Tacit Governance

Description

David Weinberger:

"Governance, as an explicit social structure, codified and implemented, arises when tacit governance fails. At its best, explicit governance is a response to a breakdown. It rarely restores a society to its prior, unbroken state.

Governance is made explicit as a scar. Scars are useful. They can even be honorable. But they generally mark wounds. The lack of explicit constitutions and explicit rules often is a sign of health.

The vastest stretches of the Internet’s surface are as yet unblemished by explicit governance. Tacit governance, however, is the surface of the Net. The Net is most of all a new social space in which people gather in groupings familiar and odd. All human intercourse has some form of governance, for otherwise the participants have no way to talk. Conversing (in its broadest sense) requires not only a common language, but also some set of core expectations about the boundaries of the conversation. Those expectations steer the conversation; “governance” comes from the Greek for steering.

The expectations that steer human intercourse are rarely laid out, in the real world or on line. Since our interactions always occur within some context, we assume the norms of that context: In Boston, we’d be fine with our cab driver spontaneously expressing support for the Red Sox, but we would be surprised if the cab driver pulled over, unasked, to show us how well she plays the tuba, no matter how well she plays it. There is no explicit rule about this because there doesn’t need to be. If, however, cab drivers start regularly giving curbside tuba performances, a “You are entitled to a tuba-free cab” rule will be posted. Rules can also be useful guides to norms when we can anticipate cultural strangers may be coming along for the ride.

The fuzziness of norms is their strength. We need the looseness of norms to enable us to be with one another in surprising ways. The narrower, more explicit, and less ambiguous the norms, often the deader the social interaction: “Come now, Marjorie, you know that we raise our hands before speaking.” Norms are not rules that have yet to mature. Rules are norms that have failed." (http://publius.cc/2008/05/12/david-weinberger-tacit-governance/)

More Information

The full article at http://publius.cc/2008/05/12/david-weinberger-tacit-governance/ is followed by Esther Dyson, Kevin Werbach, David Johnson, Wendy Seltzer, JP Rangaswami, and Pierre de Vries.