| How social modelling can help resolve dilemmas |
[Feb. 22nd, 2006|02:25 pm] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | billie holiday - strange fruit | ] |
With quite a few problems mounting at the moment, I might take a moment to reflect on how a 'social model' might help things.
The issues of AFP operation with the Bali 9, AWB scandal in the global context, Telstra stopping wireless rollout and Qantas stopping Singapore Airlines getting the US gig or whether a carbon trading scheme is going to work without international participation.
You see, there are people in all of these situations that have a perspective worth listening to. People on the ground. Good people who care about the impact of their organisation.
What are their choices right now? To leak to the media or political parties.
New media like Crikey is about the best choice there. The other media operators and certaintly the political parties have vested interests everywhere. But leaking to websites (or blogs) like Crikey has its' downside.
Who can collate and understand the fullness of the picture painted by these people who - lets be honest - just want their society to work as it should.
We get bits and pieces, and a laudable job is done by many reporters (net-based or otherwise) but it all slips past eventually. And what is learnt? Sometimes academics get involved, and their perspective is valuable, but is still only a small piece of the puzzle held under the spotlight for a short time.
Remember, we can only hold 7 concepts in our conscious mind at once.
So how do we gather the knowledge, the revelations about how things 'really work' into a coherent structure that accumulates over time?
The answer, of course, is a model. Or a collection of models. Of the telecommunications industry, of the airline industry, of the illicit drug industry and its' policing, of the international market distorted by the oil-for-food program.
All of these things can be modelled.
And the model should not be locked away behind a minister's office door. it should be accessible to the public. They should be downloadable and simulateable - so we can all see how a carbon trading scheme works. And the parts fit into the overall so we can then see how a trading scheme affects our nation's economy, society and environment.
The models should also be in a format that is understood with relatively little background. And when the people of the ground decide to leak, it isn't called a leak, it is called a dialogue with the modellers.
People like me. Incorruptible social engineers. We exist. God knows why, but we do.
Explain that one Darwin... |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
invig's journal
