Open-source technocracy

[Hyacinth]

One of the criticisms levied against technocracy, as a form of economic administration, is that it is technocratic in the pejorative sense, that is, rule by technical experts. This is something that I think needn't be the case in this day and age, if the administration of the economy is undertaken along open source lines, such that, while you do have a team of dedicated technical experts overseeing and coordinating economic planning, ordinary citizens, workers, etc. would all also have direct access to the plan if they so choose and would be able to modify it, make recommendations, etc. in real time via a wikipedia-like interface. Now, this is hardly a new idea, in fact it seems that there are several places that are already attempting it, mostly at the municipal level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_government). Running a government along these lines would provide the sort of transparency necessary to avoid concentrating power into the hands of technical experts, while at the same time allowing society to reep the benefits of said experteses. Thoughts?

[Die Neue Zeit]

How can this be related to demarchy? Ideally, you'd want as many ordinary citizens, workers, etc. to participate in this process, especially with all the free time resulting from socialist production.

[Hyacinth]

How can this be related to demarchy? Ideally, you'd want as many ordinary citizens, workers, etc. to participate in this process, especially with all the free time resulting from socialist production.
Ideally, yes. I think that we need to move away from the specialization and division of labour under capitalism which makes everyone into an expert in one small field with almost no knowledge of anything outside of their area of expertise. Having a comprehensive education available to everyone would permit for an educated populace that would actually be technically and scientifically literate enough to contribute meaningfully to economic decision making. In a way, with an educated enough populace, and an economic coordination system running on cybernetic lines, the need for technical experts might well disappear.

As for demarchy, I don't think this sort of system is necessarily a replacement for demarchy, rather more of a compliment to it. You could still have a dedicated assembly of citizens selected by lot to oversee specific administrative tasks, but by having their decision making be open sourced you provide transparency as well as a way in which others, who weren't selected, could participate in the decision making process.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I suppose you're right. The "open source" compliment to civil administration would also compliment the initial mass assembly participation.

[Dimentio]

One of the criticisms levied against technocracy, as a form of economic administration, is that it is technocratic in the pejorative sense, that is, rule by technical experts. This is something that I think needn't be the case in this day and age, if the administration of the economy is undertaken along open source lines, such that, while you do have a team of dedicated technical experts overseeing and coordinating economic planning, ordinary citizens, workers, etc. would all also have direct access to the plan if they so choose and would be able to modify it, make recommendations, etc. in real time via a wikipedia-like interface. Now, this is hardly a new idea, in fact it seems that there are several places that are already attempting it, mostly at the municipal level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_government). Running a government along these lines would provide the sort of transparency necessary to avoid concentrating power into the hands of technical experts, while at the same time allowing society to reep the benefits of said experteses. Thoughts?

Actually, NET is proposing exactly that. :)

http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=103

http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=103

[Hyacinth]

Actually, NET is proposing exactly that. :)

http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=103

http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=75&Itemid=103
The discussion of holons, terminology aside, looks interesting. I'm less enthusiastic about the utopian proposal to construct "a network of communities that exist within the current socioeconomic system but are internally run as a technate".

[WhitemageofDOOM]

I think that we need to move away from the specialization and division of labour under capitalism which makes everyone into an expert in one small field with almost no knowledge of anything outside of their area of expertise. Having a comprehensive education available to everyone would permit for an educated populace that would actually be technically and scientifically literate enough to contribute meaningfully to economic decision making. In a way, with an educated enough populace, and an economic coordination system running on cybernetic lines, the need for technical experts might well disappear.

As a technocrat(recently turned), i don't entirely think this is true. While a better educated populace is as proven always better, human knowledge has eclipsed what any human can reasonably be expected to learn. That makes ending the division of scientific labor unrealistic unless/until we can upgrade the ways in which humans accumulate information.


The discussion of holons, terminology aside, looks interesting. I'm less enthusiastic about the utopian proposal to construct "a network of communities that exist within the current socioeconomic system but are internally run as a technate".

Technocracy is born from science and engineering, right? Call it a scale model for testing.

[Dimentio]

The discussion of holons, terminology aside, looks interesting. I'm less enthusiastic about the utopian proposal to construct "a network of communities that exist within the current socioeconomic system but are internally run as a technate".

That is not a mean to achieve the transition in itself, it is merely a testing ground.

[Hyacinth]

Technocracy is born from science and engineering, right? Call it a scale model for testing.

That is not a mean to achieve the transition in itself, it is merely a testing ground.
Fair enough, I was too hasty in my characterization of it as utopian.

[NOT_a_Capitalist]

The only problem with democracy is it gets hijacked by special interest groups who control the media. You would need everyone to vote, which they won't so make it compulsory, leading back to fascism and the police state. Also, the majority rules model tramples on minorities.

I also don't trust technocracies or any concentration of power because it always get corrupted. The thing is who will create the policies, and whoever does that will manipulate the process and then you get back to square one with fascism and a police state.

[Klaus]

The only problem with democracy is it gets hijacked by special interest groups who control the media. You would need everyone to vote, which they won't so make it compulsory, leading back to fascism and the police state. Also, the majority rules model tramples on minorities.

I also don't trust technocracies or any concentration of power because it always get corrupted. The thing is who will create the policies, and whoever does that will manipulate the process and then you get back to square one with fascism and a police state.

That's the reason for Open Source. It's transparent. Everyone who desires to would have a hand in creating the policies.

[Dimentio]

NET is by the way already implementing an open source model on itself. All our meetings are supposed to be recorded.

[Technocrat]

There seems to be some misunderstanding here regarding how Technocracy actually works so I will try to clarify.

In a Technate, all positions are filled through the process of appointment from above and selection from below. Here is a brief explanation from the essay "Why Should I Believe It? or Eleven Reasons Why Technocracy Works":

"The exact procedure of position selection has to do with Technocracy's idea of appointment from above from candidates selected from below. Thus, if a position opened up on level 3, candidates to fill that position would be selected from level 2, by the workers of level 2. From these candidates, the managers of level 4 would pick the person best qualified. Of course, one might immediately spot all sorts of dangers in this type of selection, but again, Technocrats didn't make it up; they merely found something that already works. If the person wasn't qualified, something wouldn't work, thus everyone would notice, and he/she would be replaced, and the first worker would be relegated to a position more suiting their talents. Corruption would be nonexistent, because again, fluctuations would get noticed, and since there is no way to gain anything like money or power over others in a Technate, any form of corruption would be pointless. But that is part of another discussion.

Thus we may think of a Technate as one big Bell Telephones, with a branch for communications, one for transportation, one for energy, one for housing, etc. These would be called Functional Sequences. All these would be working for maximum gain by all, rather than for themselves or their 'company'. And since we have the resources to do it, gain we all would. This is another reason people have a hard time understanding the Technate, because it is simply a form of control of technology, not people, as every government in the past has been. Nontechnical concerns such as religion, art, culture, language, and the color of the flag would be matters for the people to decide, in the first truly democratic system ever devised." (Why Should I Believe It? or Eleven Reasons Why Technocracy Works)

[MarxSchmarx]

In principle this is an interesting approach, but there is an unhealthy tendency on the left to lionize open source software.

Sure, open source software is qualitatively different than other capitalist industries, and is a step definitely in the right direction. But it still operates and thrives within the context of capitalism, and the capitalist handlers have never let the open source community forget that.

The dirty little secret of the open source movement is that there is a profit motive that works to help people circumvent getting into the nitty-gritty. RedHat's Tech support and the gazillion companies dedicated to providing for-profit troubleshooting for open source software are prime examples.

At the end of the day, I'm not convinced open source software is a viable model for an economy, because as it's been employed to software, it does have plenty of loopholes that recreate the old social order -

Now, we can debate whether these are intrinsic to the development process or rather nefarious capitalist influences that are more vestigal than anything. I suspect both are somewhat true, but I have a hard time seeing how open source software would work without the very real promise of financial support provided.

I'm not in the thicket of it, but I do develop open source apps along the way and interact with the community in my work on a daily basis. The sorry truth of the matter is that open source content right now is kept alive by visionary funders, both public and private. A genuinely, truly open source project not funded by some nefarious developer like sun microsystems or a non-trivial government grant is hard to find, and the few gems that exist have had a hard time becoming popularized. Hell even Wikipedia's founder apparently spends a shitload of time fundraising.

Here's a recent article by a capitalist scumbag that is surprisingly candid about the limitations of open source as a model for a socialist future. This clown has been on a tirade of late about this on their blog, but their broader point is fair: the open source movement is not (yet) a serious socialist alternative:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10159370-16.html?tag=mncol;txt

[Dimentio]

There seems to be some misunderstanding here regarding how Technocracy actually works so I will try to clarify.

In a Technate, all positions are filled through the process of appointment from above and selection from below. Here is a brief explanation from the essay "Why Should I Believe It? or Eleven Reasons Why Technocracy Works":

"The exact procedure of position selection has to do with Technocracy's idea of appointment from above from candidates selected from below. Thus, if a position opened up on level 3, candidates to fill that position would be selected from level 2, by the workers of level 2. From these candidates, the managers of level 4 would pick the person best qualified. Of course, one might immediately spot all sorts of dangers in this type of selection, but again, Technocrats didn't make it up; they merely found something that already works. If the person wasn't qualified, something wouldn't work, thus everyone would notice, and he/she would be replaced, and the first worker would be relegated to a position more suiting their talents. Corruption would be nonexistent, because again, fluctuations would get noticed, and since there is no way to gain anything like money or power over others in a Technate, any form of corruption would be pointless. But that is part of another discussion.

Thus we may think of a Technate as one big Bell Telephones, with a branch for communications, one for transportation, one for energy, one for housing, etc. These would be called Functional Sequences. All these would be working for maximum gain by all, rather than for themselves or their 'company'. And since we have the resources to do it, gain we all would. This is another reason people have a hard time understanding the Technate, because it is simply a form of control of technology, not people, as every government in the past has been. Nontechnical concerns such as religion, art, culture, language, and the color of the flag would be matters for the people to decide, in the first truly democratic system ever devised." (Why Should I Believe It? or Eleven Reasons Why Technocracy Works)

There is a bit of a difference though between NET's approach and Tech.inc's approach. NET is utilising a holonic structure where Tech.inc is utilising a katascopic, centralised structure. That is mainly because that NET intends the EuroTech to operate in an area comprised of several hundred different cultures.

[Dean]

One of the criticisms levied against technocracy, as a form of economic administration, is that it is technocratic in the pejorative sense, that is, rule by technical experts. This is something that I think needn't be the case in this day and age, if the administration of the economy is undertaken along open source lines, such that, while you do have a team of dedicated technical experts overseeing and coordinating economic planning, ordinary citizens, workers, etc. would all also have direct access to the plan if they so choose and would be able to modify it, make recommendations, etc. in real time via a wikipedia-like interface. Now, this is hardly a new idea, in fact it seems that there are several places that are already attempting it, mostly at the municipal level (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_government). Running a government along these lines would provide the sort of transparency necessary to avoid concentrating power into the hands of technical experts, while at the same time allowing society to reep the benefits of said experteses. Thoughts?

There's nothing wrong with what you suggest. It's just that it isn't technocratic in any way, shape or form.

[Dimentio]

There's nothing wrong with what you suggest. It's just that it isn't technocratic in any way, shape or form.

Then, according to your definition, NET is not purely technocratic either. ^^

[Hoxhaist]

technocracy sounds attractive and open source software and technology seems to be a potentially great asset for innovation