Last Sunday, August 29, a crowd of 200.000 "welcomed" W. Bush in New York, voicing their discontent with his policy. An interesting question is: how do these kind of (protest) movements have their influence ? Are they able to make a difference ? Certainly on this side of the Ocean, we hope for another US international policy, and let us face it, probably also for another person as President. But is a movement like the one of Sunday able to create the necessary power to realize that ?
The phenomenon is not new. We just have to recall the Thursday evening demonstrations in Dresden, that certainly contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Much older we have the Ghandi policy on non-violent opposition. On the more "violent" side we have had the power of the Vietcong in the Vietnam war, that for most classical thinkers was ununderstandable. We have known the same kind of (indeed network) structures in the resistance movement during the Second World War.
The power of networks is what we do not really seem to understand, as long as we do not understand how e.g. terrorist networks operate. Never any straight forward (static and non-linear) attack will be able to stop a network operation. We have had some sad examples in the past, but unfortunately we respond to it with the wrong arms. The logic of a network is one that cannot be broken with the logic of a (military) chain operation.
As much as this is true for military (geo-political) matters, this is true for business networks. Networks of national (the construction industry fraude in the Netherlands) and international (drug money laundry) fraude are just some examples of the negative power of networks.
The same power networks can of course also be used in a positive sense, like for creating momentum to force a necessary political change, or momentum to start doing something for fostering sustainable development in the world.
Anyway, a better understanding of the power of networks would allow us to get a more realistic view of the world of today, and how we could probably manage it for the better. Axelrod has written a few interesting books on the underlying theories of networks.
Walter, if we look on the concept of "power of network" then in my view there is strong links between senders and receivers of the network in all the direction. In the first paragraph you have mentioned the protest against BUSH and i cant connect it with the power of networks. What i think is its a flow of people "pshycological trend" many people have seen very bad effect of war on iraq and they have sympathy with the people and thats why they might be there in protest contrary if BUSH had not gone for the war and imagine that SADDAM had really something very dangerous then also people had protest against BUSH.
what i want to say is more than 90% of people in the protest dont know exactly what is the issue and they just follow the other who r the leaders so i dont find anything related to the network in that.
But if your point of view is with the information which makes differance when it spreads in more and more people then I am agree with that point. I too believe that any information which spreads by any kind of network to more and more people will definitely make differance.
Posted by: Vinay | August 31, 2004 at 05:11 PM
Yes and no, of course. My question is about how networks function. When Aznar decided that Spain should support the Iraqi war, the entire Spanish population was against and eventually, the elections have given a major landshift. You could add numbers of these exemples. Now on the spiritual side (which I do not mention) there are people (Chopra) that are convinced, that in order to change war into peace, it would be enough to create a network sufficiently large that support a peace idea, for moving the common consciousness in that direction. So the point is not that people are in favour or against Bush (though I still think the protestors are really against). The point is how a network (non organised) of people that share a common goal arrive to create a movement that makes a difference ?
Posted by: Walter Baets | September 02, 2004 at 12:14 PM
Je pense que la force des réseaux humains est issue de l'apparition des NTIC. En effet, ces nouvelles technologies ont permis une plus grande flexibilité du fonctionnement des réseaux. Les réseaux humains sont généralement non-hierarchisés et non centralisés. Ils caractérisent un système social dynamique et permettent à chacun d'être en interaction avec les autres.
Aussi, la force du réseau humain est qu'il est dispatché, donc difficilement controllable.
Posted by: julie | September 30, 2004 at 07:06 PM
Autopoeisis again. Although they are non orgorganised networks of people manage to be powerful and efficient if they are large enough
Posted by: Marie | October 01, 2004 at 01:25 PM
La network économie est remplie d'avantages et d'inconvéniants. Socialement c'est devenu, avec les NTIC, un liens social à part entière. Idéoligiquement, c'est à la fois un vecteur de démocratie (au sens étymologique)et un danger car pouvant entraîner des dérives via justement un réseau suffisament large et accessible.
Au niveau économique, c'est une avancée enorme qui permet de coordonner plus facilement les éléments d'un système complexe. On comprend d'ailleur sa grande utilité pour des aspect tels que la logistique, ou le contrôle de gestion.
Posted by: austin | January 11, 2005 at 04:27 PM