Speeding up the transition to collective awareness

Luce Jacovella
School of Law,
Queen Mary and Westeld College,
University of London
Email: l.jacovella@qmul.ac.uk
Pietro Li o
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge, UK
Email: pl219@cam.ac.uk
AbstractThis positional paper gives an overview of some
critical issues concerning collective awareness platforms. It shows
how collective awareness could reconcile asymmetric and conict-
ing relationships to pursue the improvement of structures within
society. It also shows the opportunity for public administrations
and policy makers to create conditions for collective participation.
Collective intelligence can be used as process to pursue the im-
provement of society based on the collective efforts of individuals.
This could be assimilated to a process of social eudamonia, an
improvement of the self and of society through awareness and
understanding. However, things are not so simple and internal
tensions lead to divergent outcomes. While society is increasingly
fragmented and polarised, the power over information seems
to concentrate in the hands of few service providers, ercely
competing for market shares and user-generated data, thanks to
laws and structures built for a competition driven society. By
contrast, there is a growing demand for sharing data, access
to information and for the empowerment of individuals and
communities. In response to this demand, many Internet based
platforms have been created, governments in Europe have started
pursuing open access policies and companies are adopting mixed
business models in order to acquire a larger share of data
and users. Individuals, companies, governments pursue different
objectives using a mix of communication and collaborative tools
allowing users to play a pivotal role in the production and
management of information, creating the foundation for new
horizontal modes of communication and decision making. In
order to exemplify pathways to collective awareness to build a
society that fosters eudemonia, the paper proposes two examples:
1) social media learning and 2) the governance of health delivery
services through social media.
INTRODUCTION: COLLECTIVE AWARENESS
There is an increasing demand for sharing information,
including personal and health information, for collaboration,
content creation, participation in decision making process,
that is growing in terms of new platforms emerging, more
complex and multi-media applications created, new approaches
for dealing with privacy and other issues of governance, new
aims and missions introduced. Some platforms provide non-
commercial services to the community such as freecycle or
whatismineisyours ; other support educational or collaborative
knowledge production, or provide various forms of entertain-
ment. Powerful platforms like Youtube and iTunes-U include
educational channels and provide a range of educational con-
tents from video lectures to tutorials. Some platforms provide
peer support and information such as patientlikeme . Each
platform has distinct characteristics, but often, common prob-
lems. For example, the all apply policies to handle personal
data, share information among users or for marketing purposes
and preserving privacy [2], [3], [4], [5]. They all need to
nd means to be sustainable and facilitate people interactions.
There are also some problems which are not so evident to the
users, but that have potentially wider implications such as the
ownership of data and metadata, of collaborative and derivate
works and the use of them by governments, or commercial
rms. The main problem is however, whether the surplus of
information that platforms and social media generate can be
translated into awareness, how awareness can lead to positive
behavioral changes and how collectively we can contribute
to the improvement of society. Paraphrasing Bohm, the main
question is how the external order represented by internet
platforms, users, policy makers and providers can build a new
implicate order within capable of affecting external structures
and relationships.
Recent news show many examples of the changing role
and pressing challenges facing the use of internet.
Recently Naomi Wolf has posted a commentary on
The Guardian on the violent crackdown on the
Occupy Wall Street movement. She reported that
new documents reveal a coordinatated action on the
movement not just from FBI and local authorities. The
violent action on protesters results from a coordination
between FBI and big banks and nancial groups [10].
The well-known Web activist and software developer
Aaron Swartzs death triggered lot of sorrow. He made
4 million digital documents academic journal articles
from MITs JSTOR archive (a massive online archive
of digitized scientic journals and academic papers)
available online. The MIT has then being attacked
(DDoS attack) by the hacker collective Anonymous.
Swartzs crime is considered a greater crime than
bringing down the United States economy through
banking and nancial wrong management.
The large diffusion of the le sharing represents an
impulse for the discussion and reform of copyright
and intellectual property law.
Open sources projects (such as Linux) represent social
networks of creativity; crowdsourcing is nowadays
used in genome sequencing and annotation projects.
Websites such as kickstarter propose crowdsourcing
instauring a feedforward loop between social creativity
and social investment.
For a wide range of severe pathologies, self moni-
toring devices and patient social networks (such as
patients like me) provide good quality medical in-
formation and relief (A trouble shared is a trou-
ble halved). Implantable or wearable sensor devices
could be connected using body area networks which
in turn will enable connectivity to the wider Internet
for data sharing or remote patient monitoring.
Personal genomics is becoming cheap and our genetic
identity is intimately linked with our personality and
disease predisposition; our genome could be easily
exploited as a common project even by artists, see for
instance http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/stranger-
visions.
Privacy expectations appear to grow together with
our willingness to share our data in online networks
such as Facebook (the privacy-Facebook paradox).
This paradox should then be related to the concept of
privacy by design, the multi level essence of identity
and the onion structure of Facebook friendship.
It is clear that during the Arab spring, social media
were a medium to organize protest. The movements of the
Indignados in Spain and Occupy Wall Street in USA, have
used social media to both organize their movement and convey
their message. Even, Barak Obama rst election campaign was
based on social media communication and contributions were
collected from normal citizens instead that from the traditional
political lobbies.
According to the USA Genetic Information Nondiscrim-
ination Act, or GINA, an employer cannot re someone
because it doesnt like something in the employees genes.
The contradiction is that health insurers cannot ask for genetic
testing, but a long-term care insurer could legally require
someone to get genetically tested before selling the person
a policy to determine whether the customer is genetically
predisposed to a severe pathology. The reasoning is that if a
large number of customers would sign on for policies because
theyve discovered that they are genetically predisposed to an
expensive-to-manage disease, it could bankrupt the companies
(this reminds of the current govern protection for banks and
nancial groups). Persons who discover they have a genetic
predisposition to a severe disease may be more likely than the
average person to buy long-term insurance.
All these examples show the tendency to increasing the
quantity and quality of data available to the single person and
the increase of the number of relations and links between parts
and individuals have the hidden result of fastening the moving
towards new technologies based social networks and economic
models. New technologies enrich the range of possibilities and
relationships and increase the options for new uses.
COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE AND HUMANITARIAN
COMPETITION
A crucial aspect for the development of collective aware-
ness is the usage of technology to implement value judgment
and decision making that benet the individual and the collec-
tivity. The usage is the use that people make of technological
tools as a reection of their needs and aspirations. The value
is therefore not only in the tool, but in the use people make of
it. The question is therefore on the direction that the usage of
collective awareness platform takes and whether it is directed
towards the improvement of societys wellbeing. While most
of human decision making processes are based on heuristics to
provide short-term solutions to immediate problems, they are
insufcient for the complexity of modern society. At the level
of the individual, human responses to external problems are
based on the natural instinct of survival and competition with
other humans and animals. This has played an important role
in our survival and evolution as species. However, while the
forms of competition have changed over time and in relation
to societal structures, the internal heuristics have not changed
neither the tools we have develop to aid us in taking decisions.
In 1903 a Japanese philosopher, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi wrote
Along with changes in the unit of competition [e.g. families,
villages, states], the forms of competition also change over
time: military, political, economic and humanitarian [18].
Although humanitarian competition is not yet conspicuous in
the international arena, person who have gained some level of
insight are beginning to realise that the ultimate winners in the
competition for survival are not necessarily the winners of the
economic race . Humanitarian competition is the endeavor
to achieve individual and social goals through invisible moral
inuences. Humanitarian competition seeks the voluntary co-
operation and loyalty of people by gaining their respect . This
soft power of persuasion and collaboration is a conscious
effort to create a more harmonious community life in which
the individual gains personal benet by contributing to the
wellbeing of others.
EVOLVING BOUNDARIES
One of the major shift is the changing boundaries between
physical space and virtual space, personal and collective and
private and public. The community that denes our sense
of belonging is not limited to the physical space. A student
can learn from tutorials and video-lectures without the need
for face-to-face communication. Medical tests can be carried
out at home and automatically sent to professional services
for elaboration, while the doctor who is deciding on the
appropriate treatment might work from a different location.
The technological medium is taking the place of physical
space, but it is the way people come together and use it that
pushes the boundaries of traditional relationships and usage.
The medium, the platform creates the opportunities, but it what
users make with it that has the potential for revolutionizing
our society. The medium, however, is not neutral. It itself
carries a message that cannot be separated from the technical
aspects. The way a platform is organized, what is and what
is not allowed and by who, dene a specic view of how the
platform creators see human communication and relationships.
The discussion over net-neutrality and weather this should be
guaranteed by law, shows how neutrality is a concept that is
dened by the dialectic dynamics between users, providers and
governments. The individual space is also changing boundaries
between what is personal and public with privacy under threat
by all angles. What is relevant, however, is that the unidi-
rectionality of the relationships is breaking down. Top down,
one-to many relationships are no longer accepted without
questioning. Collective awareness platforms can only work
thanks to horizontal, many-to-many relationships, enthusiastic
participation, and seless contribution from individuals for the
benet of all. Collective awareness also integrates traditional
relationships providing a mean where these can be harmonised
around a common vision.
EVOLVING RELATIONSHIPS
Collaboration and the sense of belonging to a community
is part of our shared humanity. Socio-legal structures have
developed to regulate relationships that are often vertical,
hierarchical and asymmetrical. For example, doctors decide on
treatments which affect the health of the patient. Communica-
tion is vertical, usually following a top-down approach. Hier-
archical structures have evolved to speed up decision-making
and ensure accountability. The balance of power between the
various groups is asymmetrical as often the size of the groups.
This implies a model of relationship that can be dened as one-
to-many in well dened, static roles. For example, the teacher
teaches to a class of many students. The communication, the
transfer of knowledge and the decision- making is vertical
and unidirectional. However, cognition and behavioural studies
concur that there are other modes of relationship that provide a
better though more expensive results. In collective awareness
platform, the communication follows a complex patters that
integrates from one-to-one, to many-to-many relationships.
These relationships are horizontal. Users have the same rights
to express themselves and participate in equal terms to the
discussion and decision making process. Within a network,
relationships do not follow a hierarchical order. A user can
decide to follow another user. The user is at the same time
a content provider and contributor. Roles are not dened by the
position of a member in the community and are not permanent.
Taking the example of social learning, the same person is at
the same time, teacher and student, service provider and user,
content generator and consumer. Mechanisms of reward are
based on effective contribution. Asymmetries can evolve at any
time, even within a distributed system. Already the platforms
are owned by a limited number of people and the tendencies
towards polarization and concentration of information is an
inevitable part of the dynamic. Education is a very critical
area for the future of humanity and the direction it will take
in the next few years will have major consequences
Here we present four scenarios for Higher Education to
exemplify the dynamic interplay of some of the variables that
might inuence its directions in parallel with the future of in-
ternet as highlighted in gure 1 as extended from original ideas
proposed by Fabrizio Sestini [1]: 1) Evolution of the current
model for HE, corresponding to an highly competitive nation-
alised model in which students and communities have limited
inuence and choice, national/regional regimes allow limited
collaboration and there is a polarisation between research and
teaching, formal and informal learning and between high rank
universities. This scenario corresponds to a predominance of
formal learning acquired at increasingly high costs by an elite
of students with limited exibility of programs from highly
competitive institutions. Within this model, changes can occur
in case of an improvement of the economy in conjunction with
an opening of legal and political barriers with a transition
towards scenarios 3 and 4. On the other hand, in case of a
further restriction of the economy, a reduction in migration
ux due to increasing protective measures and as a reaction
to globalisation (see OECD scenarios) the scenario can revert
towards a less inclusive model; 2) Revolution or total departure
from the current model. A new paradigm for HE based on
collective intelligence, collaboration between individuals and
Fig. 1. Four scenarios of HE and collective awareness: evolution (1),
revolution (2), integration (3), segregation (4); numbers within the small ovals
show the ranking of importance for the different scenarios. The blue arrows
describe the trends in case of improved economy, i.e. the direction in case
of the increased funding; if it worsen it takes a different direction. The red
arrows indicate the situation in case of decreased socio-political-legal barriers,
i.e. more openness
communities and a highly connected and integrated society.
In this scenario, ICT plays an important part in connecting
individuals and institutions and the legal regimes are highly
harmonised to foster collaboration. Education integrates formal
and informal learning and society appreciates individual and
collective creativity. This scenario might come into play in case
of a very steep increase in education costs, or a crisis in the
economy that leads to a re-thinking of the societys structures,
people mobility increase both within relaxed geographical
borders. Mobility is also within jobs and careers as soft skills,
technology. This scenario can only exist within a renewed ap-
preciation for collaboration, diversity and self-empowerment.
Whether economy is improving or not, wealth is evaluated
around indicators of wellbeing, personal fulllment, environ-
mental standards; 3) Integration of several models to provide
a exible offer of education with integration between a tradi-
tional formal education and informal learning and collective
intelligence. Different models coexist and 4) Segregation in
which different models absolve different functions and have
different status in society. There is a strong separation between
formal and informal education. Due to the high costs of
education, formal HE is for an elite as in model 1. However,
increasing access to internet courses allow the distribution
to knowledge. There are two or more separate systems with
an increasing competition for students, funds, status. These
models consider the development of ICT technologies and their
possible use towards increased centralisation, competition and
control of individuals, society and the economy or towards
an increased capacity for collaboration, openness, knowledge
sharing and disperse centers of power. They also consider
macro-dynamics such as demographic changes, reactions to
globalisation and economic crisis as highlighted by the OECD
scenarios for the future of HE to show how individuals making
choices within an evolving context can equally affect the
direction of a particular scenario and being affected.
Despite a modest 5% average of on-line training in Europe,
however, the use of social media are opening new avenues for
reforming the educational system. The Institute for Prospective
Technological Studies (IPTS) indicates that the high take up of
social media applications outside formal educational settings
provides new opportunities for innovating and modernising
Education and Training institutions and for preparing learners
for the 21st century. These opportunities, are not only in
the availability of new technologies, but in the possibility
of re-thinking the educational structures which are largely
responsible for reproducing societal inequalities.
My data, your mHealth
Another crucial example of the potential use of collec-
tive intelligence is the medical eld. Health is no longer
conned within the traditional doctor-patient relationship and
the place of care is changing from the hospital to a more
decentralized dispersed care system [7], [8], [9]. Recently
social health platforms have started to appear often including
apps to facilitate the sharing of information and the managing
of individual health. The success of these platforms is a
further demonstration of how the hospital is no longer the
exclusive locus in which citizens choose to nd information
concerning their health choices. The wide distribution and the
exibility of social media in mobile platforms and the facility
with which people can share information, including health
information, enables citizens to make better informed choices
and even participating in the decision making process about the
services they want to receive, in a democratic participatory
fashion, while increasing awareness over healthy lifestyles
or the potential risks. Information, data, communication and
opinion pooling applications are now at the ngertip of a wide
section of the European population. New model can assess
optimal solutions beyond traditional dichotomies, such as cost
vs. quality of treatment, economy vs health, demonstrating
that it is possible to optimise conicting choices. Indeed, the
application of good governance principles has a proven impact
in saving costs for purchasing, insurance, pooling of funds,
service delivery. In a recent intervention, UK s Prime Minister
David Cameron opened up to the possibility that patients could
become research patient with their medical details opened up
to private and public research. This shift to health crowd-
sourcing, however, requires the denition and acceptance of
clear boundaries for privacy, security, access, ownership and
liability. Considering the trans-national character of social
media, research collaborations and corporate business, these
boundaries needs to be accepted and enforced national borders
and cultures. Social media health platforms are reecting the
shift towards that new approach to health care that reects
a scenario in which health services will have to deal with:
1) more patients informed and connected 2) probably less
doctors per number of patients 3) more disperse, horizontal
service provision and the organisation of health services by non
traditional actors. This structural change has an impact in the
allocation of resources, in the way innovation is taking place
and new and traditional actors are interacting; 4) more attention
to funds pooling, funds allocation (health economy): service
given in a appropriate way without dispersion, loss of money 5)
attention to patient satisfaction but also tax payer satisfaction.
Social media for health is based on relationships. These are
crucial both to social media and to health. Rich, healthy rela-
tionships are crucial for maintaining wellbeing. Receiving the
best care and support is also about relationships. Relationships
are always complex and emotional interactions involving a
great deal of resources. Studies have shown that people are
more willing to share more private medical information in
social media than they are willing to share with their medical
providers. Relationships are still embedded in a hierarchical
way with different inuence over the outcome of the service. In
a possible future these boundaries and the relative rewards and
responsibility could change towards an increase relevance of
social network support as the locus for information, emotional
support, nancial contribution, organization of treatment.
NEW PLATFORMS, OLD RULES, EVOLVING RULES
Collective awareness can help harmonise relationships, im-
prove communication and share common values. The owner-
ship of creative content is a classic example of the intersection
of traditional structures, including norms and laws, and the
demands from collective platforms. Contract law, IP law are
based on concepts of ownership that are designed to endow
certain individuals (whether physical persons or companies)
with certain rights and obligations. While the same concept
of ownership is already problematic without a full recognition
of the entitlements, the situation becomes more difcult in
the case of a limited multiplicity of agents, as it happens
in collaborative works and even more when the number of
agents is not dened and reaches global scale. The concept of
collective ownership as opposed to individual ownership or
multiple ownership is merely an hypothetical legal construction
based on certain (theoretical) considerations on how a more
cooperative world might be organized within the current legal
system. Collective awareness platforms are demonstrating how
it is not only possible, but desirable to overcome the tragedy
of the commons. However, any attempt to structure within a
normative framework these new forms of collaboration and
sharing such as creative common licenses are bound to reect
a traditional legal system.
CONCLUSIONS
In the last three decades we have witnessed the end of
ideologies, regimes and theories that seemed unshakeable.
Economic theories and approaches to the organisation and
governance of society have crumbled under the weight of
pressing demands for more democratic and open societies.
These changes have been facilitate and perhaps accelerated
by information technologies creating opportunities for global
communication hat were unthinkable before. The changes
at macro-level reect of changes in the personal sphere of
the individual and in the perception of the other. In or-
der to create a harmonious society based on creativity and
humanitarian competition, it is essential that more inclusive
models in science, economy and the government replace old
ways of thinking and doing things. To summarise, collective
intelligence models will have to face many challenges that are
not only technological.
The rst great challenge of collective intelligence is
to encompass and appreciate complexity and take
advantage of the opportunities offered by multiple
agents moving together and to analyzing, discussing,
proposing solutions over complex, discontinuous phe-
nomena that are the very fabric of our society.
The second challenge is that of equality. Equality is
in itself a great challenge and encompass all areas of
human interaction. A new approach to education, how-
ever, is the key for supporting collective awareness.
Traditional educational structures tend to replicates
the inequalities of the system that have generated
them. It is the awareness that arises from a process
of co-creation of knowledge that supports collective
intelligence and fosters the condition for a fair so-
ciety. There cannot be net-neutrality, democracy and
collective intelligence without providing equal access
to knowledge and to the instruments for understanding
the world around us.
The third is sustainability. Collective awareness can
represent a system that can be sustainable if it does
not remain static. In other words, collective awareness
needs a constant awareness of the changes that are
taking place within the system. It needs to appreciate
and anticipate changes in order to remain relevant.
Only increasing the quantity of data, or perfectioning
the tools are not enough. Dynamic, equal relationship
to allow distributed sharing of information can support
collective intelligence.
The forth is attribution of value. A society aware of
the implications of collective intelligence is based on
the appropriate attribution of value to reputation, iden-
tity, network neutrality, wealth, collective economic
models, privacy, citizen involvement, behavioral and
societal changes. This can be achieved only with the
integration of internal and external implicate orders.
The fth is approximation. Society should learn to
leave without certainty or absolute truth. As human we
tend to apply models and norms in order to simplify
the complexity of the environment surrounding us.
This is because each model analyses one or more
phenomena and needs to exclude a great number of
factors and agents. Even the combination of several
models can produce limited results. Together with
many theories and models of society, also the myth
of predictability has lost its signicance. Is there an
algorithm for collective awareness? Can we develop
the perfect recipe? Instead we should engage in nding
solutions that are exible and approximate the opti-
mum with constantly moving posts. A society that
bases itself on principles of humanistic competition
and uses collective intelligence to support wellbeing
is a society in which individuals reect the collective
efforts of the self and the other like the metaphor of
Indra where the jewel collocated at any node reects
the light of the other jewels in the innite net in the
sky.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
PL thanks RECOGNITION: Relevance and cognition for
self-awareness in a content-centric Internet (257756), funded
by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Pro-
gramme (FP7)
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