Ross Mayfield's Weblog
Markets, Technology and Musings

Categories


Blog-Network
(by most recent)
Blogroll Me!

Subscribe by email:

 

 

Monday, March 31, 2003
 

Second Superpower

James F. Moore identifies Emergent Democracy as the Second Superpower.

...Thus the new superpower demonstrates a new form of “emergent democracy” that differs from the participative democracy of the US government.  Where political participation in the United States is exercised mainly through rare exercises of voting, participation in the second superpower movement occurs continuously through participation in a variety of web-enabled initiatives.  And where deliberation in the first superpower is done primarily by a few elected or appointed officials, deliberation in the second superpower is done by each individual—making sense of events, communicating with others, and deciding whether and how to join in community actions.  Finally, where participation in democracy in the first superpower feels remote to most citizens, the emergent democracy of the second superpower is alive with touching and being touched by each other, as the community works to create wisdom and to take action...

Although his paper lacks attribution, he makes a significant contribution by stressing the need for Emergent Democracy to co-exist with existing political institutions as symbiots in an ecosystem.  What better balance and check for a government than its own citizens.

[thanks to Kevin Marks for the link]


11:29:04 PM    comment []

Ratings in Social Software

Brit Blaser on the role of ratings in Social Software:

...I can't imagine software more social than Xpertweb which, though its purpose is unabashedly commercial, intends to socialize its users by the character of user ratings it tracks and publishes. You might say that Xpertweb is a set of values expressed through users' valuations. As Einstein is quoted, "Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted."

Social software then, at a minimum, should at least make sure that things that matter are easier to count than they are without the software. Any other attributes may make the software elegant or compelling or easy to use, but the social part seems to be the trick of newly exposing communal activities or opinions that were not previously visible.

So that sets the bar for social software. We recognize it because it lets us start to count things we care about, but the designer has to figure out what those things are. Presumably they're not obvious yet, or we'd already be counting them. What characteristic, theme perhaps, might indicate something needs new counting tools?

Harkening back to the days of yore, in the medevil bazzar, some crazy guy was probably going around trying to get everyone to agree on the concept of coinage.  Initially people resisted.  A cow is a cow and a sheep is a sheep and never the twain shall meet.    If I think gold is worth one thing and you think its something else and lordy know what it will be tomorrow, how can one commodify?  But, low and behold, you can carry a coin in your pocket and a cow only with great difficulty.

People are in constant pursuit of the commoditzation of everything.  Not just goods, mind you.  We abstract concepts in commonly digestible forms.  We archetype and then debate over value.  Things must be simplified to be social or we end up talking about different things.

  • A rating is a price.  We define a good and deliberate over its value through signals.  Sometimes we express price not for transaction but to communicate value in its simplest form (a guy at Stanford won a Nobel Prize on this).  A price is the simplest method of communicating value.
  • A rating is a mode of communication.  What I value when.  When I send a smiley to someone, its a rating.
  • A rating is a signal of trust.  Whom I value when.  Trust is credit and credit is priced.

If there is a theme that indicates we need new counting tools its when things become too complex and when we need to simplify through the language of a rating.


10:30:41 PM    comment []


Click here to visit the Radio UserLand website. © Copyright 2003 Ross Mayfield.
Last update: 4/1/2003; 2:10:37 PM.
This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme, but severly tweaked.

March 2003
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          
Feb   Apr

<--Older | Newer-->

Subscribe to "Ross Mayfield's Weblog" in Radio UserLand. Click to see the XML version of this web page. Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog. @Ryze FOAF




Recent Posts

Ecostats
Technocrati
Ecosystem
BlogStreet
BlogTree
Blogdex
Organica
Waypath
All Consuming
Feedster
Google
Translate
German
Spanish
French
Italian