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According to the waybackmachine, I first wrote about /AmiCog on ToothyWiki back in 2005.  [LINK].  It is just over 8 years on from that, and there are just 2 years left on my range 10 year predictions, so now feels like a good time for a review...

I think the /DistributedComputing milestone has reached, though it is too inefficient for home users, or even most businesses, to bother with.

/LivingApplications - well, we have GoogleGlasses? just taking off.  I wouldn't say it is impossible that in 2 years we'll see game applications that let glasses uses spontaneously recognise and offer each other interaction opportunities.

/KnowledgeStructures - there are immense amounts of user data out there, on google and facebook alone.  But so far, even after the NSA spying on everyone scare, there is depressingly little demand from users to control their own data.  It is an issue that non-technical users don't emotionally feel is important, and it trumped by convenience.  Certainly not enough concern to over ride the financial and network lock-in effect benefits the companies gain from not letting the users control it.  This milestone isn't going to be reached in 2 years, and maybe it never will.

It is the Right Thing (tm), but so is using encryption and authentication for emails, and that hasn't taken off either.


Analysis



But suggesting that the /AmiCog future of 3rd order mediated trust being seamlessly integrated into our computing environments, our knowledge structures and our everyday lives, is being delayed only because internet users have not yet felt sufficient pain from a state or corporation abusing their power to influence which points of view get seen prominently is an easy answer.  Perhaps too easy.

What about the potential downsides of the /AmiCog vision of the future?  How scary, broken and disutopian could it get?

There's a good article in the Telegraph [Good manners are oil to our social wheels] which discusses the pragmatic advantages of politeness.  It has connections with [Postel's Law]: "Be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send"

This has applications to AmiCogs?, East-West differences, and oiling squeaky wheels.   
See also [Guanxi] --DR , 2014


Let me digress...

    I hate to be a kicker,
    I always long for peace,
    But the wheel that does the squeaking,
    Is the one that gets the grease.

In any society there are problems that need fixing.  But if you write rules, and try to have 0 tolerance of any breaking of those rules, then the system breaks down as people demand more rules be added, addressing smaller and smaller problems.  The social lubricant, that keeps things goings, is turning an official 'blind eye' to certain lapses, as long as they are not too large or visible, and there is still respect for the appearance that such things are wrong.  Part of the rage seen against local volunteer speed watch schemes is that it nibbles away at an Englishman's traditional 'right' to break the speed limit by 2 or 3 miles an hour when the driver judges it to be safe.

This honouring of 'privacy' may seem like systematic hypocrisy, but you see it even more in societies like Japan where thin walls in crowded cities mean you don't really have secrets from your neighbours.  It makes it even more important to pretend you do.  And, the kick side, the reciprocation for not having their dirty laundry aired, is it is expected that people don't behave arrogantly.  A sort of social mutually assured destruction.

You can look at the 'individualism versus collectivism' dimension for different countries, using HofstedeFiveDimensions?.  The USA is at one end (a score of 91) compared to Japan (a score of 46).  And then look at [the Law of Jante] and compare it to the Republican USA idea of Tall Poppies needing to grow tall rather than be cut down: "You cannot strengthen one by weakening another; and you cannot add to the stature of a dwarf by cutting off the leg of a giant".  Of particular relevance, are the examples of the sort of situation where [prestige is a zero sum game] - mainly small communities, with little movement in or out, where everyone knows everyone else's business.

So, in the same way the economies need a little physical cash and can't rely purely upon traceable transactions, would a society that used /AmiCog too much end up with the same problems?  Gummed up social wheels, where everyone was afraid of being watched by everyone else?  A glass fish bowl surveillance society by another name?

Or could this be avoided by making records of trust and distrust use different mechanisms?  So rather than 5 on a scale from 0 to 10 being 'the average default trust I give to someone I've never met', have it default to 0, and let any number above 0 be a good and positive thing you'd want recorded about you.

And, if you want to have a social mechanism to track whose opinions or statements you actively distrust or disagree with (effectively, saying person X is lying, in the area of food appreciation, when they say Bar Corp's sausages are best, because they own shares in Bar Corp, which actually produces toxin laden sacks of fat and gristle.) then you use a different mechanism, perhaps one where people have to stake money held in escrow, to ward off libel suits. :-)



Further thought: /MediatedEndorsement

Feedback



I'm looking for feedback from other people too.

Do any of the predictions of vision listed under /TheFuture still seem plausible to you?

On what timescale?

What down sides do you see if they did come to pass?

How could those down sides be avoided?



CategoryFuture?
See also: /TheFuture /DistributedComputing /LivingApplications /KnowledgeStructures /MediatedTrust /SocialConsequences /AmiCog /ToothyCog

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