## Content A few days ago, after listening to a fascinating episode of the Lawfare podcast I wondered (well, [tweeted](https://twitter.com/prateekwaghre/status/1431114761773535240)) whether one of the differences between [DCN firms'](https://takshashila.org.in/takshashila-working-paper-governance-of-dcns-i-categorisation-of-harms/) troubles with how to respond to the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan from the Financial services industry was the difference in 'expected response times' (for context: the guest on the episode - Scott R Anderson did a great job highlighting some path dependencies) ![[Pasted image 20210901181758.png]] Today, while reading Anne Applebaum's latest on ["mob justice v/s democratic discourse"](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/10/new-puritans-mob-justice-canceled/619818/) I was struck by the idea of the 'velocity of society'. While the article is written for a specific context - I do wonder about the importance of strengthening established processes v/s exceptional action (i.e. if regular processes worked satisfactorily, we wouldn't ideally require 'exceptional actions'). ==Velocity of society is roughly how many actions/interactions take place during a fixed of unit of time== (one can intuit that the more avenues for real-time communication there are, the higher the interactions and actions, therefore, the higher the velocity). The point of difference I noted was that *tech platforms have to respond faster because we expect them to*. But, I want to add a few questions: 1. Is the preference for 'exceptional action' v/s due-process a result of due process being too slow for society's current velocity?.2 2. And to question my own point of difference: while we expect DCN firms to respond quicker. How much quicker is it with respect to the increased velocity of society? 3. Is this an indication for what we will expect from ALL institutions? (I still hold that we don't seem to expect the financial services industry to respond as quickly as DCN firms) 4. If the answer to 3 is yes, then there's going to be an explosion in the need for decision-making. How do we prepare for that? *P.S. There is a good case for this to be called speed of society instead of velocity, since speed = distance/time and velocity = displacement/time. All interactions don't necessarily constitute movement/displacement but we'll think of that another day.* ## Colophon %% title:: Relative velocity of society type:: [[output]] [[permanent-note]] tags:: url:: file:: %% status:: [[brewing]] created:: 2021-09-01