THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
POVERTY
CHILDCARE AND DEVELOPMENT
CLIMATE CHANGE
COSTLY WARS OF HEGEMONY
VULNERABILITY – NATURAL CATASTROPHE
ECONOMIC VOLATILITY
HEALTHCARE AND SAFE ENVIRONMENTS
WHO WE ARE – WHO WE BECOME
WHAT AND WHOM DO WE TRUST – WHY
WITH A POPULATION OF 350 MILLION PEOPLE
Decisions capable of destroying economies—or civilization itself—can proceed without any reliable demonstration that the governed understood and authorized them.
Decisions about the foreign and military policy of the United States have persisted across elections, repeatedly increasing military expenditures as the population has doubled and tripled ss domestic needs and economic costs of war have grown.
Escalation of warfare in the middle east could culminate in nuclear winter, with billions of deaths.
Yet the public that bears responsibility for these decisions doesn’t understandsthe policies nor has it had the opportunity to authorize them.
WHAT DRIVES THESE DECISIONS?
PAY TO PLAY
Why are SOME people rewarded?
WHOM do we listen to and why?
For WHOM are we a credit rating?
Is there power in knowledge?
What does success mean?
MEDIA CREATES ILLUSIONS
INSTITUTIONS REFLECT
COLLECTIVE POWER
IMAGES PROMOTE
OTHERWISE UNKNOWN PEOPLE
Who wields public power?
Public power arises from organization
FAMILIAR FACES CYCLE IN SCROLLING MEDIA
PROJECTING POWER
THAT IN A DEMOCRATIC SOCIETY
DERIVES FROM AGGREGATE WEALTH OF A POLITICAL GROUP
YOUR VIEW OF THE WORLD IS INFORMED BY CREATED CONTENT
WHO DECIDES ABOUT NEW FACES?
WHY ELON MUSK?
WHY RICHARD NIXON?
WHY J.D. VANCE, JOE BIDEN, SYLVESTER STALLONE?
MEDIA PRODUCED BY ALGORITHMS
MANIPULATE EMOTIONALLY BY DESIGN
TO WHAT END?
GLOBAL ONLINE PLATFORMS
NO MORAL CODE
NO ETHICAL STANDARDS
NO ACCOUNTABILITY
WHO BENEFITS? HOW? WHY?
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE – WHAT IS THE MESSAGE?
HAVE WE BEEN MISLED?
THE NATIONAL DEBT EXCEEDS $40 TRILLION
WE HAVE BEEN LED BY MEDIA
TO TRADE OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT
TO LIFE, LIBERTY AND HAPPINESS
FOR ILLUSIONS
CAMPAIGN FINANCE DONATIONS
POLITICAL ACTION COMMITTEES
ARE SETTING THE AGENDA FOR GOVERNMENT
FAILURE OF DMOCRACY IS A GLOBAL RISK
BECAUSE WE REWARD CLIMATE CHANGE
NUCLEAR WARFARE
ASSASSINATION
GENOCIDE, WILD FIRES, HURRICANES AND FAMINE
SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL PROBLEMS
DO NOT REQUIRE GLOBAL AUTHORITY
THEY REQUIRE LOCAL ACTION
MEDIA IS TELLING US, “THIS IS HAPPENING”
WHAT DO WE WANT ?
THIS IS OUR FORM OF DEMOCRACY
When decisions are made without public input, communities are left to protest.
Public power moves much faster than communities can understand or respond.
GLOBAL SOLUTIONS
DOESN’T MEAN GLOBAL AUTHORITY
Global outcomes are the product of local actions
THE MEDIUM MUST REFLECT WHAT AND WHO WE ARE
AND BE CAPABLE OF EVOLVING WITH WHAT WE BECOME
ALL POLITICS IS LOCAL
FOR MEDIA TO REFLECT WHAT AND WHOM WE ARE
COMMUNITY CONSENSUS MUST BE INCLUSIVE
Democracy cannot mean one authority imposing one answer.
Autonomous communities must set their own priorities in the context of global objectives.
COORDINATED ACTION NETWORKS (CAN)
ON THE CUSP OF INTENTIONALLY DESIGNING THE MEDIUM
Not merely creating better content,
Intentionally re-designing the information environment through which people in autonomous communities understand reality, form judgment, establish relationships, and coordinate action.
COORDINATED ACTION NETWORKS
A NETWORK TAILORED FOR YOUR COMMUNITY
WHEN SOMETHING NEEDS ATTENTION
1. Show up
On your community’s platform
2. Hear and see
Problems, ideas, concerns
Personal experience
3. Interact
Find common interests
Challenge assumptions
4. Vet information
Find out what holds up
5. Define actions
Negotiate
Challenge
Propose
6. Build consensus
A collective voice
7. Take action
Coordinate resources
COMMUNITIES ALREADY HAVE RESOURCES
What they lack is a way to connect their knowledge, interests, relationships, resources, and authority for democratic decision-making and action.
CAN converts the dispersed capacities of individuals into the organized democratic power of a community.
CAN PROVIDES
INFRASTRUCTURE
CAN gives communities a continuing process through which people can:
- establish reliable information;
- identify assumptions and uncertainties;
- examine objectives, alternatives, risks, and consequences;
- hear different experiences and points of view;
- determine what they agree on;
- authorize priorities and limits;
- coordinate resources and action;
- preserve commitments and public records; and
- hold institutions and representatives accountable.
LIFE-SAVING COORDINATION FOR EMERGENCY RESPONSE
Emergency Features on The Platform
maintain communication
coordinate volunteers
communities support others
share vital resources
facilitate government efforts
CAN SUPPORTS COLLECTIVE ACTION
WHO DECIDES WHAT HELP MEANS?
Much of philanthropy follows a familiar structure:
Funders identify a problem.
Organizations design an intervention.
Institutions allocate resources.
People receive services.
Success is measured in beneficiaries reached.
This can relieve suffering.
But it leaves the distribution of power unchanged.
CAN is not an intervention delivered to save underserved people.
CAN is infrastructure through which people cease to occupy the institutional category of “underserved beneficiaries.”
CAN participants define the problem, establish what is true, determine priorities, make consequential choices, coordinate resources, and hold institutions accountable.
Who decides what matters?
PLAYAS DE TIJUANA
DEVELOPERS WANT TO BUILD 9 HIGHRISE TOWERS WITH 1600 UPSCALE APARTMENTS, AND A HOTEL AND SHOPPING MALL
IN A CONSERVATION AREA
Water & energy outages are already frequent
Traffic is already intolerable
RESIDENTS ARE OBJECTING
THE COMMUNITY ISN’T ORGANIZED
The community remains inside the process the development system already knows how to defeat: hearings, objections, petitions, scattered evidence, procedural delay and exhaustion.
Communities must be sustained by their development
Global Warming
MAKING GLOBAL COOLING ACTIONABLE
Community consensus drives coordinated action
Homes can become affordable.
Childcare can be organized.
Parks can be protected.
Local economies thrive
Government can be responsible
Coordinated Action Networks
NO ADS – NO PERSONAL DATA COLLECTION
ALIGNING LOCAL ACTION
FOR GLOBAL IMPACT
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
Independent Action
What people agree on—right now, moving the world
CAN’s architecture does not assume that today’s human institutions, today’s internet, or today’s electromagnetic communications represent the final form of intelligent relationship.
Peace and safety require more than powerful institutions.
They require communities capable of informed collective judgment.
CAN is the infrastructure that makes that possible.
COMMUNICATION MEDIA WILL CHANGE
Human communication has already moved from speech, writing and print to electronic and global digital networks. Physics may eventually reveal forms of communication we do not presently understand. Artificial intelligence is already creating relationships with forms of intelligence that are not human.
CAN is not designed around a particular communications technology. It is an architecture through which autonomous intelligences can understand one another, establish identity and provenance, determine what can be trusted
negotiate relationships and boundaries, establish consent, coordinate consequential action and preserve autonomy.
HUMAN DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES ARE THE FIRST APPLICATION
COORDINATED ACTION NETWORKS
Communications infrastructure through which autonomous intelligences can understand one another, establish legitimate relationships, and coordinate consequential action without surrendering their autonomy.
Today, this begins with geographically bounded human communities.