48 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2024
    1. “It’s harder to protect your reputation for reliability than to damage it. It turns out that, as usual, offence is cheaper than defence,” he says. “Everybody who cares about the preservation of any institution has to stop everything, ring the alarm bell, and start thinking about how to preserve that ‘membrane’ in a way that is morally permissible.”
    1. But that’s not the case for a computer, or a robot, or even a corporate food service, which can’t navigate the intricacies and uncertainties of the real world with the flexibility we expect of a person. And at an even larger scale, our societal systems, whether we’re talking about laws and governments or just the ways our employers expect us to get our jobs done, don’t have that flexibility built into them. We’ve seen repeatedly how breaking corporate or government operations into thousands of disparate, rigid contracts ends in failure.
  2. May 2024
  3. Jan 2024
  4. Dec 2023
    1. the problem is that most of our 01:04:45 institutions in the Democratic World evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries at a time when uh Transportation the fastest mode of transportation was horseback and almost all the information was communicated verbally 01:04:58 and uh and now we're in a world that's just radically different
      • for: adjacency - outdated government institutions - delegitimization - authoritarianism

      • adjacency between

        • outdated government institutions
        • delegitimatization
        • authoritarianism
      • adjacency statement
        • Since old government institutions are not coping with the challenges of modernity, suffering an ingenuity gap, it's fueling a political crisis enabling the rise of authoritarianism
  5. Nov 2023
    1. Women MPs face additional scrutiny and criticism compared to their male counterparts.
    2. Parliament are based on traditional gender roles, where women are expected to be in supportive roles rather than as legislators
  6. Jul 2023
    1. Human institutions are purely human creations. Theironly legitimate purpose is to serve the people on whomtheir existence ultimately depends. If institutions fail toserve us, then it is our right to eliminate or transformthem
      • for: system change, institutional change, paradigm shift
      • quote
        • "Human institutions are purely human creations.
        • Their only legitimate purpose is to serve the people on whom their existence ultimately depends.
        • If institutions fail to serve us, then it is our right to eliminate or transform them."
      • Author
        • David Korten
  7. Jun 2023
    1. But we also need new generations of user-accountable institutions to realize the potential of new tech tools—which loops back to what I think Holgren was writing toward on Bluesky. I think it’s at the institutional and constitutional levels that healthier and more life-enhancing big-world tools and places for community and sociability will emerge—and are already emerging

      institutionalising as a way for socsoft to become sustainable, other than through for profit structures that have just one aim. Vgl [[2022 Public Spaces Conference]], I have doubts as institutions are slow by design which is what gives them their desirable stability. Vgl [[Invisible hand of networks 20180616115141]] vs markets.

      Also : generations are institutions too. It is needed to repeat these things to new gens, as they take what is currently there as given. Is currently true for things like open data too.

  8. Dec 2022
    1. If we consider organizations (universities, corporations, governments and so on) as organisms (a view I do not agree with) we can argue some increase in intelligence and institutional memory through record keeping and information technology. But, in my opinion, organizations don’t have significant emergent reasoning capabilities that aren’t really more properly attributed to their members.

      What does Hidalgo have to say with respect to this quote? Can we push this argument?

    1. By AD 500, the Christian Church had drawn most of the talented men of theage into its service, in either missionary, organizational, doctrinal, or purelycontemplative activity.—Edward Grant, Physical Science in the Middle Ages

      quote


      Google is like the Catholic Church both as organizers of information and society<br /> Just as the Catholic Church used funding from the masses to employ most of the smartest and talented to its own needs and mission from 500-1000 AD, Google has used advertising technology to collect people and employed them to their own needs. For one, the root was religion and the other technology, but both were organizing people and information for their own needs.

      Who/what organization will succeed them? What will its goals and ethics entail?

      (originally written 2022-12-11)

  9. Nov 2022
  10. view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org
    1. The word “kafala” in Arabic has traditionally been used to describe a social and moral “responsibility to another.”  Researchers Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan write, “kafala contracts were used to protect the weak and vulnerable by instituting the patronage of a prominent local who provided whatever protection was required.” Think of raising an orphaned child, for example. In business, kafala originally referred to contracts where a guarantor assumes liability for another person (e.g. a cosigner for a loan).    Kafala nowadays is often used to describe the legal relationship between businesses and migrant workers. Employers, typically citizens, act as sponsors for workers and assume legal responsibility for their movement and actions in exchange for their right to work in a geographic area. 

      The use of kafala shows a shift from a meaning of social responsibility into a meaning co-opted by capitalism and social contract.

  11. Jun 2022
    1. 22. We may note in passing the archaic nature of the US Supreme Court, whosejudges are named for life like the pope of the Catholic Church and the apostles of theMormon church. However, a pontifical bull of 1970 denied cardinals over eighty yearsold the right to vote in papal elections, which proves that all institutions can be re-formed, even the most venerable ones.
  12. May 2022
    1. By exam-ining how movement toward equality has actually been produced, wecan learn precious lessons for our future and better understand thestruggles and mobilizations that have made this movement possible,as well as the institutional structures and legal, social, fiscal, educa-tional, and electoral systems that have allowed equality to become alasting reality.

      Understanding the history of inequality and how changes in institutional structures in legal, social, fiscal educational, and electoral systems have encouraged change toward equality, we might continue to change and modify these to ensure even greater equality.

  13. Mar 2022
    1. the tragedy of the commons is a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma. And she said that people are only prisoners if they consider themselves to be. They escape by creating institutions for collective action. And she discovered, I think most interestingly, that among those institutions that worked, there were a number of common design 00:12:04 principles, and those principles seem to be missing from those institutions that don't work.

      collaborative institutions relying on common design principles are seen helping to avoid the tragedy of commons

  14. Jan 2022
    1. The other two tools more or less emerge to help us scale coordination: institutions and markets.

      Yes ... and we are wearing "structure goggles" here. We are entirely ignoring culture (and being). We scaled coordination for example through religion - which isn't a corporation or a market. Furthermore corporation and markets only work because they are embedded in trust networks and cultures.

      And the problem is once we are wearing our structure goggles we are limited to a certain kind of (mistaken/very limited) diagnosis and cure.

      the basic point is we aren't going to innovate much in governance (at least not in structural terms). Democracy, markets, hell even companies, have been around pretty much "forever". We can invent tools that help them scale in informational terms - but most of the other scaling is going to come from other areas most notably culture and being.

      cf https://lifeitself.us/2017/09/10/four-types-of-problem/

  15. Oct 2021
  16. Jul 2021
    1. With identity politics, the demand became different—not just to enlarge the institutions, but to change them profoundly.

      change these institutions how?

    2. The winners in Smart America have withdrawn from national life. They spend inordinate amounts of time working (even in bed), researching their children’s schools and planning their activities, shopping for the right kind of food, learning to make sushi or play the mandolin, staying in shape, and following the news. None of this brings them in contact with fellow citizens outside their way of life. School, once the most universal and influential of our democratic institutions, now walls them off. The working class is terra incognita.

      This statement generally rings true to me. The collapse of cultural and local institutions (Lions Club, Elks Club, etc.) hasn't helped to bring different classes together.

      Some of this has been fueled by social media as well.

      Smart America can also afford more expensive tickets, so even mixing classes at baseball games is less frequent on an economic scale as well.

    1. It turns out that the physical law (as distinct from the laws of physics) takes up a lot of space, and Harvard Law School was sending more and more books out to a remote depository, to be laboriously retrieved when needed.
  17. Mar 2021
  18. Feb 2021
  19. Jan 2021
  20. Oct 2020
  21. Sep 2020
    1. He refutes genetic theories of European superiority and makes a good case against economic determinism. His quarry are the “enlightened” Westerners—would-be democratizers, globalizers, well-intended purveyors of humanitarian aid—who impose impersonal institutions and abstract political principles on societies rooted in familial networks, and don’t seem to notice the trouble that follows.
  22. Aug 2020
    1. In such a manner, then, the three universal institutions instantiate the three temporal ecstasies which, properly speaking, define humanity’s abode on the earth. Religion, matrimony, and burial of the dead embody the linear openness of time. Religion is born of the idea of providence. It implies an awareness of the future. Burial of the dead is grounded in reverence for the past, for the ancestral, in short for what we call tradition. Tradition comes to us from the domain of the dead. Both religion and burial, in turn, serve to consolidate the contract of matrimony, which mantains the genealogical line in the present.

      Contextualize: This passage is about the beginnings of Humanism and the forest as a subject or element that caused the appearance of what we know as civilization. The scene takes place in the West, in a landscape abundant with forests in all directions, in which the people who inhabited it were lonely, without parents, or responsibilities, nothing. They lived a life without rules or restrictions, what the author describes as "bestial freedom." They visualized the space in a horizontal sense, because the density of the forests did not let them see more. The forest respresented the unknown.

      As everything in nature is part of a cycle, forests dry up and between darkness, light passes through and creating the idea that there is something else than the forest, that's when the giants become aware of the sky and visualize the space vertically. Thus was born the first act of human enlightenment: forest clearing and the appropiation of it for the creation of the three human institutions: religion, matrimony and buried of the dead. The forest becomes the obstacle and threat to the progress of the human being.

  23. Jul 2020
  24. Jun 2020
  25. May 2020
    1. Using a very different theoretical approach, Robbins (2009a) suggests that one of the primary reasons for Pentecostal expansion among those most disenfranchised by late capitalism may very well be the ease with which this religion creates social cohesion despite the ‘institutional deficit’ of the neoliberal global order (B. Martin 1998: 117‐18

      This is very interesting to me because of the absence of the state and Catholic church, which led to the growth of prosperity gospel within the Brazilian lower classes. In other words, a clash between "pre-modern" and "post-modern". "Institutional deficit" is a key word coming from the available journal article Robbins (2009a). Martin (1998) is a book chapter that interested me a lot as well, and it is available at the library but not eletronically (maybe Libgen?).

  26. Nov 2019
    1. While the family headship passes intact from father to eldest son, thefamily property does not. Early in their history the Chinese abandonedprimogeniture, by which the eldest son inherits all the father’s propertywhile the younger sons seek their fortunes elsewhere. The enormous sig-nificance of this institutional change can be seen by comparing Chinawith a country like England or Japan, where younger sons who have notshared their father’s estate have provided the personnel for government,business, and overseas empire and where a local nobility might grow upto challenge the central power. In China, the equal division of landamong the sons of the family allowed the eldest son to retain only certainceremonial duties, to acknowledge his position, and sometimes an extrashare of property. The consequent parcelization of the land tended toweaken the continuity of family land-holding, forestall the growth oflanded power among officials, and keep peasant families on the marginof subsistence. The prime duty of each married couple was to produce ason to maintain the family line, yet the birth of more than one son mightmean impoverishment.

      Abandoned primogeniture which has major implications. land is subdivided reducing concentration of power beneath the emperor, peasant families on margin of subsistence etc. Nice example of institutions => social structure, inequality, political dynamics etc.

      NTS: are there cross-society/cultural studies of e.g. primogeniture rules vs social outcomes etc.

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  27. Jul 2019
  28. Mar 2019
    1. tircumstantes

      Drilling down to the even-more-particular; not just anyone can marry somebody, at any time, at any place, with a word (and have it mean anything); requires person w/ particular qualifications / authority / occasion / etc.

      Also requires a society/set of institutions that considers such acts normal and reasonable. In this way, the particulars affected by the occasion are part of a much large general sphere in which they are legitimized and sanctioned; and outside of that may exist a larger sphere which is baffled by them.

  29. Jan 2019
  30. Nov 2018
    1. peoples rising up and shaking off aging autocracies, modes of rule on which history had already seemingly rendered its verdict long before, seemed unstoppable, even irreversible.

      Hidden here, though I highly suspect she'll cover it later, there is a huge value to the building and maintenance of institutions with respect to government and building into the future.

  31. Nov 2017
    1. I think that universities (especially the 'elite' universities) have lost the plot when it comes to their value proposition (or, at least, what they tell the world their value proposition is).

      In some ways, the strongest indictment of the MOOC hype.

  32. Sep 2017
    1. patterns

      That there are patterns in the structures of networks that cut across nature, people and technology makes me wonder about human control, free will and agency. Is life controlled by networks rather institutions, culture and choice?

    1. something like this picture….

      Networks are like 'air'; they are all around us constantly. This class will not only help you see networks but also to see the complexity of them. They are growing more complex and more important to how our society functions. I often wonder if networks are not replacing institutions.

  33. Jul 2017
    1. of key institutions -the family and the education system -in capitalistsociety

      Key institutions in Superstructure includes family and the education system. They are considered the two most important component in society.

    2. Education

      Key Institution. Site of the normalization of discreet groupings of information and production, unequal social relations and powerlessness of the subordinate, production for profit - through learning for grades vs learning to learn, and undermining of the original act (learning or production).

    1. Key Institutions and their Roles

      families and education

      families are a unit of consumption that accept the quo and reproduce inequality – children of the rich grow rich, while the children of the poor remain poor.

      education supports the existing distribution of power and wealth. maintains order, control and ensures dominant culture is passed on. reflects organization of production

  34. Sep 2016
    1. Application Modern higher education institutions have unprecedentedly large and detailed collections of data about their students, and are growing increasingly sophisticated in their ability to merge datasets from diverse sources. As a result, institutions have great opportunities to analyze and intervene on student performance and student learning. While there are many potential applications of student data analysis in the institutional context, we focus here on four approaches that cover a broad range of the most common activities: data-based enrollment management, admissions, and financial aid decisions; analytics to inform broad-based program or policy changes related to retention; early-alert systems focused on successful degree completion; and adaptive courseware.

      Perhaps even more than other sections, this one recalls the trope:

      The difference probably comes from the impact of (institutional) “application”.

  35. Nov 2015
    1. If this were true for modern society, it has multiplied in ourage of social media, in which control and value are indissolubly linked to the machine ensemblesthat comprise contemporary digital infrastructures.

      I have studied in my International Marketing course here how social media is a cultural institution in society and has an extremely powerful influence on societal structures regarding preferences, levels of acceptance of products/technology, and how consumers are influenced to use them.

  36. Oct 2015
    1. and disaster flooding in from the media that have generated a pervasive fear of catastrophe but also a more deep-seated sense of misanthropy which urban commentators have been loath to acknow- ledge, a sense of misanthropy too often treated as though it were a dirty secre

      Interesting thesis.. Media is known as one of the most influential institutions in society today... is he blaming media?

  37. Sep 2013
    1. The most important and effective qualification for success in persuading audiences and speaking well on public affairs is to understand all the forms of government and to discriminate their respective customs, institutions, and interests. For all men are persuaded by considerations of their interest, and their interest lies in the maintenance of the established order.

      On being well versed for appealing to people on the basis of their particular values and interests, and understanding the order at the base of individual community and personal structures.