Its been a concern long before the Internet however.

Authoritarianism’s rise, which developed along with the move to organized agriculture from a hunter/gatherer existence thousands of years ago and persists in many places today, was due to:

Technology has cut both ways in the ongoing balancing act seeking to resolve the tension between the social organism and the individual’s natural social network size.

A successful civilization must guarantee the individual’s rights, opinions and opportunities regardless of that individual’s social position.

* A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival.

(This post is part of a series briefly laying out some broader ideas, problems and opportunities underlying development of Chagora and perhaps having some general relationship to the evolution of a global civilization.)

(Reposted from my blog Chagora & Civilization Systems)

Chagora Proposal http://www.netsquared.org/projects/chagora

We developed and in essential nature remain a social, small-group oriented species.* The majority of your ancestors and mine spent their lives relating to no more than a few hundred people. That’s how it was from the time we were still in trees to the birth of agriculture. And for many it remains much that way today.
*see Dunbar’s Number for more on natural human community size

Our innate drives for survival and status were focused on these small groups for literally millions of years. Consequently, it also has a close relationship to the boundaries of our Altruism* drive . Survival was a precarious enterprise. This was no idyllic time of pastoral peace and wisdom but rather one of short and difficult lives. And the available technology was not enough to change the social paradigm much from what it’d been from before the birth of language: a small, vulnerable group immediately dependent on one another for any life at all.
* See Biological Altruism to better understand its relationship to the concept of community

But while the technology was limited and life was short, in social terms the paradigm did have one thing going for it… We’d had a long time to adapt to it!

It’s not that these ancient groups were all alike certainly. We can assume plenty of variation in marriage practices, inheritance patterns, beliefs, rituals, etc; with some peaceful, others warlike, some matriarchal, others patriarchal, some savanna dwellers, others mountain people; locally-adapted technologies, coalitions and rivalries, etc.

But what would they all have in common?

The Ground that Nurtured the Social Network

• Each individual knew almost everyone he/she encountered – and then encountered them repeatedly – thoughout their lives. Strangers were not unknown but rare and never the majority.
• Each individual knew their own social status and the social status of those with whom they interacted.
• (An important corollary is that individuals DID NOT have more than one group with which they identified and hence separate statuses for separate groups.)
• The altruism drive was limited to, closely coincided with, and did not often extend beyond the boundaries of this social grouping.

Further:

• There was ubiquitous awareness that personal well-being was dependent on the group’s well-being.
• There was ubiquitous awareness that whatever the group decision process was – and there was almost certainly a range – decisions on group matters had whole group effects.
• Effects of group decisions to the extent they were knowable, were known to the whole group.
• Individual concealment of assets was difficult (and had no value regardless) while intragroup distribution enhanced the status of the giver.
• Lines of communication and influence were proximate and immediate.
• Decision maker(s) could not persist in the role without consensus agreement by the group.
• The Ultimatum Game‘s implications made it imperative that the range of asset and power distribution within this group not exceed limits defined by that group as fair.

The Breach in the Social Network Paradigm

This leads to a very important observation: The Social Network significantly coincided with the Social Organism!*
* A self-recognized and internally governed economic/political grouping organized for basic survival.

Until recently…

By recently I mean the revolution catalyzed by the Birth of Agriculture 10,000 years ago. (I bet you didn’t think I was going to say that but in evolutionary terms that’s just yesterday!)

The population concentration, labor specialization, intellectual stimulation, technological development , environmental manipulation, wealth creation, etc. which came along for the ride was the most significant alteration in the human condition since… well, since being human!

This revolution continues and expands. In fact it’s all been a single revolution… a revolution in technology which reached a phase transition with agriculture and has been continuing ever since.

However, this has altered the social organism in ways to which the social network mechanism was not adapted and with which it did not coincide.

This first real change in social structure for eons necessitated the creation of new systems of governance, decision-making, persuasion and control which were nevertheless built on these same social network mechanisms adapted for very different conditions. And this inevitably led to a hierarchy of social networks and authoritarian forms dominated by the decision-making classes (i.e. specialized social networks within a social organism composed of a hierarchy of social networks).

Further, problems in scaling the altruism drive create a self-reinforcement feedback loop; powerful networks tend to get more powerful. This resulted in severe imbalances in wealth and status neither tolerable or possible previously because of counter-forces offered by the proximity available within a social organism that coincides with its social network.

Political and economic thinkers from Plato and Aristotle, Locke and Nietzsche, to Adam Smith and Karl Marx have been essentially attempting to address problems related to social imbalances.

All of recorded history with its wars and revolutions are largely a recitation of struggles related to survival, status and social identity (altruism drive boundaries) as groups and individuals attempt to conform their drives to the social organism of which they are a part.

In other words, they are directly related to failing decision systems within a network of social networks. And, generally an associated perceived injustice beyond Ultimatum Game tolerable limits

The re-emergence of self-government has been a slow and difficult process. Various forms have been tried and are in use now. But success is not assured. There have been successes and failures, the lure of Authoritarianism has always been a strong temptation.

Some believe, and I am one, that a healthy future must include mechanisms for resolution of this breach between natural human community size and the boundaries of an emerging global social organism. In fact, that was largely the intent of cultural engineers like Madison, Jefferson et al…

I recently read a fascinating piece by Kevin Kelly The Unabomber was Right in which he discussed Ted Kaczynski’s belief that man could never be happy in technological society… that it would trap us; essentially making us slaves who’d lost our self-determination.

I believe this is what old Ted was talking about… this incongruity which he believe technology would accelerate and broaden. But he saw no good solution so came up with a very bad one.

He’s wrong. There are solutions ready and others still to be sought. Information and communication technology especially are the lever making resolution possible.

That is, IF we can avoid the many traps along the way… here system design is critical and, as is very often the case, the devil truly is in the details.

The outcome of this story is yet to be written… and in pop culture terms… with a likely denouement as either a Star Trek Federation, a Borg Collective… or extinction.

Personally, I pick Uhuru!

( Reposted from my blog Chagora & Civilization Systems )

Chagora Proposal http://www.netsquared.org/projects/chagora
Prototype & FAQ http://www.Chagora.com/faq.aspx

And examples of altruism extend across the biosphere: honeybees sacrificing themselves for the colony, vervet monkeys sounding loud alarms to warn of threats though it draws a predator’s attention to themselves, bats regurgitating blood meals for hungry companions… and soldiers storming Omaha Beach in Normandy.

( see Biological Altruism Stanford Encyclopoedia of Philosophy, revised Oct. ’08)

This was a dilemma for Darwin himself and he recognized it as perhaps the greatest challenge to his theory of natural selection presented in “The Origin of Species”.

How could it possibly make sense for an organism to act against its own self-interest reducing its chance for reproduction? It seems such a trait would die out since those carrying it would be putting themselves at a disadvantage to those without it!

In “Descent of Man” he glimpsed the truth: Evolutionary forces also act on the group as a whole. Later investigations by many scientists have shown how an individual organism may, by reducing its own advantage, increase the survivability of the group and thereby a greater proportion of its own characteristics. In fact, evolutionary forces act on many levels from genes, to cells, to organisms, to ecologies.

So where there are groups engaged in survival… altruism is a fundamental element.

THE ALTRUISM PROBLEM IN SCALING THE DECISION PROCESS

Self-interest is clearly bounded. In other words its quite clear where it begins and ends: the individual and his/her personal survivability.

However altruism is NOT!

The boundaries of what might be called extended identities vary from individual to individual and from sub-group to sub-group within the entire human species.

Further, the intensity of attachment to these extended identities is directly related to proximity.

Proximity here can be defined as genetic, geographic, or cultural (social, political, psychological, etc.) and is the primary factor regulating the inherent force and direction of altruistic motivations in a deciding individual.

In short, altruistic drives weaken with distance whether genetic, geographic or cultural.

Human individuals and groups engage in conscious decision processes with intent of both personal and group effect.

With scale these decision processes require hierarchical structures and compartmentalization since if each individual were expected to participate in every decision we’d all soon starve with lack of time for anything other than “deciding” group issues.

However, hierarchies with scale become increasingly problematic because the relationship of proximity to altruism tends to narrow the focus of the Deciders.

This is because WITH SCALE THE SELF-INTEREST MOTIVATION OF THE DECIDER REMAINS CONSTANT BUT THE FOCUS AND INTENSITY OF THE ALTRUISTIC DRIVE DOES NOT NECESSARILY EXPAND TO MATCH THE LARGER GROUP.

Especially where the hierarchical structure erodes proximity.

The U.S. Constitution and others are an implicit acknowledgement of this by recognizing the need for both hierarchcal and counter-balancing distributed (egalitarian) mechanisms.

It remains a sound structure. However subsequent and additional changes in scale, social structure, legal structure (corporate law especially), technology and culture make additional attention vitally necessary.

There is no single or simple solution to these issues.

As may be becoming more generally known I’m a fanatic for the idea of Political MicroDonation (under $1) and the Individually-Controlled/Commons-Dedicated Account at the core of a distributed network as a vital tool for that rebalancing.

But it’s not the only tool needed.

2-minute YouTube Video Technology & The Decision Landscape

Prototype & FAQ Chagora (seeking Angel… Bank of America cut Home Equity Line I was self-financing with just when prototype finished in September… absolute worst time!)

(Reposted from my blog Chagora & Civilization Systems)

The Proposal Chagora
LinkedIn Civilization Systems LLC

(Sure enough, within an hour of posting, a friend over at the Brennan Center sent this link: http://www.google.org/flutrends/

And I recently saw a clever suggestion for keeping realtime track of buses in NYC! Apparently the city wants to implement a computerized system to keep track of where all their buses are but they can’t afford it.

Someone came up with a simple idea! Just ask regular people to text or tweet the positions when they see a bus or its late or whatever! And some person or group will come up with an open source method to put the data together and get the job done.

It’s another example of how technology is changing economics and power relationships in fundamental ways. Like the issues with newspapers, intellectual content, etc.

From Vernor Vinge* who’s a hot topic these days:

“The work that is truly productive is the domain of a steadily smaller and more elite fraction of humanity. In the coming of the Singularity, we are seeing the predictions of true technological unemployment finally come true.“

*The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era

Yet in many cases, and as a result of the Internet’s unique nature, the value is actually produced from a distributed network which extends beyond the boundaries of the entity which focuses that value into marketable form and derives the market’s benefits.

The Internet is a landscape not a business. But as a landscape its qualities are unlike normal geographies since proximity is fundamentally redefined (farther in space and longer in time become closer and shorter respectively). This results in both greater productivity but also reduced opportunities to extract surplus value from the points along that chain from product to consumer since that chain no longer exists.

Further the Internet disperses content… or more accurately disperses it and then reconcentrates it in a myriad different configurations ever more individually determined.

Thus, the nature and reality of Vinge’s singularity are debateable but the ramifications of technological unemployment are here right now!

It’s possible that some form of exchange could be envisioned rewarding different kinds of personal or group production distinguished from the production of consumer goods or services through traditional entities.

Further, the availability of information and communication technology COMBINED with the implications of the Ultimatum Game in a shrinking and interdependent world make vast imbalances in wealth and power much LESS viable than they once were. Which suggests that a minimal drawing right against the commons for basic necessities may now be a practical necessity… in addition to the moral imperative it’s always been.

(this is reposted from my blog at Chagora & Civilization Systems )

Chagora Overview: http://www.netsquared.org/projects/chagora
Prototype & FAQ http://www.Chagora.com/faq.aspx

2. This CATALYZES Donor usage of this account for ALL CONTRIBUTION in both the POLITICAL AND CHARITY sectors for reasons of convenience, unified accounting and additional benefits and functionality it uniquely enables.

3. Eventually drawing all potential Recipients and 3rd party sponsors and advertisers to platform(s) hosting or with access to Users with such SPECIALIZED ACCOUNTS. (Even Users with no interest in politics at all!)

Political MicroDonation required an enabling mechanism. And it’s also the hook. The fish is a significant portion of the multi-billion dollar Charity and Cause/Campaign services industry and as a huge Advertising and Media magnet.

The Donor’s P.U.D Account (Pooled, User-Determined Account) with accounting and reporting makes previously non-viable and therefore non-existent transactions feasible and FUN.

Further, the account, once established persists whether funded or not and has functions related to social networking for civic and other purposes. Chagora takes no part of the transaction between the donor and recipient. For both sides it’s financially equivalent to giving directly through the recipient’s website.

(Some questions to think about: Why will this structure first draw lesser-known candidates, causes & charities? And why will this then force the larger players to become the biggest supporters?)

The Monetization
Advertising, Charity/corporate sponsorship opportunities, accounting services, supplementary promotional services, third-party affiliations, media fees, etc.

• For 2005, there were almost 48 million itemized returns with average cash charitable contributions of over $2,800 and 87 million nonitemized returns with average cash charitable contribution of over $200.*
• There are approximately 20,000 new non-profits created every year, many temporary.*
• Charity Services, Campaign/Cause Services and Corporate-Charity Sponsorships are each individually multi-billion dollar opportunities. As are those temporary and smaller nonprofits in particular.
• The Donor/User Account Portal is attractive for advertisers whether at the Chagora website or the website where a Chagora widget is offered.
• There is very strong potential for natural monopoly with proper development and configuration.
* From “The Nonprofit Almanac 2008” by Kennard T. Wing, Thomas H. Pollak, and Amy Blackwood, Urban Institute Press, Washington D.C.(ISBN 978-0-87766-736-0).

The Chagora Project

Prototype & FAQ Chagora & Civilization Systems
linkedIn Civilization Systems LLC
facebook Tom Crowl
twitter id CulturalNgineer