Citizendium Blog

Here’s another essay, which I’ve been saving up.

Mark Pesce, in a talk that appeared on Edge.org, appears to argue that the plugged-in world of the future will foster an anti-democratic revolution. Stated briefly and clearly, his argument goes like this:

(1) As more and more people get online and get connected, they join communities, like Wikipedia, that empower (”hyperempower”) them.

(2) Wikipedia and other successful online communities are not democratic; they combine anarchy with mob rule.

(3) Increasingly, these empowered people will turn their collective attention to the problems of politics, as Barack Obama’s online campaign community does.

(4) In embracing politics, they will not become less anarchical, or less apt to be organized by mob rule. Political action will look like Wikipedia’s anarchical, mob-rule community.

(5) So, sooner or later, these mob-like political groups will seize power from democracies.

Apparently, Pesce thinks such an event would be a good thing; as he says in his speech, “representative democracies are a poor fit to the challenges ahead, and rebooting them is not enough.”

This is a transparently poor argument. Why think all online communities are or will be anarchical or mob-like, like Wikipedia? They aren’t. Why think that, just because people become politically mobilized online, groups like Obama’s will eventually try to start a real (bloody) political revolution? Maybe they will, but any strong claim like this requires strong evidence, and Pesce hasn’t given any. Finally, why think it follows that just because online communities are anti-democratic, the meatspace societies such communities favor will also be anti-democratic? Of course, this does not follow. Ignoring the more radical outliers, Obama’s followers are Democrats. I am quite sure that if you were to survey even some of the most radical and annoying of Wikipedians, you would find the number of them who actually oppose democracy to be very small indeed.

I think Pesce, and many other would-be Internet revolutionaries, have forgotten that we are still in the early stages of the Internet. Most people who spend much time in the Wikipedia community find that they dislike its governance; many would prefer something more sensible, with a few clear, established rules and a reasonably reliable way to enforce them. Since I was there, I can assure you that Wikipedia could have been instituted that way. Moreover, Wikipedia has flourished precisely because of certain definite policies. It’s not a stretch to say that the only reason Wikipedia has been as successful as it has been has been its commitment to certain policies (which a certain non-anarchist, yours truly, helped to establish in its first year), such as creating encyclopedia articles (as opposed to personal essays, for example), neutrality, and not signing articles, with discussion about an article happening on a separate (”talk”) page. There was a time — in the project’s first year — when these policies were, each of them, at least somewhat controversial. We easily could have gone farther and added a low-key, bottom-up role for experts. Also, it would have caused a fork, but we could have instituted the use of real names as a policy, at least for administrators. Such policies would have made it possible to enforce rules and approve articles, as the growing Citizendium now does. The point is that Wikipedia’s development has not been wholly anarchical, and indeed its success has depended precisely on its not being so. Moreover, less anarchical projects might well do better in the long run; I hope so, but we’ll see.

Pesce is not the first to suggest that the Internet will result in a massive anarchist revolution. At the risk of banality, let me say that I favor good old-fashioned democracy both on-line and off, and I obviously oppose the anti-democratic, mob-rule society Pesce appears to desire. I do not think that the mere fact that Wikipedia has a dysfunctional anarchical/mob-rule governance system indicates that democracy itself is somehow outmoded — that seems to be Pesce’s inference, and it is as silly as it sounds. In his talk, I should clarify, Pesce does not really say what he’s in favor of. But I can make a reasonable guess. He says that our inevitable destiny is the destruction of democracy and the “hyper-empowerment” of individuals. Well, in politics, democracy is the only way to “hyper-empower” people; anarchy leads to mobocracy, and mobocracy disempowers all but those with the stomach and ability to lead the mob.

However all that is, and as many people have said, I would say instead that the Internet is more likely to strengthen our democracies. Pesce has nothing like a coherent or plausible argument to the contrary — merely a “just so story,” wishful thinking delivered with breathless, barely concealed hopefulness.