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The Risk of Information Catastrophe

Our communications networks are to our economy like what rainfall was to the Mayans in Apocalypto. If a drought caused so many bad turns for their society then, what would be the result of an information catastrophe today?

The other evening I watched Apocalypto for the first time. Great movie!

Mel Gibson wanted his film to depict “civilizations and what undermines them.” Apocalypto shows the stresses on the Mayan civilization’s means of production – maize failure, lack of rain, plague, and socio-political turmoil, only soon to be followed by Spaniards and what hell they would bring to Mesoamerica.

Today we live in a so-called knowledge age, in which our civilization-wide and personal access to prosperity – and thus effectively the source of power – is heavily correlated with our access to the means of knowledge production.

Communications is one of those means to knowledge. Our networks can leverage our access to knowledge, and thus prosperity for ourselves and our communities, if we design them appropriately and according to the right values. Notably, if we use a community-centric social process to design the network with values of community prosperity and resilience built-in to the network, then an increase of prosperity through the network would yield more power in the community to affect our world and tell our own stories.

In Apocalypto, the source of the Mayan crisis in the early 1500s is drought. Drought brings maize failure and community turmoil, which leads to starvation, the destruction of villages and human sacrifice by the religious-state complex. These events and conditions leave the Maya people already reeling before the Spaniards arrive on their shores to eventually destroy their society.

That’s a dramatic example, but our communities are no less bound by the need for resilience today than communities in Mesoamerica were at that time. In the recent recession, the financial services industry dipped sharply from contributing 8.3% of US GDP in 2006, to less than 6% in 2009. A ~2..5% drop in an industry with a significant chunk of the wealth generation of the country is bound to create reverberations for many, and harsh shocks for some. This doesn’t only hold for GDP – any reduction in the capacity of the means of production produces these reverberations and shocks.

Our communications networks are to our economy like what rainfall was to the Mayans. If a drought caused so many bad turns for their society then, what would be the result of an information catastrophe today? Our ability to leverage network effects while maintaining resilience in our communities has eroded in many places, and the integrity of our networks is at constant risk. We outsource our communications to giant corporations, who maintain facilities that run wires or beam signals from far away. It may be economically efficient for them to build their network that way, but this does not serve the needs of the community. As much as we hate telecom in less-catastrophic times, the specter of an abrupt and extended communications drought should make us think about the consequences when we lack those resources and skills in our communities.

By Preston

Agent of Change, Former of Entropy, Seeker of a Stateless World.

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