Published Date 2/4/15 7:48 PM

Lets do some grounded/blue sky thinking 😉

The internet has been (unbelievably) successful because its libertarian/anacist open/trust peer to peer network with very light centre and governances. How do we (re)build an grassroots-media to flourish in the 21st century remains of this open web?

What would an open media network (OMN) look like?

Ps. this actually already exists in part in the visionOntv project.

Peer to peer is the long term goal, but the whole internet is now largely based on client server and alt-geeks love control, so let’s take a half first step from this spot.

We need to activate the already existing client/server federated scalable human aggregation content network.

* Based on RSS (98% implemented)

* Based on current CMS’s (90% implemented)

* Second tier embed option for legacy sites (80% implemented)

* Constructed with the 4 opens.

1) Content producers are all the current sites – they have to put out a RSS feed of content (98% do all ready)

2) Second level – subject/region/ideology aggregation are run by small groups and individuals. These can be based on current CMS’s with RSS aggregation modules (50% implemented)

3) Top site takes feeds from the subject aggregation. Same CMS as second sites.

Producers/subject (1,2) can take embeds for (3) etc. to help to bootstrap the network tech.

Thus the content is published at the bottom and make its way up to wide distribution on the top sites.

Important to realise that NOBODY is in control of the network and it is completely open to setting up nodes at different levels. It is governed by the 4 opens and a light bit of agreed “set-in-stone” process.

In this set-up we have a horizontal media where everyone is in charge of their publishing, and the different communities organically create their own content flow. Some sites will be highly linked and aggregated and some will be ignored, the whole network will organically split into streams and tributaries of data/content flows. These can and will become communities. If one fails it will be replaced organically with another, the best will rise and the worst will fall, they will criss-cross and settle into a multitude of flows.

The whole network will be based on duplicated synchronised meta-data – the source will reside at the publishing site. Davie Winar has done work on how this is achieved (we can implement some caching into the network to deal with scaling issues when needed).

SPAM is dealt with by trust, as each site makes a decision to trust the sites it links to, If you let spam into your network, people will drop YOU. A data roll-back can be implemented for removing SPAM flows that get though this trust network.

The friction (delay/server load) of the RSS object aggregation is actually a feature driving content consumption to close to the bottom. Each server can have traffic light flags for load, add too many feeds and it goes into the red, drop feeds and it goes orange to healthy green. This accelerates the diversity of aggregation sites – if you don’t wont to be an aggregate you just take embeds from a site you trust.

The top sites are easy to create but slower/hard to add value to, this drives the creation of second(2) sites to build out the wider network.

The successful top sites will grow to compete with the failing traditional media. The health of the network will be at the second level sites that feed the top sites. The content will come from the bottom, rejuvenating blogging and community websites. The closed dotcom’s such as Facebook and Twitter lock them selves out of content production by not supporting RSS – they become declining dumb pipes for OMN distribution.

JavaScript embeds can quickly add the content to a wide range of existing open internet sites to accelerate take-up (we already have this working with a video embed on every page of the New Internationalist website for visionOntv)

As the OMN takes off we can create peer to peer encrypted object flows to move this away from the client server paradigm to make the network more robust against disruption by states and corporations.

The outcome is a distributed data internet of flows. Like the internet itself, it will simply flow round damage/censorship and is open to all.

Hope you found this useful

Hamish Campbell