On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been playing DF for the first time in a while so was reading the forums
> and ran across this and wanted to make sure you are aware of
> it:
http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=69307.0
> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 8:53 PM, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Give LCS another play some time; it's fun, but also feels like work, just
>> like DF. Disciplines the mind, I suspect.
>> Sorry for the delay in getting back to you; we've had a number of
>> unexpected successes in the last two weeks that have required my attention.
>> Regarding Project PM, I have pasted a more concise explanation of how the
>> media network will work below; remember that we are also building up a
>> governing network to further advance our technocratic agenda, thus far
>> composed of about 120 people, most recently the head of theoretical physics
>> at Case Western.
>> Meanwhile, we are now being offered funding. A lot of funding. I had
>> originally intended on doing this with no money whatsoever, but anyway the
>> funding is meant for something else that I will be put in partial charge of
>> and which I will explain to you further when I have more info. Again, very
>> preliminary. Whether or not this particular source of funding comes through
>> - and I think it will - I will be receiving something on the order of a
>> quarter million dollars from another source probably within a year, in
>> which case I would be inclined to purchase a portion of your time to help us
>> solve certain problems that I am inclined to believe that you are equipped
>> to solve.
>> I apologize for being cryptic at the moment, but things are more fun that
>> way. At any rate, here is the basic schematic; feel free to call or write
>> with any questions.
>> ***
>> 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 Fri, Jun 25, 2010 at 4:48 AM, Tarn Adams <
tarn.adams@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > Thanks again for taking the time to respond to these questions. For
>>> > some
>>> > reason I can't get a response back from the gaming mags to save my life
>>>
>>> I'm not sure you'll do well in mainstream American print gaming mags.
>>> We've pretty much never made it into them (maybe once?), though we do
>>> well elsewhere and online. I'm not sure if it has to do with the
>>> close links between content and ads and so on, or what, since I only
>>> hear the occasional story from the periphery about how it works.
>>>
>>> > Also, I mentioned to you my eccentric project a while back, Project PM.
>>> > I
>>> > don't know how closely you follow these things, but my friend and
>>> > project
>>> > participant Michael Hastings seems to have just fucked up all kinds of
>>> > shit
>>> > with his new Rolling Stone piece on McChrystal, who's now been summoned
>>> > to
>>> > Washington.
>>>
>>> Yeah, I first read that on HP and then heard a telephone interview
>>> with him on Rachel Maddow, and of course it has been ongoing after
>>> that. It seems like a pretty intense scoop, and that he really just
>>> needed to let the guy keep talking.
>>>
>>> > He also blurbed my book and I'm doing a piece on the background
>>> > to all this for Vanity Fair today, so we're going to be in a much
>>> > better
>>> > position to act on our agenda pretty soon with the additional
>>> > notoriety. If
>>> > you're still interested in discussing our project further at some
>>> > point, let
>>> > me know
>>>
>>> I read the Africa page a few weeks ago and the last long email you
>>> wrote and had been trying to find time to think and reply
>>> intelligently, but it has been difficult. I think that since I'm not
>>> involved at a practical level with this sort of activity I'd be sort
>>> of wasting your time asking for basic explanations when you are going
>>> to be way ahead of me on things.
>>>
>>> As I understand it, the network would need to be decentralized, so
>>> that people that were interested in, say, cooking or sports, wouldn't
>>> be able to co-opt any shared resources once they got in on the edges
>>> and started linking in all their friends and pushing recipes or match
>>> write-ups down the line. When you said the widget shows items that
>>> have been "pushed forward a certain number of times" it made me think
>>> there was some more centralized counting going on, so that the top
>>> pushed items became more universally available without having to make
>>> the entire journey from one person to another. At that point, you'd
>>> need to account for side networks latching on that outgrow the
>>> original (including a competing sub-network of the left-out
>>> conservative bloggers, once one gets linked in on the fringe) --
>>> something that I imagine would be a danger if you are trying to write
>>> a novel, high-quality system for passing around important news (which
>>> isn't going to be limited to political news once you have irrelevant
>>> contributors). I'm behind on Facebook and tweets and that kind of
>>> thing, so I suppose the ways around this might be obvious to people
>>> that are with the times, he he he. That's my paranoid first reaction,
>>> anyway, based on the experience of my forum getting a little gummed
>>> up. Maybe if the blogger network were named something that somebody
>>> thinking about cooking or sports didn't want to see every time they
>>> open up the widget, he he he. Starting with a dozen people, this
>>> obviously isn't going to be a problem right away, but if the
>>> registration/linking system is uncontrolled, you'll eventually get
>>> whoever linked or whatever pushed and any mechanism not respecting the
>>> locality of the direct links could become troubled.
>>>
>>> If it doesn't have shared resources though, and whatever side networks
>>> that form are just living off by themselves and not jamming up the
>>> network, then the overall concept would need to distinguish itself
>>> from email buddy lists -- I guess it might be enough to emulate buddy
>>> lists with more purpose and more conveniently to achieve the project
>>> goals of getting information passed around quickly, but in a
>>> completely decentralized system I'm not seeing the crucial difference
>>> and it makes me feel like I'm misunderstanding something about how it
>>> works, unless the project is more about getting these kinds of themed
>>> buddy lists organized in some standardized and easy to use way.
>>>
>>> > Anyway, I suck at that game. [LCS]
>>>
>>> Yeah, I only spent a few month-long sessions with it separated by
>>> periods of inactivity, if I remember, so it never really gelled as a
>>> balanced game. The continuing fan-written LCS is probably more
>>> winnable without cheap tactics, but it's my understanding that it's
>>> more "gamey" in a way, so I can't really say how it plays or anything
>>> about the atmosphere.
>>>
>>> Tarn
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards,
>>
>> Barrett Brown
>> 512-560-2302
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302
>