SmartMobs (The next social revolution)
\cite{Rheingold02}
[Technologies of Co-operation] – continued…
On the game theory:
< http://www.gametheory.net/ > and < http://www.rand.org/ >
Game of Chicken: two opponents rush toward. The one who stops or swerves first loses.
Robert Axelrod < http://www-personal.umich.edu/~axe/ > The Evolution of Cooperation
Rheingold traces a route through reciprocity, co-operation, reputation, social grooming, and social dilemmas as fundamental pieces of the smart mob puzzle. He sees CPR theory, game-theoretic and other computer-modelling approach into kinds of group behaviour that might emerge using smart mobs. I see these approaches able to describe every social interaction in human groups.
SmartMobs can contribute to create innovative common grounds, inventing innovation commons, new artificial public goods. He reflects on the role hackers had in the creation of the modern internet, creating tools and the Os which propelled the net. ken Thompson -> Unix. Richard Stallman -> GNU. Linus Torvalds -> Linux. Tim Berners-Lee -> WWW. Marc Andersen -> Mosaic. Brian Behlendorf -> Apache. This brought Rheinold to ask himself if the Internet is going to remain a decentralised, self-organised commons as the fixed network infrastructure upgrades to wireless connections. Lawrence Lessing in the Future of Ideas says that the resouce that was held in commons was the right to innovate. Anybody could take advantage of the commons created by connecting all these computers togethers to develop new ideas and applications that everybody could have access to.
the next step Rehingold undertake is the definition of Social Networks as per Barry Wellman master of Social Network analysis): Most people operate in multiple, thinly connected, partial communities as they deal with networks of kin, neighbours, friends, workmates and organizational ties. when computer-mediated communication networks link people, institution and knowledge, they are computer-supported social network. A community is a networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information and a sense of belonging and social identity.
Reed’s law: “When a network is aimed at broadcasting something of value to individuals, like a television network, the value of services is linear. When the network enables transactions between the individual nodes, the value is squared. When the same networks includes ways for the individuals to form groups, the value is exponential.”
This generates what Reed define: jointly constructed value.
— a system in which users defines rules, a community, where creation is enabled and allowed, where relationships are mapped and gave back as feedback in the network. There an activity is purposed, a game among the peers which reflect latest discoveries of the game theory. Nobody has to decide for everyone what the technology can and cannot be used for.—
— the difference between a network of computers and a network of mobiles is that there is no share in the network is a point-to-point private communication—
—can we envision a group-oriented phone Operating System?—
SmartMobs (The next social revolution)
\cite{Rheingold02}
[Computation Nation and Swarm Supercomputers]
Cory Doctrow in “The Gnomes of San Jose” wrote: …Peer-to-peer networks are not owned by any central authority, nor can they be controlled, killed, or broken by a central authority. Companies and concerns may program and release software for peer-to-peer networking, but the networks that emerge are owned by everyone and no one. They are a faery infrastructure, networks whose maps from weird n-dimensional topologies of surpassing beauty and chaos, mad technological hairballs run by ad-hocracies whose members each act in their own best interests. In a nutshell, peer-to-peer technology is goddamn wicked. It’s esoteric. It’s unstoppable. It’s way, way cool.
Why people should share their resources? Robert Wright: “non-zero-sumness”: the unique human power and pleasure that comes from doing something that enriches everyone, a game where nobody has to to lose for everyone to win.
One of the subsequent application is the swarm computing or the distributed processing like in the Zilla search for prime numbers by Richard Crandhall. P2P is not just about the quantity of computer disk space, but about the social arrangments that enable the members of a p2p community to copublish and share information. What will be the Killer App of the Mob community? Most of the applications for p2p just point out the computational features of the terminal of the network, without taking into account that the intelligence which drives the network is human. What can human add to the value of a p2p network? What are the feature a computer will never handle in human networks? Dan Bricklin: “the genius of Napster is that increasing the value of the database by adding more information is a natural by-product of each person using the tool for his or her own benefit.” The limit of Napster was that it had to go through a centralised server. The solution came from Tom Pepper and Justin Frankel who designed Gnutella. In “Gnutella and the Transient Web,” Kelly Truelove describes the Gnutella’s effect as: “The Gnutella protocol restores the Web’s original symmetry, enabling even transient computers to effectively participate as servers.” The problem with the Gnutella network is that there is no control on the bad usage of the network. One of the solution came from Mojo Nation, Jim McCoy. Mojo Nation incorporates an economy of incentives, using micropayments called “Mojo” to reward users.
Maybe, Rheingold concludes, the next generations of p2p sociotechnology include p2p systems that share decisions and judgements.
OpenCOLA moves toward this direction enabling people to share their interests: you have a folder on your desktop, you put things in it that you like and it will fill up with things you will probably like. This is called “Relevance Switching” is a way to create you own self-updating map of the network.
< www.opencola.com >
—Most of the design for technology for p2p relies on intelligent software agent, I argue that the intelligence in the system resides in the people who use technology. —