Digital Policy

160 days ago, according to the page it is published on, Anselm Hook wrote, "We need digital models of our communities." I just read this today, but it's something I have been thinking about for a while. After staying in the dome in LA I started reading a book by Buckminster Fuller who mentioned he had a policy of always telling the truth. A reason for his honesty policy was that the computer models we create are only as good as the data we put in, so if you base your models on lies, the results won't mean anything. (A digital honesty policy.)

Anselm makes the point that the world we live in is more complex than we can understand, and it is that lack of understanding that leads to many bad decisions (some of which we can see in retrospect). With a better understanding of how things work we will naturally change our behaviors to reach the best outcome. The problem of digital honesty comes into play in a game like SimCity.

Many of us learned about how cities work by playing SimCity, but in making the simulation more "playable" the game reduces the usefulness of the model:

For example, if crime rate is high in the created city, the user simply places more police stations and jails around the geographical space and crime rate decreases. Clearly this is not how we can or should handle this problem. -SimCities and @Culture

Of course if the game is overly complicated and works to create a more realistic model then even the model we create is more complicated than we can understand. It's not realistic to expect every individual to be able to use complex models of their communities. The models need to be created and run by people who know how to create and run complex models, and then the results need to be explained to the people in charge (either politicians, or if they are unwilling to listen, the press) who can create a strategy.

With a strategy in place you change from reactions to actions. (Or, another way to look at it, actions are the past reactions to the future.) Digital models help create the strategy, and then you create a tactical implementation of the strategy that breaks down into specific actions.

I wish my comments were working.