Brave New War

“In fact, it was the opening salvo in a revolution […] In the coming weeks and months and years, these hundreds of thousands will be followed by millions, and this revolution will not be satisfied with overthrowing a corrupt and unresponsive political system. It won’t stop at remaking politics. And it won’t pay attention to national borders.

[…] Every institution that doesn’t understand that the technology is finally here to allow people to reject what they’re being given and demand what they want had better start paying attention.

The revolution comes for you next.”
–Joe Trippi, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Before I start, I’d like to get one thing out of the way: John Robb’s Brave New War is an excellent book and everybody should read it. From start to finish it’s packed full of interesting, frightening, and important ideas and the problems and solutions found in this book need to be understood by everybody. Go get a copy and read it right now. Every single chapter of Brave New War holds important information for our survival in the twenty first century.

But I’m only going to talk about Chapter 6, the one on open source warfare. Open Source Warfare is a new way to run an insurgency. It consists of a large number of small, independent cells working towards a common goal (in Iraq, the common goal being the removal of American forces). While acting independently, all of the cells freely exchange strategies, resources, and intelligence among one another. Successful methods discovered by one group can be passed on the other groups, and useful techniques can quickly spread through the entire insurgency. Their open source organization allows the insurgents in Iraq greater flexibility and faster innovation rates than the hierarchical organization of the US military and this flexibility and innovation is what allows them to take on the world’s largest military and win. Although there are previous examples of this organization method, it has only come into it’s own with the war in Iraq.

If open source warfare were only a war phenomenon, it would still be a fascinating concept. But it’s not just a war issue. It’s part of a much larger trend, a trend for which we’ve hit a steam engine time right now. David Ronfeldt calls it ”the rise of collaborative networks.” David Brin calls it the Age of Amateurs. Jane McGonigal talks about 3rd wave ARGs and the Cluetrain Manifesto talks about markets as conversations. Despite the different language, it’s all part of the same larger trend - it’s just manifesting in different arenas and so people are coming up with the different language for it. At the heart of the trend modern communication technologies are allowing people to join together, pool resources, and work collectively towards whatever ends they choose – be it to design an e-mail program, figure out what’s happening to somebodies website, or kill the infidel.

What Robb adds to this discussion, what you can’t find anywhere else, is an in depth look at the methods behind this form of organization. Lots of people are talking about the effects or the potential of this trend, but so far only Robb provides a look at the basic principles behind creating, sustaining, and existing within these movements. And because Robb is talking about a specific example of a trend whose effects are spread out over almost every part of the human condition, he also provides basic principles that can, with a little work, be divorced from the specific realm of warfare and then applied to other realms. And once you’ve successfully applied those principles, you wouldn’t be out of line to expect similar success – specifically the ability for small, under funded groups to beat out large well funded groups. The particular realm that I’d like to try to apply these principles to is politics.

How exactly would you start on this? Well, for one thing, over the coming days and weeks I intend to look deeper into the principles Robb lays out in Brave New War and figure out how they can be applied to politics (so if you’re wondering “what exactly are the principles he’s so on about” just wait for a second. I’ll get to it). But there is another side to it. Returning to the substance of Brave New War, Robb points to the lowering of entry costs as a driving force behind Open Source Warfare. It is cheaper now to wage war, at least for the insurgents, than it has been ever before, for a variety of reasons discussed in Robb’s book. Low entry costs means that more people can participate and you can build up the momentum needed for an open source movement. But how do you go about lowering the entry cost of politics? What exactly are the entry costs of politics? The one thing I’ve been able to come up with is information, training, education. Most people simply don’t know how to put the influence on their government. God knows I don’t. So I’m looking in to it and I’m going to report what I find here.

In conclusion, I’d like to say once again that you should all go out and get yourself a copy of Brave New War. You owe it to yourself and to everybody else. It was at least good enough to inspire me to start this blog plus all the above rambling.

What is Metapolitics?

Metapolitics is the politics of politics.

Metapolitics is the systems that constrain and define politics.

An understanding of politics will tell you what is happening and what will happen. An understanding of metapolitics will tell you how to make things happen.

Metapolitics is what I can get away with.

Stay tuned for writings along this general line.