[Ci4cg-announce] Question 5 redux ~~~ tiny request

[Sebastian Benthall]

Thanks for the encouragement. I'll give this a shot.

Please describe one or more ways in which members of the Collective
> Intelligence for the Common Good Community / Network *might* be able to
> build on the work you're doing. (And/or how might the broader world be able
> to build on the work?)
>

I'm a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Information currently
working on my doctoral dissertation.

What I am trying to do with my dissertation is make a case for *algorithmic
law, *specifically the idea that laws should be written in machine
executable code. In the broadest strokes, the argument is that a
large-scale software systems are regulating society one way or another.
When they develop in an ad hoc way, that leads to a *de facto* technical
regime with very uncertain and probably very undemocratic outcomes.
Recognizing the regulatory role of algorithmic systems and designing them *as
law *would allow for the possibility of a *de jure* technical regime. I'm
arguing that there are a lot of reasons why this would be better than what
we have today, and outline some of the ways these laws could be designed
and their designers held accountable.

One way I see this network potentially building on this work is by taking
up the challenge of "What laws do we want in an ideal society, and how do
we create those laws as a technology?" to create a distributed utopia based
on principles of collective intelligence and the pursuit of the common good.

Many thanks for the opportunity to share these thoughts!

Sebastian Benthall
http://ischool.berkeley.edu/~sb
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