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.