Group items tagged

find new ways of efficiency

arbitration between efficiency and care

a global thinking of the problem

Fighting the attention and desire resource shortage: stoping to use advertisement?

The question is rather here to think the moderation of the psychopower

empower transindividuation, i.e. to make sure that an economic activity creates more possibilities of individuation than it tend to destroy by attempting to capture attention and canalize motivation in a funnel. Empower transindividuation would imply to empowering actors of their own lifestyle, winning back the savoir-vivre prescribing production

Should marketing stop using psychopower?

marketing ethics guidelines

transactions are more likely to be morally defensible if both parties enter it freely and fully informed

the goal of marketing should be to increase the likelihood and frequency of free and informed transactions in the marketplace

putting freedom as a criteria of morality

the industrial use of pycho- and neuropower tend to fall under the category of barriers to freedom

neurotechniques – to capture the attention

psychotechniques – to attempt to create motivation

Most people think commercials are a small price to pay for these benefits

advertising

denying the schemes of addiction and the fact that we are becoming through the objects of attentions

right to avoid attention capture by advertising

progress made in cognitive sciences proving that

reward system being abnormally stimulated

Advertisements exploit

vulnerability and reinforce their overconsumption behaviors

“if food advertising on TV were banned, significant reductions in the prevalence of childhood obesity are possible.” (Veerman et al. 2009)

What is at stake falls to be much more complex than the sole Freedom of Speech invoked for the advertiser

liberty of non-reception

would mean to guaranty every citizen the right to choose where and when he wants to access the advertising information

Change in the industrial and commercial paradigm

Economy of contribution and peer production

An economy of contribution means that users of a service are contributing to the production of these services.

example

is open-source software that are contributively build by potentially hundreds of developers organized in communities

minimize the gap between the producer and consumer

blur the frontier between professionals and amateurs

The Copernican revolution of the Vendor Relationship Management paradigm

change in the commercial paradigm, described as an Intention Economy i.e. the opposite of the Attention Economy

consumers are charged to express and discuss their intention

with businesses rather than the usual paradigm in which businesses where fighting for a piece of canalized motivation

Implementing such a system would nevertheless imply that marketing departments dispose of a system in which they could value their supplies and where they could be easily found by customers. Doc Searls promotes his answer to this issue: the Vendor Relationship Management system.

the belief that free customers are more valuable than captive ones — to themselves, to vendors, and to the larger economy.

To be free

1. Customers must enter relationships with vendors as independent actors.

2. Customers must be the points of integration for their own data.

3. Customers must have control of data they generate and gather. This means they must be able to share data selectively and voluntarily.

4. Customers must be able to assert their own terms of engagement.

5. Customers must be free to express their demands and intentions outside of any one company’s control.

This is a profoundly game-changing approach

big data that is the rush for consumers’ information potentially leading to the same dead-end of attention destruction and affective saturation than the former offline paradigm

VRM system working as a marketplace

the goal of marketing should be to increase the likelihood and frequency of free and informed transactions in the marketplace

less imperfect and less biased information in a cultural context overvaluing transparency, and a bigger atomicity due to the hereafter introduced trend for re-localized peer production.

3.2.2.3 VRM and externalization of the socialization process

Promoting the end of advertisement

means to find a new way to make the information circulate, what was the primary goal of advertisement

Until there is no alternative to massive advertisement campaign for the information circulation, it is indeed hard to ask entrepreneurs and managers to get rid of those successors of propaganda: such a transition process necessarily imply adaptation costs from the producer and the consumer side, and possible competitive disadvantage against competitors still maximizing profit through advertisement means

But the internet transformation of the general organology offers new way to think information circuits and potentially constitute an opportunity to externalize the socialization process of products that is to empower citizen-consumers organized in communities

Empowering groups of citizen doesn’t annihilate the risks of mis-use or counterproductive interest-taker behaviors but a well-designed system of trust between peers could minimize this risk by creating a dependency to what social capital other peers give you, as it is happening in the sharing economy: the credibility of a contributive peer would be guaranteed through what the P2P Foundation calls Feedback systems and peer-police

a strong structuration of products characteristics, allowing customers to personalize their choices according to their desire and constraints: such a “VRM+” system

Marketing would then be the art of being as high as possible in this ranking, as it is happening in SEO for search engines, but in this context of criteria explosion, marketing would then be the disciple of listening to customers’ wishes and aspiration needing an attention, in order to kick in the production or to adapt the following series.

3.2.2.4 Toward a possible equi-power

Such a system would tremendously re-configure the balance of power and tend toward a form of equi-power i.e. a social organization in which abuses of a “big” would be the potential object of a ranking sanction by the peers

self-regulative function

a form of economic Darwinism would let to conscious organization the right to curve their path toward a durable configuration in accordance with the social ecosystem.

the idea of equi-power is a form of homogenization of the social matter, in which the distortions in the balance of power would be compensated by the gathering of small forces sharing a common interest

Such a sanction systems, if successfully implemented, would make value-destructing businesses progressively decline and hopefully bankrupt,

long-term valuable strategic choice

long term satisfyingly high ranking

It would be utopic to think that the “being cool” marketing

would disappear, but marketers would have to make those two objectives compose together.

This social capital contagion is nevertheless a tool that would need to be controlled in its form of violence by extensive testings and iterations with forms of protections for the smallest peers, that is to say to keep this form of social violence to institutionalized, classic forms of businesses, clearly beyond the line of what should be acceptable in the global village.

the goal is here to create an artificial form of majority that is a self-censuring responsible behavior of corporations

s. Euclidean space

metric space

topological space

Physical space is the extension surrounding a point

My presentation of a general theory of living systems will employ two sorts of spaces in which they may exist, physical or geographical space and conceptual or abstracted spaces

Physical or geographical space

Euclidean space

distance

moving

maximum speed

objects moving in such space cannot pass through one another

friction

The characteristics and constraints of physical space affect the action of all concrete systems, living and nonliving.

information can flow worldwide almost instantly

Physical space is a common space

Most people learn that physical space exists, which is not true of many spaces

They can give the location of objects in it

Conceptual or abstracted spaces

Peck order

Social class space

Social distance

Political distance

life space

semantic space

Sociometric space

A space of time costs of various modes of transportation

space of frequency of trade relations among nations.

A space of frequency of intermarriage among ethnic groups.

These conceptual and abstracted spaces do not have the same characteristics and are not subject to the same constraints as physical space

Social and some biological scientists find conceptual or abstracted spaces useful because they recognize that physical space is not a major determinant of certain processes in the living systems they study

interpersonal relations

one cannot measure comparable processes at different levels of systems, to confirm or disconfirm cross-level hypotheses, unless one can measure different levels of systems or dimensions in the same spaces or in different spaces with known transformations among them

It must be possible, moreover, to make such measurements precisely enough to demonstrate whether or not there is a formal identity across levels

fundamental "fourth dimension" of the physical space-time continuum

is the particular instant at which a structure exists or a process occurs

or the measured or measurable period over which a structure endures or a process continues.

durations

speeds

rates

accelerations

irreversible unidirectionality of time

thermodynamics

negentropy

"time's arrow."

Matter and energy

Matter is anything which has mass (m) and occupies physical space.

Energy (E) is defined in physics as the ability to do work.

kinetic energy

potential energy

rest mass energy

Mass and energy are equivalent

Living systems need specific types of matter-energy in adequate amounts

Energy for the processes of living systems is derived from the breakdown of molecules

Any change of state of matter-energy or its movement over space, from one point to another, I shall call action.

It is one form of process.

information (H)

Transmission of Information

Meaning is the significance of information to a system which processes it: it constitutes a change in that system's processes elicited by the information, often resulting from associations made to it on previous experience with it

Information is a simpler concept: the degrees of freedom that exist in a given situation to choose among signals, symbols, messages, or patterns to be transmitted.

The set of all these possible categories (the alphabet) is called the ensemble or repertoire

.) The unit is the binary digit, or bit of information

. The amount of information is measured as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of alternate patterns

Signals convey information to the receiving system only if they do not duplicate information already in the receiver. As Gabor says:

[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.'

meaning cannot be precisely measured

Information is the negative of uncertainty.

information is the amount of formal patterning or complexity in any system.

The term marker was used by von Neumann to refer to those observable bundles, units, or changes of matter-energy whose patterning bears or conveys the informational symbols from the ensemble or repertoire.

If a marker can assume n different states of which only one is present at any given time, it can represent at most log2n bits of information. The marker may be static, as in a book or in a computer's memory

Communication of almost every sort requires that the marker move in space, from the transmitting system to the receiving system, and this movement follows the same physical laws as the movement of any other sort of matter-energy. The advance of communication technology over the years has been in the direction of decreasing the matter-energy costs of storing and transmitting the markers which bear information.

There are, therefore, important practical matter-energy constraints upon the information processing of all living systems exerted by the nature of the matter-energy which composes their markers.

organization is based upon the interrelations among parts.

If two parts are interrelated either quantitatively or qualitatively, knowledge of the state of one must yield some information about the state of the other. Information measures can demonstrate when such relationships exist

The disorder, disorganization, lack of patterning, or randomness of organization of a system is known as its entropy (S)

the statistical measure for the negative of entropy is the same as that for information

entropy becomes a measure of the probability

Increase of entropy was thus interpreted as the passage of a system from less probable to more probable states.

according to the second law, a system tends to increase in entropy over time, it must tend to decrease in negentropy or information.

therefore no principle of the conservation of information

The total information can be decreased in any system without increasing it elsewhere

but it cannot be increased without decreasing it elsewhere

. Making one or more copies of a given informational pattern does not increase information overall, though it may increase the information in the system which receives the copied information.

transforms information into negative entropy

smallest possible amount of energy used in observing one bit of information

calculations of the amount of information accumulated by living systems throughout growth.

the concept of Prigogine that in an open system (that is one in which both matter and energy can be exchanged with the environment) the rate of entropy production within the system, which is always positive, is minimized when the system is in a steady state.

in systems with internal feedbacks, internal entropy production is not always minimized when the system is in a stationary state. In other words, feedback couplings between the system parameters may cause marked changes in the rate of development of entropy. Thus it may be concluded that the "information flow" which is essential for this feedback markedly alters energy utilization and the rate of development of entropy, at least in some such special cases which involve feedback control. While the explanation of this is not clear, it suggests an important relationship between information and entropy

amount of energy actually required to transmit the information in the channel is a minute part of the total energy in the system, the "housekeeping energy" being by far the largest part of it

In recent years systems theorists have been fascinated by the new ways to study and measure information flows, but matter-energy flows are equally important. Systems theory is more than information theory, since it must also deal with energetics - such matters as

the flow of raw materials through societies

Only a minute fraction of the energy used by most living systems is employed for information processing

I have noted above that the movement of matter-energy over space, action, is one form of process. Another form of process is information processing or communication, which is the change of information from one state to another or its movement from one point to another over space

Communications, while being processed, are often shifted from one matter-energy state to another, from one sort of marker to another

transformations go on in living systems

One basic reason why communication is of fundamental importance is that informational patterns can be processed over space and the local matter-energy at the receiving point can be organized to conform to, or comply with, this information

the delivery of "flowers by telegraph."

Matter-energy and information always flow together

Information is always borne on a marker

. Conversely there is no regular movement in a system unless there is a difference in potential between two points, which is negative entropy or information

If the receiver responds primarily to the material or energic aspect, I shall call it, for brevity, a matter-energy transmission; if the response is primarily to the information, I shall call it an information transmission

Moreover, just as living systems must have specific forms of matter-energy, so they must have specific patterns of information

example

example

develop normally

have appropriate information inputs in infancy

pairs of antonyms

one member of which is associated with the concept of information (H)

the other member of which is associated with its negative, entropy (S)

System

A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them

.The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units.

Conceptual system

Units

terms

Relationships

a set of pairs of units, each pair being ordered in a similar way

expressed by words

or by logical or mathematical symbols

operations

The conceptual systems of science

observer

selects

particular sets to study

Variable

Each member of such a set becomes a variable of the observer's conceptual system

conceptual system may be loose or precise, simple or elaborate

Indicator

an instrument or technique used to measure fluctuations of variables in concrete systems

Function

a correspondence between two variables, x and y, such that for each value of x there is a definite value of y, and no two y's have the same x, and this correspondence is: determined by some rule

Any function is a simple conceptual system

Parameter

An independent variable through functions of which other functions may be expressed

The state of a conceptual system

the set of values on some scale, numerical or otherwise, which its variables have at a given instant

Formal identity

variables

varies comparably to a variable in another system

If these comparable variations are so similar that they can be expressed by the same function, a formal identity exists between the two systems

Relationships between conceptual and other sorts of systems

Science advances as the formal identity or isomorphism increases between a theoretical conceptual system and objective findings about concrete or abstracted systems

A conceptual system may be purely logical or mathematical, or its terms and relationships may be intended to have some sort of formal identity or isomorphism with units and relationships empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer

Concrete system

a nonrandom accumulation of matter-energy, in a region in physical space-time, which is organized into interacting interrelated subsystems or components.

Units

are also concrete systems

Relationships

spatial

temporal

spatiotemporal

causal

Both units and relationships in concrete systems are empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer

patterns of relationships or processes

The observer of a concrete system

distinguishes a concrete system from unorganized entities in its environment by the following criteria

physical proximity of its units

similarity of its units

common fate of its units

distinct or recognizable patterning of its units.

Their boundaries are discovered by empirical operations available to the general scientific community rather than set conceptually by a single observer

Variable of a concrete system

Any property of a unit or relationship within a system which can be recognized by an observer

which can potentially change over time, and whose change can potentially be measured by specific operations, is a variable of a concrete system

Examples

number of its subsystems or components, its size, its rate of movement in space, its rate of growth, the number of bits of information it can process per second, or the intensity of a sound to which it responds

A variable is intrasystemic

not to be confused with intersystemic variations which may be observed among individual systems, types, or levels.

The state of a concrete system

its structure

represented by the set of values on some scale which its variables have at that instant

Open system

Most concrete systems have boundaries which are at least partially permeable, permitting sizable magnitudes of at least certain sorts of matter-energy or information transmissions to pass them. Such a system is an open system. In open systems entropy may increase, remain in steady state, or decrease.

Closed system

impermeable boundaries through which no matter-energy or information transmissions of any sort can occur is a closed system

special case

No actual concrete system is completely closed

In closed systems, entropy generally increases, exceptions being when certain reversible processes are carried on which do not increase it. It can never decrease.

Nonliving system

the general case of concrete systems, of which living systems are a very special case. Nonliving systems need not have the same critical subsystems as living systems, though they often have some of them

Living system

a special subset of the set of all possible concrete systems

They all have the following characteristics:

open systems

inputs

throughputs

outputs

of various sorts of matter-energy and information.

maintain a steady state of negentropy even though entropic changes occur in them as they do everywhere else

by taking in inputs

higher in complexity or organization or negentropy

than their outputs

The difference permits them to restore their own energy and repair breakdowns in their own organized structure.

In living systems many substances are produced as well as broken down

To do this such systems must be open and have continual inputs of matter-energy and information

entropy will always increase in walled-off living systems

They have more than a certain minimum degree of complexity

They either contain genetic material composed of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)

or have a charter

blueprint

program

of their structure and process from the moment of their origin

may also include nonliving components.

They have a decider, the essential critical sub-system which controls the entire system, causing its subsystems and components to interact. Without such interaction under decider control there is no system.

other specific critical sub-systems or they have symbiotic or parasitic relationships with other living or nonliving systems

Their subsystems are integrated together to form actively self-regulating, developing, unitary systems with purposes and goals

They can exist only in a certain environment

change in their environment

produces stresses

Totipotential system

capable of carrying out all critical subsystem processes necessary for life is totipotential

Partipotential system

does not itself carry out all critical subsystem processes is partipotential

A partipotential system must interact with other systems that can carry out the processes which it does not, or it will not survive

parasitic

symbiotic

Fully functioning system

when it

Partially functioning system

it must do its own deciding, or it is not a system

Abstracted system

Units

relationships abstracted or selected by an observer in the light of his interests, theoretical viewpoint, or philosophical bias.

Some relationships may be empirically determinable by some operation carried out by the observer, but others are not, being only his concepts

Relationships

The relationships mentioned above are observed to inhere and interact in concrete, usually living, systems

these concrete systems are the relationships of abstracted systems.

The verbal usages of theoretical statements concerning abstracted systems are often the reverse of those concerning concrete systems

An abstracted system differs from an abstraction, which is a concept

representing a class of phenomena all of which are considered to have some similar "class characteristic." The members of such a class are not thought to interact or be interrelated, as are the relationships in an abstracted system

Abstracted systems are much more common in social science theory than in natural science.

are oriented toward relationships rather than toward the concrete systems

spatial arrangements are not usually emphasized

their physical limits often do not coincide spatially with the boundaries of any concrete system, although they may.

important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other

Most physical and biological hierarchies are described in spatial terms

we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom

intensity of interaction

in most biological and physical systems relatively intense interaction implies relative spatial propinquity

To the extent that interactions are channeled through specialized communications and transportation systems, spatial propinquity becomes less determinative of structure.

PARSONS

the unit of a partial social system is a role and not the individual.

culture

cumulative body of knowledge of the past, contained in memories and assumptions of people who express this knowledge in definite ways

The social system is the actual habitual network of communication between people.

RUESCH

A social system is a behavioral system

It is an organized set of behaviors of persons interacting with each other: a pattern of roles.

The roles are the units of a social system

On the other hand, the society is an aggregate of social subsystems, and as a limiting case it is that social system which comprises all the roles of all the individuals who participate.

What Ruesch calls the social system is something concrete in space-time, observable and presumably measurable by techniques like those of natural science

To Parsons the system is abstracted from this, being the set of relationships which are the form of organization. To him the important units are classes of input-output relationships of subsystems rather than the subsystems themselves

system is a system of relationship in action, it is neither a physical organism nor an object of physical perception

evolution

differentiation

growth

from earlier and simpler forms and functions

capacities for specializations and gradients

[action] is not concerned with the internal structure of processes of the organism, but is concerned with the organism as a unit in a set of relationships and the other terms of that relationship, which he calls situation

Abstracted versus concrete systems

One fundamental distinction between abstracted and concrete systems is that the boundaries of abstracted systems may at times be conceptually established at regions which cut through the units and relationships in the physical space occupied by concrete systems, but the boundaries of these latter systems are always set at regions which include within them all the units and internal relationships of each system

A science of abstracted systems certainly is possible and under some conditions may be useful.

If the diverse fields of science are to be unified, it would be helpful if all disciplines were oriented either to concrete or to abstracted systems.

It is of paramount importance for scientists to distinguish clearly between them

Open Capital is defined as “a proportional share in an enterprise for an indeterminate time”

‘Enterprise’ is defined as ‘any entity within which two or more individuals create, accumulate or exchange Value”.

Value is to Economics as Energy and Matter are to Physics.

The Metaphysics Of Value

division between “subject” and “object”.

primary reality is “Quality”

formless and indefinable

not a “thing”

a non-intellectual awareness or “pre-intellectual reality”

but an event at which the subject becomes aware of the object and before he distinguishes it

Quality is the basis of both subject and object

distinguish between “Static” and “Dynamic” Quality

treating Value as a form of “Quality” as envisioned by Pirsig.

Riegel

defined “Value” as “ the Relativity of Desire” again implying indeterminacy.

Pirsig’s approach Capital may be viewed as “Static” Value and Money as “Dynamic” Value. “Transactions” are the “events” at which individuals (Subjects) interact with each other or with Capital (both as Objects) to create forms of Value and at which “Value judgments” are made based upon a “Value Unit”.

The result of these Value Events /Transactions is to create subject/object pairings in the form of data ie Who “owns” or has rights of use in What,

at what Price

accounting data

Neo-Classical” Economics confuses indeterminate Value with a market– determined Price –

Data may be static

This Data identifies the subject with objects such as tangible ‘Material Value’

Data may itself constitute ‘Intellectual Value’

It, too, may then be defined in a subject/object pairing through the concept of “intellectual property”.

Other forms of Value are however not definable by data:

“sentimental” Value

Emotional Value’

'Spiritual Value’

We may therefore look at the “transaction” or “value event” in a new light.

The creation and circulation of Value essentially comprises the concept we know of as “Money”.

Money / Dynamic Value

“The purpose of money is to facilitate barter by splitting the transaction into two parts, the acceptor of money reserving the power to requisition value from any trader at any time

money

value unit dissociated from any object

monetary unit

the basis relative to which other values may be expressed

The monetary process is a dynamic one involving the creation and recording of obligations as between individuals and the later fulfilment of these obligations

The monetary “Value Event”/ Transaction involves the creation of “Credit”

obligation to provide something of equivalent Value at a future point in time.

These obligations may be recorded on transferable documents

database of “Credit”/obligations is not Money, but temporary “Capital”

“Working Capital”

Static Value – which only becomes “Money”/ Dynamic Value when exchanged in the transitory Monetary process.

what we think of as Money is in fact not tangible “cash” but rather

the flow of data between databases of obligations maintained by Credit Institutions

or dynamic

Banks literally “loan” Money into existence

In exchange for an obligation by an Individual to provide to the Bank something of Value

Bank’s obligation is merely to provide another obligation at some future time

These Bank-issued obligations are therefore

claim upon a claim upon Value

The true source of Credit is the Individual, not the intermediary Bank

this Money they create from nothing despite the fact that it is literally Value-less

Thus there is no true sharing of Risk and Reward involved in Lending

issue in relation to Credit/Debt and this relates to the nature of Lending itself.

the practice of Lending involves an incomplete exchange in terms of risk and reward: a Lender, as opposed to an Investor, has no interest in the outcome of the Loan, and requires the repayment of Principal no matter the ability of the Borrower to repay.

Ethical problem

Money is not

an “Object” circulating but rather a dynamic process of Value creation and exchange by reference to a “Value Unit”.

Capital/ Static Value

Capital represents the static accumulation of Value

Some forms of Capital are “productive”

An ethical question

in relation to Productive Capital relates to the extent of “property rights” which may be held over it thereby allowing individuals to assert “absolute” permanent and exclusive ownership - in particular in relation to Land

our current financial system is based not upon Value but rather a claim upon Value

Financial Capital consists of two types:

“Debt”

“Equity”

Interest

obligations of finite/temporary duration but with no participation in the assets or revenues

absolute and permanent ownership/participation (without obligation) in assets and revenues

discontinuity between Debt and Equity

at the heart of our current problems as a Society

The Enterprise

‘Charitable’ Enterprise

‘Social’ Enterprise

Value

exchanged in agreed proportions;

Value is exchanged for the Spiritual and Emotional Value

‘Commercial’ Enterprise

‘closed’

Value are exchanged between a limited number of individuals

Early enterprises were partnerships and unincorporated associations

need for institutions which outlived the lives of the Members led to the development of the Corporate body with a legal existence independent of its Members

The key development in the history of Capitalism was the creation of the ‘Joint Stock’ Corporate with liability limited by shares of a ‘Nominal’ or ‘Par’ value