"What that
means is . . ."
My good friend Jerry
Vass is helping me explain ORGware.
Jerry's a patient man. He doesn't start off like he should, with
"Ferchrissake, Blaser!
Stop with the features already! My head's about to explode!"
Nope. Jerry's
more measured: "You just
need to talk like Steve Jobs doing a keynote.
He demos some complicated, acronym-encrusted shit, man, but he always
knows how to make it
matter to his audience. He just says, 'What that means is...' And then
he shows why every grandparent will have to own the new white plastic
$500 iPictureframe."
So here's what that last
post means.
7 Technical Requirements for Rating Members'
Contributions (including ideas):
What that means is
that
management really cares what the members think and wants them to be a
proactive Board of Advisors. It also indicates that management knows
that idiots and grandstanders are present in any population (anyone who
has served on a board of directors or trustees knows how true that is).
Smart management of the future (Q3, 2006) will want the wisdom
of its crowd to help pluck the flower of effective policy out
of the nettle of vague, non-actionable theory.
- Comments on posts (or ideas) may be entered by registered
members only
What that means is
that you can be a member if you're an asshole, but
at least the site owner knows you've got an email address. This is baby
step 1 in trimming comment abuse.
- All members
get their own blog (idea description area)
What that means is
that you can reinforce your comments, in your own space,
to straighten out the rest of the world.
- Comments are
entered on the commenter's
blog as a primary post
What that means is
that
all your sins and graces are compiled for the village to see. Like
in a village.
- Every post can be quickly
rated by a graphical slider
What that means is
that management lets the members promote their leaders and
marginalize the jerks and
grandstanders.
- No one can
rate an entry twice
What that means is
that no
one member can stuff the ballot box.
- Ratings
generate a text comment and a standardized trackback
entry at the rater's blog
("bblaser rated this post 88%")
What that means is
that a member can write a comment and a trackback and a primary post
in about 1.5 seconds.
- Like Slashdot,
every member can set the minimum
quality of
entries she will be exposed to
What that means is
that, like visiting New York City, you can stay on a
concierge floor in midtown so your sensibilities are unruffled (the Deborah
Howell school of one-way discourse) or you can mix it up with
the activists in Union Square or some dudes under a bridge.
9 Technical Requirements for turning viral conversations into
Policy:
- Encourage members to create as many individual discussion
groups as they like
What that means is
that there's never a reason for minority opinion holders
to feel marginalized.
- Groups have a shared
blog with their own set of posting permissions.
What that means is
that there's shared posting for members to help scaffold
each other's ideas.
- Support private,
unmoderated group intranets (clean room mode)
What that means is
that members can huddle privately with kindred spirits to
shape the next megaton mind bomb.
- Support public free-for-all
group blogs (anarchy
mode)
What that means is
that any member can create a totally public space to
generate as much heat and light as their subject deserves.
- Support public blogs
with designated contributors (performance art
mode, like BoingBoing,
Corante,
etc.)
What that means is
that specialists can work together in public while
receiving constant feedback from smart
throngs.
- Provide a means to convert
groups from one mode to another
What that means is obvious
- a technical footnote - but necessary for what follows.
- Switch from anarchy to performance art when a
conversation goes
viral and its leaders emerge, based on peer ratings
What that means is
that the system compresses the social processes governing
any group or political subdivision, but it's less susceptible to gaming
the system. After the switch, the group's newly-deputized leaders can
focus on specifics in a way that the mob never can.
- The new discussion leaders
develop specific policy
solutions, calling on experts as required
What that means is
that the crowd's brainstorming has become a project. All
action requires this transformation.
This is a bigger deal than it sounds, because brainstorm-to-project
morphing is currently limited to open source mavens and entrepreneurs.
This simple innovation is disruptive in the sense that Alex Moffat described
almost 3 years ago, as quoted
yesterday by Doc:
"Does the innovation enable
less-skilled or less-wealthy customers to do for themselves things that
only the wealthy or skilled intermediaries could previously do?
"Does the innovation
target customers at the low end of a market who don't need all the
functionality of current products? And does the business model enable
the disruptive innovator to earn attractive returns at discount prices
unattractive to the incumbents?"
- The members
continue to vote and comment and nag and make
suggestions
What that means is
that the newly-designated elites are responsible to the
community from which they have sprung, full-grown, like Minerva from
Zeus' forehead. This is meant to counter the centrifugal force of
arrogance that drives so many celebrity writers away from her
roots.
The iTudes Musing Store
There are a lot of parts to the ORGware collaboration/activism
model. Is it too complex to be usable? Or is it so feature-rich that
it's complete enough to be useful? Who knows? Maybe what we're building
is iTunes for attitudes. Before iTunes, no one imagined that we'd need
such a complex environment to buy and listen to music, but somehow
we're there now.
I'd love to create an environment that inspires and empowers
people to spend as much energy expressing their political preferences
as they now spend tweaking their music collection and publishing their
favorites.
4:29:52 PM 
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