A Modest Proposal for transforming Facebook

With apologies to Jonathan Swift and the genre of satire, today we offer a proposal that could exceed Zuck’s efforts to rule the metaverse. Transform Facebook, or create a competitor, that is similar to the original SimCity game but that allows multi-players on the internet to collaborate on creating a shared and shareable vision of the kind of world in which they, and, conceivably, we, might want to live.

What's envisioned would require a significant upgrade over SimCity BuildIt by incorporating some AI version of the various algorithms and models used to test various carbon sequestration techniques, to assess the intended and unintended consequences of various urban and rural mixes, such as eliminating dairy and meat sectors from agriculture, composting food waste and then what happens to the soils and is there enough or too much compost to provide year-round food for the 10 billion expected.

But, and it’s a huge but (no pun intended), such an approach offers options to test Republican versus Democratic social and economic approaches; ways and means to test bridging or closing the urban rural splits; vegan, vegetarian and plant-based diets; and a variety of policy-based options that are currently being debated with few, if any, actual assessments of how well any policy may or may not work in a complex, emergent, dynamic world. (Build  Back Better anyone?)

blue sky flight test

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, we have a number of places trying doughnut economics; the United Nations has proposed its 17 Sustainable Development Goals; Paul Hawken et. al. have brought us Drawdown and Regeneration; all of which, and other approaches, require societies and cultures and nations to kind of buy a pig in a poke. If folks had access to the kind of SimWorld that’s policy-driven and systems-based, we could avoid a lot of misinformation, disinformation and consequent debate by offering folks an opportunity to plug a proposed policy into the simulation and see what happens. When multitudes are doing it at the same time, we will, I believe, at a minimum, clearly eliminate economists’ hiding behind the skirts of “rational person.” Between that and eliminating the nonsense now served on Facebook, we’ll have made major progress at creating a newer and better world. Zuck could become the snake that swallowed its own tail.

One Vote

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

            ^{After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution}

My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made

it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
on its own accord by first testing the air-slide

over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
its own. Must make the choice on its own

no matter what its been taught. Some forget
that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.

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