COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
OPEN
DECISION MAKING SYSTEM
How to replace the antiquated world decision making system with a computerized one that uses the best qualified talents in the world?
The following is a proposal to design a Collective Intelligence Decision Making systems software that will be infallible and indestructible, (note: both of these words are very strong and will be explained below) with the purpose of replacing the antiquated present political system of making decisions/laws. In other words, the proposal is to use computers as a tool to replace the current system of using centralized decision makers (corporate and government as we know it) people who most of the time are not qualified, but nonetheless do decide on new laws, regulations, investments, etc. The proposal is to use sophisticated software and qualified professionals to aid in the best possible way of making a decision/law on any subject with the aid of specialized expertise in the matter being decided on.
NOTE: This document is an introduction to the proposal and does not provide technical details. The writer is a world top expert on the subject of very complex computer systems, his intentions are to clearly assure the reader that the technology is quite available and at an extremely low cost.
FURTHER NOTE: The proposed software does NOT invent anything new, it only proposes to use presently used technology, it is no-more-no-less than a new software application of presently available software technology.
Introduction
What does a politician like the President, House Representative, Senator, Governor, Mayor, etc. exactly do? Mostly make decisions/laws for the people. Why? Because we do not have a better system of making decisions/laws, for such a large group, like the population of a whole city or country or for that matter even world-decisions. Their responsibility is to represent the people best interest in the short and LONG-term, but as we all well know, this rarely happens. Now with the aid of modern computers and software this can be tremendously improved, in fact the computers with the direct involvement of the people in the long-run can replace all these decision makers, allowing these people to use their talents in a much better and efficient way, for the benefit and advancement of our society. People in our society are quite often dissatisfied with their jobs, this includes most politicians. Why? Because they are not doing what they love most, they are fitting a job of making decisions/laws in a too wide of a field, politician have to make decisions/vote on just about every subject one can think of, quite often way outside their league. Ideally these people would be using their talents in something they are best at vs. making decision (that affect us all) in areas that are outside their abilities.
How about we take a major step forward and create a tamper-proof, failure-proof, indestructible, decision-making and computer, internet-based forum and voting system?
This we can do with our present computer technology, the proposed computer software system will be much more than just a voting system to aid politicians do their work, BUT in fact will end-up replacing all political jobs as we know it world-wide within a few years, so their talents can be reutilized in a much better way, while at the same time we all end-up with a much better way of deciding what to do. Once this software system is put in use, it will quickly start aiding most government officials, since it will provide a true vote on all issues, making the politician job considerably easier. In addition all present laws can quickly be incorporated for review/changes. In fact anyone with access to a Web page could use it, from anywhere in the world.
The main worldwide problem we have now is the fact of a very poor system of making decisions/laws. We simply delegate to a group of elected and sometimes not even elected officials ALL our societies’ problems. These men and woman are forced into making decisions/laws without enough qualified information. This can be fixed with the proposed software system.
The most important issues is the quality of a decision, let me give you an example: Where I live Loja, Ecuador, there is a very strict law about vaccinating cows for a allege killer virus; I say allege because here lies part of the problem, many cow owners say it is not a problem at all, in fact I have meet many cow owner that go through at lot of problem to make sure their cows are not vaccinated; they buy the vaccines but do not vaccinate their cows. Needless to say this law is quite worthless; in fact through my personal research I have found that the vaccine is the main cause of the disease. This has happen due to the poor system of making decisions/law in these matters. I have not gone as far as finding the actual decision makers in this particular case, but I am sure you will agree with me that those law makers were very far from being experts in vaccination, they simple saw a problem, heard a proposal and went ahead with limited firsthand experience/knowledge and made a very poor law; what is worse, it is now a law that is nearly impossible to change. And let’s not add to this equation, the more than likely scenario that the lab selling the vaccine was maliciously involved in the decision making process. In addition there is NO monitoring feedback report system for the law to be changed. Allow me to explain a bit more, as it turns out, the law went into effect and is being enforced --- someone had to place and order for the vaccines --- guess what? There were two choices, one in a clear bottle and the other in a dark bottle, clear glass cost 15 cents more, so the buyer decided on the lower cost one, after all what can possible be so different between clear glass and a darker one? He/she did not ask!!! And did not put it to vote!!! Just went ahead and order the dark glass one for less money.
Well what happens is that the person vaccinating the cow takes the broken dark glass container and leaves it out in the field next to the cows, insects that get in the dark container become the carriers of the LIVE virus when they leave the bottle, next comes a bird or some other larger insect and eats that small insect, the bird defecates in a cow pasture and now the cow is contaminated with the live virus, which often mutated in to yet a stronger stain of it. If clear glass had been chosen this would not be a problem, since the sun UV rays going through the clear glass would kill the live virus. But is even worse than these, cow owners know that 3-5% of their cows will get killed by this vaccine, therefore they do not vaccinate and falsify all the documentation. In the decision making process software that I am proposing this will never happen!!! Because ALL decisions/laws, will always be available for continuous none-stop progress monitoring and improvement. And there is a good change this law would have never been passed, due to the fact that this virus has never been a true treat or a much better modified version of it would have been used. Even if the decision had been in favor of the vaccination, the software would have tracked the order and purchase of the vaccine, and someone would have noticed the dark glass problem early enough and it would have been corrected. The fact remains that this vaccine is still in use and there is NO channel of communication to correct the container type.
Here is how it works:
First you start by getting a “voting security certificate[1]” this you would get from a private company which you provide identification information which they verify and destroy after assigning you the certificate, a certificate is basically just a number with a secret code that you keep. This technology is widely used in the Internet now a days, now that you have your certificate you can logon via any computer including a bank ATM machine, cellular phone and enter your vote, this vote will be secured with highly advance encryption technology, now widely available in many computers worldwide, no single computer will know any of the information since it is all stored encrypted and if any computer is destroyed, even if many computers are destroyed, the data and program simply gets automatically duplicated in many more computers, in other words it will be literally impossible to tamper or destroy the vote nor the system. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet not only can vote but also see the votes in action and even enter a new issue to be voted on. When such system gets implemented, ask yourself who needs a political government official for, think about it for a few minutes…
Now let’s take it a step further, take any issue the president of any country or for that matter any government official needs to decided on and put it to vote, anyone can quickly and easily vote on it via webpage on the Internet. Let’s take for example, passing a new law allowing more foreigner engineers to work in the U.S.A. If you are an engineer with let’s say 20 years experience (verifiable by the certificate issuing private company) you get X (lets say 100) voting points, on the other extreme let’s say you are a ten-year-old and know nothing about the subject, you get ¼ vote point, or maybe you are an engineering student, you would get 1-20 points depending on your years of education and/or experience or you work for a company that needs more engineers. Here we have now a vote not only by the people but also weighted by qualified people and businesses, not just a politician with no real experience on the matter.
What needs to be done is to eliminate the political competition for office and use this human knowledge and intellect in a fully cooperative way, NO MORE ELECTIONS, which are a huge waste of all types of resources including the most valuable one, the human mind, this can all be done with plain simple software with the present computer technology we have. These people should all be providing their input/vote in to this automated system, instead of competing and wasting resources in a non-efficient way. All meetings, ideas, discussions, should be online and available for others to give input on; the input part can be controlled by the elaborate certificate weighting system, this way reducing the volume of information to be viewed by the interested parties, later reduced by a simple voting request.
What we need to do is create this computer system and launch it; it will take over in just a few years by itself. Take any issue any government makes a decision on, if it contradicts the online voting systems the people will know immediately that the will of the majority (and skilled) was not taken into account, creating an instant outcry by the people to correct the decision made and in short-time seeing the need to replace the present system with the sophisticated and automated new one.
The time has come to question the efficiency of the present system we have in place in our societies and why are we not making full use of the technology we have at hand. We simply need a “new method” for thinking and making decisions and how to apply (or not apply) the powerful tools of rationality, the scientific method, reductionism, the combination of logic and efficient embodied by technology.
How secure tamper proof can such system be?
For many years banks have been trusting ATM machines and computers with all the money in the world. The proposed voting system is NOT much more complicated by comparison, though it would use much more sophisticated modern new software than banks presently use, this making it many times more secure than what banks presently are. Not even the most advance hacker can even know how much is there in a bank account, never mind actually transferring the funds to another account and this are not systems build with modern-day encryption and tamper-proof scrambling technology.
To give you an example of how widely available this technology is, on November of 2000[2] the U.S. military gave up on their most guarded encryption secret technology, technology that would have gotten anyone giving it out the electric chair. It was transferred from the National Security Agency to the U.S. Customs. Basically all the new law says is that if you obtain it in the U.S.A. you can take it with you almost to any country including the source code. Never mind that it is available for download on the Internet by anyone worldwide. This technology is so advanced and so new that most of the secret military and banks are not even using it yet and still is available for anyone to use, it simply guarantees that you are who you say you are and that the information cannot be destroyed nor tampered.
All the software source code will be available through the internet in what is known as open-source, this is the modern secure way of creating any software. Open-source means that any engineer in the world can view the source code, find flaws and help improve it. yes a one-hundred-percent tamper proof system that no one can destroy for the use of all, that will tell us what the people really want and will qualify the vote with a weighted system that can continually be improved with the same technology that was created with.
Want to know more about what is available to secure information on computers and on the internet? Do a web search for “PGP” and for “Security Certificates” or “Issuing Security Certificate Companies” You will be surprised…
How long to build such system?
Not long and not much at all, all the pieces are available now as we speak, all that is needed is ten highly experienced software engineers and such systems could be fully operational in just 2-4 years for the use of everyone in the world.
To get started this software would be initially designed and promoted by a group of approximately 10 highly experience software engineers, it will eventually involve hundreds perhaps thousands of engineers worldwide and for FREE. Let me clarify. It only requires a few engineers to create it and make it fully operational, eventually after its release it will be available for improvement by any engineer in the world that want to be part of securing that it is perfect and tamper proof. Many engineers will include themselves as part of who will have to be contacted for approval of any changes, only in order to make sure that it is kept tamper proof, not necessarily because there is any need to make any changes. The completed software system will be many orders of magnitude simpler than other software’s available today, such as an operating system. As I mentioned before, this software system does NOT event anything new, it simply uses modern available software and hardware components.
In summary and assuming proper financing, it would take approximately six months to complete a project design and another year and a half to have the first version release. This is a total of a minimum of 2 years work for 10 engineers working in parallel on separate components.
Target release date would be 2 years from initial start date after complete funding.
How long before it becomes effective?
As time goes by and more people use the new voting systems, it will reach a point that the system will provide a much better decision making than a few politician ever can do. For example let’s say that in the first year of use 5% of the population uses it, second year 10%, third 20% and the fourth year 40% This will immediately become a tool that provide realistic quality decision/laws vs. the unqualified system we have now.
How much use is giving to the system only depends on how much it is advertised. People will need to know about it.
How much will it cost to build such system?
10 of the world’s best software engineers cost $250-500,000 USD each. Contrary to popular believe a world top expert in computer science cost on average $150-250 USD per hour, the rest are desperate or simply do not know how to negotiate their fees. In fact there are a few very highly skilled software engineers that bill $700-1,000 and even more per hour, it is not uncommon to find a few that earn $500,000 per year. For this project to be a success, one needs to hire the absolute best, unless you want add this project to the very long list of software failures. So budget $5 million for this phase.
In addition to the cost of the software development cost, the software will have to be promoted a lot.
This software to the end-user will be NO more than just another pretty webpage, what really matters is how it is built in the background, you could compare it to a plane, when you walk in a plane is not much different than sitting in your living room, in fact your living room is more comfortable, but what happens behind the scene is a huge amount of technology, in fact several orders of magnitude more complex than this proposed voting software system. To the end-user it will be a very simple webpage to use, one that is intuitive, friendly, easy to use and even fun to use, one as simply as an airline flight reservation system. Its use will have to be promoted by any and all means possible, this means TV, Radio, Newspapers, Magazines, etc. and yes the Internet. Exactly how much? Well first we would have to define how wide a use one is promoting, will it be promoted only for a single city? Town? Country? For local or national issues? It can be used for all any of the above simultaneously, it will have no limitations whatsoever, the only limitation is who knows about it and has access to the internet. Any government could chose to make its use mandatory, but being realistic it will most likely be an optional and parallel to the present system, especially while it proves to be infallible, indestructible and most important an useful addition or replacement to the present decision making system.
The question still remains how much for advertising. I will leave this question to experts in this mater such as a large advertising agency or a local one that knows the local city needs. But do expect this to be several times the initial software design cost. Budget at least $5 million USD. This figure in my estimate can easily go up to a $100 million before we see worldwide extensive use. These funds can easily come from donation and governments throughout the world. Therefore an initial $5 million USD could be used to secure this additional funding.
Simple including information on voting cards, political campaign etc. should be very inexpensive and effective. An advertising information campaign will be needed…
COST OF CERTIFICATE… It would be wise to have a government subsidized certificate cost program. The companies doing this work will have to be paid. In large volume the cost will be low, but nonetheless the cost will be a bit more than for a house loan application. NOTE: The cost will vary from just $1 to perhaps $100 or more, all depends on how much information has to be verified, will it be just personal ID or will it include education records, work experience. Any government can very easily decide to move all their voters to this system, though the certificate WILL have to be done by more than one none-government independent company.
COST OF COMPUTERS TO RUN IT… Now here is the beauty of it, ZERO, that is correct no money at all. This system will run only on volunteer’s computers. People all over the world leave computers on connected to the internet, these computers will have the software and database distributed among them, with plenty of redundancy. There will be NO centralized system anywhere, no one system to destroy of tamper with. The more people use it, the more they will freely volunteer there idle computer time.
A few technical details…
There a few main components to this software system.
1. Voter’s certificate. This is a very important component; it is a life-long certificate with account numbers. When a voter enters the system to enter his/her vote he must use a certified account that proves who he/she is and optionally his/her skills to increase the voting points. This is what prevents a single user from tampering with the vote. This certificate can be provided by any authorized certificate company in the world; THESE COMPANIES HAVE BEEN PROVIDING THESE SERVICE FOR YEARS, THIS IS NOTHING NEW!!! There are presently many of these companies available with a very elaborate tamper prove system.
The certifying companies can be compared to banks, banks are institution one trust with money, in this case these companies are trusted to verify who a individual says he or she is and whatever else information he/she wished to be included in the secret certificate. The certificate itself is an online ultra secure highly encrypted 100% tamper proof database, you simply enter your certificate account number, password and level of information you wish to provide, and the certifying authority verifies it to be true, that is all it does; it is like some doing a credit check but with in this case you must provide authorization.
Here is how this works: An individual registers to vote with the certifying independent company, provide personal identification and optionally answers a questionnaire about his/her education, professional experience, age, sex, marital status, subject of preferences, financial information, and much more can optionally be provided; this information is verified by the issuing certificate company and it is kept secret from all prying eyes, including government agencies, no if or buts, court orders of nothing, the information is encrypted for all viewers, even for the issuing company, it can only be accessed if the certificate holder authorizes it. This certificate are as close a perfect, as the perfect work can be use, they are truly infallible and inviolable.
Not only can you use the certificate for voting but you can use it in just about any other business transaction that you chose to prove who you are and what your skills are, finances etcetera are. What is best, is that the certificate is 100% private, no one can access this information, not even the issuing company once the certificate has been created without the expressed authorized permission of the owner of the certificate, this is done with various levels of passwords. When the certificate is used in the voting system, only the information that is needed is used, along with an account number that never gives out the identity of the person voting; in other words the voter’s identity is always kept secret.
2. NO centralized computer nor computer system. This software and database will be spread in hundreds of thousand perhaps millions of computers worldwide, in a highly encrypted secure way, no single computer anywhere in the world will have any significant amount of the software nor the database. NOTE: THIS IS NOT NEW; IT ALREADY HAS BEEN DONE FOR OTHER SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS. Basically anyone in the world who has his/her computer connected to the internet can volunteer their computer idle time for this application. This makes the software and database 100% tamper proof from any and all, not even a countries law could change it, since this will be a worldwide borderless system; furthermore there will be NO way of knowing who’s country information resides where, the data will be spread through thousands of computers worldwide, not even the disconnection of a whole country from the internet would be able to stop the system.
3. Changes to the software. After the initial release of the software and database, changes to the software can only be made by the same system, in other words all changes will have to be approved by itself, no individual or single group will be able to change it. Eventually as it grows it will require thousands of software engineers with certificates (see above line 1) to be able to make a change. This is what makes it infallible!!! No single country, no none-qualified person, no government, can single handed make a change.
4. Efficiency. In order for this system to really work, it must be efficient, it must require very little time from the user, it must be available to everyone. This can all be easily done. Part of the certificate system is to provide a very easy interface for the user to subscribe via email to the only the issues of his/her interest, for example, if you are a virology engineer who owns a horse in an x town, you will only get invited to vote on those two issues of interest to you; If you want to vote on more issues, such as the road being build next to your home or town or city, you can also get that invitation with a link to the page to enter you vote. You will only get as must as you want. If you are retired and like to vote on issue within your profession at a worldwide basis you could get invited to vote on hundred of issues, and your vote will count more than even local people in those countries, since you are an expert in that field. The purpose of this software if to get the unpaid help of the most and best qualified people in the world, not just you local politician and community. You can actually have and unpaid expert from the other side of the planet help you make a decision.
5. FORUMS. Parallel to the voting system there will be a very simply discussion system to aid in the vote. The human webpage interface to this system will be very similar to the present system we have in place right now.
6. WHO CAN ENTER A QUESTION FOR VOTING? This perhaps is one of the best things. The answer is anyone, same as with the forum system, anyone can enter a issue to be voted on. The same system will take care of eliminating issues that are irrelevant or provide by hackers.
7. AREA OF COVERAGE FOR VOTE. The area of coverage for ones vote is only limited by ones choice, if you wish to be notified of Timbuktu you simple select it and you will be notified of issue relating to that geographical area.
