Pursuance

= "first comprehensive framework for process democracy', to be launched at the end of 2017

URL = https://pursuanceproject.org/

Contextual Citations

Barrett Brown:

1.

"The most important fact of the 21st century is that any individual can now collaborate with any other individual on the planet. This has happened with extraordinary suddenness, in historical terms; by the same accounting, it has also happened quite recently, and so remains largely unexplored. We cannot hope to know what this means as of yet, then, any more than someone who observed the advent of the printing press or gunpowder could have predicted, respectively, the Reformation or Europe's eventual seizure of much of the world. Nonetheless, the implications are becoming clearer as the years proceed; the internet itself has quickened the pace of our history, even as it makes the future more unpredictable."

2.

"It is an absolute certainty that, with sufficient thought, a new mechanism may someday be designed, capable of integrating thousands of talented individuals and existing organizations into a sort of parallel civic ecosystem, growing ever more refined in its functioning while perpetually expanding its user base on an invitation basis, and in such a way as to maintain a high average level of competence. If one were to start with a sufficiently resourceful group of initial participants with broad agreement on keystone issues—opposition to the drug war, police state, and mass surveillance, for instance, with these issues chosen in order to establish a reasoned polity sharing common values, if not ideological unanimity—one could expect such a system to quickly expand into a vast and formidable new force in world affairs, capable of advancing reform and confronting criminalized institutions across the globe." (https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gyynwm/barrett-brown-what-is-to-be-done)

Description

Barrett Brown:

1.

"The pursuance system is the world's first comprehensive framework for process democracy. That is, it allows individuals with no prior relationship to self-organize into robust, agile entities governed via a "proceduralism of agreement." These entities, called pursuances, in turn engage and collaborate among themselves to whatever extent they choose, leading ultimately to a vast and formidable ecosystem of opposition to institutionalized injustice. This system will be populated on an invitation basis, beginning towards the end of 2017."

2.

"The specific variety of process democracy we will be setting in motion is known as Pursuance. This is a server-based ecosystem of collaboration and self-governance in which all participants will have equal opportunity to create and join pursuances: structured entities best thought of as evolvable organizational charts, with a wide range of customization available, as well as the ability for individual pursuances to link up in various ways; indeed, the ultimate goal of this process, which will provide a superior means by which to organize collaborative activism, is to eventually give rise to a sort of technocratic super-organism capable of confronting criminalized institutions and ultimately rolling them back." (https://pursuanceproject.org/)

How-To

"Separate from the task mechanics, the pursuance system handles day-to- day information flow via three categories of documents.

1. "Placed documents" - Documents, more or less permanent, that are accessible to one or more users; these may be set to allow further editing by a subset of those users.

2. "Input Flows" - Documents created by a user to be "pushed through" down the line from user to user, with each given the opportunity to provide input before pushing it to the next user until it reaches the end of the line. At this point, it may either be converted into a placed document or sent back up the line for further input; this process may be repeated as many times as desired by the flow's originator. This may be used for such things as brainstorming and assessing news items and other data. That each user is directly confronted with the document, which remains in his module until being passed, helps to focus participants and encourage contributions (an option may also be set that automatically pushes the document through after some particular amount of time has passed without editing, in which case a notation is appended to that effect).

3. "Submission Flows" - Documents created by a user to be pushed up the line, generally for the purpose of submitting ideas, proposals, and items of information, which each user may either push forward or not as deemed appropriate. This constitutes one of the basic mechanics of the pursuance system as "filter," and indeed was one of its original purposes; a pursuance that starts out with a few high-quality users can grow to include hundreds without any real risk of becoming cluttered with low-quality input coming from the margins, as items must be approved forward by each participant up the line."