Bosworth on "the sociopathic collective" of right and left

Department of English,
University of Washington

"Whereas in the seventeenth century the challenge confronting the West was how to both license and tame the new social and intellectual atomism spurred by the printed book, the crisis today is how to express and restrain the messy, multifarious togetherness of the digitally interconnected field. . . .  Today, it is not the rogue individualist who threatens the social order but the sociopathic collective, whether the new gang of cyber-thieves or vandals, the virally vicious digital mob, or, more profoundly given its ever-increasing global power, the post-modern corporation, which has been adopting all the technological tools of togetherness while applying them for purely self-serving ends—which, like the Machiavellian plotter of old, has been usurping the authority of public governance while shirking that authority's traditional responsibilities."

     David Bosworth, "Knowing together:  the emergence of the hive mind," The hedgehog review:  critical reflections on contemporary culture 19, no. 1 (Spring 2017):  30 (18-31).