SOCIETY 2.0

What is “Society 2.0”?

“Society 2.0” is an image of what current tools, activities and social processes could provide social-enhancement. This can be depicted by conceptualizing two components: 1) the rightful and appropriate usage of our biological and artificial information technologies for the serious purposes of increasing the knowledge base of all, and 2) the individual and collective reorientation of acting upon the most valuable of information available to us. A redirection of consumerism, research, journalism, activism, and economic decisions, ECT, could result as people become more informed about ‘positive human-activities.’

Developing appropriate incentives for focusing our collaborative knowledge in a way of behaving and existing alternatively is not in this picture of Society 2.0. ‘Society 2.0’ is in part, an image of emerging components which have already had an impact of guiding the use of web-based information applications. Specific facets of the applications have successfully focused on integrative methods of collaboration and information dissemination. Individual users communicate to the entire collective over networks in a way where by all the users can seek out and discover innovative ideas of social change. If Human-Kind would use the “information technologies” we have to their fullest societal potential, the exchanging of innovative ideas can more easily occur. The resulting social, cognitive advancement could at least potentially offer a collective reorientation of being an ‘informed’ citizen, researcher, producer, consumer ECT. This would mean that individual 'informed-actions' would create societal outcomes which represent a wider knowledge base.

This kind of epistemic-behavior of an individual would be more apparent at an interpersonal level. This individual reorientation should create the incentive for both communities, and society-at-large to use such informational tools to manage, share, and discover innovative knowledge-formations and others' 'informed' perspectives on the decisions we make in our daily lives. If individuals are attentive to finding that which will allow them to make more ‘informed’ decisions, than the collective intelligence and the communities of practice of our species can generate alternatives to the societal outcomes we see today. Individual entities often act upon, collaborate, and disseminate information for the benefit and survival of the collective.

Could There Be a Way For This to Occur?

Yes, one potential way would be through the societal action of informing one another by more effective modes of collaborative research, so that practices of actively seeking out important information would be a more sought-after activity. Through various methods of incorporating accessible and searchable interdisciplinary research through online media, ‘Society 2.0’ would use information technology to research, disseminate, collaborate, and coordinate what individuals should do to advance society. Although not considering 'natural' knowledge systems in the statement; in 1964 Oliver W. Holmes wrote “Knowledge exists in two forms: (1) "active knowledge," meaning that to be found in the brains of living human individuals and therefore available to them at any given moment as bases for actions, and (2) "passive (or potential) knowledge," which exists in the great reservoir of documents in which have been recorded the experiences, observations, thoughts, and discoveries of other men, chiefly those of the past”(Holmes 1).

Puting collective, “active and passive knowledge” to action could be attained by using the knowledge management applications of “Web 2.0 and Social Media.” These innovative tools should be used for more than just entertainment and terminology-defining purposes. Web 2.0, Social Media, and the collaborative orientations which result from their use, should enable and encourage serious discourse and research praxis over the Internet. The increase of valuable information flow would allow us to fully characterize our physical selves as the informed beings we are. The outcome would be producing social results and externalities in the physical world that demonstrate the (at least better) understanding of our human-knowledge-base. Imagining potential human-betterment in the ways I have mentioned is the crux of “Society 2.0.”

Components of ‘Society 2.0’

Many of the aspects of ‘Society 2.0’ are related to terminology which is emerging in use, yet familiar to scholars. Outlining the components which make up the image will enable the reader to conceptualize ‘information flows’ in the context of ‘Society 2.0.’ Ken Fischer has given the best definition of ‘social technology’ from what I have researched, and it was from his own personal blog, without sources. Social Technology describes technology which makes use of contribution and the activities of the users of the tools and applications to enhance the technologies’ “relevance, usability, content, navigation or function” (Fischer 2009.) Social technology has been used in many different ways and through many different contexts, but this understanding of its meaning will be the most useful for this text. Social Software describes two things: 1) a variety of software systems that allow users to collaborate and share information, and 2) the processes of societies which serve a specific organizational role. Although applicable to academia, social software is not typically used in this context. Terry Anderson has written on the concept of 'educational social software,' defined as "[...] networked tools that support and encourage individuals to learn together while retaining individual control over their time, space, presence, activity, identity and relationship" (Anderson 2005a, p. 4.) As Anderson understands it, social software is a very difficult concept to define because it consists of a wide range of different information technologies and the ‘social’ piece of the ‘software’ often comes to light from a combined use of different tools and applications.

Among other facets, ‘Society 2.0’ combines the concepts of collective intelligence and communities of practice. Tom Atlee has written a great deal about collective intelligence and would agree that it is basically the capacity of human communities to evolve towards higher organizations, complexities of information and harmonious activities using methods of innovation. Methods to create collective innovation would be joint avenues of “differentiation and integration, competition and collaboration,” depending on the context (Atlee, 2007, 1.) In terms of ‘Society 2.0,’ it is a shared, group intelligence that exists through these methods in the intellectual ‘social media’ of many individuals having discourse about social change.

Similarly, 'communities of practice' is a term which was coined by Barbara Rogoff in 1985, and is directly related to our concept of ‘Society 2.0.’ According to Etienne Wenger, “communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavor…Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger circa 2007, 1) Weinger describes three characteristics of ‘communities of practice;’ the domain, the community, and the practice. In terms of ‘Society 2.0,’ our domain is the collective identity of an ‘informed society’ which acts upon such shared interests. The community is that of individuals participating in “joint activities” and collaborative discussions in order to better inform the collective, disseminating knowledge. The practice of ‘Society 2.0’ would be developing a “shared repertoire” of sustained interactions, becoming a collective of “practitioners” whom actively carry out decisions as consumers, activists, and researchers which echo the information these individuals have incorporated into their personal knowledge base (Wenger 2002.) The pseudo-combination of these two concepts in ‘Society 2.0’ gives the reader insight into just how this metaphysical collective intelligence is put into practice to bring about societal change.

Information Systems are both Biological and Artificial

Organisms, networks, societies and communities exchange information using interactive modes of communication. These entities utilize methods of information flow through biological and 'artificial' information systems. Information technologies facilitate this process, regardless the medium of communication. This enables these individual and collective entities to fluidly-direct their actions based on the information that is available to the network. This is more apparent in the context of specific species direct the actions of ‘networks’ based on the information these organisms can perceive. Examples of systems in nature using information in simple social networks to create long-term survival solutions are seen ubiquitously. Unfortunately, examples of other organisms and networks using misinformation or using information inappropriately are also apparent. In either instance, Information is used by all species in one way or another to guide how the actions of individual organisms should orient to 'socially-create' some specific reality. As I have found, “information technologies” can be seen in the activities of all organisms. Humans have developed “biological information technologies” as well as in this same context.
Our senses are the physiological methods of perceiving and exchanging information, our “biological information systems”. Throughout human history, examples of oral traditions and mass-gatherings show that a great deal of information and knowledge can be accumulated using our physiological information systems. Because of this biological information that is exchanged between individuals, our bodies have developed complex mechanisms and processes of reading and inferring what messages other humans are trying to convey. Human physiological media then can only convey so much information to individuals and the collective knowledge base. In order to better organize the complexities of the information in reality, humans developed methods of storing and gathering information that is more effective than only using our senses.

We have created artifice to store and gather data, being the physical technologies which amplify our communicative and informational potential. The development of artifice-based, global-‘information systems’ is something that other organisms have not accomplished on earth. This fact may seem like an obvious statement, but there is a great deal of simplicity and interoperability of 'our' unique example of biological information systems being appropriately utilized to innovate "'user-created' information systems of artifice." This begs the question of just how technologically advanced methods of exchanging information could be oriented differently? Could informing society in a way which appropriately uses information technologies allow individuals to predicatively organize entire networks; similarly to how biological organisms typically do this for the survival of that 'network' or even species? If humans currently use mainstream media and social-media information technologies in ways which only minimally inform-- only marginally inspiring social collaboration or participation in how society is guided-- then how can society use the technology currently available to facilitate more informed social actions?