How to Video- ABOUT (text)

Most businesses, and our workplace have top down management structures. The employee is told what to do by his boss, in a chain of command starting with the president or CEO.

Today, because of the collaborative nature of social media technology, we can eliminate the boss, and govern any enterprise as a direct democracy.  Direct democracy is simple.

First and foremost, its operation is open, information is made available online to all users. Choices can then be debated online,  agreed to by a majority, and executed by staff.            

An open direct democracy is a system of governance, which automatically curbs our individual instinct to take a larger piece of pie,  than we deserve. When others moderate all choices, we have no other choice than to do what is fair to others.

Social media was designed for online collaboration. It was created by hackers for hackers, in order to collaborate and build the software which would evolve to become the internet we use today. This same technology is what we used to build our platform, which provides for the direct democratic administration of our business.  

Open source started with a legal agreement ...

“In 1989, the first version of the G N U General Public License was published, it became a widely used free software license. This license guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the licenced software.”

In theory, the same can be done with any business. A user agreement would give the users of a website the right to manage a certain business. This agreement could give control of a business to particular users. Then by providing these users with an online management platform, they could observe, and participate openly with the operation of the business, all from a home computer, or cell phone.

The open source software community builds software, and then gives it away to others, for them to develop and use. In the case of a business, a business is created,  then given away to others to managed and make choices for what to do with any profits.

If this platform is successful, it could be used in situations where business owners, who no longer wish to continue, would give the business away in such a fashion that it is taken over by a collaborative of past customers or investors,  to continue a service they have enjoyed, reimbursing the previous owner over time.

We created a web platform where users can come to collaborate online and operate a business. A platform that just needs people that want to take charge. This is a prototype, never been done before, and it turns out that finding people to take charge is difficult. In fact, finding those first adopters is the most difficult task of all.

Similar to many animals, people can be “Heard Bound”. We have difficulty straying from the pack, and of trying new alternatives. This makes it difficult to find first adopters that will take charge, and lead others.   

If open source software is difficult to understand, more confounding would be a business that is given away for others to take over. The idea that you are getting anything for free, creates distrust.

Why would anyone give away a business.

We are not actually giving away a business, we are giving away the authority to manage the business, and to make choices of what to do with any profits.

There have been many changes in the past 40 years. The obvious one is the technology we use, the less obvious are the fundamental changes in the economics of supply and demand.

Things have changed in economics, the demand side of the equation has become more significant than the supply. Simply put, there are a whole lot of suppliers trying to get us to buy what they are selling, and because of this, the consumer is more important than ever.

If we can discover how to give away a business to consumers, we would have created a pool of very loyal consumers. If we have a business operated by consumers they will assure a trusted supply chain, and a better value for themselves. These same consumers would provide the sales network for a variety of products and services.   

If we can build this direct democracy into a business, we would have for the first time created a supply chain that is not based on taking advantage of the consumer. The term profit would have a different significance.   

In the past the only way we could run a business was by hiring directors and hoping they would make good choices. We would trust in a corporate black box , blue chip corporations were trusted, with investors having little or no control of management. The consumer was seen as a target, with companies competing to make as large of a profit as possible from the products they sold or services they provided.      

All good investors know that there is a chance that their investment may be improperly run, that the CEO might be embezzling, or following a wrong course. Neither investors nor consumers ever had significant ability to make choices within a corporate structure.

You can see how giving away the control of a business may not be as foolish as it may at first appear.
 

First adopters and the first rules  

In general people fear and don’t understand technology. The vast majority have not heard of open source, and would not accept that free technology is real, or that it could be trusted. In fact, the reverse is in fact true, open source technology is the most advanced and most secure available, and is free.        

With regard to the concept I am presenting to you, we are a business that hopes to make lots of money.  Using our simple formula of open democratic governance and basically giving away the store to everyone, we hope to out compete both Facebook  and Amazon.

The stumbling block is getting first adopters that will take control.

These first adopters will create the first rules for a new system of direct online management. In essence our first users will be our founders.

As in any other business, its founders will most likely design the first rules in such a way as to take for themselves a larger share of the wealth of the enterprise.

Maybe you can also see the incentive of becoming a first adopter.  

This project and its goals.

Most of the site can only be seen when you sign in. What you will see is a basis designed to achieve the following goals...  

1.   The control of social media and e-commerce by its users. Why would you not want to have some control of the store you buy from, or the business you invest in?

2.  To teach technology as it evolves. Regardless of what your business is,  we can all be significantly affected by technical changes. Much of today’s technology is in the form of shared applications  that can be used by a variety of users. If you have ever participated in any open source project you have noticed that you don’t pay for the software, you learn and participate with a community. You are encouraged to learn and participate because that is how the software gets better. As an open business, we are based on technology. We provide shared business platforms to your community. We have the same needs as open source, we want users to participate, to learn, so they can be more involved in development of the applications we provide.

3. Encouraging collaboration between local merchants. There are significant advantages that can be found when merchants collaborate. Most merchants have customers that could be recommended to other merchants selling different products. The primary application on our site is the e-commerce platform. A marketplace which promotes local merchants, and is a unique product directory.      

4. A more secure community based social media platform. An open democratic system of governance permits every user to know what is done with their data. Local communities, can direct how they want their local platform to behave. An invitation only system of users builds trusted networks that can be verified.    

The component parts of our site  ...  

You will need to sign in to use most of the tools on this site. If you don’t have an account ,or have any problems, please contact us.

What you will see is the interface of a system called Drupal, with very few changes.

Everything you see is open source and can be used in your business or profession for free. Most likely you are using paid applications that are built from Drupal, which are simply made to look a little different and given another name.

Drupal is a community of over a million users and developers , it is the most advanced open source database driven platform, for building social media, and e-commerce applications.

The point is that anything you might learn here, you will be able to use in whatever else you do.

The way this site, and all of social media works, is by managing content.  This is why this technology is called a C M S , or (content management system). Everything done on the site is saved onto a relational database.

Content is generally called a “node”, which is at least two pieces of related data. For instance a title, and a user. Of course nodes can have many related pieces of data,   like,, dates, files, images, comments, locations. All this depends on what you want the node to do, an invoice would have different related data like, amounts, calculations, address,  and more, whereas a news article about an election would have different data fields like,, images, text, dates , or other.

Users can also have variables and permissions…

We have  5 types of users, they are ,,

Authenticated,  Sales, Merchant,   Manager, and Administrator.

Each user type has more permissions, to do different things on the site,  than the next.

These relations between the user, and the data, are saved with any activity on the site. This keeps an automatic account of everything that happens on the site.  

When you sign in,  I suggest that you open your shortcuts. This is done by clicking the grey arrow, on the upper right hand side of the website. This will open a menu with different views available to you, which will display the data on the website. Views, this is the tool that enables us to present, filter, sort, and select data on the website, in different ways. You can sort and locate locations on a map, or list news blogs by topics.

Next,  I suggest,  you click the upper right, where it says hello, and your username, this will take you to your account page. Your account page will most likely be sparse since you have not created any content yet. You will find, starting from the left column going down, first a search for the site, followed by private messages, this is how you communicate with other users, then,  your image if you have added one, friends, if you have built your relations, the middle column, first on top, are the groups you belong to, and then the comments you have posted, and in the last column it starts with, Notes, which are notes you have made for your private reference. Your Items for sale, this is your inventory of things you have up for sale, and then at the bottom right, is all the content you have added to the site.           

We have 6 main node types that do different things    
 

1.  Locations, - are nodes with maps that provide local directories sortable by, geographic and other variables. Users may have areas they administer, and can provide important local services for merchants and others.     

2. Items for sale, -  An e-commerce application that can sort items by locality. Merchants or individuals can place items for sale. Your account page will give you an inventory of what you have for sale.    

3. Contacts, - can be used for collaboration with other merchants. They can be linked to locations or outside websites. Merchant accounts can share contacts, and provide sales services for one another.    

4. Groups, - these are Blog entries, when sorted by location, they can act as a news service. Groups can have a variety of aspects, and are places where users can share ideas online amongst themselves.

5. Relations, - these are Journal posts that can be seen only by your selected friends. This is the primary social media aspect of the site. This aspect awaits first adopters, to guide in the re-design of this application.

6. Forums, - This is the place for open debate, for all aspects pertaining to this site, debate can be done with private messages, but actual changes are displayed openly.           

This is in essence the full presentation of our prototype website.

This project needs ordinary people, business people, people that use social media, and in particular people that will take charge.   

If there is any aspect you do not understand,  just ask. Thank you for watching.

Before we can go beyond the terms of good and evil we must first define the words.

These two words are relevant only to living forms, and indicate either the obstacle or freedom of life. The words do not define what is good and evil for an individual but rather what is good or evil for a social group. The murder of a serial killer is seen as good, or someone having sex with your wife is seen as evil by society but not by the romantic couple engaged in such activity.

Clearly good and evil is a social construct that is relative to the point of view.

Existential philosophy has tended to relate good and evil to power, suggesting that what is good is what works. The will to power is excused regardless of its evil nature as long as the outcome is good for the victor.

This concept turns back the clock to the socratic argument on justice, the right of the strong. Which if we accept we have devolved.      

We have made so much of the term evil, that we have inadvertently elevated it to the position of  God.

Regardless if by our ineptitude or by our design since we have failed ourselves as good,  we have found the simpler path to do evil..