10.11 Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Organization
211
approach will work best in all situations. In fact, these approaches can complement
each other, and both are necessary. They must be applied in the right circumstances
or suitably combined.
Currently, Big Data is being used to strengthen the top-down governance of our
socio-economic systems, but a number of factors promote the spread of bottomup organization, too. High levels of education as well as access to reliable, highquality information and to information systems supporting evidence-based decisionmaking are important for this trend. In addition, Social Technologies are beginning
to foster collaboration and trust in circumstances where it has been lacking before.
For example, social media platforms are helping people to coordinate resources,
while the growth of reputation systems lets people and companies behave more
accountably and responsibly. Bottom-up approaches have further been strengthened
by the spread of Open Data, citizen science, moderated Internet communities, and
the “maker” movement.
31
To cope with the increasing variability and complexity of socio-economic systems,
more autonomy at lower organizational levels and distributed control approaches are
often necessary. This is fundamentally changing the landscape for policymakers
and citizens alike. In fact, more bottom-up participation is required for a number
of reasons: there is a need for more capacity (“bandwidth”), more creativity, better
solutions, and more resilience. Further advantages of bottom-up participation are
related to diversity (such as innovation and collective intelligence), but we must
certainly learn to master the challenges of diversity better. For this, we need suitable
information systems, which support a differentiated kind of interoperability. Digital
assistants and new kinds of Social Technologies (as I have discussed them in previous
chapters) are examples of such information systems.
For all of the above reasons, decentralized, bottom-up organization is currently
spreading. The rise of BitCoin and peer-to-peer lending may be taken as examples. Moreover, using smart grids, electricity can now be (co-)produced by citizens.
“Swarm intelligence” is another powerful, decentralized approach inspired by the
self-organized behavior of socially behaving animals. Taking this principle several
steps further, citizen science and crowd sourcing have given rise to a number of credible information platforms and community services. Here, I have not just Wikipedia
and OpenStreetMap in mind. In California, for example, citizens are collectively
detecting earthquakes using a distributed network of sensors,
32 while in Japan a
crowd-based sensing system has been developed to monitor nuclear radiation.
33
31 Anderson [11].
32 Minson et al. [12].
33 After Fukushima: Crowd-Sourcing Initiative Sets Radiation Data Free, see https://newsroom.
cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1360403.
211
approach will work best in all situations. In fact, these approaches can complement
each other, and both are necessary. They must be applied in the right circumstances
or suitably combined.
Currently, Big Data is being used to strengthen the top-down governance of our
socio-economic systems, but a number of factors promote the spread of bottomup organization, too. High levels of education as well as access to reliable, highquality information and to information systems supporting evidence-based decisionmaking are important for this trend. In addition, Social Technologies are beginning
to foster collaboration and trust in circumstances where it has been lacking before.
For example, social media platforms are helping people to coordinate resources,
while the growth of reputation systems lets people and companies behave more
accountably and responsibly. Bottom-up approaches have further been strengthened
by the spread of Open Data, citizen science, moderated Internet communities, and
the “maker” movement.
31
To cope with the increasing variability and complexity of socio-economic systems,
more autonomy at lower organizational levels and distributed control approaches are
often necessary. This is fundamentally changing the landscape for policymakers
and citizens alike. In fact, more bottom-up participation is required for a number
of reasons: there is a need for more capacity (“bandwidth”), more creativity, better
solutions, and more resilience. Further advantages of bottom-up participation are
related to diversity (such as innovation and collective intelligence), but we must
certainly learn to master the challenges of diversity better. For this, we need suitable
information systems, which support a differentiated kind of interoperability. Digital
assistants and new kinds of Social Technologies (as I have discussed them in previous
chapters) are examples of such information systems.
For all of the above reasons, decentralized, bottom-up organization is currently
spreading. The rise of BitCoin and peer-to-peer lending may be taken as examples. Moreover, using smart grids, electricity can now be (co-)produced by citizens.
“Swarm intelligence” is another powerful, decentralized approach inspired by the
self-organized behavior of socially behaving animals. Taking this principle several
steps further, citizen science and crowd sourcing have given rise to a number of credible information platforms and community services. Here, I have not just Wikipedia
and OpenStreetMap in mind. In California, for example, citizens are collectively
detecting earthquakes using a distributed network of sensors,
32 while in Japan a
crowd-based sensing system has been developed to monitor nuclear radiation.
33
31 Anderson [11].
32 Minson et al. [12].
33 After Fukushima: Crowd-Sourcing Initiative Sets Radiation Data Free, see https://newsroom.
cisco.com/feature-content?type=webcontent&articleId=1360403.