Despite the fact that Peter is an IT specialist to the core, he consistently defends the position that technology is secondary in relation to people. The Belgian believes that digital technologies have spawned a new culture that has replaced the culture of an industrial society. In his books and on the pages of his personal blog, he talks about the future, which has already arrived.
Digital revolution
Peter was born and raised in Congo. Decades of observing African countries have provided rich food for thought. He cites examples of how the development of the Internet, over ten years, has done more to overcome poverty than the previous fifty years of World Bank grants and IMF loans.
For Hinchens, the Internet is the foundation of digital culture. A new basis of economic relations is being formed, which is changing the balance of power that has developed in an industrial society.
Here's a statement: the quality of any society directly depends on the ratio of performance and price of broadband Internet in that country.
As the Belgian notes, in our time, starting a digital business does not require capital expenditures, and we see something completely unique in the history of trading: the largest firms on the planet face direct competition from tiny startups that can grow rapidly, experiment with high-risk strategies, adapt in the blink of an eye and grow rapidly to fill new areas before large firms even realize these markets exist.
New opportunities that have emerged in the class of producers affect the interests of the ruling elite - the owners of big business and the political elite. Hinchens compares the opposition of the old order with the new to the opposition of the Castle and the City in late feudalism. At one time, castles were the only place where artisans, in exchange for loyalty to the feudal lord, could receive protection and food. Then it became possible to live independently of castles - to move to cities.
Those in power will not surrender so easily, and we will witness their attempts to drive people back into their castles - to establish a regime of cyberfeudalism .
Will our children live in a post-industrial wasteland where rich and poor live as two divided societies? Where food, water, solitude and travel are rare luxuries, and where digital infrastructure has become so ubiquitous and intrusive that every aspect of our lives is recorded, tracked, and modeled by the Para-State? Or will they live in a global meritocracy, where much of the old industrial economy has gone digital, where old cities no longer exist except entertainment centers, and every person on Earth except the mentally ill is online, all the time, everywhere?
Hinchens believes in the inevitability of the fall of the old system and explains this by the fundamental law of the development of our world.
Digital evolution
According to Moore's Law, the number of transistors on a chip doubles every 24 months. Peter Hinchens notes that while Moore's Law cannot last forever, it is part of a broader process that will never stop. He gave the name to this process - price gravity ( cost gravity ).
Every two years, technology becomes twice as available, twice cheaper, twice as powerful and twice as compact.
For Peter, the phenomenon of digital gravity is a manifestation of a fundamental property of life. Life, as an information system, develops from simple to complex. In the form of humanity and technology, it moves to the next level of organization.
Examining examples of successful organizations in the software development industry, the Belgian identifies in them the properties that are characteristic of living systems : self-organization, self-learning, balance between internal integrity and competition. An example of such systems is some communities that develop open source software.
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There is an implicit rule in Peter's thinking: anything that contributes to life is good . For example, the system is more viable if restrictions on the movement of information and free enterprise are removed. Therefore, open source communities (in particular ZeroMQ) are a boon. Patents and other restrictions impede the good (Hinchens has spent many years fighting patent law).
In order for the laws of development laid down in the foundation of life to manifest in the system, the system must be like life. Hinchens believes that, at the societal level, closest to the living system - a cooperation of private producers (which he figuratively calls bakers - bakers ).
Peter is convinced that the digital revolution is beneficial as the Internet provides opportunities for bakers around the world. He believes that societies built by bakers will be more pleasant to live in.
This allows us to answer the question of how to fix the sick societies of the world. Give bakers freedom and opportunity to form a commercial middle class and build their own society. The bakers do not need gifts: it only strengthens the beggars. The bakers don't need weapons: it strengthens the bandits. Bakers need access to markets and freedom to trade in them. In today's world, this means cheap and fast broadband.
At the same time, the Belgian notes that even in Western Europe, at present, bakers do not have full power.
Digital economy
According to Hinchens, people are guided by economic motives in their actions.
Regardless of whether we are aware of the presence of a carrot, it is always present in our subconscious. We are essentially economic animals. Our whole life is economic calculations. No matter how we deceive ourselves, there is an economic motive behind every action and decision. We invest in projects because we feel they will lead us to success, even if it takes years. We compete with others trying to find niches in which our special talents can manifest.
The Belgian criticizes the scheme of life imposed by the industrial society: fun-study-work-death ( play-learn-work-die ). A person invests 10-15 years of his life in studies, for the sake of profit in the distant future. Perhaps, when he masters the profession, it turns out that it is no longer relevant or does not like it. Peter considers this scheme unprofitable and compares it to an advance-fee fraud .
In digital culture, it became possible to move to short (3-5 years) cycles: learn-play-work-teach . Peter experienced the benefits of this approach.
It almost doesn't feel like work. It's fun, almost addictive. It is curious to see my professional life return to a child's view of the world.
Hinchens also believes that it is more profitable to be a self-employed contractor who joins highly specialized groups, some of which may be small companies, and most of which are simply "projects." There are countless millions of such projects posted on the Internet - the informal economy must undoubtedly exceed the formal economy by at least an order of magnitude.
In the industrialized world, economics, by and large, boils down to monetary relations. Peter compares an employee of a large corporation to a zombie with limited ability to meet high-level needs.
In the economy of digital culture, the importance of intangible relations is increasing, which are difficult to express in monetary terms. Hinchens notes that when people join open source projects, even though they don't get paid for their work, they still enter into economic relationships.
If we consider Maslow's hierarchy of needs, we will see that the needs of the higher levels depend on the relationships in the group. Our individual economic motives lead us to support the group. In digital culture, a dynamic balance (synthesis) is established between the altruistic and egoistic motives of the participants.
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Hinchens stresses the importance of regulation and rules in digital culture. Rules (protocols) form the DNA of a living organization and should maximize its development. Peter takes the ZeroMQ - C4 process as an example .
In this prototype of the digital constitution, the number one goal is the size and vitality of the community. Further evidence that, for Peter, community is a blessing in itself.
In C4, an Optimistic Merge strategy is proposed - where patches are accepted without careful censoring. This rule is important for building a vibrant organization with fast feedback loops (self-learning).
Relations between people in a living organization are based on a complex balance of altruism and selfishness. The system is vulnerable to dishonest behavior strategies. In this, Peter also sees analogies with real life. He has dedicated a separate book, Psychopath Code , to an analysis of dishonest strategies in personal relationships.
The system needs arbiters and regulators who do not interfere with the natural development of the system.
We could all be much richer, happier, and freer if governments retained their role as arbiter and regulator, and spend less time trying to interfere with markets in the interests of their friends.
One of the most important differences between the digital world and the industrial one is that if the regulator crosses the line, then the community is free to fork and continue life without it.
Digital freedom
Reflecting on the reasons for the success of living systems, Peter Hinchens notes that their success is largely based on a phenomenon that James Shurovieski called "the wisdom of the crowd ." Under certain conditions, a group offers better solutions than the smartest individuals in that group. ”
According to Shurovieski, a group exhibits the properties of collective wisdom if there is a variety of opinions, independence of members from each other, decentralization and effective ways of aggregating opinions.
In turn, Hinchens analyzes the reasons that give rise to the opposite effect - “the stupidity of the crowd”And concludes that stupidity is the result of social pressure techniques that suppress independent thinking and behavior. Sects, corporations, political parties - use the fooling of the masses to maintain power and monopolize profits.
For Hinchens, there is no doubt that human freedom, like intelligence, must be seen as a synthesis of the relationship between the individual and the collective.
My conclusions are persistent. We survive by joining groups, following others, and trying to understand the world. Some groups subsist on the domestication of us and relegation to the level of animals. Others give us freedom and allow us to become stronger, smarter and more independent.
Collective wisdom manifests itself where conditions are created for the manifestation of individual freedom. Hinchens discusses the rights that ensure the freedom of the individual in the community. These rights include:
- the right to freely enter and leave the community;
- the right to freedom of expression of ideas;
- the right to action - to conduct an experiment without approval from above;
- the right to a result - the use of community developments in their projects;
- the right to be offline - a time for solitary reflection;
- the right to anonymity.
On the other hand, from the point of view of the individual, the rights listed above allow him to achieve his interests by interacting with the community. If we look at humanity as a global community, then we come to a definition that crowns the works of Peter Hinchens:
Freedom is the ability to do interesting things with other people.