Contribution received to the FET Flagships consultation: Computational Socio-Geonomics/Metaloger, The Peoples' Toolkit

Author: John Sutcliffe-Braithwaite-  Independent Professional Services Ltd

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This proposal is for a new applied science of human behaviour and its experimental validation, implemented universally via The Peoples’ Toolkit, in a shared endeavour that will enfold the entirety of human efforts across the spectrum of human interests since the emergence of the Homo Sapiens species to current fascination with our possible cosmic conclusion. In between is the ‘here and now’, and what we want to do with it, that gives us sufficient purpose and necessary opportunity - if we think about it carefully enough – to bring about a new Order of Things. Its secret recipe is the means to find value – and then make use of it. This brings to the general significance of husbanding the fragile ecology of our existence, the requirement for people, not just as the consumers of the ecology, but as its only saviour (if we put our minds to it). The task is not just loving our gadgets, but recognising we are seven billion individual widgets continuously processing the ecology of our world & our minds. We intend for us all to get on with it together; & learn how to distinguish between what we value & its opposite & how to discriminate between them (mindfulness). This skill is as fundamental as love, nurturing & working in a common cause to safeguard our future. Antonio Loredan, 25/1/16 described FET Open as having a ‘nurturing role’. Following his description of its mission as to kick start the big shifts in society, leading to paradigmatic change in functioning, we know we are on the right track. A new App, The Peoples’ Toolkit, a symbiosis of ICT, science & society will nurture a better World driven by People, empowered, enabled & engaged. We will be seven billion participants in the common experiment of life, an evolving ecosystem of purposeful innovating minds caring for the future, & empowered, enabled & engaged to make it happen, with Society its supporting ways-&-means, working “towards a sustainable World: holistic, symbiotic, creative, & survivable”.

Our target is to be the ‘social media of choice’ for concerned people. It brings to the domain of Sociology, the excitement of democratic involvement that is already making its mark in EU thinking, coupled with the socio-technology of the Information Age – extended into a new paradigm of Computable Society, eighty years after ‘On Computable Numbers’ & likely to prove as defining. Its other determining features include complexity science & ‘interconnectedness’, also key EU foci. The complexity of society and how this permeates every aspect of its functioning is a huge part of sociology & societal research; such research involves setting up laboratory experiments & applying any useful findings into ‘real-life’ actions. This is the ‘Complexity in the Real World’ (CRW) movement. This ‘grand challenge’ sets out to incorporate this model directly into how ordinary life proceeds, which presumes some fundamental alignment between ‘complexity science’ and that of ‘people/society’ functioning.  This research starts from the hypothesis that the entire phenomenon of the human condition is driven by the complex adaptive system of the human mind, specifically as the basic tool of human purpose/decision-making. This research is an empirical scientific study of how human behaviour operates to bring about observed, experienced phenomena of human life and how this can be improved and optimised; within the context of the past decade of EU research into identified problems of society and our world’s well identified risks, the S&T grand challenge proposed holds out the possibility to tackle the fundamental underlying cause – ‘ourselves’.   Paradoxically both cause-&-solution are the same: we are into the applied science domain of ‘systems of systems’. In terms that are resonant with H2020 terminology, we are beginning to recognise the total interconnectedness of everything about our world such that there is no room for the old model of power: we are all in it together. This grand challenge works with the entirety of ubiquitous systems in place, and, usefully and significantly establishes their significance(s) within the overall ecology of human purpose. The vision is of a universal individual & collective societal involvement summarised in the two slogans:

• The 4‘E’s: everyone/everywhere/everyday/everything; this is digital societal-personal involvement
• People: Empowered, Enabled and Engaged, to say, “Yes, we compute our World”.

‘Computable Society’ will be a game-changer because it uses ICT, the defining technology of our Age to involve the whole world in an effort to innovate a new, better future by redesigning the present model(s) where these are past their sell-by date. This is about Human Will and Wilfulness. The specific challenge is to establish a viable, living, ecosystem of human purpose, defined by & based on the new science & socio-technology, together with the entire phenomenon of functioning people & their society(ies), enterprises, institutions, & above all families. It becomes a living/usable model of our purposeful existence.

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You can add your comments on this topic at:  https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/computational-socio-geonomicsme...