PDF2008 - Mark Pesce, Hyperpolitics (American Style)
One of the most surprising presentations on Day Two at PDF was from Australian Mark Pesce who took an interesting anthropological approach to the impact of ubiquitous many-to-many communications on modern political behaviour.
The full text of his presentation is up at his blog and it’s worth checking out in full, it was certainly receiving an appreciative buzz on the conference floor.
Here’s potted summary:
Sociability has always been the cornerstone to human effectiveness. Being social has always been the best way to get ahead.
…..
Children are experts in mimesis – learning by imitation. ……We are built to observe and reproduce the behaviours of our parents, our mentors and our peers.
Our peers now number three and a half billion.
Whenever any one of us displays a new behaviour in a hyperconnected context, that behaviour is inherently transparent, visible and observed. If that behaviour is successful, it is immediately copied by those who witnessed the behaviour, then copied by those who witness that behaviour, and those who witnessed that behaviour, and so on. Very quickly, that behaviour becomes part of the global behavioural kit.
As its first-order emergent quality, hyperconnectivity produces hypermimesis, the unprecedented acceleration of the natural processes of observational learning, where each behavioural innovation is distributed globally and instantaneously.
Mark is sensibly reticent to speculate on the full implications of these trends, but is ultimately optimistic that they will result in increased community empowerment in democratic society. A thought provoking new perspective.
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