On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 5:19 PM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tarn-
> Here are those interview questions I promised; I may have a couple of
> follow-ups as well. Thanks again for agreeing to take a look; I may be
> writing this piece for a general interest publication rather than one geared
> towards gamers, etc.
> 1. Is there a considerable difference in what you view DF to be and how it
> is perceived by the fan base?
> 2. If it were to be arranged in such a way as that you were given control of
> fifty qualified programmers to whom you could delegate tasks and thereby put
> you in a position to quickly increase the extent to which DF operates as a
> dynamic world, would you welcome such an opportunity? Or are those "ifs" too
> unrealistic?
> 3. How likely do you think it is that we'll see collaborative game
> development go beyond such things as open-source versions of old games and
> reach the point at which we will see revolutionary games put together by way
> of online collaboration? What are the barriers to this?
> 4. Can the gaming industry produce something like Dwarf Fortress, or is it
> likely to reform enough to do so in the foreseeable future?
>
>
> On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 12:16 AM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> 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.
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
> Brooklyn, NY
> 512-560-2302
>