Cooperative Network Assembly

A CNA Overview is now On-Line

2010-10-09T18:35:00.001-07:00

Hi,
I am presently in the process of organizing notes into a single, publishable document, which should be completed soon. For a good, general idea of what the CNA and SiteFS look like, an overview is now available on the Cooperative Assembly web site.

This project is now entering it's next stage of development in public trust. Top-level parties are being sought to establish concensus on CNA and SiteFS design. The primary categories of concern at this point include:

Computer Science
Political Science
Philosophy
Language
Law

In terms of the work involved, SiteFS, which is the software for the CNA, may represent the biggest design "hit" in the roll-out for this project. Any person(s) with experience in enterprise-level security and/or File Systems may be ideal for the development of this design and of design concensus. It is presently my position that this project may be best implemented primarily, if not entirely, in Java.

The CNA is a political structure and it is not by any means one kind of organization. This is a widely configrable infrastructural tool for anything ranging from private, internal use to thoroughly public openness, involvement and participation. Aside from any standardized CNA constitutional and cresting configuration options, there is much to do in the name of framing, or templating rules for a variety of organizations, all of which would be above-and-beyond systems-level rules.

The philosophy section includes, but is not limited to the defining of the CNA, its three branches of checks and balances and the derivation of other elements closely associated with its political infrastructure.

A new world of terminology comes on-line, as well as the need to communicate well. Language rules for content review also need to be fashioned.

There are areas where legal and law-making efforts come to bear. Primarily, it appears that this will be in the areas of freedom of information, information privacy, intellectual property protection and in the development of new in-roads into information infrastructure that meets the needs for content reference in a court of law.

Any persons applying out of personal interest or inspiration are certainly welcome, as well as any comments or suggestions. If you know of someone who might be interested, please feel free to share this with them.

And keep up the good work.

Cheers, Mark G. Meyers

Coming Soon

2010-03-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Hi,
The layout for this idea seems straightforward enough when given enough time and consideration, and the good news is that I think it has seen that.

SiteFS would be the file system, which would provide

A site server with caching of files, with lock and commit, on privileged session servers, for where the editing activities (and their loads) could be taking place.
A state-of-the-art implementation of intellectual-property protection on the client side, so that everyone can protect and distribute intellectual property, and which is a good idea to build into the lower layers.
A few other file system services, such as encryption, compression, and versioning.

On top of SiteFS, are its dynamic, distributed multi-user sessions, also running off of groups of cached files in sessions distributed on the session's server side, which receive multiple connects, dynamically, and which share a common graphical interface amongst machines.

And furthermore, that in this operating environment, any number of programs could be written according to its standards that would run within the sessions mentioned above.

CNAs, or Cooperative Assemblies, would be running using SiteFS as an operating platform. Each CNA would have its own constitution, inclusive of system and application layers.

The systems layer of an org's constitution (and implementation) includes all CNA software configuration options, as selected, and as publicly documented to be selected as such. Trivia note: The pubic promise of a CNA is by way of its public output, its public records, and its public rules, along with binding everything to people's names. If the records and the output don't match, along with the rules on how records produce output, then the public will see that.
The applications layer of an org's constitution are its in-house rules. No doubt there must be many, but they are not at the systems level.

A design document is coming soon. Within a month I'll be posting here again.

Cheers -
Mark

Watch out for ACTA

2009-12-02T07:39:00.000-08:00

I think everyone needs to see the video from Russia Today, interviewing Shelly Roche from bytestyle.tv. (Along with the original video report), along with the interview on Fox News, with Judge Andrew Napolitano:

http://bytestyle.tv/content/acta-internet-users-guilty-until-proven-innocent

From Canada on this new, leaked ACTA information (Michael Geist):
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4575/125/

Existing intellectual property protection - WIPO and the DMCA and for when people violate existing, implemented copyright protections. Now, they want ISPs to be intellectual property cops, which is a huge infrastructural and technological woe. Where the agency is smaller, and fits in the 'safe harbor' clause, they will come after you directly, and ban you from the internet for 3 strikes on intellectual property protection violations, whether proven or not. This is government oversight on all internet traffic, and I find the technology very costly and circumvent to the real task at hand.

There are existing technologies, such as eCX and eCP from IBM's Tivoli and from the University of Hong Kong. These are schemes for protecting intellectual property distributed to client machines, not what this crazy government has in mind. Look at the protections currently implemented by google and YouTube, and the current ability of providers to require secured access to specific content, and liking it, at the present time.

I also have needs for intellectual property protection, in the design of a file system for an internet-based org-type which provides dynamic protection for files distributed to client machines, and at various security levels (SiteFS for the CNA). The only difference with what this design includes over the above mentioned is a dynamic aspect that enhances its security.

Platform vendors can participate in 'footprint protocol', where a trusted viewer security authority (file system vendor) can download a program dynamically at the time that a client wishes to decrypt a protected file (for viewing). The dynamic program can inspect the client's footprint, for the file system itself, and the platform vendor can join the protocol 'ring'. This is far superior to the government alternatives, and provides intellectual property protection for everyone.

I, Robot

2009-03-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

Perhaps the timing was too perfect, for last night Violet and I watched “I, Robot” with Will Smith for the first time. This morning, I got up and saw the news. As you may already know, AIG has paid $165 million in bonuses from the federal bailout money, and congress is working on writing tax laws in response to try to mop it all up. While I may be coming from my usual unusual angle, I am reminded of this film.

News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090319/ap_on_go_co/aig_outrage
Film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343818/

I’ve no doubt that all of mankind can stand there, watch AIG pay those bonuses, and feel horrified at the thought of $165 million in fresh, federal bailout money being washed away. As one focusing on public infrastructure, I see robots.

As everyone stands horrified, it is robots that pay these bonuses. Our robots are the trusted, publicly documented agencies of our civilization, and they respond with built-in precision. The robots of our day are our rules, our procedures and our laws.

Congress is making new taxes, and some of the people at AIG are turning their bonuses back in. We are so easily horrified at the way our world works, when it is the world that we have created, and which falls so short of our expectations. In “I, Robot”, the film, the laws of robotics attempt to enslave humanity.

The laws that we have created are laws for all of us to live by, and they can just as easily be the laws for us to die by. It is our subservience to our laws that we give, in exchange, I presume, for some prevalence in fairness and decency. Does it seem fair?

When the news isn’t being reported, it all gets so much worse.

The food for thought is this. We place our faith in our laws the way they (in the film) placed their faith in their “robotic laws”. We haven’t been putting as much faith in ourselves, and we’ve been relying on the system a great deal. I think bad people can use existing systems to do bad things, just as well as good people can use to do good things, and where congress is concerned, they may have to do a certain number of bad things just to be there.

But the system will always be there, for us to collectively trust, bow to, and share. Where I perceive a shortfall in infrastructure today, I work on the Cooperative Assembly (http://coopassembly.blogspot.com), which is an idea for helping out in public information infrastructure. I’m glad it seems we may be able to work this lawful AIG bonuses business out, since it is being reported. For things not reported, however, there is only the trusted infrastructure to rely upon, such as where AIG would just pay the bonuses, and that would be that.

In any event, where it isn’t being reported on, trusted actions don’t have to produce anything good. Everyone serves the law, except for those who hide. Man can only run the show if it is being reported on (or at least documented). Where this is not the case, it is all just trusted machines!

Why are we faithful to a system when it isn’t being reported on? I think it’s because we are so entirely bound and dependent upon this shared faith (in this system), and the lack of reporting is the crime that’s making all of the other crimes possible. I think it is because, in this case, it is the “free press” in the system, which is not in itself designed. There used to be regulations against media power, but they went away (primarily in 1996), and so we should figure out how to know as much on every important contemporary topic as we do on this one.

I think the press is a free entity by design, such that it would continue to do well when existing as such, but that the free press is also a part of a much larger system that won’t work well without it. This nation literally needs a “free press”, and not a commercial enterprise, as a witness to every public function. In the film there is also what no one knows, making it possible for everything in its world to go wrong.

In the film the robots become intelligent and take over, as if wishing to be our nannies, after noticing that we had been causing ourselves too much harm. I suppose one might sometimes presume our infrastructure to be super-capable, but I can assure you that none of it is, in or of itself, intelligent. That is the stuff of high sci fi. In the meantime, we will need people to have any representation, as well as any intelligence in the system.

Cheers to better information -
Mark

Asimov's Mule

2008-11-29T14:07:00.001-08:00

Has the world changed? In 1941, FDR and top military brass knew weeks in advance of an impending Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor, but commanders at Pearl were not informed. In the 1960s, there was the Gulf of Tonkin incident, where by way of US propaganda, it was said that the North Vietnamese bombed a US ship, which as we came to find did not really happen. In 1933, Hitler became Chancellor of Germany following those who died in the Reichstag fire, and in 1939, led in staging a Polish attack against Germany, launching the Germans into their first aggression, later to be collectively known as World War II. In 2001, inside elements of the US, Israel and Great Britain created a false flag attack against the United States, as conducted by modern-day “sand Poles”. Through all of this, the one major distinction that appears to me is that of the emerging network of networks; the decentralized and uncontrolled internet.

I believe the role of the Internet altogether to be directly analogous to a character from a series of books know as "Foundation" (1950), by Isaac Asimov. In his story, Asimov paints the picture of an established society where science has developed the ability to calculate any and all of the variables, and to then be able to definitively say where one would be, for example, next Wednesday at 8 AM. It gives them total control.

One central character in the Foundation series is "the Mule". As a human with the head of a mule, he is an incalculable mutation. Society's scientists experience problems with their ability to determine, at any time, his causal chains. The Mule includes variables within himself that defy the scientist’s capacity to calculate his next move. He relishes in his ability to go where he pleases, when he pleases, and without detection.

Where established powers are incapable of predicting what it will produce next, I find the Internet itself to be perfectly analogous to Asimov's Mule. I find contemporary developments in population statistics, such as; over half the US knowing that something is wrong with the 911 Commission, with this administration’s failure – led by Cheney – to gain entry into Iran in spite of such extensive efforts to achieve that end, or by way of something as simple as the new political model created by the Howard Dean campaign of 2004, to only be possible by way of an uncontrolled information agency. Meanwhile, in China, where by way of total internet control, the students of Beijing University don’t even know what happened in their own Tiananmen Square. The internet is a new infrastructure for the people, and it has been serving the people’s needs in ways that no traditional channels of information have even dared. God bless the internet; may it forever be free!

And congratulations to: http://savetheinternet.com

Cheers -

Mark

The People's Infrastructure

2008-09-12T08:57:00.000-07:00

I'm just starting to let folks know, today, that I'm starting to make links and sites public, for the Co-Operative Assembly, that I've been sitting on for bit).

Well, this is a nice announcement. It seems to me that the 4th House, as they say, has been hijacked, and people need some kind of infrastructure to get their freedom of information back.

Enter the Co-Operative Assembly, an organization that people create, with 3 internal branches of information processing, with verified identities for all work performed, and with other checks, such as a complete set of public records to back up any public, informational product. The purpose of this design is to give people the infrastructure they need, and the ability to gain trust in the public eye. Even to the point of organizations endorsed by reputable sources as useful for research purposes.

Modern technology gives us the ability to enforce checks and balances our forefathers never would have considered.

Any are welcome to stop by and say hi here or at the discussions page.

Blog: http://coopassembly.blogspot.com
Discussions: http://groups.google.com/group/coopassembly

Cheers -
Mark

Welcome

2008-09-12T00:28:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Co-Op Assembly Blog, which is additionally inspired by being asked to make a blog by a modern, political truther. Well, cheers! It's truth movements today that really fuel my fire, in bringing this project to completion.

But don't worry, I haven't moved too fast. Lately, I got bogged down in deep thought on some parts of it. At this point, I will have to start looking for project manager type personnel, who like to work like me, for fun, and who would like to be involved with Co-Op Assembly design and development.

I would also like to hear all kinds of discussions, such as any concerns arising out of first impressions of the document (link at left). Next, I'll be making a brief overview for newcomers, (and that will be the next blog entry). TIA! - Markgm

Copyrighting and Getting Started

2007-08-13T09:59:00.000-07:00

This is as much a test of the blog as anything else. Hellooooo. Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3... Hee hee. Blogging is so much fun.

The document, "Cooperative Internet Assembly" will be posted just as soon as I have received confirmations from the parties that have received copies. Without those confirmations, I can't release the document. If you have a copy, that means YOU.

Thanks so much in advance just for being you! I'm obviously very excited about getting this show on the road. :-)