Collective Intelligence and Algorithmic Governance of Socio-Technical Systems

In applying the methodology of sociologically-inspired computing to the idea of self-governing institutions for common-pool resource management, an algorithmic basis for self-organising resource allocation in open computer systems and networks has been established. This algorithmic base is not intended to be a testable model of how people manage decentralised resource allocation: on the other hand, it does raise the issue of: what happens when these computer models are made manifest in socio-technical systems for management of resources like energy, water, transport, and so on. This chapter investigates this issue from the perspective of decentralised Community Energy Systems, in which societies of people and societies of ‘agents’ are interleaved in a form of collective social intelligence. Two systems for demand-side self-organisation are presented, one based on collective awareness in a ‘serious game’, the other based on representation and reasoning with an electronic form of social capital. These systems suggest an implementation route for socio-technical systems, comprising both people and agents, in which ‘fair’ treatment of people is grounded in algorithms executed by the agents.