Strategies in Social Software

Viewing the way society has defined its rules and mechanisms as “social software”, we want to understand how people behave given their understanding of the societal rules and given their wish to further their interest as they conceive it, and how social mechanisms should be designed to suit people furthering their interest as they conceive it. This chapter is written from the perspective of strategic game theory, and uses strategic game scenarios and game transformations to analyze societal mechanisms. Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning and losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.