Digital Delights

What is PolySocial Reality (PoSR)?

PolySocial Reality (PoSR) (Applin and Fischer 2011) is a model that describes the condition of information flowing in a system in multiple ways at multiple times and how people, software, and machines act on it (or not). People and things act on information at the same (synchronous) or different (asynchronous) times. This creates different outcomes such as a lack of understanding, or partial understanding which can lead to more messages needing to be created or messages not being received. Either condition can lead to a lack of cooperation. We are dependent on each other to maintain many complex systems for food, energy, water, etc.. We need to communicate well in order to cooperate and survive. PoSR looks at the aggregate of all of the information in the messaging system, digital and analog.

Formally, PolySocial Reality (PoSR) describes the multiple, sometimes overlapping, network transaction spaces that people traverse synchronously and asynchronously with others to maintain and use social relationships; a conceptual model for the global interaction context within which people experience the social mobile web and other forms of communication and social interactions whether immediate or mediated by technology. PoSR defines relations across the aggregate of all the experienced ‘locations’ and ‘communications’ of and between all individual people, people/machines and machines/machines in multiple networks and/or locales at the same or different times. PoSR is based upon the core concept that dynamic relational structures emerge from the aggregate of multiplexed asynchronous or synchronous data creations of all individuals within the domain of networked, non-networked, and/or local experiences.