A new era is coming – the era of the growing amplitude of the collective
social effects based on the "action at a distance"-type interaction
between human beings. In physics, the meaning of "action at a
distance" is related to the immediate (no-time) reaction of an object to
an action of another object at any distance. Social networks and other
extremely effective, cheap, and fast communication tools are the
person-to-person "action at a distance", which lead to multiple spontaneous but coherent connections
of unacquainted people on numerous topics of mutual interest, e.g. a no-time reaction of readers in Australia to a Twitter post in the US. In the past, such
spontaneous reactions and gathering together in many groups at the same time were
not possible due to the absence of effective two-way communication tools and a low
number of physical connections (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) one can try
on the topics of interest. It was difficult to find several persons who
understand you and share your interest. For many years in many countries,
football or other games fans were probably the largest groups of non-political
interests. I am sure that it was not because of the beauty of the games as
such.
Currently, millions can virtually gather together on some economically/socially/technically/
scientifically/etc. irrelevant but personally important topics. The Internet
gives immediate and simultaneous (virtual) connection to the whole world (even
language now is not a big issue) and one can find affinitive souls. (I guess
that the post-modern philosophy is partly based on the increasing importance of
the growing number and sizes of the collective effects in contemporary
society, which likely came with the radio.) In the physical world, flash-mobs are a simple but clear manifestation that the
collective behavior driven by shared communication without interest to get some
benefits from the action. In its natural form, flash-mobs are important as
emotional release of accumulated stress. Such collective behavior has its own rules
and laws. Therefore, it can be used for better or for worst.
In physics, there are two major states related to the ensembles – closed
system and open system. In a closed system, only the laws of interaction
between particles/persons are important for the evolution of the whole system
and its elements and sub-ensembles. In an open system, the interaction of
elements can be also driven by external forces. In reality, there are internal
and external forces competing for closing and opening a system. (For example,
the USA protects its own electoral system but fights to open any other country's
electoral system. In the economic domain, however, the USA has a much lower level of
protectionism than in the political system.) The ensembles are characterized by
various collective effects depending on the interaction laws, e.g. attraction
or repulsion. Opposite forces can exist at the same time between two objects,
e.g. gravitational attraction and electrical repulsion between two electrons.
In the past, successful politics and policy were based on the possibility
to retain the interaction between people in a given society within the agenda
of high-level interest, even if people do not care or share these interests.
For example, the cold war was a good idea to organize the interaction between members
of society. In a few cases, small groups of people, usually called revolutionists,
were able to formulate and disseminate collectively accepted ideas or, better
to say, to express the existential but unrealized interest of an overwhelming
majority of the population. Examples of great revolutions are well known. These are
examples of collective self-driven behavior. The exclusiveness of such cases
demonstrates how hard it was to ignite and sustain collective revolutionary
actions. The number of failed coups is much larger than the number of
successful revolutions. Communication means were slow and ineffective to push
ideas through broader masses. Collective pain, i.e. unconditional consolidation
based on a similar negative experience, was the driver of revolutions.
There is one type of collective behavior that frightens me if realized
in modern society – chain reaction driven by virtual links. (A quantitative
chain chemical reaction theory was created by Soviet physicist Nikolay Semyonov
in 1934.) The main idea is that chemical reaction creates improved conditions
for its continuation. The chemical explosion is an example of a chain chemical reaction. A nuclear explosion is also a type of chain reaction, but at the physical level – nuclei
split by the capturing of neutron(s) and, together with lots of energy, emit
more neutrons to split new nuclei. The total energy release can be
catastrophic. The conditions for nuclear explosions can be, in an extremely
simplistic form, formulated as a critical density of fissile material providing
conditions for a chain reaction. This means that neutrons (more than one) emitted
by one nucleus have to be caught by more than one nuclei. In an atomic bomb,
the density is reached by extremely high compression created by a chemical
explosion around the nuclear change itself.
The social processes related to collective behavior accelerated by the
Internet applications and communications move into the direction of critical
conditions for a chain reaction with damaging effects. Naïve flash-mobs were a
good start for social protests in the Arab spring and Ukrainian unrest. The
number and intensity of horizontal connections for one person are growing with
time like the number of available tools like Facebook and TikTok. Moreover, the
collective behavior is controlled by networks and probably by some other actors
behind the scene. The horizontal connectivity of modern society has many
positive sides, but there are well-known negative effects. The worst-case
scenario, however, is if the controlled collective effects will go the nuclear
explosion path. The Arab spring is a good example of external control of internal communication-driven unrest.
Such collective behavior in Arab countries seemed to be harmless for
western states. This is a powerful
technology under fast development, however, which can be directed to any country. BLM
and Antifa is an example of externally controlled aggression through collective
communication by interest. It was a local action with a quite limited effect,
but it is a gigantic step in the technology of social manipulation using extremely
dense social networking along zillions of horizontal links. This technology is
close to being able to create critical conditions for the “nuclear explosion” in
the society in
any country, including the USA.
