The Global SoS Network

Streamlining Collective Intelligence for Continuous Improvement [Beta best viewed with I. Explorer]

THE EMERGENCE OF THE SUSTAINABLE GROWTH
OF PRODUCTIVITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE

If you have ever wondered why, after so much effort and the billions upon billions of dollars that are spent every year... there is so much poverty, conflict, and environmental degradation in the world...

Have you also wondered why there seems to be no end to those ills?

Are They People Problems?

...or Are They Systems-of-Systems Challenges?

Most of the money spent on poverty and conflict reduction or elimination is wasted because there has been no agreement on what is best to do. So in effect, the international community has been on what management scientists would call a decades-long firefighting mission.

Presently, the international development community sifts through the multitude of issues that ultimately impede the sustainable growth of national productivity, which has been identified as a fundamental factor for improving wellbeing. Meanwhile, too often people try to resolve conflict by either blowing themselves up, or by trying to bring bodily harm to someone else.

These facts reveal the essence of a global technological constraint that impedes most humans from using a more people-friendly and more practical and effective way to improve wellbeing. The global constraint, in turn, creates various levels of stress on humans as they -as Adam Smith would have said- strive to improve themselves and their lot in their daily lives.

On the other hand, environmental degradation is mostly a result of a few visible variables like consumption, solid and liquid waste, and gaseous emissions. So in principle, it should be easier for humans to deal with issues like the technological constraint that impedes humanity from carrying out all of its activities in an eco-friendly manner.

Yet, in addition to billions of humans either not having enough to eat, or not having proper living accommodations, scientists say human activities are damaging the biosphere to the no-return point.

The Engineering of Systematic Solutions to Global Issues

In this video, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, comments on the engineering approach to sustainable development, which is the global evolutionary process that faciliates the emergent System-of-Systems (SoS) properties for sustainability.

Redirect to Engineering and Sustainable Development from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

The Global SoS Network has determined that the major social, economical and environmental difficulties facing humanity at the beginning of the 21st. Century are a direct result of one and the same technological constraint. It impedes humans, in their role as constituents, from using the information about stress-creating conflict as they live their daily lives, and from initiating the collective activities required for the resolution of the aforementioned issues.

More specifically, information about all sort of social, economic and environmental conflict is readily available to constituents: As humans live their daily lives, they gather information regarding constituent conflict. Humans own the information that can bring about the end of privation, of open conflict and of environmental degradation, while boosting the sustainable growth of global productivity and wellbeing. But humans the world over, in their role as citizens, seem to be unaware of how to put all that collective brainpower to good use, hence the technological constraint.

Consequently, some key questions emerge from this scenario...

What are humans to do with that information?

Whom do they communicate it to?

How can human society unravel its major technological constraint?

Local Tools for Global Transcendence

The Global SoS Network posits that sustainable growth of productivity and wellbeing will come about from synergistic interaction between the constituent and legislative functions of legislative Systems of Systems.

Humans, now in their role as constituents, also own the decisions made by their legislators. But effective ownership requires that constituents eliminate their technological constraint by articulating the conflict-relevant information that they own, and communicating it to their legislators through their national teledemocratic infrastructure.

From the Systems of Sytems perspective, a national teledemocratic infrastructure consists of the postal service and the Internet, when those communication channels are used to communicate with legislators.

Therefore, effective local resolution of constitutnet conflict, be it social, economic or environmental, is the result of robust teledemocratic mailstreams that will facilitate the emergent and environment friendly:

Win-Win Resolution of Conflict
Unravelling of Industrial Underdevelopment
Eradication of Global Poverty

Image: © Benetton Group S.p.A.; with Adequate Technology? caption by Globalsosnet

But Meeting Those Global Challenges Seems So Difficult...

and Costly...

Macroergonomically speaking, teledemocratic collective-intelligence processes are sociotechnical-information processes. And in spite of the scarily complex, hi-tech, and expensive-sounding names, the streamlining of collective intelligence is refreshingly simple, and surprisingly economic.

To streamline their collective intelligence, constituents need to use at least four very basic tools, and to initiate simple three-step communication processes. The tools are a pen, a sheet of paper, an envelope, and a postage stamp. The processes consist of writing periodic letters to the pertinent legislator, having them delivered, and obtaining the subsequent replies.

As the collective intelligence of constituents creates teledemocratic mailsreams, legislators will use traditional parliamentarian procedures in order to resolve constituent conflict in a way that businesses will become motivated to invest in order to improve productivity, boosting the growth of national productivity and wellbeing. As a result, quality of life and the standard of living also improve, meaning that everyone involved, and the environment, win.

In addition to facilitating constituent-legislator communication, adequate postal services offer the adaptive capacity of addressing pressing social needs. For example, adequate postal services allow for the rollout of municipal and utility billing systems. The resulting income streams are key for the development and upkeep of the public infrastructure necessary for quality education and medical services, and for all-important trade.

On the other hand, the Internet is a very convenient venue for establishing teledemocratic processes. But until poor countries become affluent, the cost of each computer, in addition to installation costs (electric supply, fixed or cellular-line internet hook-up, modem, etc.) plus maintenance, upgrading, training, and hidden costs must be compared to the cost of a few stationery items and that of home letterboxes, which are usually made of low-cost sheetmetal. Home letterboxes only need a key and lock, and practically never need maintenance.

Using either type of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), postal services or the Internet, when social groups such as constituents use teledemocratic techniques, then the collective intelligence has the capacity to regulate the activities of the Public Sector System in benefit of the common good, of the environment, while steadily increasing the level of productivity.

A Straightforward Notion

THE TECHNOLOGICAL CONSTRAINT...

...gets smaller each time a mail carrier delivers a response from a legislator to a constituent.

Constituents are the world's most powerful social groups, and teledemocratic techniques make constituencies the most versatile of social networks.

Image: © Trinidad & Tobago Post

The key outcome from a reply from a legislator is accountability. It is no coincidence that countries where constituents are accustomed to carrying out the time-tested practice of communicating with their legislators... are developed countries, precisely the nations in which legislators are usually most accountable to their constituents. Needless to say, quality of goods, of services, of concern for the environment, of overall wellbeing, and of productivity, is highest in those same countries.

And because legislators are the only individuals that have the discretionary power -which they exercise collectively- to allocate public resources, teledemocratic activities give the basic sensation of being useful. Since hunches are not necessarily reliable guides, the Organization & Projects page indicates that copies of a background document, The Reengineering of Emerging Legislative and Postal SoSs, and several pamphlets, are available from Globalsosnet.

It seems that most underdeveloped nations are in the underdeveloped side of a postal divide. This means that most countries of the South have not developed postal-service-based ICT processes. As a consequence, the history of inadequate postal services appears to have inhibited the emergence of constituent-legislator communication activities. Now that the Internet has arrived, the constituent-legislator communicaction tradition just seems not to be there, so developing-world constituents do not appear to use that tool for channeling their grievances.

On the other hand, legislators in underdeveloped nations do allocate resources, but they do not seem to wield sufficient leverage as compared to the executive function of those legislative SoS. The reason is simple. If there is no constituent-legislator communication, legislators cannot really speak in name of their constituents, and the legislative function is not as relevant.

The practical result is that the executive function is very powerful, as compared to the legislative function. Even if the executive function does try to be effective, without the benefit of constituent-generated information, the executive function ends not being very efficient or effective in improving the habitat in a way that would help increase national productivity and quality of life in a sustainable manner.

Thus for human sustainability, SoS Engineering (SoSE) identifies teledemocratic activities, such as those ones being researched at the International Teledemocracy Centre as Best Constituent Practice. Dealing with legislative Systems of Systems themselves is bound to help donor nations because in addition to bringing much lower costs to development endeavours, the effectiveness of constituent-legislator communication will create giant markets that did not exist before. In that perspective, SoSE can predict, as the Global Marshall Plan puts it, a global economic miracle.

As an example of the potential of Best Constituent Practice, once BCP activities are initiated in developing nations, practically any developing nation can not just meet, but exceed eco-friendly milestones like the Millennium Development Goals at a very small fraction of the presently projected cost. In addition, BCP allows the ISO Series Standards to bring Total Quality Management to the delivery of public services in developing countries.

CONTRIBUTE:

Conflict, Underdevelopment, Poverty

A donation to Globalsosnet is not your usual donation. Firstly, your donation will not go towards achieving a diffuse goal that most likely attacks the effects, not the cause of the problem. Your donation will go towards an engineered elimination of the systematic cause of the aforementioned global issues. Secondly, because the goals are clear, the results are guaranteed. In the third place, your donation helps you realize somethig that, if you live in a developed nation, you might have taken for granted: Adequate postal services are a necessary and intrisic component of development and sustainability.

Transportation Safety: Quality Driving

If you get quite a shock when an airplane falls off the sky and kills dozens of people, or when someone dies from conflict, you will probably be horrified when you realize that three thousand humans die every day from land-wheeled-vehicle crashes.

The Global SoS Network has identified the isomorphism between Legislative SoS and Ground Transportation SoS. As a result, Globalsosnet has also designed the technological approach that will be necessary for eliminating 99.7% (Six-Sigma, assuming normal data distribution) of vehicle crashes.

There is an exasperating finding. Crashes are not accidents. They are statisticaly predictable outcomes. Crashes are not the fault of drivers -they are an organizational problem. So the solution to the problem is a matter of drivers participating in eliminating the SoS constraints in order to eliminate assignable causes for crashes. Globalsosnet is actively working to bring Total Quality Management, or Quality Driving, into practical use.

So, when you donate, you may want to take this information into account. There is more information on the transportaion issue at the bottom of the About page of this website. There is also a background/ working paper, which you may obtain by contacting Mr. Alvar Bramble, globalsosnet@yahoo.co.uk .

Donations can be made to The Global SoS Network accompanied by a donation form.

Please note that donations are not tax-deductible, except those made from within the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, South America.