<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Eric Hunting</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:erichunting@gmail.com">erichunting@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 12:09 AM<br>Subject: Re: social-semantic networking<br>To: Michel Bauwens <<a href="mailto:michel@p2pfoundation.net">michel@p2pfoundation.net</a>><br><br><br>
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I don't have an active login for the wiki or blog site so if it's OK
I'll write a piece in email.<br>
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Social-Semantic Networking:<br>
<br>
What is the future of social interaction and organization on the
Internet? What comes after Facebook and Twitter? One possibility is
the Social-Semantic Network as explored in projects like Netention.
A Social-Semantic Network is the application of Semantic Web
technology to the coordination of human connections, exchanges, and
communication through the automated association of personal
information. It could become the 'killer app' that justifies the
creation of the Semantic Web. <br>
<br>
The Semantic Web is the anticipated future basis of information
storage on the Internet. It functions by creating 'metadata' to
accompany information as it is entered into the on-line environment
so that this information can be automatically associated with
related information by passive distributed intelligence. It's as
though everything you write or store on-line automatically
synthesizes links to everything else that logically relates to it.
So, in the future, instead of finding things on-line using a search
engine like Google and having to sift through long lists to figure
out what's really relevant, those things find you by virtue of the
automatic associations the Semantic Web is forever cultivating like
a collective, active, memory. <br>
<br>
The user interface to this environment is called a Semantic Desktop
hosting various applications to work with the Semantic Web in
specific ways, much like an operating system but one designed with
the Internet and the future web as its primary environment. One
might characterize it as like a very personal Google integrated into
your personal computing environment. Curiously, the Internet is fast
becoming the primary environment in which we do just about
everything with computers, our data storage increasingly cloud-based
and applications increasingly net-dependent if not web-based.
Eventually, it might even become Blockchain-based. A unified
encrypted global cloud. Yet for some reason our old-fashioned
computers still use the Internet through an application--a web
browser--rather than fully integrating the data environment of the
Internet into theirs. This is likely to change and the Semantic
Desktop may be one form this takes. Netention is an exploration of a
possible Semantic Desktop platform. <br>
<br>
A Social-Semantic Network is intended to create a semantic web
across a community of people by first creating private semantic webs
of individual personal information. It builds this in a variety of
ways; through interaction in the network or with its various
services, through communication between users privately or publicly,
through various kinds of public or private personal records (like
school records and digital shopping receipts), through personal
diaries, through the information collected by Smart Devices in the
habitat, and through procedurally-generated questionnaires. Perhaps
one day even through casual conversation with voice controlled
digital assistants and personal digital companion characters.
Because much of this information is sensitive it will be kept
private and likely encrypted, but the metadata automatically
generated with it will be open across the Semantic Web. Using this,
the Social-Semantic Network can seek associations between personal
information webs and connections and convergences between people and
other on-line resources, businesses, and services. Having found
these connections, it can facilitate, and in some cases automate,
communication and exchange between them. On a simple level this can
take the form of a smart newspaper that can push articles of
interest to your desktop. It might help you find a restaurant or
doctor. Or it might do things like auto-manage your grocery shopping
list and link to on-line shopping. It might help manage your health
and use of prescription medicine. Or it might link your
ever-changing personal work and travel schedule to your self-driving
automobile, or the ticket sales of railways and airlines, or the
registration for hotels or future '
albergo diffuso'. It might take the form of a conventional social
media platform like Facebook but one where the choice of front-page
posts are automatically managed by mutual associations--common
interests. It might take the form of group project or activity
management systems to coordinate group activity/activism across the
globe. It might form the basis of an Open Value Network. It might
automate the dynamic linking of networked production chains and
smart contracts to suit on-demand production of products. The
potential uses are endless.<br>
<br>
But on a deeper level the Social-Semantic Network can come to
understand a person's emotional state, quality of life, personal
needs, life goals, personal development, and intentions. (hence the
name Netention) It's like an Internet that knows you as a person. It
can likewise develop a model of the state of society, their
collective opinions, interests, and intentions. Like a system of
direct democracy that's silently polling everyone about everything.
It can know the mind of the public like no politician ever has. And
so, functioning like the ideally wise butler (the ultimate Jeeves),
it can seek out information and associations across that larger
social information web--across the world--that are beneficial or,
ideally, mutually beneficial and subtly push information to the user
that helps them make those usually random social connections to meet
their needs, goals, and intentions. Cybernetic Pronoia--a secret
digital conspiracy that's out to help you and everyone else. The
power of the Semantic Web is that it doesn't just collect and store
information. Through auto-association, it builds knowledge. It
doesn't just 'parse' data. It 'reads' information and can apply it.
And it doesn't need some active artificial intelligence to do that
because its relying on a distributed intelligence built on simple
rules and the weighted associations across information. When you
create your personal semantic web you're creating something rather
like a natural language rule table that describes who you are and
defines how you relate to the rest of the social network and the
larger Semantic Web. A digital identity within a digital community
facilitating your activity within a Smart Habitat. The potential
impacts of this on civilization itself could be profound. A
Social-Semantic Network could evolve to play Buckminster Fuller's
World Game from the global level right down to the personal level. A
Digital Tao. <br><div><div class="h5">
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