Shawn – Beyond One World

I believe part of the answer for many of word’s problems lies in secrecy – but I have never worked out to myself how much openness the world is comfortable with.

Sadly the power that is held by institute or person over another person is usually maintained and upheld by the secrecy of its information or action. There are a few stories today in The coming-out stories of anonymous bloggers that show in todays society how the freedom of speech and expression can have implications if you do it anonymously.

What if all speech was open and honest, would people be too frightened to speak up, or does the right to speak anonymously infringe upon other people’s rights.

When I speak of an open and transparent government in Beyond One World I am sure of it being absolute. There can be no more secrets, no more hidden agendas and operations by those in power. It has to be open to absolutely everyone – so that no corruption is possible. But I wonder how far can that go? An extreme point I know but imagine the ability of telepathy miraculously appearing in every person in the world so that even everyday thoughts were open. Would everyone suddenly go to war realising the true intents of others or would another level of understanding develop, in the causes of those thoughts.

I have been wading through news on the Internet in any subjects relating to World Governments – the list I found interesting I have put in the World Government News and Events folder of the forums – and the dismaying and mind numbing number of conspiracy theories makes this very hard going. What is the antidote to the ‘New World Order’? It is definitely openness, equality and collaboration by the majority – the essence of Beyond One World idea.

But how far should this openness go?

Brandon Griggs has posted a list of the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers at CNN. Red-faced I realise that recently I have slotted into one of the worst types of Facebook users you can have – Ouch! I have posted quite a few updates through Twitter and Facebook from my blog and so earn my shame as ‘The Self-Promoter’.

Well – Sorry guys…

I just think I have a fantastic idea to change the world for the better and so in my eagerness I used the social network as a means of telling someone, anyone … Why not my friends?
OK – So only one or two answered or took part but Hey! It’s August – Probably everyone is on holiday!? Right?

No matter, at least it is only one slot I fill
- I didn’t tell anyone on Facebook I had Coffee and Toast this morning did I.
Or invite anyone again to join in with BeyondOneWorld because I think it would be a good thing.
Or became a ‘Friend-Padder’ with hundreds and thousands of friends in my list – In fact I could only find 50 that would speak to me … and most of them probably only connected because they perhaps heard my name previously at some company they worked at and thought it polite to accept. So that fact alone should save me any more embarrassment of being duly multi-slotted in the Facebook hall of annoyances.

Take your pick – Do you slot into any of these annoying groups:

• Let-Me-Tell-You-Every-Detail-of-My-Day
• Self-Promoter
• Friend-Padder
• Town-Crier
• TMIer (Too Much Information)
• Bad Grammarian
• Sympathy-Baiter
• Lurker
• Crank
• Paparrazzo
• Maddening Obscurist
• Chronic Inviter

Can you think of any more?

Oh Well! I may as well add another slot for myself – the ‘Chronic Inviter’ – If anyone wants to be my friend I am on Facebook and Twitter at http://www.facebook.com/shawnd and http://twitter.com/shawndm .

Seriously though, it is an interesting article  and does really show the current social needs of a large proportion of people that use Facebook and other networks. I think social networks will grow in function in the future to not just be a communication toy, but quickly to be a fully fledge collaboration tool, connecting people with their needs to those that can fulfil them.

The information that is growing exponentially on the media in these networks, day by day, shows more and more of the character, background and history of every individual that uses them. Including of course individuals that were unfortunate to be unwitting participants, possibly expressing some confused reaction to an event that did not immediately make sense but a later showing on YouTube revealed all. Unfortunately this can be a source of lifelong embarrassment to someone, whose antics, though funny at the time, could remain on display forever online when the funny side may not be so apparent – or even understood. Maybe later historians will gain a true reflection of our time from analysing this media, after wading through a copy of the internet archived and getting past all the spam posts and time-consuming porn to find this very event, in its permanence, a symbolic picture of life in these early days. I wonder if they will see this as an important point in our history – where we became ‘causally’ self aware, that with every connected upload and post, it eventually sunk into the conscience of the people that actually none of it was ever going to go away. Later generations maybe a bit more careful knowing this. Also they will live with the fact that everyone they ever met can never be forgotten – no matter how hard they try.

Other ways that these social networks may grow, in sharing, connecting and collaboration:

Imagine, with all your previous working connections and associations finding your next employment through these social networks – or indeed your employer finding you. Instead of course the current and often forwarded posts showing someone losing their job by calling their boss a ‘perve’ on Facebook. Could this be the death of the Curriculum Vitae in return for automatically up to date information available at any time?

I suspect people will find their soul mates through them, enabling them to know a person in unheard of before detail before even meeting them. Conversely of course it is possible for an unfortunate photo or comment on these networks to do quite the opposite too. Interestingly I wonder if a YouTube video or Facebook comment has been produced in any court as evidence.

I imagine too that social networks will tend to be more ubiquitous, reaching out into other web services and devices and becoming the glue that connects them together. I wonder for example for the very reason of connecting people if there will be an iPhone app that will connect through Bluetooth two people in close proximity that could be friends, friends of friends, or even in the same group on the network. Possibly alerting you at a conference, a night-out or even on holiday of someone you may wish to talk to. It might be useful even the other way round, by one click, adding the person you just spoke to your network of friends, colleagues, discussion group etc to your social network so that you may follow them up later to continue your talk. (Actually, wouldn’t this be great if you could also avoid someone or a certain group of people? ) Maybe the wireless, GPRS or mobile network layer could increase this range to give more uses? If the social network reaches towards being ubiquitous then businesses that take the heavy hand on blocking these networks from the world of work will certainly struggle to stop this flow of connectivity – it may actually cost more in effort to stop than to allow it to become part of their processes.

I predict that for our ‘identity crisis’ roles I can see more development in defining who we are and who we are relating too. There is often the need to hold different identities on the Internet to connect with different services having distinct relationships to you that you will not want to mix up. Each of us has one identity but different roles in our lives and this will be reflected more in the social networks. For example you may not really think it necessary that your relatives hear your deeply thought on comments on the latest widget servicing process, but to other possibly self-centred careerists this may be great stuff to listen to. Alternatively, you may want to filter (or expand to channels) thoughts and media you are open to. Certainly an area open to advertisement here, maybe we will see the death of spam, connecting only people that may want to listen. Also as more networks appear and share more different kinds of media I wonder if they will tend more toward the peer-to-peer model of communication.

I know that for the project here at BeyondOneWorld the social network will be the key to full collaboration on anything developed here. In fact a social network already exists here at http://social.beyondoneworld.com/ so if anyone wants to get in first then at the moment just one more person will double its membership. You might ask why bother creating another one? Well this one will be owned by its users and not a company – the model of the Open Company Specification detailed here could be shaped up quite nicely with the experience of how this experiment develops. So if you want a social network that although at this moment in time is ‘unfashionably devoid of users’ but fresh and open to your direction as to how it works then get in now – we’ll figure out what its rules are as we go on. It does have the advantage of never having any company behind it shoving flagrant ads all over the pages – that would never happen unless every user of it agreed to it.

I’ve rambled on again – this was meant to be a short post because I found a list of the 12 most annoying types of Facebookers interesting… instead I have added another few kilobytes to history.

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This will be a quick rambling but I have been thinking about the development side of things and that I haven’t had a real challenge to get my teeth into for ages. In addition to the fact I have recently got my Google Wave invite and have been playing there too – nothing productive yet however, still a little lost with what I can productively do with it. In essence I am very impressed with it, it is clever and will create quite a change in our perception of we communicate by email etc. A little concerned about how something like this will scale with all the traffic and function it will be taking care of but we’ll see. I had been watching how Microsoft got on with Groove, then Live Mesh, which are tenuously linked in my mind with what is happening in Wave but a little disappointed in how things were going. We do need something new, however I was really hoping the Open Source world would come up with it first. 

With Wave I did spend a lot of time looking through the terms and conditions trying to figure out which bits were going to be fully open and which bits were to remain proprietary because if I do use it I here I cannot lock it into any particular company or their servers. Or indeed rely too heavily on packages black boxed.

Well the exciting things going round in my mind at the moment is looking at the ways in which we all communicate – collaborate especially as far as Beyond One World is concerned – and wondering if it all can be rationalised better into a more logical kind of application. For instance we communicate via Email, chat, Messenger, Skype and Forums etc. We provide information (text and media) on web pages, blogs, wiki’s, rss feeds and YouTube etc. Particular to what I think of in Beyond One World I see tasking, workflow, configuration management and decision making process fitting in. Figuring that possibly Wave will become established and using that model, how can all the other requirements fit into the picture. I have made numerous notes and drawings as I have though about what is going on underneath and what we use it for – and thought about the semantic web and using RDF etc to distinguish between the information flowing. The more I think about it and investigate the technologies available the more exciting it gets. I think it’ll be a great learning exercise and I only wish I could not worry about income but take on these challenges as I become aware of them.

Anyhow, with all the rest of the ramblings here I have added another chapter to it. I will continue this one firstly in the forums at http://forums.beyondoneworld.com/site-discussion/beyond-one-world-as-an-open-source-project-t15.html. Then when anything become more solid start filling the Wiki with hopefully the inklings of a requirements definition.

Is it need driving technology here or is it the old trap of technology driving need?

I have spent another night awake with bursts of what can be done, how it will work and what I really should be doing and I think there is one point that I  haven’t made clear enough or even explained properly.

Imaging owning the world, imagine owning Google, Microsoft, any corporation, the Governments, in fact everything. I flippantly tried to pass this thinking into the question of what you would do if you owned the world. Well this is how it all works.

I mentioned before about the Open Company Specification, which I failed to start up in OpenOutsource some years back. It was essentially that all users of the company, owned it. Not like a cooperative, with hierarchical structure and management but in a flat, one level system whereby you were able to take part in the company at any level you wished in collaboration with everyone else. In fact Beyond One World is an artifact of the idea behind that, in that everyone would own it.

If you think of Open Source, the work that goes into it by people dedicated mainly to ensuring that the application fulfils the purpose you want from it. The lay that idea upon a company, you put in systems for fulfilling tasks, making decisions, having different people take on different roles within it in an absolutely free tasking market then it becomes the Open Company Specification. Simply then, you add all the companies and organisations of the current world that run under this system and ten you have Beyond One World. You are in equality and full collaboration in ownership of the whole workd and beyond.

How does this work at the beginning? All the functionality and information on Beyond One World will be owned and controlled by its members. I am trying to prepare a forum, a wiki, a tasking system and a social web using current Open Source tools that will in the beginning simply fulfil their set requirements. However, again these will be owned by the members of the system and no changes will take place once this has been established without the control of its members. Imagine having Tweet, Facebook etc and able to also collaborate and agree on exactly what it will do. There will be no company behind it to enforce rules and any profit that the system makes belong to the people as a whole.

If Beyond One World were to jointly work on creating a search engine, then it will belong to everyone who is part of it. If Beyond One World were applied to telecoms, then again the same idea would be applied. Let’s take it to a dangerous extreme, what if it were applied to banks – would we charge each other interest???

Working on this system is the only way to remove any centres of self interest and corruption. One of the ideals is that openness and transparency are a must in a system like this so that everything that was done would be open to everybody – to question, to learn and to make better.

Logically, I cannot see any way that we can absolutely cure the problems that we have in this world without this free collaborative framework that makes everybody in the world an equal participant. To be able to tackle problems and requirements from the personal level to the global.

I cannot tell you how this could work. I haven’t myself worked it out. I cannot give a clear picture that you could look at and say AHa! that’s how to do it. All I have at the moment is that we must establish our highest ideals, to work out the ethics and direction that every part of this system will work to. They should be our highest, our most positive, aimed at doing the most good for everybody. Also all I can see at the moment technically is that the platform for discussion, agreement and open development is needed to carry out this work. My choices of application at the moment will seem simplistic in the future, but it will change. It will belong to all those that want it. I believe out there are the dreamers, the pioneers and the achievers that are capable of putting this all together. It’s work would be the biggest collaborative work our history has ever seen – but it will absolutely benefit everybody and will be to our highest ideals.

Just got back today and checked the site for any activity – none.

Looked in the logs and found I have been visited by a few bots (I wonder what the collective name for bots are?), a continuation of a load of spam in the wordpress comments (Thank you whoever developed Akismet!!!) and some serious hacking attempts at the site (That’s not nice – I am not harming you!!!).

This is going to be a hard journey…

Current activities will be :

• to catch up with the world government news in the forums http://forums.beyondoneworld.com/world-news-events/
• Work a little more on the principle ‘every person to be protected from harm’ http://forums.beyondoneworld.com/idea-discussions/principle-every-person-to-be-protected-from-harm-t6.html
• Write up something on the first Open Source project to get the first stage of this site going. I am keen on pushing the boundaries of Google Wave at the moment but it seems to have more of a commercial excitement following, not so many developers which is bad.
• Think about drawing some pictures. I am still finding it hard getting the message across.