kenoma wrote:Thanks for the link 8bit!
But anyway... whatever is interesting about Curtis's argument in this installment is almost totally wiped out by the ending. 'The internet' created colour revolutions? Their failure is due to the failure of all non-hierarchal systems?
This is infantile stuff.
Last ten minutes transcribed (sorry for any inaccuracies). Don't think he's suggesting "the internet" created the colour revolutions, or that their failure is due to the failure of all non-hierarchical systems
Adam Curtis wrote:In the early part of this century, the idea of the self-organising network re-emerged in what seemed to be it's original radical form. Beginning in 2003 a wave of spontaneous revolutions swept through Asia and Europe. In each case hundreds of thousands of people flooded into the capitals of Georgia, the Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan and they forced the old corrupt leaders from power. In all these cases, no one seemed to be in charge. But then journalists discovered the internet had played a key role. It had brought millions of people together to create revolutions which had no guiding ideology except a desire for self determination, and for freedom.
It seemed to be the triumph of the vision that had begun with the computer utopians in California in the 1960s. They had dreamt of a time when interconnected webs of computers would allow people to create new, non-hierarchical societies, just like in the commune experiments, but on a global scale. Now that dream seemed to be really coming true. In 2009 Twitter and Facebook appeared to play a key role in organising the protests in Iran.Al Gore wrote:
blah blah a new information eco-system blah blah LOOK I HAVE NO NECK
But in all the revolutions that new sense of freedom lasted only for a moment. In the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, the man who was ousted is back in power and has started to dismantle democratic institutions . In Kyrgyzstan the new president fled because of accusations of corruption, the country is torn apart by ethnic clashes. And Georgia has now fallen in the world index of press freedom. At the time of the revolution it was 73rd, it is now 99th.
What had been forgotten in the optimism of the revolutions was what had really happened in the original experiments in the communes. They all failed. Most lasted no more than three years, some for less than six months. And what tore them all apart was the very thing that was supposed to have been banished: power. The commune members discovered that some people were more free than others. Strong personalities came to dominate the weaker members of the group. But the rules of the self-organising system refused to allow any organised opposition to this oppression.Molly Hollenbach (former member of The Family commune) wrote:
The original idea was very positive indeed, it was to create an egalitarian society in which everyone would both be free to be themselves and also be able to contribute to the group in a really positive way. But the very rules that kind of set up this egalitarian group resulted in the opposite of the dream. It resulted in creating a hierarchical structure in which some could be dominant over others because everyone is not equally powerful in their voice against one other person.
In the communes what was supposed to be systems of negotiation between equal individuals often turned into vicious bullyingRandall Gibson (former member of Synergia commune) wrote:
In practice these would be twenty or thirty minute hazing sessions that were, um, quite awful to experience and were usually met by silence with the rest of ones peers, so there wasn't any "lay off he's an ok guy" or anything like that, there were no supportive comments. The rule was "travel in your own country" which means "shut up, listen and observe".Molly Hollenbach wrote:
There was fear actually, because the people who were more dominating and had more- more power could make...there was anger, there was just constantly a background of fear in the house. It was like a virus running in the background, so that...like spyware: you know it's there but you don't know how to get rid of it.
The failiure of the commune movement and the failiure of the revolutions show the limitations of the self-organising model, it cannot deal with the central dynamic forces of human society: politics and power. The hippies took up the idea of the network society because they were disillusioned with politics. They believed that this alternative way of ordering the world was good because it was based on the underlying order of nature. But this was a fantasy. In reality what they adapted was an idea taken from the cold and logical world of the machines.
Now, in our age we are all disillusioned with politics and this machine organising principle has risen up to become the idealology of our age. But what we are discovering is that if we see ourselves as components in a system, it is very difficult to change the world. It is a very good way of organising things, even rebellions, but it offers no ideas about what comes next. And just like in the communes, it leaves us helpless in the face of those already in power in the world.
Next weeks programme will show how we have reconciled ourselves to this voluntary sacrifice of power by coming to believe that we are nothing more that machines ourselves
while waiting for the CORRECT answer, but nooooo, I went off on another research spreeeee. Now, there are more questions, and we might catch’em later. Again, Thanks.