Order by Protocol in Digital Space
The traditional models of producing order (governance)
In geo-states order tends to come from a chain of command which information flows from the bottom to the top. Orders flow from the top to the bottom. The person at the top deemed the leader, the President, is in the position to be the commander of the troops.
In traditional corporations order also tends to come from a chain of command in which knowledge flows from the bottom to the top and commands flow from the top to the bottom.
The problem with the traditional models is that in a world of increasing complexity the attention of those at the top is very scarce. Good ideas which are generated at the bottom might never flow to the top because of filters. Knowledge generated at the bottom might not reach the top because of attention scarcity. As a result those at the top increasing have to rely on expert advisers or on technologies which provide decision support.
Order from process in digital space
In cyber-states order comes from process. The process comes from the algorithms encoded into the fabric of the cyber-state. When Larry Lessig said "Code is Law" he was revealing that process produces order in digital space and code is what represents the algorithms of digital space that govern process.
In Distributed Collaborative Organizations order also comes from process. If the DCO is built up around a blockchain then the DCO is governed by those algorithms, which encourage all participants to follow a certain set of procedures which inherently produce the order we see.
This is similar to how ant colonies, bee hives, and other organic structures have order if you look closely at the distributed rule set but to the casual observer who does not study insects it might look completely chaotic. These algorithms provide the mechanisms which allow for stigmergy to shape the behavior of the swarm. All of this can be encoded into a series of smart contracts which can allow the swarm to be self governing, and to be potentially more scalable and effective at governing because of swarm intelligence which can help solve the problem of attention scarcity.
Governance by software protocol
Digital space is holonic. Every computer in digital space is a node. Every node in digital space could be called a peer for example. In human terms we could call it F2F (friend to friend) or N2N (neighbor to neighbor). If we look at Bittorrent as an example then we can see that a node can be in more than one role at a time so the node can be both a seeder and a leecher. It is the share ratio which governs the network because everyone in the network can be rewarded or punished depending on whether they meet a minimum threshold of the share ratio.
The Bittorrent example reveals that you can create order through mathematics, algorithms, ultimately making the process more important than the nodes. For this reason you do not need a leadership to create whitelists and blacklists of who can get what but instead you can have a decentralized rule set, a process which everyone knows and follows just by downloading the software itself. As a result by using the software you're subscribing to the process and the software is only able to interact with others following the same process which produces order from adherence to software protocol.
It must be noted, the code must be very flexible. This flexibility is critical because there must always be rules for changing the rules when old rules become obsolete and there must be feedback loops so rules can be rated. Rules themselves have reputations and this will be discussed further in a future post.
This post is certified as from the original author by way of public keys posted at these locations: http://darkai.org/?p=527
and https://steemit.com/steemit/@dana-edwards/private-communication-with-me-via-pgp-for-those-who-know-and-understand
really interesting @dana-edwards good content
It would help me understand if you named some famous social media platforms that adhere to those 3 sets of rules.
Fame isn't a criteria I went by when doing my research. I looked up the academic literature and found that there are some very interesting results.
Now, I will say the concept of decision support system is common and in some form many very important corporations have advanced decision support systems which you might not have heard about. These decision support systems tend to be centralized so they don't benefit the masses while a decentralized decision support system could benefit the rest of us.
This goes beyond social media as you currently would recognize it but it fits more into the Global Graph technology that Tim Berners-Lee talks about where you don't just have graphs but you want to be able to reason over them, to make sense of it all, to have a growing knowledge base with knowledge management, and to have recommenders. What I'm discussing in my blog post is something where only pieces (experimental examples) have been built but the whole has not effectively been built yet, but which eventually will be built around blockchain technology.
Governance is going to be built, but today we do have some examples such as Bitshares, Dash, even Ethereum, where we see collective decisions can be made according to the process written into both the protocol and the culture.
Steem could evolve into something like this with great effort, but then it's also possible to have futarchy (prediction market based decisions), swarm intelligence, and so on. The point is your order comes from rules, and there must be a set of rules for how to change the rules so that the order can always evolve. Feedback is necessary so that human preferences are always taken into account with any change.
I will write more about this in future blog posts because I realize I cannot explain what I want to say effectively in one reply.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision_support_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Global_Graph
That helps, I'm a little out of my depth but you are making sense. That IS what coding is: long series of rules which combine to create bigger rules that tie into ethics and economics (and warfare?).
very interesting piece. please bring up more
So in a way, every active user on a computer creates an isoeffect in this macrosimulation. I think you're spot on. Although I kind of held on nostalgically and wanted to believe in something closer to the chaos theory.
nice piece
Thankyou for sharing this great article
I came here because of the scrabble picture. :D
The traditional model of order is not what is practiced in America. Yeah there is some order in that President > Vice Vp and Cabinet and there is a sort of chain in command. However, there are 2 additional branches of government that are equally powerful, but also have a chain of command. U.S. Supreme Court > Federal Appellate Courts > U.S. District Courts. (We taking federal only). We have actually 4 branches of government, if you think about it (regulatory Agencies).
I don't necessarily think knowledge gets lost at the top. How will a person or entity at the top do their job if they can't vet out the weaker data that could easily be screened by the lower peeps in the chain of command.
Also, with increasing algorithms creates new problems. You can code a program that can influence the behavior of a swarm, but what happens when they encounter a problem that is not addressed in the program? We still need to put a environment that can make those decisions. My point is that who will decide what limits, if any that the program has? Will the coder have ultimate say and how does that actually become a cyber-chain?
I literally learn something everyday. Thanks for information and making me think. As for the last post, I have no idea. :D
Current knowledge doesn't always reach the top. The governments whether US or otherwise all rely on intelligence agencies. These intelligence agencies give daily briefings or reports to the President so the President has decision support. So there is decision support for the President.
If you have to make a really big decision you can't expect to make it by yourself. You rely on your team of advisers. In the case of AI and blockchains these advisors would be digital.
The program is supposed to be able to evolve. When an unexpected problem is encountered then it evolves. Instead of using the word program instead try thinking about this as an autonomous agent. An autonomous agent like a bot, but this bot uses human beings for it's eyes, and it aggregates the human computation into a stream of numbers which get crunched and output comes out.
The point here is that the autonomous agent is just the AI portion of the system. It exists to do the computations that humans aren't good at. It does not replace human computation in the system. Human computation exists to do the computations that AI isn't good at. It's this symbiotic relationship which would enable it all to work and it's that symbiotic relationship that is missing from the "immutable code as law" ideal because without the ability to utilize human computation within your system you are restricting yourself to only being able to solve problems which can be solved by a program as you say.
The coders might come up with initial rules for a system but the coders do not direct the evolutionary trajectory. The evolutionary trajectory of these sorts of systems would be emergent and would be the result of continuous feedback from the human beings. Human preferences for example, human computations, big data, as a neuro network grows smarter if you have lots and lots of data to feed it.
So to put it simply, you do not hard code a governance system. You design the system for evolvability, to be able to adapt to change, to be resilient, to be flexible. As the participants change, it changes, as the users change, it changes, as social norms, culture, or preferences change, it changes.
I will address this more in future blog posts, sorry if there is lack of clarity or if it doesn't make sense right now.
It sounds like sci-fy but it is now, thank for share with us so valuable content dana, you have earned a follower