it's not very often that we harvest anything from "truth is stranger than [especially science] fiction")-- --the death penalty was applied against witchcraft in 1782?? On the whole Switzerland is (today) sort of a Heinleinian (but regrettably (or unsurprisingly?) not Stephensonian) SF setting: peak humanity in hillbilly country
    - davidgay 2y ago
      > A link to the summary? Sorry, it was in a museum - https://www.freulerpalast.ch/ https://www.freulerpalast.ch/, which doesn't look like it has that much information online.
      - gsf_emergency 2y ago
        Gotta wait for our residential citation-fu master to dig that one out, then. A necessary but maybe not sufficient condition for the emergence of such governing structures would be that people grow up rejecting zero-sum status games (including) at the level of tribes. The stopgap solution, constitutional monarchy, fails, because,---? So, I'd say in Gladrus, you already had protestants living in close proximity to Catholics for a handful of centuries .. but the clincher v-a-v the asiatic cases eludes me. Ime the asiatic cases the "jesus nut" of the system (sovereign, policemen, yeomen, lawyers, judges, etc) are drawn from a single caste. Pace Manu. Makeup of the branches of government then becomes a emergent symptom. (Compare to western based systems of law.) Who formed the peacekeeping contingent in Gladrus?

sedatk 2y ago

s/network/

nickdothutton 2y ago

I only needed to read the last 2-3 sentences of this hit piece to determine its value.