Todd-
Thanks for getting back to me. I'm cc'ing Mano Singham on this along with Scott Mintz and Clark Robinson, both of whom are working closely with me on administration and planning. I'll also forward you a couple of e-mail exchanges that are ongoing and which relate to some of the details.
Am I right that the content network would sort of be a Reddit or Digg but where invited content creators are the one's who have a say concerning quality?
Essentially, yes, and I most often compare it to Reddit; I also use Reddit as an example of the deterioration of average quality that we are attempting to avoid by way of our schematic.
My understanding is that as part of the content network I'd blog/write as per usual, even on Forbes if I decide to follow the T/S people there, but at least my PsychologyToday.com blog. And within your network I'd have a program (your widget) on my computer that lets me push my work out to other writers on the network? I guess I'm asking for some specific details about how your "widget" works.
That's entirely correct, and I'll forward you some more detailed materials, including some ongoing discussions we're having regarding the specifics.
Network dynamics fascinate me, including how minor and often accidental software design issues can have huge social consequences. In fact, and you may not know this, but in 1992which was actually pre-webI started a network for other mental health professionals called The Psychoanalytic Connection. We ran servers that were in continuous operation until Dec. 31 2009. It started as an early Facebook for shrinks that eventually, among other things, helped birth a new international organization, a popular yearly symposium, and it provided the first online continuing-education course. Which is all a long-winded and self-aggrandizing way of saying that the governing network sounds interesting even if I don't specifically write for the network.
I did not know that about your early work in setting up networks; that's wonderful, and I'm also glad to hear of your general interest in network dynamics, as we could use additional input while hammering out the remaining details of the media network, and then we'll have even more questions before us as we finalize the governing network schematic, which will be similar but necessarily different if it is to do what I'd like it to.
How will Project PM handle compensation? Good journalists/writers should be able to make a living without ceding the territory to people like me who make their living elsewhere. Is the idea just that Project PM will allow its writers to improve their "brand."
Going in to this, we did not plan on being able to provide any additional compensation to participants, whom we were only offering additional exposure and perhaps other forms of assistance. However, we're now being offered a chance to raise a great deal of money by a producer out in LA with wealthy contacts and an interest in our project, so it looks like it will be possible for us to pay contributors. This is very preliminary, of course.
A robust network needs some but not too many "super-connectors"? You don't want a pyramid, of course. But you also don't want a flat homogenous web. I don't understand the incentives from the current description well enough to believe this will work.
Indeed, we want neither, and we're willing to make any changes to the schematic in order to prevent any homogenous web that might emerge under the proposed system. My thinking has been that individual participants would find it cumbersome to make too many connections due to the heavy resulting stream of information that would entail. Let me know what you think.
Do you have a threshold model in mind? For example, posting A gets vetted and pushed along by 2% of the network while posting B gets vetted and pushed along by 75%. Would the idea then be that B has met Project PM standards of excellence while A has not? Or is that something that is set, perhaps on an individual writer basis, by the reader widget?
It's the latter: the reader sets the threshold based on how many pushes he would like each piece of information to receive before it appears in his widget.
All the alliances you mention are fascinating and I would like to know more.
I'll share with you a partial list of our existing participants as a Google Doc and provide you with a bit more info on the orgs with which we're partnering presently.
On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Todd Essig
<tessig@me.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett --
I finally have chance to reply to your thought-provoking email (and nice to "meet" you Clark). Here are my thoughts in no particular order of importance. The bottom-line to it all is I'd like to be a part even though I don't really know what I'm joining nor what I might be doing!
-- Am I right that the content network would sort of be a Reddit or Digg but where invited content creators are the one's who have a say concerning quality?
-- My understanding is that as part of the content network I'd blog/write as per usual, even on Forbes if I decide to follow the T/S people there, but at least my
PsychologyToday.com blog. And within your network I'd have a program (your widget) on my computer that lets me push my work out to other writers on the network? I guess I'm asking for some specific details about how your "widget" works.
-- Network dynamics fascinate me, including how minor and often accidental software design issues can have huge social consequences. In fact, and you may not know this, but in 1992which was actually pre-webI started a network for other mental health professionals called The Psychoanalytic Connection. We ran servers that were in continuous operation until Dec. 31 2009. It started as an early Facebook for shrinks that eventually, among other things, helped birth a new international organization, a popular yearly symposium, and it provided the first online continuing-education course. Which is all a long-winded and self-aggrandizing way of saying that the governing network sounds interesting even if I don't specifically write for the network.
-- How will Project PM handle compensation? Good journalists/writers should be able to make a living without ceding the territory to people like me who make their living elsewhere. Is the idea just that Project PM will allow its writers to improve their "brand."
-- A robust network needs some but not too many "super-connectors"? You don't want a pyramid, of course. But you also don't want a flat homogenous web. I don't understand the incentives from the current description well enough to believe this will work.
-- Do you have a threshold model in mind? For example, posting A gets vetted and pushed along by 2% of the network while posting B gets vetted and pushed along by 75%. Would the idea then be that B has met Project PM standards of excellence while A has not? Or is that something that is set, perhaps on an individual writer basis, by the reader widget?
-- All the alliances you mention are fascinating and I would like to know more.
I hope you don't mind my questions and I look forward to learning more.
Many thanks,
--Todd
On Jul 18, 2010, at 11:29 PM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Todd-
Thanks for getting back to me.
Broadly, the project I mentioned to you is intended to examine and implement much-overdue methods by which to potentially improve the means by which information flows through a given system. More specifically, we are concerned with improving the dynamics of the media - both the orthodox and online varieties - by way of several schematics we have designed for the purpose. Our efforts our divided into two networks; the media network is composed of bloggers as well as conventional journalists who work at least in part in an online capacity, whereas our governing network is composed of other media participants as well as academics, scientists, lawyers, philanthropists, and plain 'ol citizens whom we consider to be clever, intellectually honest, and willing to give thought to tackling old problems with the advantages of our new environment, which I consider to be defined largely by the internet. So far, we have over 100 participants, including our fellow True/Slant contributors Allison Kilkenny, Mark Adomanis, and Michael Hastings (whom you may recall as the author of the excellent Rolling Stone piece which seems to have recently caused a stir) as well as Dr. Juan Cole and other, lesser-known commentators whom we hope to promote. Our governing network, meanwhile, includes Mano Singh, a theoretical physics department head at Case Western University who is otherwise engaged in examining cognitive and learning issues as relates to the internet; Gina Acosta, a former Washington Post editorial board member who shares our disdain for that publication's collective ethics in terms of what it chooses to publish on its op-ed page; and dozens of other individuals of varying backgrounds whom we have managed to recruit over the past couple of months of activity. Additionally, we have allied with representatives of several other organizations including the NCSE and a charity that provides bicycle parts to Africa for reasons that will become more evident presently.
Both myself and my colleague Clark Robinson, a retired lawyer who has been instrumental in bringing this project from conception to reality (and whom I have cc'd on this e-mail), are hoping that you might consider joining this organization, Project PM, within our media network or our governing network or both; your participation would entail no time commitment whatsoever, although of course we would be gratified to have your input to whatever extent you can provide. We would be particularly interested in getting your input on one of our nascent sub-projects, which is intended to improve science journalism in this country, perhaps by pairing freelancers with scientists in order to encourage the creation and publication of accurate, interesting articles. We also have several questions before us regarding the exact nature of how some elements of our project ought to proceed, and we believe that you would be of value to us in this as well.
Below, I have pasted a description of the media network; note that this schematic will also be applied to our governing network, although we are still hammering out some of the specifics of the latter. Please take a look and let me know if you'd like to talk to us further about this, and feel free to call me at your convenience if you would like to discuss the project the old fashioned way (phone communication is now old-fashioned, you see).
At any rate, thanks again for getting back to me, as well as for your writings in defense of the internet and its potential.
***
Information flow is fundamental to the success of every manner of human collaboration. Nonetheless, the processes by which information is gathered, handled, transferred, and acted upon receive far less attention than is warranted. The purpose of Project PM is to change this dynamic by developing new techniques with which to more efficiently conduct information.
Because the great preponderance of information crucial to the success of a representative government is transferred through the media, Project PM focuses primarily on media reform. Our first and foremost effort has been to establish a distributed media cartel made up of bloggers as well as journalists who work at least in part through online media. Rather than simply assembling this group of exceptional media professionals into an online outlet similar to those currently in existence, we are instead organizing our participants into a network which itself operates under a unique schematic designed to take best advantage of the internet as a medium while simultaneously avoiding the drawbacks common to even the best online communities.
In order to seed the network, we have recruited around two dozen bloggers and journalists whom we have identified as particularly competent and intellectually honest. Each of these individuals is encouraged to bring other bloggers into the network based on their own judgment; these new participants are then connected to the blogger who has brought them in and may likewise bring others into the network,and so on . As such, the network grows perpetually while maintaining a high average quality in terms of its participants, as is explained further below.
Upon the launch of our network, each of the initial bloggers will be connected to each other via a widget which is embedded on their respective blogs, as well as connected to those whom theyve recruited. When a particular individual composes a piece of work that he considers to be of particular merit, the individual pushes a single button which causes the article in question to be sent to all of the bloggers to whom he is connected. Each of those bloggers in turn then decides whether or not they agree that the article is worthy of greater attention; if so, they push the button and thereby send it along to every blogger to whom they themselves are connected. Thus it is that information deemed worthy of attention by some great number of erudite and honest individuals from a variety of backgrounds will tend to perpetuate through the system and gain a larger audience than they might otherwise receive.
As the network expands by way of the process described above, it is inevitable that there will be failures of judgement on the part of participants when choosing additional bloggers to bring into the network. Let us say that Blogger X, who is rather competent, brings in Blogger Y, who is only moderately so, and who in turn brings in Blogger Z, who is a giant douchebag. Blogger Z begins composing and pushing forward posts to the effect that Barack Obama was born in Tehran or that ethanol subsidies are awesome or some such thing but these posts only initially go to Blogger Y and whatever horrid bloggers Blogger Z has brought in himself, assuming he has brough in any. Blogger Y may or may not be inclined to push forward these nonsense posts, but Blogger X will almost certainly delete them immediately and is quite likely to disolve his connection to Blogger Y for displaying such poor judgement. Thus it is that the system is defended from deterioration by the high competence of the initial round of bloggers and consequently comparable competence of those brought in gradually afterwards, coupled with the nature of the schematic itself. No supervision is necessary for the network to expand while maintaining a high level of quality.
A few other characteristics bear noting. Any participant may connect to any other participant who agrees to the connection, no matter where each participant resides in the network, and thus the network is likely to evolve from the shape of a pyramid to that of a web, which is advantageous in terms of ensuring that good information does not become overly regionalized. All participants are equal regardless of the order in which they joined. Participants are free to bring on as many other bloggers as they would like, although they will find that it is to their own advantage to be selective in this regard.
The system is capped off with another widget distinct from that used by the bloggers the reader widget, a downloadable application which displays those posts which have been pushed forward a certain number of times (as set by the individual reader). The end result should be the best system of news and information filtration that has ever existed.
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 1:17 PM, Todd Essig
<tessig@me.com> wrote:
Hi Barrett --
Nice to hear from you; I've enjoyed your work. So, what's up?
Thanks,
--Todd
-------------------------------------------
Todd Essig, Ph.D.
Training and Supervising Analyst, William Alanson White Institute
-------------------
59 West 12th Street
NYC, NY 10011
212 633-2725
-------------------------------------------
On Jul 18, 2010, at 11:37 AM, Barrett Brown wrote:
Feedback or tips from Barrett Brown
Hi, Todd-
This is Barrett Brown, a fellow True/Slant contributor. Someone sent me a piece you wrote recently on the subject of the internet and its impact on cognition, and I wanted to get in touch with you regarding a related project. If you get a moment, please e-mail me at
barriticus@gmail.com.
--
Note: The sender Barrett Brown (Profile: <
http://trueslant.com/people/barrettbrown/>) used the feedback form and doesn't have your email address until you reply or disclose it to them.
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302
--
Regards,
Barrett Brown
512-560-2302