NPR interview

The NPR interview that included Matt Bai, author of the MLM article, was fascinating. It helped bring the issue about MLM that Bai was addressing, more to light for me. It was even clearer how the online/offline synergy worked in this "pyramid scheme." Volunteers would get detailed instructions every day on the website, and would pass on their data online as well. When I was in business school, I spent a lot of time studying "control systems," particularly Management By Objectives. My master's thesis looked at such a control system from the point of view of cybernetics. This MLM new media strategy is a classic case of a control system, made more efficient, and "tighter," by virtue of new media. It is interesting that this increased efficiency made Matt Bai uncomfortable. (It is also ironic, since, as one of the guests pointed out, it also made use of very old-fashioned grassroots techniques.) It raises, again, the question of how much control human beings tolerate, and in what form. The precision of it all made it seem "robotic," a word used by the radio talk show host. It would be interesting to ask how the volunteers felt, and compare that to how volunteers felt under the old Democratic "machine," with ward bosses. Do our reactions to control systems make sense, or are we easily fooled, in how much we are being controlled? (Reminds me of a newspaper cartoon I used to see on the door of one of my old psychology professors - a lab rat is saying to a fellow rat something like: "I have this guy well trained - every time I push this bar he gives me a food pellet.")

In the end. you've got to admit that the strategy is brilliant.