I agree completely with many of your points.  Revolution is hard for people to grasp these days.  Most Americans probably think that besides the Revolutionary War and Civil War that it is non-existent in America and that there is no need for it.  Thomas Jefferson said it best with "a rebellion now and then...is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."  The basic tenet of being American, before all of the corruption took hold, was being a revolutionary is something to be proud of and to promote.  It keeps the government in check.  The times when citizens achieved the most protection for their rights and reforms was when we actively clashed with the government.  These days it is an out of sight out of mind subject.  Something many people would say died with the civil rights and Vietnam eras. 

The American Revolution did not happen in a day, or a week, or a month.  The seeds of revolution existed for years and years prior to the first changes.  I agree with you that the logical starting point is with the mass media.  As a reader of True/Slant, Project Censored, Velvet Revolution, and Stop Corporate Abuse, I have been aware for years, since my late teens, that there was something wrong with the way the media presents things.  The control and influence over the mass media is one of the greatest move big corporations and the government has ever made.  During a movie preview the other day there was a 2 minute commercial by the Army that glorified the actions of soldiers.  It seemed like it came straight from some futuristic dystopian movie about a country who brainwashes citizens into fighting for a national cause and it's redeeming values.  Turns out that it that futuristic dystopian movie is more or less what is becoming of our present situation.

I am a member of the Zeitgeist Movement (just a member, no important role) and avid supporter of the Venus Project started by Jacques Fresco.  I have thought for years that change needs to start coming.  By starting with Project PM, the mass media would no longer be able to ignore bloggers who they deem less worthy reporters than themselves.  Finally the real stories and truths will be exposed.  Call me a conspiracy theorist or whatever you want, but if the mass media had to seriously address facts related to Karl Rove's attempts at rigging the 2004 elections, the information about House Bill 15090, the connections of JP Morgan Chase, the Rockefellers, the Bush family history, the truth about Haiti, they would absolutely shit their pants. 

Older generations such as baby boomers have grown up into adults who put complete faith in the government, who would never try and overturn it, and who think the government would never try and hurt them or do wrong internationally.  It is hard to convince them because they are glued to CNN and fox news on TV, or even online looking at those same channel's websites.  They think everything they read is true.  People are losing the ability to read an article and check the facts, the sources, the intent, and who could benefit from an ommission of important facts.  Mass media reform is the only way to present the REAL issues facing us and to expand beyond a grass roots campaign.

I am no blogger or master of penmanship, but I am a damn good reader and I think a lot.  I don't know what I can do to help but I am completely willing.  I know several others who hold similar values that I discuss these matters with.  As a student I have no position of power except that of being able to spread the word to others at my college.    I support Project PM completely.  It is the first step, the right step, and the necessary step for the gears to start turning.

                            - Alex

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 12:31 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:

Alex-

You are absolutely correct. And the main barrier to revolution is the psychological tendencies that have developed which paint efforts at revolution as something unobtainable or even inherently silly. The people capable of coordinating on any significant revolution will get over that mentality once they realize what they can do when they're organized. The trick is to organize them under the auspices of something relatively modest - media reform, in this case. When the resulting network reaches a certain level of membership, and participants being to realize that they are now operating within an entity that is comprised of some of the most brilliant, honest, ethical, and capable individuals in the world, they will figure out the next step by themselves. Obviously, this will take time, and it may not even be achieved by our organization, but it will happen eventually and we will help to spur it on, if only by demonstrating what is possible in terms of collaborative and se! lf-perpetuating networks operating parallel to nation-states.  

I'm assuming by the particular wording you used that you' will be sympathetic to this unconventional and covert purpose, and will keep it private for now (although you may tell anyone you deem to be similarly sympathetic, and I encourage you to do so). I'll be telling certain other people who give me the impression of being sympathetic as well. Don't worry about this being leaked, because either (a) no one will give a shit because I'm not all that prominent and me being eccentric/insane wouldn't be big news, (b) people tend not to believe in the existence of conspiracies even when people like Cecil Rhodes (who wanted to restore/maintain the British Empire and created a semi-covert organization to that end) admit to them outright, and (c) a good number of people would join us if they knew what we were up to.

Anyway, you're one of about a dozen non-bloggers who have contacted me over the past day or so in response to the reddit post/True/Slant article. You're the only one I've told the above; again, I'm doing so because of the phrasing you used, but also as an experiment to see how a prospective participant might react to being informed of the long-term meta goal.

In the short term, though, we of course have the opportunity to do a great deal of good by way of assisting the cause of skepticism as well as helping the better bloggers to improve their output and expand their influence. Here's my copy-and-paste pitch I'm sending everyone:

This effort is called Project PM. The major goals are to (a) discredit prominent pundits such as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer in order to reduce their negative influence on U.S. policy and (b) increase the positive influence of the more capable segments of the blogosphere. Both of these goals are dependent on the deliberate manufacturing of critical mass among bloggers such that segments of the traditional media will be prompted/forced to address certain critical issues as determined by a collective array of a network of the most erudite bloggers in existence. A third goal that does not require the same critical mass or temporary control over the traditional media infrastructure involves the development of a communicational schematic that is superior to anything else in existence in terms providing bloggers with the best possible feed of raw ! information by which to produce content, as well as the best means by which readers can most easily find the best and most important of this content without having to sift through duplicate or sub-standard info, which is to say that it will discard some of the problems inherent to reddit, memeorandum, and other such sources as exist today. All of this is to be achieved by way of a network I've designed, and which will make use of open-source software being designed for the purpose and developed by a fellow with a brilliant track record in innovative IT implementations.

Below, I've pasted a rough draft summary of the network and how it functions. Take a look and let me know if you have any other questions. Feel free to forward this to anyone else that you consider to be intellectually honest, capable, and interested in doing something ambitious.

Thanks,

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.comtend 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 netw! ork 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 necessar! y 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&! nbsp;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 (a! s 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. 

On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Alex Holmes <awh5032@psu.edu> wrote:

Hello, I just read your article on True/Slant about your idea for a new way for information to flow.  I am interested
in receiving more information about it.  Revolutionary ideas need the backing of people who want revolution.