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Kevin Werbach: Opening remarks
SuperNova is People - all of the connections during and after the event.

Why called SuperNova?

• An explosive end, but also a beginning - impacts of increasingly pervasive networks
• Decentralization is happening - intelligence and control are moving from the centers to the edges, an inexorable shift, but not necessary smooth or uniform
• Decentralization matters - redefines industries, etc

The Network Age:

• Networks are everywhere
• Networks have distinct properties (emerging science called “network science”) - can study them and model them, what social interactions are like in a network

Challenge in Networks:

• Network dynamics are not obvious: power laws, small worlds, long tails, network effects, structural holes, etc
• Undermines existing business models an social expectations

Opening Conversation: Defining the Challenges

Clay Shirky
[preso] Challenges with groups - published his book (Here Comes Everybody) and now is seeing the things that are not in the book. How do we support Collective Action?

Example: Bellarusian youth doing a Flash mob - got arrested for the Flash mob and people were not allowed to organize in October Square. Leader thought that physical world would work. Could not stop the organizing before they were a group, and the students used media to drive to action - which then created more media.

Nothing says dictatorship as getting arrested for eating ice cream (with photos).

Lots of actions that have come together - but almost all of the stories of collective actions are “stop” movements. Always about getting a group to stop doing something.

Is this proof of the Second law of thermodynamics? Always easier to stop than start. Not really.
Example: Homeschoolers can aggregate - providing back office functions for home schooling (this is a reminent of the past)

Example: Tax Wiki (taxalmanac.com)

Collective Action is harder than sharing or collaboration. In collective action, ONLY everyone benefits - case is success or failure. It is always much harder to organize a group.

What makes a barn raising work? Reciprocal altruism - matrix of favors and favors owed is dense enough, then you have fertile ground for collective action. Density - small social density: who owes, who shares. And continuity - they will be around. In large social systems - can not get them (in small cities). In Cities, usually there is a small social network embedded in the community.

Our job - do by design - originally, we do things where we get value by inconvience.

A lot of our lives has been about inconvenience - privacy has been about hassle and cost, not regulations.
In our privacy conversation - we need to DESIGN our privacy.

Used to get density an conveience due to inconvenience - no one wanted to move. We need to do this BY DESIGN.

Example to Model: Richard Stallman, Copyright law and GNU Public License - freedom by design.

What would a Collective Action License look like?

For example, if you wants to start a company - and want to open a bank account - could not do it UNLESS it had been incorporated. Incorporation is the way society recognizes groups. Is there a license extration that can do for groups what GNU does for licensing?

Some ideas:

• Virtual Company Project - goal to build online toolsto help groups create and implement governance rules necessary for successful collaboration.
• Community Interest Companies (in the UK) - designed for social enterprises want to use their profits and assets for the public good. Embedding shareholder rights into the corporate infrastructure.
• Meetup Alliance - opening up a network of groups in Meetup, google groups, Yahoo! Groups, etc.

It took Stallman’s idea 20 years to get pervasive. The question is not going to be answered immediately - how can we take current examples of collective action and move it from “stop” energy and make it into “start” or “sustainable” action.

Q/A:
Hugh McCloud: Accountability? How do you handle the trolls on blogs?
CShirky: Accountability goes into Web 2.0 SP1. Example of the Quiet Car on Acela. User moderation on boingboing makes the community stronger by only acting when the thing goes absolutely crazy.

(Ed Note: Very similar to what we had happening during the Kerry Campaign where the community of Kerry supporters managed the trolls on the site).
EDyson: Elephant in the room: anonymity. Persisant identity is a major aspect. In most societies, when bad people were punished, they worked to get back into the good society. In some other societies, bad people who were punished, they would retaliate against the most “good” people. Tools will not set everybody free if they are impacted by their poor social structure/upbringing/psychology.

Kevin Marks: Accountability will work when there are temporal aspects. Brilliant “conversational catalysts” - known often as “community managers” - it is difficult to find those people who are really good at catalyzing conversations. For example:

• mysociety.org - whole remit to work with collective action on the web. PledgeBank is one of the actions/efforts.
• sicamp.org - social innovation camp - a tool which allow people to learn about things that are not easily accessible.

Next, Bob Iannucci (CTO, Nokia)

Anecdote: Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple does in a whole year.

[preso] There is Yet Another Mobile Revolution to Come

Nokia’s opinion on how industry is transforming - right now, mobility is still in the “golden age” - very similar to the eras of mainframes, PCs, OSes, software and such - generally heading toward standardization.

In the Mobile Age, standard platform and software/framework has not yet emerged. It will have to take into consideration the need to be connected to networks and provide a “general platform”. (Ed Note: is this google Android?)

What it will need

Sensors: Open the Door - devices are sensing your environment. Light sensors, accelerometers, etc.
Coming: Near Field Communication, indoor positioning, environmental analysis

Somewhere between 5-10 yrs from now, 10 sensors on each phone. 30-60B wireless sensors in the world.
(Ed Note: are we discussion the Great Sensor Cloud?) One project they have done, working with the University of California and worked with 100 cars, 100 N95 and 150 students - were able to better accurately sense the performance of traffic patterns, then aggregated the information and provided a better service than the traffic analysis system that the state put in with a distributed network.

Someone will have to find a way to anonymize the information - aggregate it - and then draw inference from it - determine traffic jams probability - and then feed the information to the user before they begin their process (using calendaring information of the user).

Wild possibilities in a sensor-filled world:

• Tracking flu outbreaks through health monitoring in populations (usually very course - by counties)
• Real-time weather monitoring across 100’s of millions of users (barometic sensors in phones could fundamentally change the science of weather prediction with 100s of thousands of sensors)
• Data collection during an earthquake (reading from the accelerometers)

Challenges are Real: need to solve the challenges of privacy, science of scale, compatibility and standards (must be collaborative between all vendors and providers). But by having people participate VOLUNTARILY or the needs of social good - this scale is unparalleled in human history.

Internet and connectivity is greater coverage in the world that even electricity!

Nokia Facts: 3.3B mobiles devices in operation, 1B Nokia devices sold. 80% of the worlds population has coverage. Anything dropped into the Nokia pipeline (innovation) will drive a change in society within 12 months due to market effects. 1.2M GSM, 64% in emerging markets.

Emerging Markets are wildly different - they spend more on mobile tech since they do not have the original infrastrucutre, so they find new ways of making things happen. Anecdote: Mobile air minutes are fast becoming the new currency in Africa.

Challenges once again:

• What value will emerge from multi-sensory connected devices?
• How do we network 100s of millions of users?
  • Mobile device will become the premiere authoring tool for your life.
• What is needed to secure this environment? What commercial ventures can be built?
  • How can we bring then next 1B people into the global marketplace?

Next up: Esther Dyson (EDventure)

[preso] proChoice (but not what you think) - the war between the commercial institutions and
the individual - what can be helpful?

Notion: think of user privacy in a more useful way - make it proChoice.
Tracking users in advertising (behavioral targetting) is difficult to explain to people - people want CHOICE.

Users want to be informed about the choice instead of being forced to accept the advertising.

The challenge of monetization - how does all the users get monetized on twitter?

• Twitter only works when you give attention to others who then give you attention.
• Advertisers want to get into the discussion. Not easy when conversations are between people on our own needs, not the corporate need.

Potential solution: “Be My Friend” - often works if you are a rockstar (or a politician), but not if you are a brand. But what if she was using dopplr (she is) and had her trips already available on the site. Now, she could friend British Airways if friending BA would give her better service/pricing/offerings. This is a more relevant connection, not imposing/forcing themselves into non-relevant conversations.

Why does trading information with a company often feels like a currency transaction, when person-to-person transactions are more engaged. When person-to-person transactions are happening, they are aware of the “tracking”. (Ed Note: Esther sounds like she is discussing Doc’s “Vendor Relationship Management”.)

General Q/A:
BIannucci: believes there needs to be a marketplace for anonmyized information.
EDyson: users are not always doing something that is perceived as a transaction. Should be able to do other things (like window shopping, engage in relationships). For some reason, advertisers keep thinking that using the Internets is essentially a “transaction”. Everything is being quantified (TopFriends, KarmaPoints, etc) - it troubles her.
BIannucci: Certain wisdom in creating the market for the buyer and seller. Privacy can be a very emotional issue. In some cases, it can be run through a market model. Only a piece of the puzzle in terms of making privacy “fungable” then there is a way to the future benefits.
EDyson: appeal to people’s pride versus avarace.
BIannucci: Markets are a form of language.
CShiky: There is no such thing as anonymous data (see AOL search data). Never know the true impact of giving up one piece of information - could it be just for this transaction, or could it be the piece that unlocks all of the information about you.

Paul from BT: asking about Doc Searls VRM initiative. It is about making an informed decision. But int he world of advertising, it is to negate the rational decision process and make an emotional decision (think of the iPhone purchase). Are emotional decisions going to be more out of control as they gather more and more information?

Brad Templeton from EFF: assume sensors everywhere, anonymous works - all of these sensors are getting deployed in other locations within these countries in states that are not going to focus on privacy.
BIannucci: Goal is “privacy by design” - working to design privacy appropriately. Corporate perspective is to take a view on consumer protections. Always try to build products that work worldwide with the philosophy.
KWerbach: tough to discuss the issues in terms of culture when you can not decide the rules when you think
cyberspace is not a legal entity.
EDyson: Not only cross-cultural, but also cross-legal. Need to foment “transparency” - people in China were able to “not care anymore” and they are able to add to the knowledge OPENLY. There is a revolution of transparency between the citizens and the governments.
BTempleton: Companies are always the Bus Driver versus Rosa Parks. Why can’t they be Rosa?

Al Chang: “reciprocal altrusism” - donations are not easy for reciprocation (donating $5 to Obama) versus
building a barn - a qualitiatively different experience. Who protects the least of us? How do you protect people who can not really be informed?
CShirky: There are non-market considerations involved. Many places where financial motivations will not have the effect people think. What if the way for Linus Turvals to build a better operating system, was to petition Microsoft?
EDyson: investing time versus money is different. The phenomenon of Obama is not comparable to Dean. Feeling that Barack is the head of the parade, being lead by the group.

Shannon Clark: we are “hyper-optimizing” - no one person has the same experience. By not offering the same experience, are we losing the social cohesion of common experiences? Are we able to have “slow branding”? People need to think of ways to avoid the “hyper-optimization”. Need the water-cooler experience.
CShirky: when students demonstrate their social products, the customers often tell them to drop features/make it simplier. For some reason, we have missed the transformation of the computer from a box to a door - and no one wants a door with 32 handles and that others are using.

Companies tend to over-optimize but under-perform on socialization.

Heather Gold: why is it always a transaction? Is it not that people will always feel connected?
BIannucci: killer application on phones is voice. The notion of connecting people only through voice call is very limiting - with new technology, there are richer ways of sharing and communicating. There will be richer, more relevant eways of communicating/connecting.

Sanford Dickert is currently an Adj Professor at Cooper Union. Sanford holds a Masters and Engineers Degree from Stanford University in Electrical Engineering and a Bachelor of Science in Computer and Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. Prof. Dickert is also a co-producer of the New York Tech Meetup when events are brought to the Cooper Union. In other roles, Prof. Dickert has been the Chief Technology Officer for the John Kerry for President Campaign. In his spare time, he also publishes his thoughts on social media, political technology and online engagement on a number of publications.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 at 7:30 am and is filed under Conferences, Sanford Dickert, Supernova. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.