Well, that was fast. I thought of the Metasocial Web a few days ago, and looks like I will be delivering a speech about it at Web2.0 Ignite in Berlin tomorrow.
A lot of what the Metasocial Web should be is in flux, naturally, so it will be good to get the feedback from the audience, and compare notes on how to quickly progress towards it. The core of the argument is that we are ready to pull together information from public data repositories, and use crowdsourced effort to manage the data to get a better dynamic understanding on how our political, social, and economic systems interact. The goal is to be able and build as much second order knowledge about these systems as possible, in order to operate them at a higher level of efficiency then possible before.
I am calling this the Metasocial Web, or Societal Software, as social networks concern themselves with individuals, and their groupings, while the Metasocial Web is concerned about societies, and their possible competitive comparisons. My idea is that countries that adopt a Metasocial Web are going to be much more effective in allocating their tax resources, and that given this competitive advantage, all countries are going to be pushed towards it quickly.