2017 - The Digital Manifesto - John Caswell

Texto

There Was This Article In Scientific American

In many ways this document was what I was waiting for. Not necessarily a finished article but a major step. From someone in authority — kicking off a very important frame of reference for the future. I copy two tracts from it but the whole article is embedded below.

A Strategy For A Digital Age

We are at the historic moment, where we have to decide on the right path — a path that allows us all to benefit from the digital revolution. Therefore, we urge to adhere to the following fundamental principles:

ONE: To increasingly decentralize the function of information systems

TWO: To support informational self-determination and participation

THREE: To improve transparency in order to achieve greater trust

FOUR: To reduce the distortion and pollution of information

FIVE: To enable user-controlled information filters

SIX: To support social and economic diversity

SEVEN: To improve interoperability and collaborative opportunities

EIGHT: To create digital assistants and coordination tools

NINE: To support collective intelligence

TEN: To promote responsible behavior of citizens in the digital world through digital literacy and enlightenment.

Following this digital agenda we would all benefit from the fruits of the digital revolution: the economy, government and citizens alike. What are we waiting for?

A strategy for the digital age

Persuasive Computing

Some software platforms are moving towards “persuasive computing.” In the future, using sophisticated manipulation technologies, these platforms will be able to steer us through entire courses of action, be it for the execution of complex work processes or to generate free content for Internet platforms, from which corporations earn billions. The trend goes from programming computers to programming people.

These technologies are also becoming increasingly popular in the world of politics. Under the label of “nudging,” and on massive scale, governments are trying to steer citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behaviour by means of a “nudge” — a modern form of paternalism.

The new, caring government is not only interested in what we do, but also wants to make sure that we do the things that it considers to be right. The magic phrase is “big nudging”, which is the combination of big data with nudging.

To many, this appears to be a sort of digital scepter that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes. Could this overcome vested interests and optimize the course of the world? If so, then citizens could be governed by a data-empowered “wise king”, who would be able to produce desired economic and social outcomes almost as if with a digital magic wand. Pre-programmed catastrophes.

But one look at the relevant scientific literature shows that attempts to control opinions, in the sense of their “optimization”, are doomed to fail because of the complexity of the problem. The dynamics of the formation of opinions are full of surprises.

“Nobody knows how the digital magic wand, that is to say the manipulative nudging technique, should best be used. What would have been the right or wrong measure often is apparent only afterwards. During the German swine flu epidemic in 2009, for example, everybody was encouraged to go for vaccination…”

However, we now know that a certain percentage of those who received the immunization were affected by an unusual disease, narcolepsy. Fortunately, there were not more people who chose to get vaccinated!

Enlaces

URL: https://medium.com/just-thinking/the-digital-manifesto-2b7f66efeb76

Wayback Machine: http://web.archive.org/web/20191210170232/https://medium.com/just-thinking/the-digital-manifesto-2b7f66efeb76