Speeding up the transition to collective awareness Luce Jacovella School of Law, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London Email: l.jacovella@qmul.ac.uk Pietro Li´ o Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge, UK Email: pl219@cam.ac.uk Abstract—This positional paper gives an overview of some critical issues concerning collective awareness platforms. It shows how collective awareness could reconcile asymmetric and conflict- ing relationships to pursue the improvement of structures within society. It also shows the opportunity for public administrations and policy makers to create conditions for collective participation. Collective intelligence can be used as process to pursue the im- provement of society based on the collective efforts of individuals. This could be assimilated to a process of social eudamonia, an improvement of the self and of society through awareness and understanding. However, things are not so simple and internal tensions lead to divergent outcomes. While society is increasingly fragmented and polarised, the power over information seems to concentrate in the hands of few service providers, fiercely competing for market shares and user-generated data, thanks to laws and structures built for a competition driven society. By contrast, there is a growing demand for sharing data, access to information and for the empowerment of individuals and communities. In response to this demand, many Internet based platforms have been created, governments in Europe have started pursuing open access policies and companies are adopting mixed business models in order to acquire a larger share of data and users. Individuals, companies, governments pursue different objectives using a mix of communication and collaborative tools allowing users to play a pivotal role in the production and management of information, creating the foundation for new horizontal modes of communication and decision making. In order to exemplify pathways to collective awareness to build a society that fosters eudemonia, the paper proposes two examples: 1) social media learning and 2) the governance of health delivery services through social media. I NTRODUCTION:COLLECTIVE AWARENESS There is an increasing demand for sharing information, including personal and health information, for collaboration, content creation, participation in decision making process, that is growing in terms of new platforms emerging, more complex and multi-media applications created, new approaches for dealing with privacy and other issues of governance, new aims and missions introduced. Some platforms provide non- commercial services to the community such as freecycle or whatismineisyours ; other support educational or collaborative knowledge production, or provide various forms of entertain- ment. Powerful platforms like Youtube and iTunes-U include educational channels and provide a range of educational con- tents from video lectures to tutorials. Some platforms provide peer support and information such as patientlikeme . Each platform has distinct characteristics, but often, common prob- lems. For example, the all apply policies to handle personal data, share information among users or for marketing purposes and preserving privacy [2], [3], [4], [5]. They all need to find means to be sustainable and facilitate people interactions. There are also some problems which are not so evident to the users, but that have potentially wider implications such as the ownership of data and metadata, of collaborative and derivate works and the use of them by governments, or commercial firms. The main problem is however, whether the surplus of information that platforms and social media generate can be translated into awareness, how awareness can lead to positive behavioral changes and how collectively we can contribute to the improvement of society. Paraphrasing Bohm, the main question is how the external order represented by internet platforms, users, policy makers and providers can build a new implicate order within capable of affecting external structures and relationships. Recent news show many examples of the changing role and pressing challenges facing the use of internet. • Recently Naomi Wolf has posted a commentary on “The Guardian” on the violent crackdown on the Occupy Wall Street movement. She reported that new documents reveal a coordinatated action on the movement not just from FBI and local authorities. The violent action on protesters results from a coordination between FBI and big banks and financial groups [10]. • The well-known Web activist and software developer Aaron Swartz’s death triggered lot of sorrow. He made 4 million digital documents academic journal articles from MIT’s JSTOR archive (a massive online archive of digitized scientific journals and academic papers) available online. The MIT has then being attacked (DDoS attack) by the hacker collective Anonymous. Swartz’s “crime” is considered a greater crime than bringing down the United States economy through banking and financial wrong management. • The large diffusion of the file sharing represents an impulse for the discussion and reform of copyright and intellectual property law. • Open sources projects (such as Linux) represent social networks of creativity; crowdsourcing is nowadays used in genome sequencing and annotation projects. Websites such as kickstarter propose crowdsourcing instauring a feedforward loop between social creativity and social investment. • For a wide range of severe pathologies, self moni- toring devices and patient social networks (such as patients like me) provide good quality medical in-