Today we live first, and foremost, in a social system [see photo]. It is a system based on social ties, sentience boundaries, and governance.
Those three entities are loosely tied together to form what we call a society. When social ties are tight our society has a clear and present culture which often looks like a cult. Meanwhile the sentience boundaries are what we use to extend the reach of our social system beyond its physical limits. In practice it is the networked reach of the Internet that enables these sentience clusters to stretch from local to global spheres. In essence the governance limits on social ties and sentience boundaries serve as the glue that keeps the system bound together. Thus governance is the most important element in the system as a whole. If and when the governance element of the system is loose, and open, then the ties and sentience elements thrive. Alternatively. If and when the governance element of the system is tight, and closed, then the ties and sentience elements struggle.*
Over recent years the governance of the system has been split. First there is the local system of governance; and second, there is the global system of governance. Local governance in the physical world is maintained via laws and taxes. Meanwhile the global governance in the virtual world is maintained via access and censorship of content. Both systems work best for individuals when the governance measures have a light touch and the sanctions imposed do little to limit the openness of the society.
The clear-and-present change in 2020 is that the governance in both these spheres is being tightened and therefore is becoming less transparent. The less transparent the governance the more opaque the social ties and sentience boundaries will become and that will lead to an implosion of both our physical and virtual societies.
As both public and private sector governance tightens the screws on the limits to social ties [tight social ties lead us into to cults] the public square will lapse into a sharp decline. At the same time the sentience boundaries are being narrowed [not due to a lack of bandwidth] as the 2020 culture being curated is monolithic in both the real and virtual world we live in.
Richard.
* In simple cybernetics terms the difference between loose and tight governance is like the difference between an open and a closed system. An open system is full of feedback loops from its environment and thus it is constantly changing in response to these inputs. A closed system is full of feedback loops from within its jurisdictions and thus it is constantly changing in response to these inputs. In summary, the open system is constantly expanding and the closed system is constantly shrinking.
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