Knowledge Needs and Information Extraction: Towards an Artificial Consciousness

Chapter 10

Hypothesis and Control of Cognitive Self-Motivation

10.1. Social groups

Social groups have a real existence nowadays, with geographic but also digital links, of urban or professional origins. These groups are all the more significant, given that more than three in four people on the planet live in a town or city. Promiscuity and interdependency make the idea of absolute autonomy in towns an illusion. Even going to the market is tantamount to involving oneself in an organized social life and obeying a dependency upon food – a fundamental dependency. Groups are fairly furtive depending on their own motivations, obviously.

In a population capital, we can find groups who follow certain fashions, such as “goths” or bourgeois-bohemians (“bobos”). A bobo is an inhabitant of a large city, who lives in a Haussmann-type building with reduced floors, appreciating “vintage”, the difference between the rustic and the refined, the sporty and the distinguished. The name is strange: one imagines extravagance of style and spiritual disorientation. Bobo is a qualifier of one’s social language – a label one receives like a medal to validate their peaceful but non-ritualistic existence. It is presence and visibility that count, acting like a modern ritual for the benefit of a select majority, and no longer a select minority. This is a new model of the microcosm, served with democratic sauce. “I decide to adhere to it if I like it and I have the time to follow it”, with a little money of ...