Against the simplistic conservatism of Evgeny Morozov: a network-theory critique <http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/against-the-simplistic-conservatism-of-evgeny-...> photo of Michel Bauwens Michel Bauwens 12th February 2013 *Con:* Morozov sees decentralization as a leisurely, unnecessary, and incompetent social experiment by people unwilling or unable to engage in the serious work of reform. I suspect such attitudes say more about Morozov's social circle than the subjects he claims to study. Moreover, he's convinced that the trial runs we've seen by the groups identified as "internet centrist", like Occupy and the Pirate Party, is already sufficient evidence for condemning the whole approach. He's quick to link the innovative strategies of these radical upstarts with collectivist thought and media analysis from decades before the Internet, to further suggest that the strategy has had plenty of time to mature and succeed, and has utterly failed to do so. On his one-dimensional analysis, the jury is basically already in: decentralization is functionally incompatible with organizational success. Morozov is convinced that the barbarians can't win; the only way to make Rome fall is to build a better Rome. The observations and anecdotes he has collected here might be a convincing argument for perpetuating the existing order, if centralization were the only dimension available for analyzing the structure of political institutions. *Pro:* Organizational structure and success is not a product of hierarchy and centralization any more than it is a product of decentralization and horizontalism. Organization and centrality are entirely distinct measures of a network. Successful organizations find ways to effectively execute sustaining functions by any means, and this requires both concentrating and distributing power in a variety of ways. Dogmatically clinging to any degree of centrality for an institution is meaningless without some explanation of the institution's functional role and methods for executing that role. Excerpted <http://digitalinterface.blogspot.com/2013/02/social-media-is-fact-of-life-fo...> from *Daniel Estrada*: *A reply to Evgeny Morozov.* "There are two ways to be wrong about the internet. One is to argue it doesn't live up to its hype. Speculative futurism and unabashed mysticism have become commonplace in discussions of technological change, and it isn't hard to find people ready to claim that the internet is a panacea heralding everything up to and including immortality. In such an environment, one need only be moderately critical about the internet to position oneself as a pariah standing against a swarm of naive technoidealists. Democracy doesn't even work on Wikipedia, the argument goes, and so it is foolish to think that "liquid democracy" will change the form of legitimate governance (read: the nation-state) in any substantive way, hype be damned. The problem with such criticisms is that they treat the possibility of internet-generated change as all-or-nothing: either the internet meets the expectations of its most wide-eyed advocates, or it is a waste of time with all the sociopolitical importance of a video game. There's no room in this view for registering the subtle cultural shifts that can change the practice of legitimate governance over time, or for understanding how the ideals of extremists can change the discourse even when their ideals are not achieved. [...] Continua qui: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/against-the-simplistic-conservatism-of-evgeny-...
