Institutional Architecture

  • The societal pyramid works as much from the top down as from the bottom upwards, from the State towards citizens and vice versa, via groups of associations that work between these two poles.
  • A novelty : the knowledge-based society uses three structures instead of two : a media-based structure has been added to the older political and economic structures.
  • Institutions supporting these three structures do not operate at the same rate, hence the complexity of the knowledge society. The media-based structure evolves very quickly and runs through cycles of one and a half years, the economic structure, through cycles of three years and the slowest, the political structure, has cycles of nine years which give the impression that it is out of step with the current crises.
  • Another novelty : the pyramid is segmented in its middle into millions of niches. We also find civil society in that middle (association sectors, local authorities, citizen groups, etc.) :

Information architecture

  • A daily flow of data-information-knowledge fuels citizens and helps them create their opinions.
  • This flow circulates from top to bottom and from bottom to top (left), that is to say between the State and the citizen, hence between the local and the world and vice versa.
  • A novelty : this architecture is energised by the increasing number of citizens who use social networks.
  • Another novelty : tools such as mobile and geolocation segment and personalize information flows.
  • This diagram reveals an important reality : significant amounts of data have to be processed to generate a certain amount of information that will provide the citizen with some knowledge and then (collectively) one or two opinions, which form the precursors of action (see below) :

Media Architecture

  • The actors (right in the diagram) are content producers, which include social networks, value added aggregators, equipment manufacturers and networkers.
  • Systems (hardware – left in the diagram) : This world is covered by 3 billion computer screens, 5 billion mobile devices and 2 billion televisions that encompass the planet in a web.

Generational architecture

  • Immigrants (digital immigrants) : their culture has been shaped by mass media and written media.
  • Hybrids : their culture has been shaped primarily by traditional television and PCs.
  • Digitally-literate people : their culture is shaped by smart phones and tablets, that is, by consumer electronics.
  • True natives (digital natives): their culture will be shaped by the Internet 3, which will give them the impression of being in the information.
  • Hence the emergence of a generational crisis :

Societal architecture in stages

  • The operations of a society evolves in stages, each level of information corresponds an increasing order of complexity (from left to right, below).
  • Each level is a space of connectivity, that is a level of solidarity and consumption. It is a level of human experience in which the consensus is developed necessary for citizens’ participation in the decision-making about desired changes in society.
  • For citizens all levels become a process of identification, learning and interaction with their world. It is all these levels that inscribe an individual in a world of meaning, which eventually becomes his/her culture.
  • This means that a citizen lives in/at several cultural and linguistic levels and has as many levels of memory and therefore levels of information processing. (see Braudel’s theory of staging) :

Here is a multi-layered American model :

Here is another American model in the field of healthcare marketing:

Internet 2, the media architecture

If we distribute the critical mass of users horizontally and the media coverage time (from 1 sec to 3 months), we can better understand the media spectrum :

  • Use of the three communication modes according to the user’s needs: pointcasting, narrowcasting and broadcasting (more oriented towards the long term).
  • Pointcasting focuses on interpersonal interaction, and therefore on conversation and immediacy, while broadcasting is more oriented towards the long term because it is used by a large mass of people.
  • Top down corresponds, in the other sense, to the rise in citizens’ expression of voice (bottom up).

Institutional Architecture

  • The societal pyramid works as much from the top down as from the bottom upwards, from the State towards citizens and vice versa, via groups of associations that work between these two poles.
  • A novelty : the knowledge-based society uses three structures instead of two : a media-based structure has been added to the older political and economic structures.
  • Institutions supporting these three structures do not operate at the same rate, hence the complexity of the knowledge society. The media-based structure evolves very quickly and runs through cycles of one and a half years, the economic structure, through cycles of three years and the slowest, the political structure, has cycles of nine years which give the impression that it is out of step with the current crises.
  • Another novelty : the pyramid is segmented in its middle into millions of niches. We also find civil society in that middle (association sectors, local authorities, citizen groups, etc.) :

Information architecture

  • A daily flow of data-information-knowledge fuels citizens and helps them create their opinions.
  • This flow circulates from top to bottom and from bottom to top (left), that is to say between the State and the citizen, hence between the local and the world and vice versa.
  • A novelty : this architecture is energised by the increasing number of citizens who use social networks.
  • Another novelty : tools such as mobile and geolocation segment and personalize information flows.
  • This diagram reveals an important reality : significant amounts of data have to be processed to generate a certain amount of information that will provide the citizen with some knowledge and then (collectively) one or two opinions, which form the precursors of action (see below) :

Media Architecture

  • The actors (right in the diagram) are content producers, which include social networks, value added aggregators, equipment manufacturers and networkers.
  • Systems (hardware – left in the diagram) : This world is covered by 3 billion computer screens, 5 billion mobile devices and 2 billion televisions that encompass the planet in a web.

Generational architecture

  • Immigrants (digital immigrants) : their culture has been shaped by mass media and written media.
  • Hybrids : their culture has been shaped primarily by traditional television and PCs.
  • Digitally-literate people : their culture is shaped by smart phones and tablets, that is, by consumer electronics.
  • True natives (digital natives): their culture will be shaped by the Internet 3, which will give them the impression of being in the information.
  • Hence the emergence of a generational crisis :

Societal architecture in stages

  • The operations of a society evolves in stages, each level of information corresponds an increasing order of complexity (from left to right, below).
  • Each level is a space of connectivity, that is a level of solidarity and consumption. It is a level of human experience in which the consensus is developed necessary for citizens’ participation in the decision-making about desired changes in society.
  • For citizens all levels become a process of identification, learning and interaction with their world. It is all these levels that inscribe an individual in a world of meaning, which eventually becomes his/her culture.
  • This means that a citizen lives in/at several cultural and linguistic levels and has as many levels of memory and therefore levels of information processing. (see Braudel’s theory of staging) :

Here is a multi-layered American model :

Here is another American model in the field of healthcare marketing:

Internet 2, the media architecture

If we distribute the critical mass of users horizontally and the media coverage time (from 1 sec to 3 months), we can better understand the media spectrum :

  • Use of the three communication modes according to the user’s needs: pointcasting, narrowcasting and broadcasting (more oriented towards the long term).
  • Pointcasting focuses on interpersonal interaction, and therefore on conversation and immediacy, while broadcasting is more oriented towards the long term because it is used by a large mass of people.
  • Top down corresponds, in the other sense, to the rise in citizens’ expression of voice (bottom up).