Dream Infection

Ladies buy fur, barbarians sell fur, ladies don’t care,

they’re wearing their evil faces!

http://learners.in.th/blog/living-green/118594 

Some interesting thought from the preface of the book ‘The Slow Pace of Fast Change’.

It argues that the more connected the network is, the more it would experience the initial slow pace of innovation diffusions even with those with the highest degree of break through.

This goes against the common sense where the more connected, the higher degree of of diffusion. Similarly to the premise outlines in those popular book such as the Tipping point which simply concludes that it is possible to find the CONNECTOR who will spread the news/meme/innovation like a wild fire.

Of course, this paradoxial knowledge is not new, especially if one follows the recent development of network sciences, especially the role of social network threshold in innovation diffusion.

The idea is simple really, most people don’t try or accept new thing unless many of their close friends do. Each person have their own threshold on exactly how many friends it takes to accept new thing. The problem is, as your close friends grow rapidly with the growth of ICT-enabled social networks, the threshold even with the same ratio (such as 2/3) will result in the lower probability for you to accept new stuff. If you are in a room with 100 friends, it will take two third of those people to be convinced before you would. Actually, the more people adding into the social network, the threshold ration tends to change also for the worst. Of course, it would take much longer time before the diffusion happens, but once it does,

This argument is a basic stuff from social network sciences.

Now, this new book ‘the slow pace of fast change’ put forward the same arugment but using Game theory, it basically argues that the decision to accept new innovation depends on the move of so many people in the games, sort of the Nash equilibrium we learned during Econ 101, where everyone tries to maximize their payoff matrix. And exactly because of this, the more connected the game / network, the more time it will take for people to reach their innovation-acceptance decisions, especially in reality people don’t know other people’s moves. When people works on imperfect information, they tends to reserve their move in the safest manner. This can, of course, lead to something like prisoner dilemma where everyone is worst off because of their fear for others.

Anyway, this is quite insightful for people trying to create innovation diffusion or cascade over the Internet, especially those working on web2.0. The initial phase can be slow but once it picks up, the fast chagne could come. The key is to look very very closely to the development of intial responds of various players in your innovation game. Exactly how, once I read the book, I will blog more about this

Today I was presenting to the Thai Health Promotion Foundation sub-committee on its next phase of “ICT Plan for Cyber Health”. It was fun to have the Health Minister joining the meeting unofficially. I was first reviewing the situation of Thai cyberspace on risk behavior among youth. The recent survey found many interesting figure such as over 90% of the online youth use chatting service, out of that 30% goes to meet physically and 18% ended up with having sex with partners known through the Internet. The trend is getting worst everyday with rapid increase in all risk indicators.

The nice thing that came out of the meeting was that the traditional thinking of shutting down risky websites or cracking down dangerous online communities are not enough to combat the problem. The key is to both build cyber-immunity to youth as well as providing them with creative internet environment where young people who shared similar interests can exchange their views/works and evolve into various positive online communities.

One interesting idea from the health minister was that we should unite those positive online communities, especially those web 2.0 in Thailand with various incentive schemes for their members such as various competition on all things creative from music to short movie as well as provide them with BIG BANG opportunity to showcase their digital creative works (similarly to FAT festival). Something like a big & youthful web2.0 showcases and invite massive collaboration from the public. This will provide major incentive for youngsters to explore their creative potential through the digital world and perhaps spend less attention to all those risky behavior.

Although it is the end of his term as health minister, at least he is getting it. I’m sure it’s our job to convince more people like this so that there are more and more support for web2.0 communities in Thailand sustainably.

TRN was co-founding a political database website www.politicalbase.in.th which was launched last week in Beta. The site is being developed and own by Siam Intelligence Unit, the new young blood think tank in Bangkok. We hope that it will be a small step towards a more transparent, more open source democratic process in Thailand empowering by the Internet. The site was developed using WikiMedia engine to allow broad-base contribution in the future. The site was inspired by www.politicalbase.com beyond that, the concept of Open Source Democracy can be founded and downloaded as free PDF at the DEMOS website.

Here is what Bangkok Post, a local English newspapers, was covering the story.
(original at http://www.bangkokpost.com/election2007/231207/election_231207_06.htm )

Want to knowall about Thailand’s politicians?

New database has the answers

By Achara Ashayagachat

A group of young professionals have launched the first online database containing everything you want to know about Thai politicians and political parties. Project leader Charoenchai Chaipiboolwong, of the Siam Intelligence Unit, said the Thailand Political Base website (www.politicalbase.in.th) would become one of the practical tools for people to monitor political figures as well as check on backgrounds and policy platforms of political parties.The initiative was based on an idea that information is the key for ”quality politics”, he said.

”It is the people who have to stand up to protect their own interests and they can do so if they have information. When they get the information, they can share it with their colleagues and friends or create a small network to exchange this useful data,” said Mr Charoenchai, a businessman at a security firm who teamed up with his economics graduate friends from Chulalongkorn University.

Thanee Chaiwat, an economics lecturer at Chulalongkorn University’s Centre for the Development of Policy Studies, said political parties fielding candidates in today’s election had come up with similar policies, so voters need to check the backgrounds of each candidate to help them make the right decision.

The website, which is still in a fledgling stage, is sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the Siam Intelligence Unit and Social Innovation Design.

Kan Yuenyong, another team member, said the website is expected to operate like the free encyclopaedia Wikipedia where internet users can get reliable information on certain topics.

The website now contains brief histories of about 40 prominent politicians such as Thaksin Shinawatra, Samak Sundaravej, Abhisit Vejjajiva and Chuan Leekpai.

It also has lists of cabinet members of previous governments, the 2007 constitution, facts about the Sept 19 coup and laws passed by the National Legislative Assembly.

Democracy blooms in Siam,

pig-head flowers with corrupted leafs,

millions of fools water it with ignorance,

’til they all died of its sweet poison.