(Smart Mass) Times (Acceleration) = Smartforce

Swarming behavior is an accelerating social force.

Emerging from the global connectedness of cell phones, the Web, Email distribution lists etc., technological swarming is a novel development in Guerrilla warfare, protest, politics, journalism, and every social sphere. Experiment for yourself with some searches.

This one snagged me though: From China to Colorado, consumers are connecting online in coordinated "mob buying" sprees. A Smartforce of hundreds of people ready to purchase big ticket items, swarm temporarily into a collective that sellers are willing to compete for.

Here's a classic shot of a journalistic flash scoop collectively aiming their phonecams at the New York steam pipe explosion.

The Dangerous Convergence of Technology and Warfare

Technology decentralizes power; military, political, economic, media, energy... all of it. Because once a medium becomes digitized, it must move with the laws of networked information. Distributed, connected, decentralized, democratized, Peer-to-peer ... Eventually grass roots. From the hands of the few to the masses.

The Internet is possible because of the computerized digitization of text, audio and video. The fight over music copyrights emerges from the digitization of audio. Pirated Hollywood movies can arrive online within hours of release because of the digitization of video.

The same pattern is also occurring within manufacturing which will soon give birth to desktop fabrication and crude (at first) replicators. A. I. will emerge as we get far enough down the road in digitizing intelligence. And this ongoing digitization of everything allows ever smaller groups to wage increasingly potent warfare.

This nexus of technology and warfare are probably the biggest challenge we face as a species. But the increasing acceleration and magnitude of political violence is also driving technological solutions to it. Ultimately the solution to global violence will be distributed as well, meaning we, the masses will somehow become the solution.

The Acceleration of Global Violence

There is an ugly economy to violence. It's cheaper to destroy than build, and to take by force than negotiate. And within every segment of the political spectrum there are those who would employ violence to achieve their ends.

Todays coordinated attacks from stateless groups around the globe cost orders of magnitude less than the burdens of rebuilding and forever heightened security.

Present political stability depends on managing wholesale violence with the threat or exercise of still greater violence. Otherwise the political structure dissolves.

The Decentralization of Global Violence

Technology makes increasingly powerful weapons cheaper and gives rise to new ways and means of destruction. And so small innovative groups become capable of increasingly cheap, massive, raw violence. In Madrid, cheap cellphones became sophisticated detonators. They could have been triggered by Email, remotely and anonymously, from anywhere in the world.

Where Is This Taking Us?

Technology democratizes power of every kind; military, political, economic, media, energy production; all of it. Centralized power becomes distributed from the hands of the few to the masses.

I do see the day when politics reflects the conscience of mothers, the security of children and all the things communities really want in order to thrive and grow functionally. There isn't much time though. Weapons of mass destruction are becoming open source, distributed and cheap.