[Geowanking]Geostumbling regional activism communities

[Richard Soderberg]

I'm crossposting this from a blog post [0] I wrote a few minutes ago;  
thought y'all might be interested.

[0] http://www.crystalflame.net/archives/000064.html

  - R.


> * People On Page: YASNS...
>
> ...or Yet Another Social Networking Service. PeopleOnPage is a browser  
> plug-in co-browsing app, which supports two views of other people in  
> the system: Dating, and World. (Gotta love two-category taxonomies...)  
> And they seem to be following the Liz Lawley dictum -- "Its the faces,  
> stupid!" -- by providing a user-created POPCard with a photo.
-- http://www.corante.com/many/20030501.shtml#34040

Add geographical services, and suddenly you have a live, roaming  
network of people who's cell phones are searching their local  
peer-to-peer network for compatible people.

Then you let someone watch your web browser, when you don't mind, and  
they can decide if they want to talk to you; it's like "hey, what are  
you reading?", Internet-style.

If all the personals people publish their client databases, minus an  
email address and location, plus a pgp public key.  When you encounter  
someone nearby, you encrypt a greeting to their public key, sign it  
with your private key, and negotiate that you're you.  They do the  
same, using the central registry for verification, and you've got basic  
identity verification.

Add a per-URL site filter, so that they can see when I surf sites that  
I deem appropriate for advertising: things that are on this list of  
organizations [1] might be a good start; This [2] would be another.   
There's a trend, here; I'm choosing how people see me, and they can  
interpret as they wish.

[1]  
http://directory.google.com/Top/Society/Issues/Economic/Taxation/ 
Organizations/?tc=1
[2] http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/

The web browser proxy software required to do this has been implemented  
as well, in POE; combined with a new link on the history page, "Surf  
this site publicly" .  Stir in a Java app installed on my phone,  
reporting my location every two minutes to my website.

The killer app potential of this is that you can now show people an  
activism community's traffic, online, live.  By tracking each person's  
individual comments on an issue (through their freely-provided and  
pre-configured blog), activism becomes a tangible, visible thing.  It  
becomes something that people can see their effect on.

Some people will like watching the entire globe; I guess that's their  
priviledge; I prefer to watch who's nearby, because that's often more  
important.  Perhaps if I could watch areas, with various thresholds and  
levels of "brightness", then I can track what's going on everywhere.

Some people will only focus their coordinates enough to signify, say,  
Eugene instead of springfield; mine are focused somewhat closer than  
that, I think.

This'd make a great screensaver to run on a wall at <a  
href="http://www.efn.org/">OPN</a>'s downtown office; combined with  
pamphlets explaining how to get involved in making your opinion heard  
next to the computers, and you enable those without internet to have a  
voice, too.

from Corante [www.corante.com]:
> Here is a nice post from last friday author, Nick Denton describes the  
> same topic as clay, but adds more context. I like the way Nick expands  
> the conversation.
>
> http://www.nickdenton.org/archives/005681.html#005681
--  
http://rateyourmusic.com/yaccs/commentsn/ 
blog_id=90000039340_and_blog_entry_id=34040

  - R.