How the Virus is Helping Us Find a Better Social Stack

Alternative Institutions are Rising

New social systems, collective intelligences, and coordination mechanisms are forming to address COVID-19. This post can be read as a guide to making them even better, or as an evolving index of the best things going on.

The WHO, the CDC, the media, the economy — many traditional institutions are performing poorly. But while these institutions fail, new social systems like endcoronavirus.org are kicking ass. The virus is bringing new social systems to the fore. Innovations are popping up across the entire social stack (see fig 1). Today I’ll explore how to judge these new systems, and where they might be superior to entrenched systems.

Social Systems

But first, a word about our social systems, in general.

In this post, lots of things will be called social systems. When I use this term, I mean the kind of things in black text in figure 1: systems made of people, who have codified and mutually understood roles and responsibilities. If you mention that you’re part of one, and what your role is, people will understand.