11.13 Appendix 1: Where Might the Digital Revolution Take Us?
247
adapt to new conditions, including technological, environmental, and demographic
changes. But what if we prefer our society to stay as it is? Can we preserve our current
society, or go back to how it was before? Many of us wish that we could—we had
a good time in the past! But this is a romantic wish and dangerous dream, because
we can’t stop our economy and our societies from progressing. Indeed we shouldn’t
really want to stop this progress, because we would miss out on great opportunities.
Other countries would surely use these to gain a competitive advantage. Why would
we want to fall back, if we could lead this development?
11.14 Appendix 2: Future Governance: Options Rather
Than Compromises
People might be more satisfied with our governance outcomes if decisions would
involve or consider all those that are affected by a decision, regardless of whether
it is about a local, regional, national, supranational, global, commercial, or community issue. In principle, we could now establish such decision-making processes using
electronic participatory voting platforms. Individual points of view could be collected
in an argument map, such as a debate graph, to work out a reasonable number of
perspectives on the problem. Then, representatives of these different perspectives
should talk to each other in a round-table-like setting and try to integrate different
perspectives as much as they can. This process would eventually elaborate a small
number of good alternatives (say, two or three). These should ideally be interoperable. A democratic vote would then be used to decide between these alternatives. The
relative number of votes of everyone might depend on his or her respective externalities. However, with the exception of a few fundamental principles, we should not
strive to implement just one solution everywhere in the world. A suitable degree of
diversity and culturally fitting solutions are important. Moreover, solutions should be
regularly evaluated to further improve them over time according to the evolutionary
principles of innovation and spreading of superior solutions.
I would like to suggest that the more diverse a community is the smaller the
decision areas should be chosen (e.g. cities or regions). Problems that can only be
addressed by a homogenous solution (i.e. by global standardization) require sufficiently large and diverse committees to reflect the various perspectives sufficiently
well. Otherwise collective intelligence cannot be successfully built. Let’s assume
we have various perspectives i. Then, each could be represented by a*ln W i people,
rounded down to integer numbers, where ln denotes the natural logarithm and W i
stands for the expected externalities of the respective decision on those that are represented by perspective i (for example, the contribution that would have to be made
to create a new collective good). Finally, a is a constant that determines the overall
size of the committee. I also think that a supermajority (ideally about two thirds of
all votes) should be required to establish laws which are intended to be permanent.
Usually, such a high level of support can only be established by allowing for a number
247
adapt to new conditions, including technological, environmental, and demographic
changes. But what if we prefer our society to stay as it is? Can we preserve our current
society, or go back to how it was before? Many of us wish that we could—we had
a good time in the past! But this is a romantic wish and dangerous dream, because
we can’t stop our economy and our societies from progressing. Indeed we shouldn’t
really want to stop this progress, because we would miss out on great opportunities.
Other countries would surely use these to gain a competitive advantage. Why would
we want to fall back, if we could lead this development?
11.14 Appendix 2: Future Governance: Options Rather
Than Compromises
People might be more satisfied with our governance outcomes if decisions would
involve or consider all those that are affected by a decision, regardless of whether
it is about a local, regional, national, supranational, global, commercial, or community issue. In principle, we could now establish such decision-making processes using
electronic participatory voting platforms. Individual points of view could be collected
in an argument map, such as a debate graph, to work out a reasonable number of
perspectives on the problem. Then, representatives of these different perspectives
should talk to each other in a round-table-like setting and try to integrate different
perspectives as much as they can. This process would eventually elaborate a small
number of good alternatives (say, two or three). These should ideally be interoperable. A democratic vote would then be used to decide between these alternatives. The
relative number of votes of everyone might depend on his or her respective externalities. However, with the exception of a few fundamental principles, we should not
strive to implement just one solution everywhere in the world. A suitable degree of
diversity and culturally fitting solutions are important. Moreover, solutions should be
regularly evaluated to further improve them over time according to the evolutionary
principles of innovation and spreading of superior solutions.
I would like to suggest that the more diverse a community is the smaller the
decision areas should be chosen (e.g. cities or regions). Problems that can only be
addressed by a homogenous solution (i.e. by global standardization) require sufficiently large and diverse committees to reflect the various perspectives sufficiently
well. Otherwise collective intelligence cannot be successfully built. Let’s assume
we have various perspectives i. Then, each could be represented by a*ln W i people,
rounded down to integer numbers, where ln denotes the natural logarithm and W i
stands for the expected externalities of the respective decision on those that are represented by perspective i (for example, the contribution that would have to be made
to create a new collective good). Finally, a is a constant that determines the overall
size of the committee. I also think that a supermajority (ideally about two thirds of
all votes) should be required to establish laws which are intended to be permanent.
Usually, such a high level of support can only be established by allowing for a number