Decentralized groups and Stand Alone Complex

The other day I watched the talk “The coming war on general computation” by Boing Boing editor Cory Doctorow.

The talk itself was very interesting and I encourage anyone interested in the recent attempts to pass laws like SOPA to listen to the talk. Cory makes a lot of sense in his arguments and his delivery is very interesting and easy to digest.

That said, what caught my attention was a comment he made after the talk when answering questions. He mentioned how he would talk about the hacker/activist “group” Anonymous and that people would constantly correct him about what Anonymous was.

He went on to say that Anonymous and Occupy groups (like Occupy Wall Street) are formed and don’t have a hierarchical structure. With networks we can coordinate easily so hierarchical structures are not necessary. The organization and communication comes for free. Because historically these groups couldn’t exist without a hierarchy because it was needed for effective communication, we lack a vocabulary for this kind of group or organization.

Groups before networks couldn’t get together and organize without a set of common goals, but now they can get together and organize events without a set of common goals, and decide on them later because organizing is easy.

Stand Alone Complex?

The loose knit organization and loose goals, reminded me of terrorist groups, open-source hackers, and a Stand Alone Complex (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex). Open source hackers are probably different however as there is usually a project that people gather around. Anonymous and Occupy probably most similar to the structure of terrorist organizations which had this kind of organization style mostly because of their many divergent radical views. Anyway, most people are familiar with terrorist groups, and open-source hackers as they have been covered extensively at least for the last 10 years or so.

What interested me was a possible connection between these new style groups and a Stand Alone Complex. In a Stand Alone Complex, disconnected people attempt to copy, and emulate an originator of an event or idea, when the event or originator did not exist or wasn’t perceived to have the same meaning. This has the effect of seeming like a connected movement, or group when there was no real group, or originator. In the end the group of disconnected copycats can actually have a net effect of purpose or cause change in social structure.

The idea may be slightly different from Anonymous or Occupy movements but the disorganized, and decentralized nature of the groups makes for an interesting parallel.