Abstract
The digital revolution will make data abundant and cheap. Moving from a time of darkness into a digital age with information overload, we will need suitable filters. However, those who build these filters will determine what we see. This creates possibilities to influence people's decisions such that they become remotely controlled rather than make their decisions on their own. Since omnibenevolent rule cannot be supposed and top-down control is flawed for several reasons, another approach is needed. It can be found with distributed control, collective intelligence and participation. “Nervousnet” will be presented as a feasible specimen of a Citizen Web.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
E. Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You (Viking/Penguin, 2011)
C. Song, Z. Qu, N. Blumm, A.-L. Barabasi, Science 327, 1018 (2010)
A.D.I. Kramer, J.E. Guillory, J.T. Hancock, Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 111, 8788 (2014)
R.H. Thaler, C.R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (Penguin, New York, 2008)
S. Harris, Foreign Policy, http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/29/the-social-laboratory/ (2014)
J. Lorenz, H. Rauhut, F. Schweitzer, D. Helbing, PNAS 108, 9020 (2011)
S.E. Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (Princeton University, 2008)
R.M. May, S.A. Levin, G. Sugihara, Nature 451, 893 (2008)
C.A. Hidalgo, B. Klinger, A.-L. Barabasi, R. Hausmann, Science 317, 482 (2007)
J. Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (Penguin 2011)
J.A. Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies (Cambridge University, 1990)
D. Helbing, Jusletter IT, 21 May 2015
C. Andris et al., Plos one 10, e0123507 (2015)
C.B. Frey, M.A. Osborne, The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation? http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/future-of-employment.pdf (2013)
D. Helbing, Science and Culture 76, 315 (2010)
D. Helbing, The automation of society is next: How to survive the digital revolution, http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2694312 (2015)
Y.-A. de Montjoye, E. Shmueli, S.S. Wang, A.S. Pentland, Plos one 9, e98790 (2014)
D. Helbing, Nature 497, 51 (2013)
S. Lämmer, D. Helbing, JSTAT 2008, P04019 (2008)
D. Helbing, Evol. Inst. Econ. Rev. 10, 3 (2013)
D. Helbing, Qualified money: A better financial system for the future, http://futurict.blogspot.ch/2014/10/qualified-money-better-financial-system.html (2014)
I. Kondor et al., J. Econ. Interact. Coord. 9, 203 (2014)
D. Helbing, Thinking Ahead: Essays on Big Data, Digital Revolution, and Participatory Market Society (Springer, 2015)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
About this article
Cite this article
Helbing, D. From remote-controlled to self-controlled citizens. Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 226, 313–320 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60372-1
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2016-60372-1