On 6 November 2010 23:54, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, David-
> Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
> Below, I've pasted some more info on what Project PM is. If you'd be
> interested in helping to administrate the project, let me know, and you can
> come into our IRC channel and talk with me and a couple other people who are
> heavily involved thus far.
> ***
> Project PM is an online entity designed to address problems of information
> flow in a variety of contexts while also perpetually expanding its
> participant base in such a way as to maintain the high average quality of
> existing participants, all without central direction or leadership. This is
> to be accomplished by way of a communication/collaboration schematic Ive
> developed for the purpose and which is best summarized as follows.
>
> Participants A, B, C, and D are provided a widget which allows them to send
> or re-send an item - an idea, a blog post, input on a task - to however many
> of the others to which theyre connected, who will in turn have the option
> to send items to them. Upon receiving an item, each can push that item to
> whomever else they are connected, who will in turn have the same option.
> A,B,C, and D may each also invite anyone else to adopt the widget and
> connect with him or her, and will thereby bring in new participants with the
> same ability to send and receive items and connect to new or existing
> participants. Now let us say that A, who is very clever and possesses good
> judgement, invites Z, who is similarly swell. But then Z brings in X, who is
> only moderately virtuous and tasteful and who later brings in Y, who is much
> less so. Y writes a blog post about how Obama is secretly from Tehran or
> finds a great article on crystal healing or some such thing and pushes the
> item to X, the person who brought him in. If X shows such poor judgement as
> to think this item worthwhile and thus pushes it to A, then A, who has
> better judgement, will refrain from pushing it forward to anyone else, thus
> stopping the item from making its way further into the network and bothering
> everyone with its nonsense. A might even opt to severe his widget connection
> to X lest he receive any further nonsense. Thus it is that the network may
> expand without limit while still ensuring that the information flowing
> through it is always of relatively high quality.
>
> There are a few other factors worth noting. Any participant may connect to
> any other participant, regardless of how far away they are within the
> structure of the network, assuming that both agree to the connection. A
> participant can be connected to as many others as agree to the connection.
> In order to prevent good information from being regionalized as the network
> grows, a pushed item has a 20 percent chance of also appearing in the widget
> of a random participant elsewhere in the network, which may then be pushed
> around among those participants as well if they find it to be of use.
>
> When the software is completed, slightly differing versions will be used by
> bloggers and by our general participants. The former will use it to better
> share their best posts while also being privy to the best posts of others,
> the titles of which will appear on the bloggers widget which in turn is
> visible to his own readers to the extent that the blogger has chosen to push
> the articles he receives; meanwhile, readers have widgets which display
> headlines with links of those blog posts which have been pushed around the
> network a particular number of times as set by the user, making it an
> aggregation tool that is not only crowd-sourced, but crowd-sourced among a
> particularly erudite and intellectually honest array of bloggers and other
> online commentators, rather than having been chosen by one or two editors or
> voted to the top by a huge group of internet users who have not been
> filtered for competence - thereby making it potentially the best source of
> news and commentary that has ever existed.
>
> Meanwhile, our network of Project PM participants necessarily connects the
> individuals themselves, rather than blogs, and items tend to be ideas or
> improvements in the context of loose working groups of participants
> collaborating on some particular task, such as our Africa Development
> Program or Science Journalism Improvement Program or one of many others that
> will be founded and furthered by groups of participants who will work within
> the context of the schematic and with other tools well be adding.
> Organizations such as charities and NGOs in general may also join the
> network as a single party.
>
> While we wait for the software to be completed, Project PM is operating in a
> more informal manner; about a dozen members are involved in setting up our
> various programs, building the widgets, recruiting new participants and
> advisers, and otherwise preparing for the integration of the hundred or so
> other participants we have on have on hand into what will eventually amount
> to an ever-expanding distributed think-tank made up of scientists,
> journalists, activists, software engineers, authors, activists, NGO workers,
> and combinations thereof, exerting soft power in a wide variety of contexts
> and otherwise serving as a sort of technocratic counterpoint to the other,
> lesser institutions that shape human society with the very mixed results
> that have presumably led you to inquire about Project PM in the first place.
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 9:51 AM, David Ault <
jdault@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Barrett,
>>
>> Thanks for the email - it sounds like an extremely worthwhile project.
>> My speciality is astronomy, although I've been a little out of that
>> academically for a while. Nevertheless, I'm intrigued by your mention
>> of working with you and the administrators - could you give me some
>> more information there please?
>>
>> Many thanks,
>>
>> David
>>
>>
>> On 15 October 2010 20:37, Barrett Brown <
barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > David-
>> > We don't have much interest in formal credentials; I've just taken a
>> > look at
>> > your website and in particular your page on the tour you're doing of
>> > science
>> > centers and your reasons for doing so, and I think you'd be of
>> > extraordinary
>> > assistance to us in general. If you'd like to advise a writer, let me
>> > know
>> > the particular branches of science in which you're most knowledgeable
>> > and
>> > I'll put you down on our list. But you also might be interested in
>> > working
>> > with myself and the other administrators as time permits as we oversee
>> > the
>> > project in general.
>> > I'll have my associate Clark Robinson send you some additional
>> > information
>> > about Project PM and our fundamental goals, which involve the
>> > development
>> > and promotion of improved methods of collaboration and information flow.
>> > We
>> > have a number of documents you might find interesting, and our more
>> > active
>> > participants tend to congregate in our new IRC channel which itself may
>> > be
>> > accessed at
irc.freenode.net, #projectpm (I recommend Xchat if you're
>> > new to
>> > IRC, but Clark will send along a short guide including other methods of
>> > getting on).
>> > Anyway, get back to me after you've heard from Clark, if you would.
>> >
>> >
>> > On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 5:48 AM, David Ault <
jdault@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi there,
>> >>
>> >> I'm a UK-based science presenter and writer, and I'm interested in
>> >> your project. However, as neither a science journalist nor a current
>> >> academic I can understand if I'm frozen out somewhat. Nevertheless,
>> >> I've been going around North America this summer doing reviews of
>> >> science centres and so on, so I keep in touch that way, along with
>> >> presenting the twice-monthly Jodcast.
>> >>
>> >> If I can be of any use, please let me know.
>> >>
>> >> Many thanks,
>> >>
>> >> David
>> >>
>> >> --
>> >> David Ault
>> >>
www.davidault.co.uk
>> >> Twitter: @astrotour2010
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Regards,
>> >
>> > Barrett Brown
>> > 512-560-2302
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> David Ault
>>
www.davidault.co.uk
>> Twitter: @astrotour2010
>
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Barrett Brown
> 512-560-2302
>