Plurality and Cybozu (2023)
2023-12-12 I created this document to talk about what Plurality is within Cybozu, but I felt it would be useful for people outside the company, so I published it.
https://gyazo.com/8ea5e92e1b95a29ff5d3fdd34a66d28d
Plurality and Cybozu.
What is Plurality?
A concept proposed by Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl.
Plurality: Technology for Collaborative Diversity and Democracy
collaboration
diversity
Technology to help diverse people work together to get things done.
Cybozu's objective: Creating a society full of teamwork
teamwork
100 men, 100 ways
This is an ideal in the same direction
empathy can be done (Sympathy for ideals)
I can't introduce all of them, so I'll just pick and choose interesting topics.
broad listening
The development of technology to duplicate and distribute information has made it easier for one person to communicate ideas to a large number of people.
However, when a large number of people transmit information, the volume of information received by one person becomes enormous, and the person drowns in the flood of information.
In a society and company where people actively communicate, technology that supports listening to the opinions of many will be important.
https://gyazo.com/8aed1a6ee239c672d1e504cdb48d0e9e
Figure from "[Not subjective or objective, but from the subjectivity of one to the subjectivity of many.
(Technological advances) enable "broad listening," where millions of people can hear the essence extracted from the distribution of opinions of their peers, enhancing democratic deliberation on a large scale.
Polis used in vTaiwan.
https://gyazo.com/c4775b6d250ef9e9a7fbc03499cd3462
Groupware as a medium.
In the past, the media were occupied by certain companies, such as newspapers and television stations, which controlled what was disseminated.
With the birth of social media, we now live in a world where anyone can transmit anything.
This is beneficial but also distorted by the fact that it is maintained by advertising revenue. It is designed to take more time away from the user because increasing "engagement" is profitable.
Productivity software sales...are a highly profitable business model. This type of software often includes a social media component and is sold to companies to improve productivity. ...The purpose of this software is to help employees work together to achieve common goals and adapt to change.
New pro-social media will be nurtured naturally in this environment and then marketed in a broader social context to other organizations interested in solidarity and dynamism.
What Audrey Tang calls productivity software is what Cybozu has called [groupware
digital democracy
In "democracy," "indirect democracy" has been widely practiced, in which people elect "delegates" to debate on their behalf.
This was just an operation at a time when information processing technology was in its infancy. Better technology leads to better teamwork.
In the future, a wide variety of local governments will make a wide variety of attempts to "better communicate with their citizens.
The key to moving democracy forward is for teens and young people to come up with really good ideas and for them to be understood and implemented by the senior people in a shorter time. Younger people, being digital natives, do not believe that upload bandwidth once every four years is enough, and latency is too high. They prefer to collaborate on a daily basis.
Opening up the agenda-setting authority to the people would return the people's approval or disapproval of each agenda to the people. Public officials no longer have exclusive ownership of agendas.
Plurality and Cybozu
Cybozu originally sold groupware (= productivity software) to private companies
→Targets are expanding to local governments and NPOs
Audrey Tan originally had an idea of how to better govern the government.
→As a result, we believe that we need technology that supports collaboration among many people and information systems that support this collaboration.
Plurality's goals and Cybozu's goals are in the same direction
→Beneficial to learn from each other's perspectives
Want to know more about Plurality? We invite you to join our forum!
Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl are in the process of writing a book
Nishio maintains the official Japanese translation repository for this.
I have implemented a system that automatically translates daily using Github Actions and ChatGPT API.
I've created a forum where you can use the translation as a pretext.
Feel like you're reading a manuscript and writing about your questions and impressions and what you've researched.
Please come and join the bustle!
/plurality-japanese/read first.
ja.icon
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This page is auto-translated from /nishio/Pluralityとサイボウズ(2023) using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I'm very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.