This Hive is Buzzing
It couldn't happen without the kids. The Dean Phenomenon
is impossible by any conventional measure of how enterprises function, how
work
is completed
and how power is transferred.
The campaign's enabling technology is a bunch of twenty-somethings
who do projects with little direction and no or little pay, usually with
free software
that took several hundred thousand hours to write, coordinating among themselves
without memos
or manuals but with instant, ephemeral indicators and descriptions.
Out of that bricolage they're forging a revolution that's
as dramatic as the one the Founding Hackers programmed 227 years ago. If
Jefferson, Paine and Franklin were alive they'd have found their way to Burlington
and
be
sitting
in here too, at two in the morning, hacking code, tweaking interfaces,
configuring
databases
and
exchanging
staccato
messages, woven into a web of shared awareness that's like a busily productive
hive.
The most important thing about this place is subtle but obvious
once you get it. These kids know things together and work together in a way
that's
fundamentally different
from people just a decade older. Their information arrives in spare snippets,
morphing and spreading constantly among the members of their collective,
by IM, email, IRC, listserve, Wiki, SMS, cross-cubicle chat, RSS, cell phone,
SlashDot and Google, but
rarely
recorded
explicitly for private use. They share
an assumption
that
whatever
knowledge
needed
will
be instantly
retrievable
and that the hive will produce required resources at the time needed, no
earlier or later. If it's not available, they just use what is and press
on. They don't theorize that perfect is the enemy of good, they live it.
My generation, and probably a couple after me, was taught
that each of us is responsible for all the information we encounter. We're
obligated to capture, archive, organize, index, format and present it, on
demand, to whichever audience needs to be straightened out so they see things
as we do. This is the process that's been used since, like, forever, and
look how successful it's been. It never prevented one of the greatest intellectual
societies in history, Germany, from savaging the world twice and suffer ignominious
defeat both times. And it didn't keep the US from its hubris-driven adventures
in Viet Nam and Iraq.
(This morning on Meet the Press, Russert played
a 1956 video of John Foster Dulles describing why it was so important
to avoid engaging an indigenous force in the Middle East. He cited the
French
experience
in
IndoChina [Viet Nam] as his justification!) But then he hadn't reckoned
with the ability of Robert McNamara to Rumsfeld the country into a war
that killed 58,000 Americans with no significant geopolitical payoff.
No, it's clear that the top-down, hierarchical model of social
organization has failed us consistently.
Make no mistake, there are plenty of adults organizing things
in traditional ways in Burlington, but the rapid give-and-take is the secret
sauce, concocted by the kids. And we're learning how to do it, though it's
a struggle.
The Higher Archy
Every age needs its -archy. The Greeks had their oligarchy,
the Middle Ages their monarchy, the Industrial Age its hierarchy
and McKinley's assassin sought anarchy. Kids today follow an organizing
principle with an instinct for the higher good while allowing any participant
to take
whatever role feels right. Those who do more do not look down on less spectacularly
performing teammates any more than the quarterback disses his right guard.
This new way of dealing is totally natural to them and foreign
to me. I'm barely able to even recognize the profundity of the differences in
how we acquire and process information. I suppose it's like the difference
between a Jazz musician and her manager.
Zen Master
Joe Trippi is the Phil Jackson of Presidential campaigns.
He doesn't so much tell his players what to do as he tells them what to pay
attention to. Like Jackson, he creates an environment and then works on his
team's attitudes and insights. On Wednesday he emerged into the bullpen
outside his
office where the web team and Media Miners, about a dozen in all, twiddle
the bits
that describe Howard Dean to the world, where they host the Web Application
called the Dean Campaign.
"Listen up, people! Who can tell me what's on Kerry's page
right now?"
Silence.
"What have I told you?! You need to know
what's going on out there all the time!"
That's it. Back to the Bat Cave. You could almost hear Kerry's
server logs churning as the Dean Hive browsed to it and started
diddling with a silly little Flash widget that gives you access to the Contribution
Page only after hitting a carnival bell with a
hammer.
Joe's point wasn't that the animation was lame, though it
was. His point was that all his people need to be thinking
like a Campaign Manager! He didn't hold a meeting with his
Commanders to produce policy for the Lieutenant Commanders to brief the
company commanders on the directions to give to the troops.
No, this campaign hasn't time for that. Everything will work out fine if
everybody keeps thinking like the coach.
Holographic Intelligence.
Hive Mind.
The Smartest Network Wins
...as David Weinberger said.
Trippi said in his Lessig
interview that this is an open
source campaign. He spoke freely Thursday night at a classic
Vermont-style town meeting in Waterbury with folks who came to hear Joe
and Zephyr describe the campaign
and the cultural
struggle that lies behind it. Joe spoke passionately (counter to type) about
a three-decade decline in individual influence, as people power
was ceded to corporate interests. He told these Vermonters that they have
an obligation to do
what's
possible to bring their old American values to a nation that has forgotten
how to come together and thrash out the issues and disagree on core principles
for hours, but still get coffee afterwards. These people have known Howard
Dean for decades, some have been his patients. Their admiration for him
is immense and their passion to right the wrongs they perceive has them
cheering
for his Campaign Manager and Internet Outreach Director like the rock stars
they're becoming.
The lessons we're learning from this network is not that hive
mind diminishes the intelligence of its individuals. Rather it amolifies
their capabilities, just as a hive is so much smarter than the bees are.
So if you're wondering what the Dean buzz is really about,
it's about the hive. 412,791 and growing.
11:59:51 PM 
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