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<p>Dear FIS & IS4SI Colleagues,</p>
<p>"The Age of Discord" was the title of a lecture that the
historian and sociologist Peter Turchin, founder of the
Cliodynamics approach, gave recently in the Netherlands. The
slides can be easily obtained in the web (in his blog). The
content was mainly referring to a decades-long trend of low
progress and rise of inequality, and as a consequence growing
social unrest. It would form part of a secular oscillation in
history... But I think there is a new potent factor: the
hyperconnectivity we talked weeks ago.</p>
<p>These days we are watching violent demonstrations in numerous
countries: Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Nicaragua, Iran, Irak,
Lebanon... plus Hongkong, Spain (Barcelona), France (gilets
jaunes), and the rising polarization from Trumpism and Brexit.
There is a contagion effect in some cases. But a common factor is
the influence of social networks. In several aspects: <br>
</p>
<p>--How easy is to organize demonstrations and activist
concentrations.</p>
<p>--How easy is to disseminate information that efficiently
counteracts governments' efforts to maintain social order. <br>
</p>
<p>--How easyly anger and hatred are shared among the masses,
generating a collective climate of insults, physical violence,
highest irritation.</p>
<p>--How easily outright lies, disinformation, vitriolic attacks are
jumping from screen to screen to the eyeballs of hypnotized
watchers.</p>
<p>--The proportion of "negative" to "positive" (say of emotional
responses) has become the highest in the history of communication.</p>
<p>My opinion is that the new media and new modalities of
hyperconnection, still deprived of constraining cultural patterns,
are the genuine movers of this "Age of Discord", without rejecting
the other factors implied in Turchin secular views. This time
there is something really new agitating history and the masses
(like printing press, steam engines...). Is there hope that
collective intelligence will domesticate this artificial
information flow soon? Of course, without a loss of individual
freedoms.<br>
</p>
<p>Best wishes</p>
<p>--Pedro<font size="+2"><br>
</font></p>
<p><font size="+2"> </font><br>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
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