Hi Michel, All,

 

Thank you for sharing this article, a truly invigorating take that’s rekindled my own inspiration to a degree, so I feel compelled to reply. I’ve had a deep interest in social cybernetics for a long time, writing my MA dissertation twelve years ago on the potentials for new forms of democratic governance and social organisation through advances in the spheres of politics, education and technology. Although familiar with Stafford Beer and Ross Ashby in particular, as well as Habermas, and having much respect for their works, I was mostly unfamiliar with the more recent theorists and practitioners covered, and am grateful for the insight and analysis into these that the authors provided.

 

Alas, I found the work of those covered, especially that of Khanna and Pentland, rather cold and ominous, not least as I’ve been based in China these last 3 years and am witnessing first-hand the role-out of the technocratic state and the ushering in of the social credit system. Here, the network effects of seamless digital payments created through tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba already dominate people’s lives – I can pay for everything from my morning coffee to my bills to plane tickets using my phone’s messenger app, WeChat. I can order anything I can think of for delivery or take out a near interest free loan with no more than a thumbprint using Alipay. Here, even buskers and beggars have QR codes for donations.

 

However, the downside of this is becoming ever more apparent – as the ubiquity of technology grows, so too does social control. For many, everything from mortgage availability to freedom of movement to choice of schools is linked directly to the conformity to government policy of not just oneself, but one’s associations, all in the interests of a harmonious society, the social credit system becoming mandatory for all from 2020.

 

Anyway, I thought it a pity that the article didn’t really go into much depth on the technological potentials of structured discourse or collaborative deliberation, on productively harnessing argumentation for learning and governance, for the most part reducing the participation of citizens to merely providing input and feedback in the interests of maintaining whole-system stability. Thus the core view of those championing technocracy lacks heart, ignoring aspects of human endeavor that I believe should be pivotal, such as truth, trust, freedom and empathy. The authors themselves allude to this more than a few times in muted criticism of the work that they cover, but in the end do not put forward any work attempting to incorporate more broadly ethical and inclusive dimensions into these so-called participatory designs.

 

In my own focus on social cybernetics, I initially took Beer’s Viable Systems Model and applied what I considered to be universally applicable, positively oriented principles in the design of effectively structuring deliberation into collaborative, consensus-based problem-solving and decision-making processes. Beginning with orienting deliberative groups of three around common aims and working from a basis of mutual respect, my vision was to build up a functional form of participatory democratic governance that was able to take into account all available information and opinion, allowing everyone a say in the ideation process and the formation of policy solutions and decision-making.

 

It is the latest iterative development of this that I tentatively shared with you last year, though I’m currently at a bit of an impasse in seeking to develop it further into an online platform, not least as there are so many other promising projects out there that it is difficult to plot out where my ideas might best fit in. I’m familiar with Kialo, Democracy Earth, Enspiral, Holocracy and many others, though I have yet to do much more than establish contact for the most part. I suspect that perhaps it is time to connect the dots. Should anyone be interested in discussing further please let me know.

 

Thanks again,

 

Dan

On Fri, Oct 26, 2018 at 10:37 PM Bob Haugen <bob.haugen@gmail.com> wrote:

Yet another attempt of a corporation to take over governmental functions.
https://blog.goodaudience.com/ibm-and-stellar-should-replace-swift-106398161c63

In this case, it might be good if they succeeded and then we dealt
with the side-effects.

While at the same time I am pretty sure that China is working on the
same thing...
On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 1:22 PM <jbquilligan3@charter.net> wrote:
>
> Bullseye. There is a lot to learn here. Thanks for this, Bob!
>
> The reason that this is not on most people's radar, I think, is simply that most people have not woken to much of this, despite of the FB/Cambridge Analytica stuff from 2016. It's happened under our noses while we are still seeking the the vision of a cybernetic commons. Frankly, the possibilities of cyber autocracy have gotten way ahead of us now and become part of the capitalist problem. China's use of this tech for social control is only a hint of what it to come as the reality of climate change and non-renewable resources dawns on the leaders of steadily increasing populations.
>
> Another great shock will come when one of these monopoly platforms -- maybe it will be Amazon -- starts turning itself into an online bank with enormous network effects. That would lead to a major monetary crisis and also influence the resulting geopolitical solutions.
>
>
> -----------------------------------------
>
> From: "Bob Haugen"
> To: "Michel Bauwens"
> Cc: "p2p-foundation"
> Sent: Thursday October 25 2018 8:25:07AM
> Subject: Re: exceptionally well documented article on cybernetic governance
>
> Very interesting article, following up on what has become obvious for at least 2 years, that e.g. FB and Goog have taken on political-governmental roles and Amazon economic governance.
>
> What I don't understand is why anybody thinks these developments are not political. Is it because they are not about electoral politics? Or because citizens have no say about them? (As if voting for political candidates was not at least partly a charade...)
>
> On Thu, Oct 25, 2018 at 3:07 AM Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> * Article: Res Publica ex Machina: On Neocybernetic Governance and the End of Politics. by FELIX MASCHEWSKI & ANNA-VERENA NOSTHOFF. Institute of Network Cultures, October, 2018
>>
>> URL = http://networkcultures.org/longform/2018/10/18/res-publica-ex-machina-on-neocybernetic-governance-and-the-end-of-politics/
>>
>> Contents  [hide]
>>
>> 1 Context
>> 2 Description
>> 3 Examples
>> 4 More information
>>
>> Context[edit]
>>
>> by FELIX MASCHEWSKI & ANNA-VERENA NOSTHOFF:
>>
>> "In 2017, Denmark sent the first digital ambassador, Casper Klynge, to Silicon Valley. The aim of this move of ‘techplomacy’ was, as Klynge explained, not simply to distribute greetings notes by the Danish queen. Rather, the intention was to ‘update diplomacy’ based on the recognition that a few tech companies have obviously become much ‘more influential than some nation states’. Klynge framed the new political course in the manner of a well-known old but still utterly contemporary mantra: ‘There is no alternative’. In a similar vein, Denmark’s Foreign Minister Anders Samuelson highlighted the importance of the step as follows: ‘Just as we engage in a diplomatic dialogue with countries, we also need to establish and prioritize comprehensive relations with tech actors, such as Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on. (…) The idea is, we see a lot of companies and new technologies that will in many ways involve and be part of everyday life of citizens in Denmark.' (http://networkcultures.org/longform/2018/10/18/res-publica-ex-machina-on-neocybernetic-governance-and-the-end-of-politics/)
>>
>> Description[edit]
>>
>> "The idea to implement tech on new political test grounds is ... mirrored by recent digital initiatives which focus more explicitly on the nation-state. The most poignant concepts in this realm include ideas such as ‘algorithmic regulation’, ‘government as a platform’ (Tim O’Reilly), ‘direct technocracy’ viz. ‘info-states’ (Parag Khanna), ‘smart states’ (Beth Noveck), or ‘social physics’ (Alex Pentland), to name a few. It is vital to explore some of these concepts in greater detail and on a more theoretical and philosophical level. What form of politics is implicitly being promoted in this context? As we argue, this question is best examined against the background of an understanding of these concepts as very idiosyncratic reformulations of cybernetic approaches to the political, which date back to the 1960s. We explore how the implicit visions and concepts rearticulate early concepts of cybernetic politics in their insistence on the vitality of feedback structures, in allegedly blending hierarchy with tenets of decentralization, in shifting the focus from the individual to the interrelations between humans, including the social fabric encompassing them and, most importantly, in how far this might raise problems. Subsequently, this rather theoretical perspective will allow us to examine the extent to which such neo-cybernetic concepts promote a rather reduced vision of the political, or politics as such. As we argue, current approaches to ‘smart’ states or cities and their corresponding models of governance mark no entire automation of politics but at least in certain respects, a pragmatic actualization of cybernetic visions of the state against the background of surveillance capitalism. As such, theoretical dispositifs that have emerged from early ideas of cybernetic politics are still marking certain effects." (http://networkcultures.org/longform/2018/10/18/res-publica-ex-machina-on-neocybernetic-governance-and-the-end-of-politics/)
>>
>>
>> Examples[edit]
>>
>> ‘algorithmic regulation’,
>> ‘government as a platform’ (Tim O’Reilly),
>> ‘direct technocracy’ viz. ‘info-states’ (Parag Khanna),
>> ‘smart states’ (Beth Noveck), or
>> ‘social physics’ (Alex Pentland)
>>
>>
>> --
>> P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net
>>
>> Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
>>
>> Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
>>
>>
>>
>>