blogroll, Project PM

What follows consists of:

--a message Barrett Brown recently sent to the community of people who have expressed an interest in being in involved in Project PM,

--some background information about Project PM consisting of links to Barrett's past writings related to the project

--some information about how to contact us, how to keep current on our activities and how to participate.

Project PM Update - September 16th, 2010

First, Id like to thank everyone for having expressed some degree of interest Project PM, particularly those who have been kind enough to share with us their time and expertise as we go about bringing this to fruition.

Project PM was originally intended to serve a narrow purpose: to reduce the influence of those mainstream commentators who have done nothing to merit the great influence they possess over the form and content of the national dialogue. This goal itself was prompted by the months I had spent in reading over the work of such people as Thomas Friedman and Charles Krauthammer in the course of writing my next book as well as a series of articles on the same general subject. During this time, it occurred to me that a great number of our most influential commentators have gained that influence despite a demonstrable and consistent tendency towards making predictions that did not actually come true, deploying self-contradictory arguments, accidentally misrepresenting important and verifiable facts, and otherwise conducting their work in such a way as to damage the public understanding. Meanwhile, there exist other pundits whose confidence and honesty are just easily identifiable but who nonetheless have not been granted anything close to the numerical reach of their more incompetent counterparts at such places as The New York Times and Washington Post. The problem, it seems, is that those who would shift their attention to other, better pundits if they knew about these failures have in fact not managed to learn of them, not being consumers of those information outlets which are in the business of pointing out such failures.

This problem - all the more significant for having damaged the national understanding, and thus having been at fundamental fault for some degree of the problems the nation has concocted for itself over the years - has already been remedied to a small but noticeable extent by the unprecedented increases in communicational possibilities that have come about by way of the internet. In particular, a portion of the blogosphere has proven itself effective in pointing out these deficits to a considerable audience which has consequently abandoned those pundits who have been shown to exhibit them. I think that this advantageous process can be improved upon; in fact, Id argue that it would be ridiculous to think that it cannot be improved upon.

Project PM originated as a means to identify and implement such improvements in order to meet this aforementioned goal of lessening the influence of those whose influence plainly ought to be lessened. This was to be done by way of a very simple schematic whereby a significant number of participating bloggers would be persuaded to bring up the deficits of some or another commentator all at once and in tandem, thereby prompting attention on the part of those mainstream editors and producers who in turn would be hard-pressed not to address an issue being widely and suddenly discussed by a large array of commentators with a high level of collective notability. In this way, the blogger array may in effect take temporary control of the mainstream medias infrastructure in order to get across the general message to its vast audience that the commentators on whom they are depending for information are incompetent and ought to be disregarded.

To this end, I began contacting some of the better bloggers (including traditional journalists who work in part through online media) and explaining that shit be all fucked up and that maybe we could unfuck it to some extent if we all got together and did our thing as described above, or words to that effect. Having recruited a couple of dozen such folks possessed of combined notoriety more than sufficient to prompt the necessary reaction, and having designed a simple schematic by which this would all be carried out, it occurred to me that a similar schematic, backed by simple software, could also be used by bloggers to greatly improve the means by which they communicate with one another. Meanwhile, we had managed to recruit an even greater number of non-bloggers possessed of various skill sets - many with extraordinarily impressive backgrounds - and we were happy to note that such people could not only be of assistance in helping to implement our main goal of establishing the blogger network, but could also be organized in such a way as to compose and pursue solutions to any number of related problems.

This expansion of purpose was prompted by our desire for Project PM to exist as an opportunistic sort of entity, taking on whichever tasks are found to be most viable in light of whichever sorts of resources and human capital have been made available to it. Although we remain light on resources, the degree of human capital we have accumulated is particularly humbling. Among the journalists and bloggers who have agreed to participate or assist, we have Michael Hastings, the author and war correspondent whose Rolling Stone piece on Afghanistan prompted the near-immediate resignation of General McChrystal; Charles Johnson, a pioneer of blogging conventions and technology who served as the co-creator of the influential but idiotic blog consortium Pajamas Media and whose gradual shift from right to center has been frought with hilarity on the part of his allies-turned-enemies; Allison Kilkenny, a wonkish progressive whose radio program Citizen Radio, co-hosted with husband and comedian Jamie Kilstein, has become an inimitable and entertaining forum for honest-to-god policy discussions; and Dr. Juan Cole, whose erudite blogging on Middle Eastern affairs has happily translated into some degree of mainstream exposure. Among our non-blogging participants, meanwhile, we have a former editor of The Washington Post, a former CIA Directorate of Operations agent, a variety of scientists and programmers and engineers, several flavors of lawyer, various veteran political activists, and a great many people who lack formal credentials but nonetheless have demonstrated a keen understanding of the subjects on which we are focused as well as an inclination to put that understanding to fullest use.

Over the past couple of months, Ive been working with many of our participants in an effort to finalize and implement the blogger project as well as the various other sub-projects weve adopted so far. The process has involved an overlapping tangle of makeshift experiments in online collaboration, the launching of various discussion groups, research on emergent internet dynamics and related items of inquiry, recruitment of additional participants capable of filling in any remaining expertise gaps, determinations of legal framework, and writing all of that down just now. Having meanwhile developed a more specific idea of what we want to do and why and how, we have finally gotten to the matter of when and decided that now would probably work. As such, Id like to invite you to join one or more of the following working groups by contacting me with your interest:

The Science/Journalism Improvement Project, which seeks to match freelance writers with scientists in order to encourage the production of more accurate science journalism.

The Africa Project, which is concerned with producing self-perpetuating solutions by which to improve education and standard of living in the context of Sub-Sahara, such as a program to distribute guides with plans for locally-implementable engineering techniques and to encourage the further distribution of those guides by the recipients themselves.

The Software Project, members of which will hammer out details regarding the proposed software for the Project PM blogger network.

Wed also like to bring a few other people in to our weekly online meeting, during which time we plot and scheme and process paperwork in an effort to get Project PM established on its route to collective administration of the sort that will no longer require us to hold weekly meetings. Those who might be interested in joining us in this drudgery should e-mail me at their convenience.

Project PM -- Related Articles and Posts by Barrett Brown

In addition to the older links below, you may read more recent writing by Barrett Brown at The Faster Times (http://thefastertimes.com/punditry/) and in the 'featured pages' at Little Green Footballs (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/226175_The_Media-Establishment_Victim and http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/226113_Charles_Krauthammer_vs._Compet).

Barrett will publishing an new article soon in Skeptical Inquirer in which he discusses in detail the Science Journalism sub-project being developed as part of Project PM. ( http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/ )

Barrett's next book, Hot, Fat and Clouded, The Amazing and Amusing Failures of Americas Chattering Class will be published later this year. His first book, Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny is no longer available in paper, but a Kindle edition is available from Amazon.

From Vanity Fair

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/why-the-hacks-hate-michael-hastings.html

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/01/ex-conservative-charles-johnsons-next-crusade.html

From Skeptical Inquirer

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/a_tale_of_two_internets/

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/internet_and_the_republic_of_skepticism_part_one/

http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/internet_and_the_republic_of_skepticism_part_two

From True/Slant

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/05/15/just-this-once-let-us-do-the-reasonable-thing/

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/05/06/the-internet-as-revolutionary-tool-the-skeptical-opportunity/

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/04/10/wikileaks-war-context-and-common-cause/

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/04/07/wikileaks-the-reactive-media-and-the-necessity-of-project-pm/

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/03/24/project-pm/

http://trueslant.com/barrettbrown/2010/03/20/the-internet-skepticism-and-self-perpetuating-revolution/

From Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barrett-brown/a-proposal-for-a-minor-re_b_566400.html

Current activities at Project PM

Software project -- we are designing a program which will support the blogger/journalist network component of Project PM

If you are interested in this part of our efforts contact Barrett (barriticus@gmail.com) or myself (robinsonchicago@gmail.com), and we will share with you a spreadsheet capturing our current design discussions, and will welcome your comments and suggestions.

Science journalism project --

This project will improve the quality of science journalism by coupling freelance journalists and scientists while utilizing media contacts to achieve publication.

Scientists and science-based practitioners (such as healthcare professionals and engineers) will work with freelance journalists in identifying story ideas; research; and contacting qualified sources, both for background information and quotations.

Participating scientists will see increased media attention to their area of expertise, publicity for themselves and their institutions/sponsors, and by-line credit if the level of contribution merits such recognition. Also, there is the bonus of not getting heartburn reading media reports that mangle their areas of knowledge.

Participating journalists will produce articles of greater accuracy than the current norm. Furthermore, higher quality articles will result in an increase in published works.

Participating media experts will help get articles published. For example, they can strategize the best publications to contact, provide contact information for particular editors and/or publications, help formulate the pitch, and provide assistance in getting the piece sold.

We are enlisting interested scientists and freelancers in order to create a database with their areas of interest and expertise. Eventually, pairs will be created based on this database. Each pair will decide on the particulars of the articles to be produced and on their collaborative processes. However, unique to the Science Journalism Project is an explicit recognition that journalists and scientists dont always work on deadlines in a similar way. Therefore, mutual respect and understanding will be necessary to keep to deadlines.

If you are interested in this project contact Barrett or myself.

Africa Development Program --

The goal of the Africa Development Project is to improve the standard of living in the non-developed areas of Africa.

Unfortunately while the world around us moves a mile a minute, there are parts of the globe where advancements are made much more slowly, such as in parts of Africa.

This has resulted in many hardships that most living in developed countries dont think twice about such as access to drinkable water, food, and electricity to name a few.

With the help of those who have experience in matters such as these, we aim to not only raise awareness these plights, but to provide cost-effective, simple solutions to remedy these difficulties to as great of an extent as possible.

The group working on this includes people with varying backgrounds, including work in Africa and in online support of philanthropy, as well as those without such experience who are interested in learning.

If you are interested in this project contact Barrett or myself.

Other current activities:

We now have an IRC channel, #projectpm -- you may go there to see if Barrett, myself or others are available to chat about Project PM. (Barrett is a freelance writer; I am a retired lawyer; other Project PM associates are in several time zones and countries, and may be online at various times.) If you are unfamiliar with IRC, I can forward you a how-to sheet prepared by one of our associates.

We have a website in the works; and we will soon be needing writing and administrative assistance with that.

Do not hesitate to (and I hope you will) reply with questions, and if you would like to describe your skills and interests, that would be great.

Clark Robinson
Chicago, Illinois