The role of information networks in the evolution of social complexity
Pedro C. Marijuán
SAMCA (CPS-I3A) Professorship, University of Zaragoza
(Excerpt)

1. The evolution of societies toward complexity

One of the themes most discussed in the social sciences pertains to the sources and evolution of social complexity. Here, we will explore how current studies of networks and certain discussions around the construct of information are opening new conceptual avenues toward the understanding of social complexity, including knowledge structures, which we ought to research in detail. By the way, it may be a sign of our times that there is an even greater interest in the “collapse” of societies than in their complexity per se (Tainter, 1989, was one of its pioneers).

If we take the work of Diamond (1996) as a starting point in regards to the social, it affords us a dense table that provides support for the argument of the adaptive nature of social complexity. This table details various features invariably shown by societies as they increase in complexity. It consists of a series of social elaborations and institutions of great variety (kinship systems, labour divisions, exchanges, codes and norms, numbers, writing, religions, knowledge systems, legal systems, administrative and political bureaucracies, et cetera,) many of which were clearly “informational.”

Rather than associating them with a hypothetical “progress” of the social order, such elaborations must be understood as adaptations of the social structure to the possibilities offered by the environment. And one of the original factors that historically allowed mankind to go beyond their basic group size and structure—the hunting-gathering bands of about one hundred members—was the acquisition of knowledge toward the creation of artificial ecosystems: The domestication of plants and animals (agriculture and stockbreeding.) The development of very different sets of foods, singularly marked by continental axes (“the axes of history”) is what defined the relative strength of each of the geographical areas devoted to the production of food and the distribution of the corresponding human populations, along with their genes, cultures, languages—and even their germs! (Diamond, 1996).

When classical anthropology approached the discussion of the evolution of the successive organisational stages (of “progress”) in terms of bands, tribes, fiefs and states or empires, or when more recently it adopted a newer perspective based on adaptation, it is worth noting that each organisational stage or gradation of the social system brought an increase of at least one order of magnitude: from tens or hundreds, to thousands, tends of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of individuals. This is crucial in terms of networks. We could argue that each organisational stage brings forth a linear increase of the diameter (the logarithm of size) and a geometric increase of the crossing speed (the time associated to the diameter), both essential factors for the effective interaction of individuals within their corresponding social network.

The above would offer a new approach to understanding the correlations of social complexity. The emergence of new societies of higher complexity and organisation requires the development of informational systems for communication between individuals capable of covering the new social diameters, which are comparatively much larger, at substantially higher crossing speeds. Furthermore, these new relational tools would enable the emergence of multiple networks and sub-networks overlaying the basic fabric of social relationships, of variable complexity (harder to regiment hierarchically) and of equally variable duration, no longer limited strictly to the “strong” or permanent quality of family and kinship bonds characteristic of tribal groups.

In other words, the great informational and communications inventions that mark history—the alphabet, codes, seafaring, digits, the printing press, modern science, the steam engine, motor vehicles, computers—can also be seen as abstract tools for the articulation of multiple social networks and coalitions of a new kind, which partake in the deconstruction and reconstruction process of the existing social order by means of the heterogeneous types of “weak” ties that they foster, paradoxically with higher efficiency and with a broader range of action than the former so-called “strong” ties. Historically, what we here label as weak ties are constituted as authentic “bonds of civility” (Ikegami, 2005). Would the industrial revolution have been possible without the collaborative networks of modern science? Or the scientific revolution without the communication afforded by books and other printed materials” Or the current process of globalisation without computers and the Internet?

The concept of the network is directly tied to the concept of information. Though some studies have already researched experimentally the role of information and of communication networks (particularly electronic ones) in the complex world of social bonds and ties, analysing the resilience, diversity and complexity of its emerging structures (Bohannon, 2006), this direction hardly seems sufficient. For many reasons, some of which we will present momentarily, the informational study of societies is in a most rudimentary stage (Howard and Schiffman, 1998; Marijuán, 2002), despite the fact that we are living in the Information Age.

2. What information is conveyed through communication networks?

A historical review of what was communicated in the Sumerian tablets, the Greek and Roman papyruses, or in much more modern media, would reveal an interesting coincidence. In any age, the unfathomable blend of “the human” is what permeates the social communications media. As McLuhan posited (1964), “the medium is the message”. Media exist to contribute content to each other, to feed one another, starting from the basis of oral communication (though this is not their only source). Consequently, we cannot escape the problem of the “meaning” of all this circulating information, generated verbally and transmitted by the media, as McLuhan pointed out as well. We need a new conceptualisation or theory, beyond Shannon’s physico-theoretical information and the logic systems of artificial intelligence, one allowing the analysis of the “signification”, the “meaning” of information as generator and vehicle of social relations, at the levels of both the individual and society (…)

References

Bohannon, J. 2006. Tracking People’s Electronic Footprints. Science 314, 914-16.

Diamond, J. 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton, New York.

Hobart, M.E. & Schiffman, Z.S. 1998. Information Ages. The Johns Hopkin University Press, Baltimore.

Ikegami, E. 2005. Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Marijuán, P.C. 2002. La información y la evolución de las sociedades: notas para el desarrollo de una perspectiva “socioinformacional”. En: ¿Más allá de la modernidad? García Blanco J.M. y Navarro Susaeta P. (eds) Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Madrid.

McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. University of Toronto Press, Toronto.

Tainter, J. 1989. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.