Out

In an interesting experiment on how children learn, a web terminal is mounted in a hole in a wall in a remote part of India. After a while, kids gather around it and teach themselves how to use it - see Sugatra Mitra's talk from TED. This is a very different scenario from a class room teacher lecturing the quiescent pupil. No motivation or evangelism needed. What caught my attention was the term "outdoctrination" to describe this process, and how the spread of information was related to other complex systems - like violent radicalism.

Drop from your mind, if you can, the latest NWO definition of which Muslim is a terrorist this week. Instead, think about any group who have taken up arms or explosives against the state in the last 50 years.

Modern terrorism can no longer be spread by indoctrination, as a cell cannot organise by waiting for weak willed people to turn up at their door. That recruitment style would succeed only in attracting counter surveillance operatives.

Outdoctrination seems a much better description of how like minded people, probably remote in location, self organise. While a charismatic tutor or leader helps, ultimately it is down to individuals to see if the view of the world as seen by the group matches their own.

The vanilla definition of a terrorist describes an individual who selectively uses violence to support a political cause. That dry viewpoint says nothing about a journey from frustration or desperation to some kind of twisted expression. Would be terrorists 'self actualize' - hence the success of the internet as a tool to fan the sparks.

This makes terrorism more "social" in nature. Intelligence organisations have observed that the apparent leaders are not necessarily the "influencers"; it is often drivers or bodyguards who have more contacts on their iPhones. The effectiveness of terror groups is not down to how many nutcases they have, but to how pervasive their network really is.

The more society defines itself from a central point, the more radical groups are free to roam the dissatisfied fringes. As daft as allowing citizens to arm themselves to the hilt maybe, America has suffered little internal terrorism over the years partly because gun ownership is not an expression of radicalism - quite the opposite.

And if it is easier to find the aims of Al-Qaeda using Google than it is to find out which way your local government representative is likely to vote on any issue, then it is easy to see which system will best exploit the other.