My-- *Our* BoingBoing Future
Now that I've got a toe in the door at BoingBoing, I'm going to pitch them hard on a longer-term relationship. The regular bloggers' positions are pretty well filled, but there are some opportunities for a bit of engaged cultural critique and collective problem solving - especially as BoingBoing expands into BBTV, IRC, and other forms of media.
I know what I'm hoping to accomplish. Here's a snip from my first pitch email to Xeni:
Interactive, interpersonal meadia can not only expose the artificial nature of the entities currently in control of the social and economic landscape - they can restore human agency, create the right conversations, connect people, and fight fear with fun.Happy mutants are not unaware of the problems plaguing mankind, but they are committed to confronting them through collective, uninhibited, engineered transformation (mutation) and light-hearted, kind, and amused interactions (happiness).
So, I want to create pieces that initiate the conversations and behaviors that engage people in these processes. Each one would be the beginning of a discussion, and part of an expanding wiki of resources, supporting material, and user-generated content. A piece on "local currency" would branch out to embrace the local currency efforts, discussions, and tools out there. How *does* a person create a currency for his or her town? And where are the other people interested in doing this? Who has the best solar solutions, the most interesting way of organizing labor, the best free local Wi-Max network? Let's talk to the CEO's of GE and BP about their green efforts, and whether they believe their own hype. How about urban planning? Bike lanes? Ads on school buses and Coke machines in the cafeteria? What's in those textbooks, anyway?
This isn't pure 60's or Whole Earth radicalism and self-sufficiency (though it's certainly related) but a 21st Century, cyberpunk reclamation of all technologies and social contracts as essentially open source, up for discussion, and open to modification. It's an application of the hacker ethic and net collectivism to everything, done in the spirit of fun and adventure.
The question is, which medium? Instinctually, I'm drawn towards radio, which would enable interviews and live call-in. Is this hopelessly old fashioned, or is it a reflection of the bias of radio compared with TV? Is there a way to do video that's as interactive as voice? Or should interaction be kept on the margins of something more produced and standalone? More importantly, what sort of resource or engagement would you prefer (if any)? This is for you, after all.
Help?
(Douglas Rushkoff is a guestblogger)
the latest
latest episodes
My only question is when do I get some whuffie and how do I start or join an ad-hoc?
I think Wikiing about where we are making and using our own currency would immediately result in there being many fewer BoingBoingers participating online and more BoingBoingers locked away in FEMA camps.
Radio is nice. You can stream it and of course there are podcasts.
I would recommend talking to Pirate Cat Radio since they have found a means to operate a radio without a formal FCC license based upon a regulation that says during a "time of war" citizens can broadcast unlicensed radio as long as they have a PSA every hour. As you know we are now perpetually at war... with Terrorism!
I know Monkey who runs the station and he is definitely a geekpunk of a high order, he is also a capable hacker(in the old sense[programmer], new sense [anti-electronic-security], and contemporary sense[tinkerer]).
Also a wikis are great. Can you write a wiki program that allows authors to write a path (and readers to follow) of Hegelian dialecticism?
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While I appreciate your enthusiasm & I've enjoyed reading many of your submissions this week, I find this posting off-putting.
I'm of the camp that if you do strong work and people want more of your work - they'll ask for more.
At that time, it would be at your advantage to open a round of discussions with the Boing Boing decision makers.
Asking me to help you get a job, not so much.
Have you considered using Talkshoe for your forums? They don't pay their hosts anymore, but they do provide a text/voice conferencing solution that then becomes downloadable as a podcast.
#5
Well, I think you're still stuck in the idea of people making money off other people. I'm not suggesting a conversation because I need the work.
It's that context I'm hoping to change. That's probably the main reason I write these days. How do we shift from that corporatist mindset?
Maybe it's not possible, and all invitations at collaboration will be seen as efforts to exploit others. If so, then I'll be stuck doing non-collaborative work. I can post up in the top part, and you comment from down in the alley.
Sure - I can sit and talk privately behind the scenes with BB decision makers, and guess at what I think might serve the community best. But even then, I'd be creating a show that annoyed you - or put you off - because the whole thing would be about soliciting participation from others.
My original fear in making the post was that it might feel too "transparent" to BB. Not too much of an invitation to readers. But many people responded to my Exit Strategy book that way (it invited participation from readers) until they learned all the money went to the FSF.
...He's got a toe in the door? That's an old vacuum salesman's trick. Quick! Slam it real hard and be sure to throw his toe back! :-)
:)
just make lots of post about when the albanian version of your new book is out.
ahem....
one minor point, i tend to only ever get through aout half of your posts, they are all a bit long and contain All Teh Words.
actually this makes me seem like a moron with no attention span, an i'm not sure it isn't true.
@rushkoff my first post was serious :)
I don't really think there is enough detail on how this would work is the only thing or if it necessarily has a place on boingboing.
On some level it seems like you're talking about creating a wikigov and then using it to find solutions to problems. Maybe once the idea is out there real change can be effected.
Then you go on and talk about radio. Are we talking about creating collaborative audio discussion for podcast usage? Collaborative or not someone has to be in charge of it which brings us back to whuffie or some other system that grants privs.
Or are you saying that maybe popular and informative commentary will be made a part a boingboing post's main body?
What Im saying is, can you make it clearer?
1. Interesting idea. I was surprised by the radio idea, because I was reading your entry as a proposal for some kind of wiki-thing, but prettier.
2. I hate call-in shows. I can listen only so much before I have to smack down my poor little tivoli. I'm not sure your proposal for a community radio could be any different. I guess I prefer the non-linearity of text and image, augmented by well conceived metadata.
3. Ditto on @2. This kind of thing makes it awfully easy to map out dissidents. But that is probably just a growing pain...
hmm interesting idea.
I was going to suggest TalkShoe as well, but I see that #6 beat me to it, so I'll just echo the recommendation.
That's if you're dead set on actual live participation, but I don't know that you need to limit it to that. After all, it requires people to actually be present and listening at the right time. It does add something, but it also goes against the time-shifting that is increasingly common in all sorts of media these days.
Something like TalkShoe lets you do a streamed show with a live chat room, and even the option to have live calls, plus the ability to easily record the whole thing and release it as a podcast.
I would recommend also that things like k7.net voice-mail lines, email feedback, etc. be included. They may not be live, but they allow for a much larger audience to participate.
I like your explication of Happy Mutants as a force for change.
To effect change, though, requires organization, even in the ad-hoc World 2.0. And organization requires communication. And I guess what you're proposing is communication. So that's good.
But there are a lot of us, and we'll accomplish little if we all talk at the same time, so organization of this communication is required for any organization, which sounds a bit paradoxical, but one must start somewhere.
If you do go for an audio driven medium, don't forget about text. Transcripts or subtitle possibilities would be awesome for those who can't hear, and those who don't want to listen to something and rather read. Maybe a community-driven text transcription service would be nice, if Google hasn't rolled out their transcription service by the time something like this gets going.
Doesn't the radio idea limit you pretty much by timezone? I'm five or six hours behind you, I think, so that would rule me out...
The thing about the intertubes is that we get to make communities based on common mindsets rather than common location.
Nice ideas, I'm all for sticky media that keeps people involved (phpBB takes some beating) - but really, I'd just like to sit on the sidelines making smartarse comments.
I'm hoping web posting/blogging/email continues to assert its strength as the open source medium of choicce for cyber-punk culture hackers. I know I'm not alone in my LOVE of boingboing. The rolling scroll open comment format is elegant and beautiful. It is the simplicity of the layout, in addition to the fabulous content, and merry band of commentators, that I find so appealing.
On the other hand, I'd love to see something like a spin-off section. I've never done anything with tags or RSS feeds. But, perhaps there is a way to select certain topics to discuss in further detail with people that are interested? I'm not really sure what that would look like. I'm sure our wonderful world wide web has a few models to study.
@Rushkoff: I understand your impulse to post this idea here. (and btw have been enjoying your posts very much) I think this idea has a ton of potential, but like others here, feel like radio would be hard to make collaborative. The thing that's nice about blog/wiki format, is that you don't have to be anywhere at a specific time to participate, where as with a radio/video, there's a start and stop time that people have to be available in order to take part. Is there a way to get around this? I can't think of it. Is What we need some sort of wiki platform/framework that supports video & audio to a greater extent?
Check out thebrewingnetwork.com. They have a fairly hilarious podcast show that still manages to confer large amounts of (subject-specific) useful information.
I could see your RadBB working very much like Studio 360 or This American Life on NPR/PRI. The approach to personal involvement/civil participation in change would really fit well with the individual 'case study' approach that those shows take.
And +1 to the idea of having transcripts of the shows on the same site.
If we can agree to name the project "Boingkoff," then I'm all for it.
Also... I'm sure BB readers are familiar with the CBC's canceled radio show 'Search Engine' (which now is thankfully back from the dead), but they tinker around with collaborative reports. Crowdsourcing, i think they call it? correct me if I'm wrong.
http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/
I agree with #5 [I_prefer_yeti]
Rushkoff, consider your post is a lot like when someone asks "why aren't you my friend?" The answer is besides the point. that you are even proposing that question describes a larger issue. No use arguing it, if you have to ask...you are not in.
@Rushkoff
I must admit I don't have much to add about the specific idea (though I do like it). I do want to say though that I have enjoyed your posts and hope you become permanent. I think however that #10 is correct (I know, I know, everyone is a critic); your posts are pretty text intensive. I know you do have a lot to say, but it comes off as being a bit intimidating.
If you do audio, please offer a low-bandwith version a la http://thin.npr.org.
I love media that only uses my ears, leaving my eyes free for other (productive) tasks.
I concur with some of the others here in that im not really sure what your hoping to create here, can you elaborate a bit?
What i *think* your envisioning here is more followup on topics through more user participation augmented by technology....? Yes, no?
Insomuch as i think i understand you, i also think radio is a bad choice (but admit that i might have totally missed the point).
#7 - Well, you asked me to participate in your discussion & I did.
Seems to me that you made a rather wild assumptive leap in imagining my corporate mindset - but hey, no biggie.
I will say that I'm a lot more receptive to ideas and information when I'm not being talked down to.
In many of your posts (and in your reply to my post) you come off (to me) as arrogant and pejorative.
I understand that you feel strongly about a good number of things - many of which I agree with - but you lose me when you tell me I'm stuck in something.
I got it. I suppose I reacted defensively by the suggestion I was looking for help in getting a job. I see how you might have interpreted my suggestion that the community might want to collaborate on a new kind of media as an attempt to promote my career on your back.
But I still think we are living in an environment where those conclusions are all-too-easy to assume. Just as you were off-put by my post, I was off-put by your reaction, recalling the many people who have accused my own and other people's attempts at collaboration as exploitative in some respect.
I think we're *all* stuck in it, and I think there might be ways out.
If my writing as a whole has gotten arrogant and pejorative, at least it's different than the "spineless" or "all-too-agreeable" of which I'm more often accused. Perhaps I'm reaching balance.
But it did disturb me that among the first posts was a rejection of the whole notion that engaging the community in this discussion was somehow self-interested or careerist. Perhaps I should have been a little more authoritative in the post - less casual, as if foot-in-the-door is really the appropriate way to talk about this - and it wouldn't have seemed that way.
My effort is always to make any implicit disparity between reader and writer diminish - but a little self-deprecation goes a long way, and sometimes has the reverse effect.
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May I be the first to suggest a long term plan? Happy, we know what that means and implies. Mutant, I fear, insists on context.
Do we all want to be as different as possible? Cover all the bases? An even distribution of attributes, skills, and luck?
The first subject that jumped to mind was reproduction. Snicker all you like, but if, as I see it, Mutant refers to biology and not a dogma, then (I can barely say it) there needs to be attention paid to producing these happy mutant children. You want more mutants? Make 'em.
To be fair, I'm not a dad. I know a few. I've got mine still around, luckily enough.
I'll bet dollars to donuts there's similar networking going on, similar levels of meta folding in on themselves (smart libraries, savvy first grade teachers, home schooling wikis, web 2.0 for the PTA and so on) in the world of parenting as there is in the world of computer/maker/geek-ing/unicornChasing.
I think I'm pointing to the longer scale of time than product fetishism and novelty chasing. Archive, Mutate, Reproduce.
May the fittest win.
...or you could make a religion or something that looks like a religion. There's a lot of people that love dogma. They're not evil. They could be Happy Mutants too.
The thing is, Doug, et al, we're all readers and writers on here. Right? If we can all just accept that we are in a two discussion here and just conduct ourselves with dignity and respect... I think we'll do just fine. It seems to me that some of the "official" posters end up taking a lot a shit, so maybe when your official tenure is up, Douglas, you might want to kick back in the comments section with the rest of us. How is that for democratic?
The best model I've seen/experienced for something along the line of what you're describing is the online creative collaboration zefrank initiated with his viewers during the run of The Show. http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/
Now that The Show is finished, the collaboration continues thru projects launched via Twitter.
IMHO, the big take-away is that the medium i.e. radio, podcast, video, vlog, wiki, etc. is not important. Use any or all; whatever medium suits your need and the message you want to deliver. The key is creating a fun and compelling context for participation.
@Ruskoff As an evil PR person by day, I completely sympathize with the need to pitch something to get a reaction, that's just the way things work these days. If you aren't proactive, nothing will happen."Knock and it Shall Open", I think a few well qualified folks have said that.
That being said, I would welcome and enjoy your input on BB, and web radio could be a fantastic medium for that. I've really enjoyed Media Virus, Bull, and all your work with Disinfo and I think adding a different perspective would be beneficial to everyone.
BB has been one of my favorite media outlets for ages. I really enjoy the perspective everyone brings because it cheerleads what is actually going right in the world at the moment, and there are many amazing things happening that are 100% buried by most media. I'm not certain that many readers here are familiar with most of your work, but I think having a bit more magickal theory mixed in with our web wonders would be a very positive thing.
I also feel that another medium, like web radio is a much better way to facilitate a conversation than comments sections, even with a great community like this one. It's too much of a one way medium. Someone rants, someone else rants...
I'm in and I'd personally like to see you contribute here on a regular basis.
I have greatly enjoyed your posts over the last week and think that boingboing is a great way to get ideas out there. Although the search engine idea is very appealing also. I'm particularly interested in the following lines of you statement "How about urban planning? Bike lanes? What's in those textbooks anyway?"
I'm a student and the relationship between urban planning and health is what I study. In fact, this week the journal Nature, put out a call for more academic blogs on research to get research ideas more into the public domain,
http://blogs.nature.com/wp/nascent/2008/09/science_blogging_2008_london.html
I would also be very interested in seeing some posts about the academic copyfight. Authors trying to get their work out to a wider audience but being limited by the journals they publish in. Hence the idea of research blogs. Haven't started my own yet put it is in the works.
Keep up the good work. I look forward to future posts and possibly hearing you on search engine.
Let me participate in your process.
I'm sure you wouldn't be here if the Boingers didn't think you had something to offer, and I'm grateful to them for bringing us new content. But this post? Not prime time material.
Okay, then. Going 'meta'(1) on the participatory(2) thing, I'm making an open appeal for people to participate(2) in the process through(3) I create some participatory(2) media.
(1) Extraneous quotation marks
(2) Unnecessary repetitive words
(3) Fragmented/nonsensical sentence
I would also suggest that you cuddle up with copy of Strunk & White, particularly the section that states, "Omit needless words." Maybe your commentary is better suited to radio, I just don't know. I have tried and tried, but I simply cannot get through your teal dear to get to your content.
Thanks to BB for the chance to comment and thank you for guest blogging.
What I'm hoping is just that - to break the feeling of a one-way medium. I was in some of those early conversations about CurrentTV, and couldn't understand why they insisted on going straight to cable rather than letting things be a bit more level here on the web where their audience actually congregates.
I do have more solid ideas about formats and what I'd want to accomplish, but I held back in order to hear more about what people want.
There is something about radio I've always loved, and personally it's the medium I'd be most keen on playing with. TV sometimes feels too wrapped around a joke or button, and radio feels more comfortable being open-ended. So while Xeni and I have been talking about ways to experiment with format on BBTV, I've still held in the back of my mind the notion of BBRadio.
AirAmerica failed for me as a truly progressive radio form because (with the except of Thom Hartmann, who is fantastic) it was really just a left-wing equivalent of the complaining that the right-wing radio used to do.
So some kind of radio show that involved reported pieces but then opened up into panel discussions and then broader participation via call-in really appealed to me. Problem is, that doesn't take advantage of the net's asynchronicity. A person might come up with the thing they really want to say hours or days after the "live" thing took place. Do you add boards with text conversations at that point?
I keep thinking of Obama's statement (heartfelt or not) that we all would be the participants in the government he wants to head. He'd be more facilitator than governor. But what the heck does that look like? I envision many local groups doing the things they want and turning to government less for financial backing than deregulation of laws preventing them from doing this or re-regulation of the industries standing in their way.
What is the conversational, idea-generating, model-sharing equivalent of Wikipedia? I'm not absolutely sure.
But what I am seeing is that call-and-response - the general style here of posts and comments - does demand that someone do the first call. You can't start "collaborating" until someone brings something to the party. That someone just can't be the same person all the time, or it's "an evening with Joe."
So maybe the job would be for me to find people who have something to say or share and create the best forum for them to do it. And then experiment with a number of conversation styles until we find one that has the most traction.
there should be a "which" after "through."
...but that does add yet another word! ;)
I used to really enjoy this blog, but now I think it
has jumped the shark.
Between the log winded posts, buzzwords and "WIRED" nomenclature, not to mention the political screeds, it really has become less enjoyable.
It is starting to feel like a clubhouse that only a few are invited to visit.
I hope it gets back on track.
Call me a cynic, but I am not sure if BoingBoing is really the medium for the next revolution. I don't mean to sound like a total cynic, but I look on the idea of BoingBoing leading anything other than good entertainment... well, roughly exactly the same I expect punks to grow a magical anarchist paradise and overthrow the current order. But hey, the struggle is fun part, eh?
Side projects are fine, but I wouldn't try and saddle down BoingBoing with being something that it isn't. Not everyone who visits BoingBoing grows their own vegetables. Some of us work for large evil multi-national corporations that make your computer chips, cell phones, and other organizational devices using vast world wide resources only possible in a globalized capitalistic world. Thus of us, not naming names (me), while lovers of liberalism, expect the co-op localization revolution to happen somewhere between forever and never. You are not going to kick over the corporate order. It works too well and no one has offered up an alternative method of doing anything more complex that bike repair and organic food gathering.
Might I suggest smaller bites?
I might advise aiming lower to goals that are achievable. Complete destruction of the current economic system might be a little far fetched, but personal satisfaction through one's free will and choice is far more attainable. You can't stop people from burning oil, but you personally can obtain happiness riding a bike. You are not going to convince everyone that internationally grown foods are the devil, but you can find personal satisfaction by buying local goods. You can't end our materialistic culture, but you can certainly end your own by realigning your priorities and finding ways to be happy that don't involve accelerating your consumption.
In other words, work on your own personal happiness and satisfaction with your own life first. Next, try and bring in others. If by some miracle it catches on, the old order dies and the new one takes up its place. If your revolution fails like countless before it... eh, no sweat off your back. You are still happy and living a life style that brings your personal satisfaction.
Seek personal satisfaction first, help others find that same satisfaction, and then perhaps we can talk about abolishing government money and doing a hydrofluoric acid etch in your community semiconductor fab to make your own computer chips.
BoingBoing desperately needs a podcast, and I think your concept for one is a fantastic idea. Regardless of whether those two lines intersect, we need a podcast to prepare us for the world on the other side of this current mutation. A resource wiki to accompany it would be great. I think an interview with John Robb of Global Guerillas would be a great way to open it up with a bang.
What about that there old IRC channel that popped up then fizzled and died?
How about organizing a massage exchange, then?
Seriously, I'm no revolutionary, and usually talk against big change like that. In my next book I'm advocating the kinds of steps you're talking about - not overturning the corporate order, but rebuilding some of the social fabric it has replaced.
If someone is working with a good local currency model (or even just a babysitting club) and deriving personal satisfaction from it, we might benefit from hearing her story and seeing if we want to model some aspect of that behavior.
chiming in with my 2 cents.
Like you I have a soft spot in my heart for radio. But it's a very one way medium. It talks, I listen. Yes, there are call in shows but I don't think these are a very effective route for collaboration and information sharing overall. It's time limited to the duration of the show/podcast, and as has been already mentioned time zones are an issue. They are also a linear format where as text on the web isn't quite so linear. In an audio or visual format we need to follow from beginning to end to follow what's going and we must do it at the pace decided by someone else.
In text (and images too) on the web I can scan at my own pace and jump around if I like while still maintaining a sense of meaning. Also information sharing this way is not time specific. No issues with time zones. Ideas can be revisited months later. I can spend 5 minutes or 5 hours on a topic.
I have yet to find a wiki that's a good vehicle for give and take of information and discussion of topics. It might be useful as one format for what you're looking for but I don't know that it would be a good centerpiece. I still find them most usefull as more final encyclopedic vehicles than conversational ones.
IMHO the centerpiece may well be best as a forum. with wikis, podcasts, videos, member blogs as adjuncts. The other advantage that I believe forums can have is they can naturally foster a sense of community if done well.
Thank you Douglas, for cramming big ideas into small blog posts, making the detractors at "big corporate jobs" think without a unicorn chaser, and for taking steps in general.
What I would like to see is something like a multimedia library of how-to's with each document having a discussion section. Since it seems what you are advocating is generally tip-sharing on social causes, it would seems a multi-media how-to would be a starting point?
My one concern about radio is that many of us use computers in places we cannot (or should not) have sound. Plus the whole time restriction thing.
I do agree with #39 though, about starting small. That is one of the things that has made BB so successful, by growing branches where the light was shining brightest. That principle can be applied to all the conversations of "why don't we just get together and do something." When asking for participation, you have to expect and encourage mutation. so, my advice is just start something, and trust that the people who have food will share.
much love, and thanks for being my newest bookmark.
This is all new to me, and my brain is only starting to adjust... so at least for me, I just want to be able to play too and try to figure things out.
First of all I would really like a boingboing spin-off discussion oriented wiki.
#26 is right noting that radio is an extraordinary media to reach many people but that is mostly one way or it allows very few people to participate at once.
Keep in mind that at least currently any audiovisual matterial is way less mutable than text, and the tools to do it are not that widespread.
Of course changing that situation could be a brutal acomplishment.
@ Rushkoff I was going to ask BB if you could stay on as a regular (or semi-regular) blogger, so I see this as a great idea overall.
Admittedly, your posts take time to read and I am still going through some of your earlier posts in depth. (As well as posts on Rushkoff.com.) However, the fact that I am doing this shows that they are important to me.
As far as I am concerned, forget radio. Remember there is a whole world out there, and the whole world is affected by American economics/politics etc either directly by treaty or indirectly. I am part of that world, 18 hours away, and I still want to be part of this.
Podcasts would be good, and they could have a discussion thread below them. The people who did the podcast could be asked to log in over the first couple of weeks (or more, if they wanted to) to be part of the discussion. A wiki (?per topic) could be good, or not. In my experience wikis work if there is an enthusiastic community, otherwise they die. Some topics might attract such a community.
Transcripts are highly recommended, as text can be quoted and cited more easily than audio.
BB gadgets is semi-separate, and some people look exclusively at it while others largely ignore it. This idea could be handled similarly.
I hope it goes ahead.
This is really a fascinating idea, but I really don't think you're taking it far enough!!
We should expand this concept beyond just online (or even offline) media into the meat space! Let's organize our collective fiscal resources and create real spaces that people can come together to hack into the collective conscious and (meta)consciousness in a real open source fashion! It shouldn't be that hard to convince some real deep-diving individuals to perhaps come and help examine and hopefully rebuild our current epistemological frameworks, even if we have to offer some financial incentives.
We could build some sort of 'knowledge-bank' in a physical sense; a place people could come and just browse the accumulated wisdom of the crowd, and perhaps do some verbal-wiki'ing together!
If enough social orgs recognize the value of what we're doing, we could give people some sort of knowledge credits that they could accumulate after having riffed on enough expert-system knowledge!
Since these sort of experiences can be extremely brain-melting for the uninitiated, we could encourage them to groove with the collective vibe full-time, and live with others of their experience level, MMO-style, coached by a more experienced "player".
And we could have Taco Tuesday night in the cafeteria!
I'm sorry, but that post has got to be one of the silliest things I've read in a long time. There have been social structures around for eons that do what you're describing, and the 'new media' is just the same old human interactions in a different form. People aren't doing anything different than they ever have; so much just seems to be happening, and faster, because some of us (a very few of us actually) have access to technology that lets us communicate news (and nonsense) much faster. We're still just talking about the same old crap though.
Pardon my rant, but I've seen this sort of thing pop up over and over again, in various incarnations and populations. Some community emerges around a central philosophy (the salvation via technology in this case), gathers members, begins to see itself as having the potential to change society but then begins the infighting and splintering. Groups become more and more insular, and more energy is expended maintaining the group dynamic and patting each other on the back than on actually getting anything done.
There's a reason some social forms have been around for centuries (corporations, religions, schools, etc) - they work, time and time again.
If you really want to get something done, stop wasting your time trying to re-invent the wheel, and just use the tools and structures that have proven themselves to be the most effective way to create change.
If you really want to get something done, stop wasting your time trying to re-invent the wheel, and just use the tools and structures that have proven themselves to be the most effective way to create change.
Well that would explain why we're living in Utopia.
First principles:
Why is interactivity such a good idea? What are we trying to gain by "breaking down the barrier between reader and writer"?
To me it is to attempt to leverage many brains to a task or investigation.
The big problem seems to be focus. What makes the discussion coherent enough to contribute to and benefit from?
I'd like to suggest a format.
Kind of like investigative journalism. Plenty of features get written by someone who essentially tells us what happened and what they learned as they did some research.
Instead of reporting back after the fact with conclusions reporter states an aim and invites input on a multimedia wiki.
I imagine some sort of learning goal ("I want to know what happens when a currency collapses")
Then the reporter becomes a cross between a guinea pig and an editor... their social contract being that the audience would expect some sort of completion.
Someone at BB did a nice post about the Whole Earth Catalog a while back. It seems to me that you're heading in a similar direction, which is not a bad thing.
You seem to be saying "lets get together and change things", which is fine, but I wonder if a more 21c (and a more WEC) way of putting it might be, "lets make a thing to help swap the tools to all go out and change stuff on our own"?
In the introduction to Little Brother, Cory talks in a similar vein:
"I'm collecting stories of people who've usedÂ
technology to get the upper hand when confronted with abusiveÂ
authority. I'm going to be including the best of these in a specialÂ
afterword to the UK edition (see below) of the book, and I'll beÂ
putting them online as well."
This perspective has a lot of people in the (intentional) communities movement and group-process world excited, because we've had firsthand experience with the power and benefits of this community organizer approach to change. It fits into your open-source everything post yesterday, but requires a different kind of faith: belief in our fellow people/neighbors/co-creators being able to get past petty differences and grok the value of collaboration to make something that is greater than the sum of the parts.
One thing that might be useful is something like a collaborative mind-map.
I think this project is a great idea, but I agree with whoever above said that BB might not be the best place for this. I'm not convinced that all the readers of BB are "Happy Mutants". What about Instructables or Make? There's already an collaborative community who love tinkering with things. Just a thought.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 28TH REALLY REALLY FREE MARKET 6PM-10PM
FREE MUSIC, FREE FOOD, FREE STUFF, FREE FUN!
This sunday, come to the St Mark's Church in NYC(2nd Ave Bet. 10th & 11th St.) to share in a interactive market where everything is free. The Really Really Free Market is a bazaar and a celebration, where we discard capitalist notions of interaction and have fun trying new models of exchange.
Expect and share free food, music, clothing, books, other things and fun!
BRING CLOTHES!
BRING FOOD TO SHARE!
BRING OLD ELECTRONICS!
BRING FRIENDS!
BRING BOOKS!
BRING CDS AND RECORDS!
Live music by artists TBA starts at 6pm so come early.
STOP BUYING STUFF AND START SHARING WHAT YOU GOT!
Interested in helping out?
We will have a meeting for the planning the next Free Market directly afterwards in hopes of establishing this as a monthly event at the church.
Come early to help set up or stay afterwards to help clean up.
and for a meeting next months Free Market
Time: 6pm-10pm
Cost: Free!
Location:
St.
Mark's Church
2nd Ave Bet. 10th & 11th St.
New York, NY
Well - I figured a happy mutant was just someone who's happy with the concept of change in general.
I like boingboing because is aggregates the interesting stuff from around the web, so it's available for happy mutants to read.
Does boingboing have to become a multi-platform revolution? Maybe it's moving that way - but I don't think that it necessarily should.
While I love reading this blog - I'm sure that sometimes favours are called in for friends; and while [#4] maybe have been de-vowelled by the poster, it still describes a very real problem with boingboing (if it's being championed as a vehicle for revolution).
If you think a radio show would work well - why wouldn't the idea have legs outside of the boingboing banner? I'm sure you could benefit from the boingboing effect once it's running.
BB is a directory of wonderful things. That is its "mission statement" (shiver down spine at writing that) if you like. It is not to change the world, or pursue a particular defined cultural or political agenda. (If the BBers say it is to do that, that's fine but its agenda is - to me - sufficiently diffuse and wide-ranging as to not be anything like as overt as I perceive Rushkoff's to be.)
I will refrain from commenting (much) on how I found reading Rushkoff's posts, or what I thought of his ideas, but I wonder if an "average length of BB post vs average length of Rushkoff post comparison would be at all instructive.
I write the above in hoping it will constitute hints to all concerned that a permanent Rushkoff presence at BB almost certainly WILL change BB's character in a very particularr and not subtle manner. If that's what you want, fine - but if not, try something a bit more incrementally evolutionary than that.
(Hint: "do nothing" is always an option.)
This is only the second comment I have ever posted at BoingBoing, but I felt compelled.
When I saw the title:
My-- *Our* BoingBoing Future
Posted by rushkoff
And read further and found this:
"So, I want to create pieces that initiate the conversations and behaviors that engage people in these processes. "
I knew I wanted to speak up.
I read Rushkoff's first post on BoingBoing and after that knew I could skip all of his posts in the future. He has something to say, but not to me, and it seems like it would be better placed in a different forum.
I think everyone is being too hard on Rushkoff. I think it is a very noble idea he's proposing and the amount of feedback, by itself, shows how passionate everyone is about it already. You've all already been hoodwinked into participating, whether you realized it or not, don't resist it. I want to pull out Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. You're either on the bus or off the bus. He's inviting us on the bus. I for one want to take the ride.
Less metaphorically.. I think we're still stuck on ME ME ME ME ME and can't be so selfless as Rushkoff, myself included. I'd like to see you get this off the ground and I don't see why association with Boingboing (as illustrious as it is) being necessary. If you got a real thing going it will grow all on its own and you can come back and give us status updates periodically.
Good luck man!
Mark and I spoke at length about whether I should do simple links to wonderful things, or write the kinds of essays I write on my own blog or in Arthur. I also asked whether a drop-down feature might be good, so that people would only see the first paragraph of a post on the main page, and then would click somewhere to see more.
But he felt it best to do the guestblogger thing full out, let me be me, and hope that any regular BoingBoing readers who were truly traumatized by my presence would recover soon after my guest period was over.
I do admit that the style and content of my posts challenge the BoingBoing mission. Maybe I long for the old days when BoingBoing, Fringeware, and Mondo (Reality Hackers) were the only pubs on the block to serve this culture - and when consciously engaging with technology, chemistry, or biology meant something more than a consumer choice.
I think the Make/Craft community embodies a lot of this spirit in a less juvenile/punk way than we did back in the early 90's. But I really do think boingboing is more than a directory of wonderful things - or that, at the very least, this directory serves as more of a Trojan Horse to a set of values those wonderful things embody.
@#50 - love the idea of a guinea pig/faciliator jounalist investigating in conjunction with a crowd... not sure wiki is the best technology for it tho. I am not sure you need to limit the thinking to "one story, many authors". More interesting (I think) would be "many stories, many authors" but with the focus provided by a unifying topic.
bricolage is a technique for building up an understanding of a topic/issue/event by getting a group of people to describe their experience from their perspective in whatever medium they choose. It has been used pretty extensively in post-modern approaches to sociology, dance, art etc etc.
I would love to see a space where people could contribute their content (in sounds, word, picture etc) on a topic. It could start out by the posing a question (like "What happens when a currency collapses?" or "What happens when you say 'Yes' for a day?") and then build up into a really cool collaborative resource for all sorts of stuff.
Of course, that is hugely different to the BB model as it exists. I can understand some of the sentiment that has been expressed in these comments. Anything that substantially changes BB would probably please fewer people than it would turn off...
but just to clarify, I think it would be awesome. :D
Well, I for one am against the idea.
Sorry. I don't think you fit in well here. You lost me after the "How about "great books by women I'd like to sleep with because they write so well"? comment.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
I think you should just link a open chat to popular posts,than we can babble all we want about what we want.
Could best be something I do elsewhere, indeed. No need to make people feel like their BoingBoing is being changed or taken away from them.
I wouldn't think a separate BB-branded entity necessarily changes people's experience of the posts they read. If there were a link to BBRadio, or BBTV or BB-anything as an extension of possible BB experiences, it needn't taint one's experience of reading about wonderful things.
But thanks to some of the more pained posts, I understand how it could irreparably reframe someone's experience - even if they never had to see it.
That's why I did this post. To see what people think.
But it's also why BB is inviting in some guest bloggers. Not to make all the readers happy about each one of us invited - but to shake things up, create some variety, and challenge existing boundaries. I'm trying not to be too upset about the mistakes I make or the swipes people take at me; I hope people realize the things I'm doing or saying don't necessarily and don't necessarily need to cause you too much distress, either. I'll be gone in a week, or you can pass over the posts.
But I really do think boingboing is more than a directory of wonderful things - or that, at the very least, this directory serves as more of a Trojan Horse to a set of values those wonderful things embody.
Yes. THAT. It is a subtle thing, a context taken from between the words, not the words themselves acting as a bludgeon to cram those values down our throats.
I would much rather be shown how wonderful the world can be than be preached at about how I'm not doing enough to make it better.
#50
I imagine some sort of learning goal ("I want to know what happens when a currency collapses")
Then the reporter becomes a cross between a guinea pig and an editor... their social contract being that the audience would expect some sort of completion.
This is kind of what I've been groping for as well. Something reported, researched, or found has to be brought to the table. (It's why I was thinking BoingBoing, originally, because the writers here are great at finding stuff most of us don't know about.) Then, after some sort of show and tell, the story or thing develops into more of a thought exercise with practical implications.
(Also, very important: for the record, I'm not talking about anti-corporate activity at all. I think that's a waste of time. I'm talking about extra-corporate activity. People working in corporations or earning lots of money are not the enemy in the least. I'm just suggesting that there are some social answers to challenges we think only corporations or centralized institutions can solve.
There have been a few posts from people who seem to think I'm calling for boingboing to become an anarchist, lefty, anti-corporate node for the revolution. Not at all. Just a club for happy mutants. The tools described on these pages - whether developed by corporations or not - still generally promote mutation.)
Hi all! Thanks for the thoughtful comments! What Doug said in #58 is true. We like our guestbloggers to post whatever/however they want. And I've really enjoyed Doug's posts!
The email Doug excerpted above that he sent to Xeni was an idea he floated for how he might contribute to BBtv. Doug isn't trying to steer the direction of Boing Boing or hint that there are major changes underway. There aren't any secret plans to launch a big BB wiki or BB radio station or BB currency, although the latter does sound fun! I think Doug's just trying to express what the concept of a Happy Mutant means to him and how it might be "actionable" in some collaborative way. From where I sit, Doug's aim is just to provoke a good conversation. And it seems that he's succeeded in that regard!
A little late to the party, but just grooving on your laudable intent reminds me of an idea that settles into my mind every once in a while. It seems to me that realspace is the best place to " initiate the conversations and behaviors that engage people in these processes." With that in mind, I often wonder what it would be like and what would be involved in chartering a new town.
It's striking to me how much open land can be seen when flying cross-country. The organizing and collaborative tools of the 'net could be used to discuss and tune the funding and logistics challenges (i.e. feasability) of such an endeavor. The town could have it's own localized currency (HOURS, etc.) for many things, and plug into the greater culture/economy as necessary for capital, material, and distribution of ideas. Energy infrastructure would be a tight local loop, with the exception of possibly selling excess power to the grid. Essentially, instead of being a farming town, it could be an energy farming town, populated by just enough cynics to keep us sane and just enough dreamers to keep us crazy, with a solid core (corps?) of happy mutants all around.
There are a few projects like this out there already (Califia and Arcosanti come to mind). I think it would be cool to start it off frontier-style, though. A few pioneers could live rough and get the ball rolling for a while (generating revenue streams building basic infrastructure), and then as the town grows, more move in and further develop the community.
Tthe best way to show the possibility of something is to live it, right?
Antinous said, "Well that would explain why we're living in Utopia."
We wouldn't know Utopia if it hit us in the face.
I'm all for Rushkoff sticking around. He's got some seemingly interesting ideas. I'm all about increasing the size and bandwidth of the BoingBoinganism. All Hail our Doctorowian Overlords!
If you're not familiar with it, I'd recommend checking out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Source_(radio_show) -- a different set of content, but similar techniques and workflow
Personally I'm hoping that my-- *our* BoingBoing future involves less Rushkoff.
Some of us corporate types are excited about what happy mutants do. I like the rushkoff posts.
One thing the make guys do alot of is challenge their community to not just consume news, but also make new things.
There is room within bb for some people to put in a little effort in the real world and try an experiment.
BoingBoing has features stories about things that could have sparked a collective response. Like 'International Photographer's Day.' Right now, there is no good mechanism for that.
I'd like to see the bloggers and guest bloggers like you use things like thepoint, chipin, pledgebank, advocacy crm's and see if you can't actually get shit off the ground by outsourcing the tasks required.
Sure, it means trusting folks and watching mistakes get made. But what fun!
- a boingboing salon party event held in bars across the world
- photographer's demos outside train stations
- raise money for a nice lawsuit against overzealous surveillers
- launch a wiki on.... whatever, and see who shows up
etc.
-
So many comments!
Full disclosure, I've worked with Rushkoff. I like him. He's a nice guy.
These comments have been peppered by Happy Mutants who fear the mutation of BoingBoing. Your fears are relevant, they speak to upholding the essential spirit of a cherished cultural agglomerator. It is a spirit with magical breadth that appeals to a diverse audience, who enjoy a common counter-culture without having to subscribe to anyone particular value set.
Rushkoff's offense, it seems, has been to define a value set implied by the BoingBoing spirit. Some people such definition in itself to be exclusionary. If BoingBoing takes on some hypothetical purely participatory model, it abandons the audience share that prefers to eat the feed, but not prepare it.
Of course, this would never happen. That would be like BBtv killing the regular BB posts.
It's nice to see everyone taking a moment to really consider what -- and how much -- BoingBoing means to them.
But in starting the discussion, Rushkoff proved his point. We are disconnected from each other and some of us prefer it that way. For the people who want to connect, it's difficult to envision a model accommodating all the high aspirations Rushkoff lays out. It's worth trying, though, just to see how BoingBoing values -- the invisible thread that makes this so much more than a directory of wonderful things -- can mutate into new, even more wonderful things.
For my part, I don't know a satisfactory way to deliver quality crowd-sourced content in a blog or vlog or podcast. I think that reporting will have to come down from a central authority for people to understand it.
A BBWiki could be a good source of information, but it's redundant. The information is already out there and it's never been so easy to find. It isn't the information that needs to be found -- it's the population we've disconnected from.
So maybe some kind of BB social network is appropriate. Or a BB "Meet Up"-style network. Not something that changes the BB we have, but adds another branch to this tree with its roots all the way back the 1988 zine.
There were plenty of HMs who felt disenfranchised when bOING bOING moved online or relaunched or when the comments section was disabled.
There are doubtless many BB readers who don't read Gadgets or watch BBtv.
The concerns raised here should be considered by anyone lucky enough to engage the audience.
But we shouldn't be hostile to the idea of trying something new with this spirit and this community. If we stop mutating, we won't be Happy Mutants anymore -- we'll just be our own mini-mainstream.
I *somewhat* agree on the long posts that Doug makes. Though I have ADD, I'm sure many others have internetally-induced short attention spans and long posts are visually off-putting upon first glance. That said, if I don't feel like reading the post, I skip it (gasp!)--sometimes I do this upon seeing posts by the regular gang (double gasp!). Other times, I will read a bit of the post and read on or skip to some other wonderful thing that may or may not interest me more.
I agree that synchronous radio shows are limiting for such a participatory endeavor, especially for those in far-off time zones (which could be me, for all I know), but even for folks who simply can't be available at a prescribed time.
The wiki idea intrigues me in general. It could help BB newbies get initiated ("why the hell are they always talkin' 'bout them dang unicorns?"), provide useful info about things that even regulars might not know about (e.g. general info about the TED conference, or background info on Ted Stevens), etc. Granted, this takes some of the fun out of exploratory learning (i.e. surfin' the web, dude), but for those who wish for a quick fix, it's all right there. A couple of extra features could include links to all of the posts that reference the topic and tagging of articles.
JDO @76:
"...If I don't feel like reading the post, I skip it (gasp!)--sometimes I do this upon seeing posts by the regular gang (double gasp!). Other times, I will read a bit of the post and read on or skip to some other wonderful thing that may or may not interest me more."
Those directions-for-use should be on every bottle of BB. : )
You can add me to the camp who have enjoyed doug's posts, although i tend to agree that for a full impact it would be best to either create a new site or utilize other existing outlets. What would be nice is a site running slashcode that fosters discussions around intelligent models for social progress. Posts could include links to Instructables on bicycle mods, articles on local currency, windowsill herb gardens, etc. Basically I want a Slashdot for Happy Mutants. Anyone interested on working on this please email me.
As far as radio goes, I do like the idea of doing a BBradio/podacast. The best way for it to work would be to encourage submissions from the BB community (in much the same way as NPR does with some of its segments.) Ideally various submissions could be edited into a weekly podcast. Even better would be to have a connection with the local community radio station, who could perhaps play the podcast and take call-ins.
While BoingBoing certainly has many thought provoking posts, the tendency of its tone is toward whimsy (papercraft fingerpuppets, star wars knits, etc.) I would like a seperate site aligned towards more practical moderated discussions. Hopefully, the BB editors will let Rushkoff continue to post at least sporadically.
On a final note, we should meet in person to the best extent possible. I was gonna create a Happy Mutant Meetup group but they wanted to charge me $70 so I just created a Happy Mutants Facebook group. Anyone around Atlanta should join the Atlanta Happy Mutants. Hopefully other places will do the same thing.
That is all. For now . . .
-jonathan
I can see why BB turned off comments for a while. A lot of people that have simmering media rage feel compelled to post here and in other posts about how this isn't wonderful enough and that isn't what we like.
These people have an overwhelming desire to communicate but have nothing to say yet, nothing worth reading, in my opinion. I mean their comments are far more boring to read than the BB posts themselves so how is that going to pan out for a collaborative media then?
BB doesn't have a community yet, per se, and that would come before collaboration. That isn't to place the blame on BB. It's just that as a BBer there is only two ways to participate, submit via email or submit via comment section.
What do you want? There are communities that are more self policing (ie ./'s karma system), and there are communities with a more heavy handed moderator (ie SuicideGirls with their bouncers). If you don't make a choice you may get a lot of people that can only complain "not good enough, not interesting enough", and if you want a group to be self-policing against lame distracting behavior, then users need tools to identify other users, link to their comments, talk about them and talk back to them and so on.
Always the matchpoint for controversy, eh, Doug? Well, whatever your continued relationship with BB may be, I'll be on board.
I'm thinking that maybe this is an opportunity to go one better than CurrenTV, as you brought them up. As a one-way, linear media outlet, they're slaves to attention spans and jarring transitions; they can just as easily lose a viewer's attention as they can grab it. Perhaps the new hotness would be a news and views radio station that functions in much the same way as Pandora does: the user inputs a theme, a name, whatever, and the service searches its files for segments that cleave as closely to the core as possible, then free-associates outward.
The user might start intending to hear all about, I dunno, let's say baseball (not my field of expertise). So, for a time, that's the focus. Then it shifts slightly to individual players histories and profiles. Say one is of a Cuban background; the channel shifts to Cuba's history with baseball. Then it just talks about Cuba, and then communism, and then Russia, and then the situation in Georgia. (Maybe at this point it comes full circle and talks about the Atlanta Braves. :D )
I know the way I describe it sounds fairly artificial, but it would be a slow progression that, if implemented correctly, would transition so subtly and organically that your average armchair baseball fan suddenly finds themselves versed in international politics before he realizes what's happened. Apathy hoisted upon its own petard. Is that not itself a wonderful thing?
@60 I will cop to using the word wiki as an all purpose collaborative tool that works by magic and makes everything better.
How about a kind of virtual paste up board like the ones on serial killer cop shows?
@67 Interesting that you bring up coporate/anti-corporate.
Thinking about this further I wondered if the editor-guineapig might feel like the CEO of a disparate organization staffed entirely by vocational volunteers.
This is great. Even the anger/nastiness, which forces me to consider how to maintain one conversation while fielding the concerns of others.
I agree that the trick is start small and see what happens organically. I'll keep reading, reviewing, and come back (somewhere) with a pitch or invitation to help create one. I'd be extremely pleased with not being in charge.
Finally, remember that most great things begin as a call and response. Putting out the call is actually a risky thing for most individuals - it's scary to do. If we want to encourage people to do it - to speak, to act, to try - we have to figure out how best to express our rejection of their idea. The only negative part about negative reactions is that it can scare people away from experimenting.