Hive Mind

The concept  of the hive mind is new to me, but of course it has been around since before I was around.  Some of the first attempts towards hive culture "could" be traced back to religion, or totalitarianism.  In these examples group thought and action were directed and controlled by a small select few.  Often some form of punishment was the motivation of this type of hive mind.  Of course these types of hive coercion still exist, but a new dawn of hive consciousness is taking root within or culture.  this new hive mind lives, breathes, and grows exponentially on the web.

There are several examples of hive mind that reside within the confines of the net.  The most prominent example to date is the hive mentality of Wikipedia.  Wikipedia was born in 2001 and has quickly become the first stop reference for the majority of internet users.  each article within the Wikipedia hive is written and maintained by volunteers.  This is the crux of the Wikipedia hive.  In Jaron Lanier's article Digital Maoism, Lanier states:

Wikipedia is just one experiment that sill has room to change and grow.  At the very least it's a success at revealing what the online people withe the most determination and time on their hands are thinking, and that's actually interesting information.

Lanier's comment directs me back to the idea that within hive cultures of the past, only a select few are the dictators of information and the masses adhere to guidelines of the select.  This is in some relations true of Wikipedia.  For all the hundreds of times I have quickly glanced or entranced myself in the articles of Wikipedia, I have never contributed to or questioned the information that I was receiving.  Typically, I just accept that the information on Wikipedia is valid enough for my general knowledge purposes.  Of course I am not writing in depth articles solely on the text of a Wikipedia article, but I do often utilize it as a source for links to specific information found on the web.  In this sense, the hive mind does have it's advantages but this hive consciousness does create several unsavory potentials.

There is so much going on within the web.  Everyone has a blog or two, a Facebook, and or a twitter feed to maintain.  Information for these constantly updating feeds becomes regurgitation.  Very little real writing is being done.  In fact, without throwing myself to far under the bus, there is extremely little important information proposed within the blogs, Facebook persona, tumbler, and twitter accounts that I maintain.  the majority of the information that I contribute to the net is of no consequence except for personal entertainment and the entrainment of my peers; and I am not alone.  Andrew Keen in the Cult of the Amateur puts it this way:

Everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves, but nobody was listening.  Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated.

Keen goes on to describe hive consciousness as a minutia of amateurs where in truth, discourse, expertise, and talent have been undermined for the sake of advancing the self within the collective.  if the ideals of digital Darwinism as Keen suggests are true, then each  amateur content creator is responsible for the decline of relative substance that permeates the web.  I do feel that the Internet is altering culture and changing human consciousness. Certainly armature content creation is the wind at the Net's sail, but I do not feel that this is acting towards the detriment of culture as a whole.  The Internet is evolving.  What the Internet is most utilized for is subjective as per each member of the Net's global hive.  A balance between the collective and the individual seems to be the guiding direction towards a greater evolution of the collective.