1. Massively Shared
Planned Action
Barry Smith
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith
March 20, 2013
1

2. http://www.british-
history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=5
3759
Piracy law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admiral
ty_law

3. Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
3

4. • Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 2.0, over 2,000
participants from 58 countries
4

5. • Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 2.0, over 2,000
participants from 58 countries
5

6. The meshing of actions of over 2000
people in 58 different countries
• in such a way as to give rise to a common
enduring product to which they all make their
own contributions
• is made possible by law
6

7. Eric Whitacre Virtual Choir 3
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Thank you for planning to be part of Eric Whitacre's Virtual Choir 3, Water Night, recorded via www.ericwhitacre.com. Any recording you upload through this site (your Performance) is
subject to these Terms and Conditions (Terms) so please read them carefully. By recording and uploading your video (your Performance) you are stating that you have read,
understood and agree to be bound by the Terms below. Your agreement is with the Producers, Music Productions Ltd (c/o Pinewood Studios, Pinewood Road, Iver Heath, Bucks SL0
0NH UK) on behalf of Eric Whitacre Inc., in respect of Virtual Choir 3 (the Recording).
You confirm that you have made and submitted video footage of your audio visual performance of the composition, Water Night by Eric Whitacre. You hereby give all requisite
consents under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act of 1988 (or any re-enactments or amendments thereof) to enable the Producers to edit your Performance together with audio
visual material made by third parties to create a new composite Recording as part of the Virtual Choir series.
The Producers hereby confirm that your Performance will not be used in any other way, except as part of the Virtual Choir Recording, without prior consent.
You are responsible for maintaining your equipment and services required to access the recording and upload process for Virtual Choir 3. The data collected about you through sign-in
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7

8. To participate in a choral performance
with Eric Whitacre you need:
• Score
• Performance instructions
• Recording instructions
• Contact form (filled out)
• Choral survey (filled out)
• Video or audio files recording 2-3 selections from
within the last calendar year uploaded through
YouSendIt dropbox or by email to
SingwithEric@DCINY.org
By uploading video or audio files you agree to
8

9. … give all requisite consents under the Copyright Designs and
Patents Act of 1988 (or any re-enactments or amendments
thereof) to enable the Producers to edit your Performance
together with audio visual material made by third parties to
create a new composite Recording as part of the Virtual Choir
series.
… The performer copyright in your Performance remains yours
and is not owned by the Producers. The Producers retain the
right to remove or refuse any submissions as deemed necessary,
with copyright law or other international laws in mind.
… The content you upload, your Recording, is protected by
international copyright laws without limitation. These Terms
and the relationship between you and the Producers are
governed by British law. These Terms remain in full force and
effect in perpetuity.
9

10. 10

11. 11

12. 12
• Documents such as these create an
intermeshing of obligations between the
participants involved in massively shared agency
• Create an expectation of the existence of such
intermeshed obligations (somethings in
perpetuity)
• Justifying investment of ever more significant
resources in the creation of ever more elaborate
plans

13. The meshing of actions of large
numbers of people in musical
performances
• is made possible not only by legal documents
of the more familiar sort
13

14. 14

15. The actions of the players in an
orchestral performance
• are intermeshed through the sets of
intermeshed documents we call orchestral
scores
• scores are sets of instructions for playing
• scores generate intermeshed obligations to
play in a certain way
15

16. Scores bring it about that specific obligation series are
distributed across large groups
16

17. Orchestal
score with
staves
17

18. 18Hector Berlioz, Le corsaire, Overture, H 101

19. players actions are coordinated and steered
through time through intermeshed documents
19

20. scores and subscores
plans and subplans
sets of instructions, which also allow training
20

21. 21
Modularity of score reflects modularity of
orchestra

22. 22
Massive shared agency presupposes modularity

23. How to do things with documents
• An orchestral musical work (as
something that can be rehearsed,
performed and re-performed)
–could not exist without a score
–could not be rehearsed without scores and
subscores
–could not be performed without (either)
scores or rehearsal
24

24. How to do things with scores
1. the author authors the score, thereby creates a possibility
of performance, and thereby creates the work
2. conductor and orchestra use the score to form a plan
(including subplans) and commit themselves to its
execution
3. they use the score as a set of instructions to rehearse the
execution of their plan (develop score-coordinated
expertise through drill)
4. they schedule a concert, thereby making a commitment to
a prospective audience to perform that work
5. they perform the work
25

25. Laws
• systems of intermeshed obligations
• systems of intermeshed plans
• systems of intermeshed instructions
allow
• conception of ever more complex intermeshed
plans through reliance on shared commitments
and on development of intermeshed expertise
• excution of these plans through shared agency
26

26. musical scores are inert, unless their users
have the sort of expertise needed to
interpret them
Modular coordination of action presupposes
drilling of the members of each module in the
requisite kinds of skill
30

27. documents hold together the executions
of horizontally and vertically meshed
subplans
through drill
31

28. training in how to execute diagrams
32

29. The role of shared practice
This sort of coordinated activity is impossible
without shared expertise, developed
– through training and individual practice
– through practice and rehearsal in small group,
yielding
– reusable, recombinable expertise modules
33

30. Searle: Directions of fit
• world-to-mind: a plan is formulated to
change the world (to make it conform to
the mind of the planner …)
• mind-to-world: an assertion is about
something in the world
• automatic mind-to-world-and-world-to-
mind: I say “I promise to pay you $100
dollars” and thereby make it true that I
promise to pay you $100 dollars
34

31. 35
what begins as a plan,
ends as a record

32. Directions of fit
• world-to-score: the score tells the world how
to shape itself to create a performance that is
in conformance with the score
• score-to-world: the score, when the
performance is completed, serves as a record
of the performance
• automatic score-to-world-and-world-to-
score: Berlioz completes the score and
thereby brings into being a work that is
precisely in conformance to the score
37

33. 39
what begins as a plan,
ends as a record
what makes the record
true is:
the journey you took

34. Blueprint
what begins as a
plan
ends as a record
• of process
• of product
40

35. Plans will be modified along the way
physical changes to the
building to meet
building codes
changes in
materials/suppliers
changes in allowed
physical processes
changes in administrative
(approval) processes
42

36. 43
Plans will involve subplans

37. 44
Documents enable complex processes extending
over ever larger regions of space and time

38. 45
codes include subcodes include sub-sub-codes …

39. https://eplanning.scotland.gov.uk/WAM/paperforms.htm;jsessionid=A42A2A8
A30688E3FB47B35748BFAF7B3
http://www.canadascapital.gc.ca/planning-future/planning-hierarchy
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tue8HJKIPrkC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&d
q=hierarchy+of+urban+planning+levels&source=bl&ots=AZ-
WVyELXm&sig=lJs_1TFFHEYzYCDy5fo2w6vP4Zo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=
aaRHUZW6HoTB4APPhYGgAQ&sqi=2&ved=0CHIQ6AEwBw#v=onep
age&q=hierarchy%20of%20urban%20planning%20levels&f=false
architects, public health officials, and social workers -
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/08/brief-history-
birth-urban-planning/2365/
46

40. spontaneous order vs. planning
biology
47
biology military operation
market concert performance
language election

41. document templates
• As Alfred Whitehead has said in another
connection, "It is a profoundly erroneous
truism, repeated by all copy-books and by
eminent people when they are making
speeches, that we should cultivate the habit
of thinking what we are doing. The precise
opposite is the case. Civilization advances by
extending the number of important
operations which we can perform without
thinking about them."
48

42. price system
• We must look at the price system as such a mechanism for communicating
information if we want to understand its real function—a function which, of
course, it fulfils less perfectly as prices grow more rigid. (Even when quoted prices
have become quite rigid, however, the forces which would operate through
changes in price still operate to a considerable extent through changes in the other
terms of the contract.) The most significant fact about this system is the economy
of knowledge with which it operates, or how little the individual participants need
to know in order to be able to take the right action. In abbreviated form, by a kind
of symbol, only the most essential information is passed on and passed on only to
those concerned. It is more than a metaphor to describe the price system as a kind
of machinery for registering change, or a system of telecommunications which
enables individual producers to watch merely the movement of a few pointers, as
an engineer might watch the hands of a few dials, in order to adjust their activities
to changes of which they may never know more than is reflected in the price
movement.
• Hayek: The Uses of Knowledge in Society
49

43. Wikipedia
• Wales cites Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek's essay "The Use of
Knowledge in Society", which he read as an undergraduate,[16] as "central" to his
thinking about "how to manage the Wikipedia project".[11] Hayek argued
that information is decentralized – that each individual only knows a small fraction
of what is known collectively – and that as a result, decisions are best made by
those with local knowledge rather than by a central authority.[11] Wales
reconsidered Hayek's essay in the 1990s, while reading about the open source
movement (which advocated that software be free and distributed). He was
moved in particular by "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", an essay and later book by
one of the founders of the movement, Eric S. Raymond, which "opened [his] eyes
to the possibilities of mass collaboration."[16] From his background in finance and
working as a futures and options trader, Wales developed an interest in game
theory and the effect of incentives on human collaborative activity, a fascination to
which he credits enabling much of his effort with Wikipedia.[84] He has rejected the
notion that his role in promoting Wikipedia is altruistic, which he defines as
"sacrificing your own values for others", stating "[t]hat participating in a
benevolent effort to share information is somehow destroying your own values
makes no sense to me".[54]
50

44. Wikipedia cheats
• Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia
• By James Delingpole Politics Last updated:
December 22nd, 2009
51

45. Agglomerations
52

46. Book of Common Prayer
• Textual deference
53

47. • a massive change –moving to drive on right
• abolishing units of measure
• a massive meta-change – introducing a new
currency
54

48. • Amish barn raising
Underground railroad documents
Gangs)
Driving on the right
East Germany
Pounds shillings
Moon launches
55

49. Internet-scale activities on the internet
56
• MMOGs = massively multiplayer online games
capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of
players simultaneously.
– real financial markets for virtual game items
– real careers for traders of virtual game items
– real courts passing judgments on crimes involving
theft of virtual game items
• MMWGs agent-based wargame simulations to
support joint military training

50. Employment Opportunity
• Senior Semantic Cloud Scientist
Skills: Applying semantic technologies
(ontologies) for analysis of internet-scale
data. Developing enterprise solutions for
incredibly large, incredibly heterogeneous
federations.
57

51. Internet-scale activities on other
computational platforms
58
• Credit-card payment systems
• Massive on-line choral performances
• International currency markets
• Airline traffic-management systems
• Military communications systems (for satellites,
drones, sensors …)

52. All of these internet-scale activities
generate and sustain larger phenomena,
which include more than just processes
inside computer networks
• Games played by people
• Journeys made by people
• Wars fought by people
• Political, legal, artistic, financial activities
performed by people
… 59

53. The ontology of all of these things
• What is the World Cup?
• What is the Dow Jones Industrial Average?
• What is the Constitution of the United States?
• What is Beethoven’s 9th Symphony?
• What is a credit card number?
Kant did not have answers to questions such as this
60

54. Das Kapital
[T]he cooperation of the wage-laborers is entirely brought
about by the capital that employs them. Their unification
into one single productive body, and the establishment of a
connection between their individual functions, lies outside
their competence. These things are not their own act, but
the act of the capital that brings them together and
maintains them in that situation. Hence the interconnection
between their various labors confronts them, in the realm of
ideas, as a plan drawn up by the capitalist, and, in practice,
as his authority, as the powerful will of a being outside them,
who subjects their activity to his purpose. (Das Kapital)
61

55. Das Kapital
• Die Kooperation der Lohnarbeiter ist ferner
bloße Wirkung des Kapitals, ... ihre Einheit als
produktiver Gesamtkörper liegen außer ihnen,
im Kapital, das sie zusammenbringt und
zusammenhält. Der Zusammenhang ihrer
Arbeiten tritt ihnen daher ideell als Plan,
praktisch als Autorität des Kapitalisten
gegenüber … (Buch 1, S. 540)
62

56. The ontology of all of these things
• What is capital?
• What is a plan?
• What is authority?
• What is the internet?
• What is a stockmarket crash?
and especially of planned activities:
• What is a symphony concert?
• What is a military operation?
63

57. Scott J. Shapiro, “Massively Shared Agency”, 2013
*Bratman, Searle …+ ‘are unable to account for
the existence of massively shared agency.
they ‘have largely concentrated on analyzing
shared activities among highly committed
participants. The working assumption has been
that those who sing duets or paint houses
together are all committed to the success of the
activity.’
64

58. Searle’s two books on social ontology
The Construction of Social Reality (1997)
Making the Social World (2012)
• Sam is a member of the Board (roughly)
because: people in the relevant context believe
that Sam is a member of the Board
• This does not work e.g. for ‘Kashmir is part of
India’
66

59. The Searle Thesis
Through the performance of speech acts (of promising,
marrying, accusing, appointing) we bring into being
₋ claims,
₋ obligations,
₋ relations of authority,
₋ relations of membership,
…
= the entities making up the ontology of the social world.
67

60. How do such entities endure through
time?
• in the local case: through memories, fears,
desires (e.g. your desire to preserve your good
name)
• But what about the global case (where there
is no face-to-face contact)?
68

61. Hernando de Soto
Institute for Liberty and Democracy, Lima, Peru
Bill Clinton:
“The most promising anti-poverty initiative in the world”
69

62. The de Soto thesis:
documents and document
systems are mechanisms for
creating the institutional orders
of modern societies
The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and
Fails Everywhere Else,
New York: Basic Books, 2000
70

63. Documents shape society
• Tanzanians are producing valid testaments accepted
and enforced on the basis of local community
consensus.
• They have found a way to express their individual will
in such a way that it can becomes effective even when
they no longer exist.
• Documents enable them to go beyond the mere
physical control of their assets in the here-and-now.
They are inventing an abstract order which allows
them to transcend time.
71

64. Extralegal will filled out
“in the name of the
Republic of Tanzania”
testament
72

65. With the invention of documented
claims and obligations
• a new dimension of socio-economic reality
comes into existence:
bank accounts, stocks, shares, bonds,
mortgages, credit cards
• these form enduring social networks –
document systems – of entirely new types
• debts become information entities analogous
to computer software artifacts
73

66. How to do things with diagrams
78

67. From speech acts to document acts
Documents can be copied, modified, stored …
Documents can be aggregated (meshed
together)
Documents can be algorithmically executable
(Turbotax …)
79

68. Diagram-vehiculated question series
80

69. Urban Planning Consent Forms
81

70. 82
D-Day Landings

71. 83

72. 84

73. 85
MUSEE DES ARCHIVES OMAHA BEACH

74. Documents made possible
(massively shared agency of)
organized warfare
86

75. The Shang Dynasty, 1600-1050 BC
The invention of writing had a profound effect
on Shang government and its ability to rule. It
increased the government’s ability to organize
on a large scale, whether it be to oversee a
hierarchical administration; rule the state’s many
territories; organize the mining of large
quantities of ore for bronzework; wage large
military campaigns; construct city walls and
palaces; or build elaborate tombs for
themselves.
87

76. Genghis Khan
The Mongols established a system of postal-
relay horse stations, similar to the system
employed in ancient Persia for fast transfer of
written messages … Prior to the invasion of
Europe … sent spies for almost ten years into
the heart of Europe, making maps of the old
Roman roads, …
88

77. Today: Intermeshed documents make possible
more complex processes extending over ever
larger regions of social, legal, financial reality
Example: The securitization of a mortgage
89

78. Standard theories of collective
action
91
Searle, Tuomela, Gilbert, Bratman deal with
simple local interaction of cooperative agents
communicating by speech
“Would you like to dance?”
“Let’s lift this table”
“Shall we cook dinner together?”
“Waiter, bring me a beer!”
…

79. Shapiro: To adapt standard theory of
collective agency to deal with massively
shared actions we need to add authority
Authorities are … “meshcreating” mechanisms.
When disputes between participants break out
with respect to the proper way to proceed,
authorities can create a mesh between the
subplans of the participants by demanding that
both sides accept a certain solution.
Basic for Shapiro’s theory of the nature of law
94

80. Hierarchy of courts
95

81. 96

82. 97

83. 98

84. Massive shared agency presupposes modularity
101

85. Royal Netherlands Army
102

86. 103
What holds such horizontally and
vertically meshed hierarchies together?
(Partial) answer: systems of documents
establish vertical authority relations
create obligations
establish horizontal coordination
allow planning of coordinated actions
unfolding in time
…

87. Expanding Bratman’s theory
through the idea of diagrammatically nested
• plans
• authorities
• intentions
• obligations
• expertise
• modules
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOTMLPF

88. 109
Searle: one-off, one-person obligations
• I request that you bring me a beer.
• By signing this IOU note I commit myself
to paying you $1000 next Tuesday

89. Group obligations
110

90. Army uses Big Diagrams
115

91. 116
US military operations center in Afghanistan
and elaborately nested subdiagrams

92. 117
US military operations center in Afghanistan
e-diagrams

93. 118
Warfighters’ Information Sharing Environment
Fire
Support
LogisticsAir Operations
Intelligence
Civil-Military
Operations
Targeting
Maneuver
&
Blue
Force
Tracking

94. military plan (map overlay)

95. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology
Symbols for Military Organizations
Depict functions/capabilities
Depict Roles: Friend, Adversary,
Neutral

96. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology

97. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology

98. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology
Buildings, Structures, Vehicles,
Formations, Geographic Areas, and
People can all be in a Target_Role for a
period of time
These symbols designate Targets on a
map
A Target_Role is created by way of the
targeting process
A Role is a Temporal Property of some
entity

99. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology

100. Military Symbology
Sample of Military Standard 2525 Military Symbology

101. Map Overlays

102. frgament of D-Day invasion plan

103. Military doctrine
128
Creates training modules to create expertise
modules and operational modules to be turned
into operational plans and nested subplans
Reading and following orders in coordinated
fashion becomes mechanical

104. 129
Ontology(ies) that enables interoperability among members of an Operations Center
and other warfighters.

105. Words, words, words
www.militaryontology.com
130

106. diagrams, diagrams, diagrams
Ontological methods are used in the process of
Task-Organizing
A Task-Organization is the Output (Product) of
Task Organizing
A Task-Organization is a Plan or part of a Plan
A Plan is an Information Content Entity
Task-Organizing — The act of designing an operating
force, support staff, or logistic package of specific size
and composition to meet a unique task or mission.
Characteristics to examine when task-organizing the
force include, but are not limited to: training,
experience, equipage, sustainability, operating
environment, enemy threat, and mobility. (JP 3-05)

107. drill, drill, drill
Source: FM 3-0 Operations
Military Ontologies help planners and operators “see” and
understand the relations between Entities and Events in the
area of operations.
Military Ontologies are prerequisites of military innovations
such as Airborne Operations, Combined Fires and Joint
Operations.
Military Ontologies are prerequisites for the creation of effective
information systems.
Operational Design — The conception and construction of the
framework that underpins a campaign or major operation plan
and its subsequent execution. See also campaign; major
operation. (JP 3-0)

108. 133
Human beings know how to coordinate massively shared agency
Fire
Support
LogisticsAir Operations
Intelligence
Civil-Military
Operations
Targeting
Maneuver
&
Blue
Force
Tracking