Open Password – Wednesday October 6, 2021
#982
Stefan Thurner – Fragility of the World – Information Science – Tipping Points – Stefan Hauff-Hartig – Complexity Hub Vienna – Club of Rome – Konrad Lorenz – Complexity Research – Big Data Technologies – Revolutionary Theories – Financial System – Financial Crises – Complexity Economics – Planet Earth – Species Extinction – Global warming – Collapse – Collateral damage – Dilemmas – Mental changes – Civil society – Hierarchical-dictatorial systems – Western democracies – Information pathologies – John W. Bagby – Pennsylvania State University – Kimberly House – University of North Texas – Artificial Intelligence – Critical Infrastructures – Machine Learning – Industrial Policy – China – United States – European Union – Philipp Steinberg – Nils Börnsen – Dirk Neumann – Digital regulatory policy – Economic service – Shaping digitalization – Federal government – Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy – Data and evidence-based economic policy – Tessa Diphhoorn, Nikkie Wiegink, Corporate Sovereignty – Permissive Power – Southern Africa – Sage Journals – Anthropology – Ethnographic Fieldwork
- Cover story:
In a complex and fragile world, a clear task for information science: identify tipping points, move them into the distance and use their positive potential –
By Stefan Hauff-Hartig
- Outside the box
Critical Infrastructures of Artificial Intelligence:
Where will win – China, United States or the European Union?
Develop economic policy based on evidence
Corporate Sovereignty and Permissive Power in South Africa
Stefan Thurner: The fragility of the world
In a complex and fragile world,
a clear task for information science: identify tipping points, move them into the distance and use their positive potential
By Stefan Hauff-Hartig
Stefan Hauff-Hartig
Stefan Thurner: The fragility of the world – collapse or turning point. We have it in our hands. Vienna: edition a; 2020. ISBN 978-3-99001-428-8. 259 pages. €24.00.
In his book “The Fragility of the World – Collapse or Turnaround. We have it in our hands,” says Stefan Thurner, describing our world as a complex system that consists of many fragile sub-systems and individual systems. Their anthropogenic networks can change radically again and again when critical points are exceeded. There are major threats to the status quo, but at the same time there are ways out of current crises.
The author Prof. Dr. Stefan Thurner is an economist and physicist and, as president, heads the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH), which brings together and advances various institutions in Austria in the research of complex systems and big data.
With his expertise he describes the state of our social and natural world and what is threatening it. The book is therefore in a series with publications such as the interdisciplinary study “The Limits to Growth” by the Club of Rome (1972), which was published almost 50 years ago, and to a certain extent the “Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity” by Nobel Prize winner Konrad Lorenz (1973). . Unlike the latter, however, one does not find any strongly moralizing or apocalyptic conclusions in Thurner .
Rather, based on his findings in the field of complexity research, the author paints our world quite soberly as a networked system of complex networked systems. In contrast to the empirical research that has prevailed to date, big data technologies make it possible not only to process previously unimagined amounts of data and information, but also to gain new insights based on these available amounts and to reorient future research.
Thurner uses two elementary concepts as the basis for his theses. On the one hand, he assumes that every complex system can be broken down into interconnected individual elements. This is of course not a new finding. Big Data, however, creates the conditions so that reductions that are essential for empirical work are no longer necessary (or no longer to the same extent as before).
The second concept is the tipping point: a tipping point, which is precisely the moment at which a relatively small quantitative change within a system leads to its radical qualitative change, possibly even to its complete destruction. The term has been used for about ten years. Ideas about abrupt upheavals like those in revolutionary theories have of course existed at least since industrialization.
Of course, tipping points can be found retrospectively, described and conclusions drawn for future developments. This is the core of science and research in general, but also of everyday experiences and actions in everyday life. If you follow Thurner, it is Big Data, with the processing of huge quantities of data and their relationships, contexts and semantics, that enable us to recognize possible tipping points in advance and to look for possible solutions on a completely new basis.
One of the (partial) worlds to which Thurner applies complexity research is, first of all, the financial system. This is obvious, because it is obviously based on “numbers”, financial data, and in an incredible abundance. At the same time, despite ever-expanded regulatory mechanisms, there is still a risk of regional and global financial crises. That’s why the Complexity Science Hub Vienna is researching how different regulation schemes can be tested virtually and which measures can make a system safer or more unstable and even collapse. This complexity economics can therefore calculate systemic risks of financial systems.
The next complex system Thurner focuses on is our planet. Even before the appearance of humans, several tipping points can be identified, each of which led to mass extinction of species. However, what was in equilibrium for a long time has, over the last few decades, come closer and closer to not just one tipping point, but rather to several tipping points due to anthropogenic global warming. Due to the much stronger and more complex networked networks compared to financial systems, there is a risk that ecological and physico-chemical systems, which are mutually dependent, will move irreversibly and self-reinforcing towards a collapse. But in contrast to financial systems, “the fact that there is currently no comprehensive, coherent, standardized and network-based data base that details how the various economic and ecosystems are connected […] also leads to this Difficulty that we do not know the tipping points exactly” (page 139), and the appeal to draw conclusions from this: a more than clear task for information science.
The author doesn’t make it easy for himself. For him there are no easy solutions with increasing collateral damage. He clearly highlights dilemmas, such as: B. that, on the one hand, infrastructure projects cause a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions, but non-industrialized countries have a right to humane living conditions. For him, possible solutions include technical advances. But he relies even more heavily on mental changes that lead to changed behavior and thus to changes in socio-economic networks. This is where the hopeful side of his approach becomes apparent: a gradual change in personal attitudes can lead to a “positive” tipping point that causes the fossil culture to disappear.
The last complex that Thurner considers is civil society, which for him is primarily threatened by populists. Similar to global warming, the complexity of civil society cannot currently be comprehensively described scientifically. Complexity research, for example, compares the stability of hierarchical-dictatorial and democratic networks. While hierarchical-dictatorial systems shorten decision-making processes and can be economically more efficient, especially in the short term, history has shown that strong hierarchical structures lead to the loss of democratic and personal freedoms and to the abuse of power by small elites. The flat hierarchies of Western democracies, on the other hand, are more adaptable and resilient in the long term, but important decision-making processes are sometimes delayed for far too long.
The stress factors that cause the democratic rules of the game to come under pressure and our civil society to move toward threatening tipping points are not unknown. However, phenomena such as monopoly positions of tech companies, the ultimate pressure for efficiency, but especially the destructive effect of national populism take on a new dimension in this context, especially since the protagonists of populism openly pursue the goal of destroying democratic institutions to put hierarchical structures in their place. Information pathologies such as fake news, filter bubbles and nudging (as an undemocratic method of manipulation) act as tools in a destructive program.
In the final chapter, with “Caught in a dilemma or steps forward?”, the author describes from his point of view the core question facing our world, which he wants to help answer through the science of complex systems. For this purpose, tipping points should be identified based on a broad database and scientific methods and possible approaches to them should be monitored. To ensure that these tipping points are never reached, corrective mechanisms must be identified, which politicians must then implement as binding, reasonable rules of conduct.
In his easy-to-read book, which summarizes the core statements at the end of each chapter, Stefan Thurner soberly describes how fragile our world is, but also how fragile subsystems can be, because everything is connected to everything else. However, without calling for the end of the world, he shows that complexity research and big data technologies make it possible to identify or at least shift destructive tipping points based on a broad database. And the potential of tipping points can even be used positively through counteracting civil society action.
Outside the box:
Recommendations of the week
Critical Infrastructures of Artificial Intelligence:
Where will win – China, USA or the European Union?
Develop economic policy based on evidence
Corporate Sovereignty and Permissive Power
in South Africa
John W. Bagby , Pennsylvania State University, and Kimberly House, University of North Texas, Artificial Intelligence: The Critical Infrastructures, September 2021, in: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3924512 . Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation is most strongly impacted by AI Critical Infrastructures. These are the conditions, capacities, assets and inputs that create an environment conducive to the advancement of the AI technologies. Close inspection of AI’s generalized architecture reveals a supply chain that implies six AI critical infrastructures. There are at least seven necessary steps or processes contained in a generalized AI architecture. These steps are: (1) occurrences, events, facts or conditions transpire enabling the creation of potentially useful data, (2) these data are logged through capture and (increasingly computer and telecommunications enabled) initial storage, (3) such data are aggregated , often by numerous data repositories or AI operators, (4) human intelligence performs iterative analysis as derived from deployment of algorithms, (5) initial machine learning occurs, (6) near constant feedback loops are deployed by many AI applications that adapt the underlying model as new data is incorporated, and (7) based on insights resulting from AI, decision-making occurs, both automatically by computer or by human intervention. Successful Machine Learning requires ample supply of the six broad AI critical infrastructures: (i) strategic insight/vision largely expressed as regional and/or national Industrial Policy, which is paramount in impacting all four other AI critical infrastructures, (ii) human intellect is needed to foster a deep-bench, from a competent AI Workforce, (iii) R&D Investment in AI, (iv) AI Hardware, both Computing Power and Connectivity (ICT), (v) bountiful and ever growing supply of Accessible Data, and (vi) market receptivity as sustainable demand for AI knowledge to monetize successful AI innovation. This article provides an initial foundation for a comparison of the three world economies (regions) seemingly best positioned to make substantial AI advancements. Predictably, significant differences among the political and cultural drivers in these three regions are likely to impact needed commitment to AI critical infrastructures: China (Asia) vs. the United States (North America) vs. European Union (EU). The harsh reality of AI innovation is that delays in commitment and deployment of AI critical infrastructures will relegate the losing region(s) to become, at best, a chronic AI customer rather than a major successful AI supplier.
Philipp Steinberg, Nils Börnsen, Dirk Neumann, Digital regulatory policy – further developing economic policy based on data and evidence, in: Wirtschaftsdienst. Digitalization brings with it far-reaching changes for the economy and society. Against this background, the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy published a concept paper for a regulatory action program to support digital change in December 2020 as part of the federal government’s implementation strategy “Shaping digitalization”. Its core thesis is that the basic ideas of regulatory policy remain valid in the digital economy. Its principles remain pillars of the social market economy today and can provide clear guidance for future economic policy in an increasingly digital economy. The concept paper is presented and one of the approaches outlined there for the implementation of a digital regulatory policy is examined in more detail: the data- and evidence-based further development of economic policy.
Tessa Diphhoorn, Nikkie Wiegink, Corporate sovereignty: Negotiating permissive power for profit in Southern Africa, September 2021, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14634996211037124 . The growing engagement with sovereignty in anthropology has resulted in a range of concepts that encapsulate how various (non-state) actors execute power. In this paper, we further unpack the concept of ‘corporate sovereignty’ and outline its conceptual significance. Corporate sovereignty refers to performative claims to power undertaken by (individuals aligned to) corporate entities with profit-making objectives within a state-sanctioned space. These contrasts with claims made by other (non-state) actors who operate in a permissive space that (regularly) lacks this legally grounded relationship with the state. By unpacking this state-sanctioned permissive space and highlighting the role of the state as the arbiter, our approach to corporate sovereignty offers a new comparative analytical perspective to theorize how sovereignty is performed and opens ethnographic avenues to explore how sovereignty is negotiated and co-produced across various localities. To elucidate our argument, we draw from ethnographic fieldwork conducted on coal mining companies in Mozambique and private security companies in South Africa. By focusing on cases that differ, we want to show the multitude of ways in which corporate sovereignty is enacted and takes shape.
OpenPassword
Forum and news
for the information industry
in German-speaking countries
New editions of Open Password appear three times a week.
If you would like to subscribe to the email service free of charge, please register at www.password-online.de.
The current edition of Open Password can be accessed immediately after it appears on the web. www.password-online.de/archiv. This also applies to all previously published editions.
International Cooperation Partner:
Outsell (London)
Business Industry Information Association/BIIA (Hong Kong)
Open Password Archive – Publications
OPEN PASSWORD ARCHIVE
DATA JOURNALISM
Handelsblatt’s Digital Reach