The Institutions-Individuals Pair
In my previous blogs I had discussed about the societal beings (societal body and societal brain). I was thinking about the Internet was the backbone for super-human-beings. After reading an article about Digg.com where news articles are rated by the netizens, I suddenly realized that the super-human-beings have already existed in our society. Institutions are such super human beings. Stock markets are such super beings.
There are millions participants of the stock markets – they buy or sell stocks every day. Each stock player does not have a complete picture of the market while the market is entirely determined by the sum of all stock players. In this societal body and societal brain pair, the individual stock players are just like the cells in our human body while the stock markets are just like the human beings themselves.
It is a great day for me to realize such a paired structure among human beings and the institutions we collectively created. This new realization will guide me in thinking about the future of how institutions are developed and advanced.
I was thinking about the Internet as the backbone for building such pairs between human beings and super-beings. Now there are no such super-beings. There are just institutions we developed over our history. The Internet helps formalizing the virtual networks of institutions. Before the Internet, all institutions are connected by discrete objects such as books, news papers, legal documents, etc. Now with the Internet, institutions can have continuous structure among them.
Along this line, I have to think more about how human beings can understand institutions and nurture new institutions. I will study the market institutions first. There are stock markets, international currency markets, bond markets, options & futures markets, and commodities markets. All these markets are example of institutions. The same institution-individual pair relationship exists. Now I can see a new branch of sociology – the networked institutions.
There are millions participants of the stock markets – they buy or sell stocks every day. Each stock player does not have a complete picture of the market while the market is entirely determined by the sum of all stock players. In this societal body and societal brain pair, the individual stock players are just like the cells in our human body while the stock markets are just like the human beings themselves.
It is a great day for me to realize such a paired structure among human beings and the institutions we collectively created. This new realization will guide me in thinking about the future of how institutions are developed and advanced.
I was thinking about the Internet as the backbone for building such pairs between human beings and super-beings. Now there are no such super-beings. There are just institutions we developed over our history. The Internet helps formalizing the virtual networks of institutions. Before the Internet, all institutions are connected by discrete objects such as books, news papers, legal documents, etc. Now with the Internet, institutions can have continuous structure among them.
Along this line, I have to think more about how human beings can understand institutions and nurture new institutions. I will study the market institutions first. There are stock markets, international currency markets, bond markets, options & futures markets, and commodities markets. All these markets are example of institutions. The same institution-individual pair relationship exists. Now I can see a new branch of sociology – the networked institutions.
posted by Unknown at 8:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home