HackMD
Date: October 2024
Location: Azores (likely University of Azores, Ponta Delgada, Ilha de São Miguel)
Intended audience
This conference is intended to facilitate conversation between sociologists and software developers. This means the language used has to be accessible to non-experts in the respective fields, to the extent that it is understandable by everyday people. The talks are required to be an overview of the field with a summary of intended actions that would improve the online participation, similar to policy briefs.
This is a grass-roots initiative. If there are similar events in existence, please let us know.
Introduction
This conference addresses the question, how can everyday people impact government? How can an increasingly virtual world positively affect our real world?
People are increasingly lonely, scared and isolated which impacts behaviour negatively, with an increase in hate speech and misinformation being one example. With distrust in social media giants growing, another large segment leave social media altogether, but without anything else, virtual or real, replacing this social need. How do we combat this?
Aiming for ~100 in-person attendees.
Intended outcomes of this conference
- Conference proceedings will be published, in conventional academic format as well as mixed media.
- This conference is part of a project building a social platform component of the metaverse (better words needed here), therefore the lessons are more targeted than what is typically expected from an academic conference.
- Cross-pollination of interested communities and creating curiosity for the metaverse from diverse and unconventional sources.
Wishlist for speakers
(When asking them ask for suggestions for others)
| Name | Topic | Location, details |
|---|---|---|
| Dougald Hine | Post-Apocalypse | the end of the modern world as we know it |
| Cory Doctorow | Plurality, subsidiarity | |
| Miguel Afonso Caetano | Technology journalist, communication researcher. | Lisbon, Portugal |
| Lesley Green | Ecological governance | South Africa |
| Anand Giridharadas | Curiosity | book: “The Persuaders: Winning Hearts and Minds in a Divided Age” |
| Carol Gilligan | Ethic of care | |
| Brett Scott | Community money | |
| Text | Text | Why are supposed open communities (FLOSS) so closed, and toxic? |
| Pascal Schneiders | Author: Social cohesion in platformized public spheres: toward a conceptual framework | Germany |
| Nanjala Nyabola | How the internet can help democracy | |
| Sheila Jasanoff | Uncertainty, Sociotechnical Imaginaries | Harvard, US |
| SOLID - structured data | ||
| Yuge Ma | Challenges of collaborative governance | UK |
| Sandro Serpa, Maria José Sá | Dissemination of Knowledge in the Digital Society | Azores, Portugal |
| Joep Meindertsma | Argu:digital aid for grassroots decision making processes | Belgium |
| Audrey Tang | Taiwan |
Conference content categories
Community in a Digital world
Introduction:
People are trying to find new ways: From libertarian initiatives like Liberland to micronations, to island nations exploring aspects like digital currencies, digital nomad incentives.
The struggle to create and maintain community, to moderate it (is there a role for AI?), to find the relevant data to manage real world resources, to maintain momentum and prevent burn out, to find common interest in a world filled with noise.
The hypothesis of this conference is that it is possible for the digital world to improve governance of our world in a very real, immediate way, but that this is hard. This conference is not about building the technical tools to do that, but to see what are the aspects that we need to consider before we start building. There is a track to showcase what exists already and lessons learnt from these.
Setting the scene - Workshop?
What are the ideologies hidden behind our approaches?
What are the elements of "community?" Can it be said that it is ability to make change (governance) and access to resources (money being a shorthand for that?) Underpinning these are trust.
Power, influences, soft power.. ?
How is a digital community defined? What are the characteristics? What is a "good" number for a healthy community, 1 000, 10 000? Why this number? - Manfred Max-Neef related research?
Sociology of risk
How digital presence shapes real world behaviour and how can we improve that
Suspending judgement, Creating Curiosity
"Scientifically literate people, remember, were more likely to be polarised in their answers to politically charged scientific questions. But scientifically curious people were not.
*** Curiosity brought people together in a way that mere facts did not. *** " - https://timharford.com/2017/03/the-problem-with-facts/
End of expertise
both sides - Challenging the perceived blind spots of traditional expertise and authority https://www.ucalgary.ca/news/end-expertise The current challenges to expertise is both part of a healthy public sphere (https://acdi.uct.ac.za/articles/2018-01-31-making-it-through-water-crisis), and a sign of a dangerous slide towards populism and demagoguery, as described by the sociology of risk. The synthesis to both combat populism and provoke critical thinking across all these groups involves cultivating curiosity in both activist and populist groups, to suspend judgement in favour of merely being curious, and playful. This requires time, and the ability to step outside of popular groups, or our established tribes. These aspects are elements of the metaverse.
Managed discomfort
If good things take hard work, if we have let our community muscles atrophy, how do we sustain the hard work to get results?
Subsidiarity
Local community governance where real meets virtual
What replaces church?
Digital facilitating citizens' impact on national governance
Trust, identity, connection (reputation) what is the design requirements from a socialology perspective?
DIY citizenship track
Metaverse track
Have a track that invites the "internet decentralisation / blockchain" folks. DAO track?
Open Day
Free and open to the public, and have the event well advertised in "metaverse" circles
What digital community initiatives exist already? Show and tell, join.
Mastodon
Open source examples…?
https://www.paralelnipolis.cz/en/
Virtual component
This conference is held in conjuction with a float parade metaverse celebration in virtual worlds, hosted by https://omigroup.org/ . Link
Talks are also in hybrid format, remote speaking and attendance are allowed.
Probably too much for this conference, out of scope, but might need something to catch overlap:
Productive Incoherence
fundamental underpinnings of economic systems
What is a jurisdiction these days? Is it still so zero-sum game with emerging economies at the losing end? https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-emerging-markets-are-moving-beyond-neoliberalism/
