Dreaming 5GW

From TPMB

Thomas Barnett responded to my post “On the Barnettian 5GW” with “Nice post by Curtis on 5GW.”

Shane’s right in his comment: I do agree with the vast majority of the post, to include its criticism that my vision to date has relied a lot on stock characters (nations, militaries, corporations).

The reason why I don’t just elucidate the super-empowered masses is two-fold:

[TPMB]

Very thrilling to have a response like that, although I must admit I did not expect it.  I didn’t expect any direct response, mostly because I know Tom is a very busy man and I’m just a blogger on the sidelines trying to make sense of things — in my own peculiar way.  So it’s also thrilling to have my “take” on Tom’s vision validated.  I mean, I made some metaphorical, logical, and horizontal leaps in that post.

Tom’s reason behind his lack of elucidation is two-fold.  You can go read it, if you like.  I left this response:

After writing that post, I began to realize my own paradox: Given the stress made at D5GW on secrecy in 5GW operations, my criticism that you haven’t outlined the street-level 5GW approach seems a little silly. Of course you haven’t. I’ve been contemplating the ways that much of that outline could be incorporated into your Book III — even before your response here. In any case, I also realize that your primary audience has thus far matched your prior approach (as well as matching your experience) and that many seeds must be planted for any 5GW endeavor before the flowers can bloom. Anything I’ve written on the topic, even criticisms on your Core/Gap strategy, has been greatly informed by your work. If I’m co-opted, I would expect my criticisms to be part and parcel of your overall game plan!

BTW, I very much like “the tale of 5GW can only be told in mosaic.” I’ll probably have to steal that metaphor.

I’m also looking forward to your collaboration with Steve, even if I have to work my way there through #3.

[CGW]

When I mentioned in comments under the original post on D5GW that Tom often speaks in parables, I was not far off in my analysis, I see.  His experience, his connections, his audience, have gone to shape his message thus far; and the superempowered individuals are hidden behind the parabolic figures, “nations, militaries, corporations.”  I knew that when I wrote that post.  As part of my own peculiar on-going effort here at D5GW, the analysis of those parables requires elucidation — but as PurpleSlog once commented, Tom’s effort to sell his vision may be 5GW even if the particulars he has thus far outlined are pre-5GW operations when considered in isolation.  That’s something to keep in mind.  To the degree that others-who-are-not-Tom take his ideas and run with them, altering them, elucidating them, we might wonder if they are in fact co-opted without knowing they are.

From the ZenPundit

Mark Safranski highlighted my post and Tom’s post with “Globalization’s Superempowered Societies.”

I don’t think Curtis’ use of ” relative equalization of individual empowerment” is actually as oxymoronic as it seems. This is an astute normative economic observation on Week’s part. Instead, it illustrates the aggregate effect of Schumpeter’s creative destruction rippling across the globe as the spread of economic connectivity and information technology proceeds apace. The spread, of say, cell phone-based wifi internet access to states with sketchy (at best) landline telephone service, is a quantum leap forward for equalization of empowerment on the macro- scale even as certain small networks or individuals of those states on the micro- scale, possess the ability to leverage still greater levels of empowerment to become “more equal than others”.

This seeming dichotomy are flip sides of the same coin in any true market action and is always ongoing to some degree, provided the market is permitted to function. Unless the comparative advantage is artificially locked in by force ( this is what tyrants of disconnectivity, like Mugabe and Kim Jong-Il, do - force everyone else to remain still in order to retain their own local “super empowerment”), any individual or entity’s “super empowerment” is apt to be a fleeting condition unless constantly maintained by adaptive improvements.

[MS]

If my grasp on complex economics were as good as Mark implied in the first paragraph, I’d have an easier time addressing my uneasiness with his analysis.  On the surface, I understand this completely and somewhat agree; but I’m leery of the subject of ‘free markets,’ given the fact that even capitalism within democratic societies is certainly not ‘free.’  It can’t be free, or it wouldn’t be capitalism.  For instance, the truly superempowered within a capitalistic society will by definition be the best at adapting to maintain that superempowerment.  Am I wrong?  Then again, the sort of inheritance system we have in America may enable an American bin Laden to emerge one day:  How much time should we give to “the system” to correct such an emergence, given the sort of destruction such an individual could wreak before we realize the nefarious turn?

I suppose I could rephrase those questions and ask:  What keeps the greatly empowered and, especially, the superempowered from tweaking the system in order to “lock in” their relative wealth/power?

And yet, to the degree that those superempowered rely on “the masses” for their power and give “bread and circuses” to the masses, the masses may remain content with the disparity. Something besides the “anti-lock-in” is at work.

Mark makes an excellent point in reference to Tom’s “accent on [SEI’s] positively remaking the world” —

Numerically speaking, most highly intelligent, energetic, creative and task persistent individuals who function as change agents are overwhelmingly positive actors.

[MS]

— while cautioning us not to grow complacent given that fact. “Negative super empowered individuals” may emerge.  I particularly like Mark’s addition of a potential third ingredient for building systemic resilience capable of surviving and even thriving despite the perturbations a superempowered actor might cause:

Steve’s Development-in-a Box paradigm at Enterra is one effort to begin comprehensively addressing these deficits. Tom’s Sys Admin is another. Building new, highly decentralized, “Wikinomic” mass-collaborative platforms from scratch, may be yet a third.

[MS]

Where’s John Robb?

Ah, there he is.  Should’ve expected that.  Not exactly a response to my post, but…

Here’s the latest entry on his personal blog, short and sweet:

Brave New Peace?

Working on the ideas for a second book (in the proposal stage) on superempowered individuals and their ability change things for the better. It picks up on the last section of BNW on rethinking security and runs with it.

[JR]

It also runs with Mark’s and Tom’s posts, right on cue.

My initial reaction was the above; then, I thought, Hmmmm…Maybe someone’s 5GW is coming together.

And then I thought something even better:  We may one day in the not-too-distant future find Tom, John, and Mark operating in close harmony (with the occasional skeptical remark from CGW lobbed over the fence.)  Essentially, my post exploring the Barnettian 5GW, though it carried the familiar criticism of Robb’s GG theory, was critical of Barnett’s theory precisely where Robb takes up; that is, at the street level, far below the parabolic national, military, and corporate level.

We will see.

Filed in The Vault and tagged John Robb, Mark Safranski, Superempowerment, Thomas P. M. Barnett