you're welcome to check out the project summary here:
http://wikipeacesummary.yolasite.com/
And you're welcome to contact me here:
Anthonydunn97202@gmail.com
I'm posting the project summary here: Project abstract:
The Wikipeace project is meant to increase the rate by which everyday people learn, by making it effortless, entertaining, and social. Facets of social networking sites meet elements of a transparent and scalable wiki information cache. This web-resource for consensus making and mass praxis is multifaceted in it’s function and worth to any particular community.
Project timelines:
This web based resource is going to have four relatively distinct phases. The first will be programming the bare wiki templates and layout, producing the actual site people log onto and can get involved with. Wikis are special because programmers set up the layout and templates, and the users do the rest. This programming shouldn’t take more than three months. I’ve already drawn up the majority of the site, so the lead programmer will have simply to translate into code.
The next phase is to contact organizations which are already volunteering their time to research and write about social and ecological injustices. Thousands of people are independently and spontaneously writing for justice, and once enough people hear about this Wikipedia-like-resource designed to unite them, many thousands will volunteer enthusiastically. The first pages will be authored by those who are outspoken, well informed and are already actively writing about and researching these issues. This phase begins transitioning into the next phase most likely within a couple months as organizations are contacting their allied organizations and the basic pages are starting to fill out.
Phase three will be a gradual inclusion of more and more people who follow and support these organizations. They will gradually be increasingly encouraged to disseminate the wiki based medium. As this gains steam, it will find its way into the mainstream. Any opposition will be poignantly welcomed to contribute their concerns, and the site is designed to make it easy to tell if someone is being ignorant, fascist, or fanatical. Everything a person rates high or low stays openly displayed on their profile, with comment sections for their reasoning and opinions. This phase of everyday activist users will begin transitioning most likely within another couple months to them telling their mainstream friends, family, and communities about how cool what they’re working on is becoming. People most interested in direct action will likely have periods of reinventing their perspectives on what they should be doing as they are increasingly connected to more experienced organizers, followed by reinvigorated investing of their energies to involve as many people as possible from their communities.
The last phase occurs once the majority of people agree Wikipeace is a popular movement which offers better solutions to their problems than does traditional governments. It will eventually be advertised in mass as the ultimate tool for truly democratic governing and conflict resolution, rendering governing systems involving 'representatives' completely obsolete. The heart of the global dilemma is the systems being used to make everything else happen are corrupt. Once decisions are made through the collective brain storming of every specialist and layperson interested, with equality in decision making power, issues like foreign resource dependence will be remedied by a never ending succession of 'drops in the bucket'. Hopefully, as the environment changes from profiting with money to profiting with life, and everyone’s encouraged to be a leader, those 'drops' may well come to pour freely.
How the proposed project activities are related to the idea of the Noosphere.
“The noosphere is the third in a succession of phases of development of the Earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).”-Vernadsky
Wikipeace is more or less the current vision of an opt-in government process. Anyhone who wishes to opt-into a governing process, is welcome to, and has equal say unless perhaps they will be hit disproportionately by the decision’s consequences. It was actually very exciting to have heard about the Noosphere Award because the role of a truly democratic government is essentially to cover the earth in an invisible protective veil. Informed people know they need the life-support systems of earth, thus the rule of people will translate to the protection of ecosystems.
Essentially, as more everyday people take habit watching the 'discovery channels', with that alone, they will become gradually more defined as stewards of the land. The consciousness pertinent to the sanctity of life will nourish itself and flourish beyond imagination given the right environment, as it had before hierarchical industrialization. Wikipeace was born from that very dream, and will continue to be crafted about exactly that purpose. The collective wisdom of an entire planet will be archived, organized, and immediately available to anyone wishing to learn what they can do. People will make more informed strategies for sustaining one another, and the earth may yet finally know peace.
Upon the collaboration of team members
There will be at least three key players:
I, (Anthony Brasher), will be the site designer, and lead coordinator. I designed the site layout, and can tell the main programmer what features must be present on what pages. I know HTML, but various other scripting languages will be necessary to provide a number of crucial features. I have a strong understanding of the kinds of difficulties we can expect from coordinating direct action in the real world, and integrating elements of peaceful conflict resolution. The subjects being discussed are unbelievably loaded with misconceptions and hatred. Not only am I the liaison between the programming code and tenants of Marshal Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication, but I’m a potent social networker who knows the most about how this site is supposed to become the change we seek. That is to say I will be instrumental in the post programming stages of disseminating and networking amongst organizations already mobilizing, researching, writing, and organizing for a more just and sustainable world. Furthermore, this site is the single most meaningful phenomenon of my life, and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make it succeed. If there needs to be additional fundraising, a particular new recruit, or someone needs to travel speaking to the public, I am willing to drop everything else. I may not be able to do much of the programming, but having the entire page already mapped out for the programmer means they’re job is very much simplified. Especially considering I will do all the writing and networking to accomplish the rest of the project.
Richard Weiss is a computer science professor at Evergreen. He will be invaluable in terms of code-related trouble shooting in programming, as well as the kind of perspective he has to offer on what options are really present and worthwhile. Furthermore, he is rather well established and respected; trouble shooting beyond writing code will happen, and very few have the kinds of connections Richard does. When the programming is first completed, Richard will have final say on when the programming is complete. For the most part, Richard is a busy person, and his involvement will be primarily at critical junctures and on ‘at need’ basis.
There are a handful of skillful programmers who have expressed interest currently. Before officially picking a lead programmer, I'm going to talk with Richard about exactly what programming languages are necessary, then pick the programmer with the full range of necessary credentials. I offer my deepest apologies for any inconvenience; I was informed about the Noosphere Award literally two days before it’s proposals are due. Fortunately, I am very confident it will be no trouble finding a sufficient programmer who's interested in around a thousand dollars and having a project like this in their portfolio.
The anticipated outcomes of the project.
The benefits of Wikipeace are both very direct and indirect, and will benefit every individual. –Paulo Frier said it will be the oppressed who alleviate their oppressors, which is inherently uncomfortable because growth necessitates moments of uncertainty and discomfort. While MLK jr said “The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, but It Bends Toward Justice”, likely alluding to the fact that it is a long road to a truly free society. Wikipeace in this light is designed not like a bus, but a generator of busses, taking people where they want to go, and enabling them to bring their friends, family, and even likeminded strangers.
Education is a unique resource in that it is the single most effective means of protecting all other resources. Whatever calls to a person is exactly what they should be working on, and thus organically, the most calling causes will proliferate themselves the strongest once the right environment is set. In example, this would include a life-or-death subject called “Food Sovereignty”. Anyone who learns the dire necessity of a global neighbor’s right to grow their own food will often try telling their friends and family about it, and correspondingly what they can do about it. However, when an advocate speaks up for a literally starving community, the desperation of starvation will not be present in that exchange, this advocate cannot accurately convey the true depth of the issue because they are fed. However, once that oppressed community can produce a documentary, and the advocate’s friends are in a position where they watch documentaries for fun, specifically in a place like Wikipeace where any documentary is available, anytime, and at their convenience they may choose what to learn in times of ‘boredom’, the potential impact of ‘Food Sovereignty” may well bring tears of radical change. The first advocate was able to achieve a far more potent effect, potentially helping far more people understand than they had time to speak with, all the while using far less of their own energy. Especially as advocacy groups ban together to make discovery channel streams which target common misconceptions and act as primers or orientations to the movements. -Combined with user ratings and comments, the process of education will be changed forever.
The site is also designed to make direct action as easy and seamless as possible. It’s as easy as logging on, selecting the scale you want to work on, (which goes from the individual all the way to global, and includes niches like a specific organization, workplace, or even household. There is practically unlimited space online, searching options and an effective layout make navigation easy. Once the size scale and area is selected, the site brings up the highest rated problems anyone’s cared enough to write about. Other search options like keyword search makes finding what matters to you very easy. From the ‘problems’ page, you are connected with all the best ideas people had for remedying that issue, they are also displayed by highest rating with other search options, like highest rated per view, for spotting new worthwhile ideas. Once one clicks on the solution they support, it links to the organizations actually working on the problem, and one can effortlessly check out their calendar, ‘add’ events to their personal profile’s calendar, join the organization’s supporters listserve, or their organizer’s listserve. Then the physical time and place of an action is saved onto their profile’s calendar, set to potentially remind them the day, week, or hour before the action that it’s time to get ready for direct action. This organization could be doing anything from planting indigenous edible and medicinal plants in your city, to eventually otherwise semi-‘governmental’ functions like creating legitimate shelter for homeless. Any great feat of human kind is composed of some combination of specialists, workers, and a system which applies them. As the profit motive is replaced by the purpose motive, the destructive coercive forces once ‘making’ the things people need will be replaced by organizing which has no place for things like toxic materials, wars, and ‘racing to the bottom’.