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Holoscopic

infrastructure for the new social internet

How it works

TLDR

Holoscopic combines tools from social media and the frontiers of open democracy and applies them to an examination of our culture, creating models of social discourse that enable groups to see and act from the perspective of the whole. Each exploration generates structured repeatable processes that can be copied, altered, stacked, studied and compared on common data frameworks so we can collectively advance the conversations that define our society.

Make maps of culture

Concept: Maps transform the world

Maps began as communication between individuals.

("Over the hill, through the pine trees, cross the stream by the big rock then go to the base of the nearby tree...")

Maps helped us compare and expand knowledge over generations

(explorers venture out to discover the world and bring back records (maps) or revisions. Those revisions are copied and taken on new journeys, each adventure expanding or refining the collective project of knowing and navigating the world.)

Maps allow us to see the whole

(Though first recognized through study of the night sky, at some point the idea spread that all the far lands of the world connected in a great loop. Maps make this real. You can hold the globe and identify all its parts. This was a radical shift in perception for human kind. The flat map with fuzzy unknown around the perimeter become a globe. Known.
The project of map making entered a new phase. No longer expanding but filling in layer upon layer of useful information.)

Maps became a public collective knowledge project

(The atlas was born. And Google Earth and Maps. Earth sciences, industrial planners, bureaucrats, everyone with information to share mapped their data onto the surface of the globe. New functions became possible. We can zoom in and out from the whole as a tiny unit in the solar system to the furniture you keep in your backyard. In place of landmarks we have coordinate systems that allows us to coordinate on a global scale, build navigation systems that automatically plan your journey on, foot, road, boat and air. In a sense the world is unknowable and ever changing. In other ways we can see it completely and these ways are functionally very empowering for us.
Next: How do we take the transformative power of maps and utilize it to advance human culture? )

Concept: Mapping Culture

Take the tools of data science and make them social.

Human culture is a big project

a feedback loop with a cycle of lifetimes
big projects take massive coordination
culture tends to be implicit
culture often defined as the thing that shouldn't be changed
it's hard to truly 'see' any culture, let alone how they all interconnect
we often don't even agree on what we are seeing

Culture exists on a spectrum

Here are two and seemingly divergent expressions of Culture. One end sees culture purely as the visual or ritual aspects that make a group of people unique, their cultural "artifacts". These are explicit, visible but (to highlight the edge case) purely ceremonial.
On the other end culture is defined in a purely functional way. This is "how things get done". In between these two are countless variations, blends of the implicit and explicit, traditional vs functional.
In a conversation, where we think the other person or group is on this spectrum with define how we respond to them.

Identities are silos, Ideas are layers of soil.

Another way of approaching this concept is by comparing the influence of a culture's identity or categories with that of how it interprets ideas.
Often in discussing culture we study our categories but under pressure this easily collapses into "just the way we are", "agree to disagree", etc. We could envision these as distinct and separate.
Ideas on the other hand are shared across the culture. Identity groups interpret those ideas differently but there is a common field, with varied mix of elements. From this point of view we can begin to observe the spectrums.
Studying/mapping ideas allows us to step out of our private cultural context and observe spectrums of relating.

Data science offers visual shorthands

(Surveys, graphs, venn diagrams, regression, analysis tools describe a visual language for processing large amounts of data in a snapshot. Science requires separation of experiment and experimenter. The illusion of impartiality prevents mutual collective evolution of ideas. Data science is asymmetric in theory and execution. From the few to and for the many. It's not a conversation. Social theory uses these visuals to compress complex ideas in ways that are easy to digest and spread. There is one piece missing that allows us to complete the feedback loop...)

A Social 'map'

This looks like a graph but it's a map: [image] Example: a group's relationship with the idea of progress. it has areas of alignment and conflict. It highlights areas of familiarity and potential blind spots in our way of thinking. This exercise cannot be done blind as a survey might. This is the result of a brief collaborative conversation where everyone attempts to develop common language about how the group all relate to a shared idea.

Study Collective Identity

Concept: The Journey to Wholeness

Identity is how we are known.

Like culture, it is some combination of what we do and how we do it. More than just a snapshot of what we think, identity is formed and refined through time and many iterations.

Individual identities are composed of parts that compete or collaborate

(Internal Family Systems)

The parts of our self can experience convergence or wholeness

(Internal Family Systems , again.... This is a phase shift that doesn't require deleting parts, but of seeing how they are all connected. Internally, this is a parallel to the shift in attention made when the world became a globe.)

Our collective identities are engaged in parallel processes

(country, religion, region, class, school, company, etc. Collective identities magnify our qualities; generate prosperity and or war.)

The journey between fracture and wholeness is our source of knowledge and meaning

(Example: the shift from systems of domination to mutual inquiry & discovery; 17th century enlightenment, science, democracy, free speech)

The most profitable journey's require new frames of reference

(Maps allow us to chart our journey. Example: accounting, economics, social theory)

Novel frames of reference transform communication at scale

(Frameworks allow more nuanced ideas to become viral.)

Activity: Collective Introspection

This is a description of how social maps can be used by a cohort to observe and extract knowledge from a shared process of self exploration.

Introspection requires a feedback loop

This is more than categories, fixed culture, this is learning through experience and refining process. In this 'Social maps' can be shared sensing for a feedback loop about change.
Q1: "Who are we?" How do we describe ourselves? What is our state of being?
Q2: "What do "we" do?"

Change happens in certain ways

(intended unintended, harmonious turbulent, simplification, elegance) Things go well and reinforce our concepts. Things go wrong and force us to reassess. There's what we want and what works and ways of moving from one to the other.

Seeing Wholes

Whole group: a map is a way of seeing the group's relationships. [map] Whole ideas: as a group settles into stable relationship the nodes define a kind of functional geography of that concept in the world while leaving room for new ideas to enter. [4 quadrants, clear distributions] Whole process: charting the journey to wholeness reveals the stages that lead to completion. [Flow chart of maps]

Programming Humanity

Once we learn to observe our collective transformation, can we reverse the process and induce it? Can we use this new language to create self-replicating social viruses that bring healing and mutual understanding?

Concept: Open Source Social Algorithms

Algorithms guide us through known solutions

Math/Code: a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, that can produce desired change in state. Example: rubik's cube. There is a sequence of steps someone can use the solve from any state. No knowledge of the pattern in the cube are required, just reading the cube and following instructions.

Social Algorithms help humans solve problems

Social Algorithms: a process or set of rules that allow humans to solve complex creative problems in collaboration.

Democracy

Democracy gives a set of practices for arriving at a prosperous society but it doesn't define what that state looks like. It merely creates a context where humans can have a better chance at assessing and improving: Talk about it. Poll opinions. Suggest a course of action. Execute. Reassess who gets to talk about it. Repeat.

Science

Science is a social context for observing the world and arriving at common understanding. It doesn't tell us which experiments to perform or when we have it figured out or what the truth is. Humans remain the creative agent.

Scales of influence

We are influenced at various scales
Some are scary (one world government, corporate monopoly, extractive social media algorithms, manipulative media).
Some are foundational but ailing (public education)
Various methods of knowledge transfer continue strong (teachers in relationship with students: courses, guides, gurus)
We like programs (physical trainer, diet, professional training)
Like all social change it is a balancing act. We can map this and identify the right contexts for distributing different kinds of knowledge.

A context for "Social Programming"

Here I look to open source technologies for a working model. Tools that are freely available, can be audited, tested in private, but that feed data back into a larger collective growth process.
Qualities: Clearly communicated process. Voluntary. Adaptive. Communally generated (a reflection of the whole). Communally owned (shared benefit).

Going Viral

Ideas, tools, social processes that work, spread (genes -> memes -> knowledge -> technology)
Social Media revealed the powerful dynamics of cultural change as influenced by economic ratchet.
The process/trajectory that moves us towards what works for the whole can be just as contagious. We need ways of devising tools that work at all scales. Like think tanks for the masses.

Zooming out. Seeing the whole

What are the characteristics of such tools? How do we develop global, social, technology systems? Some ideas:
Contextuality over uniformity (forking paths, if:then loops)
repeatable process allows us to compare results for many contexts
forkable process opens the gates for collective, asynchronous development
Composability over central planning: instead of everyone having to share the same strategy, format strategies so that they can be integrated with others. Just another performance metric but one that allows rapid scaling. This is analogous to established libraries in programming. Plug and play knowledge that is organized and ready to use.

Activity: Running Human Code

A program or course could be an example of human code. My interest here is in how such solutions both evolve and scale when subjected to the influence of the crowd. Here is an abstracted description of the complete cycle proposed by this site.

Identify pattern

(Hypothesis. Because x then y. These could be individual observations or the identification of working human algorithms.)

Turn Into Explicit Steps

(including what data will be collected/shared)

Invite participation

(Find people to learn about / test this concept with)

Observe and Modulate

(Iterate.)

Report

(Share your results. Make them digestible and reproducible for others.)

Let the code run

(Submit algorithms to the collective for continued exploration, validation and expansion.)