Devin Fidler
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

Qanon is a disappointingly low bar for conceptualizing the future of “collective intelligence.”

Indeed, it is an example of exactly what could go wrong in our attempts to build collective cognition systems.

While Jordan may be enamored with the distribution of the “Qanon Community” it is important to note that this is not the “grassroots” architecture that is supposed to characterize the “Red Religion” but instead is an extraordinarily top-down power structure. It is hundreds of thousands of people thinking in extremely narrow channels that are dictated to them, not by a few big media outlets, but by what is represented as a single individual.

Importantly, the posts themselves have intimated that they originate from state actors involved in military intelligence. This is the very “Deep State” itself, and precisely the same cohort that Jordan has condemned for duplicity with Operation Mockingbird and the Tonkin Gulf Incident. But surely this time is different.

Yet in retrospect, when Chairman Mao used new mass media tools to whip the nation’s students into an ideological frenzy to help fight internal power struggles and brutally implement the precepts of the Cultural Revolution, that was not a herald of the birth of a new age of sensemaking. Looking back, it can best be understood as an example of a kind of mob manipulation that is as old as politics itself. Ultimately, it was a tactic that Roman officials thousands of years ago would have understood and appreciated.

If you expand the lens to include the hundreds of years of documented examples of very similar campaigns in pursuit of geopolitical objectives (e.g. — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_during_the_Reformation), it looks an awful lot like this could be a case of “meet the new Religion, same as the old Religion.”

Further, the actual “sensemaking” functions of this collective system have been deliberately muted. On the whole, the Qanon community does not deliberate with those who disagree with them. Indeed, their Facebook communities and subreddits typically ban counter-arguments. And deliberately vague and cryptic framings, very similar to the language in the “Q-drops,” have been used in historical campaigns to greatly amplify confirmation bias. It is the same technique used by fortune tellers in cold readings, and so does not seem to me to be a particularly stunning example of the global brain coming online.

    Devin Fidler

    Written by

    Future of Work, Enterprise and Organizations. Studying Transformational Innovation at RethinkeryLabs.com

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