杏吧原创

COMPARED with Davos, Ditchley and Aspen, the Highland Forum is far less well known, yet it is arguably just as influential a talking shop. An occasional gathering of civilian and military intellectuals founded in 1994 by retired US navy captain Dick O鈥橬eill and financed by the Pentagon, it brings together a couple of dozen innovative people to consider interactions between policy and technology. Its biggest successes have been in the development of high-tech network-based warfare.

One such innovative Highland fellow is John Henry Clippinger, an academic and writer on technology strategy and policy, artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. A member of the Santa Fe Institute, Clippinger is senior fellow both at the Aspen Institute and at Harvard School of Law鈥檚 Berkman Center for Internet and Society. This latter is affiliated to , a group which 鈥渟eeks to give people more control over their digital identities: their online identities, personal information and social identities鈥�.

In his latest book, A Crowd of One, Clippinger extends these interests to the meaning of identity, trust, openness, social networks and freedom in a digital age, where all sorts of boundaries are suddenly up for renegotiation.

Clippinger believes strongly that major scientific insights, brought about by neuroscience, evolutionary biology and the like, have produced welcome changes in our knowledge of ourselves. He develops this idea in a wide-ranging and stimulating manner through the history of ideas. From the Renaissance to Enlightenment Edinburgh, Clippinger explores the relationship between science and societal self-knowledge, always keeping his central belief in sight: the effects of the digital revolution can only be good.

The 鈥渃rowd of one鈥� of the title is a nod to his thoroughly scientific view that we only become ourselves through interaction with others. For him, as a sort of libertarian, digitalisation can and will ensure that 鈥渄ecision rights鈥� (in other words, individual power) are distributed throughout society. While many see power being concentrated in too few hands, be they Microsoft or Google, he sees digitalisation as helping enhance the development of independent yet networked, non-hierarchical, individualised movements.

Given the involvement of Clippinger and others in the development of the Pentagon鈥檚 network-centric warfare, it is easy to be jaundiced about such hopes. After all, the US spends more on its military than the rest of the world combined, yet is signally failing in Iraq. In that bitter war, tens of thousands (relatively few) paramilitaries are tying down 400,000 (comparatively many) coalition troops and Iraqi security forces 鈥� and this despite all those new techniques and networks.

To be fair, Clippinger is pretty scathing. As he puts it, 鈥渁mong the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense, there is an unwavering conviction that force, fear, and intimidation are not only effective deterrents but are the necessary ingredients for fostering democratic behavior鈥�. This is an outlook that he roundly demolishes in the book.

Instead, Clippinger looks to what he calls 鈥渇ourth-generation capitalism鈥�, a much freer advance on our current post-industrial/information model. This current model involves governmental and other regulation to curb the excesses of even earlier forms. For him, 4G capitalism 鈥渋s more autonomous and self-governing than its predecessors and is primarily digital. It uses social preference signals and digital institutions to create markets to internalise economic, social, and political externalities to resolve鈥� social and ecological issues鈥�.

鈥淔ourth-generation capitalism will be more autonomous and self-governing鈥�

In other words, ideologically progressive digitalisation applied to capitalism will rid it of inherent weaknesses such as war, poverty and oppression. This is a fine aim, which, if it happens, will change the world political economy in startling and radical ways.

But, while an increasingly globalised free market has managed to deliver patchy economic growth in the past three decades, it has signally failed to enhance economic justice. The divide between an increasingly rich and successful transnational elite of some 1.2 billion people and a marginalised 5-billion majority has only grown bigger.

Ironically, as this majority becomes more educated, literate, communicative and, above all, increasingly aware of its marginalisation, digitalisation has already made the world less stable. You need only recall the Afghanistan war, with images of a corporal on horseback who has the technology and 鈥渄ecision rights鈥� to call in a bomber attack, or take a look at Al-Qaida websites.

Perhaps Clippinger is right and such thoughts are unnecessarily pessimistic. Whatever the prospects, A Crowd of One is stimulating and essentially positive. For that alone, his contribution to the debate on our common futures is considerable.