First off, I’m in AGONY!
So I’m gonna take it out on Shirky and Surowiecki—both of whom have some really great points, but annoyed me somewhat…so they will get the brunt of my acting out from my pain. (I’ll save my positive comments for replies and comments on others’ posts…)
Both dudes run parallel— Surowiecki: Large groups often make better decisions than smaller elite groups Shirky: “…with a large enough crowd, unpredictable events become predictable.” (p24)
Shirky: Cognitive Surplus—What “free time,” dude? I get what he’s saying though, and approve.
However, I intensely dislike the “stories” (the examples) both of these writers start with, and feel that they distract/distort/obscure the messages they are trying to relate.
A better example would have been The Church: it’s comforting, full of fantasies, is a one-way street (The Church is “unbalanced,” certainly), and creates a sort of (false) community (people who have NOTHING in common are brought together—which may be a good thing—in the same way that TV lets us have polite, meaningless conversations with strangers: “Did you see Breaking Bad last night?”).
Meanwhile the Gin Craze “was a reaction to the real problem—dramatic social change and the inability of older civic models to adapt” to the massive alterations the Industrial Revolution was creating in society and civilization. There is a huge difference between a person who had been a rural farmer (from generations of farmers) dumped into a nightmarish, overcrowded London (see William Blake’s poem for a taste of what it was like) and an office drone preferring the narcotizing effect of Uncle Miltie and Howdy Doody (orSeinfeld and Friends ; or American Idol and Pretty Little Liars ; or…).
Besides, as Black Flag sings, “T.V. news shows what it's really like out there/It's a scare!”
VIDEO
If anything, Shirky should have started off this chapter with Ory Okolloh and Ushahidi (like he did with his TED talk—and nope, I’m not going to include the URL because I feel bratty and in pain—arrrrrrrrrrgh!
The tale of how people managed to subvert and go around the governmental/corporate media systems due to their access to cheap equipment (cell phones, for heaven’s sake!) ties in more with the concepts of Cognitive Surplus than 18th century English drunkards, in my opinion…
As for Surowiecki…
(p71) Decentralization was excessively promoted by the same people who want to “reduce government,” and privatize everything—
Friedrich Hayek is evil and his influence pernicious —the “liberal economics” he espouses is the type that the worst corporations love: NO RULES.
Not that I am against Decentralization in general—it’s a good idea, and I agree with Surowiecki: “the closer a person is to a problem, the more likely he or she is to have a good solution to it.” (p71)
But Surowiecki becomes suspect to me when I feel he is espousing or supporting socio-political values I now despise.
And I dislike the continuation of the fantasy that the attack on Pearl Harbor was an utter and complete surprise: The U.S. and Imperial Japan had been butting heads in China for nearly a decade before that with both nations eager to grab as much of the British Empire and French holdings as possible.
The base in Hawaii was the US naval station for the Pacific at the time, and was a huge target. In fact the US Navy conducted a mock attack on the Pearl Harbor base as early as 1933 (!) to test its readiness—and the defense of the base during this mock attack was deemed a failure. Had the aircraft carriers been in the harbor during December 7, the Great Pacific War would’ve been Japan’s to win.
It was not so much the overwhelming volume of information that lead to Japan’s success that day as it was American complacency.
Thomas Peele 
Caitlin Geoghan 
Ivan Lerner 
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