I explained this whole book concept and societal issue to someone the other day, and it came out nicely and reasonably succinctly. So I thought I’d copy and paste my explanation to him here and then structure it better. This was a conversation, so excuse spelling and grammar mistakes.
him: the issues is in the wetware, the culture, and cant be solved by technology
me: it’s the identification of it and correction. Our institutions are broken, but I’m afraid when they inevitably collapse, what is there to catch it will only make it worse based on the masses see the world today
without institutions that function and self-correct (themselves and each other), there can’t be any level of meaningful society
him: i think the only way out is to build real human physical networks
me: absolutely, although I enjoy supplementing those with virtual ones in parallel.
that being said, having strong opinions on global issues that literally don’t affect you are a net negative to an individual, especially if the reaction to them is larger than the reaction to similar things happening within your local physical community
emergence of civility has to take place, starting from local groups
that being said…
him: i didnt quite follow this, but i definitely agree not having a focus on local first is weird and that civility is paramount
me: many people form their ideology around circumstances that literally don’t impact their life in any meaningful way.
we as a society are so inundated by things happening globally that don’t affect us that we sometimes forget to just look around and care about what’s most important (edited)
which, ironically, sometimes leads to the degradation of your environment, which then repeats the process.
many people form…
him: thats a very good point
me: I’m slowly forming a detailed narrative and story of this in my head, with maybe a hypothesis of a solution. This is all informed by my fascination with information (theory, virality, transport, networks manipulation, etc) and complexity/emergence.
and how our information technology transforms these things in various ways: enabling, shaping, constraining, manipulating, etc
Nexus has done a good job of helping me form a stronger framework in my head, but I think there’s more to it. I’m only about half way through though.
one theme I’m fleshing out that I think is is a core part of it all is that the virality of information (how easy it is to spread across a social network) is a function of its complexity. This fact impacts our ability to form alrge social networks that understand complex myths (or “social truths” like “bitcoin has value”). The larger you get, the less complex your understood “values” are as a group, and the more manipulatable they become as complexity adds subtlety and detail.
him: yeah definitely, like ‘good’ memetics reduces down to evoking raw strong emotions
me: 100%
me: so, in the end, I believe it’s better for society to only participate in multiple smaller social groups such that they’re able to hold onto multiple complex value sets simultaneously instead of trying to shove them all into one big network. This also allows them to grow over time and move/change according to their needs/beliefs/desires
but… our current information technology is not setup to do this. in fact, it actively tries to do the opposite, and shove everything together
the other side of that is deeply niche academic topics that require decades of previous experience to understand the edge. transfering information within that context is incredibly detailed and subtle (and not emotionally manipulating), but only available to a VERY small group of people.
the bridge between those two opposites is where everything gets fucked up, as it gets transformed and manipulated, abstracted and ultimately destroyed along the way
i like working on what we work on because I think it helps maintain the integrity of information as it travels, and helps to self-form communities with value such that participating in them is beneficial and meaningful to the persons doing it
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
him: i think you’re onto something here