[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?

Tue Mar 1 17:57:23 CET 2011

MessageHi MIke
I agree with you in some points. Absolutely agree in the circular and academic arguments of the article (you know, "experts", they must show their wisdom and scope of knowledge) and in the little engaging with your discussion. But I was interested  not so much in the deterministic assumptions but in the idea of being working with theoretical models that maybe could be outdated to explain this world. I mean, Michels, the concept of oligarchies, the idea of hierarchies, the idea tha afer a revolution, the net bevame a oligarchy....
My point is that we, probably, need  another quite different categories to explain the changing world around us in all orders (politics, society, business, literature), but this categories shoud be pragmatics and updated. For example, Do we need traditional structures to keep stability and equilibrium? and what about after a period of turbulence? (traditional political parties, trade unions, periods of 4 years between elections are useful or not?)  or if it´s possible to build this up with the use of ICT´s and p2p categories?, but Which one?
I´strongly agree with the point of selfconsciousness of the arab people. There is a new mental paradigm about  the idea of getting big things together, but alone at the same time. I mean together as citizens, men and women of all religions but at the same time alone with the traditional supporters (Western countries. Just words (not even words in the UE case ) but no real/factual support at all).
On the other hand Mike I Think we need some kind of model to understand the dynamics of p2p development and that drives us again to be part of the model (but not in a deterministic way)
Lot of mess anyway
Best 
Pedro

----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Michael Gurstein 
  To: 'Pedro Gioya' ; 'P2P Foundation mailing list' 
  Cc: 'p2p-foundation' ; 'Dougald Hine' 
  Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 11:22 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?

  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
  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 
      To: Michael Gurstein 
      Cc: p2p-foundation ; Dougald Hine 
      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."

      -- 
      P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net 

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