Huey Prashker
1st December 2014, 03:09
Hi everybody. I use this site sometimes, but not that often. I have had a website idea brewing for a little bit. Let me toss it up here, and maybe something (collaboration) will come out of the resulting discussion.
The easiest way for me to describe this website is to give a history of the idea and the motivation for each subsequent development of the concept. If you think this idea is worth pursuing, please e-mail me at [email protected] and pass it along to whom it may concern...
Redundancy of Intellectual Labor
The initial motivation for the idea was my recognition that the structure of modern forums, tumblr, and Reddit, all lend themselves to a massive duplication of intellectual labor. By this, I'm referring to the thousands of times on this site that one user has explained to another why the USSR was not communist, what the problems with liberal capitalism are, etc. As a user of the site, you recognize that one idea has been explained many times, and the quality of the explanation each time often suffers because explanation requires effort. While one user may one time write a few great paragraphs explaining the nuances of tendency / ideology x, the next time the circumstances demand a similar explanation, laziness says that one sentence will suffice.
A highly structured forum would reduce that duplication. With subdivision beyond the current categories that exist on most forums, things are easier to find, and one could educate themselves using the resources of the site much more quickly. I also speculate that with greater subcategorization, discussions on the site would get much deeper.
So, as of now, the idea is just like a forum but with more extensive categorization that is forced and able to be changed. By forced, I mean that a discussion about anarchist praxis would have to take place under Anarchism > Political methods. Additionally, one discussion can exist in several places at once anarcha-feminism would be represented in Anarchism > anarcha-feminism as well as Feminism > anarcha-feminism. Keep reading if youre with me, theres more.
Limitations of Sequential Post Structure
By sequential post structure I mean that there is an initial post which creates a thread, and then subsequent posts afterwards, where each post follows the one before it. This is also how Facebook comments work. On Reddit and several other platforms, there is an improvement in that you can comment on comments recursively. However, both of these tend to escalate towards tangents. I dont mean this as a criticism, but in order to have a good discussion through Facebook comments the users need to go through some effort. They either need to label their arguments, 1,2,3, and expect the other user to follow their lead and label, or the discussion usually narrows down quickly to a small subset of what the initial discussion was about. When someone doesnt respond to something, that idea is often lost instead of emphasized.
The solution I thought of is that the core unit of the site is an idea, or some whatever you call it, and then that the addition of new idea units occurs in relation to a pre-existing one. To, for example, explain wage slavery or argue that the condition of wage labor is similar to slavery, one would start of by making supporting units, first that in wage labor relationships, the worker has little to no control over their working conditions and second, the fact that a worker can quit does not make their labor free in any meaningful sense. These each have subsequent supporting ideas, so that the structure of discussion on the site more or less follows loose syllogistic forms. Ideally, the site could be constructed so that any idea can be easily expressed using ideas and a finite set of relationships between ideas, including idea A supports idea B, A refutes B, A is necessary in order for B to be true, etc. Furthermore, the links themselves are composed of the core idea unit described above. Therefore a link between two ideas can be disagreed with, questioned, supported, etc.
After thinking that the site could be composed mainly of these ideas and their relationships, the idea of having separate organized discussions seemed unnecessary. By that, I mean that these sets of ideas would not exist in separate threads that are categorized, but that they would all be connected by their relationships to each other in one big network type thing. Using the example from earlier, discussions on anarcha-feminism would not take place in one place that is tagged with both anarchism and feminism, but that discussions related to it would take place in an area of the network that was intertwined. Specifically, the idea that patriarchy should be opposed would link to and get support from the idea that all forms of unjustified hierarchy / authority should be opposed, and so discussions of anarcha-feminism would take place in this area of the network.
Given that I have just proposed getting rid of the categories that I previously expressed support for, what about the problems with loose categorization (duplication of effort) I expressed above? Well, the single connected idea network structure forces a discussion of a particular idea to take place next to what has already been said about that idea. Specifically, if someone wants to criticize Marxs telos, they must navigate to the area that such a thought would be expressed and in doing so find that it hopefully has already been expressed. Then, they may add to it, suggest a clearer phrasing of such a criticism, or apply that criticism in a new way. It seems to me that the single connected idea network structure would sort of naturally lend itself towards the further development of ideas by centralizing all discussions on a particular subject.
But what of the role of ideologies and categories? Well, since an ideology is more than a single idea (more like a set of connected ideas), to me it makes sense to create an additional type of entity or unit. So far, the only type of entity on the site is the nebulous idea unit. It is the base unit and links are composed of them as well. Ideologies could be defined sets of ideas. The anarchist ideology holds these opinions on these ideas. Additionally, the relationship between ideas and ideologies is an idea itself, so someone can disagree with whether this idea is a component of this ideology, etc. Furthermore, ideologies could have a separate set of relationships between ideologies accessible to them based on their ontological hierarchies, accomplishing something similar to but more than the type of categorization I described earlier. For example, both anarchism, communism, and even Fabian type progressive state socialism would inherit from anti-capitalism. Both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism would inherit from anti-statism, but one would inherit from anti-capitalism and one would inherit from capitalism.
I have put inherit in quotes to indicate that I have delayed defining it until now. I get the word inherit from computer science usage of the term to refer to Classes and Methods. Go to the wikipedia page for Inheritance (object-oriented programming) to learn about it if you dont know. Basically, inheritance would entail the same positions or collection of ideas present at the stage further up in the ideological hierarchy. Specifically, all tendencies within anarchism would inherit the core set of anarchist beliefs from anarchism. A revisionist ideology could inherit only a subset of the initial ideas from their parent ideology, and inherit their revised component from something else. Something like green anarchism would inherit all ideas from both anarchism and environmentalism.
Ill clarify now that the parent and inheritance relationship between ideologies is not the ideologies historical origins, but instead the hierarchy of concepts. For example, both progressive state socialism and communism may inherit from anti-capitalism, despite the fact that that is not anywhere close to a good description of the historical development of each.
Now that Ive done a lot of explanation of what I think the basic structure of discussion on the site should be, Ill move to another thing.
De-fragmenting Internet Communities and the Internet as a Public Sphere
When I use the phrase the public sphere, I mean in the Habermasian sense. Look it up if you need to! A tremendous amount has been written on the internet as a public sphere, as well of criticisms of Habermass formulations of the idea of the public sphere. Ive read some stuff, but not all of it. From what Ive gathered, the internet is sort of close to the ideal type public sphere, but I think that in several key areas it comes short. These are not original ideas by the way, but since this isnt an academic paper and I dont remember exactly where I got it from Im not going to cite it or anything.
First, the internet is a set of many fragmented communities. While many critics of Habermass concept of the public sphere have remarked on the need for many public spheres, specifically so that marginalized groups have their own sphere (the phrase subaltern is often used here, which is a phrase that is somewhat new to me), it seems that in order for discussion to take place and for public opinion to form, there needs to be communication between them. Communication between communities on the internet seems to be infrequent. Even on Reddit where opposing ideologies share a site, the subreddit division does not force opposing groups to interact. I think that the provision of a common discussion space could remedy this.
In order to ensure the protection of many public spheres, or private spheres of communication, I propose a third basic entity to the website. The first two are idea and ideology. Idea is the core unit, ideology is a set of ideas, and the third is the group. I dont know if it should be the case that there is a group for every ideology, or that the group and ideology entities are completely separate and require separate user creation. Either way, there will be groups that are much more specific than ideologies, like College X Socialists. Groups can fit into a group hierarchy, where there are affiliates and stuff like that. This was motivated by my frustration after joining my campus labor activism group, which is a United Students Against Sweatshops affiliate / chapter. The only way for us to really get in contact with other chapters was through personal connections between our members and other members and through the leaders of the national organization. There were no centralized resources, no online spaces where we could discuss tactics and share experiences of what worked and what did not, etc.
Although there exists a discussion space that is public (accessible to anyone), they may also be group hosted discussion spaces that have group determined permissions, similar to Facebook groups (open to anyone, visible to anyone and open to members, or secret). Ideally, there would be more flexible permission options, like open to us and our parent group and all affiliates, etc. I think this could be a useful tool for activist coordination.
Second, a problem with the internet as a public sphere is that it does a poor job of representing public opinion. The representation of public opinion is critical because it defines what individuals think people think, which is really important for the formation of that individuals opinion. Modern news, being corporate, does a poor job of representing public opinion. The internet also does a somewhat poor job of representing public opinion in several ways. First, ones impression of public opinion is heavily biased towards ones own online community. After the Ferguson shooting and protests, I had a warped perception of public opinion because my Facebook community is so leftist, I didnt really even see the infamous Facebook fights. Second, the representation of online public opinion is pretty nebulous. For example, you could say a bunch of people on Twitter thought this, but thats pretty much it.
As a result, there needs to be a ranking / voting system on the site. Any idea, including links between ideas since they are ideas themselves, can be agreed or disagreed with. Since the discussion is so structured, this allows someone to express their opinion in a very detailed way. Someone could say why they agree or disagree with an idea based on their agreement or disagreement with the supporting and refuting ideas. Furthermore, users on the site could define their identity by affiliation with an ideology or group, and therefore users could see what types of people think what way about what. It could be an option which would be the equivalent of saying, I agree with this as a <blank>, filling in the blank with the relevant portion of their ideology.
One could see the breakdown of opinion by ideology on a particular subject, providing a much more detailed and powerful representation of opinion and consensus where it develops. Additionally, the website would be able to present certain ideas in different ways. For example, a socialist could select to see a particular section of the site the way that a libertarian capitalist sees it, with their positions emphasized, etc. Many cool and elucidating features would be possible by how computer-readable the information on the site would be.
There are lots of places that this could go, too. It could be used for workers too, giving, for example, each McDonalds restaurant a group, all affiliates of their parent group McDonalds Workers, which is an affiliate of the parent group Fast Food Workers, and so on, based on similar class interests and geography (fast food workers of lower Manhattan).
Theres a whole news analysis and statistics component that I wont go too in depth on now, but which is basically automating a comparison of news coverage by sources using computational methods. A user could see concept networks of news coverage of protests in Ferguson compared to protests in Hong Kong, or compare coverage of the same issue by different sources nationally and internationally. The field of computational linguistics still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of what can currently be accomplished, but word context comparison using statistics and machine learning techniques can actually reveal a lot. The news analysis could be integrated into the site so that a discussion could occur about the statistics. Ideally, this would allow people to discuss the news in a way that clearly represented the differences between the representation of public opinion expressed on the site and the supposed representation of public opinion expressed in the news. That seems like a cool manifestation of political consciousness to me.
This is the last thing Im saying, I promise. I want the site to be discursively flexible. For example, every idea can have alternate phrasings that are promoted or characterized, and these alternative phrasings dont even have to be words. They could be videos, memes, or other forms of art, phrased in different languages or dialects. The same idea could be expressed with high brow academic intellectualism or organic intellectualism, and a user could set their preferences so that they see the entire network in art, in memes, or in Twitter speak.
If youve read this whole thing, thanks. If you skipped around, thanks too. Im a computer science student so Im capable of developing this, but probably not alone, and I especially cant be motivated to do it alone. If you know any programmers, pass this along to them. I know lots of programmers, but they have gross Silicon Valley aspirations and I dont want them coopting this whole thing. If you dont, let me know what you think by posting a response or e-mailing me.
Please, if you think this is a shitty idea and Im delusional by thinking this could change anything, tell me too. The stage of fantasy, between aspiration and execution, is exciting but also quite uncomfortable without external validation. If this has no potential, I would like to move on as soon as possible.
Also, ask questions! Make comments!
The easiest way for me to describe this website is to give a history of the idea and the motivation for each subsequent development of the concept. If you think this idea is worth pursuing, please e-mail me at [email protected] and pass it along to whom it may concern...
Redundancy of Intellectual Labor
The initial motivation for the idea was my recognition that the structure of modern forums, tumblr, and Reddit, all lend themselves to a massive duplication of intellectual labor. By this, I'm referring to the thousands of times on this site that one user has explained to another why the USSR was not communist, what the problems with liberal capitalism are, etc. As a user of the site, you recognize that one idea has been explained many times, and the quality of the explanation each time often suffers because explanation requires effort. While one user may one time write a few great paragraphs explaining the nuances of tendency / ideology x, the next time the circumstances demand a similar explanation, laziness says that one sentence will suffice.
A highly structured forum would reduce that duplication. With subdivision beyond the current categories that exist on most forums, things are easier to find, and one could educate themselves using the resources of the site much more quickly. I also speculate that with greater subcategorization, discussions on the site would get much deeper.
So, as of now, the idea is just like a forum but with more extensive categorization that is forced and able to be changed. By forced, I mean that a discussion about anarchist praxis would have to take place under Anarchism > Political methods. Additionally, one discussion can exist in several places at once anarcha-feminism would be represented in Anarchism > anarcha-feminism as well as Feminism > anarcha-feminism. Keep reading if youre with me, theres more.
Limitations of Sequential Post Structure
By sequential post structure I mean that there is an initial post which creates a thread, and then subsequent posts afterwards, where each post follows the one before it. This is also how Facebook comments work. On Reddit and several other platforms, there is an improvement in that you can comment on comments recursively. However, both of these tend to escalate towards tangents. I dont mean this as a criticism, but in order to have a good discussion through Facebook comments the users need to go through some effort. They either need to label their arguments, 1,2,3, and expect the other user to follow their lead and label, or the discussion usually narrows down quickly to a small subset of what the initial discussion was about. When someone doesnt respond to something, that idea is often lost instead of emphasized.
The solution I thought of is that the core unit of the site is an idea, or some whatever you call it, and then that the addition of new idea units occurs in relation to a pre-existing one. To, for example, explain wage slavery or argue that the condition of wage labor is similar to slavery, one would start of by making supporting units, first that in wage labor relationships, the worker has little to no control over their working conditions and second, the fact that a worker can quit does not make their labor free in any meaningful sense. These each have subsequent supporting ideas, so that the structure of discussion on the site more or less follows loose syllogistic forms. Ideally, the site could be constructed so that any idea can be easily expressed using ideas and a finite set of relationships between ideas, including idea A supports idea B, A refutes B, A is necessary in order for B to be true, etc. Furthermore, the links themselves are composed of the core idea unit described above. Therefore a link between two ideas can be disagreed with, questioned, supported, etc.
After thinking that the site could be composed mainly of these ideas and their relationships, the idea of having separate organized discussions seemed unnecessary. By that, I mean that these sets of ideas would not exist in separate threads that are categorized, but that they would all be connected by their relationships to each other in one big network type thing. Using the example from earlier, discussions on anarcha-feminism would not take place in one place that is tagged with both anarchism and feminism, but that discussions related to it would take place in an area of the network that was intertwined. Specifically, the idea that patriarchy should be opposed would link to and get support from the idea that all forms of unjustified hierarchy / authority should be opposed, and so discussions of anarcha-feminism would take place in this area of the network.
Given that I have just proposed getting rid of the categories that I previously expressed support for, what about the problems with loose categorization (duplication of effort) I expressed above? Well, the single connected idea network structure forces a discussion of a particular idea to take place next to what has already been said about that idea. Specifically, if someone wants to criticize Marxs telos, they must navigate to the area that such a thought would be expressed and in doing so find that it hopefully has already been expressed. Then, they may add to it, suggest a clearer phrasing of such a criticism, or apply that criticism in a new way. It seems to me that the single connected idea network structure would sort of naturally lend itself towards the further development of ideas by centralizing all discussions on a particular subject.
But what of the role of ideologies and categories? Well, since an ideology is more than a single idea (more like a set of connected ideas), to me it makes sense to create an additional type of entity or unit. So far, the only type of entity on the site is the nebulous idea unit. It is the base unit and links are composed of them as well. Ideologies could be defined sets of ideas. The anarchist ideology holds these opinions on these ideas. Additionally, the relationship between ideas and ideologies is an idea itself, so someone can disagree with whether this idea is a component of this ideology, etc. Furthermore, ideologies could have a separate set of relationships between ideologies accessible to them based on their ontological hierarchies, accomplishing something similar to but more than the type of categorization I described earlier. For example, both anarchism, communism, and even Fabian type progressive state socialism would inherit from anti-capitalism. Both anarchism and anarcho-capitalism would inherit from anti-statism, but one would inherit from anti-capitalism and one would inherit from capitalism.
I have put inherit in quotes to indicate that I have delayed defining it until now. I get the word inherit from computer science usage of the term to refer to Classes and Methods. Go to the wikipedia page for Inheritance (object-oriented programming) to learn about it if you dont know. Basically, inheritance would entail the same positions or collection of ideas present at the stage further up in the ideological hierarchy. Specifically, all tendencies within anarchism would inherit the core set of anarchist beliefs from anarchism. A revisionist ideology could inherit only a subset of the initial ideas from their parent ideology, and inherit their revised component from something else. Something like green anarchism would inherit all ideas from both anarchism and environmentalism.
Ill clarify now that the parent and inheritance relationship between ideologies is not the ideologies historical origins, but instead the hierarchy of concepts. For example, both progressive state socialism and communism may inherit from anti-capitalism, despite the fact that that is not anywhere close to a good description of the historical development of each.
Now that Ive done a lot of explanation of what I think the basic structure of discussion on the site should be, Ill move to another thing.
De-fragmenting Internet Communities and the Internet as a Public Sphere
When I use the phrase the public sphere, I mean in the Habermasian sense. Look it up if you need to! A tremendous amount has been written on the internet as a public sphere, as well of criticisms of Habermass formulations of the idea of the public sphere. Ive read some stuff, but not all of it. From what Ive gathered, the internet is sort of close to the ideal type public sphere, but I think that in several key areas it comes short. These are not original ideas by the way, but since this isnt an academic paper and I dont remember exactly where I got it from Im not going to cite it or anything.
First, the internet is a set of many fragmented communities. While many critics of Habermass concept of the public sphere have remarked on the need for many public spheres, specifically so that marginalized groups have their own sphere (the phrase subaltern is often used here, which is a phrase that is somewhat new to me), it seems that in order for discussion to take place and for public opinion to form, there needs to be communication between them. Communication between communities on the internet seems to be infrequent. Even on Reddit where opposing ideologies share a site, the subreddit division does not force opposing groups to interact. I think that the provision of a common discussion space could remedy this.
In order to ensure the protection of many public spheres, or private spheres of communication, I propose a third basic entity to the website. The first two are idea and ideology. Idea is the core unit, ideology is a set of ideas, and the third is the group. I dont know if it should be the case that there is a group for every ideology, or that the group and ideology entities are completely separate and require separate user creation. Either way, there will be groups that are much more specific than ideologies, like College X Socialists. Groups can fit into a group hierarchy, where there are affiliates and stuff like that. This was motivated by my frustration after joining my campus labor activism group, which is a United Students Against Sweatshops affiliate / chapter. The only way for us to really get in contact with other chapters was through personal connections between our members and other members and through the leaders of the national organization. There were no centralized resources, no online spaces where we could discuss tactics and share experiences of what worked and what did not, etc.
Although there exists a discussion space that is public (accessible to anyone), they may also be group hosted discussion spaces that have group determined permissions, similar to Facebook groups (open to anyone, visible to anyone and open to members, or secret). Ideally, there would be more flexible permission options, like open to us and our parent group and all affiliates, etc. I think this could be a useful tool for activist coordination.
Second, a problem with the internet as a public sphere is that it does a poor job of representing public opinion. The representation of public opinion is critical because it defines what individuals think people think, which is really important for the formation of that individuals opinion. Modern news, being corporate, does a poor job of representing public opinion. The internet also does a somewhat poor job of representing public opinion in several ways. First, ones impression of public opinion is heavily biased towards ones own online community. After the Ferguson shooting and protests, I had a warped perception of public opinion because my Facebook community is so leftist, I didnt really even see the infamous Facebook fights. Second, the representation of online public opinion is pretty nebulous. For example, you could say a bunch of people on Twitter thought this, but thats pretty much it.
As a result, there needs to be a ranking / voting system on the site. Any idea, including links between ideas since they are ideas themselves, can be agreed or disagreed with. Since the discussion is so structured, this allows someone to express their opinion in a very detailed way. Someone could say why they agree or disagree with an idea based on their agreement or disagreement with the supporting and refuting ideas. Furthermore, users on the site could define their identity by affiliation with an ideology or group, and therefore users could see what types of people think what way about what. It could be an option which would be the equivalent of saying, I agree with this as a <blank>, filling in the blank with the relevant portion of their ideology.
One could see the breakdown of opinion by ideology on a particular subject, providing a much more detailed and powerful representation of opinion and consensus where it develops. Additionally, the website would be able to present certain ideas in different ways. For example, a socialist could select to see a particular section of the site the way that a libertarian capitalist sees it, with their positions emphasized, etc. Many cool and elucidating features would be possible by how computer-readable the information on the site would be.
There are lots of places that this could go, too. It could be used for workers too, giving, for example, each McDonalds restaurant a group, all affiliates of their parent group McDonalds Workers, which is an affiliate of the parent group Fast Food Workers, and so on, based on similar class interests and geography (fast food workers of lower Manhattan).
Theres a whole news analysis and statistics component that I wont go too in depth on now, but which is basically automating a comparison of news coverage by sources using computational methods. A user could see concept networks of news coverage of protests in Ferguson compared to protests in Hong Kong, or compare coverage of the same issue by different sources nationally and internationally. The field of computational linguistics still leaves a lot to be desired in terms of what can currently be accomplished, but word context comparison using statistics and machine learning techniques can actually reveal a lot. The news analysis could be integrated into the site so that a discussion could occur about the statistics. Ideally, this would allow people to discuss the news in a way that clearly represented the differences between the representation of public opinion expressed on the site and the supposed representation of public opinion expressed in the news. That seems like a cool manifestation of political consciousness to me.
This is the last thing Im saying, I promise. I want the site to be discursively flexible. For example, every idea can have alternate phrasings that are promoted or characterized, and these alternative phrasings dont even have to be words. They could be videos, memes, or other forms of art, phrased in different languages or dialects. The same idea could be expressed with high brow academic intellectualism or organic intellectualism, and a user could set their preferences so that they see the entire network in art, in memes, or in Twitter speak.
If youve read this whole thing, thanks. If you skipped around, thanks too. Im a computer science student so Im capable of developing this, but probably not alone, and I especially cant be motivated to do it alone. If you know any programmers, pass this along to them. I know lots of programmers, but they have gross Silicon Valley aspirations and I dont want them coopting this whole thing. If you dont, let me know what you think by posting a response or e-mailing me.
Please, if you think this is a shitty idea and Im delusional by thinking this could change anything, tell me too. The stage of fantasy, between aspiration and execution, is exciting but also quite uncomfortable without external validation. If this has no potential, I would like to move on as soon as possible.
Also, ask questions! Make comments!