Information-Energy Metasystem Model
= IEMM
Description
Library of Consciousness:
"Drawing from cybernetic theories, the IEMM posits that major control transitions depend on specific information-energy control and feedback properties. As humanity approaches a potential fourth metasystem, Last argues for distributed, digital, and democratic mechanisms to organize a global commons, harnessing collective intelligence and direct democracy."
(https://www.organism.earth/library/document/information-energy(metasystem-model)
Discussion
Caddell Last:
Theoretical foundations of IEMM: MSTT and CIT
"I propose the IEMM as a conceptual tool that can be applied to our current control situation. The function of the model is specifically to contextualize evolutionary/historical human control transitions in the hopes of finding a meaningful trend or relationship that will help us understand the complexity of the evolutionary “ocean” we are currently navigating. Therefore, the IEMM should also prove to be a useful guidance tool when we are making decisions regarding the future nature of control structure. In an attempt to be all encompassing this model aims to incorporate the whole of human experience and control organization from our emergence as a species to our emergence as a global civilization/superorganism. As the name IEMM suggests, the concepts of “information” and “energy” both play a dominant role in the model’s prescriptive and predictive power (Last, 2014).
Information mediums are understood to be platforms for the organization of controls, and energy systems are understood to be engines for the stabilization of control organization. In this framework new control systems only emerge and stabilize when a new information medium evolves and acquires prolonged and stable access to an energy system. This process can open an information-energy feedback process between control system and society as a whole. Historically, three such information-energy systems have emerged and stabilized in the human system (see: Last, 2015) (Figure 1).
MSTT
The IEMM is constructed utilizing biological, anthropological, and historical data(see: Last, 2015), as well as two cybernetic theories: MSTT (see: Turchin, 1977) and CIT(see: Corning, 2007).
According to MSTT, a metasystem (or “major transition”) occurs when living systems achieve higher system organization from the controlled coordination (i.e. control system X) of previously disparate subsystems (i.e. A1+A2+A3)(Turchin, 1977; Goertzel, 2002; Last, 2015). In our current context the information medium for control system X can be considered the internet, and the disparate subsystems A1, A2, A3 can be considered nation-states (i.e. we need to use our new information medium to cooperatively organize a global commons).
Metasystems occur as a step function separating two qualitatively different levels of organization that can be approximately measured as a sigmoid (S-shaped) curve(Modis, 2012) (i.e. as quantity of interconnections increases, a new qualitative organization must emerge to maintain a new level of complexity). Therefore the metasystem represents a punctuated equilibrium-like process characterized by an accelerated period of subsystem integration, before stabilizing into a new level of organization (Heylighen, 2007, 2015a).
In the human system, metasystems have generally stabilized within three different levels of complex organization: hunting, agricultural, industrial (Niele, 2005), and within three different broadly defined forms of control hierarchies: band/tribes, chiefdoms/kingdoms, nation-states (see: Last, 2015).The next system is likely to be constructed utilizing solar power (and a diverse mixture of other renewables, e.g., geothermal, wind, etc.) with a more distributed control organization that transcends contemporary nation-states (i.e. self-organized).Metasystems occur when environmental conditions favor an adaptive pressure for increased biological or technological information processing capability (Smith and Szathmáry, 1995). Under these conditions functional synergies between cooperative agents that were previously impossible (in this context geographically separated human groups) can produce the emergence of higher complexity and control organization (Corning, 2002, 2014).
The coordination of higher controls begins by the cooperative/inclusive utilization of emergent information processing capabilities in a collective information medium, which allows for qualitatively new interaction potentiality (Heylighen, 2006). Control innovation utilizing a new information medium can then allow for higher integration and a new level of complex organization(Heylighen, 1995). Throughout human evolution control innovation has occurred on three emergent information mediums: language, writing, and the printing press(Last, 2014), which have changed the qualitative nature of human interaction potential(bands, kingdoms, nations, etc.). The contemporary human system gives the appearance of approaching a higher metasystem. As mentioned, the highest human controls manifest in select nation-states(e.g. USA, China), and more recently in emergent international governance (e.g. United Nations, European Union) and corporate networks. However, as suggested, human cultural flexibility, technological potential, and increasing internet-related evolutionary convergence pressures suggest that our current control systems do not represent a complexity plateau.
CIT
The IEMM is also built utilizing CIT (see: Corning, 2005, 2007). CIT posits that all living systems (biological or biocultural) possess “control information” (IC): IC is the relational capacity to use information in the acquisition, disposition, and utilization of energy for cybernetic processes (i.e. control and feedback). CIT emphasizes that information cannot simply be quantified as an “amount” measured in bits, as traditional information theory (i.e. “Shannon information”) suggests (see: Shannon, 1948). This is because measuring the amount of information explicitly ignores the function-laden(content and meaning) nature of information used by living systems (Kauffman et al.,2008). Consequently, there is no correlation between Shannon information and the physical structural order observed in living system organizations (Kauffman, 2000).
To bridge this gap IC is a concept that represents a living systems capacity to control the capacity to do work (i.e. the functional relationship between goals inherent to cybernetic informational processes and physical structural order). In this theory, the “amount” of IC is a manifestation of a living systems “power” to use information to control available energy for purposeful cybernetic activities, and not simply in the amount of information, nor the amount of energy (Corning, 2007). The difference is of fundamental importance to the construction of this model, because the sheer amount of information or energy in a system is not our concern. Instead we are concerned with how information and energy is purposively organized (i.e. do we create an increasingly unequal and unstable world? Or do we create an increasingly equal and stable world?).IC an be mathematically formalized as: IC¼ (AU/Ai). In this formalization AU¼ total quantity of available energy accessible for control processes by a cybernetic system and Ai¼total available energy cost associated with bringing AU under control and utilizing control (see: Corning, 2005, 2007). By applying CIT to our understanding of the MSTT control hierarchy, we can conceptualize human evolution as three nested information-energy systems that have managed to acquire, distribute, and utilize ever-more energy for feedback, and ultimately for continued reproduction of the highest control (Figure 2).CIT is integral to the development of MSTT. First, although the evolutionary emergence of new information processing functionality is a pre-condition for metasystems, this property is not sufficient. Instead, the emergence of higher metasystem is likely dependent more on how new information processing functionality is meaningfully utilized by users toward the organization of a new control system. Therefore, new organizations are not the direct product of “more information” in a system. The mere presence of increased internet access and faster computation on its own will not fix our control issues.
Increased access to bits of information simply creates new control information potentiality (IP).The best recent example demonstrating the difference is perhaps the controversy surrounding the NSA in the USA where increased informational capacity was purposefully (and secretly) used by a centralized government for spying on its citizens and the rest of the world. Here increased IP was a detriment to democracy, safety, and privacy.
.However, if we were to organize a metasystem transition, our new informational capacities could be distributed, in order to ensure that all citizens had better knowledge of government activity, and were able to effectively regulate the behavior of control systems, through collective standardization (i.e. surveillance to sousveillance).Thus, the difference between “Shannon information” (which focusses on quantity) and “IC” (which focusses on purposeful organization) is an important reconceptualization in information theory for understanding metasystems. Too often we frame the solutions to our problems in term of quantity, i.e., we need better information technologies or more energy. But actually transforming higher IP into useful collective beneficial modes of information control requires a purposeful re-organization of that new potentiality. Thus, we need to re-focus on creating new organizations, new ways for purposeful interconnection: government and society as a laboratory of new relationships. Furthermore, when CIT is combined with MSTT we get the mechanism for metasystem disintegration or stabilization (Figure 2). If there is IC breakdown in feedback, the control hierarchy is likely to disintegrate into smaller subsystems. However, if there is functional IC synergy in feedback, the control hierarchy can survive and replicate as an integrated whole. This is why the first priority of both the USA and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (to use two extreme examples) is the use of information technology to find, secure, and maintain a stable energy supply. Of course, this is true of any control system, as the continued replication of the highest control can then in turn generate the socio-ecological/economic conditions for yet another metasystem transition toward deeper integration. In our context, modern governments in the developed world are attempting to maintain stable IC feedback between outdated information-energy systems (print media, telecommunications, and fossil fuels). Again, the USA is a good example of a system primarily concerned with defending its own fossil fuel reserves (i.e. “petro-dollars”),and using print media and telecommunications to foster support for such a national agenda (i.e. the USA media since the 1970s). However, the internet increasingly allows for the disruption of this information-energy stability, providing a new distributed platform that transcends centralized organization and national boundaries."
More information
* Article: Information-energy metasystem model. By Cadell Last. Global Brain Institute, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
"Purpose – The human system is developing into a global biocultural superorganism. However, in the process of aligning a stable global goal state, contemporary human control systems appear to be inadequate structures. The purpose of this paper is to help humanity contextualize the nature of our highest control systems and guide future structural control system decisions, by proposing the application of an Information-Energy Metasystem Model (IEMM).
Design/methodology/approach – IEMM is an evolutionary-cybernetic model built with biological, anthropological, and historical data, and constructed utilizing two cybernetic theories: metasystem transition theory and control information theory (CIT). The IEMM suggests that major control transitions are dependent on specific information-energy control and feedback properties.
Findings – Throughout our evolutionary history humans have stabilized three distinct metasystems in the general organization of
- bands/tribes stabilized by language-hunting feedback,
- chiefdoms / kingdoms stabilized by writing-agricultural feedback, and
- nation-states stabilized by printing press industrial feedback.
In the future, IEMM predicts that new global (or “glocal”) controls based on the internet as an information medium, and renewable energy as an engine for stabilization, could potentially generate a fourth metasystem. However, this is largely dependent on our own ability and willingness for fundamental structural control innovation."