[P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek, Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

Mon Feb 28 23:22:32 CET 2011

Hi Pedro,

Thanks for pointing to this...

I was aware of Zeynep's paper but frankly could see little point in engaging
directly with that discussion.  To my mind Michel (and Zeynep's) arguments
are essentially academic (in the worst sense) and
self-fulfilling/circular... Any social movement will "inevitably" do such
and such, why, because at some point they stop being movements and therefore
need to transition to something else and that something else is by
definition structured and thus "oligarchic" or whatever. (The arguments are
"academic" in that the terms on which the discussion is engaged are
self-defined and thus the subsequent discussion is limited within these
definitions and of course, that being the case the author can prove whatever
they choose to prove (Alice's argument with the Queen in Alice in
Wonderland)--the result to my mind is a similar result to most such academic
arguments--the author shows themselves to be both clever and irrelevant!)

Zeynep's paper is rather cleverer than most (it at least uses data rather
than simply anecdote) but is equally disempowering and in practice
preposterous.  What would be the consequences for action in Egypt if the
active agents were to take the argument seriously... They would all go home
and leave the field to Mubarek since why bother to waste blood replacing one
oligarchy with another.

My point was rather something different that is, what can we learn from what
was done that can be transferred forward into the process of
reconstruction... There will of course, need to be stability and structures
of some sort but there is one (and perhaps two) differences from previous
revolutions. The one difference is the use of ICTs which allow for some
rather profoundly different/transformational organizational processes.  The
second partial difference is that there is now a "memory" or
self-consciousness concerning the failures of previous revolutions and with
this self-consciousness comes the possibility of overcoming this--I don't
believe that anything is social behaviour is inevitable! and neither should
anyone who is in any sense involved with or sympathetic to the idea of
p-2-p!

Best,

Mike
Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Director: Centre for Community Informatics Research, Development and
Training
Vancouver, CANADA
http://www.communityinformatics.net <http://www.communityinformatics.net/> 
CA tel. +1-604-602-0624

-----Original Message-----
From: Pedro Gioya [mailto:pg at institutodeliderazgo.com] 
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 5:30 PM
To: P2P Foundation mailing list; Michael Gurstein
Cc: p2p-foundation; Dougald Hine
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the
Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek,
Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

Hi
Look at this post on the same issue but with different  perspective (Sure
you know, but anyway....)
http://technosociology.org/?p=366

Pedro

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Michel Bauwens <mailto:michelsub2004 at gmail.com>  
To: Michael Gurstein <mailto:gurstein at gmail.com>  
Cc: p2p-foundation <mailto:p2p-foundation at lists.ourproject.org>  ; Dougald
Hine <mailto:dougald at schoolofeverything.com>  
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 6:52 PM
Subject: Re: [P2P-F] FW: Blogpost: Applying the ICT Lessons of Revolt to the
Institutional Challenges of Reconstruction: They overthrew Hosni Mubarek,
Now Can They Overthrow Robert Michels?

This is really brilliant Michael and I warmly recommend it to our
listmembers,

Michel

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 4:11 AM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
wrote:

Michel,

I think this is one that you will find interesting...

M

---------------------------------------------
http://wp.me/pJQl5-5Z

"In this, I think that the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia have access to
skills and resources which were unavailable to earlier movements that is-the
Internet, social networking, mobile telephony and perhaps most important,
the experience and knowledge of how to use these in support of collective
social ends."

-- 
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