Dont we see this with open source?<p>More people show up. More people can find issues. Many more people can find issues than can fix them. The bug tracker bloats. Core team members get called incompetent every 2 hrs. As a counter reaction some core team members get it into their head, to share less or react in unhelpful ways that have long term costs and things go back and forth in waves.<p>We have a few rules at work.<p>1. Focus on solutions over reactions.<p>2. It becomes easy to take advantage of weaknesses in people and squander their strengths, so try as much to do the opposite.<p>3. Have a plan to handle highly ambitious people before they show up. Don't start wondering what to do after someone with more energy/drive/talent/resource shows up and wants to take over everything, which will keep happening as networks expand.
For this we treat things like sports teams, which have to deal with a whole spectrum of highly driven people and get them to work in sync. Works out some days and blows up in our face on others.<p>There is no free lunch with transparency and growing networks. Just lot of tradeoffs.
Authority rests on information control. High status roles generally depend on access to and control over the dominant communication channels of the time.<p>[...]<p>Of all social roles, those of hierarchy are affected most by new patterns of information flow. The loss of information control undermines traditional authority figures. Further, because information control is an implicit rather than an explicit aspect of high status, the changes in hierarchy are surrounded by confusion and despair.<p>[...]<p>Many Americans are still hoping for the emergence of an old-style, dynamic "great leader." Yet electronic media of communication are making it almost impossible to find one. There is no lack of potential leaders, but rather an overabundance of information about them. The great leader image depends on mystification and careful management of public impressions. Through television, we see too much of our politicians, and they are losing control over their images and performances. As a result, our political leaders are being stripped of their aura and are being brought closer to the level of the average person.<p>– From Joshua Meyrowitz's No Sense of Place, 1989
Alternate headline: "People With Access to More Information Less Likely to Trust Blindly"<p>The article references a paper that hasn't yet been peer reviewed either. This isn't much.<p>"In general, people’s confidence in their leaders declined after getting 3g. However, the size of this effect varied. It was smaller in countries that allow a free press than in ones where traditional media are muzzled, and bigger in countries with unlimited web browsing than in ones that censor the internet. This implies that people are most likely to turn against their governments when they are exposed to online criticism that is not present offline. The decline was also larger in rural areas than in cities."<p>They bang on the 3g access, but gloss over the rural vs urban part. It could be reframed to something like "people who are isolated from information are less likely to question their assumptions about their government."
It's kind of ironic that people educated in social science tend to have idealistic or just legible, few factor theories about something this complex. I mean complex in the strong sense.<p>Early theories were about <i>"access to information unleashing a wave of democratisation.</i>" Current theories are about foreign and domestic intelligence manipulating social media.<p>The internet is an era. Eras have a lot going on.<p>The way we should (IMO) be thinking about this stuff is as complex systems, where the mechanisms can't really be understood to the point of predictiveness. Just like printing presses, mass literacy, radio and television broke political equilibriums... the internet breaks political equilibriums, for better or worse.<p>The internet is, OTOH, obviously structurally inclined to being an agent of chaos. Despite all the centralisation, the facebook, twitter, google and such use extremism like an exploitation film uses sex and violence. If something is dangerous, sexy and naked... people are going to look.
> A new study finds that incumbent parties lose votes after their citizens get online.<p>It appears that the study doesn't factor in cases where the governments indulge in mass propaganda. Mobile internet helps disseminate information at scale instantly, and people usually don't tend to ascertain authenticity of information.<p>Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter also do little do prevent spreading misinformation. If a government is "committed" to spreading misinformation, mobile internet makes it much easier to have a much wider reach that would be easily possible otherwise.
Isn't this a modern version of Plato's Cave Allegory[1]?<p>People being deprived of the truth and free information have no alternative but to blindly believe whatever you(the government) will tell them, North Korea style.<p>[1]: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave</a>
I remember back in the AOL days being excited about the internet and choosing it as a career because I was convinced that when it was possible for everyone in the world to openly communicate and share information that things like corruption and inequality couldn't possibly survive. Funny how that turned out.
Martin Gurri on the revolt of the public & crisis of authority in the information age:<p><a href="https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-of-the-public/" rel="nofollow">https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-...</a>
If you bother to read it, the conclusion contradicts what's expected .<p>Faith in government only declines if they are corrupt.<p>"The 3G expansion decreases government approval if there is at least some corruption. In few noncorrupt countries, the effect of 3G on government approval is actually positive."<p>So the internet is good for democracy even at the maxima?<p>Also censorship works well "Government approval falls with the expansion of 3G only when there is no internet censorship."<p>Neither I believe to be true. Censorship allows management of the population and will work, but it's hard, there should be some drop.<p>Anyway for corrupt governments without censorship I agree with the document and Starlink will sort it all out soon and bring in a few revolutions
The decline of classical pirates is also correlated with a rise in global temperature. Arr!<p>Mobile also arrived right around the time we really got confirmation there were no WMDs in Iraq.
I would love for there to be an actual open source/wiki government model that we could try.<p>I haven't done much research on what is the current state of the art thinking about this.<p>I bet people here know loads about it - where should I start after the wikipedia?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_governance</a>
People have faith in things because they need to, not because those things work. This is why people refuse to accept that prayer doesn't work. This is why in the 50s governments were corrupt, incompetent, wasteful, racist (plus all the other prejudices imaginable) and yet people had huge faith in them.<p>When you live in a rural village and can't really communicate or interact beyond the village, you NEED to believe there is a government out there keeping things working, keeping the enemy away and running stuff. So you do.<p>When you get a mobile phone and need to complain about something and talk about how you're a self made person and how those bozos in <capital city> are IDIOTS, and it seems like you can access more resources by complaining louder, guess what you believe then?<p>That's a big part of the rise of neoliberalism: the modern economy requires us all to be self starters and entrepreneurial (or at least to switch jobs regularly and make out own way in the world). To do that, it really helps to think of government and other people as morons and obstacles and yourself the a randian hero of you're own story. So we believe that. Because belief isn't based on evidence, its based on utility.
Mobile internet dilutes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry</a>
Innovation has also decreased with increased government R&D spending. Everyone knows you don't do linear regression on one point. Everyone but ... economists.
> Among 102 elections in 33 European countries, incumbent parties’ vote-share fell by an average of 4.7 percentage points once 3g arrived.<p>That's not a loss in faith in government, it's a loss in faith in the current government. A loss of faith in government would be voting for those who want a smaller government with less power, but the movements in Europe and elsewhere are hardly libertarian. Perhaps mobile internet is driving a desire for <i>change</i>, but for different, not less. Why would you desire that if it's government in general that you've lost faith in?
"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"?<p>I find it interesting that we refer to "faith" in government, as opposed to "trust." When cheaply printed books and pamphlets arrived on the seen, thanks to the printing press, we saw another kind of faith shaken. What followed, eventually, is what we call "The Enlightenment."<p>I'm not sure the decline in government is a bad thing. Here I will disclose my political leanings. I lean very heavily libertarian. I'm something of a classical liberal, in favor of what's derided as a "night watchmen" government. I am not for getting rid of government. I just think it should do a lot less. The scope of government increases only because of the "faith" people place in it, because its track record by comparison isn't all that good.