Terminology
Functional Electronics (1): 1959, J. A. Morton (Bell Lab.) – “too many circuits & numbers, physics must be used directly, (example: quartz crystal is a circuit)”
Functional Electronics (2): ~1976, M. Drăgănescu – “circuits & information = function (example: one chip microcontroller)”
Embedded ComputationCyber Physical Systems
Cyber Physical Societies May 5 2012 IWoCPS-2012 2
ICT & Democracy = iDemocracy
Motivations:sustainable development means sustainable
exercise of democracy
decline of how democracy works:the “democratic technologies” are the same as the
mechanisms used in the 18th centuryICT (Information & Communication Technology) are used
in a lot of non-, maybe anti-democratic activities (brain washing designed and financed by the big corporations)
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Regress in exercising democracy leads to:the emergence of corrupt political classes in
countries that claim to be democraciesthe emergence of alienated populations, resigned to
live in corrupt democracies.
Project goal: reconsidering the way the democracy is exercised,
from the perspective of the current and emergent ICTs in order to balance the relation established between states, corporations and civil society.
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Current status:ICT are very efficiently fructified by the corporate
space to corrupt the political class and to “sell” counterfeit images into the public space
ICT are partially assimilated by states helping them in solving only some simple administrative tasks
ICT affect very little the civil society obsessively dominated by too “local” issues.
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Project’s objectives:Defining new mechanisms of exercising democracy
in the context of the new & emergent ICTs Defining the architecture of the information system
designed to support the new mechanisms of exercising democracy.
Developing the technological environment as a hierarchically interconnected network of personal devices called iPAL (ICT Personal Assistant Linker)
nodes equipped with intelligent data centers able to provide the preprocessed data to each iPAL
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Architecture of the information system: provides a two-direction flow of structured information:
from our complex world to each individualfrom each individual towards the decision process
using two ways: the explicit one, emulating a sort of participative democracy,
where each opinion/vote is weighted according to the attested competences of the participants
the implicit one, allowed by a controlled openness each democratic player provides using a “blog-based” activity
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iPAL sub-projectiPAL: is a mobile Cyber Physical System:
cellular approach: 104 – 106 processing elements complex interfaces
solves the real-world data problem: there is too much unstructured or persuasive data.
Unstructured data: the result is that either data is ignored, or results are produced too late to be of value.
Structured data: provides interpersonal consciousness allowing for each individual the access to the whole complexity of our fast evolving world.
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Implementation gradual process, with many iterative stages
We must avoid stressing too much our very reluctant world!
The components of our world – civil society, corporations, states – are highly inertial processes
any new mechanism of exercising democracy must be implemented as an alternative and experimental process working in parallel with the current mechanisms
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The main effect of iDemocracy project: Integral way of exercising powerthe democratic power, as a rational exercise of the
threefold competences of the state: legislative - administrative - judiciary
the elitist power, as the action of an imaginative body of highly competent people, able to provide solutions validated democratically under the sacred power supervision
the sacred power, as an unquestionable spiritual power, which offers the superior discernment when reason is too harsh or imagination is too heated.
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Comment on sacred/spiritual
“It is unfortunate that we do not have at our disposal a more precise word than “religion” to denote the experience of the sacred. … But perhaps it is too late to search for another word, and “religion” may still be a useful term provided we keep in mind that it does not necessarily imply belief in God, gods, or ghosts, but refers to the experience of the sacred, and, consequently, is related to the ideas of being, meaning, and truth.”
Mircea Eliade, The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion, The University of Chicago Press, 1969.
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Democratic & sacred forms based on CPS
Artificial forms of consciousness (Mihai Drăgănescu) will act in all forms of power, supporting mainly the democratic and the sacred forms
“There are two sciences: mathematics and ethics. One is the superficial, the other is the deepest. These sciences are accurate and unambiguous because all people have the same reason which receives mathematics and the same spiritual nature which receives moral.”
Lev Tolstoi: About God and man. Form last years diary,Humanitas, 2009. (in Romanian)
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Concluding remarks Cyber Physical Systems will support the power exercise
in Cyber Physical Societies allowing an integral way of exercising power
Ideal limit stage of a Cyber Physical Society:Democratic power exercised trough socially
embedded computation (iPAL and the like)Elitist power is exercised supported by ICT toolsSacred power is exercised by an ICT construct
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