Gary, Thank you again for your explanation of Augmented Social Netowrks.
I share further below my a letter that I wrote to another group with
some related thoughts. (01)
> The ASN idea is to create a network of trust and within it have
trusted brokers who can find and promote relevant connections. (02)
In my mind, I'm attracted to know, what is a social ethic and framework
by which anybody might take the initiative to find and promote relevant
connections? Why do we want brokers if we could do it ourselves? (03)
> To do this, you need to know who people are, and so identity becomes
the key issue. (04)
I don't find this to be true in my work online and offline. I do a lot
with people who I don't really know. What matters to me is our behavior
together, and I keep checking a person's behavior, and making my own
transparent. Verifiability, to the extent needed for whatever's
relevant. And a database based on initiatives, endeavors, projects,
ideas, rather than on people. People are simply contacts for
initiatives. Which immediately shows they don't have to have a single
or unified identity. (05)
There's an enormous amount of good that could be done right now by
creating an open system with publicly available information. Things
like addressing the global AIDS crisis, poverty, inclusion, liberty,
etc. I imagine the best overall design will be the one that starts with
the assumption of openness, and takes that as far as it is useful, and
only then adds privacy and security, rather than the other way around. (06)
Maybe a more constructive way to raise this would be, Would there be any
use for the Augmented Social Networks to have available data and content
for such an open network, in the public domain, that might be used by
all developers and organizers as they like? (07)
Andrius
http://www.ms.lt (08)
The below was my response to a letter about information that can be
found out about us on the Web, such as our old opinions.
------------------------------------------------ (09)
I agree that we shouldn't judge people by past opinions,
but not because they're in the past,
but rather
because we shouldn't judge people by their current opinions. (010)
I regularly meet people who are anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-black,
anti-Asian, anti-foreigner, anti-woman, anti-rich, anti-handicapped,
anti-AIDS-patient, anti-God, anti-Evangelical, anti-America,
anti-Russia, anti-Muslim, anti-Africa. And who are attracted to a lot
of stuff that turns me off, like Hitler, pornography, revolution,
civil war, devil worship, hurting animals, sadism, masochism, drugs,
racism, obsessive sex, death penalty, caste systems, talking to the
dead, social Darwinism, Napoleon, Stalin. And to stuff I think is
totally dubious or irrelevant, like psychic powers, extraterrestrials,
biorhythms, national genetic deficits, reincarnation, astrology,
mysticism. (011)
Amongst them, there are large numbers of loving, thoughtful, caring,
honest, brotherly, sisterly people. People who are my close friends
or relatives. People with a very good heart. People who have devoted
their whole lives to doing good. The great people in history. People
who may, in practice, act entirely in conflict with their opinions,
and yet continue to maintain them. (012)
Of course, there's a lot of people who hold destructive opinions,
beliefs, attitudes, and apply them harmfully, in large and small ways.
But the problem is not what they think, but how and why they think.
How and why they operate on those opinions. (013)
Yeah, I'm obliged not to let people include me in these kinds of
opinions, I call them on it, educate them, plead with them, grill them
on their mental hygiene. But I'm not going to walk away from them. (014)
My gut feeling is that it's about judging behavior, not people.
Including the behavior of our minds. Opinions are a clue, symptom,
output, but not the real human story. (015)
That's why the "identity" systems make me feel weird, I don't
understand them. They all seem to want to label people as
"trustworthy", or at the least, to know that they really are who they
say they are. (016)
I don't trust myself, why would I encourage other people to trust me?
or want to trust them? Aren't we supposed to be our brother's keeper,
checking up on each other? (017)
If somebody can help me, or anybody, who cares who they are? I would
find it helpful to have, for a start, an open system where:
- we could all know what people are trying to accomplish
- we could know how we might join and help
- we could know where people are meeting to do this
- we could know what resources we have and are needed
- our interactions would be captured as knowledge in the public domain
- we would encourage re-use and meta-use of our knowledge and
relationships
Furthermore, that we would take every opportunity to be inclusive. (018)
It's also bizarre how much interest there is in opinion, but very
little in taking action, dialogue through action. I realized the
other day that I'm not happy with the whole idea of a "group mind". I
ranted about that: http://www.no-hit.com/andrius/archives/000079.html (019)
Peter Kaminski once told me how he's interested in how groups work, but
even more so, in groups of groups. And I think I understand his instinct
now. It's the groups of groups where individuals have a chance of
being in control of groups, not the other way around. If each group
is an island, then there's no point in Reed's law. It's not the
number of groups, but the number that are able to interact. (020)
Andrius (021)
Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@ms.lt
+370 52645950
Vilnius, Lithuania (022)
Gary Alexander wrote: (023)
>> I'm actually not quite sure what the right endeavor is for this group.
>> "Augmented Social Networks" is the topic. But why? Why exactly do we
>> need them?
>
>
> As I see it, the way through our problems is to build connections and
> collaborations on a basis of trust and common purpose. There may be some
> global sense of common purpose, encapsulated by phrases such as the
> health of the natural environment and the well-being of all of humanity,
> and below that a great diversity of local purposes common to smaller
> groups.
>
> Your website is a way of creating such links and collaborations. The
> problem with it is that there are too many interesting and worthy
> possible links. Should I be going to your site regularly, reading
> through a list which could grow enormously long in the hope that
> something really significant for me will come up? And there are so many
> other possible places to do the same.
>
> The ASN idea is to create a network of trust and within it have trusted
> brokers who can find and promote relevant connections. This may range
> from people who can connect others with relevant health or business
> expertise to a food co-operative, whose organisers connect people who
> produce local organic food with those who want to consume it. Within a
> network of trust it becomes possible to distinguish information from
> people who share your interests strongly from those who share them
> weakly or those who are preying on you (spam, etc.).
>
> To do this, you need to know who people are, and so identity becomes the
> key issue. So the basis of the ASN is to create mechanisms for
> persistent identity outside of the commercial sphere (Microsoft
> Passport, the Liberty Alliance), and to use this to build connections
> and brokerages.
>
> (My talk at the PlanetWork conference, (a Word document at
> http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/papers/EnvPlanCit.doc ) and my
> more recent paper
> (http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary/papers/onlinetools.doc ) both try
> to spell this out more fully.)
>
> Does that help? Does it make sense to you?
>
> Regards,
> Gary
>
>
> ================================
> Dr. Gary Alexander
> Director, PlaNet project
> Senior Lecturer in Telematics
> Faculty of Technology
> The Open University
>
> See my new book "eGaia, Growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through
> communications" on my website.
> Personal Web site: http://sustainability.open.ac.uk/gary
> PlaNet: http://planetarycitizen.open.ac.uk
>
> Mobile: 07766 - 711999
> (024)
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