Decentralization and Second Generation Social Networks... a seminal manifesto?

In our silly traveling nomad circles a lot of energy gets put into talking about how to save the world.

In my personal experience and world view, I am turning my efforts away from the "anti-globalization" and "anti-capitalism" messages, towards a message of decentralization, which I think is a meme that deserves replication, I'm not so much for the abolishment of centralized governance, as I am a grass roots movement of establishing independent, autonomous, decentralized communities, zones, sectors, cities, or micro states that cooperate with each other through open and transparent communication.

Its becoming readily apparent that the centralized paradigms of food and power production are failing, and it is up to the individual to grow enough food and generate enough power locally to survive. I look forward to a future without eating a salad that has crossed oceans to find its way into my stomach.... just sayin'

A lot of the house's efforts seem to be about establishing much needed new forms of communication, turning away from the dinosaurs of centralized mega-corporate social networks and establishing sites such as this one ( http://casarobino.org )to create the world we want with our friends and allies around the world. I've heard whispers of this vision including a means of communication between these "Second Generation Social Networks".

One of the tools this house has historically been fan of is drupal. I personally have been spending my time in the world of ruby on rails, which for me is frankly, more fun. A tool that I've recently discovered the joys of is, git, a source code management system developed my linus torvalds. Git incorporates these decentralized Ideals, and with the establishment of http://github.com has created a paradigm of social open source development.

A project I just found out about is Google, ('the new china'),'s "OpenSocial API" ( http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/ ) . I haven't examined this project at all, but plan on at the very least, looking at it, and researching whether or not this is a viable option for our use in the establishing of second generation social networks.

My plan involves starting a github account for this project, and hopefully, gaining support and contributions from the developers in the casa robino community, to create both easily distributable minimal 2gsn's in bot drupal, and ruby on rails, which can communicate via either Open Social, or a new api of our creation, so that all someone will really have to do to have their own site, is $ git clone http://ourapp.github.com/ourapp

is anyone interested?

Comments

Paxus's picture

Third Generation Social Networks

When my charming Czech wife Adela first brought my attention to thoughts of next generation social networks, i thought we were going from first (MySpace and Facebook) gen systems to second generation ones. It turns out we are actually going from 2nd gen systems to (if we get anywahere) 3rd gen system. I have not been able to get a concise description of what the difference between 1st and 2nd gen systems are (perhaps friendster and care2?). But regardless, it is our terminology to borrow.

Third generation social networking systems (3gSN) are designed to:

1) directly address a specific social and/or political need
2) actively meet the needs of members, while protecting their privacy
3) use interlocking incentive programs to draw new individual members and enroll insitutional members

for more info see

http://sites.google.com/site/carbonfixnet/2gsn

Paxus in the shadow of boston
5 shrinking wait list 2K9

narnua's picture

Cross-social

"One of the tools this house has historically been fan of is drupal." - more like accidentally ;) just happened to be the CMS/framework I had most hands-on experience at the time...

Anyway, I'm definitely curious with hacking around with these kinds of cross-pollination efforts and somewhat aware of existence of tools developed elsewhere. (but unfortunately online-disabled for the next couple of weeks at least :´-( )

guaka's picture

Is it allowed to ask silly

Is it allowed to ask silly questions?

dennis collective's picture

silly questions are encouraged...

especially when they have no relevance to the situation at hand.

I'll start:

Why are wikipedia discussion pages so fun to read?

guaka's picture

Ok then, I'll start

Ok then, I'll start answering some :)

Yes, do create a repository for the project!

Another silly question: are all wikipedia discussion pages fun to read actually?

dennis collective's picture

repository comin' right up...

I'll make a repository when I have time to jump into the project...

which should be soon I hope

... and the shortcut to finding a good talk page is to find one where there is a
"the neutrality of this article is disputed" or other such warning at the top...

a comedy gold mine.

rene's picture

Discussions

Those wikipedia discussions are:
-Funny when you are not involved in the project
-Depressing when you are

guaka's picture

Cool! Not too much time for

Cool! Not too much time for this right now though. Send me a reminder the second half of May.

dennis collective's picture

my github http://github.com/DennisCollective

just made a github for myself, should I create a repository for the project?