Let me start with what I want from this platform. I have a few projects that I think would profit greatly from having an online platform with great collaboration tools for collaborative co-creation of stuff belonging to these projects. The main project I want to work on is the reputation economy system [Quantified Prestige][1]. It’s an idea that has been hanging around both in my mind and in the web for years without ever maturing into a web app that could be of practical use. There are reasons for that. But those reasons could be at least partially addressed by having a community platform that was supportive of that project.
More specifically, I’d like to have supporters who could help me to turn this idea into something real and world changing. I’ve considered contacting big companies with that idea, but I’ve been reluctant to actually do that in the fear that they would mess this idea up somehow. The preferred path would be to create a start-up company that focuses on turning Quantified Prestige into at least one app. One major problem is that my health is not stable enough for allowing me to create such a start-up on my own. So, I would need a couple of very dedicated collaborators who could lead that start-up for me, or together with me. Is there a platform for finding people like that? If yes, I’d love to hear about it. I know that there is Kickstarter and so on, but these platforms are only for acquiring crowd funding, not crowd people.
I know there are many who are in a comparable situation to mine: People with interesting ideas, but without the means to turn them into effective world changing projects on their own. It’s similar with the Transhumanist Parties: It’s hard to find really dedicated members who would be able and willing to invest their time and energy into establishing them and then doing serious politics.
So, what we actually need is some kind of platform which can attract people. People are the core of companies and other organisations. Capital without the people who do something with that capital is worthless. It’s people who are the basis of value creation. Initiatives come from people and only people can push initiatives so far that they actually have an impact on the world.
Of course, people alone are not enough. That’s why I set up some basis online infrastructure to enable collaborative creation of materials. This forum, the wiki, and a blog that I actually rarely use at the moment, but the latter is thought to become the portal site for the community later on when it has matured to something with more clarity and people.
Ideally, I’d like to have a platform that can help people to
- Find ideas
- Share ideas
- Discuss ideas
- Improve ideas
- Turn those ideas into projects
- Provide those projects with people, helpful information, online infrastructure
- Spread the world about these projects
- Turn the projects into active communities
- Create organisations for these active communities
- Help those organisations to establish their own infrastructure
- Help those organisations to increase their reach and effectiveness
- Generally network with other organisations for pooling resources, synergy effects, increased effectiveness, and greater popularity
All of that with the goal to improve the world. Thus, a modicum of philosophy would be needed in this platform, too, because it’s a philosophical question what “improve the world” actually means.
Do you think this is the generally the right direction this platform should go into? What are your wishes for an online platform? In what way do you want to transcend what we have right now?
[1]: http://sfmeta.net/wiki/doku.php?id=projects:quantified_prestige