The Pursuance Project Launched on Reddit - Is the Blockchain Next?
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![Pursuance Project on Twitter Ladies and Gentlemen here we are The Pursuance Project on Reddit https t.co uJbvTDZZzO … Don t forget to sign up for email alerts at… https t.co i6KXveWmVd .png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmTyx4RW4aeWkwwi9savkB6wrpcHKC9JLYw8Wn5dBF8hDL/Pursuance%20Project%20on%20Twitter%20%20%20Ladies%20and%20Gentlemen%20%20here%20we%20are%20%20The%20Pursuance%20Project%20on%20%20Reddit%20https%20%20%20t.co%20uJbvTDZZzO%20%E2%80%A6%20Don%20t%20forget%20to%20sign%20up%20for%20email%20alerts%20at%E2%80%A6%20https%20%20%20t.co%20i6KXveWmVd%20.png)
Essentially, the project aims to leverage the combined skills, expertise, knowledge and resources from all sectors of society an streamline them towards directed purposes. This organizational structure will provide new avenues to challenge institutional injustices and harness the collective power of activist communities.
Impactful, agile, secure civic collaboration.
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.
Structure / Architecture
- Open Sourced
- End-to-End Encryption
- Provides Task Management (First of it's kind).
There are a number of possible structures and configurations a pursuance might take, here a few examples:
Figure 1: Alfonso has created a pursuance and then granted Buford and Catherine a degree of control equal to his own. There are two basic settings by which disagreements may be resolved among the three of them - requiring majority or unanimous votes - and a variety of options as to what each of these co- equals may do without approval from the other two and what requires a vote. For instance, each may be allowed to bring on participants without approval - indeed, this is usually for the best regardless of structure - but may require approval for putting out a public statement or initiating a new project.
Figure 2: Algonquin has created a basic chain structure whereby each new participant is only permitted to bring on one additional participant. Such an arrangement will be rare, but useful in certain specialized circumstances.
Figure 3: A participant may be linked inwards to two or more other participants in addition to whichever outward participants he may be permitted to bring on.
Figure 4: Several pursuances have joined together into a cluster, sharing information and tasks, and coordinating campaigns. The orange lines represent fairly informal connections among participants of different pursuances, who may act as liaisons. The green lines represent formal operational agreements among the pursuances themselves.
Note that the pursuance system isn't intended just for the creation of new entities; existing institutions such as NGOs may easily establish a presence in the universe as a means of organizing large-scale campaigns, getting assistance from specialized pursuances, or collaborating with one another with far greater efficiency than is generally achievable via conventional office-to- office cooperation.
As we can see pursuances are meant to be flexible and may develop into new formations as they evolve over time. Specific structures may be determined by the initial creators of a specific pursuance or can be designed to be more democratic in nature depending on the project's aims.
Basic Collaboration Mechanics and Information Flow
Since the Pursuance Project is still in its infancy, an in depth blue print of how pursuances will function, including specific features, will be released as the project progresses and matures.
Obviously, task management is an integral part of any pursuance and is dependent on the settings established at the onset that will guide its scope and functionality.
Aside from the ins and outs of task management, information flow will occur under three main rubrics in a pursuance system.
- "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.
- "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).
- "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.
As with several other aspects of the system, the flow process is subject to exceptions that may be determined via settings. By default, any participant may send one document to the primary or anyone else up the line at any time, outside of structural channels; if the document turns out to be worthwhile, the recipient may choose to renew the sender's ability to do this. Another setting determines whether a submission flow document, upon being created and sent up the line, also appears randomly at some other point in the pursuance, or at several points, where they may be pushed up the line as usual; this is intended to speed up the proliferation of time-sensitive news items, as well as to better ensure that good input from the margins get more than one chance for acceptance. Another setting allows for documents to automatically proceed to the next position on the line after some variable amount of time has passed without editing or approval/disapproval; this is largely intended to prevent bottlenecking due to temporary absences. Other settings will allow for additional refinement within a pursuance's existing structure.
This breakdown of the pursuance project is by no means comprehensive as I've opted to highlight a few key aspects of the project. For a more complete overview, I highly recommend that you visit the Pursuance Project official website from more information.
Website: https://pursuanceproject.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PursuanceProj
The Pursuance Project on Reddit and the Blockchain?
I recently came across a tweet announcing the creation of a new subreddit for the project. The subreddit is only a week old and has only a handful of submissions thus far, but it's nice to see the seeds beginning to germinate as this initiative has great potential.
Of special note, is a submission entitled:
Making Pursuance Project Indestructible, Incorruptible, and Indispensable
This thread is about the potential integration of stratified Blockchain technology and AI algorithms as a possible suitable fit in the development of pursuance projects. (Look out for a follow up post discussing this proposal.
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/http://marconisociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Blockchain.jpg)
It's my own opinion that the blockchain is a perfect match for this kind of initiative and in previous posts quite a number of Steemians came to the same conclusion.
Steemit may be ideally situated to experiment with different sorts of pursuances. I for one am seriously considering ways in which we can achieve this goal here on the Steemit platform in the future.
For now, I'd like to see a few examples of how some of the projects shape up before I attempt to introduce a pursuance on the block. That being said, if any of my fellow researchers have similar goals I'd be happy to collaborate and support similar endeavors.
@rebelskum's - Din's Fire is along the same vein and I hope we're lucky enough to get an update on its progress in the months to come.
Related Posts
https://steemit.com/pursuance/@v4vapid/building-institutional-opposition-and-activist-super-organisms-pursuance-project-preview
https://steemit.com/crowdsourcing/@v4vapid/barrett-brown-s-pursuance-project
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Let’s put an eyes on this project!
Rewards Pool Farmer Alert
He is leasing 30k SP from @minnowbooster then using that to VOTE Up his own 7 Day old comments on random posts at the last minute. Scroll his comments to around the 6 day mark or just go to https://steemd.com/@ryacha21; he has a lot of self love on his own old comments.
HE IS DOING IT OVER AND OVER AND OVER.. He is farming the pool.. If you could help it would be appreciated..
Learn more about this sack of monkey spunk here:
https://steemit.com/shitpost/@pawsdog/the-shit-post-diaries-1-17-18-4
Also kinda a dick move to use the actual good post of another person to post a comment for no other reason to come back and farm it later.
Post Author, @v4vapid I do apologize.. This dude makes no actual articles of his own so the only way to draw attention to what he is doing is to comment his comments. My sincerest apologies for cluttering up your blog, outing the abusive self voting behavior of @ryacha21
Barrett Brown was on the Intercepted podcast recently and had a lot of interesting things to say. I believe he talks about Pursuance towards the end of the interview.
He has denounced Wikileaks on Twitter after he very publicly fell out with Julian Assange because he believed that Assange became too close to the Trump Presidential campaign.
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/06/intercepted-podcast-whos-afraid-of-the-alt-deep-state/
Thanks for this link, and I do remember he has been quite vocal in his criticisms of Assange and Wikileaks and I think some of the criticism is warranted. I can't say with any certainty but perhaps Assange has been focused on securing his safe passage out of the Ecuadorian embassy.
It's hard to say what I would do in his position, but if I was under house arrest for over 5 years I think I would be trying to find ways to obtain my freedom.
It's strange that Wikileaks hasn't released any significant leaks regarding Trump and US ally Israel. It does make you stop and wonder if deals are being struck in the background.
Assange has problems now because he crosses back and forth between being a journalist and being an activist or political operator. You can not engage in all three pursuits without destroying yourself and/or your credibility as such. I am sympathetic to his attempts to secure his freedom. I am not sympathetic to him cozying up to Trumps people and not being upfront about what he was doing. He either needed to be totally upfront about his efforts to secure his freedom and drop the role of being "journalist" - or if he wants to maintain his journalist integrity, he needs to abandon realpolitick. It's that simple. And I speak from the experience of a journalist that destroyed my life/health in the process of trying to combine being an 'activist' with being a journalist... it just can't be done... something's gotta give when that starts happening.
That's even if that's not a body double. Embassy cat still hasn't tweeted since the embassy went dark 12.26.16
i hv bought nxt but it shut down i think it s time to re buy again in this down level
Interesting in its approach to organizational structures, but is the chain going to be public? We live in a world that is increasingly dangerous for journalists and activists, state and non-state actors having access to records of who participated in which projects would be useful in their targeting of these individuals. One cannot prove credentials if they are anonymous, so is this merely a system that seeks to decentralize what other information-publishing projects have took it upon themselves to do?
Considering the vast history and experience with infiltrating groups that seek to disrupt the status quo I'm still left to wonder how they can avoid foul play from members intentionally disrupting the flow of otherwise good information in some of these structures. I'm glad people are working on things like this and attempting to bring attention to the weaknesses of centralized platforms of the sort.
The idea is very interesting But you are right, they must protect the information before launching it. Maybe with some trusted dedicated users who validate the information and add it to the blockchain. About the anonymity of the sources they had to learn to send something without being spotted (encryption pgp, Tor + VPN + not your connection + MAC adress change ... to avoid repeating things that happened with wikileaks) And only a small group of people see a single person can have access to the source that validates the information at first and the sending (no source included) to dedicated users who definitively validate the info. Or something like that, I did not really think about it.
But I think they had brainstormed about it and have much better ideas than mine.
You're making me picture a group of journalists rowing a boat offshore in the darkness of night, opening up a laptop and transmitting documents via a private satellite lol, hoping they don't get spotted by their government's navy.
Yes, there's always the fear of infiltration and I addressed this in another post on the Pursuance Project here's how they aim to prevent infiltration. This is how I understand it.
That's good to see, I'm guessing they've thought about all kinds of situations like that at this stage and I'm hoping they can adapt fast if they find an issue with members who are hard to detect. I mean for crying out loud they're willing to have relationships and babies with people in environmental groups, I don't doubt they have people who can act the part for extended periods of time if need be. I hope they have a good nose for recruiting the right people to the project and that those people can be protected properly, look forward to seeing the results of their work in the future.
In b4 a cat and mouse game of dummy documents sent to suspected infiltrators to see who's the mole lol.
In short (apparently we need it here) : MORE CENTRALIZATION ! YAY !
Awesome, i was glad when i saw it on reddit. I think this is a great idea and have been thinking about something like this for a while. I wonder if he plans on having the whole thing democratically run as a meta-pursuance, that would be ideal I think. as long as there was a good way to vet new members.
And I think it'd be issue based and CST would end up spawning lots of specific pursuances, sometimes for conflicting purposes, judging by the variety of stuff here.
Great post @v4vapid
This is a genuinely exciting time to be alive!! Whilst many aspects of technology threaten to enslave us along comes a project like this, a project that holds the very genuine promise of handing "power to the people". Pursuance on the blockchain is very interesting and I wait patiently to see the direction this takes.
As with anything, I'm always a little concerned about infiltration but they seem to have some sound ideas in relation to how this might be combated and so I remain optimistic. That said in terms of encryption the birth of quantum computers is going to pose some interesting challenges for the entire concept.
This is the future and this could become one of the technological trenches in the war for the freedom and empowerment of humanity. Great work as always @v4vapid!!
Wowwww. This is POWERFUL stuff, especially since, at least I hope, there will be more added to this in the future to expand it's possibilities. Even then, this is an amazing way of managing tasks on a MASSIVE scale, while still being at the grass roots level.
The thing I immediately ran to was the idea of this type of crowd sourcing intelligence mixed with AI. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult to develop some neural networks within this frame work to help both originators and people further down the chain. This could revolutionize so much it's insane. Just wow. Blown away.
A lot of people already understood.
Blockchain is a new chapter in the history of technology as we know.
Blockwhat?
excellent post
I am wondering if we can engage the power of Steemit to help the Pursuance Project. I've been paying attention to BB's development of PP for sometime and even tried to reach out to him to see if he'd consider using Steemit for fundraising and monetizing of the content that will be developed by PP. Have not heard back. I'm a former journalist and want to engage in a journalistic pursuance on the subject of the high rate of death and injury of "children in care" in Child Protective Services by various govt jurisdictions here in Canada. I am so glad to see that there are other people who are supporting BBs work here. Nice to meet you. I already made a tag for PursuanceProject and the proposal for the pursuance I mentioned was posted there last week.
Highly rEsteemed!
Great of you to point out @rebelskum's project and the similarity. I can't understand why they cannot see the OBVIOUS advantage that Steem would have. I quote...
"Basic Collaboration Mechanics and Information Flow"
For example, I AM Already using Steem like a Decentralized Pursuance Project, with fewer steps. On MY end, I am pursuing the process of OPTing OUT... THAT is what I pursue. While The "Others" continue their relentless Pursuit for outright Justice in the form of a coming PERP WALK for the members of Government who have been exposed for the Criminal Class they are.
Interesting times we live in V... perhaps with your piece Barrett will get a clue and join us here. If not then most of this seems like fluff. I mean afterall, even reddit censors...
Among others...
https://steemit.com/news/@arthur.grafo/breaking-twitter-engineers-to-ban-a-way-of-talking-through-shadow-banning-project-veritas