...here is conceptual art/graphic as I begin to generate ideas starting with the visuals for Midgarden, NovaEden:
That looks so awesome! The color scheme, the lettering, the sword (of truth!)...and, of course, the flourishes. I love seeing the (Mid)Garden flourish.
[Please pardon my plant puns.]
Here is a test of the full logo for RNDTBL:
There are multiple layers of symbolism within it...
* The pink hexagram-looking shape is the topology for a "mesh" or "fully connected" network. In short, it represents a group where every individual is connected to every other one. It has resilience. If one link breaks, everyone can still communicate. The shade of pink is my favorite color,
Baker-Miller Pink. It is quote: "...a tone of pink which has been observed to temporarily reduce hostile, violent or aggressive behavior." Altogether, this symbol represents a communication system in which all people are continually interacting in harmony.
* The tree represents Nature in general. However, the juxtaposition of it with the above symbol represents the constructive interplay of the organic and technological. Technology should serve Nature, not destroy it. Further, how people treat each other is often a reflection of how they interpret Nature. For example, it is likely that a person who "objectifies" others probably treats Nature itself as something that must be "controlled" because we are all interconnected by Nature. Everything is alive. The Web of Life is the most primary network and it thrives through
mutualism.
* The white letters spell out RNDTBL when followed clockwise. White is often a symbol of purity or divinity. The circle has a similar connotation, being a representation of the infinite, wholeness, or completion. It is without beginning or end, beyond space and time. The letters are also at the tips of the branches because they are like "fruit", the culimination of something. Nature culminates in a transcendent Love when All are united in a mutually constructive purpose.
...It completely goes against the design convention of logos being minimal, but I think I will try to make a simplified version when I design the icon set for the RNDTBL interface.
Feel free to elaborate her by all means! I'm not exactly sure what to ask to be honest but I am interested in learning more about your project/inspiration/long term goals etc.
Ok, I will start off with explaining the long-term goal of RNDTBL. Then, I will describe a few of the inspirations behind it and how they connect to its intended function(s)...While I am open to any and all comments, please do not feel obligated to read or reply to any of this. Also, like all of the stuff that I post, the links are only there to provide extra resources and/or context...
The Overall AimMy hope for RNDTBL is that it will become a means for people to do in-depth collaborative research, something like
History Commons*, but for applied science instead of investigative journalism. And further, that it will provide a method for translating that research directly into easy to understand, step-by-step DIY ecological engineering projects applicable to a wide variety of different environments.
[*I should clarify that it will be a forum app and not a Wiki. I just meant that they share the same goal of "a space for people to conduct grassroots-level investigations on any issue". One doesn't need any special qualifications to do science, and we can accomplish much more working together than separately.]
Mapping Collective KnowledgeThe general layout / visual organization is inspired by the note-taking software
Obsidian. However, instead of making connections within the input of one person, it makes connections within the input of a small group of people. Together, the users are building up a map of their collective knowledge.
Some of the features are loosely based upon a few concepts by
Ted Nelson. He made "
Project Xanadu", the original design for "the Web" that he came up with in the 1960s. He also authored the book(s)
Computer Lib / Dream Machines.
For example, he wanted "hyperlinks" to be visual connections between documents shown in parallel. Similarly, the Obsidian-like interface for RNDTBL is intended to simplify and condense an entire forum into something easy to navigate and understand at a glance. It transforms it from a list of topics spread across many pages into a web of connections visible on a single page. This is partly what I meant by "non-hierarchically sorted". The more that people converse, the richer the connections made.
To continue, Ted's concept of "hyperlink" is bidirectional. You can move back-and-forth between an item and anything that references it. Inversely, the modern web uses links that are one-directional and prone to "breaking" (i.e.: a link that doesn't lead anywhere when you click on it because the original reference is gone).
One of the ways that he resolves this problem is through a process that he calls "transclusion". An example of this is a page that has the source of a quote embedded within the page itself. The only way to do this without having a ton of redundant copies is to have a single copy that everything else references whenever it is quoted. In other words, everything points to the same source.
Technically speaking, this is done through a method called "
tumblers". A "tumbler" is a unique number assigned to every piece of information at every level (e.g.: the first letter of the first word on the first page within this specific book). It acts like an address for finding even the smallest of details as they are distributed across a network. The "tumblers" are also designed in such a way that the system can be extended without any number ever conflicting. It can accommodate the expansion that occurs as more references are added.
In a similar fashion, because RNDTBL is meant for group study, each person who quotes something must be referencing the same copy. Therefore, it will have a library feature built into it that functions something like a cross between the book tracking on
OpenLibrary and "peer-to-peer". [The
InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) gets close to it in some ways,
minus the "Filecoin" cryptocurrency aspects.] To elaborate:
Any time that a reference is made to some piece of media (like texts, images, audios, and videos), the user who makes the first mention of it has to upload that specific segment. RNDTBL will then share that data amongst everyone using it. The data itself will be represented by something like a "tumbler" so that it can be easily found within the network, and tagged with a citation that describes exactly where it came from so that anyone can easily find the original context. Everyone within RNDTBL who quotes it from that point on will be drawing upon the exact same reference material. The duration of these snippets is capped. It doesn't make a whole copy. Hopefully, this will make it so that useful knowledge will stay available without people trying to undermine its access through bogus copyright claims, and the information will stay persistent because there is a local copy of the relevant portion.
This aspect is an attempt to foster both "fair use" and "open access", to resolve the problem of racketeering and cliquishness that makes up a lot of academic publishing
without doing any sort of "piracy".
Growth Through DialogueWhen people become passionate about particular topics, they sometimes see challenges to them as personal attacks. This is also true within the context of "science", despite it having a bit of impartiality from focusing in on phenomena that can be repeatedly demonstrated.
Hopefully, many arguments will be preempted or tempered by the features that I had mentioned within the "
Building Vital Communities Virtual & Actual" article (like one having to agree to the Etiquette from the outset, making resources that can help dialogues to go smoothly readily accessible, and the platform itself helping to mediate conflicts through some kind of built-in Restorative Circle).
At the very least, multiple viewpoints can share the same space without one becoming "dominant" over another. For example, it wouldn't matter if dialogue about one specific topic started to flood the forum as it would all be contained within its own "branch" within the network graph, existing in parallel to other "branches". In this way, both the "pros" and the "cons" of any topic could always be presented together. Diversity in opinions makes it harder to form "
echo chambers" and "
purity spirals" (i.e.: spaces that only serve to feed biases and amplify them towards extremes).
This is part of the reason why it is called "RNDTBL", the participants within every dialogue consistently remain equals, facing one another like people seated at a round table. I want to remove the necessity of moderation roles by having everyone involved hold each other accountable as much as possible, not necessarily by trying to advocate for particular viewpoints but by continually making the consequences of individual behaviors plain. In my opinion, moderation roles are a form of "positional power" that eventually lead to a kind of "diffusion of responsibility" within a community. To define these terms...
From
BetterUp:
From
Wikipedia:
So, to put it another way, people will not take responsibility for how they choose to engage a space if they continually assume others will "take care of it"
for them instead of maintaining it
with them. Likewise, people may not always put much consideration into what their individual actions contribute to the spaces around them in both the short-term and the long-term.
Translating Into ActionThere is a specific form of community organization called Sociocracy. [I gave a very brief summary of it within the "
Building Vital Communities Virtual & Actual" article.]
At its core, Sociocracy follows a set of three principles (or "values"). These are:
1. Transparency - all information about the organization is available to everyone
2. Equivalence of Voice - everyone has equal input in regards to the organization itself
3. Effectiveness - we must always determine what happens as a result of the tasks that we set out to do
It then uses a specific process (called a "feedback loop") to try to facilitate their expression. I won't cover all of the details of that process here, but it is essentially a kind of "scientific method". People come to collective agreements for the community to try something out for a specific period of time. Then, they explore the results together before refining it or putting it aside to try something else. Changes are incremental and as much benefit to everyone as much as possible every step of the way.
The other form of community organization that I mentioned above, Networked Improvement Community (NIC), has a very similar structure. It has four "essential characteristics". To reiterate them here:
1. "It is focused on a well specified aim."
2. "It is guided by a deep understanding of the problem, the system that produces it, and a theory of improvement relevant to it specifically."
3. "It is disciplined by the rigor of
improvement science."
4. "It is coordinated to accelerate the development, testing, and refinement of interventions and their effective integration into practice across varied contexts."
These are carried out by a cycle called "Plan-Do-Study-Act"...
Stage 1: Plan - Identify specific areas of need
Stage 2: Do - Intervene to improve supports to address those needs
Stage 3: Study - Measure any changes that occur
Stage 4: Act - Refine the intervention
*Graphic from
American Institutes for Research (AIR)These methods will be combined in both how the group generally operates and how the interface for making a post is organized. It also applies to the
"makerspaces" that are built in order to implement the solutions that are generated. In other words, once an ecological problem is well-defined and a promising method of handling it is formulated through collaborative research, then a physical space to test it out, refine it, and sustain it must be created.
This aspect is an attempt to make it easy to do that, to give RNDTBL a structure that can help direct the map of collective knowledge that is created through dialogue into constructive activities within each person's local community. Hopefully, this will accomplish the long-term goal expressed above (i.e.: "in-depth collaborative research in applied science translated into easy to understand, step-by-step DIY ecological engineering projects applicable to a wide variety of different environments").
...There is still
a lot more planning to do before I start trying to code it, but that is the gist of it. I hope that these notes help everyone come up with ideas for communities, and/or how to constructively engage the spaces that they are already in, both online and off.
Thank you for reading!
For now though, here is conceptual art/graphic as I begin to generate ideas starting with the visuals for Midgarden, NovaEden:
[Please pardon my plant puns.]