Hi folks, a request for pointers, Below I define what I call "self-determined publics". Has anything similar been attempted before? A self-determined public is an open community that stakes out the definitive bounds of its own communications. The boundary stakes are formed as a timely sequence of references (e.g. web links) each pointing to a communication of the public, such that all references together define the total of that public's communications in time and space. For example: Ago Place Title (click to visit thread) ------- --------- ------------------------------------------ 17 min r/Foo How do we attach the doohickey? 5 hr Foo-L The problem with so and so's proposal. 1 day FuBarz Who are these Foos, anyway? 1 day r/Foo This, that, and the next thing. 2 days FooStack What's the best thingamy for such and such? . . . and so on The staked boundary is similar in form to a conventional news feed. It concerns a specific topic, or style, or other quality of communication. The differences are in a) the exclusion of mass communications, b) the claim to totality, and c) the self-determin- ation that redeems that claim. (a) A principle criterion for the inclusion of a boundary reference is that one may immediately join the referenced communication and reply in kind, as a peer. Unidirectional, mass communications are excluded. (b) The staked boundary is asserted to cover the entire public discussion of the topic across all communication media and sites; or the entire public dialogue in the style of the community; and so forth. It claims to be the most complete, accurate and up-to-date outline of the extended dialogue that is available anywhere. (c) This claim is redeemed by the public members themselves who continually submit the boundary references, self-organize the necessary labour, and self-constitute the necessary government. No aspect of this redeeming self-determination is limited by an external authority, not even by the authority of their own, past decisions. I'm looking for brief pointers, please. I don't know of any actual implementations of this, or projects that are working on it. I'll share what's found with the list. Pointers so far: Heather Marsh (Concentric groups, knowledge bridges and epistemic communities); Chris Kelty (Two bits, recursive publics); Anthony Cohen (Symbolic construction of community); and Sebastian Benthall (Weird Twitter). https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-July/thread.html#... Apologies if you received this message twice, -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/