Q’s & A’s about “TIMN in 20 minutes” (2nd of 7): nature of the forms and their relationships

As I explained in the introduction to the first post in this series, it is about comments on my video about TIMN. The introduction also explains how the posts are arranged, and how I’ve approached using commenters’ remarks.

This particular post assembles remarks by commenters who raised issues regarding the number and nature of the forms, and relations among them. The post is quite theory-oriented.

But before continuing, I’d reiterate some caveats I noted in the series’ introduction: In some instances, my replies at the time are reprinted verbatim here, but in other instances I’ve modified my reply a bit, usually to cut excess verbiage, or to expand and clarify further. In all instances, the comments and my replies should be regarded as rough drafts. Indeed, some of the commenters might have written their comments differently if they’d known in advance that I’d be putting them in a blog post. I might have done so with my initial replies as well.

As for identifying the commenters, I will have to feel my way as this blog posting progresses. I will clear in advance whether they are willing to be identified by name, or prefer anonymity. If the latter, I will hope they at least approve my including the content of their comments here. While most comments are from personal emails, a few were made anonymously at a Highlands Forum conference I could not attend, but I heard about them afterwards and am able to reference their content here (h/t Dick O’Neill).

Finally, here’s another caveat: In some instances I do not make a full effort to reply to a question or comment. But I do make a full effort to display the question or comment. That’s partly because I think it is more important to show the questions than to assert my answers about TIMN. Over the long run, TIMN’s vitality and prospects may well depend more on the nature of the questions it prompts than on the lucidity of my answers at this time.

Questions about TIMN’s development as theory

An information-age strategist wrote me to point out that, despite his general interest in my efforts, TIMN still needs a lot of work to become a theory:

“To develop the theory, it would help to define more clearly what the nature of the links are between the nodes. Are they transactions? Trust relationships? Communication lines? Agreement on mutual support? It seems important, because these links go on to define the nature of the social organization. Defining them more precisely would offer greater insight as you go along, and facilitate testable hypotheses.

“You refer to “bad guys” and “good guys” employing each form of organization, and that bad guys tend to be early adopters. What do you mean by “good” and “bad”? Is this a normative or an empirical definition? It’s worth dwelling on, because it begs the question of why “bad” guys would be early adopters. (Perhaps it’s because they are seeking an advantage by playing outside the rules of the existing dominant form of organization, which the good guys are trying to preserve or maintain.) ...

“It would help to make clear whether you are trying to predict which form of organization will prevail, or trying to prescribe which form works better. The two approaches are related, but if you addressed this more precisely, we would, again, be better able to test the model (e.g., Do we expect one form of organization or another to be more efficient, which can be empirically evaluated? Or do we expect one form or another to predominate over others because it represents an equilibrium, that is, a state toward which events move?)

“Finally, if you were to be more precise about the nature of the links between the nodes, it might be possible that one would find that the first three forms (tribes, institutions, markets) are really sub-sets of networks, where a particular kind of transaction, or a particular kind of equilibrium, has become predominant. For example, tribes may reflect a state in which inherited trust relationships predominate, which hierarchical institutions reflect a state in which a single actor or set of actors have been able to impose a set of relationships on others, or one in which actors accept this for the sake of efficiency. One trend seems to be that, as society and technology evolve, the range of possible relationships expands, but then the question is whether these relationships settle into one configuration or another, and why.”

That’s an impressive thoughtful set of points and questions — all oriented to helping with theory-building, and far larger than I can address in this blog post. The email about it arrived at a time when I was ailing, so I’ve postponed replying until now. And I’m limiting my reply to the following for now:

I agree with most all those points. TIMN would benefit from further clarifications about the nature of the forms and their relationships, about what “good” and “bad” mean in different settings, and about what may determine which (if any) form prevails under what circumstances and to what effect. Yet, these are not new concerns for me; I’ve had them all in mind as I’ve gone along. The video may be sketchy, but it’s based on fuller written elaborations (notably here, but also here in this precursor analysis which I should update someday). If all goes well, I will gradually continue to clarify all of them as matters progress, perhaps as follows:

• As to the first point, what may be the best way to theorize about each form — use transaction analysis, which appears to be a default mode these days? try to revive structural-functional analysis, though it has a bad reputation these days? emphasize that all the forms are based on some kind of trust, though nowadays many analysts identify only the network form with trust? stick with emphasizing topology? — is still up in the air for me.

• As for the point about “good” and “bad” actors using the forms, my definitions (or lack thereof) may well remain fuzzy for a while; but my sense remains that further inquiry will keep showing what you suggest: that “bad” actors are keen and flexible about finding organizational as well as technological innovations that provide asymmetrical advantages.

• As to the point about whether TIMN is meant to be predictive or prescriptive, I view it as having the potential to be both — and I’d thought I’d been explicit or at least clearly implicit about that. It would help if I got around to applying TIMN to the analysis of specific societies. For example, TIMN would seem to make it predictable that societies across the MENA region will continue to revolve largely around the tribal form — yet TIMN also means that that their long-term evolution would benefit, prescriptively, from finding ways to disentangle tribal dynamics in those areas where TIMN claims that professional institutional and/or market systems are better. Of course, that sentence contains loaded notions — e.g., evolution, better — but I hope it makes my point okay for now. Each form has attractive efficiency aspects, and balanced equilibrium of some kind does seem advisable according to TIMN — but TIMN may also be used to identify, and expect, disequilibria in societies that are highly tribalized to begin with, not to mention in societies that are further along in TIMN evolution but then suffer crises that lead to a retribaliization of their politics or other affairs.

But I must disagree with the final point about the forms being sub-sets of networks, if that means there are really only three forms, not four. I’ve already written about this (esp. 2006, pp. 22-26) — not enough to settle the matter, yet enough to stake out my position: I started on this track about social evolution by sensing that the network form was on the rise, in a general sense and relative to two other forms: hierarchies and markets — resulting in what I initially called the IMN framework. It did not seem adequate, so I did more research and learned about the earlier tribal form — resulting in the expansion of IMN into the TIMN framework. And despite similarities between the tribal and network forms, I still see them as different enough to be viewed as distinct forms.

Of course, experts in the growing fields of network science and social network analysis have increasingly insisted that all forms of organization — tribes, hierarchies, markets, my bounded notion of networks, whatever — are just sub-sets or variants of those fields’ rather unbounded notion of networks. Perhaps that is what your point reflects; and I’m not saying those fields are wrong, only that I am using “networks” in a much more bounded organizational sense. The contrast may well take a long time to shake out. Odds are, what I am calling networks will end up needing — and eventually breeding — a distinctive new name as their parameters and functions become clear in the decades ahead. Assuming of course that TIMN is valid.

Even so, I shall remain open to a possibility — expressed mainly in episodic footnotes — that the +N form is some kind of upgraded futurized version of the T form, and thus that there really are only three cardinal forms of organization. I’ll discuss that and some implications later in this very post; but it’s not my favorite possibility. I’d rather keep theorizing in the directions laid out above.

More about numbers, levels, and interactions

A futurist best known for his science-fiction novels — David Brin — referred me to a briefing he’d done about future threat potentials. Then, in what led to a somewhat confusing exchange, I reacted to a slide (#14 here) that depicted information flows “among society’s three levels” — said to be “Formal / hierarchical institutions”, “Arena-Markets for creative competition”, and “The People” — that appeared to be somewhat TIMNish in design:

Me: “Yes, there is some overlap between your three-part and my four-part scheme. Actually, I’ve seen a lot more three-part than four-part schemes in my wanderings. You refer to “the people” while others tend to refer to “civil society” as the third part. And whether the parts are “levels” or something else also varies from analyst to analyst. In any case, there is still a lot to be wondered about in these regards.”

Brin: “David, the distinction is not between 3 and 4 [forms]. It is between linear and parallel. You seem to be saying that these structures evolve into each other as a progression, leaving the old structure behind. I see them all co-existing, with the new ones layering OVER the older ones... in much the same way that the mammalian cortex laid upon the fish-reptile lower brain, and the primate cortex on top of that and our prefrontals on top... Emergent properties do not always eliminate the old. Hence, 4 becomes 3 when you realize that both tribal and networked interactions involve the People. Networks do not emerge easily out of hierarchies or lateral competition arenas, but they do emerge when tribal beings are unleashed to associate at will.”

Me: “But my writings about TIMN have never said that the old structures are left behind or eliminated, or that older forms evolve just into the newer. That should be evident even in the briefing-style video. Co-existent layering is an aspect of my view, and I regard “layering” as a better term than “levels” if that term implies levels of analysis.”

He agreed that “your slides did say that”, and thus ended our minor differences. Yet, I value the exchange for reasons that are not so minor. It speaks to the continuing challenge of whether to opt for a three- or four-fold design — and the related challenge of distinguishing between tribes and networks. It also speaks to the significance of regarding TIMN as being more about layers than levels — and his metaphor about layering in the human brain seems quite apt to me.

Today, I’d add an afterthought. Why not say that all the TIMN forms arise out of “the people” — the tribal form included. That way “the people” are not necessarily defined in terms of any particular form of organization.

Yet another trifold distinction — and even Bismarck comes up

Another commenter who is generally supportive of TIMN — blogfriend L.C. Rees — tried to expand my historical horizons by bringing up the trifold nature of “classical republicanism” in ancient Greece, and then by noting Bismarck’s dedication to having a strong central state:

“Your discussion of balancing the forms reminded me of classical republicanism (res publica can be translated “the public thing” or “common wealth”) and the idea of the mixed constitution as advanced by Plato and popularized by Polybius where the orders or estates (generally the monarch, aristocracy, (upper end) commoners, with the priests sometimes having their own body) were ideally kept in balance. Some have wildly speculated that this three (or four) part division of society echoes the “primordial” structure of proto-Indo-European society:

“I’m reminded on the sharp divide between Otto von Bismarck and his advisors over the design of the first welfare state. Many of Bismarck’s advisors wanted to strengthen local charities and associations that already provided a proto-safety net in some parts of the newly reunified Germany. Bismarck wanted to create loyalty to the Second Reich by establishing a direct payment mechanism that linked worker to state. Bismarck won that debate.”

My reply: I’m leaving open a possibility that TIMN could yet turn out to be a three-fold system, if the +N part turns out to be a recasting of the ancient T part to suit our times. I gather some people on the Left would prefer that. But if so, then the +I and +M parts will get recast in the distant future too, in a kind of spiral, which those same people on the Left would not appreciate. But for now, I’m sticking with the four-part view I have, and shoving the above possibility into occasional footnotes.

The point about Bismarck is interesting. But it also reminds me that I’m remiss, and may always be, at bringing historical examples into play in the elaboration of TIMN — much as I appreciate having the examples pointed out.

After this exchange, he sent some clarifications that were further in support of TIMN, but also showed how complicated its application to history might become:

"Just to clarify, my remarks are not an endorsement of the triform form of the theory (TIM?). I find the quadriform version a better balance ...

"Networks may have features that they strongly share with tribes but each of the four forms share characteristics with the others and in reality are hopelessly intermixed. But examining networks as a distinct manifestation of human society seems to me to be a more promising approach.

"... classical republicanism and the "trifunctional hypothesis" (the latter being psuedoscience), were examples of overall societal balancing in general but not specifically of TIMNish balancing since most of the balancing bodies would be institutions (and their constituent tribes) balancing against other institutions (and their constituent tribes).

"The last example, that of Bismarck, was cited because it is clearly TIMNish in that Bismarck was explicitly trying to loosen local ties to other forms in favor of tightening the ties between individuals and a larger, less localized institution. It's not cleanly TIMNish though since the local ties Bismarck was trying to weaken could simultaneously be ties to local German tribes, institutions, markets, and even networks left over from before German unification."

He is not the only one who commented about the intermixing of forms, and about leaders trying to balance institutional actors that depend on embedded tribal actors.

Penetrations of one form by another

Another information-age strategist figured, in keeping with a newspaper report, that efforts at nation-building in the Palestinian city Jenin provided “an interesting example of how the TIMN forms interact; and in this case, I think the best word to characterize the interaction is "interpenetration." ... Notice that clan/criminal relationships operated inside of the formal hierarchical “I” structure of the Palestinian Authority; I think this is quite a different relationship than the types of “I” - “T” interactions we discussed at the Forum.”

My response: What’s reported in the article looks like standard TIMN dynamics to me, as I understand them. This case is about the persistence of the tribal/clan form and its dynamics in ways that hinder the proper professional construction and performance of state (and other hierarchical) institutions. It’s going on all over the place still. (And Washington is reverting too.)

Though I may misread, “interpenetration” is mentioned as though it might be a difficulty for TIMN. Not at all. Some interpenetration is bound to occur; it should be manageable, and may even be helpful (e.g., old-boy networks, when positive). The Jenin case looks like it amounts to excessive penetration (not really interpenetration?) by clan actors into the efforts to build a modern institutional field. It used to be the case in Europe too, centuries ago. Getting the institutional form right is hard work and takes ages.

On a broader note, this kind of situation helps explain why I remain cautious and dubious about so many U.S. efforts to advance liberal democracy around the world. Our narrative, if not our strategy, is designed around modern notions about economic development and related matters, but we seem to lack clear emphatic ways to grasp and address the persistence of tribal / clan actors in settings where their power is embedded. Moreover, we often call them criminals (and many indeed are), but in their view they are not at all criminals — they’re just doing things in their customary patrimonial corporatist ways.

TIMN as implying various types of leadership

Elsewhere, I heard that participants at a Highlands Forum session where the TIMN video was shown raised issues about its implications for leadership. One participant wondered whether different kinds of leadership might correspond to the different TIMN forms, adding that, even though leaders may prefer a networked type of leadership in some contexts, it may still be necessary to use an old-fashioned hierarchical form, if only so people know leadership is occurring. Another participant proposed that all leaders — perhaps especially in Asia with its heterogeneous peoples — may have to dig back into tribal leadership styles in many situations. Yet another participant questioned how leaders are chosen under each of the TIMN forms.

Again, while I was not there, I think these are all worthy points that cut across all four TIMN forms. Yes, each form does imply a different kind of leadership. (And in light of comments above, I can sense new questions about how tribal and network styles of leadership — not to mention followership — may differ.) Such points often arise in regard to modern management models and schemes, some of which I have discussed in a prior blog post (here). That such points arise in connection with TIMN too is, in my view, to its credit. I’ve even mused at times that TIMN could be turned into a kind of management consulting device that’d be just as sound as some established schemes. But going in that direction is not for me; I’d rather stick with trying to be a theorist.

Q’s & A’s about “TIMN in 20 minutes” (1st of 7): TIMN as a set of narratives

My video presentation “TIMN in 20 minutes” (located here and here) prompted a range of comments and questions, mostly via email but also at a few blogs and other sites. This post assembles those comments and my replies, as a way to keep advancing TIMN.

Here’s a list of blogs and other sites that showed interest in the video:

Highlands Forum (h/t Dick O’Neill)

The P2P Foundation (h/t Michel Bauwens)

Spinuzzi (h/t Clay Spinuzzi)

ZenPundit (h/t Charles Cameron)

Intercontinental Cry (h/t Jay Taber)

Contrary Brin (h/t David Brin)

The Challenge Network

Harold Jarche (and again)

Thinking and Learning in the Digital Age

Gael Van Weyenbergh (aka stroombank)

Charles van der Haegen

Chemoton & Vitorino Ramos’ research notebook

KeySo Global Blog

Ann Pendleton-Jullian at TEDxGeorgetown

This series of posts about the video does not cover all discussions I heard about. In particular, I missed a discussion at the Facebook site of The P2P foundation, because I’ve avoided joining Facebook. The overlaps between TIMN and P2P theory, as well as some differences between them, are so pronounced (as noted at the end of a prior blog post here) that I’ll hope to say more about them in the future. Meanwhile, if I missed any other discussions, please inform me.

After collating the comments, I felt they could be arranged thematically into seven parts for this series of posts, as follows:

1. TIMN as a set of narratives

2. Nature of the forms and their relationships

3. Past, present, and future of democracy

4. Creation of a new sector?

5. Significance of information technology

6. Space-time-action aspects

7. Toward a mathematics of TIMN?

In some instances, my replies at the time are reprinted verbatim here, but in other instances I’ve modified my reply a bit, usually to cut excess verbiage, or to expand and clarify further. In all instances, the comments and my replies should be regarded as rough drafts. Indeed, some of the commenters might have written their comments differently if they’d known in advance that I’d be putting them in a blog post. I might have done so with my initial replies as well.

As for identifying the commenters, I will have to feel my way as this blog posting progresses. I will clear in advance whether they are willing to be identified by name, or prefer anonymity. If the latter, I will hope they at least approve my including the content of their comments here. While most comments are from personal emails, a few were made anonymously at a Highlands Forum conference I could not attend, but I heard about them afterwards and am able to reference their content here (h/t Dick O’Neill).

Finally, here’s another caveat: In some instances I do not make a full effort to reply to a question or comment. But I do make a full effort to display the question or comment. That’s partly because I think it is more important to show the questions than to assert my answers about TIMN. Over the long run, TIMN’s vitality and prospects may well depend more on the nature of the questions it prompts than on the lucidity of my answers at this time.

TIMN as a set of strategic narratives

An expert on strategic narratives — Amy Zalman — “wondered whether there are particular narrative forms that might be associated with each” TIMN form. She even speculated that the possibilities extended into “different ways of telling” whereby different art forms might be used to express different TIMN forms.

I replied: Yes, I’ve long thought that TIMN can be viewed as a strategic narrative. The whole thing can be treated as a strategic narrative, and so can each form by itself. TIMN thus becomes a narrative that’s not only about the past and future; it can also be used to support other current narratives (e.g., about the wisdom of developing proper market systems), as well as to assail and undercut still other narratives (e.g., extremist religious narratives that seem more about virulent tribalism than true religion).

I’ll just mention some points I conveyed, sketchily, all preceded by “in my view”:

Tribal narratives are mostly about the origin and nature of a people, their identity and place. Tribal narratives tend to emphasize how to live in mutual solidarity, with honor, pride, respect, and dignity. They demonize outsiders who tread and dishonor.

Institutional narratives tend to be about order and hierarchy, why they exist (e.g., God and King), why people should abide and obey.

Market narratives recognize the value of the individual and his/her rights to pursue opportunities and develop capabilities. Freedom becomes key. Competition is valued. It’s not that the tribal and institutional forms fail to “explain the self”, but rather that the rise of the market form helps enable a new kind of explanation.

Network narratives go even farther to value the self, and to allow for augmenting the self. They also recognize “collective individualism” (or “networked individualism”). At the same time, the current crop of network narratives seem to be more about how networks may serve to modify and/or counter narratives associated with the preceding forms. It’s still far from clear what a mature network narrative will look like. It’s early for that.

To that, I added a comment about religious narratives: There are lots of expressions that reflect the tribal form, including many sects. The Papacy epitomizes the hierarchical institutional form; Protestantism the market form. I’m not sure about what religious expressions go with the network form yet, but I hope it’s more than the new-age stuff, and eventually becomes something more ecumenical, associative, and combinatorial.

As for artistic expressions that might attend each form, our exchange was too brief to be conclusive. Associating heroic poetry and folk music with the tribal form seemed to make sense, as did associating classical masses with the institutional form, jazz and rock-and-roll with the market form, and perhaps ambient electronica with the network form (à la Brian Eno’s music). But we remained uncertain about where to place the novel and the symphony. In any case, our exchange implied that it might well be interesting to consider how various art forms do (or do not) reflect the roles of TIMN forms in particular times and cultures. (And I might add, although I did not say so in our exchange, I wondered some years ago about proposing to an art museum to do a study about the historical evolution of painting from a TIMN perspective.)

Elsewhere, at a Highlands Forum session I was unable to attend, she observed that narratives represent a kind of power, including about how life should be regulated. Quite so, I’d say. What I’d add now is that, important as narratives are about each TIMN form, TIMN also implies narratives about relations among the forms — in the case of advanced societies, narratives about taking all the forms into account, elevating their bright sides over their dark sides, making all four work together, keeping them in balance, recognizing not only the strengths but also the limits of each form, and realizing that proper regulation is essential, including via regulatory interfaces. In other words, it seems to me, TIMN implies the kinds of narrative lines that get abused every day by political ideologues on Fox News, as well as by religious extremists in the Middle East, who seek to purify, polarize, and tribalize in ways that violate TIMN’s relational principles.

TIMN’s implications for diplomacy and “soft power”

After viewing the video, a diplomatic historian — Alan Henrikson — wondered “what this might mean for the understanding of Diplomacy, which now seems to operate in all four domains simultaneously. Even in the tribal, in some parts of the world.” As a result, “Diplomacy is a very difficult subject to teach now.” He mused whether TIMN’s “concepts are much clearer, more structured, and deeper than concepts(?) such as “soft power” or “smart power.” Those terms, in my view, conceal rather than reveal.”

Much as I agreed with his points, and much as I’ve long had my own critique of the “soft power” concept, I refrained from saying much at the time. But then I spotted a critique that Amy Zalman had just posted online (here). It was not about TIMN, but it prompted me to revisit points I’d wanted to make since first hearing from Henrikson.

So I noted the following: The “soft-power” concept deserves critical review, the “smart-power” concept even more so. I have had major reservations about how soft power has been defined — it is too identified with being attractive, benignly so, when in fact it may (and sometimes should) be used to shun or repel or deceive. Yet, that definitional matter ought to be correctable. What I find more objectionable is “smart power” — it’s just a clever stand-in for sound strategy, not a new way to think about power, for sound strategy has always combined hard and soft elements. It’s fine to ask what would be a smart strategy or a smart way to use power; but the term “smart power” is pretentious hype, if not bogus.

As you indicate, analysis of the shifting nature of power should include something about narratives — narrative or narrational power. When what’s being fought over are resources, colonies, routes, and other hard geopolitical stuff, hard power and realpolitik may matter most. But when religion, ideology, and culture are at stake, when lots of people must be influenced, when media play a big role, and when efforts revolve around who can relate to whom, then soft power (and “noopolitik” — whose story wins) may matter decisively. As you emphasize, it’s the mix that may matter most; soft and hard power are not as inseparable as touted.

Thus struggles for power become struggles involving competing narratives. And I have a criticism to offer about how these get framed. Standard discussions about narratives and counter-narratives repeatedly claim that Al Qaeda (or some other protagonist) has an effective narrative, and that we must come up with a better counter-narrative. This is ahistorical analysis that misses a key point: what is said to be AQ’s narrative is in fact its counter-narrative, reacting to the narratives that Western powers used to gain positions in the Middle East long ago. Many so-called narratives may actually already be counter-narratives, at least in part. So, what we need is not so much a counter-narrative, but a corrected narrative. I suppose I’m arguing a somewhat fine point, but I still think something is amiss with the narrative / counter-narrative frame as it has been presented so far.

While I did not mention TIMN in these remarks, it was always in the back of my mind. In my view, TIMN not only has correct narrative lines embedded in it; it also offers a way — potentially a methodology, even a forensic narratology — for deconstructing and reassessing rival narratives.

Strategic multiplexity revisited: a conceptual update

Four years ago, I posted about “Strategic multiplexity: another notion for our troubled times.” I proposed the term as a way to help think about the fact that U.S. relations with many actors abroad increasingly combined a mix of cooperative, competitive, and conflictive ties, all at once.

The term extended from my interest in how, in complex systems fraught with shifting alliances, out-competing may depend on out-cooperating. I also meant for the term to reflect work by Jeffrey Cooper and others who were wondering how best to deal with complex network-like situations where cooperation, competition, and conflict were all interactively intertwined.

Cooper was focused on discerning “New Approaches to Cyber-Deterrence” (see appendix below). But the underlying challenge — how to deal with situations that produce wild gritty mixes of cooperation, competition, and conflict — extends far beyond the cyber domain. Indeed, it dominates the news this very day, as Arab and other Islamic streets explode with anti-American rage, mostly in societies where we’d like to have cooperative relations.

When I drafted the 2008 post, I searched to see whether anyone else had fielded the term “strategic multiplexity” — and nothing turned up, though of course “multiplexity” by itself is a key term in network analysis. Now, four years later, I’ve come across (h/t orgtheory.net) a pertinent essay titled “Strategic multiplexity” by Andrew Shipilov (INSEAD, France) in the journal Strategic Organization (August 2012, pp. 215-222). His orientation is quite different and more academic, but it tracks with my own and thus helps keep the term in motion — which is why I call attention to it here.

According to Shipilov, “we are missing a possibility to examine how multiple kinds of relationships could simultaneously affect network dynamics and network outcomes.

“In this essay I attempt to sketch a research agenda for a strategic multiplexity perspective that should address this shortcoming. The three key premises of this perspective are that (a) organizations are simultaneously embedded in different kinds of relationships, (b) these relationships are interdependent and (c) this interdependence influences organizations.” (p. 215)

For Shipilov, as for other network analysts (see appendix below), the term enables network theory to continue moving away from treating actors as though they are unitary nodes who have unitary interests and uniplex ties. The ensuing emphasis, then, is that “strategic multiplexity is inherently a multilevel perspective” (p. 715). Accordingly, various kinds of interpersonal and inter-firm ties may cut across different formal and informal levels within and between firms. And this may help to show how informal interpersonal relationships may lead to formalized strategic partnerships.

Along the way, he lays out an interesting distinction between pipes and prisms:

“We know that networks act as pipes and prisms for organizations. Pipes provide access to resources and information, while prisms shape the perceptions that others have about the organization’s quality and social standing. Strategic multiplexity allows the development of theoretical models capturing the role of multiple kinds of pipes and multiple kinds of prisms that enable organizations to achieve a network-based competitive advantage.” (p. 217)

In sum, he extols strategic multiplexity as a concept for comprehending how the world keeps changing:

“The strategic multiplexity perspective can have a broad impact on social science. As the world around us is becoming more interconnected, reciprocal cross-level effects become more pronounced in our economic and social lives. For example, established formal relationships of exchange and power in many societies have influenced informal communication for centuries, until they were ripped apart by the grassroots communication revolutions enabled by social media. New technologies increasingly play the role of aggregating mechanisms in collectivities, such as societies or organizations. The downward influence of macro- to the micro-structures is increasingly giving way to reciprocal influences in which both micro- and macro-structures co-evolve. By forcing ourselves to better understand strategic multiplexity, the associated aggregating mechanisms and reciprocal cross-level effects, we should be able to better understand the momentous changes happening in the social systems around us as well.” (p. 220)

Good points; I quite agree. Yet it’s not entirely clear (at least not to me) what his paper means by “strategic multiplexity” and how it differs from and improves upon the standard network-analysis notion of multiplexity. Shipilov’s focus, like that of most network analysts, is on multilevel ties that tend to interact so as to reinforce each other. His strategic optic, I gather, is about how multiplex ties may serve to create competitive advantages and strategic partnerships. Thus, his use of the concept is not only descriptive; it starts to have prescriptive implications for strategy.

Okay, fine. But his is still a limited firm-oriented optic. I’d like to see more about multiplex ties, whether at the same or different levels, that involve contradictions and inconsistencies vis à vis other kinds of actors — relations that may be competitive and conflictive as well as cooperative. Therein lie greater challenges for using the concept for prescriptive purposes that may help us understand better how actors delineate strategies for maneuvering in complex situations — be those actors governments, firms, civil-society organizations, or parts and pieces of them, not to mention tribes and clans (or even criminal organizations) who revel in multiplex dealings in parts of the world.

John Arquilla and I used to write quite a lot about the importance of building networks, and many other writers now do so as well. So I don’t want to burden this post with much reiteration about that. Again, my key purpose here is, simply and hopefully, to use Shipilov’s paper to add momentum to the strategic-multiplexity concept. But I would conclude with a remark or two about today’s headline news:

The Arab Spring is suddenly, exasperatingly, showing signs of moldering into an Arab blight. If/as this continues, American links with societies across North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia will be increasingly fraught with an evermore wicked complexity — indeed, with strategic multiplexity. As I’ve indicated before, in connection with TIMN, patrimonial corporatism exerts a much stronger pull than liberal democracy in those regions, largely because of the enduring sway of the tribal form and attendant tribalisms. In such contexts, figuring out how to deal with strategic multiplexity — discerning what kinds of cooperative and competitive relations to build across which levels and sectors in order to counter conflictive relations elsewhere — is a bigger deeper question than merely asking (if not posturing) whether the U.S. government is perceived to be a strong horse.

. . . . . . .

Appendix: Two pertinent writings

I referred above to Jeff Cooper’s paper about finding “New Approaches to Cyber-Deterrence: Initial Thoughts on a New Framework” (2009). It never uses a term like strategic multiplexity, but his points bear on what I’ve had in mind. Hence, I offer the following exemplary quotes from it:

“Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict. Among the most important of the circumstances mandating a new logic is an international system that is no longer dominated by a bipolar structure, in which both non-state actors and networks of actors (among them ““virtual communities””) have emerged as important factors in international relations. As part of reformulating deterrence for this new environment, this research effort introduces two concepts as key components for cyber-deterrence. The first is a new framework that we term the “Three Cs”— Cooperation, Competition, and Conflict. This framework explicitly recognizes that both we and our potential adversaries (as well as friends, allies, and other actors) now conduct multiple but distinct, relationships with each other across numerous and diverse channels of interaction; and as we participate in networks with a wide range of other parties, we perform different functions, can assume different personas, and often exhibit substantially different behaviors at the same time. ...

“Networked Deterrence. The second key concept in this approach — the “networked deterrence” concept — argues that networks themselves are increasingly the key underpinning of international power and influence and, therefore, represent the real source of value.” (2009, pp. 4-5)

“... It [the 3Cs framework] recognizes that actors can pursue different objectives in different networks and that these three types of relations can exist contemporaneously or simultaneously, resulting in complex “mixed-motive games.” Importantly, such “mixed-motive” games do not, unlike Nash equilibria, produce stable optimum solutions. In fact, for assessing decisions by these actors, the decision space may resemble the sets of multiple attractors produced by complex systems in which predicting the choice among them is impossible.” (pp. 121-22)

“[I]t is now a reality that all players — including states, as well as individuals and other non-state actors, regardless of whether or not they are terrorists or terrorist groups — are entangled in multiple types of relationships. The first key aspect of the “networked deterrence” concept rests on an understanding that these relationships powerfully affect every actor’s motivations and behaviors, and hence their decision calculus. This concept argues consequentially that affecting (or threatening to affect) those relationships can influence the behaviors of an actor; and it should be generally applicable to forestalling a wide range of potential threats.” (p. 129)

“Implicit in the results of this research is a conclusion that a policy of “engagement,” if it is to yield any benefits for the U.S., must create a set of conditions in which all parties to the relationship understand that reciprocity is important. Engagement may imply cooperation, that is, seeking a mutually beneficial outcome, but that does not mean the relationship has to be “friendly.” 160-161

Meanwhile, academic network theorists have been turning more and more to the analysis of multiplexity (but not strategic multiplexity per se). A good example is a paper by Seungyoon Lee and Peter Monge, “The Coevolution of Multiplex Communication Networks in Organizational Communities,” in the Journal of Communication (2011, pp. 758–779). It, much like Shipilov’s paper, emphasizes “multiconnectivity” and the expansion of partnerships across multiple sectors. Here are a few quotes (minus footnote and other citation references):

“Typically, studies of organizational communication networks have explored uniplex networks, those built on a single relation that creates a single network, rather than multiplex networks, those involving multiple relations that create multiple networks. Yet, tie multiplexity is a fundamental aspect of social relations because multiple types of network ties are frequently interdependent, and ties in one network have been shown to influence the formation or dissolution of ties in other networks.” (pp. 758-759)

“Ultimately, the dynamics of multiplex networks suggest that organizations can take advantage of their position in one network for building their positions in other networks. Second, efforts for selecting potential partners can be facilitated across multiple networks, as the presence of ties in one network is expected to increase potential tie formation in other networks. Third, for the purpose of mitigating the uneven structure of global networks, it is expected that intervention in one network will influence other networks.” (p. 773)

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Double thanks to Charles Cameron for spotting that a link had an error, and that text was missing near the end of the main body of this post.  Now corrected.

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UPDATE / ADDENDUM — September 22. 2012:

I appreciate an email from Andrew Shipilov noting that my write-up seems “quite right” regarding his view of using the term “strategic” in combination with “multiplexity”.

In trying to learn more about multiplexity, his research, and INSEAD, I came across the results of the INSEAD Conference on Network Evolution 2.0, held October 22-23, 2010. Various presentations dealt with multiplexity (but not strategic multiplexity). Here are germane quotes from two (available via .zip download here):

According to David Obstfeld, Steve Borgatti, and Jason Davis, “Increases in the heterogeneity found in multiplex ties demand greater brokerage intensity. ... The intensity of brokerage behavior increases as network multiplexity increases. ... We predict that brokerage intensity is increasingly relevant in multiplex structures in non-routine environments...”

Moreover according to Goce Andrevski, Joe Labianca, and Walter Ferrier, “Differences in firms’ strategies explain why firms become embedded in different network structures:  – Advantage-enhancing tendency leads to dense network structure and more strong ties – Advantage-creating tendency leads to sparse network structure and more weak ties”.

I also appreciate an email from Peter Monge in which he points out an issue of the International Journal of Communication (2011) that contains a special section on “Network Multidimensionality in the Digital Age,” edited by him, Manuel Castells, and Noshir Contractor. I especially recommend a look at the prologue. The focus is on “multidimensionality” — a far broader concept than multiplexity — but its papers occasionally bear on multiplexity (though not strategic multiplexity).

Such readings offer further insight and inspiration for wondering about strategic multiplexity. In particular, they illuminate the significance of brokers — a point that Shipilov’s paper also makes in passages I did not note above. In any case, many questions remain about how strategy and multiplexity may affect each other, and more to the point, how multiplexity may be exploited (even deliberately constructed) for strategic purposes.

UPDATE / ADDENDUM — November 16, 2012:

I'm informed about an early (1996) paper on “economic multiplexity” that tends to be about “strategic multiplexity” as well. It concerns firms that are partners in some instances, rivals in others — “instances of multimarket competition, multiple cooperative alliances, multiple buyer-supplier relations, cooperative ties between product-market competitors, etc.” The paper — Javier Gimeno and Catherine Y. Woo, "Economic Multiplexity: The Stuctural Embeddedness of Cooperation in Multiple Relations of Interdependence" — was published in a professional book series on management strategy.  Today it still deserves to be included in current literature reviews, including for its early discussion of “the consequences of economic multiplexity for interfirm cooperation.”

Blog update in two parts: (2) learning about Colossus

A quick thanks to all who wished me well via blog comments, emails, and calls. But this post isn’t about my recovery from that rear-end auto collision. No, this post is about something I’ve learned as a result of the accident: that there’s yet another computer system out there — one I’d never heard about before — that appears to run against the grain of my old optimistic hopes for the information revolution. This system, called Colossus, looks like a further sign that we’re seeing the rise of a new kind of computerized corporatism: what I’d like to call “cybercratic corporatism”.

I first learned of Colossus in a form letter from the insurance company of the person whose car rammed into my car. And I’ve been told that Colossus may — or may not — be used to determine an appropriate compensation for the medical part of my claim, after I file.

Colossus is evidently an expert system, loaded with data and algorithms, constantly updated and tweeked, about thousands of automobile accidents involving bodily injuries and medical claims. It was constructed in the mid 1990s, mainly at the behest of one major insurance company that wanted to cut costs, curb large payouts, and constrain its adjustors. Today dozens of insurance companies use it. It is owned by an outside computer services enterprise.

I’m not going to describe Colossus in detail here. I really don’t know a lot about it yet. I’m not even sure how central it is. But if you want to learn more and see some sources, just search the web using the following set of four terms: automobile insurance colossus computer. Doing so will yield some remarkable discussions, not to mention criticisms and allegations — e.g., about the possibilty of using it to low-ball claimants, whose “data” may or may not be entered in ways that best reflect their condition; or using it to constrain adjustors, who may receive incentives and bonuses based on their performance vis à vis Colossus.

Now, my interests are broader than Colossus by itself. Many of us — myself included — have long had hopes and expectations that the information age will favor bottom-up forces, foster greater openness, transparency, and democracy, and make hierarchies more responsive. Yet we’ve also remained warily cognizant that the information age may also be used to strengthen top-down controls, enable greater surveillance and monitoring, and facilitate secretive denial, deception, and disinformation operations. Lately there have been myriad developments in the United States and around the world that reflect all such tendencies; and which ones may prevail in the future is far from clear, far from certain.

What I’m learning about Colossus adds to my skepticism and pessimism. Colossus has a sensible economic rationality behind it, including cost-cutting and managerial rationalization. But it seems to be designed and applied as much for game theory as economic rationality. Colossus appears to be a strategic, operational, and tactical device that may be used to exert top-down control over claimants, adjustors, interactions between claimants and adjustors, and perhaps even over relations with other insurance companies.

Why is this so interesting? I have a longstanding theoretical interest in the futuristic prospects for “cyberocracy” (rule by information) and how its rise may modify and even supercede age-old “-ocracies” — like bureaucracy and democracy — not to mention various “-isms” — like corporatism and authoritarianism (see my writings, referenced below). Mostly I’ve tried to track implications for government and society at large, not so much for business, in keeping with my personal interests. Yet, I know the business world is being revolutionized by information-age dynamics, in all sorts of ways that many of you may be better informed about than I am. What’s mostly caught my attention is the development of computerized systems to suit the worlds of banking, financing, marketing, and advertising — and I’m often more dismayed than impressed by what I read. And now I can add Colossus to my sense that we are witnessing a further deeper spread of cybercratic corporatism.


[UPDATE — October 25, 2013: More information about Colossus has come to light — notably, a report by Mark Romano and J. Robert Hunter titled Low Ball: An Insider’s Look at How Some Insurers Can Manipulate Computerized Systems to Broadly Underpay Injury Claims (Consumer Federation of America, June 2012). Its Introduction observes that:

“Over the past ten to fifteen years, the payment of bodily injury claims covered by automobile or home and property insurance has evolved from a system based primarily upon the experience and knowledge of claims’ adjusters to a computer-based assessment that has the potential to be easily and broadly manipulated by insurers. This technology has enabled many insurers to increase profits by reducing the amount paid to consumers who file bodily injury liability claims, including uninsured and underinsured motorist claims. Insurers have also been able to hire less-experienced employees to handle these types of claims, since the computer programs conduct much of the decision-making. Few consumers have knowledge of these practices, while even less understand the significant impact that the practices can have on their financial lives. The authors’ primary objective in writing this report is to inform regulators about the technical complexity of this topic and the need to exercise better oversight regarding how these systems can be manipulated to the detriment of consumers. Expanding on a previous CFA report, we hope to further educate consumers filing bodily injury claims about how they can avoid unfair tactics employed by some insurers who use computer-based assessment systems and receive a fair settlement.” (p. 1)

Note the warning that computer programs may “conduct much of the decision-making.” By now, some insurance companies have apparently ceased using Colossus, while others have turned to downplay its relevance, perhaps largely because of outside pro-consumer pressures. Nonetheless, my sense is that cybercratic corporatism remains on a long-term march.]

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References: Regarding the prospects for cyberocracy, see this paper and this blogpost.

Blog update in two parts: (1) blog on hiatus

A quick videogram in two parts:  This part one observes that this blog is on hiatus, pending my continued recovery from the effects of a rear-end auto collision.

In a few days, part two will focus on something I've learned as a result of the collision:  a kind of "cybercratic corporatism" — built around the use of a specialized computer program — is affecting more sectors than I'd known.

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P.S. I ddon’t know why Blogspot's editor to make and insert a video directly from my laptop looks black at first. But the video does play properly after you click on the start arrow.

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TIMN in 20 minutes: a video presentation

Here’s a video that offers an overview about the TIMN framework, its system dynamics, and some future implications. It was filmed at my home in order to enable a presentation about TIMN at recent Highlands Forum meetings, after I demurred about traveling to participate in them.

The presentation proceeds in three segments. Segment One is about how TIMN got started. It provides background and a basic description of TIMN.

Segment Two is about how TIMN works. It relates my sense of TIMN’s system dynamics, emphasizing general propositions that hold across the evolution of all four TIMN forms.

Segment Three is about where TIMN is headed. It focuses on the rise of the network (N) form and prospects that a new sector may develop around it. It reflects recent posts at this blog about Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street, as well as about Red Toryism, P2P theory, and monitory democracy.

My presentation indicated that there would be a slide about follow-up readings at the end of the video, but it's missing from this somewhat shortened version.  So I'm inserting it here:

There is still much to be discerned and said about all these matters. And I am lagging way behind on my intended arc of postings. Yet, for now, the video provides a good update, and points in the right direction — or so I hope.

I’m very pleased, all things considered, that the video turned out so well. Special thanks to Richard O’Neill (Highlands Forum) for making the video possible, and to Marc Alexander (independent filmmaker) for producing it so appealingly.

Praise for “monitory democracy”: a concept attuned to TIMN (Part 2 of 2)

As noted in my Part-1 post on monitory democracy, I’m always on lookout for concepts that may help show how the +N (network) part of TIMN may unfold in the future. John Keane’s concept of “monitory democracy” is one of the best I’ve seen lately.

The Part-1 post summarized the concept and provided preliminary review comments. This Part-2 post assesses the concept’s relevance to TIMN.

I’m interested in “monitory democracy” for its own merits. But doing this double-post now is prompted by my intent to refer to monitory democracy, but sparingly, in the final (Part-IV, upcoming) post in my coterminous series on the causes, conduct, and consequences of Occupy! and related pro-democracy movements.

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Monitory democracy and TIMN: major similarities, minor differences

TIMN is about the rise of network (N) forms of organization; how they work differently from older tribal (T), hierarchical institutional (I), and market (M) forms; and how the whole thing can be assembled into a theory of social evolution that spans the ages from monoform (T-centric), to biform (T+I), to triform (T+I+M), to quadriform (T+I+M+N) societies. According to TIMN, the rise of the information-age network (+N) form is strengthening civil society more than state and market actors, and will lead to the growth of a new sector that is different and separate from the existing public and private sectors. TIMN associates this with the spread of networked NGOs and other entities that act as sensory organizations and do lots of watching and monitoring.

Keane’s view is remarkably consistent with TIMN. The concept of monitory democracy parallels, overlaps, and reinforces much that I’ve said about TIMN. The similarities are not precise — see the next two sections for some major differences. Yet his concept is tantamount to a missing piece in TIMN — a piece that slots into place quite nicely. I like it in lots of ways, as follows:

I like his emphasis on monitoring. My TIMN efforts have long pointed to the monitoring roles of NGOs and other actors involved in the rise of the network form (see Appendix 1), and related to that, the growth of vast new sensory apparatuses, both organizational and technological, that enable monitoring (see Appendix 2). But I never thought of elevating monitoring to a degree that redefines and renames the nature of democracy.

I like 1945 as a date for the start of monitory democracy. For TIMN, I’ve often wondered when to date the start of the rise of the +N form. Sometime in the mid-to-late 20th century, for sure. But when, why? The +N form doesn’t start to take-off until faxes come into play in the 1970s. But seminal experiments with organizational networking occurred earlier, in the 1960s, notably with the civil-rights and anti-war movements. I’ve not seen a way to put the take-off date earlier. But Keane’s account shows that the stage-setting ferment for networked activism within civil society began decades earlier, circa 1945, with the appearance of monitoring “inventions” all across civil society, often operating outside the standard boundaries of the state- and market-related public and private sectors. Thus, these early inventions were not extensions of the prevailing +I or +M parts of TIMN; they were a new breed of actors and entities — forerunners — awaiting a capacity to link up and maneuver in +N directions.

I like Keane’s emphasis on civil society. TIMN also regards civil society as a growing source of monitory power vis à vis state and market actors. And related to that, I like Keane’s point that monitory democracy brings new kinds of checks and balances. TIMN is very much about each form being used in proper ways vis à vis the other forms — ways that would keep the forms and their realms largely separated, limited, balanced, and mutually regulated. I see monitory democracy fitting well with that.

I like Keane’s point that the progression from assembly to representative to monitory democracy does not mean that the old forms are displaced by the new. Rather, the old continue to coexist with the new, and they all work on and with each other. Likewise, TIMN is about the layering and compounding of all the TIMN forms and their respective realms, in a preferred progression over time.

I also like Keane’s recognition that all three types of democracy have both bright and dark sides. This too is TIMNish. Keane does not extol monitory democracy in utopian terms, any more than TIMN is utopian about the rise of the +N network form. Indeed, if the trends behind monitory democracy turn out to generate far more surveillance than sousveillance, the outcome might be more a monitory cyberocracy than a monitory democracy.

And I like that Keane’s concept offers a way to look beyond Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis. TIMN does so as well; and I plan to eventually post about this. As a reminder, Fukuyama’s famed thesis (1992, p. xi, quoting from 1989) held that “[L]iberal democracy may constitute the “end point of man’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government,” … the “end of history.”” From a TIMN perspective, Fukuyama’s thesis is thoroughly triformist (T+I+M); it does not grasp that the network form of organization is on the rise and will remake history by creating quadriformist (T+I+M+N) societies. Rather similar to TIMN, Keane’s monitory democracy means that political evolution is far from ending. The forces and dynamics behind Keane’s concept will grow throughout this century. Something quite different from liberal democracy á la Fukuyama seems bound to result.

Monitory democracy vs. TIMN: differences along with similarities

Despite all these likeable similarities, there are some major differences I’d highlight:

Keane’s progression from assembly to representative to monitory democracy makes good sense, and aligns quite well with the progression of TIMN forms. But with qualifications. As I’ve long intended to show (2006, p. 39, fn. 16), each TIMN form may be associated with a different type of democracy. Thus TIMN implies four, not three, types of democracy.

What I’ve had in mind means that Keane’s assembly democracy corresponds well to the tribal (T) form; consultative consensus-seeking in tribal councils — majority rule — was indeed the first type of democracy. Representative democracy evolved later, when it appears first in hierarchical state-centric (+I) societies, and then is more fully realized in later societies where the (+M) market form takes hold as well. Monitory democracy corresponds to the modern rise of the (+N) network form and its effects on civil society.

Which leads to a discrepancy. TIMN implies that representative democracy — or should I say liberal democracy, with its allowances for political parties to compete and for dissenting minorities to have rights — corresponds best to triformist T+I+M societies where the market (+M) form has taken hold, penetrating and modifying the state (+I) realm. That leaves a question as to what kind of democracy corresponds just to a biform T+I system that revolves around a central (+I) state hierarchy, and where the +M form has not emerged, esp. if it is being prevented from doing so. The answer, I detect, is what is now called democratic centralism — a sheltered pyramidal institutional (+I) system in which allowances are made for the selection of lower-level representatives who then select or otherwise approve higher-level ones, tier by tier, until the top ruler (e.g., a dictator like Lenin, Mao, or Castro) is validated, along with his chosen cadre. It’s essentially hierarchical but can claim to be democratic. Variants I’ve spotted include “consultative dictatorship”, “authoritarian deliberation”, and “networked authoritarianism” — mostly in connection with efforts to characterize China’s system today.

From a TIMN stance, such a four-part typology makes more analytic sense than a three-part. But I’ve not yet gone through the history of democracy enough to document that it makes factual historical sense as well. Making a good case would require identifying past examples of democratic centralism, say in medieval monarchies or the Papacy, in order to show that what may seem like early examples of representative democracy can be recategorized and better understood, from a TIMN perspective, as instances of democratic centralism. Any suggestions?

This difference in Keane’s and TIMN’s approaches to typologizing democracy is reflected in our views about the nature of enabling technologies. I like very much Keane’s association of each age of democracy with a different information and communications technology: assembly democracy in ancient times, with the spoken word and early writing; next, representative democracy, with first print, then telegraph and radio, and lately television; and now monitory democracy with all sorts of new digital media. This is very TIMNish. I have long associated the rise of the tribal form with early language and writing; the hierarchical institutional form, with the mechanical print revolution; the market form, with the electronic revolution (telegraph, telephone, radio); and now the new network form, with the digital media revolution.

That’s quite an overlap between our analyses — but notice the discrepancy: Keane associates representative democracy with both the mechanical and the electronic revolutions. In contrast, TIMN says the two are so different that they help explain the phasing of two different forms of organization. The +I and +M phases each require, in turn, a deeper denser information / communications revolution to take hold. This suggests that, at a minimum, representative democracy goes through two phases: an intra-hierarchic (+I) phase and a more open competitive marketlike (+M) phase. Or more to the point, the two phases are so different that the +I phase should have its own name — e.g., democratic centralism — and representative democracy, in its liberal sense, should be identified primarily with the +M phase. That would be more in accord with what I think TIMN implies.

Of course, none of this is to say that one of us is right and the other wrong — that a three-part or a four-part typology is better. We just have different analytic sensibilities and priorities. Mine is to keep elaborating TIMN. Hence my interest in identifying the foregoing differences and discerning ways of adjusting to them. In any case, most are of an historical nature. More significant may be some differences in our orientations toward the future.

Monitory democracy vis à vis TIMN: long-range future implications

As already noted, monitory democracy is a powerful concept that fits well with TIMN. Yet, TIMN contains some pointed themes about future forces and dynamics that are not fully evident in Keane’s approach. I lay them out in this section, with an eye to wondering whether they might benefit future elaborations about monitory democracy or TIMN, if not both.

One key TIMN theme is the growing importance of the network (+N) form of organization. Keane’s writings, to their credit, often refer to networks — “organizations and networks”, NGO networks, global networks, computer networks, media networks, social networks etc. And it seems implicit that all kinds of networks — organizational, technological, social — are making a crucial difference for monitory democracy. But in contrast to TIMN, Keane’s writings do not (yet?) say much about the rise of networks as a distinct form of organization. And I don’t mean this strictly as a plug for TIMN’s +N view; Bauwen's P2P or similar views may be suitable as well. I just think that monitory democracy, as concept and practice, would benefit from a stronger clearer identification with the rise of network forms of organization.

A second key TIMN theme is that the rise of the network form will lead to the creation of a new sector, from out of civil society, that is different and apart from the established public (+I) and private (+M) sectors. Various names have been tried out for this nascent sector over the past several decades: e.g., third sector, social sector, civic sector, citizen sector, social-benefit sector, commons sector. But sure as I am that TIMN implies a new sector, it remains unclear what’ll be its cardinal purpose, scope and scale. Maybe one of the previous names will stick, but I have doubts. In any case, it cannot turn out to be simply a monitory sector, for a lot of monitoring will also be done in and by actors in the other sectors. Yet, monitoring — á la Keane’s concept — will surely be a major function. I’m still trying to figure out this aspect for TIMN. And I will hope that Keane’s future writings offer further guidance. His current writings indicate in spots that a new sector is emerging; and as my Part-1 post noted, he ties the prospects for monitory democracy to prospects for people having “equal access to ‘the commons’”. But that is far from explicitly forecasting a new sector, much less calling for a commons sector.

A third TIMN theme is that the network age will result in new modes of governance. Keane’s mention of “networked governance” indicates that he recognizes this, though he doesn’t elaborate. TIMN, mainly in a paper on future prospects for cyberocracy, expects networked governance to become increasingly significant, perhaps resulting in a “nexus state” that combines multiple modes of governance, as a successor to the classic bureaucratic and modern market states. A democratic nexus-state would surely be a monitory democracy. Keane’s concept also fits well with Michel Bauwen’s P2P concept of a “partner state”. In any case, a lot of work remains to be done on how monitory democracy may affect governance in the future, from local to global levels.

And that leads to a set of final points: One is that the prospects for a new sector and for monitory democracy will depend on what happens with the vast new sensory apparatuses, technological and organizational, that are expanding capabilities for both surveillance and sousveillance. I’d suppose that a balance between them is advisable for the sake of both TIMN and monitory democracy. But at present, surveillance seems to be growing far more than sousveillance. I covered some of this in a 2008 writing (see Appendix 2), but a lot has transpired since then. For example, just the past few months have led to revelations about the construction of a huge NSA electronic surveillance facility (reported here in Wired, blogged here by ever-attentive David Brin). And there’s an idea to build a “social radar” for the U.S. government. But I’ve also come across ideas for a “sensor commons” and “surveillant landscapes” as well as “augmented activism” and “crisis mapping” that are mostly about sousveillance. Quite a lot of ferment! And it’s still in early stages. The balance is far from set.

Something else: A point that is missing in writings so far about TIMN and monitory democracy is that, if a new sector is to become influential in the deep future, new kinds of aggregators and clearinghouses will be needed. I offer this point speculatively, but I’m pretty sure about it. The +I realm has its states with their councils, congresses, parliaments, parties, and elections. The +M realm has various markets, exchanges, banks, and currencies. But so far, the +N sector is lacking in aggregators and clearinghouses of similar scale and scope. Sure, there are bits and pieces, often by issue area, as in social forums, watch-dog networks, opinion polls, and philanthropic entities that do scanning. But we’re still far from seeing major aggregators and clearinghouses that can assemble large amounts of monitoring from multiple diverse sources and give voice to what it all may mean. Perhaps like a Google designed for monitoring rather than searching, or a platform like All Our Ideas that uses “wiki surveys”, where people may even set their own parameters.

A final point: As I noted in my Part-2 post about Occupy! and related pro-democracy protest movements, responsibility is emerging as an important thread. Many activists talk about rights — e.g., Occupy as a continuation of the civil rights revolutions of the 20th C. But I detect a growing emphasis on responsibilities, and have wondered whether Occupy! may develop into a responsibilities revolution more than a rights revolution. Corporate social responsibility and government accountability are strong threads. If monitory democracy is to take hold in the 21st C., it may make sense for activists of all stripes to press on civic responsibilities even harder than on civil rights. A recent plea for this appears here in the Democracy journal. It comes with a liberal / progressive bent, but I’ve seen similar pleas of a conservative bent. Monitory democracy may well turn out to be about responsibilities more than rights — and about how this affects people’s abilities to work together and abide by mutual social compact despite different leanings.

Coda: revisiting a comparison of 1848 and 2011

Previously, in a sidebar at the end of my Part-1 post on Occupy! and related protest movements, I picked up on comparisons of the 2011 movements to the 1848 revolutions, and speculated in TIMN terms that 2011 is to the rise of the +N form as 1848 was to the rise of the +M form:

"If 2011’s wave reflects the rise of the (+N) network form … what about the 1848 wave? Where’s the similarity in that TIMN regard? Back then was too early for the network form of organization to be much of a cause …. But — and here’s my TIMN point — it was an era when the (+M) market form was on the rise, reshaping not only economic but also political and social dynamics. Indeed, representative democracy depends on the penetration of (+M) market principles and dynamics into the (+I) realm of the state. …

"… The 1848 revolutions were “caused” by the rise of the market form, much as the 2011 revolutions are “caused” by the rise of the network form. As to whether the post-1848 outcomes imply being cautious about expecting much from the 2011 wave, I’ve little idea. But my sense of TIMN suggests that the stakes this time around involve a different kind of democracy, not just representative democracy."

After reading Keane, I see that the “different kind of democracy” at stake may well be monitory democracy. If so, then 2011 (or will it be 2012?) is to monitory democracy as 1848 was to representative democracy — a year full of upheavals, harbingers, and turning-points for the future of democracy, but likely to yield mixed results for decades to come.

Thus Keane’s framework — his distinctions about assembly, representative, and monitory democracy — is consistent with (and helps make) a point that undergirds my coterminous series on Occupy! and related pro-democracy movements: These movements are doing a lot to express and propel the rise of the network (+N) form of organization. They will succeed to the extent that they continue to do so, presuming it’s in a constructive manner.

From a TIMN perspective, fostering monitory democracy is one of the most constructive things to do. It’d help with renewing social compacts that have been badly damaged in many societies over the last decade or two. It’d help with assuring that the liberal democracies of the world get fully back on that path, rather than slipping further in the direction of patrimonial corporatism.

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Appendix 1: Excerpt from “A Long Look Ahead: NGOs, Networks, and Future Social Evolution” (2002)

What follows is an excerpt from a TIMN-related paper I wrote — “A Long Look Ahead: NGOs, Networks, and Future Social Evolution” — in 2002 for Robert Olson and David Rejeski (eds.), Environmentalism and the Technologies of Tomorrow: Shaping the Next Industrial Revolution, (2005). The excerpt is from pp. 92-93, 94-97. The paper is available as a download here.

I include the excerpt in order to document and provide elaboration that TIMN has long been moving along a similar track to Keane’s in regard to the monitoring roles of NGOs. The excerpt focuses on environmental matters, but its scope could be applied to other issue areas as well, in keeping with TIMN’s general implications about how the rise of the network (+N) form may reshape societies.

Implications for Future Modes of Conflict and Cooperation

New modes of conflict and cooperation emerge with each evolutionary shift. A society’s efforts to transition from one stage to the next, or relate to a society that is at a different stage, are bound to create internal and external contradictions; indeed, the values, actors, and spaces favored by one form tend to contradict those favored by another. Thus, the rise of a new form induces epochal philosophical, ideological, and material struggles that are jarring to a society’s stability, transformability, and sustainability. This happened in the past when tribal systems faced the rise of states, and states the rise of market systems. It will happen anew now that the network form is on the ascendance, energizing mainly nonstate actors.

Network forms of organization are attracting enormous attention these days; new books and articles appear every few months (with some of the best analysis coming from researchers at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). But it remains quite unclear what a new network realm may ultimately look like. One way it may evolve is through a four-stage progression in network topology: from an initial scattering of groups and individuals that have sparse network ties (“scattered emergence”); to their combining into a “single hub-and-spoke” design where the central hub acts mainly as a clearinghouse and coordinating agency; then to a deeper, more dispersed, specialized “multi-hub small world” design; and eventually to a dense, vast, sprawling “core/periphery” mass of organizational networks.[*] To some extent, the environmental movement (not to mention other civil-societal movements) is already moving through this progression. But just as the molding of a network realm will take time, so will the development and understanding of its interactions with the other, existing realms. …

Long-Term Scenario: New Approaches to Policy and Strategy

As the subversive effects subside and additive effects take hold, a society adapts to the rise of a new form and learns to combine it with the prevailing forms (realms). This may take decades, probably much longer. The deepening of the network age will cause a leap in the strength of civil society, or the emergence from it of a new network-based realm whose name and nature are not yet known. An end result will be the creation of next-generation policy mechanisms for communication, consultation, and collaboration among state, market, and civil-societal (or new-realm) actors, at home and abroad.

Because of the rise of a realm of networked actors and forces, current approaches to domestic and foreign policy will go through radical revisions. Some oft-noted trends will deepen: First, the boundaries between domestic and foreign policy will blur further, as activist NGOs continue to press for transnational perspectives on policy problems and solutions. Second, public-private cooperation, so needed in so many issue areas, will continue to extend beyond state and market actors to include socially minded nonprofit NGOs (who are sometimes said to comprise a new social sector separate from the traditional public and private sectors).

Meanwhile, new challenges will take shape. Taking advantage of the information revolution, people and organizations in advanced societies are developing vast sensory apparatuses for watching what is happening in their own societies and elsewhere around the world. Many innovations are occurring in organization and strategy, often by taking advantage of the new information and communications technologies. For example, one unusual benefactor of the Internet has been birdwatchers in North America, a group that contains an estimated one in four of all U.S. citizens. A few years ago, with the help of the National Audubon Society and Cornell University, bird watchers started sharing data online and have used the network to better understand and map migration patterns.

Mining and analyzing data culled from large networks is not new and has long been used by existing government regulatory, law-enforcement, and intelligence agencies; corporate market-research departments; news media; and opinion-polling firms. What is new is the looming scope and scale of this sensory apparatus, and its increasing inclusion of NGOs who watch, monitor, share information, and report on what they see in diverse issue areas. One example is Global Forest Watch (GFW), an international network of local forest-protection groups linked by the Internet and a common data-gathering format. The World Resources Institute collaborated by e-mail with over a hundred scientists in different parts of the world to create a unique set of digital maps showing the location and extent of the world’s old-growth forests. The GFW network monitors all these areas, recording any illegal cutting, burning, or other violations of forest leases on the digital maps. This information is posted to the Internet in near-real time, naming specific violators. Review processes check the accuracy of the data collected and ensure that participating network groups are acting responsibly. The information makes it possible for activists to mobilize quickly, apply market pressures to companies, and pressure governments to regulate effectively.

Developing the kind of early warning capability illustrated by GFW is an increasing concern for many environmental NGOs; so is gathering information to affect the framing of policy options. Determining appropriate designs, and roles, for this array of sensory organizations and their (centralized? decentralized?) internetting will be a growing challenge. Perhaps one day in the future, advances in autonomic and pervasive computing will even enable us to build self-regulating systems that can monitor and report on conditions without the constant involvement of humans. How such networked-based, self-regulating systems may interface with traditional forms of top-down regulation by government is only a speculative question today.

The emergence of a network realm — and of massively networked systems and infrastructures with it — will pose significant challenges for the agencies responsible for environmental protection. Their advisory councils and decision structures will have to open up to more regular participation from NGO representatives, at least in consultative capacities. Indeed, various environmental, health, consumer, and other activist watchdog and advocacy groups are already working — perhaps with more success in Canada and Europe than in the United States — to see that such reforms occur. And as stronger, more transparent connections are built among the responsible government agencies, NGOs, and companies, they will have to learn to work more cooperatively to formulate policy through new governance systems that embrace not only government and business but also NGO representatives. Climate change is probably the best example of an environmental issue that can only be resolved by networking across institutional boundaries of every kind.

Public policy dialogue has, for over a century, revolved around contentions as to whether government or the market represents the better solution for particular policy issues. In the network age, this choice will prove too narrow, too binary, even for blending. New views will come to the fore that the network is the solution. These views may well open up possibilities for major improvements in environmental protection. …

If this view of the role of networks — and of the eventual rise of a new network realm — in long-range social evolution is correct, the growth of transnational NGOs, and the ability of NGOs, states, and market actors to network with each other, should prove a major asset for democratic societies. It may help reanimate the concept of progress — giving it new direction and credibility. It may point the way to developing the structures and organizational processes that will make a sustainable future possible.

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Appendix 2: Excerpt from The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited) (2008)

What follows is a sub-section, minus footnotes, from an unpublished paper available online: The Prospects for Cyberocracy (Revisited) (2008, co-authored with Danielle Varda). It updates the first paper I wrote on the topic in 1991, and the excerpt is from the 2008 update.

As with Appendix 1 above, I include the excerpt in order to document and provide elaboration about TIMN’s long-standing concern with monitoring roles that may increase as the network (+N) form takes hold.

Development of New Sensory Apparatuses Throughout Societies

Taking advantage of the information revolution, people and organizations in the advanced societies are building vast new sensory apparatuses for watching what is happening in their own societies and around the world. Of all the uses to which the new technologies are being put, this may become one of the most important for the future of the state and its relationship to society.

These sensory apparatuses are not entirely new. Government agencies, public utilities, science centers, corporate market-research offices, news media, and opinion-polling firms have long amassed data and tracked trends in selected areas of interest. What is new is the burgeoning scope and scale of these apparatuses: the deployment of new kinds of sensors by all kinds of actors; the increasing roles of NGOs and NPOs in this activity; and the internetting and sharing of information that is becoming possible across agency, sectoral, and national boundaries, both publicly and privately. 

Many of the new apparatuses reflect the perception of perils. Crime and terrorism are impelling new installations for watching cityscapes, monitoring communications, and mapping potential hotspots. But sensor networks are also being deployed for early warning and rapid response regarding many other concerns — disease outbreaks, forest protection, bird migration, and urban electricity spikes, to name a few. In addition, environmental, human-rights, and other social activists continue to develop new media — notably, IndyMedia — to keep watch and speed mobilization in case of a challenge or abuse somewhere, say against the Zapatista movement in Mexico. In a sense, the partisan blogospheres amount to a gigantic, reactive sensory apparatus in the American body politic.

Many technologies are involved. Indeed, the diversity of devices being deployed is impressive — such as cameras on satellites in earth orbit, moisture sensors embedded in trees in fire-risk zones, postings broadcast on public Web pages, and silent alarms for remote private monitors. Networked computers, closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras, and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags play prominent roles today. But looming advances in nanotechnology, robotics, biometrics, and alternative energy sources will enhance the trend. Cell phones, smart cards, and other hand-held and embedded devices may become the key bearers of this new technology at the individual level.

Thus, technologists are fusing the decades-old goal of “ubiquitous computing” with the newer goal of “pervasive sensing.” Before long, what are called “anticipatory technologies” may become so widespread and effective that many surroundings are embedded with “ambient intelligence” — leading to so-called “smart buildings,” “sensible organizations,” and “sentient cities” set to autonomically monitor for everything from leaky pipes to lost children. Then, the sensor era will turn into a sensor/effector era, where devices not only detect but also can manipulate matters. Meanwhile, citizens’ concerns about top-down surveillance may be countered by bottom-up “sousveillance” (or inverse surveillance), particularly if individuals wear personal devices for detecting and recording what is occurring in their vicinity.

This is not to say that societies will increasingly resemble “organisms” that have a central nervous system and brain. That’s going too far. But something is taking shape for which sensory apparatus seems an appropriate term. A term like surveillance system is too limited (and biased). Far more than surveillance is occurring, and the diverse arrays comprising this apparatus are far from forming an integrated system. Bits and pieces have existed for decades — they are normal for complex modern societies — and more pieces are being emplaced. Yet most are scattered and task-specific. They exist to do people’s bidding — such as responding to a change in environmental conditions, or to a signal from a nearby actuator, transponder or microprocessor. Some pieces are networked, but not all. And no central master hub exists (and presumably never will).

The scope and scale of this apparatus are growing far beyond what government, business, and civil-society actors have ever had at their disposal or had to cope with. They will all be challenged to figure out proper designs for the kinds of sensory organizations and technologies they prefer — and proper ways to regulate them. Their growth has already sharpened issues about privacy and security, but it may also open new pathways for fostering transparency and accountability. How information is assembled and accessed, how issues and options are illuminated, how public and private forces are mobilized, and how oversight is achieved will all be affected.

It has become standard fare to speculate that such apparatuses mainly benefit government and corporate actors, for good and ill. Less noticed, but we think equally likely and significant, is that the apparatuses will aid the rise of civil-society actors, by providing networked NGOs and NPOs with new tools not only for checking on the behavior of government and corporate actors, but also for participating in collaborative governance schemes with them. New mechanisms for attracting and combining diverse viewpoints under the rubric of “collective intelligence” could help foster this. So could the continued advance of principles favoring freedom of information, the right to communicate, and open access.

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A thankful h/t to Michel Bauwens and Kevin Carson for calling my attention to John Keane’s concept of monitory democracy.

Special thanks to Richard O'Neill, director of the Highlands Group and the Highlands Forum, for his overall interest and encouragement.

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[AMENDED — April 14, 2012: I added a few phrases and links here and there.]