832.2
Reflections on the Sociocybernetics of “Cybernation” and the Emerging “Cyber-Nation”

Thursday, July 17, 2014: 7:45 PM
Room: Booth 47
Oral Presentation
Bernard SCOTT , Centre for Sociocybernetics Studies, Louth, United Kingdom
The term “cybernation” refers to the existing and imminent cybernetic technologies of control and communication, data storage and retrieval, social media, user modelling and intelligent support for man-machine conversational interaction. The term “cyber-nation” refers to the emerging internet-based communities that promote social change and, explicitly or implicitly, practice forms of non-hierarchical (heterarchical) democracy. Well-known examples are Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page[1] ), Avaaz (http://www.avaaz.org/en/ ) and Change.org (http://www.change.org/en-GB ).  A less well-known example is the Zeitgeist movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zeitgeist_Movement ), that developed from the Venus Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Venus_Project ), initiated by the late Jaques Fresco and Roxanne Meadows. Fresco coined the term “sociocyberneering”. There is a Facebook page dedicated to his work (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sociocyberneeringworld-a-better-place/175409582509717 ). A well-known example of an hierarchical organisation that works towards social change through cybernation is Google (http://www.google.org/ ).  There are many other organisations that use the internet to promote their particular vision of global harmony and utopian futures. A useful list can be found here: http://www.peacefromharmony.org/?cat=en_l .  Questions addressed in the paper include:
  • What is the current state of play?
  • What does the future hold?
  • What influences are at work in terms of checks and balances on privacy and social control?
  • Who owns cybernation (hardware, processes, data)?
  • How viable is the concept of a cyber-nation in the context of existing dominant belief systems and institutionalised practices?