Development in the pipeline

Yesterday was the quiet launch of the Ubuntu Planet social network on: www.ubuntuplanet.org

This is only the beginning of development on this service...

The immediate new features in the pipeline are:

• An integrated blog - which will automatically link posts between the blog and the social network. This will allow those of us who have the need, to make full blown blog posts...
• A Google map of all members (Lisa's idea)
• A link to a 'contributionism' etc Wikipedia page
• An integrated gifting/matching tool (see http://ubuntusocialnetwork.blogspot.com/2013/04/giftegrity.html for the functional spec). This will be our first tool which will enable us to implement contributionism on-line
• An integrated contributionism tool (busy working on the spec, based on Michael's book). This will help us to implement full-blown contributionism on-line

Important Note

In my opinion, once contributionism has become the way we operate as people, much of this on-line activity may become redundant... but at the moment on-line communities can be of tremendous assistance to get the idea going... but yeah, the tool is only a tool, and should never become an end in itself... :)

Giftegrity

So this is exactly what I see for Ubuntu Planet...  it is almost spooky... also very cool cause it means the thinking is on track with what is happening in our collective consciousness at the moment :)  

This is brilliant! 

Giftegrity

GIFTegrity is a software that allows to organise the gift economy and non-reciprocal exchange, produced by Timothy Wilken and friends at Synearth.org.

Description

Since it is somewhat complex to explain we start with a indirect citation, followed by the explanation by Dr. Wilken.

All citations are from http://futurepositive.synearth.net/stories/storyReader$261

Synergic Economist Wayne F. Perg, Ph. D writes:
“My concept and understanding of the GIFTegrity is one of a radical move away from trade-oriented or materialistic sort of exchange. In the GIFTegrity there is no accounting, there are no prices, there is no barter (no tit for tat), and there is no medium of exchange! For me, it is the road to a post-monetary, post-barter economy.

Barter and monetary economies both tie together giving and receiving. One cannot be done in the absence of the other. It is this "tying together" that is the ultimate source of "dead resources" and unemployment. The GIFTegrity frees giving from receiving and receiving from giving and will, as it is implemented, bring all resources to life and eliminate unemployment.

The GIFTegrity does this by creating transparency, i.e., by creating good information on the SEPARATE giving and receiving actions of all members of the gifting tensegrity. Because there is no trading, only gifts given with no requirment of payment, there are no market prices and no accounting of trades. What there is is an open exchange of information on needs and resources available to fill those needs and ongoing individual negotiations around actions that will meet those needs.

I see the GIFTegrity bringing the exchange relationships of a living organism to human society. As Elizabet Sahtouris has pointed out, the heart does not hold an auction for the supply of oxygenated blood and it does not withhold blood from those organs who are currently unable to pay.

I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful new vehicle for first supplementing and then eventually replacing our present exchange economy that relies on money and barter to facilitate exchange.

I see the GIFTegrity as a powerful step forward from money systems and barter because it separates the acts of giving and receiving whereas both money systems and barter tie giving and receiving together into formal exchange transactions. It is this tying together of giving and receiving that creates "landlocked" resources and unemployment.

I do not see the GIFTegrity replacing informal, undocumented and recorded giving and receiving within families, groups and communities within which all participants are known to each other and within which trust is well established. In fact, I see the operation of the Gift Tensegrity increasing the number and size of the groups within which informal, undocumented giving and receiving is the norm.

It is my understanding that, in the GIFTegrity, I do not make any commitment to giving in advance. As a giver, I have access to information on the needs of those who are seeking what I have to give, but potential receivers of my gifts have no access to me as a giver until I offer my gift to that person, organization, or community to which I decide that I would like to give.

Also, given my big picture vision for the GIFTegrity, I see givers and receivers including organizations (including for-profit businesses) and communities as well as individuals." (http://futurepositive.synearth.net/stories/storyReader$261)

Discussion

Timothy Wilken explains:

Tensegrity is the pattern that results when push and pull have a win-win relationship with each other. The pull is continuous and the push is discontinuous. The continuous pull is balanced by the discontinuous push producing an integrity of tension and compression. This creates a powerful self-stabilizing system. The term tensegrity comes from synergic science.

The gifting tensegrity is a newly invented mechanism for the exchange of human help. Let us begin by describing how a GIFTegrity might be structured and how it could work. Every member of a synergic help tensegrity would participate in two roles. That as a giftor and that as a giftee.

The continuous pull of the giftees' needs are balanced by the discontinuous push from the giftors' offers of help. Again we see as an INTERdependent life form, there will be times when we will help others and times when others will help us.

The GIFTegrity works on trust. I give help to those in need and trust that when I am in need there will be those who will give me help.Synergic Trust was discovered long ago, and was once known as:
The Spiritual Principle Of Giving And Receiving

When we give to one another, freely and without conditions, sharing our blessings with others and bearing each other's burdens, the giving multiplies and we receive far more than what was given. Even when there is no immediate prospect of return, Heaven keeps accounts of giving, and in the end blessing will return to the giver, multiplied manyfold. We must give first; to expect to receive without having given is to violate the universal law. On the other hand, giving in order to receive--with strings attached, with the intention of currying favor, or in order to make a name for oneself — is condemned.

And while, The Spiritual Principle of Giving and Receiving relies on “Heaven to keep account of giving., the Gift Tensegrity relies on a public database to keep account of giving.and receiving. This database of the synergic help exchange is a public space where the exchanging of help is made visable to all members who are participants in good standing.

When you join a Gift Tensegrity you sign in and register as a Giftor-Giftee. You will fill out two profiles. The first profile is for your role as a giftor. Your giftor profile is the list of the types of help you would like to give to other members of the synergic help tensegrity.

The second profile is for your role as a giftee. Your giftee profile is the list of the types of help you would like to receive as gifts from other members of the synergic help tensegrity. A third profile will develop as Giftor-Giftee members use the synergic help exchange. This is the personal history of each member’s giving and receiving. This profile is transparent. It can be seen by all members who are particpants in good standing. It shows all the gifts you have given, all the gifts you have received, and any comments made by other members of the synergic exchange tensegrity that you have interacted with in relation to the exchanging of help. Every exchange generates a Giftor’s comment rating the Giftee, and a Giftee’s comment rating the Giftor.

Now once a new member has completed their Giftor and Giftee registration and entered all their data into the data base, the computer sorts and matches gifts of help with needs for help.

Now initially within the Gift Tensegrity, the role of Giftor is active. The role of Giftee is passive. This means that once the computer has completed sorting and matching registered gifts of help with registered needs of help, the lists of matches are presented to the Giftor. These matches are not available for viewing by the Giftee.

The list of matchs are sorted with those who have the highest ratio of giving/receiving and most positive comments being sorted higher on the list than those who have lower ratio of giving/receiving and negative comments.

Freedom of Choice in the Synergic Help Exchange

However, the Giftor is free to offer his gift to anyone on the list regardless of the order presented. The Giftor is in control of his giving. Once the Giftor has made his choice and selected a Giftee to receive his offer of help, then the Giftee is notified that an offer of help has been made.

The Giftee is then presented with a list of offers of help from those Giftors that have selected them for offers. With these offers of help comes access to the profiles of the offering Giftors. The giftee is then free to examine the offer carefully, read the profile of the Giftor and decide whether to accept the offer or not.

Freedom of choice is an absolute tenet of the GIFTegrity. The Giftor decides when and to whom to offer a gift of help. The Giftee decides when and from whom to accept a gift offer of help. Giftors are unknown to Giftees unless the Giftor offers help. The Giftee is under no obligation to accept an offered gift. At this point the Giftee may contact the Giftor with questions or clarifications about the offer. If the Giftee accepts the offer, than that action is recorded as a synergic help exchange and both profiles are updated. Both Giftor and Giftee can make comments about the interaction then or at a later time if more appropriate. If the Giftee declines the offer of help, the Giftor is notified so they can offer their help to some other member." (http://futurepositive.synearth.net/stories/storyReader$261)

From: http://p2pfoundation.net/Giftegrity

Also a great article:   http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/to-build-community-an-economy-of-gifts

New domain, technology and contributions

OK, some updates...

New Domain:

We have a name and a domain! That is always good...

The  name of our new Social Network is UbuntuPlanet. (www.ubuntuplanet.org)

I think the Mission Statement is pretty much going to be the scope of the UbuntuPlanet Social Network.

Technology:

Any technology as long as it is PHP with MySQL lol

We have decided to go for Sharetronix (http://sharetronix.com)

Sharetronix Micro from Sharetronix on Vimeo.

It is an open source social network which we can implement out of the box for the first aim on the mission statement 1.)Free Global Liberation Information Sharing

And then we'll extend it for aims two and three. (2.) Collective Decision Making  and 3.) Free Global Exchange of Goods and Services...)

Functional Specification:

I am in the process of writing a functional spec which will help us customize Sharetronix for aims 2 and 3.

Contributions:

I have added a contact widget to the page, so PLEASE get in contact with me if you would like to contribute to this project!

Mission Statement

We, the People of Earth, need a collectively owned, open source, global, software service, which will assist all of us in the management of the following three challenges:


1.) Free Global Liberation Information Sharing
Yes, there are a vast amount of blogs, social networks, news sites, and on and on available on-line. This is a part of the problem. There is too much info available, and a lot of it is dis-info. Sometimes deliberate, sometimes because the publisher of the information lack critical thinking and/or awareness. 

The first aim of the Ubuntu Community Social Network is to provide a software service for those of us who would like to share liberating information with each other. These types of topics will be covered:

• Contributionism
• The global sovereign citizen movement
• Free energy
• 3D printing devices (replicators)
• New agriculture
• New education (for all ages) 
• New health and healing 
• Disclosure (our true history, 'non-locals' and our covert slavery)
• Banksters and the old economy
• New science
• New building and housing solutions
• New consciousness and spirituality

This is not a comprehensive list. But it will give you an idea of the types of information this social network will  distribute.

The formats in which the information will be shared are all the standard media types: text, images, videos, embedded objects, hyperlinks, topic threads, nested comments, user walls, RSS subscriptions etc. 

2.) Collective Decision Making
Once we have the information about what is really going on around us, we need some mechanism by which to make decisions which actually SERVES THE PEOPLE.

The traditional structure of politics have clearly failed us miserably. The problem is that we the people abdicate our involvement in issues on the ground, to some tiny group which we believe we have elected freely and fairly, and which are now supposed to represent our interests.

The reality is that this has simply not happened historically, and is not happening now. We are still ruled by covert authoritarian oligarchs.

So how do we establish to an actual Service To Other paradigm to the Earth's communities?  

The second aim of the Ubuntu Community Social Network is to facilitate these sorts of councils on-line, based on the Ubuntu Contributionism principles, at the various levels where decisions are needed: local, provincial, national, international.


3.) Free Global Exchange of Goods and Services
Now that we know what is really going on, and how we the people would like to act on the issues at hand, we need a way in which to identify a multitude of specific personal and collective needs, and then match solution providers, with those who require some good or service.

The third aim of the Ubuntu Community Social Network is to facilitate the matching of those who require some good or service, with those who can provide some good or service. This is a virtual contributionist sharing facilitator.

The software service gives preference to local providers, thus inherently supporting sustainability and sanity :)

Needless to say, no currency exchange will be allowed on this software service. This includes monetization of the service itself. Obviously.