Hey everyone..Man it's been a WHILE...Anywho, I've noticed on several message boards similar to this one that tons of people are wishing for change to take place whether it be within their government, society, religion, you know..But the one thing that accompanies these wishes is the lack of motivation. Not to put anyone down or anything like that at all. I'm ecstatic to see a gathering of people to discuss these concerns within society. I think its time to take it to the next level, i guess. Anyway, what I have come up with is basically an idea that could have some seriously beneficial results if all works out to plan. Now its just an idea so your welcome to bash it, modify it whatever..The premise of the idea is to coordinate and maintain a type of internet hub or gathering ground or possibly even a merging of many different internet communities. The communities chosen to work together will all have the similar interest of wanting change within our society, globally or locally. I believe in order for change to actually take place in our world, we need a type of global gathering - People from all different cultures, countries, etc.. It would be impossible for something like this to happen in the physical realm of things, which is why the internet proves to be not only the best terrain for something like this but in reality, the ONLY one. Using this route, ideas and/or stategies would be able to circulate with the greatest efficiently. The ease and ability to actually manage an operation like this is much simpler and managable. Now that internet use is becoming worldwide, all types of people are able to partake in something like this - getting a range of ideas and perspectives on certain issues.

Some examples of the different types of communities that would come together:
Any type of Sub/Counter Culture groups
Groups dealing with different types of technology
Politics
Social movements
Music
Art
Literature
Communication
Philosophy
Exploration/Pioneering
Education
Drugs
Psychology
Media
Health
Ethnic Groups
Sciences - Biology, Chemistry
Etc....

With groups like these merging together the broad range of creativity and discussions would be monumental. If something like this happened, with the amount of people behind it, I think something constructive could actually happen. I still have several ideas for this but I just wanted to get different opinions on it first. It's still just an idea in my head that still needs tons of modifying which is why I've decided to post it here. Hopefully with your help, if this idea is even slightly rational, something like this could be accomplished. But whatever I'm trying to get something going so say whatever you have to say, good or bad.

Peace


[edit on 4-8-2004 by MajicEyes]

I dunno... sound like a great idea, but terribly hard to create if you ask me. Bring these communities together would create much argument within many groups...

It would indeed be hard task, motivation being a key word getting people to work together. Arguments are good on forums as long as they stay constructive and don’t turn into a slaging match. I have noticed on ATS there are all of the above mentioned already, and if you read through the threads there is so much knowledge and wisdom.

In my eyes this site is already monumental. It’s just that i think not enough people know about it yet. I had a look around at other forums and there seems to be nowhere with quite as much traffic from so many different backgrounds.

I know what your saying, there are so many good ideas and truths passed around here at ATS makes you want to go and do something about it. But then in a world of politics what may be a good idea and a truth isn’t always wanted.

For starters, to make change, you would need a damn good legal team. IMO

Oh I completely agree with you guys..It would take an enormously motivated not to mention funded team to put something like this together. The ATS community is an awesome one at that..I've been here since its early days and actually witnessed its flourishing. I think forums like this are an awesome start for change. But anyway Im glad to see some feedback - Keep it flowing.

Peace

MajicEyes: the Burning Man festivals pull off what you're trying to do, from what I'm told. Lessons you can learn from the burning man stuff are:

a) It's very hard to "engineer" social gatherings to turn out the way you want, and easier just to bring people together and let something emerge naturally. on the web that's pretty hard to do, you might need some other kind of interface to do this in. if you look at games like everquest and the sims online the players have formed all kinds of guilds / social organization that aren't built into the game; if you wanted to bring people together online they'd probably have to be able to reshape their online environment pretty heavily.

b) The biggest problem is people running out of steam -- after people have gotten tired of talking they'll want to do something, and the WWW part of the web's not really suited for "doing stuff" so much as it is just a place to communicate; see part a). Festivals are great because they don't last so long that people get bored, and because they're in the real world people can always just go and do something new; a webforum's great for trading info, as are chat rooms and so on, but once people get tired of talking if there's nothign to do besides talk they'll just log off and go do something else.

So yeah, I like the basic thrust of your idea but if you want something to come of it i'd suggest that a) you look into successful examples of things like what you're trying to accomplish and learn from them and b) I'm willing to guess that the internet will be the best communications environment but not necessarily the best place for anything else to go down with what you're up to.

I'm happy to helpout and offer more constructive criticism if wanted; u2u me if you'd like to talk. Also, there's a thread in "website-related-discussion" called something like "magazine idea" where I left some comments you might want to take a look at also; that thread would also be good recruiting ground for you, i think.