Dear all,
this might be the most naive thread you will find on coding. social!
That is, because I am no techie at all… So excuse my bad knowledge of terms, I would appreciate if the discussion could stay on a moderate technological level.
Background: I am a student of philosophy/rhetoric from a rather small university city in Germany (Tuebingen); together with some collegues we found an initative that is best understood as some sort of “public thinktank”. We are predominantly concerend with matters of communication in general, political discourse, democracy and social change. Today, Social Media obviously plays a keyrole for forming public opinion and I do not need to tell my audience here about the flaws of Big Tech… Also, I do not think there is a need to delve deeper into the multifaced crises we are facing worldwide… Something needs to happen asap. Following this, we envisioned a new social medium with the project name “Common Ground”. For further details, you may have a look at our website (under development): https://paranova.org/
I will point out 3 core topics of our approach that might differ from other approaches in the Fedi and Social Media in general. I will keep them short in this starting post but I would appreciate all your comments, so we can develop an argumentation together.
Bringing it back to the local lifeworld
The world spins faster and faster and the impact a sole individual can have on it seems to vanish, put pathetically. For making a change we believe in real physical visibility in our local area. The Internet brought us global connection but we lost track in front of our doors. Online Communities are nice but especially for potential political purposes we have to reconsider where and how we can have an impact. We think, in some way we need to “rebuild” some feeling of local community in the digital realm because the pace of time makes asynchronous communication necessary. Of course, this approach does not behold on the local sphere, rather it fits the idea of the Fediverse perfectly and is open for global connection.
Concretely, we currently are aiming at an event-map, trying to collect all events in our city, displaying on a modified open street maps (developers welcome). This way, we hope to gain traffic on a domain that can be shut down later for the sake of including an event-map on a platform to be build…
Embracing civic engagement
Connected to the first point, there are a lot of people outside the door engaging for the good. On the one hand they may deserve a special “advertising space” (to be discussed) on a platform, on the other hand, they are a lot of potential users that are necessary to reach social tipping points for making people switch platforms. Also, they may have a positive impact on the overall “climate” of the plattform. We think, ironically, the experience of self-efficacy is a rare product in our times. Making civic engagement “cool” and lowering the threshold for entering this world, would be beneficial for everyone. It may be a special case in the city we are based at (Tuebingen), but here the public authorities are really open to all sorts of engagement. Chances are good they would even pay for server costs (or similar) if the “product” is available and used by local citizens.
Stronger ties with science
This is probably the biggest aspect, but I will break it down to one central question: How to improve discourse in Social Media? We think there is only a hard way that will yield sustainable results: education (with pathos we may call it enlightenment). Language is a complicated thing and it increasingly seems - radicalized through technology - to divide and control us instead of enabling us to reach common understanding for the sake of acting-together. It is an all too human problem and it is part of my philosophical inquiry to find answers to this. Nevertheless, I think, we know quiet a lot about how humans work and how we could aid malfunctioning discourse step by step.
Content moderation is a topic for itself, an we think (despite obvious insults) it needs to be regulated community-based. But looking at the comment section in mainstream social media makes me depressive, indeed. Still, taken all beforementioned aspects together and elaborated further it may be possible to create a self-regulating community on a local basis, especially if the development includes all non-techie but rather “rational” spheres. Furthermore, universities are quiet open for “student innvoations” and chances are quite good to get fundings here as well.
Finally, if we want to stretch the talk about more concrete stuff as user interface, we suggest to not “reinvent the wheel”. Sticking to what works, adding some tweaks and building a good alternative to established Bigtech platforms would be our conclusion. With my limited technical knowledge I made a little app mockup, so you know what I am thinking about:
As a last point we do not take our own organisation too serious. We think, the banner under which you run should not be the deciding factor, it is more about making a change. Therefore, we are searching for feedback, networks with similar projects, enthusiastic developers and everyone who thinks this approach is worth advancing.
Welcome to this forum Sirius, you are a social coder now and part of the movement!
Don’t worry about naive. There is no such thing, Your post is spot on and in the most useful language: people talk, not tech talk which comes later. Besides, most naive posts likely already mine where they seem utopian and I claim they are not.
“Common ground” is a great name, and as students you are uniquely positioned to bootstrap initiatives like these. It is easier to have “runway” as a team next to the obligations the studies impose. My own focus is on the Commons, and in wordplay I use that, and might say “commons ground” in this case. I’ve experienced first-hand how hard it is to have the technology base be commons-owned, so that what is built upon it is not the same pile of junk that is supposed to keep society running (aka hypercapitalism in my vocabulary).
I think we all agree on the ‘asap’ in that sentence. The question is ‘asap, what?’. There’s good news, good news, and bad news. The good news is that the technology in theory is all there, patiently waiting to become useful innovation. The good news is also that today you can build a platform based on your new insights, and it may become a success. The bad news is that if you want to serve the commons at scale in a way that creates societal impact, the technology is NOT there and won’t be for a couple of years minimum.
Some other good news to the bad news is that that is your opportunity area, as you will need years to develop something that can have societal impact. Especially if you don’t want to see that become just another extension of the corporate web, where hypercapitalism festers better than never before. As students I think you are more aware of ethics and the need to address externalities, less need to see this meme I posted to the fedi:
If you want my opinion… currently we are building Skynet, because we don’t know any other way to build humane technology within a commons. We think however that we are NOT building Skynet.
Aside: The ‘fedi’ abbreviation is a petname for a ‘segment’ of fediverse bounded off by its cultural values. A culture with similarities to what existed in the days of the early Web. It is a precious culture, and it is disappearing/watered down by a kind of Eternal September introduction of newcomes fleeing big tech platforms. It is also a difficult culture, that in many ways is a social minefield where you better walk on eggshells. It is “social Wild West”, which is much better than social wasteland of tradtional corporate social media.
You are in the areas of communication, so I need not tell the importance of language and terminology. I’d immediately drop “new social medium” as a concept. We don’t need new mediums. Mediums just indicate channels, and we have enough of them. We need to understand how to use them less poorly.
There’s a very interesting job here for skilled communicators to help the techies increase the “social bandwidth” on these thin copper and glassfibre wires. It has taken me quite some time to appreciate how much mankind underestimates the impact of technology and takes it for granted when its ditched into society. I guess this must be especially true in Western cultures, where tech is seen as progress and ‘leading the way’.
To become experts in developing a common(s) language I advise you to delve into “Strategic Design”, which is a comprehensive totally non-technical part of Domain Driven Design (DDD). And don’t get lost in other parts of DDD (web search delivers you a tangled mess here). You might also want to look into event modeling or other methods built on top of DDD practices. At minimum develop a Ubiquitous language (UL). This becomes your ‘handshake’ to the tech world as well, and will avoid tons of misunderstanding and waste.
Instead of “social media” consider using “social networking” and realize this is nothing new and what people do for thousands of years. Now we do it online, and somehow we think that that’s business-as-usual, and we just have an ‘extra line’. Tremendous waste and parasocial communication we take for granted… we hardly perceive them as we accept many things as normal. Making simple analogies to offline social practices is a great way to point out the weirdness in our online behaviors.
Other terminology advice: Avoid “app”, “user”, “platform” in your ubiquitous language. They lead to dogma and bias, stuck innovation, and Conway’s Law more-of-the-same end results. Only use these terms where they make sense to the particular domain you are considering.
TLDR is there a niche for what you want to do? Oh my god, there’s a chasm. And here at social coding movement you are at the right address. Before you lies an unexplored field of IT: Social experience design… where social meets the technoverse.
This is what I call “residential social networking”, a subject area that I pursue for a decade now along with my crazy techno-philosophical background research (“professional hobbyism” only, a mere dream, I won’t bore you with it but it involves investigating how an alternative to hypercapitalism may be introduced successfully into society). I have very particular and unorthodox ideas in this area, which are however waiting patiently in the attic of my brain, as both the technology base and the means to control it responsibly are not there yet atm.
In terms of current initiatives I would encourage to contact @ivanminutillo and @mayel of Bonfire Networks who are likely furthest on the Fediverse in thinking in same directions as you are with Paranova.
Another research initiative (that is I think dormant right now) to check is openEngiadina. Then the Lemmy developers are creating a federated wiki called Ibis. I should definitely cross-ref Semmy too here, an idea parked at the movement and ready for ideation to commence on it.
This entire subject area is encompassed by my new applied research area (as “professional hobbyist” mind you, certainly not as academic expert) of hedonic commons-based peer production in grassroots environments.
I’ll cross-ref the diagram from Proposal: Start a fellowship to explore the Social Web for that. And I’ll immediate add that you should consider your initiative to be candidate for the fellowship, so give the proposal topic a peek if you wish.
(It needs some updates, SOS → SOSS, Sustainable open social software, plus Fediverse and Open social stack shouldn’t acronym FOSS… that was a tease to make a point about FOSS general unsustainability)
Congrats, you have found entrance to a huge tech ecosystem that is in dire need of more science to turn into furtile innovation that progresses mankind, and to address this transfer systematically so it becomes sustained and sustainable.
This bridging is very much topical to social coding movement. This forum likely works best for elaborating on a broad range of applied research. Big part of SX is focused on the (co)creation processes and supply chains that support intricate social experiences.
(Btw, part of the movement is Delightful Club and I co-curate delightful-open-science. All credit for current list goes to Victor Venema. We both lack time to maintain the list, so if any of you want to co-maintain: post to the chatroom or to #ecosystem:delightful category and I can hook you up.)
If my crazy techno-philosophical quest has learned me anything, then that is that “Simple solutions still exist”. My decade of dreamwalking has given me some you might say profound insights. I hope maybe I can unfold some of that into material reality. But the dream itself was worthwhile and useful, a source for gaining life exerience, strange as that sounds.
I am convinced that when it comes to simplicity and simple solutions, that can nonetheless carry the weight of society, then mimicry of nature and natural laws is the only way to go. Should we be able to unravel what sparks the commons into furtile collaboration at scale, we can unleash unstoppable forces for good.
That’s utopic, until it is not. And it depends on the number of minds and souls who proactively dedicate to pursue - what seem to be mere - dreams. Dreams are where passion and intrinsic motivation come from. They are drivers of life.
In the light of mimicry of nature it becomes clear that “content moderation” is an artificial construct. Other than for very specific use case where it might be useful, it is needed solely by the inadequacy of our social web where “social” is just branding invented once by marketeering techbro’s. Not the real deal. Remember that well, because that is the huge niche or chasm to take position in, imho.
A new huge area of things to discuss here. Here’s question how your initiiative best position itself. What’s ambition level, the mission / vision / purpose questions, roadmap and evolution, breadth and scope. Lotta considerations.
Holistic sustainability and sustainability-first approaches are also study topics of social coding movement, because only Sustainable open social systems & software (SOSS) can reliably be adopted broadly in the Open social stack (the techstack / technosphere + social / solution layers). See on this forum the subject of #sx:fsdl
I know in academic realms all is not well in terms scientific practices and commercial influences that promote a wrong system of incentives (it promotes vices, which are big drivers of hypercapitalism). I don’t know the extent to which your group of students is exposed to that. In your spare time, picking up this initiative you are liberated to apply actual fundamental science and go the fullest on realizing actual innovation. Maybe you aren’t aware how little actual innovation comes from the business sector and Big Tech, esp. given all those billions of dollars they have to their disposal to innovate. Innovation simply isn’t their goal, domination is. Status and power, a shallow game, that victimises humanity. I need not explain more. You indicated all that in your intro.
Just wanna mention: There is a big lure to get your own business going, and monetize, find business models. Here you can quickly stray, and become (or stay) part of the wicked problems that mankind faces. Seek (holistically) sustainable business and don’t be afraid to apply the utmost of your fantasy, imagination and creativity in moving forward. Dare to be naive and it will lead to refreshing insights.
You can go the route where you prototype, find techie companions in your team, build community, and then a MVP, Minimum viable product of your social networking concept. Yet there may be more value if you orient more broadly on how to connect YOUR particular studies to this whole outline I am depicting. That’s the first entry point to the ‘gold mine’ of life experience and different pathways of passion that match your individual dreams. It is also - to speak in more concrete terms - the best way to consider the entire ‘value portfolio’ you might develop.
This is great. How you have most chances, if you keep that spirit. I mentioned dreams… they avoid disillisionment in case you foster impossible “vision”. Avoid visions, just dream and adjust them when needed. Or dream another dream. It is more casual and keeps you open-minded, away from dogma.
I will conclude my very long response, which your topic warranted, hauling back to the good news, good news and bad news I started with. The bad news is solved with patience, proactive participation and on to hedonic peer production and an open social stack where we can weave social experiences into the existing social fabric so that supportive humane technology might help choreograph human interactions more effectively and efficiently.
Wow, thanks for your huge comment, let me elaborate my perspective on yours:
The name is not chosen just by its nice sound (also a reason), but by reference to a concept of linguistics/psychology that seems fruitful for a general approach about mutual understanding (The original term comes from Stalnaker, but the concept of Clark seems more handy
Not sure if I get your term of hypercapitalism right, are you refering to something like Shushana Zuboffs and others describe as “digital capitalism” in the broadest sense?
So just to get my understanding clear. By “we” you refer to all of open-source developers? Or humans in general? As I understand your point: There is technology development (with good intentions) but it gets swallowed by big corps (hypercapitalism) and misses the common good this way. I would say it is nothing new to be honest, it is the Marxist discussion of privatizing certain properties. We once had state-owned electricity, imagine.
Interesting. What you mean by Eternal September?
I totally agree to your point, “what” we humans do is the same since always, just the “how” changes a lot. The problem short said is imo, that people seem to think technology would suggest a “what”, it becomes a directionless development for its own sake. I came across some strange intertwinings in my studies between capitalism, technology and language in general, that I will elaborate further (some time…)
So, I think this is a crucial point. If we want to be innovative coders we have to include broader audiences. These audiences only have the terms at hand that are circulating in everyday discourse. Now the point is: Who changes terms? The one having knowledge about both sides or the side that has to gain insight into a whole new field? I leave this open for discussion.
(but thanks for the advice concerning Strategic Design, if you have a good introductory read that sums things up, I would be thankful)
I already had a quick look on this and will definetly have a closer one soon.
Let me add that the understanding of “science” here is crucial. Because science often gets used in opposition to the so called “humanities” (or in german “Naturwissenschaften” und “Geisteswissenschaften”). We are stirring up a wasp’s nest of philosphy of knowledge in general. And it is kinda funny that you with a more “technical” background, aka “pure science” associated, are indicating that the social aspect needs more recognition. I think, we are pretty much on a wavelength here, though speaking different languages
Could you elaborate? I agree, the Social in Social Media isnt really “social” in the sense we would natural call something “social”. But I think in core content moderation is if you let of the possibility to be goverend by some central authority a democratic issue and in this way it does indeed differ from something we can mimic from nature. But not sure if I got your point right.
sad but true. But I strongly believe there are somewhere some billionaires (atleast one or two haha) ready to invest in something that shows its true innoovative potential^^
Well, I definetly have to catch up with my understanding of “this whole outline”. Imagine our project as a “sandbox or pilot-project” in one city that ideally gets a foothold in other comparable fertile environments…all this grassroot stuff. Furthermore, my talk about “a new platform” is more rhetorical. People outside the technosphere want this talk, they get this talk. I just think cooperation across all our (ego)-boundaries is needed in this life; words are just words^^
