Ants work both individually and collectively

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/ants-have-unique-ability-to-switch-between-individual-and-collective-action-says-study-10425367.html

"Ants have an almost unique ability among animals to switch between individual and collective action, according to new research which uncovers the mystery behind their impressive teamwork.

The insects are able to transport objects such as food that are much larger than themselves by intuitively understanding when to be part of the collective muscle and when to play an individual 'scouting' role for the group, researchers found.
Experiments using the Cheerios breakfast cereal showed how groups of a dozen or more ants working in unison could haul much bigger items by pushing in the same direction. But crucially, when the group moves off-course or trouble looms, the ant who first realises the problem transforms into a highly individualistic leader."

This is pretty cool. There is really no leader. there is one ant who is in the best position to give directions at that time.

Anonymous is bigger than most thought

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2015/0708/How-big-is-Anonymous-Maybe-bigger-than-you-thought

"The analysis looks at Facebook pages connected with Anonymous to gain insight into its international prowess. Yevgeniy Golovchenko, a graduate student in the school's sociology department, examined 2,770 Anonymous Facebook pages that generated a collective 22.2 million 'likes.' This is just the 'absolute minimal size' of the entire global Anonymous network, Mr. Golovchenko explained in an interview.
The point of the study was to 'show the enormity and connectivity of the Anonymous movement at a global level,' he said. The end result revealed a network greater than he expected. It was even 'a lot bigger than my Anon informants thought it would be,' said Golovchenko."

Anonymous still in the news too!

"the rich and poor social networks did not overlap"

http://civicmediaproject.org/works/civic-media-project/the2013protestsinbrazil

"Even though the people facing digital inequalities in the marginalized areas came late to the protest, Facebook still provided a platform so the residents of Gurigica, São Benedito and Itararé could organize and manifest their demands in the street protest. But the social divide that takes place in Vitória affected the way information flowed, impacting the civic engagement of the poor. The organizers of the first protests belonged to an upper class that did not overlap with lower classes, online and offline, the marginalized came in late to the streets and their voices and requests were not privileged as the ones shouted by the rich."

This is an interesting study in how class divide prevents larger protests.  Something for organizers to think about in the future.

Looking back on the Arab Spring

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/fallen-leaves-arab-spring-150310060732982.html

"No matter what the current state of different Arab uprisings, this much is certain: That where the people once loudly demanded the downfall of certain regimes, many now want order and security before anything else.

Hassan Hassan, an Abu Dhabi-based Middle East analyst and a co-author of ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror, says there are no visible gains for the people so far as conflicts and insurgencies in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Egypt continue to cut a swathe of destruction through the region.
'All that ordinary people are looking forward to is an end to the violence, and stability at some point,' he told Al Jazeera."

Sad article.  The Arab Spring succeeded in toppling dictators. But then what?  That is the question.  And can such a revolution be preparing for a smooth transition at the same time as it is toppling a government?  Personally, I think not.  And I don't know the solution to that.

Collective Action as a business model?

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/g/gary_hamel.html

"The real damper on employee engagement is the soggy, cold blanket of centralized authority. In most companies, power cascades downwards from the CEO. Not only are employees disenfranchised from most policy decisions, they lack even the power to rebel against egocentric and tyrannical supervisors."

I'm just finding out about Gary Hamel, but I like the general flow of his ideas.  I heard him being interviewed on BBC radio last night and will have to look into this guy.  

Is crowdsourcing a myth?

https://medium.com/backchannel/how-a-lone-hacker-shredded-the-myth-of-crowdsourcing-d9d0534f1731

"On November 24, an email from an anonymous Hushmail address landed in the team’s inbox. It taunted USCD about the team’s security lapses, claimed that the sender had recruited his own horde of hackers from the notorious 4chan bulletin board, and revealed exactly how he had used proxy servers and virtual private networks (VPNs) to launch his attacks.

'I too am working on the puzzle and feel that crowdsourcing is basically cheating,' read the email. 'For what should be a programming challenge about computer vision algorithms, crowdsourcing really just seems like a brute force and ugly plan of attack, even if it is effective (which I guess remains to be seen).' He signed off with the phrase 'All Your Shreds are Belong to U.S.'”

* * *

"By Stefanovitch’s reckoning, just two individuals had accounted for almost all the destruction, eviscerating the completed puzzle in about one percent of the moves and two percent of the time it had taken a crowd of thousands to assemble it. Yet the attacker had left one more clue, a blunder that pointed right back to his door. During the first attack, he had logged in with an email address from his very own domain."

* * *

"Luckily for platforms like Wikipedia or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the prospect for longer-term crowdsourcing projects are not so bleak. Game theorists have found that systems where individuals can build up a good reputation, are (probably) not as prone to devastating attacks from within.

But wily humans are good at finding their way around even the most secure digital systems. In a paper last year, researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, used AI software to detect spammers in China’s Weibo social network with an accuracy of up to 99%. Despite that, the authors concluded that 'adversarial attacks are effective against all machine learning algorithms, and coordinated attacks are particularly effective.'”

Ok, so designing a crowdsourcing problem is critical.  And some problems cannot be handled by crowdsourcing because trolls and saboteurs can get into the system and wreck things faster than you can solve them. Got it.  But this doesn't destroy crowdsourcing.  The Internet itself is flawed because the original design did not take robust security into account. But we still use the Internet.

Did the Arab Spring miss important steps in Egypt?

http://www.madamasr.com/opinion/power-january-25-revolutionaries-and-responsibility

"In short, at a time that could have made a critical difference, the revolutionaries did not realize the need to take initiative. As the protests to fulfill the democratic demand for presidential elections drew nearer, it was only a small group of revolutionaries that were dubious about the outcome. The rest merely made various public calls against military intervention when they should have focused on holding the main umbrella group, the National Salvation Front, to that anti-intervention principle as a condition, and established protocols to be followed if that intervention happened. That was their only leverage.

This is not to say the revolutionaries had control over, or were responsible for, the protests in any effective manner. Had the revolutionaries been silent at home on June 30, the size and the outcome of the protests would have been same, drawn from the broader, anti-Brotherhood segments of the population. Here, effective power, and the 'power of responsibility to provide alternatives' diverge – and it is the latter we must now examine."

 I'm reading Havel: a Life about the Czech president Vaclav Havel.  After communism fell in 1989, there was a power vacuum.  But there was also a group of people who had stood up to the communist government, who were well respected by most Czechs, and who were willing to form a new government from scratch. Somehow it worked, in a messy sort of way.

   Looking back on the Arab Spring, it seems to me that the revolution had one main goal, get rid of Mubarak.  There wasn't really much planning past that that I, from an extremely long distance away, could see.  Short-term thinking might be a problem inherent in collective action. I'll have to think about that.

And here's another overview; http://www.ahrc.ac.uk/What-We-Do/Strengthen-research-impact/Inform-public-policy/Documents/Understanding_Instability.pdf

protesting = terrorism? Come on NYPD

http://www.vice.com/read/how-the-nypds-counter-terror-apparatus-is-being-turned-on-police-protesters-119

"'When I see counterterrorism folks amongst protesters, it sends me a message that I'm the enemy, and that they are trying to keep other New Yorkers safe from those protesting for their civil rights," said Sarsour. "It vilifies the people who are being peaceful and asking for something they should already have, asking for things like ending of police brutality.'

The police wearing the counterterrorism jackets at protests are perhaps the most palpable sign of the agency's transformation since 2001. Before 9/11 the NYPD had no counterterrorism bureau and the Intelligence Division focused its resources on gang activity. After the September 11 attacks, however, billions of dollars were poured into the department to counter the threat of terrorism, as a 2011 60 Minutesreport showed. Critics of the NYPD's post-9/11 turn have been arguing that practices devoted to fighting terrorism have violated the Constitution.
Now, they say, the NYPD is unleashing its counterterrorism tools on activists against police brutality, conflating legitimate protest with the threat of terrorism."

Good grief. I'm assuming that this is happening because all those cops assigned to counter terrorism have to do SOMETHING, but this is counterproductive on so many levels.  Mainly, it sends the message that protests are scary, dangerous things, and that those who are practicing their first amendment rights might actually be criminals.

"Impossible" seeks to have people help each other, one year old

https://www.impossible.com/aboutus/

"What is impossible?
A global community who help each other out. People share their time, skills and objects.


Build valuable profiles —
impossible gives you a place to record your acts of kindness (complementing your LinkedIn/Facebook profiles). We reckon it’s easier getting a job or a partner or a friend if people know how kind you are.


Thanks currency -
impossible users earn Thanks when they give to one another, a social currency that can be used with some impossible partners.


Is Impossible a business or a charity?
Impossible is a social business which means that no private dividends are allowed, and 100% of profit goes back into Impossible."

This has been going for a year and I just found out about it.  Lily Cole started it.  Seems to have a good reputation.

making activism a group effort in Russia

http://www.vox.com/2014/12/30/7468609/alexei-navalny-russia

"Navalny began to normalize anti-corruption campaigning, turning it into something that ordinary people do in their spare time, rather than the futile quest of lone idealists with high tolerance for risk."

This is a good article about how collective action is stronger than the work of a high-end single player.  The Internet is what makes this collective action possible.