Socio-Technical System Design
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right to send a message to anyone, whether they will or no, and so invite spam. In contrast, in Facebook, chat, Skype and Twitter, one needs prior permission to message someone. The details of legitimate communication, where a channel is opened by mutual consent before messages are sent, are given in (Whitworth and Liu, 2009). The resulting ACS operational principle is: P5: Any communication act should have prior mutual consent. The evolution of telephony illustrates a communication evolution. At first phones just transmitted information — the phone rang and one answered, not knowing who was calling. This allowed telemarketing, the forerunner of spam. Now cell phones show caller id by default, so one can choose to respond, i.e. it is more mutual. Yet we still have to personally type in contact list names, while social networks synergize - we each type in our on name then let others add it to their contact list. Cell phone companies could use this synergy but like the makers of TV remotes, are locked into a one-level mind-set87.
24.4.8 Roles Roles, like parent, friend or boss, simplify rights management by covering many cases, but still remain understandable, so people can review, evaluate and accept them. They are equally useful online, e.g. Wikipedia citizens can aspire to steward, bureaucrat or sysop roles by good acts. Slashdot’s automated rating system offers readers the moderator role (Benkler, 2002) if registered (not anonymous), regular users (for a time) with positive “karma” (how others rate their comments). Every registered reader has five influence points to spend on others as desired over a three day period (or they expire). In this role democracy, high rated commenter’s get more karma points and so more say on who is seen. The technology lets a community democratically direct its governance. 87. Users would have the option to show a name instead of a number when they call. It could be their real name or a nickname, just as they now can choose to show ‘Anonymous’ instead of a caller-id number. The social system would self-adjust, if receivers chose not to reply to anonymous senders. If people chose to show their real name to the friends they call, that is their choice, so no privacy is lost. Privacy is not secrecy.