social informatics - towards a united future for mankind

8/14/2019 Social Informatics - Towards a United Future for Mankind

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Submitted to NIST: TIP Critical National Needs Ideas of 31

By: eiTan LaVi*

Correspond to [email protected] _________________________________________________________________________* Informatics Research, Bio-medical Engineering Department, Tel-Aviv University, Israel



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Social Informatics

Towards a united future for mankind

Contents________________________________________________________

Abstract 4

Preface: Mapping this White Paper to Administration Guidance 5

1. Integrating Humanity - Towards a Science of Union 6

1.1 From Building the Body to Awakening the Soul 6

1.2 Social Informatics – A New Journey 6

1.3 Infrastructure for Unity 6

1.4 Patterns of Social Dynamics 7

2. Knowing What We Know 8

2.1 Academic Nebulous 8

2.2 A Call to Make all Things Public be Known 8

2.3 Evoking a Social Compass 9

3. How we think and feel as social groups 10

3.1 Individuality and Teamwork in the Human Body 10

4. Who Knows What is Happening in the World Right Now? 11

4.1 News – Read all about it? 11

4.2 Our Limiting Information Habits 11

5. Humanity is Trying to Speak – Let's Listen 12

5.1 Bacteria Colonies as Survivability Gurus 12

5.2 Of Michael Jackson and Google's Fears 12

5.3 The Googles of Tomorrow 12

5.4 Detecting and Mapping Tweeting Outbursts 135.5 Unified Social Signals 13



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6. Privacy Issues and the Power of Publicity 15

6.1 Publicizing Political Opposition 15

6.2 The Power of Public Social Feedback 15

6.3 Decision Support for Public Officials 15

6.4 Social Informatics for a Balanced Economy 16

6.5 SI-Irrelevance of Personally Identifiable Information 16

6.6 The Dynamics of Privacy-Boundaries in the 21st Century 16

7. Modeling and Predicting Social Dynamics – from wars to social weather 18

7.1 Social Vectors 18

7.2 Social Dynamics and Binary-Based Conditioning 187.3 Detecting Social Storms 18

7.4 Building a Microscope for Social Harmonics Analysis 19

7.5 Rolling Stones – Modeling Social Weather through Facebook 19

8. Social Differentiation en Route to Global Economic Optimization 22

8.1 Nature's Model of Excellence for Evolutionary Synergy 22

8.2 Personal gain through mutual understandings 23

8.3 Models of Collective Income 23

8.4 Pyhsio-Morphological Aspects of our Economic System 24

8.5 Skewed Representations Leading to Dangerous Instability 24

8.6 The Secret of Balance 25

8.7 Balance Between Receiving and Giving as a Recipe for Peace 25

8.8 Monitoring and Modeling the Dynamics of Economy 26

8.9 The need for Collective Optimization 26

8.10 Connecting Abilities 27

9. Global Bio-Feedback 29

10. On Social Justice, Equality and Freedom 31



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Abstract

We must find the way to exist in harmony and communion just as the cells in our body function

as one. We already realize that while fighting over resources, we must also cooperate in facing

the truly great challenges that await us as a species. We can and must find a way to live in

equilibrium with one another and to exist in homeostasis within our habitat. Let us march on to

comprehend the network of networks of mutual influences in which we as human-beings act as a

living, breathing system. Social Informatics (SI) - will grant us, for the first time, the ability to

truly behold ourselves as a collective, to grasp the very core of our existence on this planet as a

unified single organism, to realize how the entire of humanity is in fact a living, breathing,

dynamic entity, which must find and invent itself as such. Let us awaken our great emergence.

Social Informatics will enable us to clearly perceive our already-existing inter-dependence and to

open our eyes once and for all to the big picture: We, human beings, are a one species. Only by

striving towards a scientific comprehension and catalysis of our becoming as a living, breathing

whole – an organism by all definitions – can we develop the solutions to allow us a steady state

existence on this small planet, in harmony amongst ourselves and with our environment. Let us

choose to win together, and march towards a future where mankind is united as a whole made up

of unique individuals; Our power is in unity, and the secret of our unity is in grasping the

potential of our variance. We will begin to develop computational systems allowing us to

observe and model the anatomy and physiology of the human organism. We will gradually attaina deep understanding of ourselves as a live dynamic fabric, as a defined and discernible entity.

Armed with this understanding we will discover the ability to project our evolution as a whole

towards a place of a united, collective equilibrium.



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Preface - Mapping this White Paper to Administration Guidance

The OSTP has decided to put great emphasis in the coming year (2010) on FederalInformation Technology, stating that "Greater transparency, accountability, and public

participation are central to the President’s Open Government agenda." It is further attested that "the2010 Budget reflects the growing responsibilities for federal IT management with $75.8 billion for

total federal IT spending, $5.1 billion or 7.2 percent more than the 2009 enacted level." The OSTPalso declares a determined will "to address the Administration’s goal of greater openness in

government, wider participation by citizens in government, and a more collaborative, cost-effective federal IT enterprise." [http://www.ostp.gov/cs/rd_budgets]

In that very spirit, the following white paper portrays the road to our true democracy, to ourtrue openness throughout and across the social fabric, to a true state of government for the peopleand by the people. This manuscript depicts the ways in which we can enhance our administrationand management on all scales, from the individual government we each exercise in our private livesand to the very means by which we decide to run ourselves as collectives. It is the mirror across fromthe mirror. It is the Global Biofeedback awaiting to emerge, to spiral us towards our true freedom for

all, balanced and whole and anciently new.

As our time of social blossom is at hand, we are now beginning to witness national think-tanks sprouting in pursuit of social sciences' true potential. For example, The National Academies'

Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education recently launched (Oct 1 2009) A

Research Agenda for the use of Social Science Evidence in Public Policy. The project launched a12 months "ad hoc committee to conduct a study to develop an agenda for research on the publicpolicy uses of knowledge from social science research".[http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/projectview.aspx?key=49136];

Our actions and policies already speak a tacit search; we already feel how a true science of

society can transform our lives for the better and have begun to actively seek the ways to reach ourPromised Land.

The glorious riches that await us in the merger between the Social Sciences and the ExactSciences are already beginning to give their bloom. The following white paper is a portrait of theflowers and the fruit that await us, and a vision into the ways to fertilize our blossom into a magicalgarden.



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1. Integrating Humanity - Towards a Science of Union______________________

1.3 From Building the Body to Awakening the Soul

Is it not time to understand the secrets of our inborn unity?

We are already connected; our economic interdependency fully exists and every localfluctuation in the economic markets is quickly transmitted across the world. We live in an age wherea worker strikes in a Detroit automobile factory and a family man in Japan loses money. We arelinked through communication networks and similar social consciousness – many of us know what aFacebook "poke" is regardless of where we were born. Our mutual influence and our interaction arepresent, but the infrastructure of our connection is now awaiting an understanding to emerge: Whatis the essence of this networking? How should we co-operate to survive on this Earth? Uncontrolledhuman expansion is exhausting the available resources, and now our time is calling: We must striveto find the balance in which we as a species materialize as a collective human organism. We mustfind the way to exist in harmony and communion just as the cells in our body function as one.

Currently, the social sub-systems (S3) which make up humanity are trying without cease topull our whole in a myriad of disharmonic directions. If we fail to decipher the secret of our unitywithin the near future, we will sober up to discover that our selfishness has swept Earth's floor frombeneath our very feet of existence.

We can and must find a way to live in equilibrium with one another and to exist inhomeostasis within our habitat. If we fail to unite, if we destroy our breeding grounds in a wildproliferation frenzy like a cancer consuming its host, we will ultimately be left with nothing; withoutour Home, for now we have no existence. Let us take the next step towards a better future, let usmarch on to comprehend the network of networks of mutual influences in which we as human-beings act as a living system.

1.4 Social Informatics – A New Journey

Today a new science is emerging destined to change the way in which we live and think. Atfirst we created mathematics, and then computer science, and we begun playing with the games of mind we ourselves created. Along the road, when we felt ready and strong enough, we decided to tryand bridge between the descriptive sciences of biology and the exact sciences of formulation. So ithappened that the knowledge domains of Biology, which were previously limited to merelydescribing and classifying observed phenomena, were reborn as the fields of Bio-Informatics,Biotechnology and Biomedical Engineering.

The time has now come for us to begin an exciting new journey, a more challenging one, tobridge between the Social Sciences and the Exact Sciences. This new scientific realm - SocialInformatics (SI) - will grant us, for the first time, the ability to truly behold ourselves as a collective,to grasp the very core of our existence on this planet as a unified single organism, to realize how theentire of humanity is in fact a living, breathing, dynamic entity, which must find and invent itself assuch. Let us awaken our great emergence.

1.3 Infrastructure for Unity

We all feel the foundations of unity being woven between us for some time now: The

Internet exists; we are continuously updating blogs and publishing status lines in Twitter andFacebook; many of us are already maintaining social relations with people from all across the world,



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not binding our social ties to our country of birth. Many people take part in forums and virtualcommunities which allow for work, leisure and exchange of ideas in ways that cross geographical,political, cultural and even religious boundaries. There is already this feeling, slowly trickling itsway into our awareness, that we are all on the same boat, and that while fighting over resources, wemust also cooperate in facing the truly great challenges that await us as a species.

In the depth of our heart we know: the world is far too small; only if we learn to work together will we be able to hit upon the collective point of balance which can ensure the existence of the human whole.

1.4 Patterns of Social Dynamics

The high level of self-monitoring which we have established will allow us to follow andinvestigate the social processes occurring in the world in a way never before possible. SocialInformatics will consolidate methods to observe the infinite amount of available data and torecognize patterns within it typifying collective human behavior on all scales - from socializationgroups, to business networks, to cities, states, countries, peoples and civilizations.

Social Informatics will allow us to utilize the unfathomable riches of our already accessibleinformation: from de-identified cellular phone data through academic, commercial and governmentalpublications, to communications of individuals and interest groups using our newly found media(blogging, micro-blogging etc.), through mass opinions' polling sites (e.g. news polling sites such ascurrent.com, talkbacks etc.), through private and governmental news sites, to statistical datapublished by various sources, formal and private alike. This nascent research field will develop newtools to enable data mining, natural language processing (natural language being our communicationinterface which serves de-facto as the technical infrastructure for humanity's unison), as well asknowledge and pattern discovery methodologies. These tools will allow for the analysis and deepunderstanding, in an exact quantitative way, of human networks on all scales and in all forms, from

friendship networks to business, religious and political social networks.

We will begin to develop computational systems allowing us to observe and model theanatomy and physiology of the human organism. We will gradually attain a deep understanding of ourselves as a live dynamic fabric, as a defined and discernible entity. Armed with thisunderstanding we will discover the ability to project our evolution as a whole towards a place of aunited, collective equilibrium.

If we succeed in probing and analyzing in a computational manner all of our public datasources, we will finally be able to know what it is that we know; today we all communicate ourpersonal visions, thoughts and feelings into the network, but nowhere is the whole picture accessibleto us;



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2. Knowing What We Know____________________________________________

2.1 Academic Nebulous

To a small and familiar example, we communicate academic knowledge in the form of infinite textual articles which get published across infinite electronic and paper-based journals, but

there is no element which produces an outlook of how this knowledge takes form as a collective,how the physiological sub-systems of the human academic knowledge evolve, take shape andchange. As a result, conflicting knowledge published in different venues and/or in differentlanguages is unmonitored and so the incoherencies in the knowledge-network remain largelyundiscovered. Moreover, a multitude of similar knowledge and conclusions keep on beingredundantly re-discovered time and again, through an atrocious wastage of time and resources.

We should see that as long as our image of academic profit is perceived through narrowvistas held by private or governmental academic institutions, and as long as our academic progress isreliant upon economic bodies with narrow business or geographical interests, mankind will not beable to progress towards our optimum. From a bird's eye perspective it is difficult to justify thesquander of man years and money resulting from our lack of collective awareness to the knowledge

we are accumulating as individuals and as social sub-systems.

2.2 A Call to Make all Things Public be Known

This is not a call to reveal confidential information, but rather an invitation to observe theprevalence of public information for which we, as a public, are currently lacking a bigger picture. If researchers from Russia or China have already published a discovery in their own language, but nowan entire laboratory in America is investing twenty man years of work in either re-discovering thesame knowledge, or in researching a similar subject area without fully building upon the pre-discovered knowledge, clearly these are symptoms of a communal ailment: they signify that we are

operating with an inefficiency that in the long run is not in favor of any entity within the system of humanity.

The human attempt to overcome the problematic aspects of academic information flowsusually manifest in specialization. Researchers narrow their fields to an extent which allows them tobuild an adequate mental perception of the global knowledge available in their field. We mustrealize, though, that this answer falls short from providing a whole solution to the problem: Becauseof human memory limitations, the amount of information which the average researcher can availablyrepresent in consciousness has not changed dramatically over the past centuries. The amount of information accumulating in the various disciplines, on the other hand, is on an exponential risethrough time. As a result, the scientific researchers in the world are continuously narrowing their

actual scope of research (even though these subject areas are being gradually defined under moreand more inter-disciplinary fields).

By not augmenting the human abilities to match the rising need for accessible memory, weare loosing our grasp on the big picture, and are affectively shrugging at our responsibility tonavigate the ship of our collective knowledge through the sea of life and death in which we exist.

Nature does not know a separation into disciplines; it is a unified fabric of intelligencewaiting to be discovered as such. Through the development of computational tools for deep scaleanalysis of social networks we can produce a dynamic lucid picture depicting the state of the humanknowledge-platform; by examining the social networks of scientific knowledge-commerce (e.g. e-

journals, conference proceedings, professional online science forums, citation-mapping, cross-

disciplinary thesis-mapping etc.), we can construct a continuous, unbroken image portraying thecomplete state of science.



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By developing the appropriate SI tools, automatic methods will materialize to survey thepublic textual knowledge base. These tools will enable us to consult with a computational systemshared by mankind, to inquire whether a proposed research has already been investigated in anothercountry, in another language or in another time, and to know the results of such research. Today,stemming from our inability to produce a true appraisal of the existing knowledge base, our

scientific progression (which, ultimately, is a global endeavor) is suffering from a long line of inefficiencies.

2.3 Evoking a Social Compass

Furthermore, a system which is able to computationally create whole representations of thescientific knowledge base will also know to direct us to contradictions and gaps in our knowledge.We will attain insight as to new points which require investigation – either to eliminate dissonancesand close the gaps in our knowledge, or to push forward our existing comprehension. These systemswill find for us the directions of scientific progress which will ensure optimality in the investment of mankind's time and energy resources. By devising this social compass, we will gain the power to

strengthen the general fabric of human knowledge and to march it towards optimization of itsconsistency, coherency and significance, while performing a renewing dynamical discovery of themost efficient ways – time and money wise - to increase the scope and depth of science.



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3. How we think and feel as social groups__________________________________

Looking from a different angle, we publish endless Tweets, status lines, blogs, talkbacks,news sites, spokesmen sites etc. but there is no publicly available intuitively graspable portrait of what we feel and think as the various social groups that we form;

3.1 Individuality and Teamwork in the Human Body

Each cell in the human body is first and foremost an individual cell, and thus similar to allother cells, but at the same time it also acts as an integral part of different physiological sub-systems.The multitude of these sub-systems hold varying degrees of equivalence and differences betweenthem, as well as mutual influences: a bone cell is primarily a cell and thus similar to all other cells(e.g. has same DNA, basic structure scheme etc.), but it also specializes to function as a part of oneor more body systems such as the skeletal system or the hematopoietic system. Moreover, the cell isaffiliated with an even broader range of physiological sub-systems, such as the endocrinal andnervous systems, through an intricate web of interdependencies, mutual feedback and interactionnetworks.

So too, we as human beings serve as parts of a collective organism, and are divided intocomplex, parallel and inter-connected social sub-systems; a human being is first and foremost anindividual, but beyond that he can also belong to one or more social sub-systems which function viacomplex networks of mutual influences within the framework of the super-organism:

We are separated into geographical social networks: neighborhoods, cities, states, countries,continents etc; we interact through cross-spatial social networks such as groups and forums of interest-areas ranging from the friendship-based to professional-based, hobby-based, life-style-basedetc; we form ideological social networks such as peoples and religions, and inherit cross-temporal

social networks such as cultures, historical-reference groups etc.

After we learn to mathematically describe the interactions between our different socialgroups, it will become possible to observe the ways in which the different parts of humanityinfluence each-other as well as the whole. We will know to characterize inherent human patterns thatforetell negative events and so act to prevent them. Our understandings will also teach us how toimprove the mutual dynamics between the different social systems active in the world, so to performeconomic, environmental and cultural optimization.

Following are discussions about several possible routs of progress, out of many, en-route tohuman unity. These subject areas will materialize thanks to the future of Social Informatics. Theywill enable the tomorrow of all of us by supporting our advancement towards a sustainable

equilibrium, both amongst the social sub-systems which construct mankind, and between humanityas an organism and its fountain of resources - the environment.



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4. Who Knows What is Happening in the World Right Now?_________________

4.1 News – Read all about it?

So many news sites get updated every day, every hour, every minute, in so many languages.But does anyone know what is happening in the World? Does anyone make a global picture publicly

available? Is there someone reading all the sites, all the news articles that are published around theglobe? Is there a body in existence monitoring the whole of the public information, reflecting thecorrelations and variance in the communicated contents and publicizing an updated probabilisticdepiction to enable humanity to observe the state of the World as it truly is?

4.2 Our Limiting Information Habits

In our current state of affairs we are leading ourselves astray; Most of us have built a habitfor a limited (and usually closed) set of media and political news-sources, on which we base ourview of the World. By accepting a perspective of reality reflected to us by a small andunrepresentative collection of fun-house warping mirrors we are creating in ourselves a skewed,biased view of the World.

Without a doubt, the human consciousness is innately biased, twisted and subjective, but ourgoal is to strive for as objective a base of knowledge as we can attain. We have thus set sail on thescientific voyage as an answer to our questions of the absolute, as our quest for the agreeable and oursearch for the provable and disprovable. We have chosen to establish a method which cuts acrossnations, peoples, cultures and religions – a method which allows us, as a human whole, to lay mutualfoundations for communication, development and progress – together, in joint forces.

We must realize that only by dynamically monitoring and representing a wide variety of

distorting mirrors will we be able to recruit the power of large numbers and the blessed humandiversity so to winnow what we know from our subjective perceptions of knowledge; Only bywisely summing together the entirety of news sources into a united representation will it becomepossible to consolidate a lucid and objective an image as possible of the same world in which we alllive. Our view of this world should ultimately average in as many perception types of reality aspossible - from micro-blogs through commercial communication channels to governmental sites.

It is to the benefit of mankind that such knowledge be made available to all the individualsmaking up the organism, so that anyone may choose at any time to expose themselves to this bigpicture. Today most of us are satisfied with reading a newspaper or two that we like (or, in mostcases, that we are used to), and perhaps referring to a news station or two on the TV/Internet. But

these habits are creating a deep bias and a dividing variance in the way different people perceive thesame events happening in the same World. While variance in abilities is bliss, variance in globalperception of the same events can lead to violence and disharmony.

All of our news information is known and publicized, we have already chosen, as humanity,that it is right and just that everyone be granted access to the information, but at the same time wehave yet to develop the tools to allow us to know that which we know, we have yet to develop thetools to allow us to forge a crystal clear collective image from the mountains of data which wecommunicate into our collective network. Our mission is not only to aggregate news, but tosynthesize news.



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5. Humanity is Trying to Speak – Let's Listen______________________________

A multitude of micro-blogs, status-lines, talk-backs, blogs etc. are being published each andevery second – these sources hold the great potential for allowing us to see ourselves as we are,always anew. They are the key to smashing our funny mirrors, to begin heading for our greatreflection:

5.1 Bacteria Colonies as Survivability Gurus

Bacteria have become the most survivable life-form known in existence mainly due to anatural implementation of Social Informatics; they unite to form colonies in which each individualcan access the collective knowledge and experience held by all other individuals. Bacteria havenaturally incorporated SI tools into the very fabric of their life as a collective social organism; theexperience of individual bacteria immediately becomes shared across the colony through a beautifulpublic communication infrastructure. Many of the colony's decisions which lead to increasedsurvivability stem from the bacteria's capacity, as a whole, to successfully aggregate individualexperience and knowledge into group decisions. The colony performs continuous collective voting

(total democracy) so to synthesize a coherent as possible an outlook on reality from the multitude of biased and subjective personal views of the individual bacteria. It is our future that is calling us tolearn from bacteria.

5.2 Of Michael Jackson and Google's Fears

When Michael Jackson passed away, the rumor of his death spread so fast throughout theglobe that a social action potential was formed, trying to close a feedback loop with Google:millions of queries containing the name Michael Jackson were sent to Google's servers over a shorttime-span and from all around the world. Even though humanity itself was trying to initiate a grand-

scale communication, the company closed its servers to public access fearing it was under a cyber-terrorism attack. Because no computational entity was charged with the capacity to listen in on theemotions and thought-processes of mankind as a whole, it was impossible to meet humanity's tacitrequest to perform big-scale aggregated social communication.

Even the crudest of statistical tools could have deduced that similar content being queriedfrom such a myriad of IP addresses easily passes most tests of statistical significance. When such amomentous public query rises up, it is often the very statistics of the individual queries inputted

into Google which serve as the required output to the individual users. Google's lack of awareness to the reciprocal potential of big-scale social interactions was the cause which sproutedthe company's fear of being under attack. Although that which is veiled and unknown fears us, it isnevertheless fear itself which frequently marks the doors of opportunity in our life.

5.3 The Googles of Tomorrow

Social informatics will allow us not only to trace big-scale collectively-shaping events suchas the death of Michael Jackson, but also to observe the patterns of social action and reaction in alllevels so to enable all of us to make decisions from a more informed vantage point. The Googles of tomorrow will enable humanity to beat together like a heart, to think together like a mind, to receivenot only information about sites, but also real-time knowledge about the very thoughts and feelingsof mankind, as portrayed online both by our queries (request for input) and our "tweets" (outputs) of all kinds. We are all, individually and together, a balance between input and output. Googleshould add a line for output, so that we can all, as our assumed online identities, both input and

output information. This will make our Internet truly come alive.



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5.4 Detecting and Mapping Tweeting Outbursts

For example, if within a short time span and from a defined and limited geographicalboundary we observe a statistically significant outburst of Tweets, Facebook status-lines or blogsconveying similar content, we can infer this to be a significant attempt on the part of a social sub-system within humanity to communicate a message to the rest of the organism. The "impulse"

morphology (in the vernacular of signal processing) of this social signal portrays an emergentspontaneous collective will to communicate some content. Constructing a framework to detectand exhibit spontaneous group communication efforts is only half the cycle; the other half requiresthat we actively listen to these messages. Our incessant communication of content into the network occurs in amounts far greater then is humanly possible to keep track of. It is easy, therefore, to seethe importance of closing this loop by creating a computational auditory faculty which continuouslylistens to the entirety of our individual online broadcasts. For the sake of mankind, we must realizethat the only way for us to monitor and grasp our collective communications is by developing theappropriate SI systems, for in the smart synthesis of all these communications lies a treasure of immense knowledge useful to all of us.

When we have established the ability to listen in on our collective conversation, humanitywill be granted clearance to a several-folds increase in the lucidity of our intra-organismcommunication. As we detect, for example, such impulse-type social signals in Twitter (andsimilarly in Facebook, the various Blogospheres and the multitude of privately held news sites), wecan dynamically translate many individual murmurs into a single coherent Tweet representing therespective city or geographical frame, as well as the time, from which emerged this communicativeenergy which passed a significance threshold.

Today our views of reality are tainted with distortions and biases. These blemishes in ourperception are the currency with which we pay overpriced arbitration commissions to the interests of commercial and government media organizations. Though our online media sources often provide us

with "free" public access to their privately held information, they are doing so while charging ourconsciousness with their own interests.

5.5 Unified Social Signals

By performing advanced synthesis of many individually-biased contents into unified

social signals we can cancel out the biases to see more clearly what is happening in the world. Thesesummative message-signals can be projected onto a World map so to aggregate, into a single publicdomain, a clear visual representation unifying the most basic strata in humanity – the individual –with the higher levels of our complexity as a collective socially-integrated organism.

Consequently, a public realm will emerge enabling all individuals who so choose to examinethe communication exchanges between the various social sub-systems which make up the humanwhole. Out of this space spontaneous processes will arise to advance the development of technological tools to help us steer the various aggregative messages to their appropriate receivers. Itwill eventually come about that listening to the feelings and thoughts of mankind will turn as naturaland seamless as listening to our own individual thoughts, perhaps with an even greater signal tonoise ratio then we are used to in our own heads.

For instance, if an impulse-type social signal is recognized in Facebook which testifies of asignificant number of people reporting to be sick or to feel unwell etc. within a defined spatio-

temporal frame, we will have the automatic tools to perform an initiated and selective transfer of this



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information to locally active health-care providers, to the appropriate governmental or municipalpublic health office etc.

Moreover, the science of social informatics will develop the tools able to performoptimization for the best answers to the questions of required receivers (e.g. "to whom is it advisableto transfer this collective message?", "is there in existence an optimal receiver for this information?",

"what kind of new receiving party should be formed to best deal with this kind of information?" etc.)



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6. Privacy Issues and the Power of Publicity_______________________________

6.1 Publicizing Political Opposition

It may be that a fear will now arise in you. You may be asking yourself what will happen if adespotic government uses these tools to monitor sources of resistance or opposition. The answer is

two-fold: On the one hand, as will be elaborated later on, the knowledge produced by the means of social informatics will be, by definition, personally unidentifiable. But still, you may say, if thegovernment of China discovers that a single county produces a lot of online content whichcontradicts its interests, it can use this knowledge to crush the opposition in the renegade region andsilence the resistance before it comes about into the physical realm.

Here comes into play another side of SI, one exemplifying this nascent field's true beauty andpower: let us first accept that the government of China already performs such research throughnational intelligence agencies which monitor pockets of resistance within the Chinese people.Regardless of the issue of the intelligence's quality, the surreptitious nature of its discovery allows itsowners to use it without global scrutiny. When, however, these sources of opposition become

publicly known to the world, night will turn into day; in the same way that crimes are mostlyperpetrated when there are as few witnesses as possible, so too will the public nature of SI-drivenknowledge act as a giant projector of light to hinder the ability of tyrannical governments to commitactions contradicting the globally accepted moral codes and norms of conduct.

6.2 The Power of Public Social Feedback

In essence, the knowledge produced by this science will be fed-back into the public realm, sothat to the same extent which the government of China knows of a rising opposition, so too will therest of the countries in the world, and also, within China, all the other regions. Now the game

becomes truly open, transparent and global, for all players: maybe less dramatic, but much safer foreveryone.

Each nation outside China and each county within China will now be able to decide forthemselves whether to strengthen the call of opposition or to enervate it. These new witnesses will infact serve as multiple balancing affecters between the government on the one hand and the defyingcounty on the other. No more will countries be able to hide in the shadows of "we didn't know";Total global awareness will lead to new, better global dynamics. In fact, it will be the very publicity

of the knowledge generated from our social data that will create a new balance, beautiful and

healthy like never before, between the governments and peoples of the World; SocialInformatics will finally take us forwards in our journey towards true Democracy.

6.3 Decision Support for Public Officials

In a complementary manner, SI will provide invaluable decision-support for our bearers of public responsibility. Currently, our public figures frequently make decisions affecting entirepopulations while referring only to a handful of advisors and occasionally to targeted narrow-scopesurveys. Both these decision-supporting mechanisms ultimately reflect no more then a narrowperspective on reality. If, however, we build a shared live vista of what is happening in the world, wecan enable policy and decision makers in the levels of cities, corporations, countries, unions etc. tobetter understand the thoughts and feelings prevalent within the publics they represent. We can

empower our officials by providing them with the tools to make decisions based on a collective

real-time globally-shared social-information reference framework.



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6.4 Social Informatics for a Balanced Economy

By computationally scanning news sources on all scales, from status feeds of individuals toreports in formal sites of governments, in all languages, at all times, we can create a capacity towinnow the significant information from the nebulous, and to obtain an up-to-date real-time pictureof what is happening in the World. This picture, if made available to all, will persistently function as

a harmonizing factor on all levels of the human organism. In addition to balancing betweengovernments and populations, a unified world view will create better transparency in the world'smarkets, thus contributing to the ability of our organism's oxygen system to reduce the spaces of uncertainty in which it acts and reacts, spaces caused to a large extent by the gap between what isactually happening in the world and what is publicly known to be happening.

6.5 SI-Irrelevance of Personally Identifiable Information

It is clearly evident that the issue of privacy is of great importance, and that much attentionmust be placed on maintaining the privacy of individuals. It is important to emphasize, therefore,that the power of social informatics will be attainable only through the laws of large numbers, and

that personally identifiable information will actually have no value in these contexts, simply becausethe enormous amount of data communicated by individuals becomes socially informative only whenwe look at cross-personal content such as geographical location, time, general content attributes etc.

In fact, any content which personally identifies the writer of a blog or a status line (i.e. whichsingles him out from the rest of mankind), any content that is personal, is by definition immaterial togenerating the knowledge relevant to the collective. The goal of social informatics is to synthesizethe knowledge pertaining to humanity and its social sub-systems, knowledge which emerges onlyfrom content characteristic to more then one individual. For example, if we were to collect all thesocial IDs of people around the world, this information would not help us in understanding anythingsignificant regarding the social processes which are occurring, because the social identificationnumber of an individual represents only that individual, while social processes by definition relate tomore then one individual.

If, on the other hand, without knowing the identity of the individuals, we discover that astatistically significant number of people are communicating the occurrence of street riots in somedistrict in Iran currently inaccessible to western media, we can easily deduce that what makes thisknowledge socially relevant to the collective is in essence the fact that it is does not relate in auniquely-identifiable manner to any single individual, but rather that it is relevant in a non-personalmanner to a significant group of individuals.

6.6 The Dynamics of Privacy-Boundaries in the 21st

Century

Notwithstanding, it is pertinent that we realize that in this age of social networks andconnectedness, we have in fact voted, as a humanity, to forgo certain aspects of our privacy in favorof our evolution as a whole. If millions of people are suddenly asking what happened to MichaelJackson, even though their queries are in essence personally-identifiable, it is statistically probablethat the strength of the phenomenon indicates that this is not a personal but rather a public event.Therefore, we must realize that we ourselves, through the ways in which we choose to communicate,are classifying what is personal and what is public. We are actively and dynamically defining the

private and public realms of our reality.

Let us assume, for example, that an anonymous, private person, not holding any publicposition and not under any legal obligation to expose herself or to act with any public transparency,



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decides one day to open a blog. Her decision is in fact to become a public figure, for she has chosento publicly communicate her private thoughts. Hence, under the identity with which she chooses toblog, she may find herself in the midst of a cyber assail by micro-bloggers, talk-backers or otherbloggers. She might even find herself virtually attacked by corporate news sites. Thus, under anyidentity she assumes, her choice to communicate private opinions into the network transforms herfrom a private to a public figure.

As we can already feel, we are entering an age where the barriers between the "I" and the"not I" are beginning to crumble away. We will ultimately understand that we are all connected andthat we all depend one on another. In this respect privacy in its deepest sense is no more then anillusion. We are linked and joined in interdependencies much deeper and stronger then we usuallycare to admit. The wealthy man flying in his private jet shares a strong invisible bond with thefarmer raising wheat in the field far below him. With time, it may very well be Social Informaticsitself that will grant us the courage to bring down the walls and open the gates of unity between oneanother, to finally realize that we are all one.



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7. Modeling and Predicting Social Dynamics – from wars to social weather_____

7.1 Social Vectors

If we learn how to monitor and mathematically represent all of the social signals we create,starting from the public expressions of our leaders, through the declarations and decisions of

governments and organizations, through the publications of individual citizens (in blogs, status linesetc.), to the published content in news sites from around the globe – we can attribute an energy, avector of attributes to each such social signal. By translating monitored social phenomena tomathematical representation we can begin to discover, through observation, the models and patternswhich govern human social processes on all scales.

In the scale of countries, for example, we'll be able to attribute to each nation both the sets of signals which relate to it and the signals generated from it in relation to other countries. Every sourceof information that can be attributed to a country, on all scales of social expression, can be depictedas a social vector; from public expressions of leaders, through the murmurings of the public and theground-floor World-image as reflected from individual data sources (blogs, micro-blogs etc.),

through reports in the various news sites regarding maneuvers (both rhetoric and actual) of armies,governments and other social groups, to political and diplomatic proceedings within countries andbetween nations. Social Informatics will create the tools to analyze these signals so to characterizethem in a multi-dimensional way, measuring their levels of hostility, aggression, fondness, support,negation etc.

7.2 Social Dynamics and Binary-Based Conditioning

Ultimately we will rediscover our social dynamics as a network of networks emerging fromsimply two types of feedback: positive and negative. In our brain, the entire complexity of thesystem arises out of merely two effects one neuron can have on another – either positive or negativefeedback. While the amount of excitation or inhibition one neuron evokes in another may change,the effect is essentially classifiable into these two types. Just as one neural sub-system in our braincan have varying degrees of excitation or inhibition on another, so too we shall realize that all thecomplexity of our social system relies on the basis of a dichotomy, a duality between excitation andinhibition - attraction and repulsion. Social Informatics will lead us to behold that any social sub-system can essentially affect any other social sub-system primarily through two types of conditioning – positive or negative. Thus a new working-paradigm of humanity will surface, onewhich portrays mankind as a multi-dimensional, multi-scale feedback and control social-system. Wehave already defined words which classify different positive or negative social impacts; we canbegin to work with this partial set of discrete representations and gradually evolve towards a future

where the degree of social feedback (be it positive or negative) is mathematically measured on acontinuous spectrum just like any other physical force in nature.

7.3 Detecting Social Storms

By performing vector analysis on social signals it will be possible to describe models anddiscover patterns of social-signals' transduction within a country and between countries that arecharacteristic of war and peace. Consequently, we can monitor the negative, violent energeticvibration between any two social entities, as synthesized from the entirety of signals. When thisnegativity reaches a certain threshold or is found to correlate highly with a pattern characterizing thebrink of a war or other types of social clash, it will be possible to predict the conflict. We can thus

divert public awareness to the progressing events well before they culminate in the breaking pointfrom which there is no return and the clash materializes.



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When we attain a global public system that continuously screens inter-social tensions on alllevels, its warnings about a forming "social storm" between countries or other social groups will betreated just like other natural-disaster warnings about tsunamis or hurricanes. There will be,however, a strikingly optimistic difference: when the ominous disaster is a social one, an earlypublic warning of its development will grant us the opportunity to resolve the dissonance before it

ripens into a disaster, to actively solve the problem rather then passively taking cover from it.

7.4 Building a Microscope for Social Harmonics Analysis

By developing data mining and knowledge discovery methodologies to analyze both microand macro social processes, we can apply these methods not only on social signals derived from theInternet but also on social signals extracted from other sources. Reciprocally, we can use differentsources of social data to advance and refine our existing methodologies and provide further insightsinto social processes. For instance, by analyzing airborne video imagery of social action fields suchas shopping centers, metropolises, sport stadiums and events, clubbing areas, open-air and naturefestivals etc. we can perform "microscopic" studies into the atomic essences of social

phenomena.Imagine a small hot-air balloon equipped with wide-angle high-definition video-cameras

hovering over a New-Delhi road intersection. Imagine the same contraption hovering aboveintersections in different countries, cultures and civilizations. We can perform video analysis so toextract temporal vectors describing the different entities and their relative motions. By exercising thetools of Social Informatics on this data we can begin to unravel the harmonies, dissonances,

energetic efficiencies and mathematical optimizations characterizing different ways of life. Wemay discover how it is that Indian streets seem to hold such a chaotic stress-free harmony in themotions of such a complex assortment of moving bodies, without the use of any strict set of rules orartificial traffic control. We may unravel patterns of individuals' movements which are characteristicof a build up to a brawl – so to be able to predict the onset of such clashes between sports fans in

football or soccer stadiums, or in entertainment districts across the world. Moreover, we may be ableto decipher anomalistic moving patterns that predict the occurrence of robberies or other crimes.

Ultimately, it will be possible to analyze social hostility between neighboring tribes in Africaor between any combination of physically adjacent social factions; utilizing satellite imagery (andultimately also a mosaic of YouTube inputs) accompanied by the same methods of video processing,we'll be able synthesize vectors describing the motions of populations so to subsequently performresearch on those movements using the tools of social informatics. This will enable us to provideinformation in a public, thus collectively balanced, manner. Today such knowledge is the exclusiveproperty of rich armies around the world, holding battalions of human image decipherers workinground the clock, functioning according to the private interests of a specific country. When we growmore mature as a unified human organism, we will come to realize that the key to our personalsafety lays in cooperating to turn the information and knowledge that concern us all into atransparent public domain.

7.5 Rolling Stones – Modeling Social Weather through Facebook

Facebook events and the dynamics of their virulence represent the social weather. Here's atrue story: an event created by a high-school student in America informing about the expectedLeonid Meteor Shower sweeps through the social network aggregating invitations. Although theoriginal user who created the event has only 350 Facebook friends, the virulence of the event

becomes enormous; it begins slowly, like many natural phenomena, but several days later(4.Nov.09) the event boasts 160,000 invited users, 90,000 of which are confirmed. A day after, the



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number jumps to nearly 300,000 invited users, 150,000 of which have confirmed their attendance.Let us fathom the riches which sparkle before us:

Every intersection of this emergent network comprises of a live human node dynamicallycollated into the structure. Each of the Facebook users invited to an event thus becomes an activeparticle of energy in an animated social wind; they each perform an energetic affect on the emerging

social vector – shaping its movement and size by evoking their individual social potential: Eachinvitee takes two principal decisions: how to mark their RSVP and which of their Facebook friends(if any) to invite. According to the amount of social-potential-energy in possession of an invitee, hecan evoke varying sizes of social influence by his decisions, thereby playing a bigger or smaller rolein shaping the overall social impact of the event.

The decisions made by each human node in this vibrant ad-hoc network affectively measurethe social relevance, strength and lure of the information portrayed by the event: This social creditcan manifest in a wide array of forms ranging from the popularity of the original inviters (and evenof subsequent inviters), through the attractiveness of the hosting venue, through the fame of aregarded persona, to the reputation of the exhibited ideas and current attractiveness of the proposed

occasion (rally, party, lecture etc.). It is thus the very social virulence of the event that is determinedby the collective decision-making of invitees. In our decisions as invited guests we are weighing-insocial energy in the form of negative and positive feedback. Through our decisions we vote whetherto strengthen the phenomenon or weaken it, whether to make the social wind more or less sweeping.

Our current decision for RSVP is limited to the 4 possibilities: {"attending","maybeattending","not attending","awaiting reply"}. Let us note that in this we are actually classifying a

closed set of social energy vectors ,0, , NA+ − , actively defining 4 discrete points in reference to a

social feedback axis. This spectrum depicts each node's degree of personal interest and attraction tothe evolving social vector. The feedback also acts as a degree of influence over the futureattractiveness of the event (to future invitees).

Furthermore, a node's decision regarding who to invite serves as another, complementaryvector of influence; it essentially depicts the vote of the invitee regarding the social relevance of theevent to other users in his immediate network. Each invitation decision may be mathematicallydescribed as a vector projected over a multi-dimensional social-impact space: The raw number of forwarded invitations is one axis, the combined social credit/potential-energy of the invitees isanother, and the space can easily be expanded by defining more axes of socially-relevant attributes.

By monitoring the dynamics of invitations and RSVPs while cross-correlating them to thecontents represented by the event, we can gain immense insight on the mathematics and physics

governing the winds of social interest, as well as the formation, movement and dynamics of socialimpact clouds. We can thus attain a genuine working model of social weather, allowing us todecipher and predict social processes: we will understand how the winds of ideas and causes flowand how the clouds of social impact form, change, and storm.

We will witness how an economy of thought is taking place within humanity, amongst thevarious social sub-systems. We will behold the dynamics governing the interchange of ideasbetween individuals. We shall comprehend the ways in which dominant notions, norms, values andideals build up from within the social sub-systems of humanity, and understand how the exchange of these heavy bases takes place in the master's chemistry of social groups. We will grasp themathematics of how private individuals rise to social popularity, how citizens rise to fame or amass

political credit and how organizations gain and lose reputation.



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Let us fathom: just as local vibrations of energy can amass to form winds and individualparticles can merge to form clouds, so too our social processes are ultimately no more then temporalaggregations of individual social particles and their respective energies into the phenomena of socialweather. By unveiling the formation patterns and movement dynamics of these winds and clouds wecan attain not only the mathematics of weather but also the potential to begin the exercise of acollective conscious free will in shaping the personality of mankind.



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8. Social Differentiation en Route to Global Economic Optimization___________

Eventually we realize that the economic system is the blood, the material oxygen we havecreated; whoever receives more oxygen has more credit (potential energy) to utilize resources.Nevertheless, living right requires a sweet balance point. When every social sub-system in the Worldsimply wants all the oxygen it can get its hands on, we quickly descent on the slippery path to

oblivion. Only by learning how to work together while appreciating the importance of our innatedifferences can we attain the savvy to perform economic optimization. The variance between themultitude of social clusters we are continuously dividing and uniting into is no less then holy; itserves a crucial foundation for our survival, as it will enable us to ultimately differentiate andcooperate, just as the cells in our body have found necessary in their struggle to exist.

Have no doubt; there is an economic bingo in respect to our abilities as a whole made up

of uniquely variant parts. But as long as we continue behaving as a distributed collection of separate social systems, each trying to maximize their private gain, our capacity as a species toeffectively utilize our available resources on this planet will continue to be hindered. Continuing onour current plethora of selfish paths will lead us to a point where the World will no longer be able to

sustain us.

8.1 Nature's Model of Excellence for Evolutionary Synergy

In the human body the cells have ultimately found differentiation as an optimal answer toachieve a state of homeostasis, an existence in a fine balance between the inner and the outer,between resources and needs. The mechanism which has led natural evolution has been acting insimilar ways across different scales for billions of years. The reason that oxygen based breathing wasenabled to begin-with is because a merger took place between two separate entities: The primordialcell which knew mainly how to perform anaerobic breathing unified with the mitochondrion, so tocreate a new collective organism. In the new cell type, the two formerly-separate organisms receiveddifferentiated roles: The mitochondrion was freed to concentrate on the task of converting oxygen tobiological energy while receiving all the rest of its needs from what was previously the primordialcell, whereas the cell, whose energy conversion efficiency was far inferior, was freed in turn toconcentrate on performing the interface with the environment, while leaving all of the roles of energy conversion to the mitochondrion.

By each entity focusing on what it naturally knows to do in the relatively highest efficiency,the unified organism was able to attain synergy in respect to energetic efficiency, thus substantiallyincreasing the survivability of both the individual entities and the whole. That is to say, this divisioninto differentiated roles harbors within it the optimal state of existence for all sub-systems, because

at a certain blend and by a certain functional distribution, a synergy in energetic efficiency emerges.This "model of excellence" (i.e. professionalization – letting each entity concentrate only on what itdoes exceptionally well) is woven into the very fabric of natural evolution, taking place also in thescale of our physiological human body:

If all the cells wanted to become brain cells, the body would die. Ultimately, out of the striveto reach optimization in the distribution of resources as well as in the energetic management infacing the environment, the cells found it crucial to take form as differentiated groups (i.e.physiological sub-systems) and to assign them with various complementing roles (e.g. liver,pancreas, lungs, kidneys etc). In this way, every cell receives the amount of oxygen it requires whilethe energetic efficiency (i.e. survivability) of the whole becomes far greater then that of the sum of

its parts. By the liver cells concentrating on a certain functionality which they perform in the mostefficient way, they are able to provide specific services for the rest of the body's cells, while



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receiving all the other resources they require in order to live from other organs and physiologicalsub-systems in the body. In turn, the other systems, such as the kidneys, do not occupy themselveswith manufacturing services that the liver has been assigned to provide, and are thus emancipated tospecialize in producing different services for the collective, those which they are best equipped toperform in the relatively highest efficiency.

Our physiological body is in fact a brilliant solution to an energetic optimizationproblem very similar in nature to that which mankind as a whole is facing today. This aspect of optimization by a model of merit is the key to the survivability of humanity – as an organism – infacing its environment of limited resources. We must understand, as a collective human fabric, thesignificance of the relative variance between social groups on all scales, from tribes throughcountries, to peoples, religions and civilizations. By grasping the true meaning of our relativedifferences we can navigate ourselves as a whole towards economic optimization for all individualsin the collective.

8.2 Personal gain through mutual understandings

For example, when we have the tools able to mathematically link – and thus show – therelative contribution of each country's export to the economic energy in the world (in the wide senseof economic energy as a fusion of material, environmental, medical, cultural and spiritual profit), wecan provide countries with a potent instrument to aid them in making decisions that could have neverbefore been made in a conscious manner. By looking at the same picture, we can all come to

mutual understandings leading to greater personal gains. Individual profit is already, bydefinition, a concept based on optimizing for public service. In this respect, Bill Gates' affluencestems not from offering the most brilliant idea or product, but from providing humanity with agreatly required service at a specific time.

Social Informatics tools will allow us to detect which services are in great public demand or

need. They will also allow us to predict which services, if offered to the public, will reward theirproviders with profit. Eventually, SI will allow us a clear perception of which social sub-systems inhumanity require which services, and which social sub-systems are best equipped to render theseservices. We can thus discover, for instance, that it is more efficient to have certain countriesconcentrate on certain branches of export, while other countries would stand more to gain byrelinquishing those services and concentrating on providing others.

8.3 Models of Collective Income

We can harness Social Informatics to develop the computational ability to build models of

collective income – for humanity as a whole - so to predict which new manufacturing branches andbusiness domains can potentially provide mankind with profit. We will then be empowered tooptimize humanity's manufacturing branches by scientifically prescribing the finest blend of all thedifferent forms in which social sub-systems should come together to provide services (material orintangible) for one another.

We will learn, building upon scientific analysis, to map out which social sub-systems (bethem countries, corporations, interest groups etc.) are most suited to develop their abilities so toprovide the services predicted to be required by various publics. More so, it is highly probable thatwe may even succeed in using the tools of Social Informatics to develop the knowledge enabling usto both predict and plan new kinds of social sub-systems that will be better suited then existing ones

for meeting the newly defined needs of humanity.



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By using such a model of excellence, based on a public and transparent analysis, the entiretyof social sub-systems in humanity (from professional unions to entire peoples) can decide incommunion to differentiate into a wide spectrum of functionalists and to agree upon a distribution of roles so to achieve synergy in the economic optimization of both the whole and its parts.

8.4 Pyhsio-Morphological Aspects of our Economic System

Physiologically, all of our economic sub-systems are in essence service-providers. As such,the amount of economic oxygen (i.e. money) they receive should be a direct expression of thequality of service they provide (i.e. the degree of its public usefulness). Moreover, their economicenergetic efficiency should be an expression of the balance between their consumption of resources(e.g. time, money, material, energy etc.) and their output of services.

Morphologically speaking, our economic organelles are linked through an intricate web of networks comprised of more then just simple action-reaction dynamics between countries; Thisinterplay encompasses a vastly complex interaction, not only between geographically-bounded S3slike countries or continents, but also between cross-spatial S3s such as political alliances, economicforums, amalgamations of national and commercial interest groups, local and global professional

unions etc.

We are dealing, therefore, with a need to model a multi-dimensional network of networks of social systems and sub-systems within the human organism, all of which function according to thesame physiological principles; they all convert resources to services, receiving income of economicoxygen as a function of both the demand for their services and the efficiency with which theyperform the conversion. By developing the tools of Social Informatics we can build a computerizedobservatory monitoring the becoming of the human organism with respect to both economic-energetic-efficiency and the quality of rendered services, on all levels and in all scales, from themicro to the macro. We can then use our probing abilities to map out a complete model of oureconomic network and begin to scientifically optimize it.

You may assert that global economic optimization is already happening through thefunctioning of the World's markets, but the situation today is actuality more that of trial and error;we have erected a highly distributed system built of a multitude of individuals and privateorganizations, each trading and weighing their profits and losses from a narrow outlook of personalinterests. Let us emphasize that for each of the players in the system, the current perspective is of personal gain – representing a narrow range of interests. As a result, the players' interaction which,when amassed, serves as feedback within the system, is always representative of personal, ratherthen public, viewpoints. Granted, this approach works to the benefit of the whole, to some extent,when the power of large numbers is recruited: if many people and bodies across the world tradeaccording to their personal interests, ultimately the world progresses in a direction representing thecollective.

8.5 Skewed Representations Leading to Dangerous Instability

Still, we must see that our current practices are severely lacking: The global economicsystem of today is highly biased towards those social bodies which already hold either most of theresources, or the economic potential energy to use most of the resources. This is to say that our

current markets include a skewed representation of the collective interest, a distorted

perception which in turn slants the economic system towards dangerous instability: In a systemwhere the mutual dependency between all players is already ingrained and ubiquitous, placing

disproportionally heavy weights on narrow-interest standpoints brings about a genuine risk to thecontinued stability of the entire organism.



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We live in an era when 20% of the World's population holds 80% of its wealth. This state of affairs is unhealthy for the rich and the poor alike. Our ship is a one fabric of interdependency. Whenit is steered by interests that misrepresent the whole, the ultimate collapse of the organism becomesinevitable. The recent economic crisis has provided us with abundance of proof: a global economicstructure comprised of inter-reliant sub-parts but which at the same time is dominated by parties

acting out of narrow perspectives unrepresentative of the collective interest can easily bring thesystem to the brink of general collapse.

8.6 The Secret of Balance

The secret is in finding a balance. Just as in our own bodies all the cells have alreadydiscovered; oxygen, water and other resources can maintain life only as long as they are received incarefully measured proportions; a surfeit of oxygen kills just as quickly as its dearth. The tools of Social Informatics will advance us towards a better understanding of ourselves in the economicplain. They will bestow upon the economic bodies and systems operating in the World the tools forcollective decision making, which in turn will enable economic optimization, for the human whole

and its parts alike. The attitude by which only a few parts in humanity can win is wrong. An excessof material possessions does not guarantee a balanced existence: Cancer rates prevalent in America,which are the highest in the world in many of the categories, already whisper to us the dangers of abundance. Just as our bodily cells already know, the secret is in finding a balanced diet

between consuming resources and giving service.

Materialism for its own sake is pointless; its true meaning can only be measured by its abilityto bring about peaceful, wholesome lives. Only by assessing the extent to which materialism bringsabout a life of physical and mental well-being for those who strive for it as an ideal, can we ascertainits usefulness. Its worthy place in the sets of values and aspirations of social sub-systems throughoutthe world must be examined with sober, lucid eyes. If we keep looking out into reality through

unconscious eyes intoxicated with unrestrained desires, repeating the mantra "more is better", "moreis better", we shall continue to discover the beast within us leading us to doom.

When we create a culture of resource-consumption driven by the greedy and narrow concernsof a handful of social sub-systems within our organism, these interests - disjointed from the good of the whole and detached from the balance with nature - will eventually lead us all to a dead end. If weare to progress to the heavens, we must nurture the vision that in the same manner that molecularoxygen belongs to all of us, so does economic oxygen, providing yet another pillar to our commonexistence in this World. We like to say that money is a means and not an end in itself. Let's takeourselves seriously.

8.7 Balance Between Receiving and Giving as a Recipe for Peace

Currency is no more then a collective human measure, a factor which has already beenestablished through a united agreement of mankind as a physiological characteristic of the humanorganism: it constitutes an amenable measure of the mandate given to sub-systems within the wholeto access the general pool of resources. With time our vision will clear up; we will see that our truegoal in this reality is to exist in balance. Thus, we are required to find, together, the optimal way toutilize available resources and to differentiate on all scales into sub-systems which provide servicesand maintain an optimal equilibrium between one another with respect to the economic efficiency of the whole. This equilibrium should be portrayed in the overall ratio between using the available

resources and providing the whole of the services required by the organism to sustain its parts, thepeople of mankind.



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The balance between the will to receive and the will to give is the secret of all secrets of

an organism's health. Within this understanding, we shall also be required to perceive that one of the most vital services we must develop to its fullest is the closing of the organic cycle between thereservoir of our natural resources and the decomposition and left-over products of the services whichwe provide for our populace.

Money is the key to managing the prudence with which we employ our resources. Thisefficiency is measured, amongst other, by the degree to which we are able to return the leftovers of our consumed products and services back to Nature - our general resource pool. We must developthe scientific tools to allow us to measure the efficiency of the recycling of resources on all levels of consumption within the human organism – from food products, through technological products andthe packaging of our manufactured services, to heavy machinery and so on.

8.8 Monitoring and Modeling the Dynamics of Economy

Furthermore, our journey will lead us to develop Social Informatics tools for monitoring and

modeling, in real-time fashion, the mutual dynamics between the numerous economic bodies in theworld. It will then be possible to dynamically locate sites of imbalance in the system – not only of unhealthy lack in resources, but also of unhealthy excess:

For example, the lack of resources experienced in Africa causes negative phenomena such asplagues and social instability. This imbalance subsequently threatens the ability of the continent as asocial sub-system to provide services which are required by the other parts of humanity. In theconnected world of today, dangers to the stability of one sub-system can easily diffuse outside of thesocial borders in which they were generated. Moreover, when the source of imbalance is meaningfulin size or function as a continent, the danger can easily be heightened to the extent of jeopardizingthe interests of other sub-systems in the organism, possibly culminating in a threat to the general

stability of the organism. Oh then, as the world is discovering today, not only does it take muchmore money to try and restrain the disease after it has already broken out, but also the efficiency of adelayed response if far worse then that of preventive medicine; After all, putting a fire out is mucheasier when the flames are small.

On the other hand, an unhealthy surplus of materialism and access to material assets createspsychological imbalance within the populace. This manifests in the occurrence of hard-drugs' usageand other escapist phenomena in rates much higher then the World norm. Another sign of pathological materialistic obesity are high morbidity rates of diseases characteristic of an excess inresources (e.g. cancer, physical obesity etc.). These two phenomena are clearly observable inAmerica, the World's materialism capital.

8.9 The need for Collective Optimization

Were we living in an infinite space with unlimited resources, we could undoubtedly arguethat there is no need to perform optimization for the whole of mankind, but we must remember thatwe exist in a limited space of resources, and that even though we increasingly discover more ways toutilize our available assets more efficiently, we will still be facing, at any point in time, a finite-resources reality. If we fail to observe the greater good of the whole, if we fall short of aspiring toreach a united benevolence of the whole, eventually all of the parts will drown. Today we are slowlycrystallizing an understanding that we are all on the same ship - that we all make up a single

structure. We must remember that if the bow rises too much in respect to the stern, the entire shipmay sink to oblivion. We are sailing these oceans of life one in the hands of another, one with the



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help of another, all in all; we must recognize that in this game we can either win together or losetogether. The choice is ours.

Social Informatics will enable us to clearly perceive our already-existing inter-dependenceand to open our eyes once and for all to the big picture: We, human beings, are a one species. Onlyby striving towards a scientific comprehension and catalysis of our becoming as a living, breathing

whole – an organism by all definitions – can we develop the solutions to allow us a steady stateexistence on this small planet, in harmony amongst ourselves and with our environment.

Let us choose to win together, to march towards a future where mankind is united as a wholemade up of unique individuals; our power is in unity, and the secret of our unity is in grasping thepotential of our variance.

This is not a preaching to annul the personal, individual interests of people, countries andorganizations, but on the contrary: this is a call to lay the scientific foundations to allow for thepossibility, for the first time in history, to represent how this wonderful mosaic of interests calledhumanity looks like from an integrated, unified perspective. These new tools will march us towards

a future where we discover how our fabric of interests and needs as individuals blends in harmonyinto a single beautiful picture.

8.10 Connecting Abilities

These new scientific tools will allow us, for example, to connect between sources of finance -people and organizations looking to invest money in commercial, academic and philanthropicendeavors - and sources of vision holding ideas and the ability to convert money into revenues. Eventhough we have many venture capital funds, technological incubators, entrepreneurship contests,power circles, angels and online business social-networks, we still do not possess a global systemable to link, at the level of the collective whole, between the owners of intellectual property and the

owners of material property.

In this very moment there are holders of capital steering in darkness, searching for holders of business or scientific vision. These landlords of finance are currently unexposed to the entrepreneursmost fitting their interests, because the pathway of social circles which ties between them, thoughexistent, is too convoluted to be either traceable through manual Internet searches or personallyvitalized (i.e. be deliberately hooked up through personal man-to-man handshakes to mediate thespecific link). The systems of Social Informatics will know to search and represent the entirety of funding opportunities in the world in an available manner and in a single site. Eventually we willhave a single location showcasing all publicized funding opportunities, from public biddings toresearch grants offered in all disciplines and scientific domains. We will ultimately accept that ourgreater good is at stake here. We are to honestly observe ourselves and see that, in certain aspects,nepotism and biases of geo-cultural proximities can easily be to our disadvantage as a species. If youhave, for instance, an interest to invest 37 million dollars in a venture to develop a solution for acertain medical problem, will you not prefer to have all the relevant entrepreneurs in the world vyingfor your money? Is it not clear that such competition will be the healthiest in reducing the inherenteconomic risk in your investment?

The new science of Social Informatics will facilitate us with new understandings of how toclose the loop between the wills of one group and the needs of another, between "our" abilities and"their" abilities. This discipline will grant us discoveries of how differences alone are the basis for

unity: Seeing the big picture we shall realize that our needs - our different wants - complete eachother, that if we look from high enough above, we can recognize how to guide the broad arch of



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our various abilities and aspirations so to rejoin ourselves in completion as an enormous

balanced circle of mutuality and sustainable symbiosis.

By accepting our differences and sanctifying our variance we can allow all individualsamongst us to strive for their own personal greatness. Furthermore, the scientific understanding of the social interactions between us will be key in fulfilling our freedom as a collective to choose our

future. The scientific journey of Social Informatics will grant us the tools to connect between theaspirations of the parts and the enhancement of the whole, between the private pinnacles of individual humans and the global apex of the organism which is humanity.

Finally, two remarks about subjects of importance that will require our attention with the riseof Social Informatics:



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9. Global Bio-Feedback________________________________________________

Social knowledge can be abused only when it is not public. When social sub-systems amassdata, information and knowledge, but do not share it with the rest of the human collective, they thusaccumulate power and the potential to influence within humanity. Social power, as we know, is adouble-edged sword, and just as it can be used to better it can be used to harm; from seclusion comes

danger.

For Social Informatics to fulfill its destiny it will gradually be required to produce more andmore knowledge from public information. Furthermore, if Social Informatics is to create ourpromised tomorrow, one of human unity, it must regularly communicate its findings with the public.It is very important to emphasize that the tools of SI will not be efficient without closing the loop of seamlessly feeding the findings back to the public from which they were generated. Whenknowledge becomes public and is communicated all across the human organism, it takes shape as abalance-promoting factor of the whole. Just as we have already established in the economic sciences,when public knowledge spreads almost instantaneously across the markets, it is immediatelyreflected as a contribution to the overall balance in the system.

For instance, in that same example above regarding monitoring micro-blogs in Twitter andspotting "impulses" of similar-content communication in various frameworks (e.g. spatio-temporalframes), we can note two possible scenarios: Let us assume a private company has decided tomanifest this venture, and is now keeping to itself the image of the world which dynamically showsin real-time the aggregated contents communicated by populations across the world. It may be thatthis company will now hold a business advantage over its competitors, but by disconnecting thefeedback loop it is actually creating a very low asymptote for the ways in which this new tool canimpact humanity.

And now, let us imagine tomorrow: there exists a public site where each user can freely

observe what is being communicated by different social circles anywhere in the world. The users seea map of the world, and each time a statistically significant content is communicated, for example bya large enough number of people from a certain city, everyone can see that a communication isbursting out of the respective location on the map. Now let us perceive how all the net-surfers seethe same dynamic view of the world, and we can grasp how a gigantic feedback loop is thus closed,forming a global bio-feedback by definition.

Because our systems will automatically find and collate together similar-content similar-context communications throughout the web, we will shortly after witness an emergence: When allsurfers can effortlessly amass together to form notion groups, seamlessly and spontaneously, notonly geographically but also by cross-spatial interests (e.g. people from around the world who havesimilar interest in star-gazing can form the world's largest flying comets' observatory), we willrealize one site accessible to all which shows in dynamic real time fashion many images of theworld, all represented on the same geographical map, intuitively graspable by all users. From oneangle we can see communications rising from humanity in the scale of cities in different countries,and from another angle we can see communications rising in the level of various sub-systems:

We can witness, for example, that all basketball fans in the world are passionately arguingabout some subject. If before their discussions were limited to a single forum or to their fewhundreds Facebook friends (who don't all have the same affinity to the discussion), it will now bepossible for any basketball fan in the world to tune in to the world view which listens in on

basketball fans' communications, and see what his global affinity group is discussing. The systemswon't know, of course, that they are listening in on basketball chatter, they will simply fish out of the



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net all similar content communications, so when basketball discussions emerge, an ad-hoc channelwill be created to feed it back to the populace. We will just as easily be able to tune in to theReligious global view and see on a certain day many Muslims in the world ardently discussing thesubject of nationality and emigration. This tomorrow will enable us to listen to ourselves, to meetourselves, truly, as humanity, for the first time.

The entire point of emergence is based on releasing users from the need to manuallysynthesize coherent social knowledge from the plethora of individual online communications. In this future, it does not matter in which forum, blog or status line you are discussing basketball,religion or politics, because from wherever in the net you decide to talk about any given subject, thesystem picks you up and aggregates you into the respective synthesized view of the world; "we areall listening, just talk". Imagine what this will do to our online discussions; Total ignition. Byenabling a medium through which similar content on the web can automatically find itself, link andaggregate, we will emerge a new age for humanity, Let us find ourselves.

In the same way occurring in our brain between sub-networks of neurons, so too we shallexperience between social sub-systems; the moment we, as humans, become exposed to the

feedback representing the summated contents we are incessantly trying to communicate, contentsthat we have thus far been unaware of in their wider contexts, we will begin to witness rapid mass-scale phenomena emerging, interweaving the global communication fabric in ways we have neverdreamt of. All of a sudden we will witness the levels of tweets and micro-blogging double, triple,quadruple itself; All of a sudden the human organism will become aware that it is possible to listenin not only to the thoughts and feelings expressed by individuals, but also to the collective flurries of consciousness, mutual thoughts and feelings bursting from within us, on all levels and on all scalesof our social groupings.

Let us behold that there exists a huge difference between the two ends, the private and thepublic; only by closing a massive feedback loop which communicates to the public the very

knowledge synthesized from the public communications, will the enormous power of SocialInformatics be unveiled. Anyone who tries to hide the data or knowledge so to accumulate potentialenergy of social influence will discover not much of it left in his hands; the very power of thisknowledge will be rooted in its public nature.



10. On Social Justice, Equality and Freedom_______________________________

The computerized systems of Social Informatics will be distributed across the globe; nosingle entity will hold a veto power over the unified knowledge base and no single organization orbody will hold the entirety of information or its resulting knowledge. Here too, the communalproperty will act as a crucial foundation in the physiology of social knowledge, and will thus compel

SI systems to exist from birth and forever in the public space. These systems will be dependent fromtheir very core on the in-betweens of all the social sub-systems in the world, and not on any singleone of them exclusively.

The time is now,The way is science,The direction is Social Informatics,And the work is aplenty.

As we pave the road to Eden, our tomorrow awaits. It is calling us to unite.

Under well be skies, from leaves of merchants sailing down, we all but slip away as dreams

depart our shores, from hopes to sea from dawn to dusk, we go marching on.

Sincerely,

And with great hope,

______________________________

Eitan LaviInformatics ResearchBiomedical Engineering DepartmentTel-Aviv University , Israel

[email protected] +972.544.700.888

social informatics - towards a united future for mankind

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