Helbing Dirk. Thinking Ahead: Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society

Springer, 2015. — 194 p. — ISBN 9783319150772, 3319150774.The rapidly progressing digital revolution is now touching the foundations of the governance of societal structures. Humans are on the verge of evolving from consumers to prosumers, and old, entrenched theories – in particular sociological and economic ones – are falling prey to these rapid developments. The original assumptions on which they are based are being questioned. Each year we produce as much data as in the entire human history - can we possibly create a global crystal ball to predict our future and to optimally govern our world? Do we need wide-scale surveillance to understand and manage the increasingly complex systems we are constructing, or would bottom-up approaches such as self-regulating systems be a better solution to creating a more innovative, more successful, more resilient, and ultimately happier society? Working at the interface of complexity theory, quantitative sociology and Big Data-driven risk and knowledge management, the author advocates the establishment of new participatory systems in our digital society to enhance coordination, reduce conflict and, above all, reduce the «tragedies of the commons», resulting from the methods now used in political, economic and management decision-making.
The author
Physicist Dirk Helbing is Professor of Computational Social Science at the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Sciences and an affiliate of the Computer Science Department at ETH Zurich, as well as co-founder of ETH’s Risk Center. He is internationally known for the scientific coordination of the FuturICT Initiative which focuses on using smart data to understand techno-socio-economic systems.Introduction - Have We Opened Pandora’s Box?
Global Financial, Economic and Public Spending Crisis.
Need of a «Knowledge Accelerator».
We are Experiencing a Digital Revolution.
Threats to the Average Citizen.
Threats so Big that One Cannot Even Talk About Them.
Are we Entering an Age of Discrimination?
Threats to Companies.
Political and Societal Risks.
Are the Secret Services Democratically well Controlled?
What Kind of Society are we Heading to?
«Big Governments» Fueled by «Big Data».
We Must Move Beyond September 11.
What Needs to be Done.
A Better Future, Based on Self-Regulation.
References.
Lost Robustness.
Understanding Complex Systems.
Criticality and Lack of Transparency.
Acceleration and De-Compartmentalization.
Systemic Stability and Trust.
Utilizing Control Features of Complex Systems.
Author Information.
How and Why Our Conventional Economic Thinking Causes Global Crises.
«More Networking Is Good and Reduces Risks».
«The Economy Tends Towards an Equilibrium State».
«Individuals and Companies Decide Rationally».
«Selfish Behavior Optimizes the Systemic Performance and Benefits Everyone»
«Financial Markets Are Efficient»
«More Information and Financial Innovations Are Good».
«More Liquidity Is Better».
«All Agents can Be Treated as if Acting the Same Way».
«Regulation can Fix the Imperfections of Economic Systems».
«Moral Behavior Is Good for Others, but Bad for Oneself».
Summary.
Further Reading.
«Networked Minds» Require a Fundamentally New Kind of Economics.
Evolution of «Friendliness».
Networked Minds Create a Cooperative Human Species.A Participatory Kind of Economy.
A New Kind of Economy is Born−Social. Decision-Makers Beat the «Homo Economicus».
Outdated Theory, Outdated Institutions.
New Institutions for a Global Information Society.
Benefits of a Self-Regulating Economy.
Economics 2.0: Emergence of a Participatory Market Society.
References.
Further Reading.
Global Networks Must be Redesigned.
Living in a Hyperconnected World.
Our Intuition of Systemic Risks is Misleading.
A Global Ticking Time Bomb?
Global Networks Must be Redesigned.
Coming Era of Social Innovation.
Creating and Protecting Social Capital.
Big Data - A Powerful New Resource for the Twenty-first Century.
Data Sets Bigger than the Largest Library.
What Do Applications Look Like?
The Potentials Are Great...
... but also the Implicit Risks.
The Digital Revolution Creates an Urgency to Act.
Europe can Become a Motor of Innovation for the Digital Era.
References.
Google as God? Opportunities and Risks of the Information Age.
Introduction.
Gold Rush for the Twenty-first Century Oil.
Humans Controlled by Computers?
Is Privacy Still Needed?
Information Overload.
The Knowledge-Is-Power Society.
A New World Order Based on Information?
Privacy and Socio-Diversity Need Protection.
An Alternative Vision of the Information Age.
The Democratic, Participatory Market Society.
The Benefit of Opening Data to All.
A New Paradigm to Manage Complexity.
Loss of Control due to a Wrong Way of Thinking.
Decisions Needed to Use Opportunities and Avoid Risks.
Further Reading.
From Technology-Driven Society to Socially Oriented Technology: The Future of Information Society — Alternatives to Surveillance.
Appendix: Why Mass Surveillance Does Not Work
Further Reading
Big Data Society: Age of Reputation or Age of Discrimination?
Information Box: How to Define Quality Standards for Data Mining.
References.
Big Data, Privacy, and Trusted Web: What Needs to Be Done.
Ethical and Policy Issues Related with Socio-Economic Data Mining.
A Source-Based Taxonomy of Available Personal Information.
Why Would the Honest be Interested to Hide?
Cyber-Risks and Trust.
Current and Future Threats to Privacy.
Additional Ethical Concerns.
How to Address Ethical Issues in Large-Scale Social Data Mining.
Towards Privacy-Preserving Data Analyses.
Deliberate Participation.
Anonymization and Randomization.
Coarse-Graining, Hierarchical Sampling, and Recommender Systems.
Multiplayer Online Games, Pseudonyms, and Virtual Identities.
Anonymous Lab Experiments.
Concept of a Future, Self-organizing and Trusted Web.
Data Format.
Intellectual Property Rights.
Trust Management.
Microcredits and Micropayments.
Transparent Terms of Service.
Privacy-Respecting Social Networks.
Summary.
Recommended Legal Regulations.
Recommended Infrastructures and Institutions.
Summary.
References.
Further Reading.
What the Digital Revolution Means for Us.
Big Data: A magic Wand. But do we know How to Use it?
What Is the Next Big Thing After Big Data?
A New Kind of Economy is Born.
The New Algebra of Prosperity and Leadership.
What Does it Take to Master Our Future?
Creating («Making») a Planetary Nervous System as Citizen Web.
What are the Benefits of Having an «Internet of Things»?
Basic Elements of the Planetary Nervous System.
Creating a Public Good, and Business and Non-Profit Opportunities for Everyone by Maximum Openness, Transparency, and Participation.
The Role of Citizen Science.