Why all men are not created equal : Study on Social Hierarchy
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120713-why-all-men-are-not-created-equal/2 "David-Barrett and Dunbar discover a particularly intriguing implication for our information age. One of the important factors in their model is the *cost* of communication: how hard it is to exchange information. It’s often suggested that by lowering the cost of communication, electronic networking will make it easier for everyone to access information and so will flatten the social hierarchy. The researchers find that, if there is an initial inequality in how information is distributed, lowering communication costs counter-intuitively sustains this steep hierarchy and promotes inequality. There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it. If we want to avoid this effect of cheaper communication, they say, then we’ll need ways of compensating for it – for example, by greater social investment in education to disseminate knowledge. The web won’t do it for us." I don't get this last bit - "There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it." Does the author mean that because information is more abundant that rather than actively sharing information we expect other people to able to find it for themselves?? Kevin
On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Kevin Flanagan <[email protected]>wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120713-why-all-men-are-not-created-equal/2
"David-Barrett and Dunbar discover a particularly intriguing implication for our information age. One of the important factors in their model is the *cost* of communication: how hard it is to exchange information. It’s often suggested that by lowering the cost of communication, electronic networking will make it easier for everyone to access information and so will flatten the social hierarchy. The researchers find that,
Correlation does not equal causation. I think those researchers will find that after the legal system judged (almost completely) in favor of wealthy plaintiffs (RIAA vs. 17year-old, etc), the egalitarian nature at the heart of the Internet dramatically got stifled after Napster, for example.
if there is an initial inequality in how information is distributed, lowering communication costs counter-intuitively sustains this steep hierarchy and promotes inequality. There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it.
Big media doesn't want to "spread information around" -- it wants you to go to their sites. Unfortunately, the lawsuits mentioned above was a big blow to p2p, so now we have this rather stagnant internet where most of people's time is on less than 1% of the net.
If we want to avoid this effect of cheaper communication, they say, then we’ll need ways of compensating for it – for example, by greater social investment in education to disseminate knowledge. The web won’t do it for us."
This is an example of a reporter who doesn't know how to do the research well enough. As I said, it's not an effect of cheaper communication, it's purely an inadvertant correlation. markj
Mark, have you read the article or is it just a suggestion that it is correlation and nor causation. I havent read it either but there seem to be some errors in the article. Either the journalist or the authors of the paper have made some mistakes about the interpretation of the results. Both authors of the article are not Biologists. The abstarct of the paper says that they describe 3 theoretical models about group coordination. There is a huge logical error to assume that theoretical models that try to describe the phenotype of organisms in a specific environment could prove that this phenotype is due to an genetic characteristic of those organisms obtained through the evolutionary process. I doubt that the authors are putting into question the moto that "all people are made equal" The article is also probably intermixing social hierarchy with inequality, suggesting that social hierarchy is bad. In fact, there can be social hierarchy while retaining equality. Since our context is information, noone values the opinion of a random person the same as the opinion of a person which has specialized in the subject. If we disregard all those mistakes, what we should learn about this paper is that reputation matters. Apart from lowering the cost of communication we should create reputation networks that promote trustworthy and honorable people, otherwise things will get worse. 2012/7/18 Mark Adam <[email protected]>
On Tue, Jul 17, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Kevin Flanagan <[email protected]>wrote:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120713-why-all-men-are-not-created-equal/2
"David-Barrett and Dunbar discover a particularly intriguing implication for our information age. One of the important factors in their model is the *cost* of communication: how hard it is to exchange information. It’s often suggested that by lowering the cost of communication, electronic networking will make it easier for everyone to access information and so will flatten the social hierarchy. The researchers find that,
Correlation does not equal causation. I think those researchers will find that after the legal system judged (almost completely) in favor of wealthy plaintiffs (RIAA vs. 17year-old, etc), the egalitarian nature at the heart of the Internet dramatically got stifled after Napster, for example.
if there is an initial inequality in how information is distributed, lowering communication costs counter-intuitively sustains this steep hierarchy and promotes inequality. There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it.
Big media doesn't want to "spread information around" -- it wants you to go to their sites. Unfortunately, the lawsuits mentioned above was a big blow to p2p, so now we have this rather stagnant internet where most of people's time is on less than 1% of the net.
If we want to avoid this effect of cheaper communication, they say, then we’ll need ways of compensating for it – for example, by greater social investment in education to disseminate knowledge. The web won’t do it for us."
This is an example of a reporter who doesn't know how to do the research well enough. As I said, it's not an effect of cheaper communication, it's purely an inadvertant correlation.
markj
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
-- Sincerely yours, Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis
Hi Kevin & all, The other thing which always gets me and it always made feel a bit uncomfortable - is, when I hear or see terms such as 'men' or 'man'. It would be useful and less confusing if we actively moved on from these systemic forms of language based absolutes. This type of approach in language tends to reintroduce immediate hierarchies. Reinforcing cultural divides between male, female and (of course) other genders. wishing you well. marc
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120713-why-all-men-are-not-created-equal/2
"David-Barrett and Dunbar discover a particularly intriguing implication for our information age. One of the important factors in their model is the /cost/ of communication: how hard it is to exchange information. It’s often suggested that by lowering the cost of communication, electronic networking will make it easier for everyone to access information and so will flatten the social hierarchy. The researchers find that, if there is an initial inequality in how information is distributed, lowering communication costs counter-intuitively sustains this steep hierarchy and promotes inequality. There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it.
If we want to avoid this effect of cheaper communication, they say, then we’ll need ways of compensating for it – for example, by greater social investment in education to disseminate knowledge. The web won’t do it for us."
I don't get this last bit -
"There’s less incentive to spread information around: you can just keep on looking until you find it."
Does the author mean that because information is more abundant that rather than actively sharing information we expect other people to able to find it for themselves??
Kevin
_______________________________________________ P2P Foundation - Mailing list http://www.p2pfoundation.net https://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation
-- Other Info: Furtherfield - A living, breathing, thriving network http://www.furtherfield.org - for art, technology and social change since 1997 Also - Furtherfield Gallery& Social Space: http://www.furtherfield.org/gallery About Furtherfield: http://www.furtherfield.org/content/about Netbehaviour - Networked Artists List Community. http://www.netbehaviour.org http://identi.ca/furtherfield http://twitter.com/furtherfield
participants (4)
-
Apostolis Xekoukoulotakis -
Kevin Flanagan -
marc -
Mark Adam