Essay: Collaborative Structures and Future Generations of Political Action

This idea is based on two events: the publication of yet another"what
are we gonna do with these apathetic kids?" article in the Post, and
attending a BBC Proms concert which debuted a really good
collaboratively-developed performance piece by a youth orchestra, Invisible Lines.

What I propose is that the sources and methods for acquiring trusted
social, cultural, and political information have shifted for at least
some of the population, – generally youth who have had lifelong
or at least prolonged access to the WWW, email, and instant messaging
technology – to data and opinion that has been vetted through
the Coolness & Connectedness Protocol.

This protocol is based on the algorithmic behavior rather than the
exhaustive data access of the source: for example, an authoritative
source of cultural information is not someone who knows everything
there is to know about Franz Liszt or Franz Ferdinand, but is someone
who gets, digests, and distributes the latest, most insightful and/or
most useful development in that area.

It is also a means of feeling connected in a smart and nearly
subversive paradigm: the example of "All Your Base," Conor Camp, Sam
and I, and Darshan Thota. Other examples are the spontaneous
net-generated be-ins, protests, etc.

Back to algorithm: it is a means of problem solving that copes with
the onslaught of variety, choice, and information by connecting with
the persons or groups who seem to be good at processing the situation
at hand, rather than highlighting key data points about it. Getting
finding yourself in a deadly boring pub: "Kristin is good at finding
the party, I will text her..." is an example, "Patty knows all the
restaurants in this post code" is less useful. I need a better
example.

The next point I thought of is the relationship of this trusted,
dynamic source of information to traditional, authoritative, and
relatively static media and political systems. I believe they are
conceived of as finite, fact-of-life type objects rather than living
institutions with which one might affiliate. One copes with
government and politics because one sees it as belonging to someone
else, monolithic, and impossible to change. About as personally
change-able as the weather. One is almost making subversive, cynical
subgroups in opposition to institutions, whether political parties,
newspapers, charities, big corporations, or international
institutions. Note the similarities between subgroups who decide to
opt-in to western culture and those who opt-out into some form of
more active subversion.

Severe note for now: this is not necessarily an ideal or mature
system. The Coolness aspect of the protocol still underscores the
importance of the novel, clever, short term, and popular over the
orderly, humane, long term, and independent. In fact, these
subgroups may see themselves as independent and unique, even when
they travel in packs defined mostly as "being aware" of something the
main culture is not.

Finally, the truly hopeful thing about the "Invisible Lines" piece is
that it presents not a critical post-assessment of an accomplished
event or work, but an example of an effective and high-level
collaborative creation produced using fluidly dynamic, dispersed
group labor. The piece was lively, celebrating diversity without the
tiresome, pedantic "and now we have the digeridoo" programming that
comes from a checklist-based rather than group generated
representation of the world.

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