All posts in the topic Societal and cultural effects of broad consensus (was, Delegate cascade...) (Short link)

From: Michael Allan Date: Feb 26 13:34 UTC Short link

In follow up, (apologies for the cross post)

For any who are interested, I now have tentative answers to 7 and 9.
If they stand up to critical examination, they complete the
architecture (in outline) of a social medium of ambitious scope.  (It
ought to be an easy target for criticism.  Please knock it down, if
you see flaws.  You will save us the trouble of coding it. :)

The answers are part of a broader hypothesis that predicts the
*disentanglement* of Lifeworld and System (theory of communicative
action, TCA) and the consequent *rationalization* of the four
subsystems of society.

   =======================
  |          |            |
  | Economy  |   Polity   |
  |          |            |
  |          |            |
  |=======================|
  |          |            |
  | Culture  |  Societal  |
  |          |  Community |
  |          |            |
   =======================

  http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/design.xht#figure-10

Community (bottom right) will be re-positioned to the driver's seat of
the political machine (top right).  Community interests will then
propel the machine on its course.  Its destination will be expressed
by culture (bottom left).  The cultural sphere will be disentangled
from the economic (top left), and subsequently hooked into the
community.  Collective cultural artifacts will then become the
travelogues, the sign-posts, and the visions that fill blank spaces of
the journey's map.

(Disentanglement of community and polity was already hypothesized
previously.  It's what puts the community in the driver's seat, so to
speak.  It served as my answer to question 5.  That answer, in turn,
came largely from the recent thread 'Building consensus online', in
DoWire consult.  What follows takes off from there.)

> *(8)* What will be the cultural effects?

(This answer is informal, anecdotal in style.  It has yet to be
anchored in theory.  The necessary sources are largely unread.  For
reference, it is also posted as part of Votorla's system design: )

  http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/design.xht#ca-culture-untangle

Imagine how a text might look, as it formed within a collective medium
of composition (6a).  Imagine a creative literary work, for example,
as it is being composed by a community of artists.  Picture it, not
from the vantage of an artist, but rather from that of an outside
observer.  Viewed thus from a distance, the population of variant
drafts (one per artist), looks much like a swarm of particles, or a
cloud.  It is somewhat amorphous and hazily outlined.  Most of its
internal structure and dynamic (complexes of specialization among the
artists) will be invisible at a distance.  But we might still see
concentrations, here and there, around particular artists.  We might
see a division between two language communities, two half-clouds with
a narrow bridge of translation between them.  Or we might see the
cloud tending to pull apart in other places, on the verge of becoming
two clouds, drifting away from each other.

At a finer scale, we know that the internal dynamic of creativity and
composition (unseen to us) is one of textual interchange.  Artists are
exchanging pieces of text amongst themselves, peer to peer.  These
unseen exchanges are, in fact, the attractive force that holds the
cloud together.  Without them, it would disperse away into nothing.
These exchanges are also the primary motor that impels the text along
on an evolutionary course.  Communicative exchange - a kind of
dialogue or conversation - is therefore essential to the process of
composition within this new medium.

In a sense, this is nothing new.  Artistic creation has always been a
dialogue (of one form or another) among artists.  Ian Colford explains
this sense of it, with regard to traditional creative literature:

  It is this interplay between reader and author that creates a
  literature.  We read, we agree or disagree, and we are stimulated to
  compose a response (either in emulation or in opposition), and in
  effect reverse roles with the author.  No written work ever emerges
  from a vacuum, without reference to another.  Each text that is
  created represents an attempt to refine or refute or answer or in
  some way imitate or improve upon an earlier one.  - Colford (1996)

In modern society, the form of this dialogue is very unlike the one we
envisioned further above.  Rather than an exchange of textual
fragments, it is an exchange of whole texts.  And rather than engaging
many artists in a humming, buzzing cloud of activity, it empowers a
few to speak loudly through the machinery of mass communication.  An
artist speaks, the presses clatter, and a million copies of Harry
Potter are printed for the world.  The world reads it.  Eventually,
the presses clatter again, and the reply is printed.

There was once an economic rationale for this form of dialogue, but it
no longer has a basis.  Capital machinery and costly distribution
systems (printing presses, book stores, and so forth) are no longer
needed for literature.  We can therefore ignore the old economic
rationale, and re-design our media according to a purely cultural
rationale.  According to that rationale, an efficient facility of
dialogue is foremost.  So we leave the clatter of the presses behind
(for now), and turn once again to the hum and buzz of the cloud.

Given that this is the new medium of composition, we naturally wonder
what is being composed in it.  (What stories do the writers tell,
amongst themselves?  What tales do they spin for their own pleasure?)
Reaching into the cloud, we pull out a copy of an individual draft.  A
publisher happens along, equally curious.  He peers over our shoulder,
and together we read it.  Soon he is shaking his head, "No, no. I'm
afraid we can't print that."

You might think he fears there will be no market for it; that the
writers have composed a dark, modern tale of alienation and malaise.
But no, it's actually worse than that.  They've copied the entire text
of Harry Potter, and are freely adapting it.

"It's guaranteed, " he says, "A copyright infringement suit."  He
pauses, and looks over at the cloud, "On the other hand, if the
readers actually like it..."

But the cloud cannot answer the question on his mind.  To answer, it
would need a consensual medium (6b).  Recall that a consensual medium
would facilitate the formation and expression of collective interest.
And collective interest is exactly what the publisher is looking for.

Something changes, however, when we add a consensual medium that
introduces voting to the cloud.  The compositional ideas that had been
flowing throughout in a wayward, criss-cross pattern, now begin to
coalesce in places.  New ideas, new pieces of text, have now acquired
a slight tendency to move toward the nearby consensus drafts (those
having the most votes).  The reason is simple: every 'consensus
artist' has a natural desire to appeal to the voters.  The easiest way
to appeal to them, and attract their votes, is to pull content from
other artists (artists are voters), and to openly receive new ideas
from them.  By gravitational attraction, therefore, the clumps of
consensus are drawing content from the creative cloud along
communication lines that resemble (somewhat) the voting lines.

This raises an interesting question.  The text is *not*, in this case,
a policy document or legislative bill.  Rather, it is art.  What is
the meaning of consensus, when it forms on an object of art?  When it
forms on a policy document or a legislative bill, its meaning depends
on the fact that the artifact is subsequently actualized in the
political sphere.  But where is art actualized?  How does a work of
literature, for example, confront the world?

"I publish it," answers the publisher.

Then art is actualized in the economic sphere?  This would take us
back to where we began.  Culture might be broadcast to a mass
audience, once again.  The difference is, this time, the relationship
between culture and economy is altered.  The two spheres are now
disengaged.  The publisher would be drawing his wares fully formed
from the cultural sphere, without being involved in their composition.

(But there is more to it than this, as becomes apparent if we revisit
the question of cultural consensus, this time on a broader scale.)

> *(9)* How will cultural effects (8) interplay with societal-communal
> effects (5)?

(This answer addresses the formal relationship between culture and
community, as bridged by the open electoral medium.  The incidental
focus here is fine art; the other fields of culture have yet to be
considered.  This is also posted to: )

  http://zelea.com/project/votorola/a/design.xht#ca-culture-community

To fully address the meaning of a cultural consensus, we must look at
what happens when the consensus extends to a broad scale.  All members
of the community can vote, of course, because the medium is open.  A
properly broad consensus will therfore extend beyond the artists and
their immediate audience to encompass the entire community.

This opens a question: How can those members of the community who are
neither artists nor audience meaningfully contribute to a consensus
that forms on a particular object of art?  To frame an answer, let us
return briefly to a political orientation, and consider an object of
law: a legislative bill for tax reform.  Most residents are not
actually going to *read* a legislative bill.  (Even professional
legislators often read only a summary.)  Nevertheless, almost every
member of the community does have an *interest* in tax legislation.
Consequently, they also have a motivation to vote.  This poses no
problem for the consensual medium, because it is a delegate cascade.
A typical voter who lacks the time and expertise to read a legislative
draft will nevertheless have time to cast a vote.  She can do this in
an informed manner, for example, by voting for a friend who is better
informed than herself - perhaps a friend who is a tax accountant - and
has similar interests to her own.  By casting a vote on the basis of
trusted and reliable information, such as this, she is making an
informed decision.  If she has doubts or questions, she can direct
them to her chosen candidate.  By engaging her friend in dialogue and
weighing the answers, she can decide whether to leave her vote in
place, or to shift it to another candidate.

Meanwhile, those candidates who are more directly occupied with the
legislative drafting (higher in the cascade) will be revising their
drafts in response to (and in anticipation of) the vote shifts.  By
this mechanism, an entire community is intimately involved in the
composition.  And should their votes ever cascade to a single
consensus draft, then it properly represents the legislative
expression of the entire community.

We can now see, more clearly, the meaning of a cultural consensus.  If
a broad consensus were to form on a cultural artifact, then that
artifact would be, quite literally, the creative expression of an
entire community.  It only remains to predict what sort of artifact
would be capable of capturing and holding the broad interest of a
community.  If it was not Harry Potter, for example, then what might
it be?

Recall from Weber: "Not ideas, but material and ideal interests
directly govern men's conduct.  Yet very frequently the 'world images'
created by 'ideas' have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along
which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest." [Quoted in
Habermas, TCA1 193] Recall from Parsons: the function of the political
sphere is 'goal attainment'.  Putting these two together suggests the
hypothesis that a community will employ an open electoral medium in
order to independently form and express its highest aims *in culture*;
while, simultaneously, employing the medium to attain those aims *in
politics*.

Please comment,
    

--
Michael Allan

http://zelea.com/

From: Michael Allan Date: Apr 22 07:18 UTC Short link

Craig Burton wrote:

> The specification of the Smartocracy implementation for Open Social is
> now done and the development work runs to the end of June.  It will be
> for political questions, especially "hard" political questions...

interesting... are you able to post the spec?