dose

I’ve been chatting a bit with Austin Hill of late. I convinced him to join the advisory committee of the Atwater Digital Literacy Project, and we seem to be interested in many of the same things, mostly revolving around applying the power of online communities to idealistic goals. His Top Secret Project-Ojibwe (based on aboriginal gift-culture) is coming out sometime later this year, which if I understand is going to be one central project, with many little side projects, such as gifter.org.

Anyway, that project, plus the thinking I’ve been doing over the last few years, and my experience with librivox lead to this little epiphany the other day. Perhaps this is happening already somewhere (and I haven’t fully thought it through or fleshed it out, but there you go)… enough chatter, here’s the idea:

UPDATE: In comments below with Tracey, it appears that some ideas were misconstrued. The proposal is for a funding organization.

BACKGROUND
1. internet and distributed communities are very good at:
a) building software
b) sorting/managing/making info available (wikipedia/librivox)
c) massive peer-review, monitoring
d) democratic ranking (technorati by links, digg by diggs, wikipedia for info etc)
e) leveraging small-chunk work to make a big project cheap and easy

2. free softare, wikipedia, creative commons, librivox are all examples of PARALLEL structures, that do not concern themselves much with what is happening in the mainstream, instead focus on building something different, in PARALLEL.

3. government is increasingly (or always has been) removed from the actual desires of people - part of this is because the process is hidden from most people. it takes real dedication, time, effort to influence policy (hence pro lobbyists = money talks, not voices)

4. what does government do?
a) raises funds (tax)
b) plans policy
c) plans programs to implement policy
d) decides on budget allocation for different programs
e) (sometimes) implements programs
f) monitors progress of projects

5. this process is hidden, inefficient, and subject to influence peddling. But effectively it makes the rules, gets the money and spends the money.

6. while groups of individuals are not able to make the rules, they can raise money, and spend it.

7. charity UPDATE: AND FOUNDATIONS generally are subject to some of the same problems … and often only 30% (check #?) of money actually donated to charity goes to programmes - the 70% balance goes to administration, fund-raising. UPDATE: This is a systematic problem in how charities are funded.

8. much of the reason for 7 (above) is that getting funding is difficult, time consuming, inefficient, and requires massive efforts, publicity, management. loads of paper.

9. re: #4 … without replacing government, is there a parallel system that could be set up, that could do some of these tasks… with a model like #2.

10. YES! again, looking at the government’s role, the internet & open projects can be very good at:
a) raising funds
b) deciding on budget allocation
c) monitoring progress of projects.

11. Probably not so good at:
b) planning policy
c) planning programs to implement policy
e) implementing programs

(these all take more energy, time, on the ground effort … which is possible, but is not the real power of a distributed system).

PROPOSAL

An open-style charity “foundation,” that works as follows:
-Members pay $20/yr each ($50? $100?)
-This money goes into a fund
-You can donate more money, but no one is given more power because of how much money they have donated (but maybe some sort of moderation karma points, as with slashdot)
-projects “apply” for funding (eg atwater digital media), by posting project description, budget, plan
-Members can:
-ask questions
-make suggestions
-rank projects

-On an ongoing basis (maybe every 3 months?) the foundation does an open budgeting process, where members decide on allocating: short-term, and long-term funding to projects that have ranked well.
-Projects will be required to update progress and info on an ongoing basis, solicit input, etc, and further funding can be decided based on that. UPDATE: This process would be same as standard reporting process for most funding programmes, tho the idea would be to reduce burden on recipients, rather than increase.
-(an aside: When projects run into trouble, the Members that supported the project should be aware, and can possibly offer more concrete help UPDATE: idea here is just to give the individual “funders” a more direct connection with the recipients…but again should not result in more onerous requirements for recipients)

In this way a totally parallel system (to government & usual charity foundations) could be established to fund projects with a community of givers that:
a) funds itself, through membership
b) decides on where the money goes in an open process
c) monitors & provides feedback (and possibly more concrete support) on an ongoing basis (UPDATE: monitoring here refers mostly to standard financial oversight, that all funding agencies must do)
d) is transparent & efficient

NOTE: This principle should be applied also to an new open internet media production house too, to find a way to fund film-makers, musicians, etc, based on an open co-op system…film, music projects funded based on the interest of the Open Production House Co-Op members.

(cross-posed at TextoSolvo).

I’ve been thinking for a while that a lot of what we do at LibriVox, and how we do it, could be useful for other people who wish to start open, community-driven projects.

I just launched a blog to talk about this stuff, with the idea of maybe having a book out of the process sometime in the future. I’d also love to have contributions from people on librivoxy issues - obviously in the comments, but probably in longer format too, so stay tuned there.

Here it is, if anyone is interested: TextoSolvo

We were contacted a long while ago about having a librivox recording included on the new Ubuntu install package. Apparently, it happened & we think it is Aesop’s fable : “The Fox and the Grapes,” but I’m not certain. Does anyone know? I guess I should ask ubuntu.

I meant to post about this before, but got caught up in that little project of mine … anyway, a bunch of musicians left the CRIA over copyright issues, and started the wonderful Canadian Music Creators Coalition. Some high-profile folks in there, including the Barenaked Ladies, Feist, Avril Lavigne, and Dave Bidini of what remains one of my all-time favourite bands:Rheostatics. More to come presumably. Idea: CRIA and industry-friendly anti-piracy doesn’t help the artists, but hurts them. Here’s their statement of principles:

1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists

Anyway, we hope to see more exciting stuff like this.

In other news, I’ve been in touch with Justin again recently, and would like to spend little time on publicbroadcasting.ca, which I think could develop into a very important project: a true people-powered public broadcaster that uses (rather than shuns) the internet to connect Canadians.

But first, I must spend some time on the very-neglected LibriVox.org - which is moving swimmingly without much help from me, but there are some things I should help clean up including a bunch of recordings I owe!

ella’s audiothougts on free/libre/open movement: response to free/open source software discussion. My brief summary: the open movement is in fact very closed - due mainly to technical barriers. A nice take on things from outside the uber-geek circle.

Juien posted his audio thoughts on our open/free movement discussions, here: Open source movement and evolution. He talks about things from the creative/podcasting perspective. Using say creative commons, fighting against DRM, allows a bigger, wider, more fertile creative space for people to put together art of one kind or another. He’s got a great take on empathy too: that even the evil drones who work in big corporations in fact are very empathetic, human people who have similar ideas to you & me. The problem is the structure & systems we’ve build up which define what those people do. So what we’re doing is creating a new system and a new structure.

et puis, notre ami dans le lutte pour le mouvement libre, sylvain a repondu en format vlog … et voici son point de vue: Le Frog Show - Une réflexion sur le mouvement libre

Sylvain adds his 2 cents to the multi-media, asynchromatic, geographically dispersed conversation about the open/free/libre movement. some interesting ideas about architecture, public space. He’s also a real live practictioner of the free software/open source movement, having built a business around providing these solutions. So Sylvain takes a more practical concrete approach to the fundamentals of the movement in the software context, and, according to Sylvain, those are: synergy, spirit, and democracy. Synergy: the abilitity to put different GPL tools together makes open source tools powerful (see Firefox!); Spirit: the scientific spirit, sharing of information, developments, projects makes innovation happen faster; Democracy: a social contract rather than just a legal one, and the principle that tools are developed within a bigger context, and it’s the context that defines their usefulness.

All this I think gives a better context to this idea that in the long-term, the free movement is about being able to make better tools to solve the problems people want to solve. About creating the systems and structures that allow it to happen.

I know this reduces the discussion to something specifically non-idealistic. But I guess my thought is that my own idealism is good for me, but idealism does very little to convince others. Often ideologies are more about methods than about outcomes: most people want to end world hunger, say, but some think debt reduction & foreign aid is the way to get there; others think mass market liberalization is the way. Left and Right, same long-term objective, very different methods.

So rather than look at the free movement as a idealistic movement, why not fight for it on the basis of it’s long-term effect on innovation?

Thanks for joining the conversation Sylvain; good job Julien…anyone else want to join in the fray?

Brett issued a challenge in his last vlog, which was a response to the recent intense discussion we had at Laika about the open movement, what’s going on and what it all might mean. I wrote a long post about that discussion below, and here is my effort to make a vlog about my thoughts. Some notes:

• I ripped off Brett’s walking & video style
• I am as long-winded in video as in writing - it clocks in at 15 minutes & about 30 MB
• I should have edited one more time to cut it down a bit more - but crashed half-way thru first edit & couldn’t stomach another run-thru
• The sound is crap
• When I am talking about torture, I am not saying that I think current torture practices are legitimate, but rather that if your suvival is at stake, then questions of morality fall by the wayside. You will do whatever it takes to survive, and morality seems like a luxury for other people. In the case of the current US policy on torture, I a) don’t think US suvival is at stake, and b) think that torture is hurting their long-term security and not helping (that’s just my opinion).

Recorded Sunday March 26, 2006 at 8:15-8:45am while walking around my home at de Bullion & Pins in Montreal. It was a bit wierd talking to myself while walking around with a camera in my hand.

In this video I refer to this post about our Laika meeting here; and my description of Boris’s snowplow analogy here.
And, here is my first vlog:
openmovement-hugh.mov

To summarize the long post below, here’s what I think’s going on:

1. solving problems enables humans to survive as a species/culture
2. to solve problems, we must: get & process data, choose actions, and implement solutions
3. humans develop and use tools to do this
4. a “successful” human (& culture) is good at doing 2 and 3
5. to be good at 2 and 3, individuals and groups should have maximum:
   a) access to data
   b) access to tools
   c) abilitity to use tools AND improve tools … as they wish.

Art, religion, roads and software, are all big-level tools to deal with big-level problems. Hammers, mp3s, openoffice.org, marriage contracts, and dynamite are all specific tools to solve specific problems.

Closed software, digital rights management, IP protections on life, closed scientific research, etc etc. all make us less able to solve problems because they:

• restrict our access to data, and
• prevent us from using, improving, developing tools as we wish

And with problems like climate change, peak oil, and maybe avian flu on the way, we can’t afford to restrict our ability to solve problems, for the short-term financial gain of a few companies.

So a few Montreal geeky types convened at the Office (aka Laika) for a sort-of impromptu discussion to try to figure out what the hell is going on in the world, and specifically what this “Open Movent” might be, and what connections we can draw (if any) between it’s various strands: that is, are there any connection between:

• Software: Free Software/Open Source (eg. FSF)
• Data: Access to Government/Civic Data (eg. Howtheyvote)
• Art/Media (eg. Creative Commons, LibriVox)
• Infrastructure (eg. ilesansfil.org)
• Hardware (eg. $100 laptop)
• Information (eg. wikipedia)
• Scientific Research (eg. open journals)
• Education (eg. UC Berkley podcasts, MIT OpenCourseWare)
• Patents on Life - and those opposing it (eg. GRAIN)
• What else should I add here?

The group was mainly geeks, and unfortunately Devlin couldn’t make it. That’s too bad because Devlin isn’t a geek, and works in agricultural IP issues, mostly in the South (ie developing countries) and his take on things might have helped us find the root we couldn’t grasp: biotech/IP issues are important in those countries because they have a direct impact on farmers’ choices about how they feed their families, how they live - if they can feed their families - and so are, in some sense, more critical than what we were talking about.

But I feel that there is an important link between all these things, a link that is very difficult to articulate because all these “sectors” talk in very different words, and are motivated by very different things. The hard-core geeks and the creative commons artistic freedom fighters are not necessarily talking about the same things, and probably wouldn’t agree on much.

Julien assigned me the task of summarizing the 1.5 hr discussion, but I don’t think I’ll do that. It would be a disservice, and I’m much more interested in what those attending have to say themselves (get writing!) than trying to interpret what they had to say, and butchering their thoughts in the process. Still, what I’ll try to do is summarize my perspective of things, after trying to absorb the discussions. I’ll probably leave out things like “I think” and “in my opinion” and “as steve said” etc…Take what comes below as an open reflection that could encourage comment & discussion, and not exactly my categorical statement of Reality in the Universe (although it might sound like that).

To start with, there are links, they are important, and figuring out what those links are is important. But all these “new movements” are in fact not new at all: the various principles the intellectual movements are built on (say: freedom, equality, access to data/information) are all old successful ideas. Ideas that are compelling because they appeal to successful and enduring notions in many cultures. For instance: sharing is good (kindergarten class #1), everyone should have access to knowledge (public libraries, public schools), a society should try to give everyone the same opportunities - ie you shouldn’t be explicitly barred from doing something because of race, creed, colour; but we might not do too much to help you.

These ideas are not at all universal, but just happen to be prevailing ideas of our particularly successful (ie good at economic & military dominance) western liberal democracies. We happen to be at the top of the heap right now. Meaning we’ve been successful, but not necessarily meaning that the Universe has designated us Kings of the Planet.

Note also: Not everyone is motivated by such abstract ideas. This is something that Mike speaks of with great passion from his experience at ISF: many people are involved because they like coding, they like wires & antennae, they like fiddling with projects, tinkering, building. That they’re doing something for the “good of humanity” (freedom etc) might be important to some, but it’s certainly not the universal motivator. Some couldn’t care less.

So here’s what I think: Humans are programmed to find ways to overcome environmental challenges, and to get pleasure from overcoming them (which encourages them to overcome them). If you look at the history of human civilization, you could look at it as a series of problems: access to water, access to food, access to heat/energy, access to clothing, access to shelter, access to mates. “Civilization” is an evolving process which morphs based on a lack of any combination of those, and cultures develop as codified ways to meet those needs, in more and more complex ways, generally for more people. Wars start when one culture’s need for one thing rams up against another culture’s need for another; successful cultures are the ones that win wars, and gain access to what they need; or cultures that succeed in negotiating in some non-war way. Unsuccessful cultures don’t win the wars, and get denied access to varying degrees. Similarly within a culture you’ve got warring factions all fighting for bits of the stuff that satisfies those needs. And the drive for wealth, the drive for power etc. is a sensible thing to have within the system of a culture because it means that the culture, as a system, will be driven to maintain access to the things which fulfil those base needs. As the world & it’s cultures get more complex, this need is abstracted out to other things. So you get art, computer games, religion etc. But in a way that’s just a fetishized expression of the same thing. (That guy’s pyramid, whatever his name is). Even when you have all the water, food, mates etc you could possibly want, your drive to solve those problems is still there; your drive to solve problems full-stop is still there. Otherwise you would fade away. That drive to solve problems manifests itself in art, in the joy of coding, in building bookshelves…anytime you “do” something, accomplish something, build something, and you feel good about it, you’ve filling that need; and the pleasure you get out of it is a genetic signal that you’re a functioning human. There are of course exceptions, but bear with me.

So: Humans are happiest when they build things (whether that’s a poem, a bridge, a printer driver code, or a field of corn, a new way to generate energy, a library, a community of freedom-fighting geeks). Let’s say we are genetically (culturally?) programmed to get satisfaction from completing tasks, making something. Some tasks are more fulfilling than others, but in general even completing excruciatingly boring tasks results in a pleasing feeling. You can describe this in many different ways, but we generally feel pride and happiness about accomplishments.

We use various tools to accomplish these tasks, to build things & do things. Hammers and ibooks, and apple scripts, paintbrushes, shovels, encyclopedias, calculators. And people who are driven to build things (say, the tinkerers, the programmers, the car buffs and the CEOs, the politicians & the activists) are pretty pissed when they are told that they cannot make the tools they use better. So when, for instance, a software company gives you a tool to do a job, and you say to yourself, this is OK but what I really want is THIS; but the software company says: you cannot change the tool to do THIS, you can only do THAT. Well that pisses off someone who has a job to do, an inefficient tool, the means to make that bad tool into a good tool; but gets artificially prevented from improving that tool by IP protections. That, I think, is the root of the Free Software movement. That a non-free software system that doesn’t allow tool users to use tools the way they want, and to improve those tools offends their general desire to build things and do things. If you have a bad tool and the means to make it a good tool, it’s really shitty not to be able to make it a good tool.

Now you can abstract THAT out to everything else related. Art, data, scientific research, education, seeds etc. are all tools used to solve problems. Those problems could be very base & important (how do I feed my family), or very trivial (how do I make a better songlist in iTunes), but we are driven to DO these things and build these things and solve problems; and that we are driven this way means that we as a species are good at overcoming environmental challenges. ie It has been essential for our survival that this be the case.

So I *think* this open movement is about something very fundamental to the survival of the human species, that is: we want the ability to get and use tools to solve whatever problems we deem worth solving.

The free movement is about defending this fundemental need of humans to use tools as they wish, for purposes they wish, and with whatever modifications they wish. And the different strands grow out of different people’s interest in different tools (encyclopedias or bits of code, or music samples). So we are against:

• DRM that says you can use this piece of art only like this
• proprietary software that says you can only use this software the way we want you to use it, and you cannot make it better to do what you need
• closed government data systems that say, we will manage & interpret the data for you, the way we decide to do it
• IP protected seeds, that say you may plant these seeds only as we tell you, and if you pay us
• closed scientific journals that say: you can get access to this scientific knowledge only if you pay us this much money
• information/education systems that say: you can only have this knowledge under these conditions
• communiction infrastructure that says: you may exchange data and information like this, and with these charges associated

And we are for: Allowing humans to use their tools as they see fit, and to modify their tools if they want to modify them so that they are better at solving problems. By “opening” this stuff up, we give humans access to more data and more ability to solve problems (trivial, critical) in creative ways. The Open movement has huge implications for the future survival of cultures, and perhaps the species.

NOTE about participants (ie people who happened to be there): brett (videoblogger & film maker), mike (isf founder & general free movement spitter), robin (anarchist software developer), steve (builder of opensource tools for scientific collaboration), julien (ace podcaster), and me (in my LibriVox hat, I guess). Ella, an artist & blogger and non-boy popped over to our table a couple of times, but I think we were stupidly much less welcoming than we should have been - more out of intentness of our conversation than anything conscious - and I would like to personally apologize for that.

From Seed: Reinvention of the Self:

To understand how neurogenesis “the process of creating new brain cells” works, Gould’s lab studies the effect of two separate variables: stress and enriched environments. Chronic stress, predictably enough, decreases neurogenesis. As Christian Mirescu, one of Gould’s post-docs, put it, “When a brain is worried, it’s just thinking about survival. It isn’t interested in investing in new cells for the future.”

On the other hand, enriched animal environments “enclosures that simulate the complexity of a natural habitat” lead to dramatic increases in both neurogenesis and the density of neuronal dendrites, the branches that connect one neuron to another. Complex surroundings create a complex brain.

This applies to my post about open data too, I think. A brain becomes more sophisticated in a situation when faced with “enriched environments” … chronic stress stops things. Note there’s a big difference between chronic stress - which puts you in constant survival mode; and discrete stress, which forces you to find a solution to a specific problem. I would argue that having a complex brain, stimulated by “enriched environments,” allows you to overcome discrete stress (call that environmental challenges) in more creative and effective ways.

As this applies to society: we will be best able to meet complex challenges if we expose society to “enriched environments.” Enriched environments mean, I think, access to maximum amounts of data; and public domain, open data movements mean just that. A vibrant public domain (free software, art, civic data, scientific information, agriculture) will mean a more vibrant and innovative society, better able to meet major challenges (say: climate change, peak oil, avian flu). The connections between art & software & science & civic acess are not yet clear to the world at large. But some are working hard to forge these links, across a spectrum of areas, seeking to increase data exchange, and give the tools of data production to new people. Others don’t quite get it yet. Still others seem intent on shooting themselves in the foot, by fighting the obvious. That’s OK. You can’t expect everyone to get it. But you can keep pushing.

(tip to: Tech Monk & mtl3p)