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
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.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 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.
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.