I just finished listening to The Santiago Boys podcast about the attempts to use cybernetics to run the Chilean economy under Allende in the early 70s. It was very interesting and got me wondering what kinds of technology (hardware or software) that you have come across that you think would be good for managing resources/efforts and democratising society.
What tools do you think could empower people?
Yeah, I was thinking tools for a more local level that enable collaboration, knowledge sharing, and tracking (rather than allocating) resource use. For higher-level coordination, something that could flag emerging conflicts over resources would be useful to spot problems on the horizon and then enable groups to work things out rather than impose a solution.
I worked on a project earlier this year to build an AI system that would share knowledge about performance and best practices to match communities up with solutions to their problems, as well as modules to help them implement, manage, and track them, all of which could then be fed back into the system. Enterprise tools for grassroots groups, so to speak. Unfortunately, it didn’t get off the ground.