Don't become part of the Swarm Culture

A swarm is a plurality of living beings whose behavior follows (or seems to follow) rules embedded in their neural systems. Biologists call a swarm a multitude of animals of similar size and bodily orientation moving together in the same direction and performing actions in a coordinated way....In conditions of social Hypercomplexity human beings tend to act like a swarm.

When the Infosphere is too dense and too fast for conscious elaboration of information, people tend to conform to shared behavior...In a broader sense we may say that in the digital age power is about making things easy. In a Hypercomplex environment that cannot be properly understood and governed by the individual mind, people will follow simplified pathways and will use complexity reducing machines.

This is why social behavior today seems to be trapped in regular and inescapable patterns of interaction. Technolinguistic procedures, financial obligations, social needs and Pyschomedia invasion: all this machinery is framing the field of the possible and incorporating common cognitive processes in the behavior of social actors.

In a swarm it is not impossible to say no. But it is irrelevant. You can express your refusal, your rebellion but it is not going to change the direction of the swarm nor is it going to affect the way the swarm's brain is elaborating information." (Bernardi)

Link to rest of article by John Stanton: english.pravda.ru...

Get the cure before you become part of the swarm.

Antidote #1: The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Astra Taylor, Metropolitan Books, 2014.

Antidote #2: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press' Semiotext(e) Intervention Series: Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity, Gerald Raunig; The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Franco Bernardi; Theory of the Young Girl, Tiqqun; and The Agony of Power, Jean Baudrillard.

Antidote #3: Global Interdependence--The World After 1945 (Volume 6); A World Connecting, 1870-1945 (Volume 5), General Editors Akira Iriye and Jurgen Osterhamme.

reply to post by UxoriousMagnus


Us non biologist, call this monkey see, monkey do . Nothing new here. Wonder how much tax payer Money was wasted on this rebranding.

reply to post by UxoriousMagnus


Serious question. (though it is somewhat humorous)

If we supposedly have a swarm mentality seeking simplicity, why are things getting more complicated?

Ive heard it called crowd mentality too.

People tend to copy each other in large masses, it could be from anything to a yawn to a riot.

reply to post by UxoriousMagnus


S&F for you for this article. Not because you are advertising a book, but its probably a book I will read because the swarm describes a feeling I have had now for quite some time. Slowly we are having our technology turned against us by either being spied on or infiltrated by disinformation, institution trolls or so many warnings that apply pressure to already beleaguered people.

Living today in one way is like living in a pressure cooker that is slowly coming up to blow. I watched people interviewed on the tv last night about workers right to strike. We had two interviewees who both seemed to think about the question and then say no to making laws to control these public rights but then we had Boris Johnson who gave us Boris's right to make laws to stop them. Its about the % one must have agreeing if Boris and the elite get their way, however, the interviewer pointed out that Boris himself got elected with a lower % of the vote than he is prepared to give unions the right to strike if his law goes ahead - double standards which for once the interviewer pointed out somewhat sheepishly.

A law, the ultimate weapon to destroy people's civil rights (I am fine with the ones that protect the public from mad drivers rapists, murders and all the paper crime and fraud etc). But not ones that restrict our right to action when we feel standards are slipping or we are being further exploited than is fair.

Both parties work for the establishment so their protectionism mechanics work to create a predictable swarm and soon I expect in UKy we will start having superprisons into which to pop people whose main crime is to oppose the institutions in some way or another, but who the police can target for something to give them an excuse to arrest - which is pretty much like breathing today.

reply to post by UxoriousMagnus


Einstein had this down to a small phrase, which, I suppose, was a habit he was very famous for in some respects. He said that things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler than that.

That sounds like advice worth taking to me. Its why I do not rely on the internet, or gadgets to do my thinking for me. There are many things in my work life, and personal life, that I could do to increase my technological uptake, and perhaps the time efficiency of my activities. However, I would rather use more traditional methods, because they are usually more beneficial in terms of the wider scheme of things. For example, using an electric drill driver (screw driver with a motor), is faster, but sometimes the heads of the screws will become rounded.

The other thing is personal interaction. I could get a Facebook or something, but the fact is that apart from any data security concerns I may have about Facebook, many of my friends spend HOURS AND HOURS a day, preening their online personalities, like a bird poking and prodding at its nest. It is supposed to make keeping in touch easier, but all it does is sap your time. Therefore, if I want to speak with my friends, I may call them, or perhaps text them, but more often than not, I go to their homes, I knock on the door, like the way it used to be done.

I do not accept my place in the swarm.

I think we Humans are a little too complex in order to become an all out swarm culture. Where there is no room for individuality, and only unity as one.

We align ourselves to the things we enjoy and carry them out with people who share our common thinking. It kind of gives us purpose and comfort doing so. So in some sense we are herding together. But we only do so by interest and choice.

Take this website for example. There are quite a few of us here. And we all have one ultimate goal; To talk about the world and the things that are happening around us. Not everyone has an interest or need to do this. I can go up to someone and say "Wow, this website called ATS is awesome, you should join." But there is no guarantee they will follow along. And there's no guarantee everyone will participate in one particular forum section. Advertisements and commercials would be a good example of this. Not everyone who watches a cool commercial goes and buys their product, but some do.

So I can agree that we Humans do create herds, possibly you could say swarms, but we do so in order to express our goals and desires in a more peaceful and "safe" environment. And people who have their own agenda go about what it is they want to do with like-minded people. Perhaps you could call this a simplistic complexity. But you couldn't say that everyone is going about in one certain direction collectively.

Just remember.
You are an individual, just like everyone else.

"If you listen to fools, the mob rules" (Ritchie Blackmoore, I think)

TDawgRex
reply to post by UxoriousMagnus

 

Serious question. (though it is somewhat humorous)

If we supposedly have a swarm mentality seeking simplicity, why are things getting more complicated?

Tdawg,
Life is getting more complicated but technology is making the processes easier.

If you needed to put some money in the bank 100 years ago....you got the wagon all hitched up, made a list of what you needed to get from the mercantile and gathered all the homemade jam and fresh cut veggies and cured fox hides that you are going to trade while in town and you set out for a full day.

Now you just log into your account from your Galaxy S4 during that boring meeting at work and transfer some funds that were automatically deposited by the company you work for.

I think this is kind of what they are getting at

Biigs
Ive heard it called crowd mentality too.

People tend to copy each other in large masses, it could be from anything to a yawn to a riot.

exactly and they are saying that with technology.....this is getting worse

Beartracker16
Just remember.
You are an individual, just like everyone else.

"If you listen to fools, the mob rules" (Ritchie Blackmoore, I think)

but they are saying that now days with technology that we aren't even aware that we are getting swept up in these mass movements

TrueBrit
reply to post by UxoriousMagnus

 

Einstein had this down to a small phrase, which, I suppose, was a habit he was very famous for in some respects. He said that things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler than that.

That sounds like advice worth taking to me. Its why I do not rely on the internet, or gadgets to do my thinking for me. There are many things in my work life, and personal life, that I could do to increase my technological uptake, and perhaps the time efficiency of my activities. However, I would rather use more traditional methods, because they are usually more beneficial in terms of the wider scheme of things. For example, using an electric drill driver (screw driver with a motor), is faster, but sometimes the heads of the screws will become rounded.

The other thing is personal interaction. I could get a Facebook or something, but the fact is that apart from any data security concerns I may have about Facebook, many of my friends spend HOURS AND HOURS a day, preening their online personalities, like a bird poking and prodding at its nest. It is supposed to make keeping in touch easier, but all it does is sap your time. Therefore, if I want to speak with my friends, I may call them, or perhaps text them, but more often than not, I go to their homes, I knock on the door, like the way it used to be done.

I do not accept my place in the swarm.

well said....

thanks truebrit

Shiloh7
reply to post by UxoriousMagnus

 

S&F for you for this article. Not because you are advertising a book, but its probably a book I will read because the swarm describes a feeling I have had now for quite some time. Slowly we are having our technology turned against us by either being spied on or infiltrated by disinformation, institution trolls or so many warnings that apply pressure to already beleaguered people.

Living today in one way is like living in a pressure cooker that is slowly coming up to blow. I watched people interviewed on the tv last night about workers right to strike. We had two interviewees who both seemed to think about the question and then say no to making laws to control these public rights but then we had Boris Johnson who gave us Boris's right to make laws to stop them. Its about the % one must have agreeing if Boris and the elite get their way, however, the interviewer pointed out that Boris himself got elected with a lower % of the vote than he is prepared to give unions the right to strike if his law goes ahead - double standards which for once the interviewer pointed out somewhat sheepishly.

A law, the ultimate weapon to destroy people's civil rights (I am fine with the ones that protect the public from mad drivers rapists, murders and all the paper crime and fraud etc). But not ones that restrict our right to action when we feel standards are slipping or we are being further exploited than is fair.

Both parties work for the establishment so their protectionism mechanics work to create a predictable swarm and soon I expect in UKy we will start having superprisons into which to pop people whose main crime is to oppose the institutions in some way or another, but who the police can target for something to give them an excuse to arrest - which is pretty much like breathing today.

LOL...yeah...I was going to leave the books out of it but since they were part of the article I felt I had to put them in there.

Thanks for the comments as I agree with your take on this

Has anyone found it interesting that as we develop our computer technology -- we ourselves are behaving more and more like computers? Additionally, we are building our computers/AI to become more "human".

Down the road, computers and AI might resemble today's humans more than the humans themselves!

MystikMushroom
Has anyone found it interesting that as we develop our computer technology -- we ourselves are behaving more and more like computers? Additionally, we are building our computers/AI to become more "human".

Down the road, computers and AI might resemble today's humans more than the humans themselves!

edit on 5-2-2014 by MystikMushroom because: (no reason given)

uh....I hadn't thought of it like that.....but you make a very good and funny yet kind of frightening point.

We are all individuals who' actions are not dividual.

Swarm , not a word meant for a human.

There is the hive mind. Would the swarm be the same thing - just a different timeframe or moment when it was doing something else that made someone came up with another name for it I wonder.