| Subject: Fwd: The Internet, Skepticism, and Self-Perpetuating Revolution |
| From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 4/19/10, 20:55 |
| To: Caleb Pritchard <cpritchard2001@gmail.com> |
Barrett,
I look forward to seeing your other writing on the subject. I should probably emphasize that I am optimistic that your network can improve the flow of information and that it may effect positive change in at least some domains. Nevertheless, I would predict that there will be other domains that will prove as stubborn as ever. Mapping out these different domains would, in fact, be fascinating to me. I imagine that the way you are setting up this network should make it relatively easy to track information flow. I am curious, though, what sorts of metrics you may have in place to assess whether that improved information flow has the impacts you desire.
Thanks for your time,
Yasha
From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2010 10:54 AM
To: Yasha Hartberg
Subject: Re: The Internet, Skepticism, and Self-Perpetuating Revolution
Yasha-
That's fantastic that you're studying with Wilson. I hope I'll be able to convince you of the relative importance of information flow, if not by way of these materials, than with some of my other writings on the subject.
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 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.
On Sun, Mar 21, 2010 at 9:45 AM, Yasha Hartberg <yasha.hartberg@gmail.com> wrote:
Greetings!
I came across your blog posting on True/Slant this morning and thought that your interests may intersect with my own. I am a second year graduate student at Binghamton University studying cultural evolution with David Sloan Wilson. In particular, I am interested in understanding why cultures are resistant to change. I am still in the early stages of forming an evolutionary theory for why we should expect cultural recalcitrance in certain contexts. Nevertheless, I have collected enough background material to suspect that improving information flow as you suggest may have only a limited effect.
I would welcome a dialog with you about these topics.
Sincerely,
Yasha Hartberg
Department of Biology
Binghamton University