A Guide to the Establishment of Autonomous Online Entities
by Barrett Brown
This brief treatise is written for the use of those who are interested in establishing a cooperative organization for the purpose of organizing efforts towards activism, whether of the philanthropic or oppositional sort. Note that this is merely a first edition to which further information and advice will be added gradually; much of this will involve organizing tactics and other details.
The greatest barrier to collaboration among well-meaning people is the widespread cultural sickness by which such efforts as these are deemed to be misguided or even unseemly. Many take what would appear to be solace in the fact that some great number of appeals to human decency and attempts at human reform have succumbed to human failings; here is humanity, after all, still imperfect even after some number of people have taken so much trouble in attempting to perfect it.
For the purposes of this pamphlet, it will be assumed that the reader is aware that the environment has lately changed to such an extent as to render the past a largely unreliable indicator of what is now possible and wishes to act accordingly.
***
Introduction
We will call the entity that is to be created a pursuance. A pursuance will be defined as some number of people who have come together via the internet to pursue some action or agenda on which participants will work closely via a set of online communication mediums. Admittedly, this definition describes any number of phenomena one may now see as having arisen across the internet. On the other hand, fuck you.
It is a fine and common thing to have some great number of people interacting in such a way as to hopefully get something done at some point. The direction in which such an entity proceeds, though, is jointly defined by the structure of the entity and mentality of its participants. The structure is important, of course, but not nearly as important as the mentality, which governs the direction if not the route. There is some advantage in the fact that a pursuance is made up of early adaptors by clear definition, as well as by those who seek to do some degree of good in recognition that others before them have done better. Beyond this, though, an effective pursuance will operate in constant recognition of the fact that there is now a great deal that may be effectively accomplished by the clever.
Composition
Those inclined to take so odd a step as to establish some futuristic online syndicate of the sort laid out here are quite likely to be acquainted with the sort of people who might be inclined to join such a thing, which is to say that the instigator of a pursuance will usually have at least one or two people with whom to begin collaboration. Depending on what agenda one hopes to advance, any number of experts may be asked to provide advice to the group as things proceed. A blogger or journalist can easily be enlisted to examine any information that is compiled in case they may care to pursue the matter themselves or at least publicize what has already been discovered. Additional participants may be recruited by posting a brief message of intent in a couple of well-frequented IRC channels or appropriate message boards. Meanwhile, each new addition is likely to have associates of his own who may be willing to consider doing something so eccentric as working with others to do some sort of good in some efficient manner.
Nature
There are any number of methods by which a pursuance may organize its work. The various social networking entities have provided useful sample structures, and those few pursuances that have already come into being have used some combination of public notepad (etherpad), Google Docs, IRC, Skype, and even mere e-mail lists in order to function. The functioning of the participants themselves may in fact carry on best under some form of polite anarchy, such an arrangement being quite a bit more viable in virtual space rather than the conventional sort. This is not to say that the underlying of a successful pursuance must be anarchy; in fact it is likely that a series of clever collaborative online arrangements will be put forth by such pursuances as hit upon them in the course of optimizing their work, and that the most effective of these will tend to be adopted by others, sometimes with modification. Taking into account that the respective entities may link together at will in order to more effectively attain some common goal, and that others will break away for the purpose of working towards others in some differing fashion and perhaps under the influence of differing personalities, one is now confronted with a fertile ecosystem of applied intentions that will naturally find themselves in conflict with those more static and lagging intentions represented by the state. And the states, being a collection of slow-changing systems in sudden competition against a collection of fast-changing processes, will continue to lose ground in terms of the loyalties of their respective populations, and as a consequence of this they will afterwards lose much more. But then we are getting ahead of ourselves!
Linking Up
Any pursuant that is launched may register for assistance or matching by making contact with Project PM, a distributed think-tank and pursuance that was established in early 2010 and which comprises around a hundred participants. In addition to helping your pursuant find others with which to collaborate and perhaps even link up in order to form a larger entity, Project PM can also provide the following resources and services to those who aim to make good use of them:
* Working scientists capable of providing assessments of subject matter as needed * Journalists, bloggers, and combinations thereof who can provide assistance into research and potentially report on the results of an investigation * Introductions to experts in relevant fields * Information on relevant subject matter by Project PM or networked pursuances * The development and support of online infrastructure such as Wikis and forums * Leads on potential instances of state and corporate wrongdoing to be investigated
One may of course do these things for ones self, and even for others once ones pursuance is off and running - assuming you actually create one, which you probably wont. But others will.
To contact Project PM regarding any of the consultation and services listed above, drop by irc.freenode.net #projectpm. If youre too much of a precious little princess for freenode, e-mail Barrett Brown at barriticus@gmail.com.