Re: Project PM
Subject: Re: Project PM
From: Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com>
Date: 4/14/10, 16:33
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>

Barrett,

Thank you for the informative reply. I will try to do it justice by first commenting on what I've read so far, and then adding some information about myself.

I've read the links you posted and I must say that so far I feel far more connected with the ideals of the former rather than the latter, this is not to say that I cannot feel connected to the latter, but rather I found it difficult to my feeble mind to comprehend. To confirm and/or clarify, the posting about DDOS attacks serve more of an example of the Internet's powers rather than an advocate of such attacks, even against organizations that by many are viewed at repulsive? I am certainly interesting in hearing more about the goals of Project PM. For example, is there a resemblance of a mission statement that has been put together?

I am a young man at the age of 27 and with that comes a lack of experience, conviction, and, sometimes, confidence. I will not be able to add to the cause in any way relating to attracting high-quality news and commentator folks, however, I do have other skills and personality traits that you may find useful.

My background is as follows: My father's side of the family is money-focused and calculated, while my mother's side is empathic and realist. Growing up I was fascinated with the sciences and excelled in various science-related academics. I was pre-Med before deciding to enter into Business School. I was let go last year from a hedge fund which I joined in its formative stages and that ended up closing shop at the end of 2009.

I like to view myself as a futurist in the sense that I look back at all the world's amazing accomplishments throughout history and use my overactive imagination to think about what is possible in the future. While an idealist that may stray too far from realist, I truly believe many wonderful things are possible, socially, economically, and technologically. Politically, I aim to be as optimistic, but one thing that has, so far, proven true is that all great civilizations fall and that peace is not permanent.

Thank you for your time,
Scott


On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 6:15 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, Scott-

Thanks for getting in touch. If you haven't already seen it, read through the description of how the main component, the blogger network, will operate here. I've also written a short treatise regarding why I consider "ambitious" projects such as this to now be easily accomplished, found here. Let me know if you have any questions at this point.

If you're interested in proceeding, there are a couple of ways you can be of assistance. First off, I'd like to get many people as possible established within the legislative network (which is separate from the blogger network) so that more and better ideas will be conceived, evaluated, and tweaked by as many competent people with as many different varying skill sets as possible. Participating in this network will allow you to contribute to and shape the project to the extent that your proposals are determined to be swell by other members, as well as to influence the direction of things by "voting" on the proposals of others - although the process is somewhat different than voting and more akin to advancing something by means of perpetuating it further through the network by means of clicking a button that both indicates your approval of a given item and pushes it to those to whom you are directly connected within the network; we're about to make a final determination regarding how those mechanics will work specifically and what threshold need be met for a proposal to "pass" or "win" or what have you.

Also, please let me know what particular skill sets you have that might possibly be of use in terms of your potential role as an informal advisor or operative; even if you can't think of how they might be applicable based on what you know of Project PM so far, they may indeed turn out to be useful as we expand our scope of action. Though we won't be launching till sometime this summer, the blogger/journalist network that is to be the main component of this project is already a success insomuch as that the people we've recruited are of such a caliber as to easily recruit a great number of other high-quality news and commentary folks with established audiences, and as this network will thereafter expand on its own without need of any real oversight by myself or the legislative network, we'll be able to concentrate on advancing our goals from a variety of different angles. To the extent that we do, it will be tremendously helpful to have members with wildly different abilities and social resources.

Thanks,

Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302

On Fri, Apr 9, 2010 at 1:21 PM, Scott Mintz <scott.w.mintz@gmail.com> wrote:

Mr. Brown,
I came across your discussion of the project via LGF and respectfully request additional information.
Thanks,
Scott