2011: The Year Everything Nothing Changed

Abstract

Chapter One introduces the connections between anarchism and cybernetics against the backdrop of what will be referred to throughout the book as the 2011 uprisings (Occupy, the Arab Spring, 15M/Indignados, the UK riots). The chapter highlights the apparent role of leaderless self-organisation in these uprisings and the perceived use of social media as an organising tool therein. It is argued that the examples of the 2011 uprisings show that there is a need for an in-depth understanding of how self-organisation and social media-backed organisation can and do operate.