Authors: Scotty Allen, Phong Le, Adam Torgerson, David West 1. IntroductionCollaboration is constantly being enhanced by the development of technology and large-scale, decentralized social interactions are becoming more visible as emergent phenomena. Our initial interests were in the phenomena themselves, but we quickly moved to examining theoretical frameworks to gain a deeper understanding of these phenomena. In this paper we present the main points of those theoretical framework and applied them to analyze Extreme Democracy, an instance of these distributed social phenomena. 1.1. Historical Case Study: A Technology Enabled Coup In summer 2000, several aspects about the office of the Phillippino President Joseph Estrada were presented to the people of the Phillipines. An investigative journalism report documented a substantial amount of wealth Estrada had accumulated during his presidency, of which the source could not be readily identified. He was also under fire for his alcoholism, many mistresses, and illegitimate children which he openly acknowledged and supported, and for his bumbling representation of the Phillippines at international meetings. In October, the leader of an organized illegal gambling game openly stated he personally gave Estrada 12 million dollars as a kickback. This provoked the House of Representatives to call for Estrada's impeachment for bribery, corruption and the betrayal of public trust. The impeachment trial was televised and was viewed by a large number of the people of the Phillippines. Text messaging is substantially more popular in the Phillippines than in other parts of the world. Phones with text messaging capabilites are cheap, and monthly service for the phones comes with a number of free text messages. Text messages themselves cost only about 2 cents when they must be paid for, in contrast to phone calls costing at least 8 cents per minute. Phillippinos send over 14 million text messages daily, compared to only about 600,000 daily in North America. It is this proliferation of text messaging that enabled the people to assemble in January 2001, after senators voted not to open critical evidence against Estrada, effectively ensuring he would stay in office. Tens of thousands of people assembled in an intersection in Manilla where another people's overthrow of the government had occured in 1986. They had been watching the impeachment on television, got angry with what was happenning, started messaging and emailed their friends and family, and eventually ended up in the street in protest of the impeachment proceedings. Eventually, although Estrada would not step down after days of protest, the supreme court declared the position of President empty, and swore in Gloria Macapagal as the new president. This is an instance of smart mob. Howard Rheingold defines a smart mob as group of individual who act with a common purpose even if they don't know each other (Rheingold, 2002). In many cases communication, especially mobile, and computational technologies facilitate their group formation. 2. Theoretical Framework2.1. Smart Mobs: A Social Analysis Howard Rheingold, a sociologist for the electronic frontier and an active member of the seminal online community The Well, coined the phrase "smart mobs" to describe the emergent phenomena that occurs when large groups of individuals that don't know each other act in concert with the aid of technology. The above example is an example of one of these smart mobs – a group of people gathered to take action with common interests. According to Rheingold the challenge of building community and associated collective action for the common good has been a challenge throughout human history. One has been that the high cost of collective action, such as communicating with a large number of individuals, or providing incentive for individuals to contribute, has doomed many collective action efforts. Communication and computational technologies, however, have the potential to lower the costs of supporting collective action. As a result, collective action will arise where none was possible before (Rheingold, 202). 2.1.1. The Tragedy of the Commons When speaking about groups and group action, historians and sociologists often speak of "The Tragedy of the Commons". The commons refers to the pastureland owned by a medieval town where individual herders may allow their sheep or cattle to graze. Often these commons can only support a limited number of grazing animals before the land is exhausted. From the perspective of individual herders it is in their best interests to allow as many of their animals to graze at the common as possible. On the other hand, the town must limit the number of animals that may graze to ensure that the vegetation can sustain itself. Thus there is a tension between individual and group, or common, interests. In light of these competing interests scholars have asked: How do humans manage to collaborate in the context of compelling self-interest? And do humans require an external regulatory authority to cooperate properly (Rheingold, 2002)? 2.1.2. The Collective Action Challenge and Social Loafing In the 1950s, Mancur Olson, an economist, conducted experiments regarding group behavior. He noted that it is a commonly accepted fact that in a perfectly competitive industry, profit maximizing firms can act contrary to their interests as a group. For example, a group of companies may have the common goal of maximizing aggregate profits, but the company, from an economic standpoint would have a conflicting self interest that it would do well to serve. This self interest, selling more units, would lower aggregate profits, working against the will of the group, but each profit maximizing firm would be so small that it could ignore its output on price. This is similar to the tragedy of the commons: the group of citizens would have the goal of maintaining the commons, and the individuals would have the conflicting goal of keeping their cattles fed. The conflicting interests that commonly arise when comparing group interests to common interests are generally hard to reconcile. It is generally agreed by economists, however, that firms in a free market economy are best off acting in their individual interests. Obviously members in a labor union may be more compelled to act in the group interest for higher wages, but some break strike in order to pursue their purely personal interest of greater personal income (Olson, 1965). One important point Olson made is that small groups tend to display more voluntary cooperative behavior than larger groups. Originally this has been the case in history, since close kin and family have usually been the best group to rely on for collaboration. In addition, the pattern of cooperative behavior increases if group participants repeat the same game multiple times and if participants can communicate with each other. Thirty years later, Olsen concluded that “unless the number of individuals in a group is quite small, or unless there is coercion or some other special device to make individual act in their common interest, rational, self-interested individuals will not act to achieve their common or group interests (Olson, 1982).” Researchers call this tension between self-interest and substantial, but uncertain, group benefit the collective action dilemma. Olson’s conclusion suggests that unless there is an external regulatory authority willing to force cooperation among group members, humans will not cooperate. From the perspective of social psychologists this problem is called social loafing. Social loafing is defined as the phenomenon that occurs when group members neglect to contribute to a group. It is common in certain individuals, especially in very large groups. A number of variables contribute to whether an individual will be likely to loaf, and therefore determine the robustness of a group. Here are a few:
These variables could be manipulated to reduce social loafing and positively aid group participation using technology. Therefore there is potential for bettering the functioning of large groups. For instance, group valence, or cohesion, should ideally be improved with the aid of a tool like this swiki or modern meeting technologies such as the ones Shinichi Konomi discussed in his presentation on context-aware embedded systems. In addition, the way technology allows vast quantities of information to be produced and processed aids the individual in finding his or her niche in a group. Likewise the problem of providing good consistant evaluation potential, or feedback, to all the members in a group could be provided by almost every form of modern communication technology. People can recieve group feedback by telephone, email, or even by reading online postings. 2.1.3. Common Pool Resource In contrast to Olson’s pessimistic conclusion, sociologist Elinor Ostrum argues that some groups have solved the collective action dilemma successfully without external coercion. She points to instances where groups have managed their “common pool resources” successfully such as Japanese shared forest, Switzerland pasturelands, and common water source used for irrigation in Spain and the Philippines. Indeed, Ostrum finds that these successful cooperative arrangements share the following characteristics (Rheingold, 2002; Ostrum, 1990):
Ostrum concludes that any efforts to organize collective action must address the following challenges: free-riding, commitment problems, and monitoring individual compliance with common rules (Rheingold, 2002). 2.1.4. Free-Riding, Commitments, Gift Culture, and Social Capital Free riding is the temptation for a rational individual that benefit from a resource to use it without contributing to its creation or sustenance. What is good for an individual can be detrimental for a group if enough free-riders over-consume a common resource to the point of depletion. Elinor Ostrum argues that successful common pool resources management requires clear and locally appropriate rules, consistent graduated sanctions for violators, and community self-policing via reputation and social pressures. But sanctions and bad reputation help to prevent bad behavior but they seldom motivate individuals to contribute to the common good. The idea of social capital and the associated concept of a gift culture is central to understanding what motivate individuals to contribute. The idea of a gift culture has been used by anthropologists to describe a particular strategy to gain social status in populations where social status is gained not by “what you control but what you give away.” (Raymond, 2001). This dynamic can be seen in the open source software movements where developers “compete” to contribute useful software to the community as a whole. What these developers get in return is the social prestige, status, and reputation among not only among the community of developers but also those that use the software. A related concept to gift culture is the idea of social capital. First defined by Lyda Judson Hanifan in the context of his sociological research into rural community centers during the 1920s, the term has recently become widespread due to the work of Robert Putnam in the context of civic society development. Putnam defines social capital as the connections among individuals and the sense of trust, mutual understanding, shared value and behavior, and reciprocity that emerges from this network of social relations (infed.org, 2005). One facet of social capital is the ability to form strong social network and to use the resources offered by the network. Thus gift culture is related to the social capital in the sense that giving resources away help form new network and reinforce existing social networks. 2.1.5. Another Look at Free-Riding The commons approach to collective action implies that free-riding is undesirable. In the context of the commons, the goal is to minimize consumption without production. Yet this binary distinction between producers and consumers may not fit in all situations. The idea of a continuum between a consumer and designer in the context of human computer interaction may provide a model for creating a continuum between consumer and producers in the context of collective action; especially when the collective goal is is not physical end-product, but an intangible product or state that enhances everyone's well-being (i.e. political ends) (Fischer, 2002). We also like Fischer's argument that providing "convivial tools" is key to motivating individuals to take an active role in "extending artifacts" (Fischer, 2002). In the context of collective action, "convivial" tools might be critical in encouraging individuals to participate in collective action. 2.1.6. Enabling Technologies The collective action dynamic discussed above has been present whenever society grapple with the challenge of collection action. Rheingold argues that emerging communications technology has reduced the cost (and effort) involved in social mobilization. He points to the following technologies at those with the greatest potential impact:
3. Extreme DemocracyExtreme democracy refers to a method for understanding politics during the information age, in which people are put in charge of the whole political process. The word "extreme" is a tip of the hat to the "extreme programming" movement in software development. The extreme programming movement focuses on the use of technological tools to allow small groups of programmers to accomplish large goals in small amounts of time, which would be otherwise unachievable with more traditional software engineering methods. Similarly, extreme democracy focuses strongly on the use of emerging technology tools to enable effective communication and collaboration amoung citizen activists, and thus provide greater access to power to everyone. However, extreme democracy, in its goal of putting individuals in charge of the political process, is not advocating direct democracy. Direct democracy is the process by which every citizen is involved in every decision, in order to render the entire process democratic. Despite the current proliferation of effective tools for communication and collaboration, direct democracy remains extremely inefficient, and grows increasingly more so as it is scaled up. Rather, the assumption is that any individual who is interested in a given issue will have the power to participate in the relevant discussion and debate surrounding that issue, in an effective and engaged manner. 4.1. Extreme Democracy Under Theoretical Lens Many similarities can be drawn between this concept of extreme democracy and the open source software movement. Both place utmost value on the entire process being open to the public at large, and allowing anyone to engage themselves in projects or issues they find of interest. Both are heavily reliant on emerging communications and collaboration technology as a foundation for effective interaction. Both are, for the most part, comprised of individual, unrelated participants, participating as volunteers. The primary reward these indivuals experience is that of increased social capital - prestige and respect amoung their peers and, perhaps, the larger community. But perhaps most important, is the way in which participants increase their social capital in each of these cultures - through gifts. Whether it be contributing good, well thought out arguements on an issue, be it technical or political, or contributing materially (perhaps through server facilities, or financial contribution), or by creating or improving a tool useful to the community. Thus we find that in these instances, Extreme Democracy exhibited good strategies to motivate its member to contribute to the common good. In his famous collection of essays, The Mythical Man Month, Fedrick P. Brooks makes the assertion that adding more programmers to a late software project has a significant chance of making the project that much later. He postulates that this effect is due to the increased overhead of communication, both in catching the new programmers up on the existing code, as well as on the increased overhead of communication between team members. In fact, Brooks states that while the amount of work increases linearlly with the number of programmers, the complexity of the project increases with the square of the number of programmers, as every programmer must communicate with every other programmer. Similarly, the barrier to such effective democratic processes as embodied by extreme democracy has been that of effective communication between group members. Political groups have often been kept small due to attrition, based on the large effort required to communicate and coordinate. Traditionally, like the programming teams described by Brooks, political campaigns have been run in a very top down, hierarchical fashion, in a manner that is described by Joe Trippi, campaign coordinator for the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, as "militaristic". However, in his famous article "The Cathedral and The Bazaar", contrasting the open source software movement, Eric S. Raymond addresses why Brooks' theories don't completely apply to the open source movement. After all, as Raymond points out, if Brooks' thories did completely apply, such successful open source projects as Linux would be completely impossible. Raymond gives a multitude of refutals to Brooks' theories, including: everyone (including the public at large) has access to the entire process and product, and thus, can contribute in any manner they see fit; groups of individuals are often working on debugging in parallel, thus, removing the n squared law of communication from all but the core programmers; and perhaps, most importantly, there exist much cheaper, more effective communication methods today than the endless stacks of paper and memos of Brooks' era. All of the above lessons learned by the open source movement can be applied to extreme democracy. Joe Trippi, the campaign manager for the Howard Dean presidential campaign of 2004, understood this. In a blog posting in May of 2003, Trippi said: "One of the other reasons I think this has not happened before is that every political campaign I have ever been in is built on a top-down military structure – there is a general at the top of the campaign – and all orders flow down – with almost no interaction. This is a disaster. This kind of structure will suffocate the storm not fuel it. Campaigns abhor chaos – and to most campaigns built on the old top-down model – that is what the net represents – chaos. And the more the campaign tries to control the "chaos" the more it stiffles its growth. As someone who is at least trying to understand the right mix – I admit its hard to get it right. But I think the important thing is to provide the tools and some of the direction – stay in as constant communication as you can with the grassroots – two way/multi-way communication – and get the hell out of the way when a big wave is building on its own." [Trippi] Similar to the chaos of the linux movement, the Dean campaign was fueled by the chaotic involvement of tens of thousands of volunteers. This involvement was largely fueled by the availability of new internet driven tools, which allowed participants to more effectively communicate, collaborate, and orgainze. These tools included such things as Meetup.com, an online organizational tool for groups meeting regularly face to face; Yahoo Groups, a tool which allows anyone to easily create a mailing list; blogging tools, which effectively allowed individuals to publish their own material online in an easy, yet effective manner; RSS feeds, which allowed sites to syndicate the content of other sites quickly and easily; online donation tools, allowing supporters to quickly and easily donate money to the campaign over the internet; and Deanspace, a custom built open source tool which was an amalgamation of many of the above tools built specifically for the Dean Campaign. Using these tools, and a foreward thinking core campaign staff, despite being relatively unknown, Dean rose quikly rose to the top of the presedential primaries early on. His campaign generated such publicity, funds, and support, that he was chosen the clear favorite for the Democratic presidential nominee. However, when the votes started coming in during the primary, Dean was not coming in first. Nor even second. It appears, despite the excitement surrounding his campaign, voters were simply not voting for him. Clay Shirky surmises that this isn't a question of why Dean failed with such a significant initial lead, but rather, why anyone thought he had a lead in the first place. And a lot of that, he attributes to the use of the new internet technologies harnessed by the campaign. Specifically, while the technologies had many excellent effects, they also seemed to significantly mislead the campaign staff. Because the barrier of entry to participate was significantly lowered - Meetup.com made it that much easier to show up and meet with other Dean supporters, and online donation tools made contributing the campaign a trivial matter - traditional metrics such as numbers of people attending campaign meetings and amount of campaign funding raised and from how many supporters were all of a sudden quite inaccurate. Shirky theorizes that having 300 people show up to a Dean meetup in New York that was organized using internet tools is not the same as having 300 people show up to a meetup pre-internet organization tools. Because the organization process is that much easier, the corresponding committement required from individuals is that much lower. Thus, the campaign was deluded into thinking it had a much higher support than it did, and made significant strategic mistakes because of it. 4. Relationships to other concepts in the course4.1. Distributed Cognition Taking a vastly different approach from the traditional view of cognition at the time, Ed Hutchins proposes that cognition is better understood as a phenomenon distributed across individuals, instead of one localized at a particular individual; hence the term distributed cognition. This framework accounts for the cognition that takes place in settings where intelligent processes are spanned across several individual actors, and focuses on the interaction amongst invididuals and their environment. The classic examples are the air traffic control tower and ship navigation where individuals use physical objects or task events as cognitive cues. This framework can easily be applied to social collaboration. A group of people are working towards some kind of social reform, they have an agenda and various tasks they wish to accomplish, which are cognitive properties. Different members of the group carry out specific actions, transforming the state of the cognitive system. In the case of the Phillippines example above, this may happen somewhat spontaneously, with specific events triggering state transitions. 4.2. Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors In his article entitled Beyond "Couch Potatoes": From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors, Gerhard Fischer discusses modes of interaction with current "new media". He states that the majority of new media is focused on treating humans largely as consumers, as opposed to active contributers of ideas and content. He then goes on to describe a continuum of interaction, where, at one end, is a "couch potato" passive consumer, and the other is a meta-designer, an individual that designs frameworks in which others interact. Along that continuum exists many different levels of personal engagement and contribution. And, perhaps most relevant to the research presented here, he points out that individuals may not want to choose one role of interaction allt he time. There may be times at which an individual want sto be highly involved, actively participanting in the creation of content or the design of a system, and at others, they are perfectly comfortable being a passive consumer. These concepts directly relate to the concepts of extreme democracy. In fact, extreme democracy is deisgned around the concept of variable levels of participation. Because the debate process is open, and individual may choose their own level of involvement. They may choose to devote a good portion of their life to advocating a particular issue, or they may be comfortable to let others debate it, only aware of the final conclusions reached. 5. ConclusionFrom the readings we learned that there are multiple theoretical and practical approaches to the challenge of collective action. While it was easy for us to understand these theoretical framework when they were focused on physical commons (such as pastureland), when attempting to analyze technology-enabled political collective action we needed frameworks that examined the dynamic of interaction of people-technology-people. We also came away with the understanding that technology-enable collective social actions possess the same advantages, foibles, dynamic, and potential of prior collective social actions; however technology amplifies these characteristics. Finally, we also find that none of these theories neatly explains these phenomena and more research and analysis is needed. 6. ReferencesThe Encyclopedia of Informal Education. http://www.infed.org/ Fischer, G. (2002). Beyond 'Couch Potatoes': From Consumers to Designers and Active Contributors, in FirstMonday (Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet), at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/fischer/. Hollans, J., Hutchins, E., Kirsch, D. (2001). Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation For Human-Computer Interaction Research in J.M. Carroll (ed). Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millenium. New York: ACM Press. Hogg, M., Abrams, D. (1993). Group Motivation: Social Psychological Perspectives. New York, NY: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Olson, M. (1965). Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rheingold, Howard. (2002). Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing Group. http://www.smartmobs.com/ 7. Individual FocusAdam: Collective Action from Mancur Olson, Presentation David: Social Capital, Loafing, Phillipines Demonstration Phong: Rheingold Smart Mobs Theoretical Sources Scotty: Extreme Democracy
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