Can Steemit be a Gandhi Phenomena?

"Can Steemit be a Gandhi Phenomena?"
Introduction

My next post is called "Can Steemit attention economy be a non-competitive society? and will deal with the problems of the relations between man mediated by the world of objects and analyze the new concept of "attention economy" in an ecosystem and the culture of networks.

@kevinwong suggested me that I should explain better to everybody what is the meaning in this work of Utopia (that can be realizable). The ones that are non-realizable is called here a Dystopia or Romantic Dream.

Satoshi Nakamoto had a Vision that made what was an unimaginable dream that looked like a romantic Dystopia but in fact became a Realizable Utopia on the blockchain.

Some utopias are realizable in reality and some are impossible and become romanticized dystopian views of non-realizable Utopia. Sometimes to get Possible results, the Impossible must be attempted.

This posts deals with the analysis in logical-mathematical terms with the infinite possibilities of communication and objects transactions made possible by the blockchain and the known limits of perceptual and genetic limitations of the individual in big groups to sustain unlimited transactions with any number of people and objects.

This are just philosophical reflections on the pseudo-scientific theories that are just assumptions about the value of a network and do not pretend to be any kind of scientific research with data to back it up. At the end of the post, there is a lot of references that have different approaches and contradictory conclusions about this numbers.

Continuing in the line and language of thinking of Yona Friedman ⁽¹⁾ the "critical-group" as a kind self-regulating mechanism, a form of social ecology to regulate the survival of big organizations and the species, a manifestation of a mechanism of "social selection" that limits the growth of big groups, without the loss of identity or power of every individual.

This "social selection" is a system of rules of the species as social beings, a natural factor to equilibrate "natural selection" in "social ecology".

Social ecology is a biological genetic limit-base, imposed by a system of mechanisms, that tend to maintain human groups within certain quantitative limits in social organizations.

Environment here is the "Others", the interrelated dependencies people and objects that at any change in this ecosystem will react and reequilibrate, until he reaches a new stage of evolution or equilibrium. In relation to objects- the less pyramidic the distribution they have the less influences they have in peoples' interaction.

Ecology is the mechanism of people and objects (things, possessions, money), where peers have reciprocal influence direct ( a->b) or indirectly (transferred a->b->c) but mediated by a field of materiality with transactions and influence of objects that at the same time influence a lot the relation of human interaction from man to man.

Maybe it has to do with humans losing the qualitative limits of their sense of empowerment, participation and engagement every individual needs to feel, that maybe is only possible in small equalitarian groups so that we escape the sense of void, of feeling "anonymity", or more accurately anomie⁽²⁾ the French word of Emile Durkheim in the actions made to build the world around them, a defensive natural mechanism of a "the malady of the infinite".

An equalitarian society is a set of people interacting in social situation, with equal capacity of influencing and being influenced. Influence here is just a quality with direction (inbound, outbound) because it is impossible to measure quantitatively inside of every human being and it has an unconscious strong component.

We can only ensure equality in the relation of Man-toMan in equalitarian (non-paternalistic) groups , but not in relation to the world of objects (hierarchic and paternalistic) underlaying and influencing the equality of human interaction because everyone wants what others have and everyone has what others want.

Maybe the next example where I mix objects with people is not the best one, but I'm going to use it anyway:

The 1% of society rulers (minority) that are equalitarian only between them, but at the cost of the exploited 99% (majority) that are considered objects (slaves) and shows the influence of object possessions in the relation of Man-to-Man, and how paternalistic structures of things can "treat men as objects".

With decentralized autonomous free cells the phenomena of the "critical-group" increases the probability of success for organizations. This is based on small and completely autonomous groups because of its resilience and malleability, improving learning, innovation, engagement and introjection of the process of consensus. Culture is all born of introversion of old and new values.

To this kind characteristics mentioned in the paragraph above, I will call it "the culture of the network", and it's very important to understand the concept, because all social media platforms have a different kind of culture, they can be centralized, hierarchic and paternalistic or the contrary more like steemit that established a neo-culture for social media in the blockchain and we are the witnesses of new patterns in the attention economy.

1- The Value of a social network

I going to start with some Questions that I'm not going to answer.

Even if you can get all the telephone numbers of the would, can you call them all during your life?.

Can I interact with all the users of Steemit, until I know all of them, distinguish them and memorize them all?.

And after can I read all the posts on Steemit during my lifetime?.

In my other posts on this subject I mentioned the concept of valency as the number of info and influences a human can carry in a defined period of time. The valency of the number of objects possible to possess and the number of transactions is not unlimited and should also be considered here.

Valency represents the biggest number of interests in relation to people, objects, and transactions that are simultaneously possible in a period of time and this can't change without a genetic mutation, showing also the problem of the limits of access-to-all for every human being.

The syndrome of the Babel Tower, the hope for global communication for all Humanity leads to that actual state of mass media where false facts can become proved real news with the point of view of the power. I'm not going to waste much time on the analyses of the value of the network, discussing the already established theories or assumptions related to Zipf's Law, Metcalfe's Law and Reed's Law, that will need more studies to prove their scientifically or even dollars/

David P. Reed's law --> "that the utility of large networks, particularly social networks, can scale exponentially with the size of the network. The reason for this is that the number of possible sub-groups of network participants is 2N − N − 1, where N is the number of participants. This grows much more rapidly than either the number of participants, N, or the number of possible pair connections, N(N − 1)/2 (which follows Metcalfe's law). so that even if the utility of groups available to be joined is very small on a peer-group basis, eventually the network effect of potential group membership can dominate the overall economics of the system."(7)

Sarnoff's Law says that value of a broadcast network increases in direct proportion with the number of users.-10 users - 10 dollars/ 100 users - 100

Ethernet founder Robert Metcalfe's law --->Value — and value growth — of fully connected networks is proportional to the square of the number of its nodes (connected users of the system) (n2)

Zipf's Law formalize that every member of a network with n users has value proportional to log( n ), for n log( n ) total value.

"Zipf's Law is behind phenomena such as "content is not king", and "long tails", which argue that it is the huge volumes of small items or interactions, not the few huge hits, that produce the most value."(5)

I'm going to talk about the limitations in size of human nodes ( how long can you go and stay human2human ) not about the physical node limits of P2P (mathematically infinite).

This theories basing the value of a network by the number of possible connections was created in relation to devices, so this pseudo mathematical analysis that are not base in Human nodes(people) explaining the failure of a lot of dot.coms which value was based in this formulas.

Humans Nodes have limited scalability in relation to the number of interactions with other humans and looking at all species is proportional to the size of the neocortex.

Maybe the value of the network isn't for sure exponential and less is quadratic it can be possible that it is just logarithmic or even lower, just an arithmetical progression with values from 150 (Dunbar's number) to 500 ( more recent studies in social media) for each human node created.

Recent studies of Dunbar and Al. found that there was layers related to the strength of emotional ties with peers (5 more close friends or family in the first layer, then 10 less contacted friends in the second layer, then 35 and a final layer of 100, defining a stratified nature for human social interactions.

Dunbar's numbers simply says that the value of a personal network, is around 150 and maybe can reach 500 but after that is surely very difficult to manage, even with the facilitating mechanism of the Internet, because each connection demands a finite amount of time.

The importance of this numbers here is to understand the capacity to keep people feeling human on being equalitarian, to access and influence and I will call it the Human value of a social network that have always to be analyzed in therms of culture and social stratification of that community.

In a network node connections in the beginning increases but around Dunbar's Number (150) some data have showed this values can until until 500, varying a lot with factors of age and time spent online, but only a small percentage of those "friends" actually communicate with one another.

"Anthropologist H. Russell Bernard and Peter Killworth and associates...came up with an estimated mean number of ties, 290, which is roughly double Dunbar's estimate. The Bernard–Killworth median of 231 is lower, due to upward straggle in the distribution, but still appreciably larger than Dunbar's estimate. Nevertheless, the Bernard–Killworth number has not been popularized as widely as Dunbar's."(6)

2- From Value of the Network to Personal Value Network.

“What Dunbar’s theory does, like all good theories, is it explains constraints, constraints in nature,” he says. “And it’s the constraints that make great architecture. It’s the constraints that make great companies.”⁽⁴⁾

To say that you know each peer or person in a network you must at least interact for a minimum period of time that is necessary to distinguish the traits that make it different from all the others

Quality guilds are trying to reward to real rich content. This is the only strategy to avoid steemit becaming a casino "nickel-machine", benefiting only the owners. Quality content curators are working as node witnesses of consensus in "good-proof-of-content creation and curation"

I'm not talking about the numerical value of the network but about small more active groups bigger then the sum of the individuals in it, implying more cohesiveness of users in the Steemian Community to remain united and solidary in the pursuit of a better perceived common goal and actions.

So the value and culture of a Human network is a function that is consubstantiated in identity, belonging, accessibility, sharing and consensus on building these values, the processes building the network with cohesion, co-operation, dissemination, learning and innovation that are crucial to the identification, legitimation, recognition, participation and transfer of introjected practices.

Inbound and outbound human connections in a group-forming network can be managed so that the actual maximum-value structure is much sparser than the set-of-subsets measured by Reed's law or the complete graph measured by Metcalfe's Law.

The number of stable of social connections a person can have, overstating network value is ignoring peoples capabilities of the individual value to form networks or communities bigger than Dunbar's Number. Some other studies go from 150 peers to a maximum of 500, depending on age and online time engagement this gap can be supported in the future with new filters, attention economy layers and new tools.

Group sizes larger than this can only became hierarchic by imposed rules, laws and regulations to maintain a stable but coercive cohesion.

"Ben Kunz wrote about this recently in Businessweek in terms of the threat to Facebook of the rise of what he calls "unsocial" networks. He points to Path, which limits your network to Dunbar's 150, and a new app for networks of only two, called Pair. These new micro social networks are bound to get closer to what their users really care about than sprawling sites like Facebook, but will probably be even more impenetrable to advertisers, which will make monetization difficult.".."Further research has suggested that the "actual value"of a social network is somewhere between the Metcalfe and the Zipf numbers, with the growth line tending more linear than exponential."⁽³⁾

Don't forget that to the value of the network must be subtracted the number the users that spam, flag and mute. Attracting and retaining augments the value of the network.

Clusters of Freedom Cell networks sharing a common vision and the set of all the solutions in their mission are the fundamental and best pillars to build a free society.

3- Can the Blockchain and Steemit be a "Ghandi Phenomena"?

To achieve possible and realizable utopias to happen, we may have to try impossible things.

To start this last philosophical reflection I will say "Yes" it is a possible realizable utopia on the blochchain and in social independent media, like commented in a dan & ned video interview "Giving back power of media to the people,... without censorship" that I consider to be our first Mission

The smaller groups in very large numbers give the possibility and Speed of reaction of the all community and the size depends on:

a) - the social structure of the group (hierarchic or equalitarian ) - equalitarian structures numbers seem to be smaller because hierarchic structures only desintegrate at large number around 900 members;

b) - the valency specific to human nature;

c) - the capacity of the channel related to human species;

d) - the speed of reaction imposed by the context;

e) - the specific velocity of the language used by the group.

How could the phenomena of the message of Ghandhi have passed in a country of 300.000 million people-without Internet :)- in such a short period of time and get all them involved in a passive resistance involving women and children, overcoming even the fear of death as a consequence?.

This question helps to understand how the structure of smaller equalitarian groups can lead the blockchain and Steemit, so that any human feels he is involved and participating in a society of hundreds of thousand users and be the active foundations.

Yona Friedman uses the"critical-group" phenomena to explain how this have happened and explain the speed of language.

At the time in India there was 500.000 villages and about 50.000 casts, where decisions for survival are made in small sub-groups that in the case of India are juxtaposed and not overlapped between them , that Yona calls "the abandoned of power" because government in India is distant and not important for their lives.

This happening is an exception to the impossibility of generalized communication where radios or papers where rarely used, so instead of messaging and instead of talking he opts to give an example, he start behaving like a peasant or farmer, which is explained by the inimaginable speed of language Gandhi used of mimetizing traditional and usual behavior. So generalized communication is only possible in this case because everybody targeted by it already knew perfectly in advance the content of the message.

So the steemit phenomena if in the future everybody in society is already expecting that kind of message (almost impossible) and steemit maintain a structure of clusters of equalitarian micro-groups with a strong sense of involvement building the community.

Change is the only certainty in society and when it is not made from the Top then it will come from the people bellow, but when this happens the Top calls it subversive and it is more disruptive and make the network lose value.

The motivation to change come by the power of feeling that things can transform the power of the valency of the human possible interactions and the capacity to influence one's destiny and abandon the culture of fate or destiny outside influence that is only masking and unconscious state of voluntary servitude and conformism.

Society have a materialistic base and human consciousness is a reflection of that.

Steemit can be an oasis in this savage capitalist post-democracy, an island to focus in the resistance to the globalization that supposed to benefit the explored but is being made in the name of big money and authoritarian right winged populism.

The new economic elites do not believe in democracy as consensus and want to maintain in this post-truth kleptocracy maintained by the corruptocrats dancing int the "Revolving Door" making politicians and elites to live in the same House of Cards.

Actually the miscalled democratic regimes electing new false nationalist, populist and racist millionaires and entrepeneurs, that can only exist in a facade of elections that "legally" steal the will of 99% of the people and replaced by the will of the 1% creating increasing inequality and poverty.

Because the media was supposed to be the Fourth Power to fight abuse of the other powers, today it is more and more the stage where Power can make their plot justifiable in the eyes of the oppressed and to suffocate new ideas.

So if steemit keeps its actual polarized equalitarian small groups, I think it's possible to spread and become a very valuable network mainly by its actual network culture, that keep the ideal of inside this Freedom cells.

I'll put here a comment I made @kevinwong think the Rock'n Roll phase on steemit have to do with growth crisis in any community that finds ways to re-organize and polarize in Steemian Freedom Cells or groups that actively want to feel engaged in the growth of the community and to escape that sense of the impotence of feeling powerless in a big crowd and create that feeling of belonging, empowerment and participation.

At the same time, I think that these free cells have avoided the possibility of Steemit to became a centralized and hierarchic structure, by polarizing in smaller equalitarian sub-communities that keep the original vision of Steemit as an alternative for empowering the people against the mass media blindfold and build new ways for this post-truth Era.

Conclusions

a) The value of a network is not the possible connections between Steemit peers, but the possible human connections each one can do

b) The fundamental aspect that equalitarian group polarization in Steemit seems to bring more value because we have avoided to became a hierarchic structure because it reduces engagement, speed of growth, adaptability and resilience.

c)A final big value is that Equalitarian Freedom Cells is the cohesiveness of the Steemian Community to remain united and solidary in the pursuit of a better perceived common goal and actions favoring high learning curve and innovation.

Footnote:

(*) I choose the term Equalitarian for a vision that accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism , instead of Egalitarian a vision who accepts or promotes social equality and equal rights for all people because that is not yet possible in the material hierarchic structure of our world of objects and assets.

My other posts on Steemit about the blockchain

3 Realizable Utopias for Steemit

Do Blockchain communities have a "Critical-Group" ?

Is the blockchain a "Hierarchical"; or an "Equalitarian" Community?

Is the blockchain a Realizable Social Utopia?

An Ode to the blockchain - the Dialectic of Liberation

Steemit: Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy

Steemit Value : Intangible Asset vs Tangible Asset Analysis

Steemit: Altruism and Financial Scarcity and the rise of Advertising

Steemit : The Shrinking of the Money Pie and the Rise of Human Pie

Posts of Steemians

Higher Social Activity = Higher Currency Value?

Scalability of value in decentralized networks

B/W Pictures Source:

All black and white hand writing pictures included in the slides, are originally copied from the book - "Utopias Realizáveis" - (Realizable Utopias )by Yona Friedman , Sociocultur, Lisbon, 1977 (in Portuguese)

References:

(1) Yona Friedman - wikipedia : Architect, urban planner, designer but also a sociology student, physics and science communications, Yona Friedman (Budapest, 1923) is back at the center of international architectural culture after having long been dismissed as Utopian. Member of the Hungarian anti-Nazi resistance, Friedman spent a few years in Haifa, Israel, where he sketched the first of his many theories, namely the Mobile Manifesto architecture in which special construction systems allow the inhabitant to determine for itself the shape, style etc. his apartment and to change it when they want it.

website: Yona Friedman

Interview with Yona Friedman: "Imagine, Having Improvised Volumes "Floating" In Space, Like Balloons"

Yona Friedman 1000+ photos - Pinterest

(2) Wikipedia - Anomie is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals".[1] It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. Durkheim never uses the term normlessness; rather, he describes anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[3] Durkheim used the term "the malady of the infinite" because desire without limit can never be fulfilled, it only becomes more intense.

(3) The Dunbar Number, From the Guru of Social Networks - Bloomberg

(4) Facebook Values Itself Based on Metcalfe's Law, But the Market Is Using Zipf's

(5) A refutation of Metcalfe's Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections

(6)Dunbar's number - Wikipedia

(7)Reed's law From Wikipedia

A refutation of Metcalfe's Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections Andrew Odlyzk and Benjamin Tilly

Growth of Value in Social Networks

Metcalfe's Law is Wrong

Your Facebook Friends Are Really Not That Into You

Metcalfe's_law - wikipedia.org/

On the Value of a Social Network - Sandeep Chalasani

The Social Physics of Financial Technology (FinTech)

Robin Dunbar: we can only ever have 150 friends at most…

Books:

Utopies réalisables by Yona Friedman.

Dunbar, R. (1996). Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language. London, Faber and Faber.

Comment vivre entre les autres sans être esclave et sans être chef, J.J. Pauvert, Paris, 1974

The Politics of Utopia: A Study in Theory and Practice By Barbara Goodwin, Keith Taylor

Video:

One Video among hundreds : Yona Friedman: You are obliged to stay Mainstream