I am developing an appreciation of the Occupy Wall Street movement that surprises me. You know the news about it and how over the weekend the movement went global. You probably also know that the authorities are not dealing with it effectively. They’ve been content to watch and wait, hoping that the movement will exhaust itself. That’s a good strategy for the last millennium, and the movement may wear out if only because as winter approaches it gets harder to remain committed to living on the street. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
It's a far more ancient and natural phenomenon than an e-marketer would like to admit, going back to ancient human history and of course the leaderless group intelligence frequently found in Nature. The exceptions prove the rule here -- in religion, for example, where the "movement" forms and follows long behind the "leader" (Lao Tzu was dead for 300 yrs. before any "Taoist" movement existed; Christ was gone for half a century before anyone began to speak of "Catholicism").
The point here is that OWS is an organism of vast intelligence. What the tech has done is to make that intelligence more easily manifest and more globally accessible. No small accomplishment; but tech is not responsible for the rise of leaderless orgs, which have spawned and thrived throughout human history, each attracting and accepting johnny-come-lately leaders. History fixates on the leaders, because that's an easy focus to deliver in a textbook; but the realities are far more interesting than textbooks would like us to think.
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OWS: The Strategic Brilliance of Facelessness
Posted by: Denis Pombriant October 19, 2011 05:00 AMI am developing an appreciation of the Occupy Wall Street movement that surprises me. You know the news about it and how over the weekend the movement went global. You probably also know that the authorities are not dealing with it effectively. They’ve been content to watch and wait, hoping that the movement will exhaust itself. That’s a good strategy for the last millennium, and the movement may wear out if only because as winter approaches it gets harder to remain committed to living on the street. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
The point here is that OWS is an organism of vast intelligence. What the tech has done is to make that intelligence more easily manifest and more globally accessible. No small accomplishment; but tech is not responsible for the rise of leaderless orgs, which have spawned and thrived throughout human history, each attracting and accepting johnny-come-lately leaders. History fixates on the leaders, because that's an easy focus to deliver in a textbook; but the realities are far more interesting than textbooks would like us to think.