EnlightenedStructure.org
We live in a time where information is quickly becoming our most valuable resource. Our
capacity for information exchange directly affects our level of success in developing and
sustaining relationships and organizations. The quality of our communication and the tools we
use to augment collaboration influence all our projects and processes.
Enlightened Structure is a web of projects which represent new systems for creating, sharing,
and interacting with information. Many of the challenges of our age cannot be solved from
within the level of their existing systems. These projects serve as platforms to harness our
inherent collective intelligence, augmenting our natural human capacities. These platforms
offer solutions at a different level, by fundamentally re-engineering creative processes, the
exchange of trust, visibility of information, and the operating systems of communities and
organizations.
The Trust Exchange
Superseding the Scarcity Economy
The Trust Exchange utilizes the network of human trust relationships that already exist, making
them visible, interlinked and actionable. Most of our decisions are based on collective opinions
and discernment, particularly those of friends we trust. The Trust exchange brings visibility to
your friends’ ratings of products, companies, websites, and more. In turn, you can rate your
trust level of a friend or information source in any
category, where categories are simply user-created
tags. One friend you may trust for their computer
knowledge, and another for their culinary capacity.
The Trust Exchange amalgamates existing ratings from multiple sources – and ultimately any
source – and feeds them into an open platform. Instead of owning your ratings and trust
information, like existing online networks and organizations, the Trust Exchange is a simple,
powerful, non-proprietary platform for humanity to exchange its trust information. Individuals
can choose whether to make ratings publicly available, or share them privately with trusted
contacts.
The purpose of the Trust Exchange is to support and facilitate the era of transparency that is
emerging. Anyone doing research on a purchase can tap into the publicly available ratings of
relevant companies, to help them choose a product or supplier aligned with their own values.
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Even corporations can become model citizens when social capital is tied closely enough to
revenue. The engine of capitalism then becomes an engine for systemic self-improvement.
The Core Network
Geometric System Interface
The Core Network is a social browser and visual interface based on the geometry and physics
of space-time itself. It traces our interactions and relationships with information, displaying
them using colors and geometric shapes, and organizing them by shared keywords,
categories, and proximity references. The system is designed to enable us to more clearly see
how we are related to each other, as well as how closely we are connected, based on personal
preferences and community interactions.
The interface functions like a multidimensional map, with
each user at the center of their own personal browser.
Surrounding them, their social and information networks,
from people to bookmarked websites, are elegantly displayed
in a color-coded geometric matrix. Items they interact with
regularly position themselves adjacent to their “avatar” in the
honeycomb grid, while items they interact with less often are
displayed further away. Each connection in the grid is
organically organized by relationship categories based on
similar tags or keywords. For ease of display and efficient
user referencing, these categories are simply represented by
color coded points.
The system is designed to aggregate data from a variety of social networks and search
engines. It can be used as either a standalone browser, or a module that can be inserted into
an existing website or application. Priorities in the interface design are flexibility and ease of
use. The map is rendered and displayed with smooth physics-based movement, and reorients
itself according to searches or general navigation. The geometric structure, which can be
rendered in 2D or 3D, also displays changes in interactions over time.
WikiNodes
Massively Parallel Creative Collaboration
Wikis have revolutionized textual information sharing. Documents created by harnessing
collective collaboration far outperform previous modes of knowledge aggregation. Wikipedia
has demonstrated the incredible effectiveness of this approach. Just as open source has
changed the face of software, and wikis have changed the arena of knowledge sharing, so too
is a revolution brewing as creative collaboration becomes possible across all forms of media.
WikiNodes is designed to create a boundless and self-evolving container for collective
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intelligence to congregate around any type of project, while retaining the edits and
contributions of every individual.
In the WikiNodes collaboration platform, contributors
do not have to agree on a single version; each author
can maintain their own latest version. This “branching”
of creative works encourages a diversity of
perspectives that can be exchanged and interwoven in
a massive creative network. Authors can create
unlimited branches, easily view differences between
branches, and merge in changes from other versions
and authors. The power of remixing.
WikiNodes is an engine for massively parallel creative collaboration of all sorts. It harnesses
the power of existing systems and workflows currently used for developing software, and
applies them to creating media at large.
Integration
Enlightened Structure is designed as a suite of software startups, each with a separate and
clear mission. This suite of companies will serve two purposes: 1) Enlightenment, and 2)
Profit.
The Trust Exchange, The Core Network, and WikiNodes are the key platform-level projects
that, interdependent, build the enlightened technology layer on top of the existing Internet.
These platforms will be released open source, free to the world, and all IP will be Creative
Commons licensed, so that this enlightened structure layer is itself remixable Free IP.
The suite of companies will also include for-profit ventures, which will build on the same
platforms, and leverage the expertise within this startup ecosystem. Custom applications can
also be created for clients with specialized needs.