Imagine that you are in a lucid dream. You have lots of friends, from all over the world, the love of your life, people from your schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, workouts, hobbies, and some who are not even humans: your dog, the old tree on the corner, the robot you built, a random Martian lifeform… You meet some of them every day, while others only once in a while.
Your circle of friends keep track of each other. You endorse those, who make the world nicer by helping others, setting a good example, keeping the places clean, raising happy kids, making sad people smile. You are free to appreciate anyone for anything.
There is an outer circle around you as well. It consists of those who have similar interests, play the same games, have the same views – or the opposite: love to debate –, follow the same sport teams, love the same music, and so on. Some of these are building blocks of your identity, while others are mere whims.
Imagine that you spend most of your time with sharing your thoughts and listening to others. Nothing limits you: you can talk about news, fun facts, opinions, philosophical questions, share your poems, etc. Everyone can like or dislike your ideas, and you can do the same with theirs.
However, there is a catch: people speak from behind Guy Fawkes masks, which also distorts their voices. Some thoughts inspire heated conversations with new and new ideas. You can point out fallacies and biases, influencing the public opinion on an idea.
Good ideas worth to be implemented. If you want your wish to come true, you should convince the people around you that it will not harm them and their environment. And, of course, you should take up the gauntlet to beat the competition.
Let us stop here for a moment. Sounds like real life so far, and not a dream, right? Except for the Guy Fawkes masks, which are usually used by hackers or the Robin Hoods of the Royal Mint of Spain.
To turn up the fun, add some simple rules. First of all, you may emphasize your like or dislike for an idea (or, by the way, like for an endorsement, a community, and so on). But the average importance of your likes and dislikes (for all ideas) will always be the same with other folks’.
This is a simple rule, but not that easy to grasp. It can lead to significantly different results than the traditional “one person, one vote” law. I will show that in a separate post.
Second, your participation in this system is a value adding job. Therefore, you get paid for everything you do; the more active you are and the more folks like your activity, the more you bring in. How much more, what is the source of this money, and what can you use it for – these are questions that will be examined in other posts.
Third, if you get the green light for your project from the public, enjoy all the benefits! It is understandable that if you make money from your project, you will have less time for your other job. Even if robots take over the jobs from most of us, we will always need brave fellows who propel us to new heights, and they will always deserve extra compensation.
Fourth, the likes and dislikes also represent the values of each community. You are free to choose your communities but held responsible for following their norms. Rare conflicts should be mediated in front of a jury.
Now imagine that all of this is tracked using online social media. There may be competing platforms, but the rules should be the same and the platforms should be interconnected. Have you realized by now how much effort would it need to follow the rules without social media, and how easy it is with social media?
Finally, imagine that we pimp up our little new world with artificial intelligence. It is a learning machine that knows the history of all connections, ideas, reactions. It suggests communities, ideas that you may be interested in.
It reads your mind – even when you are dreaming – to suggest ideas that will likely be popular. At this point, you may say that mind reading is far away from today’s reality and it may not even be possible; but with the billions and billions of past ideas in the back of its brain, all that our little robot needs is inspiration, so if it is able to guess just a few basic concepts of your thoughts, it will come up with more amazing ideas than any one of us ever could. It will support us with smart analysis, but we will be in charge for the decision making. Welcome to the world of collective intelligence (CoIn)! Are you ready to dream on?
Homework: List serious issues in today’s world that would not exist in CoIn, or vice versa, and add rationale.
