Shawn – Beyond One World

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.

As I must make the effort to try and get people involved I will keep an account here of my efforts.

I already made a plea to my Facebook friends a few days back and had two responses. Special thanks to Peter Brand for spending time on this.

I have been doing daily searches and watching Google Alerts in my search for relevant news. I am tring to catch up with it currently at http://forums.beyondoneworld.com/world-news-events/. One item that interested me was the BBC’s ‘digital revolution’ (working title) at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/digitalrevolution/2009/08/programme-two-overview-nation.shtml. I have posted there to see if they have any interest in this project.

A few FaceBook groups next where I have guiltily wrote on their walls.
World Government…
Democratic World Government (DWG)
and one that I am sure will treat me with a lot of caution
Stop One World Government.

Finally, an interesting project called Blank Slate that aims to create a world democracy from scratch – some parallels there.

Just a few thoughts which I will try to shape up better later. Let me know if you can add or improve on this.

This has got to be the basis for anything done here without exception. If something is based on anything but the truth it cannot last. If a system is open then everything within it can be seen and tested if necessary. This is a remedy of any conspiracy.

Whatever lies are being communicated now or in the past will be found. No-one should wish to escape from the truth. In later years historian will research and test all of the information that exists to get to the bottom of all events in recordable history. Technologies that we are unaware of now will be used to find out what really happened in history and each participant in it judged with knowledge.

People need truth. Although heavily distracted by life’s events now more than ever they have the ability to assimilate and learn more and need the truth to separate reality from fantasy.

With truth comes responsibility, we will find out things that will need also our understanding. Out temptation to punish those things that we see as wrongdoing may need first a learning of the reasons and the understanding of why things have taken place.

I envisage IMHO some kind of wiki where facts will be kept in its raw form or linked to some physical evidence. Use of this wiki will ensure that any knowledge or information is linked to the items of fact to which they are using. Any change in any of the core facts will signal up this change into all the knowledge depending on it.

If society must have an enemy then let it be lies, untruths and falsehood.

Beyond One World is not based or should not be associated with any point of view, belief in any politics that takes place. This will be the responsibility of the people that run it to put whatever is false or wrong to rights.

Our version of the truth will always be changing as we develop and as circumstances change, so this truth will probably need to be version controlled in the best techniques possible.

Truth must belong to all of us and we must be sure that the system we create is based upon it.

The system must have the use of the very best and most accurate information and data and always ensuring it remains so.

In truth we must deal with each other, our diversity, our beliefs and views of the world must be understood, but all must eventually be tested and checked for truth.