[P2P-F] Fwd: [singularity] Social Graph Transformation Algorithm (SGTA) project update

Mon May 16 09:05:42 CEST 2011

(via Dante Monson)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Joshua
Date: Sun, May 15, 2011 at 4:46 PM
Subject: [singularity] Social Graph Transformation Algorithm (SGTA) project
update
To: singularity <singularity at listbox.com>

The Open Mesh Project (http://www.openmeshproject.org/) seeks to democratize
the Internet on the hardware level, with nodes automatically connecting to
physically nearby nodes. The SGTA project seeks to lubricate and democratize
content distribution -- to mediate a broad, deep, continuous, global
conversation, with nodes automatically connecting to physically and
semantically nearby nodes.

*Externalizing/sharing our imaginations*

We seem to be undergoing a transition into a more flexible, more visual,
mode of communication -- an accelerating externalization and conglomeration
of our individual imaginations. The inventions of drawing and writing
thousands of years ago could be considered early stages in this transition.
Today, computer/Internet technology seems to be playing a key role in our
psycho-techno-social-linguistic evolution. As of May 2011, we seem primed
for the creation and widespread adoption of algorithms that will
express/subsume/automate/sublimate the previous "linear," "verbal" modes of
communication, folding knowledge from our various linguistic legacies into
an intuitive, online, graphical communication/programming environment.

We have always drawn upon shared knowledge bases, shared complexes of
linguistic structures, in order to speak to each other. We continuously
encounter linguistic structures, witness the associations to other
structures they evoke in our imaginations, and choose which of these
structures we will pay immediate attention to. Now that large portions of
our species' knowledge bases have been put online, it seems appropriate to
expect a similar associative-imaginative process to play out on our computer
screens, relieving our brains of substantial cognitive burdens and turning
web browsing into an experience of navigating through continuously
self-transforming, uncannily intelligent-seeming, images.

*Feedback loops by which SGTAs may aid in the transition from textual to
graphical internet interfaces*

Algorithms that automatically transform our social graphs could conceivably
be plugged into interfaces to social media sites like Twitter, Facebook,
Tumblr, etc., as they currently exist, without any immediate change to the
look and feel of the interfaces. The only apparent difference at first would
be the occasional, unbidden appearance of updates from new friends, and the
occasional disappearance of others. Then, as our social graphs grow more
complex, more subtly reflective of our actual interests and concerns, we
will find it increasingly convenient to use our social media interfaces as
our primary interfaces, or portals, to the entire Internet.

We tend to think of social graphs as methods of filtering the streams of
data flowing onto our screen. But they may also soon be seen as equally
powerful modes of expression. We will potentially want to include in our
social graphs anything we become particularly interested in, since that will
cause information related to those interests to appear on our screens and
will help keep us abreast of the latest developments about those interests.
Your SGTAs will include in your graphs new nodes likely to be of interest
based on your previous graphs and on your input actions. As more of our work
goes online, as more of our online life becomes attached to social media,
and as social media filter our datastreams in more sophisticated/dynamic
ways, we will be able to express more complex ideas via patterns of URLs in
our social graphs.

We will naturally be interested in ways of maximizing the feedback we can
receive in response to anything we say and do, and also conversely, in ways
of maximizing the amount of our own feedback, our own reactions, that we can
provide to whatever information we are exposed to. Using the social graph as
a kind of central organizing metaphor would seem appropriate given the
assumption that almost everything we do on our computers will soon be
online. Your social graph, continuously evolving, will factor into the
second-to-second choices your interface makes about which data to present to
you. It will also provide everyone else on the Internet with
up-to-the-second data about what's going on with you. Since your social
graph will keep getting updated in response to your input anyway, why not
use it as The Last Text-Based Data Format We'll Ever Need, allowing all
other data formats, codes, etc., to be expressed "in terms of" the social
graph?

In other words, some data format similar to what has become known as a
social media user's "social graph" (a filter for determining which
datastreams will appear on our screens) appears both necessary for future
Internet interfaces and, if it evolves automatically in response to our
input, sufficient as a meta-format for expressing whatever we may want to
express online. "What we want to say" can merge with "what we want to see."

With so much (increasingly salient) data available, the process of reading
and writing linear text will become a major constraint on the speed with
which we can navigate. Out of concern both for efficiency and for
aesthetics, we will seek wherever possible to communicate through images. As
we see already beginning to happen in our social media feeds, which feature
an avatar next to each update and expandable thumbnail photos of last
night's parties, images will gain a foothold wherever possible, colonize
whatever territory they can, and declare as Benjamin Netanyahu did today:
"let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and
sovereignty." There will be no going back once a particular area of
knowledge has been visualized online; our interfaces will automatically
search out and serve up rotating arrays of images potentially relevant to
what we're doing, and we'll obviously tend to prefer dealing with images
rather than text, when the choice is there.

Anything with a URL attached to it can be included in a social graph, so
Wikipedia articles, Semantic Web objects, Google Images, YouTube videos,
etc. will easily be assimilated into this new environment. For instance,
images and videos of the Deepwater Horizon explosion will automatically
appear when your interface detects that you have been hanging out around
nodes that correlate strongly with that incident based on the links in your
social graph and on second-order links (links in the social graphs to which
your graph links), third-order links, etc. If someone on the other side of
the planet is researching the same incident at the same time as you, then in
a scenario of continuously transforming social graphs having become our
primary tools of expression and discovery, that person's avatar might very
well appear on your screen and vice versa. The more you interact with the
incident, the more frequently your avatar and other images associated with
you will appear on the screens of subsequent Deepwater buffs. In such ways,
the browsing activity of millions of people will build up increasingly
comprehensive associations between images. Eventually we will have built up
ultra-efficient all-graphical routes by which we can quickly navigate to
images representing just about any idea we could want to express -- from
programming concepts like "if-then" relationships to something like "the
grade school years of Frederic Chopin."

*The mathematics of conversation (/imagination/intelligence)*

Say you're having a conversation with one or more other people. You think of
something to say, but you don't say it yet. Maybe you hold your thought for
a fraction of a second before saying it, maybe longer, or maybe you don't
say it at all. How do you decide whether and when to say it? We might list
some very general considerations that would tend to push you toward or away
from delivering your line. Anything you might say would tend to express
something true about where you're coming from, turning your private
experiences into public information. On the other hand, anything you say
will interrupt the previously established flow of the conversation,
potentially disrupting some delicately balanced equilibrium.

Sometimes something so clever occurs to you that you say it almost
unhesitatingly, anticipating (probably correctly) that it will contribute
significantly to the quality or complexity of the discussion. Other times,
you may speak less out of a sense of the salience of your words than out of
a sense of the value of saying either anything at all or anything that meets
certain conditions.

Could the decision of when, or whether, or to what extent to
potentiate/perpetuate/actuate/deliver a given verbalization be expressed as
some sort of product of a) the value/salience of the message content, and b)
the value of maintaining the channel/medium/relationship through which the
message is sent? Factors a) and b) could each potentially take both positive
and negative values. Then, how would we quantify these two factors, as well
as the process of potentiation/perpetuation/etc. in terms of social graphs?

I don't have the math worked out quite yet (except for an "alpha version" of
an algorithm joshmaurice.livejournal.com/19048.html ), and I have probably
gotten kind of messianic and ahead of myself about this at times, but I
still have a very strong suspicion that something like this is coming soon
and will contribute significantly to extreme accelerations of communications
efficiency, which will help solve economic/political/social crises, which in
turn will help smooth the road toward the development of Singularity-type
technologies.

*Feedback & Fundraising*

I would of course be interested in everyone's impressions of all this.
Delusion, brilliance, neither, both? Any ideas for the SGTA beta version?

The SGTA Project could currently use a few hundred bucks to avoid eviction,
etc. Our phone number is 214-587-0196 and we live at 2707 SE 16th Ave. #2,
Portland, OR 97202.

Kickstarter.com lets you receive donations for creative projects online, but
requires a credit card and bank account. Perhaps someone who has these nice
things would like to register the project there?

Josh Maurice
josh.maurice at gmail.com
http://jmmsynch.blogspot.com
http://joshmaurice.livejournal.com
http://twitter.com/joshmaurice
   *singularity* | Archives<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now>
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