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David,

I call your attention to a wonderful essay written a few years ago by Peter Lurie in Chicago. "Why the Web Will Win the Culture Wars for the Left: Deconstructing Hyperlinks." He approaches the issue from a different direction but arrives at your conclusion. In a nutshell, he says the STRUCTURE of the Web forces people into an exercise in deconstructionism and that a segment of the population that grows up with such will hardly produce respect for hierarchies or authority.

"The Web is a postmodernist tool that inevitably produces a postmodernist perspective," he writes, and we all know that if there's one thing Pomos loathe, it is hierarchies.

Even if hyperlinks result in future hierarchies, I believe the ones who created them (the people) will just as easily remove them, if they end up counter to the public interest. The hierarchies that are most threatened are exisiting structures, for their pecking order is usually determined by some form of protected knowledge or other access, and increasingly, people are seeing this for what it is: self-serving.

Rock on, David. Hyperlinks most certainly subvert hierarchies.

It's a great article. Thanks, Terry.

I understood the phrase to mean like so:

Typically, brick-and-mortar companies want all communication to flow into and out of "approved" channels. As corporations set up web sites in the 1990s, they assumed (wrongly) that people would follow a logical, "safe" path through the site and not glom onto something that runs counter to the approved narrative. (Example: Company says everything is going swimmingly. A page deep in their web site says it isn't. People link to and socialize the "negative" page. Oops!)

To flesh this out a bit further, many corporations expect people to enter their site through www.companyname.com. That is certainly an option, but not the only one. Thus, the desired heirarchical communication structure is subverted.

Naturally, I'll have more to say about this in my own weblog, but a few observations here seem appropriate.

What seems to be an unstated assumption of "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" is that hierachies are universally pernicious. Maybe because we've made a fetish of "equality?"

Quite apart from the question of whether or not hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, is the question of whether or not all hierarchies ought to be subverted. I would say no.

That being said, and being quite beside the point, what "subverting" a hierarchy looks like to me, when stripped of its sexy allure of being a "dangerous" or "edgy" activity, is simply a form of competition.

When hierarchies are overturned, chiefly by other groups with their own hierarchies, newer hierarchies are created.

Hyperlinks, as a technology, facilitate all sides in this competition. Technology doesn't care who is using it, or for what purpose, if it has an application or an efficacy in achieving the desired purpose, it will be used.

So "rock on" all you want, fellow aging hipsters, hiearchies and competing with them and within them is not going to go away whatever new toys we create; and the pernicious effects of that activity attend to our own lack of self-awareness more so than some deficiency of existing technologies or perceived virtues of new technologies.

I will go on at greater length at my place too, but I also disagree with Mark Bernstein's rebuttal that technology does change what we do. It does not.

Mark cites a number of examples, all of which are things that human beings have done since at least the invention of writing. In general technology changes how we do things, usually by expanding their range in space, and compressing it in time. Sensory technologies expand the bandwidth of our senses, chiefly in the realm of "seeing," and "hearing" though we now have machines that can "smell" and "touch" as well. For all I know, someone has invented something that can "taste" too.

Most of the pernicious aspects of life are due to what we do, less so with how. Is there a technological reason why so much of the world goes to sleep hungry each night? Well, it turns out that the answer is a little complicated, but, in general the answer is no. (Yes, we do lack adequate distribution networks, but that doesn't require new techology to be created.) People go to sleep hungry because of what we do, not the least of which is fail to agree on the urgency or desirability of even applying the technology at hand to solving that problem.

There are som aspects of "how" that are problematic, chiefly in the realm of energy production and the greenhouse effect; but again, I'd say the driving factor in that is "what" we do, which is consume, consume, consume!

If there's one thing that makes me want to just jump up and down and scream and pull my hair out it is this senseless, adolescent enfatuation with our insufferable cleverness with our toys, projecting onto each new advancement some virtue we fail to cultivate or develop in our own embodied selves, perhaps believing we'll ultimately invent a machine that overcomes all our failings, at which point, were it ever to happen, I suppose we'd wonder why there's any reason for us to even exist?

"this senseless, adolescent enfatuation with our insufferable cleverness with our toys"

Well said.

I've already written and dumped two replies, because of, drumroll, the existing hierarchy (i.e., I remind myself that, if angered, A-listers can attack me to a broad audience, but I can't effectively defend myself to comparable reach).

Here's a very simple point: Hasn't all the discussion of where-are-the-women made it blatantly obvious that the dominant hierarchy (i.e., well-off white males) is not subverted?

Obviously, hyperlinks don't subvert all hierarchies. They certainly don't do so immediately.

Dave has brought us to a useful point. Dave looks at our cultural history and sees few discontinuities brought about by technological change; Dave's paragraph that begins "Mark cites a number of examples..." is intended (I believe) to minimize what Mark is maximizing. I personally agree with Mark. I'm fascinated by how changes in technology have brought about unexpected social and conceptual change. E.g., James Shapiro's "A Year in the Life of Shakespeare" argues that the introduction of essays made Shakespeare's soliloquies possible, and others have argued that the soliloquies introduced a new inwardness to consciousness. That may be wrong, but to me it's credible and fascinating. (I know essays aren't technology, but I'm reading the Shapiro book and it's what I thought of. Another random and trite example: Digital chronographs change our idea of time.)

I don't know a good way of proceeding. I can point out changes brought about by technology (tech in a cultural/historical context - I'm not a determinist) and you (I'm leaving the "you" indefinite on purpose; I'm not trying to speak for any particular person but for what I take to be a set of views) can minimize the importance of the changes or deny the connection to tech. So I give another example and you give another refutation. Or I can point to some social hierarchies that have been weakened by hyperlinks and the connectedness for which links are proxies, and you can point to many hierarchies that are still in place.

That'd be interesting, but I don't think it can be conclusive because we seem to be down to some fundamental differences. I see important change happening all around me, which gives me hope. You see a persistence of institutions that either annoys you or comforts you. The facts and experiences we adduce are governed by our stance and attitude and thus they cannot persuade.

Any ideas about how to proceed constructively?

I'm with Dave and Seth F. here. I don't have time to compose a detailed response of my own, but let me offer a couple thoughts:

(1) When I first applied for a job on the Web, about years ago, I filled out a form that asked various things about my skills and experience, clicked "Submit", and was told "sorry, you do not meet our qualifications at this time, blah blah blah". Wow, I remember thinking. I've been flushed by a CGI script. I've also encountered companies where you'd have to hire a private detective to figure out how to speak to a human employee responsible for customer service--all the interaction was channeled through a Web site or one of those email systems that feed you canned responses. These seem to be examples of hyperlinks reinforcing hierarchy rather than subverting it: by taking away opportunities for lower-level employees to provide information or exercise discretion, the power of upper management to set the terms of the interaction is increased.

(2) How to proceed constructively? It might be illuminating to look at the rise of capitalism, which subverted the feudal and church hierarchies that preceded it, but created new hierarchies--and subverted some of the traditional rights that people at the bottom of the old hierarchy had.

(3) The set of all interlinked documents on the Net is too large and varied to be a very useful unit of analysis; you might as well make sweeping claims about the set of all documents written on paper, from grocery lists to the New York Times. (Behold the power of the papersphere!)

I've always found "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" to be a useful idea--especially in the context of massively hierarchial enterprises that suffer from, essentially, the hierarchies themselves being obstacles to organization / communication.

Hierarchy is useful as part of a creative dynamic between definition and possibility (hierarchy generally representing the defining influence).

Hierarchy getting subverted is an important part of what allows hierarchy to be useful.

People use hyperlinks to subvert hierarchy because people need to create better hierarchy (and never fully succeed)!

"I've always found "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" to be a useful idea."

Perhaps to get down to the simplest case I should say this:

Hyperlinks don't subvert hierarchy, people do. (Channeling the NRA here.)

"Telephones subvert hierarchy."

"E-mail subverts hierarchy."

"Television subverts hierarchy."

Are any of those especially insightful? Unique? Useful? Constructive?

Hyperlinks are a form of communications technology. Subverting hierarchy, even for lone nuts like the Unabomber, involves communication. Any technology that facilitates communication can be used by people to subvert hierarchy.

By people to subvert hierarchy.

Why the interest in hyperlinks? Why choose to emphasize, inaccurately, hyperlinks, instead of people in the context of subverting hierarchy?

Further, the implication seems to be that the existence of hyperlinks subverts the very notion of hierarchy, and I see no evidence of that either. If you want to look at technologies that are hierarchically "flat," I'd say the telephone or e-mail are more inimical to the notion of hierarchy than hyperlinks. Phone calls and e-mails are largely invisible externally, unless you're the NSA or work for the carriers. Nobody can count, and therefore rank people on the basis of the numbers of phone calls or e-mails they send or receive. But hyperlinks are visible to all who use the technology, and therefore someone is counting them and ranking people on that basis, mostly to draw attention to themselves for the purposes of increasing their own rank in a hierarchy.

So I'd say hyperlinks are in many ways less subversive to the notion of hierarchy than other, more prosaic examples of communication technology.

The scenery changes, the world remains the same.

Man, did I stumble into my kind of discussion. ;)

"Any technology that facilitates communication can be used by people to subvert hierarchy."

The problem with this perspective is that *all technologies* are not available to *all people.* I cannot compete with Fox News because I do not have the resources to program and produce in television.

Emailing with such impetus is spamming.

Telephones get tapped by our government.

Now the web, well the web is the great equalizer, and that's why it's imperative that this relatively low cost publishing/social networking vehicle remains at a low cost and we ensure that it crosses the digital divide both at home and across the globe (Global Voices anyone?) to people of all walks of life.

With ideologies such as "The New World Order" years into motion, this is a deadly serious conversation.

My take on the brilliance behind the hyperlink is that explicit intent can never be established, and I'm sorry folks, but that's an extremely subversive concept.

Once our presentation interfaces catch up to our current retrieval techniques and they both iterate a few more times!... we'll be living in a world where a large number of people are generating their own creative perspectives, *beyond* linking and finding one another and, to david and terry's point, taking this post-modern perspective on knowledge and humanity into their daily fray in the real to provide for their families.

Raise those stakes a bit: Would a smart, successful business person/netizen make a better political leader than a former oil executive? A lawyer? Methinks yes.

btw, Wikipedia has received a ton of press recently, but it's really only a branded, neutron -- *one* dense service nugget, and simultaneously, a microcosm of the web itself. How much mainstream coverage would Wikipedia have received if hyperlinking wasn't a threat to the norm? Remember, a bogus bio on Wikipedia does equate to a bogus post sans the centralization.

Here I go walking clumsily into another good conversation with a third way of looking at things, hopefully won't muck this up:

I believe people can and have used hyperlinks to subvert hierarchy. I believe it because I believe efforts I've been part of have done just so.

Likewise I believe people have used hyperlinks to form new hierarchies that have strength that is very hard to subvert. That is exponential once it starts rolling. And yes Seth, I can't help it, here I go with the Clay Shirky link: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality: http://www.shirky.com/writings/powerlaw_weblog.html

Dave nails it in many ways for me when he says "hyperlinks are in many ways less subversive to the notion of hierarchy than other, more prosaic examples of communication technology." They are visible for the eye to see. Algorithmically countable. Screen scrapeable. Searchable.

Hyperlinks -themselves- aren't subversive at all. They are transparent. Or at least were until Google came along with the "nofollow" tag.

In many ways that is what fascinates me about them. That they enable us connect. To associate. To form new associations. To form new hierarchies of interest and attention.

Mark Bernstein, in replies to this conversation, seems to have put restrictions on what hierarchies are and are not in order to support his point. I've never had one boss in any context of my life. The hierarchy he describes are what are on organization charts that no one follows anyway.

I have multiple bosses at work. There are definitely cycles there. And quoting Buffy during it's worst season is bad form.

Sean and Terry - this is for you: I once believed the net was, by its very nature, liberal and not conservative. I don't think it has a political nature per-se anymore. But don't tell David Shenk, who wrote a terrific book back in the 90s called "Data Smog" about where we would be today, and in many respects it was spot on. He claimed "Cyberspace is Republican". That an environment that allowed me, urged me, demanded me to create filters for news, opinion and fact - to construct the "daily me" - and provided an environment to measure and track all I see hear and do on it - could only be Republican. That the environment favors "a decentralized, deregulated society, with little common discourse and minimal public infrastructure". I don't take such a view - I definately see a lot of public infrastructure - and a democratizing effect - but take a good look at the blogosphere. Take a very hard look at the political blogosphere in particular and notice how partisan it is. Shenk said that "birds of a feather flock virtually together". See how little tolerance there is for opposing points of view? See how much division there is? See how easy it is for us to find our birds of a feather and dwell there? Just look at our blogrolls. Are these things liberal?

Shenk's book, and David, your book, have largely influenced my thinking about the nature of the web. And David you made a point to talk about how the web helps us to connect.

I think thru connecting we form hierarchies. It's just human nature. Not necessarily a bad thing. Although some hierarchies definitely are.

Oh, and speaking of hierarchy...

Forget the "A-list". Ask yourself: Are you a "wiggly worm", "lowly insect", "insignificant microbe", "large mammal", or "higher being"?

http://www.truthlaidbear.com/ecosystem.php

TTLB isn't popular around these parts, but among the conservative blogosphere, it shows the world who's who. You tell me that doesn't look like hirearchy?

As for definitions of hirearchy: here are some

To say that hyperlinking can only be used by people to subvert hirearchy, and to deny that it enables people an avenue for creation of it - is to deny its power and significance.

Like you David, I see important change happening all around me, which gives me hope. And I see old institions, definately being subverted, weakened, and destroyed. So Dave, this is where I and you differ.

But it appears, unlike David, and maybe like Dave (maybe) is I see -new- ones rising up to take their place.

DaveR:
Hyperlinks are a form of communications technology. Subverting hierarchy, even for lone nuts like the Unabomber, involves communication. Any technology that facilitates communication can be used by people to subvert hierarchy.

Zigackly. Web technologies can enable conversations which undercut (or route around) restrictions imposed by hierarchies. Which is great and well worth celebrating, although not without taking SethG's point on board -

The set of all interlinked documents on the Net is too large and varied to be a very useful unit of analysis; you might as well make sweeping claims about the set of all documents written on paper, from grocery lists to the New York Times. (Behold the power of the papersphere!)

But the operative words are 'can enable', not 'must' or 'should' or even 'do enable'. And those same technologies can also enable people to create their own new hierarchies and compete for position within them - and create new, improved versions of the new hierarchies, and...

Sean:
How much mainstream coverage would Wikipedia have received if hyperlinking wasn't a threat to the norm?

I start to understand DaveW's weariness with this discussion; to me you're reading that story backwards. From my standpoint, mainstream coverage of Wikipedia is only tangentially about hyperlinks - people are jumping all over Wikipedia because it's perceived as an authority.

Terry:
Even if hyperlinks result in future hierarchies, I believe the ones who created them (the people) will just as easily remove them, if they end up counter to the public interest.

Hmmm. There was a very similar discussion in your neck of the woods round about 230 years ago, wasn't there?

The problem with this perspective is that *all technologies* are not available to *all people.* I cannot compete with Fox News because I do not have the resources to program and produce in television.

This sort of assumes the necessity or desirability of the individual to compete with Fox News; and even in that regard, the hyperlink is not the an enabling technology that allows one individual to compete with Fox News in a meaningful way. Certainly not in a way, to my view, that is profoundly different from, say, letter-writing campaigns (gasp, dead trees, how dull).

Any communications medium is potentially faced with competition from other communications media. Print, radio, film and television each changed as their markets were disrupted ("ooh, ooh, subverted! subverted!"), by the advent of each succeeding technology. It is clear to me that, as a technology, http is a lower barrier to entry than each of the previous technologies, and maybe that's a good thing if we desire more competition. But even http remains a barrier to some people, if the existence of barriers is significant.

E-mailing with such impetus is a consequence of competition, and an undesirable, unintended consequence. Can we be that certain that there aren't undesirable, unintended consequences of http, even for the people it supposedly empowers?

When I started doing this six years ago at editthispage.com, it seemed to me to be mostly a social activity. It was kind of fun, and I was able to meet, virtually anyway, many people from different parts of the country, in a way that was somewhat different from bulletin boards on the major online services. But I don't think editthispage.com was in existence for more than a month when Dave Winer put up a page that ranked the weblogs he hosted on his service by the number of page visits they received. The hits were visible to Dave because all the sites were hosted on his server. Later, Google got the idea of counting links, which are also visible, but are visible on whatever server they reside upon, and thereby ranking sites that way.

Having established a mechanism of measuring to establish rank competition set in in earnest. What had been a pleasant social experiment then acquired a kind of tedious aspect as various entities tried to improve their rank in the hierarchy. Noticing how much attention people paid to hierarchies, measured again by the number of links to those ranked lists, merely invited other competing entities to establish lists of their own, each with their own competitive "secret sauce" that made their list "better" or more "authoritative," not the least of which was Technorati, which added a whole repertoire of social engineering techniques to its mix.

The result is the establishment, not the subversion, of multiple hierarchies, and the resultant pernicious effects of competition, including google-bombing, link-farms, and other efforts to "game" the various systems; as well as the pernicious effects of hierarchy where those lowest in rank have the least authority or influence. "Ah, but you can change that!" you say, "With the power of the hyperlink!" If I want to play that game. If I want to compete. Because with hierarchy comes competition. To some extent, that's what I'm doing now, but it's about as far as I care to go, and perhaps a little further than I care to go.

Yea us. Our hyperlinks are so subversive. Let's all go buy berets!

Yes, hyperlinks are a disruptive technology, but as a technology it is, to echo Nicholas Carr and many others including myself, amoral. They only subvert hierarchy to the extent that individuals can use any technology to subvert hierarchy, and some pretty significant examples of that lately have been whistle-blowers from Enron, the FBI, and whoever let the NY Times in on that little thing about the NSA, none of which involved hyperlinks. And if you care to consider the "swiftboating" of John Kerry, hyperlinks can be, and indeed are, used to protect the established hierarchy.

To me, "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" is a slogan. A "marketing claim," which then perhaps makes it immune to criticism, because it's "just marketing." Whatever truth value it possesses is insignificant, almost tautological. It seems to me it is intended to increase the perceived value of a new medium to those who may be unfamiliar with it, and to lend an air of authority to those who utter it, thereby making them part of a particular stratum of the new hierarchy, those who "get it." Unlike all those proles like me, existing in the "hinternet," from whom Ben Hammersley would like to "protect" the internet. It would seem he doesn't want his hierarchy subverted.

There may be a couple of straw men in there, I'm sorry, but this topic really irritates me. Feel free to ignore the straw men, but try not to overlook anything that may be constructive.

I was always better at application than theory... an ax I've been grinding the last few days relates to the second wave feminist web site offering at
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/about.html

Doc's assembly of links led me to Bernstein's analysis which quietly reminded me that a lot of this is about spanning tree algorithms and I posted on that here... sorry if this seems like an advertisement for myself, but it probably is...

http://sandhill.typepad.com/sandhill_trek/2006/01/whats_a_spannin.html

It occurs to me that to be subversive is to speak the truth as best one can, and ignore the hierarchy.

So, Seth Finkelstein, go put on your beret and be subversive!

"Here's a very simple point: Hasn't all the discussion of where-are-the-women made it blatantly obvious that the dominant hierarchy (i.e., well-off white males) is not subverted?"

Speaking of which, where are the women in this conversation? Could it be after participating in dozens of these cross-weblog discussions, and linking to same, that we'll feel excluded from the discussions? That if we do right something, attempt to join in, one or more of the participants will toss out a link as acknowledgement, feeling that they've dismissed their 'duty' when it comes to ensuring the ladies have their say, before turning again to the 'real' discussion with the other men.

Not only do the links in cases like this not subvert the hierarchy, they reinforce it, solidify it, build the gates higher; all the while creating a pretense of 'egalitarian' participation. After all, if I'm linked that's all that matters.

Right?

Regarding: The facts and experiences we adduce are governed by our stance and attitude and thus they cannot persuade.

David, you have put your finger on the fundamental issue of scientific knowledge - that is, how GET BEYOND our stance and attitudes. This connects back to my remarks on Wikipedia, that popularity is not accuracy; and indeed, there's deep conflict between the abuse of language done by marketing, versus the refinement needed for engaging external reality.

How does anyone know that what they believe is not just a pretty story? And more importantly, when they should care, if the story is appealing and profitable?

For example, regarding "to minimize what Mark is maximizing" - one might be interested in how to get a rough description of magnitude. Doesn't have to be perfect, but rather, informative. The well-off white males data-point is a measurement - it tell us directly and obviously that several hierarchies are not subverted, but recreated, to that level of income and gender and race. The A-list data-point is another measurement - it tells us that links don't subvert, but recreate, hierarchy with respect to attention.

Against this, there is, what? Exhortations to believe that the proletarian revolution is not yet over, and someday, the state *will* wither away? Seriously, it's sometimes extremely difficult to even find a comprehensible claim amidst what looks like a tossed salad of buzzwords.

My suggestion is: State claims in a way that *some* reasonable evaluation as to accuracy can be done. If it can never be disproven, because God works in mysterious ways, I mean, it's still early days, and the most important thing is being pure of heart, I mean, taxonomy restructuring, well, there's a problem.

So, Seth Finkelstein, go put on your beret and be subversive!

My experiences speaking truth to power have in general been harmful to me, both on personal and professional levels. So I find much of blog evangelism downright cruel, a 'net version of let-them-eat-cake.

Subversion isn't cheap :-(.

Further thoughts:

(4) One can rephrase "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" as "if you are trying to combat an established hierarchy, the Web is more likely to help you than hurt you". I suspect that most people in this discussion will agree with the thesis in such a weakened form...but in such a weakened form, it's not terribly useful.

(5) The relationship between blogging and work is another place to test the "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" thesis. Obviously, if you're fired for saying something in your blog that annoys your boss, then the hierarchy has, umm, subverted your hyperlinks. Less obviously: if your blog has worked to your advantage in advancing your career, is that partly because you've projected a persona through your blog that's congenial to the people who make hiring and firing decisions?

(6) It seems to me that in almost any case where a netroots campaign affects the world outside of the Net, it has to find a sponsor from the existing political or media hierarchies. When this doesn't happen (case in point: Cory Maye), the hyperlinks are subverting bupkes.

Further thoughts:

(4) One can rephrase "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" as "if you are trying to combat an established hierarchy, the Web is more likely to help you than hurt you". I suspect that most people in this discussion will agree with the thesis in such a weakened form...but in such a weakened form, it's not terribly useful.

(5) The relationship between blogging and work is another place to test the "hyperlinks subvert hierarchy" thesis. Obviously, if you're fired for saying something in your blog that annoys your boss, then the hierarchy has, umm, subverted your hyperlinks. Less obviously: if your blog has worked to your advantage in advancing your career, is that partly because you've projected a persona through your blog that's congenial to the people who make hiring and firing decisions?

(6) It seems to me that in almost any case where a netroots campaign affects the world outside of the Net, it has to find a sponsor from the existing political or media hierarchies. When this doesn't happen (case in point: Cory Maye), the hyperlinks are subverting bupkes.

"people are jumping all over Wikipedia because it's perceived as an authority." Exactly my point, while at the same time everyone else's. The perception of authority, to netizens and non-netizens alike, places Wikipedia in the ranks, or hierarchy if you will, of established reference material. Now if hyperlinks didn't exist within Wikipedia, then would the open aspect of editing/creating content make any real noise?...

dave r:in order to subvert hierarchy with television, to grab eyes as it were, one would need broadcast and marketing capital. that was my only point, Fox was just an example of lined pockets that one would be competing against for eyeballs. and if one were so funded to broadcast, even when the audience is armed with tivo and dvr, television (as well as print, radio, film, etc.) is a fleeting medium. hyperlinking is pretty much forever, which enables discovery. that's one major aspect of its power.

now place tv broadcasts and films online, and you'll begin to understand why certain hierarchical organizations of old media are starting to run with terry's well-established approach of leveraging unbundled media. and if you're not familiar with his work, feel free to go over to his site and browse his past links to check it out. whatcha know!? terry is providing intillectual capital for all to leverage, however they may see fit? is he doing so to explicitly promote the brand of terry heaton within the competition to land gigs? or is he doing so to further ground his post-modern ideologies? or could there be other reasons? the take-away gleanings are just as subjective.

when talking subversive, this may not be akin to the last scene of fight club, but i think at the heart of the matter, it's what we're talking about here when we talk about subverting heirarchy with hyperlinks. or i could be off as well ;)

shelley: wow. i guess as a white male, i've never taken a "had a great conversation with" link to heart as such. i've experienced the same payoff linking, but i seem to chock it up to "manageable circles of interaction." kinda like seinfeld not being able to have more than three tight-knit friends. kinda... but with your perspective, i can see how a link can be perceived as a silencer, though i personally wouldn't take it as such.

Sadly, hyperlinks are at best easy doorways to and within hierarchies. Traffic/hits/hyperlinks often demonstrate popularity which itself is hierarchical.

The TTLB Ecosystem is a great example of how this works.

Like 'em or not, systems of ranking and power are default systems for human relating. They may suck. But there they are...my belated two cents.

And don't the majority of the above comments simply state that the bloggish pseudo-hierarchy is a system attempting to subvert an enfleshed/corporate hierarchy? It is one system for another, each with their own systems of ranking and access.

The web is hierarchical.

Then there's that chap with the cell phone who subverted hierarchy and reported 12 miners found alive, not that the hiearchy performed as it was should have when confronted with that situation. But then, there's evidence that that hiearchy wasn't performing as it should have to begin with.

Maybe if everyone just had more "roles" it would have turned out differently. Who knows.

So, I know I am late to this conversation, but it seems to have gotten my attention somehow.

Like in WV, a hierarchy is not always a bad thing. Being an expert may raise one to a higher plane of prestige or responsibility for good reason. Skill and knowledge matters.

What the web *might* do is help garner support for a kinder more gentle merit system. There is no structure that keeps me from posting my drivel on thsi blog...even though I average 40 visits a day on my own blog. Dave is higer up the food chain than I am.

Now the curious thing is that I know Dave. I have met Dave. How? The benefits of the academic hierarchy made that possible. My seminary professor had access to Dave and money at the same time. He also has his own level of fame/expertise online. These hierarchies conflated into a (minimal) relationship.

Hierarchies are not all bad.

I need a copy editor.

Thanks Tripp for backing me up on the TTLB Ecosystem - which I find a *perfect* item for discussion related to this.

Google and PageRank being another. So are the myriad blog networks like Weblogs Inc that recognize the influence of the link and the power of a network using them.

However, Tripp, I would never say something like the "web is hierarchical". That's as easy to argue for/against as is 'hyperlinks subvert hierarchies'.

Oh, and all generalities are false :)

K, you are welcome. Anything I can do to subvert the hierarchy, you know. ;-)

BTW, all generalities are not false.

Sean, I was agreeing with what you were saying there for the most part until you're closer: "links, conversations, creativity, etc., they're all the antithesis of such "order""

That's another one of those generalities.

Speaking of which...

Tripp: all generalities are false.

:)

Sean, in conversational English the word "hierarchy" means a social ranking or pecking order - NOT a database-structure with strictly branching nodes (the conversational English phrase for that is "organizational chart"). To write "true hierarchy is an ontology of parent-child ...", is using a definition which is uselessly narrow.

The marketing abuse of language is to make a statement which certainly sounds as if it means "links subvert [power relationships]" (which is absurd almost on the face of it), but then retreat back to "links form a mathematical graph which is not strictly branching nodes" (which is basically obvious and almost trivial). The post by Mark at the top has the same confusion.

This is what I mean by making claims in a way which can be examined. If there's a clear chain of reasoning, the flaw in steps can be identified. Marketing seeks to obscure, to confuse, so we can have people making, basically, silly statements that SINCE link graphs have cycles, THEN they undermine social power. If we examine this as a blunt proposition, it's just objectively wrong in many immediate ways. For example, there's social power generated by large numbers of incoming links, which can then be channelled by a few outgoing links (i.e., "sucking up to the A-listers"). Note here the cyclic nature itself functions to support hierarchy (ranking).

DaveW just posted that he got a link from Slashdot. FEEL THE SUBVERSION!

Actually, when I wrote that phrase, I was thinking of hierarchies not in terms of mere pecking orders, or of some people having more power or prominence than others. Rather, I was thinking of the sorts of hierarchies one finds in businesses and other such institutions, which are roughly pyramidal. Of course, no one could know what I was thinking, except perhaps by the context of the other theses.

What I meant isn't the point of this discussion, though.

Dave, by pyramids etc are you also referring to accessibility (spelling woes abound)? Meaning, I have little to no realy relational access to the CEO of the company I work with by nature of the corporation's hierarchy. Is this what you mean?

I think I was speaking of that dynamic.

Sorry if I misunderstood David, this got me thrown off: "When I wrote that "hyperlinks subvert hierarchies" phrase, I must have used the word "subvert" for a reason. I believe that I used it to hint at the effect of hyperlinks on power relationships."

I pretty much hear the phrase "hyperlinks subvert hierarchies" the same way Seth describes "links subvert [power relationships]".

Which I may not find as absurd as he does, but I do find it a truth concealing generalization that is more disempowering than anything else. It's one of the few of the Cluetrain thesis I have a negative reaction to.

From what I've seen, the more we link to those "higher up the chain", the more we reinforce existing pecking orders. If that's true then it's not that hyperlinks subvert hirearchies... but what we do with them is what counts.

Then again, I know you're not speaking about that - you're speaking of those underneath the top of the pyramid linking to one another directly:

http://www.hyperorg.com/misc/thelonging.html

You said this back in 1999 :)

But this gets concealed in the catch phrase.

seth:look, i absolutely do not view blog ranks as hierarchy.

first off, none of us report to one another. no matter how much higher ranked a blog (or blogger) is over my blog (or me), the effect of that relationship is nominal at best. maybe if we’re competing within the same space at the very top of the A-list, but nowhere beneath that level.

secondly, blogging is a personal venture (though less now than when i started), so while one person might constantly check their ranking and employ daily schemes to move up the charts, another just might enjoy writing and sharing their perspective and let the rankings just happen.

from where I sit, these contradictions do not fit into a rank = hierarchy equation. that’s why I prefer to relate us/blogs to cities in terms of perceived ranking. i mean, what’s a ranking algorithm other than a social stereotype in code?

look, our blogs are all different, but not through the lens of hierarchy (from a database perspective, a library science perspective or even a corporate perspective). none of use *report* to one another. we exist in an ecosystem, which is much more complicated by nature.

this is why i can’t resign to a "sucking up to the A-list" reference. i mean, i don't report to you, so i can’t skip-level you to impress david to be anointed, what, VP of my blog? links come, links go.

now, when i visualize hierarchy in my minds eye, i see a top down representation (skyscrapers compared to three-story buildings or pyramids, perhaps).

when i visualize links, i see instantaneous, powerful, left to right, right to left movement. And what little physics i do know tells me that enough dots moving about--in either a frenzied or an organized, connected manner--on a horizontal plain will eventually erode the base of such hierarchies.

now that was the marketing abuse of language. ;)

kmartino: yeah, that last line was a bit of a generalization, as hierarchies (power structure) do leverage links, conversations and creativity as well. but, no matter how much a structure leverages these elements, by definition, they are elements of individuality and that frightens organized, structured, "hierarchy" because channels they don't control are built and destroyed in the blink of an eye, all while delivering inspiration and knowledge.

does that explanation reduce the generalizations?

Hmmm...

Seth, you are on to something, but I want to puch it around a little. If online success matters...and we can define success in far too many ways...then online success is measured by traffic. Well, this is what Technorati and TTLB want us to believe. If I want to increase traffic, I have to link certain blogs, travel certain threads and make sure I am registered with certain search engines? Why? Because they are recognized gateways to the internet. If google don't know about me, no one does. I bet you that commenting here increases my traffic.

That being said, hierarchies (popularity contests and traffic quotas), also define our own limits. Does Dave have time to plug every "third tier" bloggist out there? No. And I probably don't appear within the first thousand hits on most google seraches about anything I blog. People limit their time to their interests. People have limited time. That is not a reflection of some ill-meaning scheme. It is simple reality. Thus hierarchies are born.

The CEO does not have time for you.
Real Live Preacher does not have time for me.

This speaks ill of neither. It is simply a limit. And hyperlinks can only take us so far past this limit.

:-)

I think that most hierarchies exist to enable some purpose (ordering information, certain kinds of widely-found decision-making structures, certain types of behaviour in nature / biological domains, etc.) ...

... and an issue I have with discussing hierarchy in linked environments (or whther links, and linked environments, are subversive of established hierarchies) is that i can't see how blogging fits into an particular category of organized purposeful behaviour. The list of most links, whicgh creates a ranking, is to me just a superficial *hierarchy*, just a list of quantity of links.

And clearly, blogging is having some kind of noticeable, tangible impact on some kinds of *hierarchies* (whether it is the place in our society of reporter-and-editor filtered and driven journalism, or in threats to established business practices (marfketing, PR for example) or models (music, online advertising, etc.) where the digital infrastructure and dynamics exposes weaknesses in control mechanisms, etc.)

For me, in blogging, we are *hierarchies of one* relating to other *hierarchies of one*, and the discussions or dialogue which evolve grow and (may) build into something useful or pertinent if the participants (the *hierarchies of one*) find common ground and maybe help each other learn something new or *build knowledge*.

If that activity evolves into more organized purposeful activity that involves several people, then we need to look at whether any hierarchy develops, or whether it may be *this hierarchy* this week for these tasks/decisions, and *that hioerarchy* next week for a different set of tasks/decisions, with perhaps the development of some more formal structure if the organized activity begins to interact with other formal structures .. so that there can be instantiation for where to initiate and perhaps apply influence, formal communiocations, leverage, etc.

I've long wondered what it might be like in organizations in some future era, if people's skill sets, role definitions and accountabilities, and internal and external relationships were identified by tags, with links to clusters of involved people .. rather than the lines between boxes on org charts that denote reporting relationships. Imagine clicking on and grouping tags, and seeing whether the resultant *draft team* is the best grouping for the identified purpose / tasks (and then asking what kind of hierarchy do we need here to get the job done).

Valdis Krebs' and Karen Stephenson's (NetForm) work (and no doubt others ... William Halal and Thomas Malone also come to mind) on mapping social networks and identifying hubs, gatekeepers, edge-dwellers, boundary spanners, etc ... is material that I think is pertinent to watching and understanding how link-enabled flows of informationa re having erosive effects on the traditional pillars of traditional hierarchies (and are a part of the *important changes* Dave W, and others are noticing). Other patterns of the concentrations of influence and poewer, whether in an organization or in established institutions are clearly peeking over and around the edges of the forms we have traditionally used and know.

Mapping those flows and the aggregation and control of *knowledge* is not unlike X-raying the org chart .. the resulting picture is always different than the formal org chart

Anyone wanna know more about the semantic and structural rules of job evaluation, which are the design specs for organizational hierarchies ? Ask me ... I did waaaay too much job evaluation work for too many years not to know in my bones that the accumulated effects, over time, of links that enable flows of information will fundamentally change some of the fuundamental assumptions about, and some the dynamics of traditional hierarchies.

How ? I think we are all watching and learning and arguing.

The problem with this debate is the subjective / pejorative / rhetorical use of the word "subvert" - it's sets off the knee jerk responses and defenses about whether subversion is a good thing (and whether the thing being subverted is a good thing).

But of course its meant to be provocative and argument is a good means of making progress - the only means. Disruptive technology is always a mixed blessing in the short term, but the motivations are in the people.

The telling line earler is "Technology doesn't care (about taxonomies)" The trouble is so much sofware is concerned about the behaviour driven by this or that class of object, whereas humans are much more subtle - more holistic / heuristic.

Coming from a hard objective engineering industry background, I am forever pointing out to people that taxonomies are never as well defined as our hierarchical classification structures suggest, but they get cast in stone in s/w implementations, year in, year out.

We do need subtler taxonomies, to get more value out of information systems. Tagging (even anarchic, ad-hoc tagging) adds many overlapping sets of relationships that can be interpreted as heterarchies or simply as multiple concurrent hierarchies if people prefer. The only catch, is the human intent in adding the tags - you need to know who and why - so the politics can be managed (or subverted if you prefer)

Hierarchic taxonomies are pretty natural and pragmatically useful in many contexts, but they cannot be the last word in systems design. Roll on (well managed) folksonomies.

http://www.yaodownload.com/software-development/components-libraries/activelinkxcontrol/