Emergent Intelligence

Nicholas Carr, whose "Does IT Matter?" was debunked in some recent work I participated in last summer, has some telling insights into Chris Anderson's defense of Wikipedia's emergent intelligence. He states:

To people, "optimization" is a neutral term. The optimization of a complex mathematical, or economic, system may make things better for us, or it may make things worse. It may improve society, or degrade it. We may not be able to apprehend the ends, but that doesn't mean the ends are going to be good.

He's exactly right. Evolution and emergent intelligence doesn't naturally flow towards some eschatological goodness. It moves forward under its own logic. It often solves problems we don't want solved. For example, in global guerrilla open source warfare, this emergent community intelligence is slowly developing forms of attack (such as systems disruption), that make it an extremely effective foe for nation-states.

Of course, this development may not be a bad thing when looked at from a higher vantage point. An emergent anti-state platform may be necessary -- for states, without opposition, cannot and will not improve. As Nietzsche pointed out, ideas only gain meaning through the development of their opposites.