Hi, Tarn-
I'll send you an invite to the Africa Development Program Google Doc. Note
that this is simply a temporary means of collaboration not having anything
to do with the networks themselves, which will operate under a superior
schematic that's described in part elsewhere; in the meantime we are just
using Google Docs while we wait for the software to be ready. Still, even
this more uncoordinated process is interesting insomuch as that these are
professionals with various skill sets who didn't know each other a week ago
but whom I've been able to recruit via reddit and my own outlets, convince
of the viability of this project, and then put to a particular task.
Already, they've accomplished quite a bit (and some of it isn't represented
in the Doc yet, having involved phone conversations between myself and a
couple of other participants I've just recruited in the last couple of
days).
As for Project PM, it consists of two networks, the blogger/journalist
network and the governing network. Both are intended to grow perpetually
without declining in average quality. For instance, we start with a dozen
bloggers whom I've picked out as reliable, honest, competent, etc. Each of
them can bring new bloggers into the network, and so on. Eventually, of
course, someone will bring in another blogger who is not competent or
honest, but the only people who will initially see such contributions will
be the person who foolishly brought in that blogger and those bloggers whom
the blogger brought in afterwards; since contributions are only actually
seen to the extent that they are pushed forward, and since the blogger
network will be made up of relatively competent bloggers, content deemed to
be poor is unlikely to make it very far into the network before more
competent bloggers decide not to push it forward further. This dynamic will
be in contrast to that of reddit and digg, in which all incoming info is
treated equally and then subject to a vote by just any person who chooses to
vote, and the results are decidedly mixed. There is more to it than that,
and my upcoming manifesto should provide a more concise summary of the
benefits of the system; I'll send you a link when it goes up on Vanity Fair
or Wired or wherever, probably before the end of the month.
Regarding your question of how this is intended to relate to the orthodox
media and whether our intention is to have them pick up our stories: the
main goal is to create the best means of evaluating information such that
the best rises to the "top;" users have a widget that will automatically
display any content that is pushed forward a certain number of times. The
content they're seeing has been chosen by an unusually erudite array of
bloggers and journalists who themselves are getting the best raw info to
start with, and thus it's filtering through the better judgement of people
with damned good judgement. In contrast, the cover of a newspaper is decided
by one or two editors who may or may not be competent to make that decision
and who at any rate are working under pressure from above to win readers by
any means necessary; a similar dynamic takes place with all publications
and outlets. Our system should produce superior end results - in fact, we
think that this could potentially be the best means of obtaining important
news and information ever devised, if only by default.
Now, we do hope to see conventional outlets covering what we cover; this
already goes on to some extent in the blogosphere, with editors and
producers scanning the blogs for story ideas, and we want to increase the
extent to which that occurs. To the extent that we can coordinate bloggers
into a single network such as this, we can encourage this dynamic further
while also helping to ensure that the best stories are being perpetuated
around the blogosphere to begin with, on our network and elsewhere (as our
bloggers will remain hooked in to whatever cross-linking they have going on
already and will thus continue to have an influence on others, and so
hopefully what rises to the top at our network will be more likely to flow
through the existing structure as well). There is another, related dynamic
we are pursuing - coordinating it in such a way that our bloggers
consciously perpetuate a given story at a given time so that it becomes the
de facto main topic of discussion on a given day and thus making it more
likely that the traditional outlets will address such things. This is how we
plan to force the mainstream media to examine its own faults (or, more
likely, the faults of other outlets, which a given outlet is obviously more
likely to discuss). For instance, everyone involved hates Thomas Friedman,
knows that he's talked a great deal of nonsense throughout the years and
otherwise led the public astray on all sorts of crucial topics;
unfortunately, this is only expressed by a couple bloggers here and there at
different times such that no critical mass arises. We will thus organize,
from time to time, a particular window during which we'll ask our bloggers
to all coordinate at once in exposing a given pundit's actual record in
terms of predictions, consistency, etc. At that point, blog aggregators like
Memeorandum become inundated with, say, articles about Friedman's suckiness,
and then someone at a competing newspaper picks it up, etc. Even the New
York Times itself might feel pressured to address such a thing if the meme
reaches a certain level of activity. This critical mass will be even easier
to reach by virtue of our participants being rather influential;
collectively, even with just the bloggers we have now, we can achieve a
couple hundred thousand unique visitors in a single day, and this will of
course increase as we bring on new bloggers and journalists. Additionally,
we have a number of other tricks up our sleeves in this regard - some of our
participants are sort of akin to sleepers insomuch as that they still work
as TV producers or assistant editors, hate the institutions for which they
work and the structure as a whole, and are thus in a position to help ensure
coverage at such time as we begin to go after the inexplicably respectable
columnists like Friedman and Krauthammer.
Then, we have the governing network, which is made up of various
individuals of varying social station and skill sets. The overt intent of
this network is to perpetuate media reform by thinking up new tactics and
implementing them as well as overseeing any new programs that it chooses to
implement. The actual intent is to build an entity that is designed, like
the blogger network, to grow perpetually without losing its original high
average quality. At some point, when this consists of hundreds of members of
well above-average intelligence and ethical standards, and when these
members are coordinating via this improved collaborative network, the result
will be an entity that is far superior to any other decision-making body now
in existence, that operates in conjunction with what amounts to a
distributed media empire, and which can draw upon every imaginable branch of
expertise by way of our members' respective skill sets and colleagues. Such
an entity would be capable of achieving all sorts of things, particularly
since, unlike Congress, the members will have a lot of fundamental values in
common and thus plenty of potential goals to pursue, and with an unusual
degree of success, I would expect. So, in short, I am building a sort of
technocratic, distributed shadow republic made up entirely of intelligent,
capable individuals - one that is, again, designed to grow over time and
thus gain more and more soft power, which may in turn be used to further our
general goals to greater and greater degrees.
The Africa Development Program, aside from being an example of one such
goal, is sort of an experiment to see how well this would work and what
dynamics might arise in the process. A week into its inception, it seems to
be going very well indeed, as you'll see from the link.
Anyway, let me know if you have any other questions at this point.
Basically, you're welcome to become involved in whatever capacity you like;
if you have a good idea regarding what we ought to do with this little cyber
army, for instance, I'm all ears, as we're about to start setting up new
sub-programs anyway. At some point, the governing network will be ready to
operate on its own, but until then I remain benevolent dictator, and my
cyber army is your cyber army. Someone who puts together the sort of output
as you do clearly has the ability to make good use of such resources. Now, I
understand that I am making you a bizarre offer, but give it some thought.
Even if you're busy, you'd be in a position to delegate any ideas you'd like
to see implemented, which is to say that you'd be able to get things done
without actually taking the time to do them yourself.
In conclusion, I promise that I'm not crazy.
I'll get the interview questions to you soon; thanks for agreeing to that.
Let me know if you'd like to see a sort of experimental example of
one of our sub-projects, the Africa Development Program, which is being
ru
largely by our legal and financial folks and which may be viewed viao a
shared Google Doc.
Yeah, it would be interesting to take a look. Like you said, I'm
busy, especially now, and I'm not sure of what use I can be, but it
would be good to look. I read the Project PM page, and from what I
could tell it is a specialized social networking site where you'd
"friend" people that are worth listening to, and you can send out
information pulses some distance down the friend network. I gather
the intent is to move the best information around more quickly in a
more chaffless environment -- I don't know if it is intended to be a
new place where the larger media outlets actually look for stories, or
if it is a way to influence what appears on the existing news
aggregators that the media already dips into, or both. The
influence-the-media part was what I was most fuzzy on after reading
the description, but I either missed something or just don't
understand how the overall system works.
Slightly related - would you be interested in doing a short e-mail
interview? I've been meaning to do at least one piece on DF and its
various
implications, probably for one of the bigger U.S. mags (non-gaming or
tech,
I'm thinking The Atlantic or at least its website), otherwise just a
single
piece to be run on both True/Slant and Huffington Post (the latter has
appropriate sub-sections). I would only need a couple short quotes from
you,
and promise that these would not be the sort of questions you usually
receive.
Sure, interviews are always fun, especially when they are refreshing.
Tarn
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302.