Re: Project PM

awesome man. She is really excited about it. You sir, are a badass.
I'll think about it for sure. I would do it, if you want. Didn't know
you wanted comics.

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Sup playa-
I've been talking to Allison about the blogger project and sent her a rough
draft summary of the network and its advantages over existing mediums; have
pasted it below in case you'd like to take a look. I was wondering if you
might know anyone else who might be interested in overturning obsolete
institutions and otherwise causing trouble for pundits who have contributed
to the national decline - activists, writers, comedians, anyone else with
talent, audiences, undirected anger. Let me know what you think, and feel
free to forward the below summary to anyone who might be inclined to get
involved.
Word,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
Project PM Network Summary
The institutions and structures that have developed over the past two
decades of accelerating public internet use have had what we reasonably
describe as a wholesome effect on information flow. But the information age
is a work in progress, and thus there are potential improvements to be made.
More importantly, there are improvements that can be made by an initially
small number of influential participants working in coordination. The
purpose of Project PM is to implement these solutions to the extent that
participants are collectively able to do so, as well as to demonstrate the
beneficial effects of these solutions to others that they might be spurred
to recreate or even build upon them independently of our own efforts.

The Problems

Project PM is intended to address the following inefficiencies:

(a) Watering down of contributor quality within participatory networks: Open
institutions such as reddit.com tend to peak in terms of the erudition of
the content conveyed a few years after coming about, with this being due to
the particular dynamics of network growth. By definition, early users are
early adapters, who themselves tend to be better-informed and otherwise
relatively capable in terms of the value they bring to the network. To even
know of such networks early in their existence is to pass a certain sort of
test regarding the potential quality of one's contributions; as knowledge of
the network expands, this "test" becomes easier, and to the extent that it
does, the network is less "protected" from those who did not pass such a
test by virtue of the fact that they did not know of the network until
knowledge became more common. Obviously, failing to be aware of some
particular institution does not come anywhere near precluding one from being
intelligent and knowledgable in general and thus of value to the
institution, but the influx of valuable participants versus damaging
participants appears to decrease after a certain level of notoriety is
reached. Again, the decline in the intellectual relevance of content at
reddit.com is a good example of this.
(b) Data overflow: The watering down process described above does not only
result in one coming across information of relatively low quality, but also
in having to contend with more of it. On reddit.com, for instance, a user
who scans new submissions will find not only a certain amount of potentially
useful information, but also some amount of almost certainly useless
information. The watering down of contributor quality also contributes to
the extent to which the latter is perpetuated within the network itself
insomuch as that lesser contributors are more likely to vote up useless
information, thus helping to ensure that the barriers built into the network
in order to facilitate the viewing of important rather than unimportant
content - in this case, a pre-established threshold of up votes necessary to
bring something to the front page - will thereby lose their effectiveness.
(c) Barriers to obtaining raw data: The obvious fact of data overflow - that
some data is more useful than other data - is dealt with by means of
selecting certain sources of information which one has identified as being a
provider of quality output relative to other sources. Bloggers and others
who require a steady stream of data in order to operate have certain methods
of obtaining that data, and there is of course no reason to believe that any
of these methods could not be improved upon to an extent that these
improvements would be worth adapting. One has RSS feeds flowing from sources
one has selected (and by virtue of having been selected, the sources must
have been necessarily known to the blogger in the first place); one has
algorithm-based sites like Memorandum.com (which merely shows what bloggers
are talking about rather than necessarily providing any insight into what
they should be talking about); one has democratic or pseudo-democratic sites
such as reddit.com and digg.com; and one has the fundamentally one-way
outlets of television and newspapers, the content of which is decided upon
by a handful of producers or editors (who themselves are working within an
incidental structure that does not appear to be of much value relative to
what may now be found among the better portions of the blogosphere). A means
of obtaining data that improves upon these and all other methods would be of
great utility insomuch as that the quality of data is of course one major
limiting factor with regards to the quality of output..
The Solutions
By way of a network designed to take better advantage of the existing
informational environment, Project PM can help to remedy the problems
described above without significant effort on the part of participants, yet
with potentially dramatic results on the efficiency of information flow.
(a) Watering down of contributor quality within participatory
networks: Project PM will greatly reduce the accumulation of low-value
contributors by way of the method by which contributors are brought it. The
network will be established with a handful of contributors who have been
selected by virtue of intellectual honesty, proven expertise in certain
topics, and journalistic competence in general. Each of these contributors
has the option of inviting into the network any number of other bloggers,
each of whom will initially be connected only to the contributor who brought
him in. Each of these new participants also has the option of bringing
others into the network in the same fashion as well as offering a connection
to any other participant, as will anyone they bring in, and so on. To the
extent that the original participants are of value in terms of their
judgement, they may be expected to bring in participants of similarly high
value, and so on; meanwhile, as the network expands, participants will be
likely to form new direct connections to others whom they have determined to
be of particular value relative to other participants, and conversely, to
disestablish any direct connections they might have established to those
whose output they find to be below par. Of course, none of this precludes
the network from eventually encompassing participants of low desirability
relative to that of the average participant, but to the extent that such a
thing occurs, its effect are largely neutralized by way of the dynamic
described below.
(b) Data overflow: Information flows through the Project PM network by way
of a single button accessible to each participant. When a participant either
writes or receives a blog post or other informational element, the
participant may "push" the item, thus sending it to all of those with whom
he is directly connected in the network. In such a case as a participant
pushes forward items that others may determine to be of little merit, the
resulting clutter is only seen by the participant who brought such a
low-value blogger into the network in the first place, as well as those whom
the low-value blogger has to this point brought in himself along with those
who have agreed to connect with him from elsewhere in the network. To the
extent that a given participant exercises good judgment in establishing
connections, then, he will only receive informational elements of value
while also being able to quickly transmit them to contributors who will be
able to make best use of such information. Meanwhile, below-average
participants will have only very limited means by which to clutter the
network, as informational elements become less likely to be pushed forward
as they approach above-average participants within the network, who
themselves are "buffered" from such things by way of the competent
participants with whom they surround themselves by way of their connections
and who, by virtue of their competence, are unlikely to push forward
low-value information.
(c) Barriers to obtaining raw data: The dynamics described
in (a) and (b) collectively provide for a means of information inflow that
should theoretically be superior to any other medium currently in existence
in terms of overall quality, both by virtue of the network's improved
organizational methods as well as the relatively high competence of
participating bloggers relative to members of the traditional media outlets
as a whole. Accessibility to particularly valuable items of information will
be enhanced further by the option to set one's widget in such a way as to
display any piece of information from the network, regardless of
"proximity," if such information is pushed forward (which is to say,
approved of other participants) a certain number of times. This should help
to ensure that, as the network expands, particularly valuable information
does not become unduly "regionalized." A variant on the widget for use by
readers (as opposed to network participants) displaying information that
meets similar thresholds of popularity within the network would likewise
provide those readers with a source of information above and beyond other
existing mediums.