be the change you want to see in the world

John Horgan Announces Campaign for NDP Leadership from Horgan For BC on Vimeo.

Check out his website at http://www.horganforbc.ca/.

The recent introduction of Google Instant got me thinking. That won’t be the case for most people though. In fact, Google Instant will allow most people to think less, and that is a bad thing for all of us.

In fact, Google Instant may have an unintended consequence similar to the outcomes predicted by proponents of net neutrality. Net neutrality proponents point to the value and necessity of free speech in a healthy society. They argue providing priority bandwidth for some, as proposed by some of the major operators of the Internet, hurts free speech and flow of ideas. I agree. Google Instant provides another way for us to self-limit our free speech and thereby lose the benefits of it.

There is a concept in philosophy known as “noology”. Noology refers to the image of thought present in a person or society. What is an “image of thought” you might ask. An image of thought refers to the character, shape, form, intent and many other characteristics of thought. It refers to a style of thinking. Just as you may wear your hipster hat tilted forward or backward to indicate you personal outlook, and we might think of you as having a certain attitude or outlook as a result, so too does your style of thinking provide insights into who you are, or, in this case, who we all are.

I have previously written about Google and what it means for modern metaphysics. If you dig deep enough into any religion or metaphysics that appeals to an authority (God, the proletariat, etc.) you always find Us looking back in the mirror. The collective We is always the author in one way or another.

I believe Google Instant diminishes and devalues Google Search, which is a major collective source of authority we share. It does this by taking away the need for creative thinking in query construction. Not only that, but by using predictive technologies that present you with what it calculates to be the common query you have started to type, it reinforces the mainstream of thought. By allowing you to quit or give up when articulating your desired destination, Google instant herds us into one of the larger cattle gates on the human pasture. The hidden valleys and roads less traveled are lost from view before the search results load.

A good way to understand the Noology of a society where Google Instant is a major source of authority is to metaphorize it in the language of ecology. The web certainly is an ecosystem in one way. It is an ecosystem of thought where ideas and memes grow and develop, are discussed and debated, and may rise to the level of established truth or fade away into obscurity. By allowing us to stop thinking early and avoid having to creatively articulate ourselves, Google Instant promotes monocultures of thought. It clearcuts the forest of ideas and replants it with repetition and predictive algorithms. This is a bad thing in our human cultural ecology just as it is in our environment when we change things via forestry for example.

In some practices of forestry we cut down forests with diverse gene pools and replace them with tree farms made up of saplings all taken from one source. The trees are therefore all vulnerable to the same diseases and environment changes in the same way. We know from our ecological research that a diverse forest is a healthier more resilient forest; one more likely to withstand the ravages of disease and weather changes. This is particularly true in the era of climate change.

A monoculture is a dangerous thing to rely on when we live in challenging, changing times. Google Instant promotes a monocultural social noology. It does this by limiting the diversity of search queries and thereby the ways of expressing a question or idea.

When everyone sees the same preformed search queries, and therefore the same results in their Google search window, we will be increasingly influenced by the same sources of information, and the same set of ideas. We will increasingly reflect those ideas back to each other. Like minded but not-so-mainstream people will find it harder to connect, and potentially valuable new or different ideas will die off. This makes humanity less able to withstand the challenges of changing times. It makes us less innovative, less creative, and ultimately more vulnerable. We become permanent inhabitants of Plato’s Cave, uncritically watching the same shadow play.

Of course, this may not happen at all. I may be completely wrong about this. I hope so. All I know is that I want a web of diversity where healthy, creative ways of thinking are promoted and facilitated. I don’t see how Google Instant can nurture that. Quite the opposite, in fact. I see it as a self-inflicted blow to our collective requirement for net neutrality. As Senator Al Franken has said, net neutrality is the First Amendment issue of our generation.

I welcome your thoughtful comments.

Chris Anderson’s original 2004 article on the Long Tail phenomenon in marketing provides us with three rules:

1. Make everything available.
2. Cut the Price in Half. Now lower it.
3. Help me find it.

Anderson and thousands who have followed him focus on the ability of emerging media and networks to facillitate delivery of product long after its traditional shelf-life has expired. They point to businesses like Amazon and Netflix as examples of extensive inventories with small sales of older, less popular items. With huge inventories these small sales add up to significant revenue for retailers and rights-holders. Thus the three rules.

The Long Tail concept is one that has captured people’s imaginations. I see this as an opening for some new thinking on old topics. The concept of the Long Tail invites us to expand our scope of awareness. That invitation can be extended to thinking around more than just digital media and giant inventories of obscure widgets. We need more economists who think like ecologists, and understand the three rules apply to other aspects of our economy. It may be that the Long Tail is not always a positive thing. I’d like to invert it and propose the concept be applied to issues economists like to refer to as “externalities“.

An externality occurs in economics therefore when a decision causes costs or benefits to stakeholders other than the person making the decision, often, though not necessarily, from the use of common goods (for example, a decision which results in pollution of the atmosphere would involve an externality).

Succeeding using the Long Tail phenomenon as a strategy depends on a particular kind of Externality called a Network Externality or the “Network Effect.” Companies like Amazon and Netflix built out capacity in a gamble that they would win the race to provide the infrastructure people would choose. People chose them, and competitors fell by the wayside.

An example of a Network Effect play with long-term Long Tail potential is Sirius Satellite Radio. Here’s a company that is bleeding badly right now, but is nonetheless winning a race that will position them to deliver Long Tail content to huge N subscribers. Howard Stern was brought on to drive the Network Effect forward with his name recognition.

So, we have a concept - the Long Tail - that depends on an Externality - the Network Effect - for major commercial success. Such phenomena depend on the growth and expansion of markets, the freeing up of exchange and transactions, the free flow of goods, and the growing commonality of base culture. This is Globalization.

Gobalization drives the increasing thickness of the nascent Long Tail. The expansion and finer granularity of globalization and its networks means Long Tail phenomena can occur in more and more diverse sectors of the economy. The Network Effect externality speeds the thickening of Long Tail phenomena.

There are other Long Tail-ish phenomena that have not been properly or at all monetized. Globalization drives these phenomena through various Network Effect externalities, and their thickness is also increasing.

An example: ocean acidification. The ph balance of the oceans is shifting due to the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide - the collective exhalation of our civilization. There is a huge positive externality in the short term, but a highly negative one in the long term. The oceans are presently functioning like an Iron Lung for the planet:

Although this oceanic absorption will help ameliorate the climatic effects of anthropogenic emissions of CO2, it is believed that it will have negative consequences for oceanic calcifying organisms. These use the calcite or aragonite polymorphs of calcium carbonate to construct cell coverings or skeletons. Calcifiers span the food chain from autotrophs to heterotrophs and include organisms such as coccolithophores, corals, foraminifera and pteropods.

Currently our civilization is building out capacity for increased CO2 release. Huge middle classes are emerging in India and China, and they want the same amenities Europe and North America have enjoyed. This takes power and Network Infrastructure. The uncosted, unpaid for externalities will be significant.

The short-term money to be made equipping these new middle classes is enticing. But that is only because the cost of a wildly swinging environmental Long Tail has not been negatively monetized. Or, more simply, things do not cost what they really cost.

So here’s the inversion I spoke of before: while there is a marketing opportunity brought about by the growing Network Effect externalities of globalization, and that opportunity can be monetized using Long Tail techniques, we need a concomitant political and social acknowledgement of the strengthening and thickening Long Tail externalities that nobody wants to monetize lest they be put quickly out of business at minimum and behind bars at maximum.

I’m all for it. Let’s broaden our focus. Let’s collectively think past the “head of the tail” as Bill Gates put it in a recent interview. But let’s do it across the piece. Let’s acknowledge that externalities eventually have to paid for - that externalites are paid for, often with lives and livelihoods and neighborhoods.

So what are our three rules then?

1. Make everything available.
2. Cut the Price in Half. Now lower it.
3. Help me find it.

I propose this change:

1. Make everything accountable.
2. Double the price. Now raise it.
3. Help me bind it.

Make everything accountable: this simply means we have the right to ask what the full cost of things is, in the here and now and out on the Long Tail.

Double the Price. Now Raise it: this is a very conservative estimation of what we’ll find when we start to do true costing.

Help me bind it: this means globalized industry must not have anywhere to hide from their own Long Tails. Polluters and other externality generators like arms manufacturers should be made to bear the true costs of their profiteering.

Man, he was looking pretty fresh, pretty intelligent, pretty attractive…pretty electable.

Damn. Stupid Democrats.