Values, beliefs and information

The feedback to us at Triarchy on The Three Ways of Getting Things Done has been incredibly positive in that people know that they feel oppressed, often depressed, by hierarchical organizations and that they are excited by the idea that there may be alternatives. However, what they really want and need is to find helpful ways of making the change away from hierarchy to more dispersed systems. It is the 'how to' that is difficult. This may be what the debating pages here end up being concerned with -but it is not going to be easy...
I am not going to offer any pragmatic suggestions about how to move from hierarchy to flatter systems but raise a question that seeks to engage with Peter Farnden’s critique (read it on our Forum ) of Gerard’s book. I thought that, as we are communicating here via the internet, it might be interesting to consider this by thinking about global communication as an example of a flat system. First, I consider its impact on hierarchy. Then, I ask whether, as a flat system, it ends up behaving like hierarchies in terms of power and ultimate control. If so, how should we be viewing our place in the global network organization? My thoughts play through Peter’s comments on values and information.

The internet provides the freedom for people to participate in a flat system, and anyone who contributes to debates and blogs forms part of revolutionary social change in the way we organise ourselves.

An example of this is the way recent blogs from Iraq have impacted on our view of the war. These views, no doubt, put pressure on governments to make changes, if nothing else to the way in which they present and justify their intervention in Iraq. From this, it is fair to say that the voices from the net are seriously beginning to impact on and create tensions in hierarchical systems. Not just on governments, but also, for example, on newspapers. Because they are changing our view of publishing, of professional journalism and even on what constitutes literature (a recent blog from Iraq has been published and put forward for a literary prize...).

The mobile network is another loose organization and a technological tool that impacts on the dissemination of information.

I was recently speaking to someone who works in the military who gave me an example of how a voice from the bottom can seriously put pressure on those at the top of the command and control system. He mentioned that a senior member of the government had spoken by mobile phone to a private serving in Iraq. Having listened to the soldier's take on the war, including some criticisms, the government member used this view to immediately put pressure on people at the top. On one level, this is a sign of democracy in process – a rapid means to change. On the surface, that seems to present a good value arising out of the democratization of the hierarchy. But in reality, it may do little more than demonstrate the politician's need to interfere by using the soldier's tale as a tool to exercise power (there was no suggestion that he checked out the soldier's take before having a go at the top brass). This illustrates why Peter's point about power, values, information and supervision is a valid one.

I have no doubt that the guys (almost certainly!) at the top of the military considered that the intervention of the government agent after an informal conversation with a trooper showed a distinct lack of judgment, and probably an ill-informed one too! But how are we to decide?

Peter writes that:

All organizations are in some way in a principal-agent relationship and there are always the problems created by distortions in information and power between the two (agent & principal). Hierarchy is in a sense one response to this problem through the roles of supervision, roles and policy.

As the voices from the net begin to impress themselves on the hierarchies of newspapers and governments, the problem of 'whose values' raises its head. So too, does the question of who the principal is and who the agent. That is why the exercise of power and the problem of distortions in information are an issue in flat systems.
No doubt the military pointed this out to the politician!

As far as the net is concerned, this is a hot potato. Who exactly supervises and selects the excellent from the pernicious and ill-informed? (In the case of this website, by the way, it will be members of our team!)

So, Peter's question - How do heterarchy and responsible autonomy address these problems? - is an extremely valid and important one. He is right that hierarchy seems to be strong and clear about how it can supervise the value system. But it is probably the case in heterarchy and responsible autonomy too; the question of values and parameters must, as such, be the key to their respective success or failure.

The web and the mobile form complex, flat organizations. It is hard to work out just how to inculcate values and beliefs into flatter systems because the question always remains - whose values? If none are imposed you enculture relativism. But already most people in the west think that the fewer controls on net-voices the better - despite the dangers of the dissemination of bad information. This is exactly because we understand that supervision means someone else deciding for us what 'bad' is. And yet most of us hate the idea of free access to child pornography, right-wing politicos and extremist religious views. This is because we recognise the dangers to cultural values that most of us still share. We will trust to a hope that we will respond by resisting such information. But we know that some won’t.

So, once again, Peter's question about values, information and heterarchy and responsible autonomy hits the mark. But at the same time that we try to work out whether a common sense rejection of some information will generally prevail, are we missing something else out? In his book, Gerard talks about the hegemony of hierarchy. What this means is that the cultural ideologies are so deeply embedded that we don’t consciously recognise them, but subscribe to them without even being aware of it.

The question I would like to ask is, therefore, whether we should be thinking more carefully about the likelihood of a hegemony of heterarchy? How do we learn to recognise hegemony? For I suspect that the reality of the global network with its claims on democratization and freedom may not be quite what we think it is. We may seek supervision of fraudsters, paedophiles and terrorists on the web. But fears of supervision and invasions of our privacy are real too. And Google's recent acceptance of censorship on the Chinese web-search engine exposes the ability of this ‘invisible’ supervisory hand to control the heterarchy of the web. Hence, the recent new debate on the power of Google to survey and, potentially, intervene in all our lives. And if Google can do it, so, arguably, can governments and other institutions of power.

We are all going to have to work through these issues. One approach would be to hone our skills in ideological criticism – the ability to read the gaps and omissions in information that we are presented with. This skill applies just as much to a hegemony of heterarchy as it does to one of hierarchy. As a skill it will not entirely answer Peter’s question about the need for values, the supervision of values, and the ability to work out whose values they really are. But it sets us on our guard. This must be set in the context of the need and dangers of freedom. It is going to be just as critical to work out whether web freedom is real or being interfered with – and if the latter, to find out who is doing the distorting.

This is quite a challenge. But it is a necessary one because, whether we like it or not, the times, they are a-changing. I guess that we have to try to ensure is that flatter systems don’t just end up oppressing and depressing us as much as the hierarchical systems of which we are so critical. It is a question of being mindful about frying pans and fires.

Rosie Beckham