The first is one-to-one (1-1). This is also known as conversation, and simplifying it would be telephone conversation.
The second is one-to-many conversation (speech). Holy shit we have a lot of this. Speech, broadcasting, television, radio, magazines, advertisements, etc.. This is the most existent type of communication, but not the most popular by choice.
The third is many-to-one. The best example of this is democracy. While this communication is not great, it’s methods are being improved on every day, and some of these methods are what i am here to talk about in this article.
The last is many-to-many. Before the dawn of the Internet, the best example of this type of communication [that I can think of] would be a food fight. Put people in a room, and they will break into small 1-1 and 1-few conversations, or perhaps a 1-many, if that 1 spoke loudly enough. What is surprising from a philosophical point of view, but not from a practical point of view, is why this large group does not break into many-to-many conversation? The reasons are simple.
To have many-many conversation, one must have order. With the food fight/disorderly classroom examples of many-many conversation, the second law of thermodynamics takes its place, and while people fight to be heard and have a voice (to become 1-many, or 1-1), the volume level increases, and disruption happens. When 1-many fails, the 1 tries nearby 1-few (who can hear him) and such continues in a way that, while complicated conversation that may weave in and out of smaller conversations, is decidedly not many-many. Simpler conversation is easier.
In some cases, a 1-many can be classified as a few-to-large, and yes, this is many-many conversation, it isn’t really the point that I am making and is just arguing semantics.
How does one get this order? Before, well, technology-- it was difficult. There were no channels to use. So it didn’t happen. Now, I can give you a prime, perfect, and wonderful example of many-many conversation that nearly all of you have taken place in: Wikipedia. (Wiki’s in general). With the Wiki, a central thread is open to be read by the masses, but instead of being written by one person (1-many, as it were) it would be written and collaborated on by many. With things such as moderators, version control, and *cough*respect*cough*, the inevitable hassling and annoyances of a few untrustworthy few can be canceled out, and as Wikipedia has demonstrated, the concept of many-many can be successful. With the right control, moderation, interference, and editing, many-many conversation is not only possible, but practical. Who doesn’t love Wikipedia? Look at the amount of information it has been able to generate, store, and give out! It is a lot -- a LOT of information. Behold the power of many-many communication. A lot of power, ideas; in a little amount of time. It has worked better (efficiency) than the many-one approach of regular encyclopedias. many submit in information, which is reviewed and published by one (turning around to become one-many upon publishing). In a way encyclopedias are almost many-many. They are many-one-many; Which is close, and encyclopedias do have a lot of information, but does not quite cut it in achieving this cooperative powerhouse or general efficiency/speediness. Even so, encyclopedias are still impressive.
While I have yet to explain the explicit benefits of this sort of conversation, I hope it is apparent. Wikipedia power can be unleashed upon the world. Through collaboration, we can succeed. Succeed is an ambiguous word, and rightly so, as I can inherently not be specific enough to elaborate.
There are several methods of many-many conversation I can present to you, in a way to catalog these, and hopefully develop a feasible model that us humans can use to our advantage.
The first is a wiki. A Google Wave. a public whiteboard/bulletin board. A shared Google doc. Or some other form of real time collaboration, with version control.
Another method is the thread. Above I brought up the example of the bulletin board. It is from this concept that, what can be considered the first electronic many-many method of communication was created. This was the BBS. The Forum. The Threaded conversation. Essentially, each person would add their comments, their two cents, to the end of an article.original post. One person would start it, yes - so it could be many-to-1 (such as blog comments) but, just as blog comments often do (see reddit), threads thread out. The branch and break, and different people have different conversations, responding to different people. It varies, and can just be groups of 1-1 conversation inside on another, but often it is true many-many conversation in its development. People replying to multiple other peoples posts, and all relating to an original subject.
One last method I do not have the expertise to comment on is Source Control, as in programming (SVN, GIT, etc.). I hope you are starting to get my drift. People: We have the technology. Google docs, Google Wave, Wiki’s, a giant whiteboard, all of this is available, free. Let us, as a collective, take advantage of the resources at our disposal and become more efficient. I am trying to use it, but my attempts at real time collaborative writing in Google docs usually fail because not everyone is online at the same time. The tools still offer an advantage because not everyone needs to be present at the same time. I hope to start more projects that try and take advantage or many-many conversation. I hope you do too. Lets try it and see what happens, see what needs changing, development, refinement.
In the spirit of experimentation, here is the link to the Google Doc where I wrote this. It is public and anyone can access and edit, for example, if a reader out there knows something about Github and wants to offer his opinions. I will republish it here if anything interesting happens. Such as someone actually, positively, editing it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1acZU8JmkJtegiKR8mnaGsU0Uw41UBd_Q3bslNduWnms/edit?hl=en&authkey;=CJ76vPwN
