platformer - introductory white paper - working draft v0.61

8/14/2019 Platformer - Introductory White Paper - Working Draft v0.61

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PlatformerOpen Protocol and Technology Suite

for Distributed Coordination and Exerciseof Individual Political and Economic Power

Introductory White PaperWorking Draft v. 0.61

Noel Bush Berlin, September 2009


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Contents

A Note About This Document...........................................................................................................................1

1. Overview......................................................................................................................................................1

1.1. What is Platformer?..................................................................................................................................................1

1.2. Why is it needed?.....................................................................................................................................................1

1.3. How does it work?....................................................................................................................................................1

2. Background...................................................................................................................................................2

2.1. A survey of the problem...........................................................................................................................................2

2.2. Approaches to a better model..................................................................................................................................3

3. Key Concepts................................................................................................................................................4

3.1. Constituencies..........................................................................................................................................................4

3.2. Platforms..................................................................................................................................................................5

3.3. Positions...................................................................................................................................................................6

3.4. Coalitions..................................................................................................................................................................7

3.5. Pledges.....................................................................................................................................................................7

3.6. Deep Profiles............................................................................................................................................................8

3.7. Campaign Architects................................................................................................................................................9

4. Technical Overview of System......................................................................................................................9

4.1. Fully distributed.......................................................................................................................................................9

4.2. Open source (free software).....................................................................................................................................9

4.3. Secure and private..................................................................................................................................................10

4.4. An open platform for application development.....................................................................................................10

4.5. Re-implementable..................................................................................................................................................10

4.6. Verifiable................................................................................................................................................................10

4.7. International, multicultural....................................................................................................................................10

5. Technology Implementation Plan...............................................................................................................10

5.1. Protocol Specification.............................................................................................................................................10

5.2. Node Reference Implementation............................................................................................................................10

5.3. Application Reference Implementations................................................................................................................10

6. Community Development Plan...................................................................................................................11

7. Expected Impact.........................................................................................................................................11


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A Note About This Document

This document describes a system that is as-yetunimplemented. For the sake of clarity, however, weoften speak herein as though the system already ex-ists. As the system is actually built, it is anticipatedthat this document will evolve alongside it, so that the

description of what is according to this documentwill increasingly come to match what, in reality, is.

1. Overview

1.1. What is Platformer?Platformer is a set of technologies that enable

collaborative, distributed exercise of individualpolitical power in coordinated actions with explic-it and measurable goals.

Platformer works primarily as a kind of infra-structure that allows individuals around the worldto coordinate activities in ways that were previ-

ously unthinkably complex. Platformer allows anyindividual to make use of political and economicpower that might otherwise seem so negligible asto be useless, by coordinating with others acrossthe globe, and across ideological, socioeconomic,cultural and even linguistic barriers.

Furthermore, Platformer preserves individualcontrol of personal informationpersonally-iden-tifying data as well as information that is relevantto a persons political points of view and economicstatus and priorities. Instead of submitting data toa campaign organizer or political party organiza-tion and hopingthat the data stays private and is-

nt used for nefarious purposes, an individual hasan iron-clad guarantee that his or her informationis used onlyto advance the causes of the individu-als choosing. In a reversal of the present-day situ-ation where a marketing-oriented approach de-fines political organizing, Platformer puts controlof personal information back where it belongs.

1.2. Why is it needed?We all know that any two people may differ

from one another on many important ideologicalpoints, yet share a common concern for a singlecause. But ideological divisions can often be sooverwhelming that they prevent shared action onsuch common causes. Add to this the difficulty ofcoordinating across geographical distances, politi-cal boundaries, and cultural and language barriers,and it is easy to understand why so many matterson which we know that many people have com-mon views simply cannot be addressed in a coher-ent manner.

Yet these difficulties in coordination are, atbase, often just that: logistical issues. History andcontemporary experience both show us that,whenever it is possible for groups of people to mo-bilize on issues of importance, change can be ef-fected, regardless of the fact that each individual

may possess only a tiny quantity of political oreconomic power.

1.3. How does it work?

Platformer provides the means of coordinationin aform that truly belongs to everyone. All of thePlatformer protocols and technologies are opensource, meaning that they can be freely distributed

and modified.1

Platformer is not a single piece ofsoftware, nor is it a web site or web service. Plat-former can be most readily compared with two ofthe key technologies that underpin the Internetand World Wide WebHTTP, and HTML.

Like HTTP, Platformer describes how comput-ers can talk to one another:

2web browsers use

HTTP to get content from web servers; Platformerspecifies how nodes can request and exchange in-formation related to identifying constituencies andorganizing actions. Like HTML, Platformer sup-plies a format for the exchange of information:web servers deliver web pages to browsers as

HTML; Platformer specifies the means for captur-ing and encoding information about political posi-tions, intentions, planned actions, and results.

Generally, people do not use Platformer direct-ly, just as they do not use HTTP or HTML direct-ly.

3Instead, most people use applications that

communicate via Platformer.So, for example, someone who has previously

established a link among several online identities,such as a Facebook account, a blog, and an instantmessaging identity, might answer a poll on Face-book that asks for a position on a war. Later thatday, the same user might receive a proposal via in-

stant messaging to participate in a boycott of apopular coffee chainwhich that person frequentswith the explanation that this action will have ameasurable effect on military policy. Since theconnection will likely not be immediately appar-ent, the user will be invited to click a link whichopens a page explaining how the seemingly unre-lated boycott of the coffee shop will lead to leg-islative action on war policyin this case, per-haps, the corporation that runs the coffee shopswill receive a message stating that a significant

1 More precisely, the technology is available under the GNU

General Public License (http://www.fsf.org/licensing/

licenses/gpl.html), and hence should be termed free.However, frequent misunderstanding of free in English

(free as in freedom or free as in beer?) tends to lead to

the colloquial use of open source even when free is

what is meant. The bottom line is that the source code for

the software is available to anyone for free, that anyone

can modify the software freely, and that these same rights

must be extended to users of all derivative worksin other

words, they cannot be revoked.

2 More correctly, HTTP describes how certainprograms can

talk to one anotherthe communication between actual

machines happens at lower levels of the protocol stack

but for this analogy we are not concerned with the details.

3 Even though people do sometimes write HTML by hand,

rarely does someone read HTML directlyinstead, the

markup tells a browser how to display text, images andother content.

Platformer: Introductory White Paper (Draft) 1 http://platformer.org


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quantity of regular customers pledge to boycottthe coffee shop unless the corporation uses someof its lobbying funds to press the legislature tovote in the desired direction.

While there currently exist web sites that ap-proximate some of this functionality, a criticalproblem is that the data on these sites is managedby a single entity. Legal protections such as priva-cy policies, and IT security policies, presumablyprotect user data from unwanted exploitation. Butthey also prevent the use of that data for manyconstructive ends. The centralization of the data aswell as the application that manipulates it meansthat a tremendous amount of personal informationis spread around, and duplicated, across manysites, yet its collective political and economic pow-er can only be leveraged by any one individual tothe extent that any given site owner imagines andoffers such possibilities.

One key characteristic of Platformer, then, isthat the communication and coordination servicesit provides are notcentralized. There is no singleentity that houses the data that Platformer manip-ulates, nor any single location where its variouscomponent programs run. Rather, all storage andprocessing is distributed, and anyone may partici-pate in operating the infrastructure of the networkby running a Platformer node. Anyone may alsodevelop an application that makes use of this data,and anyone may use tools that permit the creationand management of issue-based campaigns.

However, critically, Platformer builds in unas-sailable security mechanisms that make it impossi-ble for anyone to access anyone elses personal

data. While it may seem paradoxical that anyonecan run a node, and that the nodes together holdthe data, and yet the data cannot be accessed byany given individual, this is possible thanks to themanner in which all data is distributed. Essential-ly, every piece of data, including the identity ofthe individual it belongs to, is broken up into sev-eral pieces, and those several pieces cannot be as-sembled by anyone except the owner of that data.So an application developer can specify, for exam-ple, that a message should be sent to all peoplewho favor a given ballot initiative, without everknowing the identities of any of those people.

The security mechanisms are vital for makingPlatformer useful for people under politicalregimes that suppress or punish dissenting opin-ions. Data collection and profiling by authoritarianstates becomes much more difficult with Plat-former, because it is impossible to seize a physical(or a virtual) asset and uncover individual identi-ties.

That the Platformer technology set is opensource is key to ensuring the security of the sys-tem, because this allows anyone with adequate ex-pertiseor anyone with access to someone withadequate expertiseto evaluate the software in

use and satisfy, personally, any concerns aboutsafety.

4

2. Background

2.1. A survey of the problemPlatformer began as a meditation on the inordi-

nate influence of corporate lobbies in governmen-tal functions such as legislation and oversight. Thishas long been acknowledged as a growing problemin some parts of the world. In most cases where re-form is attempted, efforts focus on regulatory limi-tation of corporate influence. However, since theexercise of political power by corporations is sodeeply intertwined with the rest of the economicecosystem, there is almost inevitably an organiccounter-response to any regulationthat is, whena channel of influence is closed off by new regula-tion, corporate interests simply develop newmeans of exerting influence that are not limited bylaws. The situation is further complicated by thefact that the regulations limiting corporate influ-ence are themselves targets of influence by corpo-rations.

In any market-based economy, then, it seemsinevitable that corporations will exercise tremen-dous power, over many aspects of political, socialand economic life. But admitting this reality doesnot mean that we must consign ourselves to acceptinterminable postponements and reversals in ongo-ing efforts to extend justice, equality, humanrights, quality of life and education to peoplesaround the world, in deference to profit-based mo-tives of corporations that almost always deferhigher aims to later. Instead, we might look atways to harness the existing power of these corpo-rations in the service of the people who, after all,ultimately keep them in business.

The de facto method of mobilizing for changehas generally been the grassroots approach.When an issue has no organized advocacy, organi-zation must start from scratch. In the case that noexisting agency (political party, union, etc.) can bepersuaded to take an interest in a cause, individu-als must organize on the ground in efforts thatoften demand enormous amounts of time and en-ergy. Each new cause must compete for attention

in a world saturated with messagesmost ofwhich are consumption-oriented, not action-ori-ented. In a world full of entreaties to buy and en-joy, it is extremely difficult to reach enough peo-ple with a join and take action message in orderto achieve even the simplest of goals. And for eachperson who is successfully recruited to a givencause, the pool of people available for anothercause has likely diminished by onemost of us are

4 This perhaps surprising utility of open source to security

concerns has been acknowledged by none other than the

National Security Agency of the United States, which

maintains an open source version of Linux called Security

Enhanced Linux (see http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux).



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simply unable to commit to more than one or twocauses (and many cannot even dream of commit-ting to a single one).

We do, of course, tend to think most readily ofpolitical parties when looking for ways to addresscauses of importance to us. But the political partysystem embodies a crippling paradox: almost al-ways, the effectiveness of a political party is in-versely related to the breadth of its platform. Inother words, a single-issue party that draws pas-sionate supporters, and may even enjoy widemembership, finds difficulty in effecting changebecause it must compete on a playing field withparties whose complex platforms involve them in awide variety of issues, and thus provide numerouslevers of influence. On the other hand, these larg-er, more mainstream parties, whose overall powermay be much greater, have attempted to includeso many constituencies that they cannot afford topursue most of the causes under their purviewwith the energy that one would desireand theyoften end up failing to represent any particularconstituent adequately. This leads to apathy on thepart of constituencies, and tends to make success-ful political partiesstaysuccessful by relying moreon emotional appealson marketing, essentiallythan on substantive, issue-based engagement.

The result is a weakening of the political sys-tem, in which prominent political parties fail torepresent peoples interests adequately, andfringe parties expend huge energy just to try tobe heard. Since many corporations cultivate exper-tise in marketing to thrive, they can offer this ex-pertise to political parties in exchange for favor-

able representation in government. Corporate in-fluence helps to keep the fringe on the fringe, andto preserve the status quo in government. To theextent that consumers (as corporations term hu-man beings) may express dissatisfaction with agiven regime, it is a small matter to incorporatedissent into the overall marketing portfolio. Butin no case can one see an alternative to the para-digm itself.

Efforts to overturn this state of affairsthat is,revolutionsrisk death in the cradle because, first,they can be coopted by the very same corporate-organic forces that attempt to assimilate any social

foment into market-fed culture, and second, be-cause explicit threats to the fundamentals of theestablished order are perceived with alarm, andaddressed with efficient and thorough censure.

2.2. Approaches to a better modelSo instead of plotting yet another master

planreally, a utopiathat dictates away all theproblems, but falters (or explodes) on implementa-tion, it makes sense to investigate developingpar-allel infrastructures that complement existing sys-tems whenever possible, and address power imbal-ances not by seeking to regulate away (or obliter-

ate) the powerful entities that so often workagainst the greater good, but rather to enable peo-

ple to direct them in ways that integrate with life asit currently operates.

It has long been recognized that the boycottcan be a spectacularly effective means of accom-plishing what legislation cannot (or legislators willnot). But generally, boycotts are aimed directly atthe entity whose activity we wish to change. Ac-tivists boycott a fast food chain, say, because theirlivestock treatment practices are determined to becruel. Success is measured by whether the corpora-tion changes its practices.

Somewhat indirect boycotts are sometimes im-plemented. Companies that did business with theformer South African regime were boycotted, forexample, and this indirectly helped to toppleapartheid. Currently, there are efforts underway tospread boycotts of companies who do business inIsrael, in an attempt to influence policies there.But still, in such cases as these, we can see the in-herent limitation: it is only possible for someonewho currently patronizes the target of a boycott toparticipate. Only people who bought wine couldparticipate in a boycott of South African wine, forexample. Further, the only situations that winedrinkers can influence, in the traditional boycottmodel, are those in which some part of the pro-duction of wine is an economic element.

But there is no reason to accept these limita-tions. Virtually every person alive has some politi-cal and/or economic power. Even those peoplewho do not earn income, who live in abject pover-ty, still possess the power intrinsic to being a hu-man beingthey can work, they can refuse towork; they can move, they can stay still; they can

speak, they can be silent. And when we considerthose of us fortunate enough to have some degreeof economic agency, even the slightest amount,then we can see even more obvious power. Eventhe individual who works in a job that barely cov-ers expenses, and who has little to no choice inthose expenses, possesses the power to work orwithhold work, to buy or to not buy (even necessi-ties), to speak or to stay silent. If a person sees thepossibility to effect real change, even difficult ac-tions in difficult circumstances seem worthwhile.

The problem, generally, is that for the vast ma-jority of useven those of us in the First World

with disposable incomethe amount of politicaland economic power we possess individually is sominuscule in that we cannot use it. We know thatif we could get everyone together who felt thesame way we do about a particular cause, wecould make something substantial happen. But theseeming impossibility of contacting individualswho share our interest in just one given issuees-pecially if those individuals may be scatteredacross a country or a globe, may exist at differentsocioeconomic levels from us, may speak differentlanguages, may hold radically different views onother issuesprevents us from even exploring this

path.



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But it was from a consideration of this state ofaffairs, and from an immersion in the burgeoningtechnologies of social networking that began tomature and proliferate on the web several yearsago, that the notion formed that it might now bepossible to organize at this atomic levelto bringtogether people from radically different con-stituencies (from the perspective of a politicalparty) to unite in common, effective action on spe-cific causes, and to enable anyone to initiate suchactivities of organization, in a manner and with anease comparable to that with which we now areable to retrieve and exchange information in mul-tiple media on a limitless variety of subjects, usingthe technologies we now take for granted as theweb.

Social technologies have revealed some criticalinadequacies of the mechanisms in use in manyliberal democracies. Namely, individuals have avariety of concerns, prioritized in unique waysthat cannot possibly be represented by a givenparty platform. Individuals have a limited amountof energy, usually very little, to devote to any giv-en cause. Bad experiences with being misrepre-sented by political parties cause people to disen-gage. Bad experiences with seeing grassroots ef-forts not produce desired effects cause people todisengage. And fear of losing control of private in-formation inhibits people from participating. Thebottom line is that an individuals actual politicalpower, such as it is, is essentially not somethingthat can be effectively wielded by the individual.Either they must surrender this power to some en-tity that is not likely to make use of it in a way

that is maximally desirable for the individual, orthey leave it primarily in the service of corpora-tions whose products they buy (and whose causesthey thereby indirectly support).

So the notion, here, is to turn this situationaround: Put the full amount of an individuals po-litical power at their disposal. Make an individu-als private data fully usable by that individualwithout surrendering privacy to a third party. En-able individuals to direct their power toward pre-cisely the causes they care about. To accomplishthis, we want to (i) reverse the vector of control sothat individuals direct larger entities to advance

causes on the individuals behalf, and (ii) providean alternate means of organization so individualscan easily coalesce around particular causes, with-out needing to buy in to causes with which theydont agree.

As we approach more concrete ideas of whatmight be done, some key concepts begin toemerge. These are outlined in the next section.

3. Key Concepts

3.1. Constituencies

The term constituency generally refers astructure found in representative democracies,where an elected or appointed agent is responsibleto a segment of a population. These segments maybe defined by political boundaries, or by key char-acteristics or interests (e.g., elderly people, peoplewith chronic diseases, people of color). If such asegment is identified and associated with an agent(usually by means of an election), then the peoplein that segment are referred to as constituents.

But, generally, the existence of a representativeagent is always implicitit would seem strange totalk about constituencies without representa-tives.

Yet, in an idealized sense, we can imagine thatevery individual is a member of multiple con-stituencies, with a different level of vested interestin each, and that the union of all these member-ships constitutes a unique constituency with the indi-vidual as the center. If you, as an individual, areempowered as an equal participant in a negotia-tion of needs and policies, then you are essentiallythe representative of your own constituency. Other

people belong to your constituency, to greater andlesser degrees. We may imagine those other indi-viduals whose priorities and needs most closelymatch a given constituencys central individual tobe located closest to the center of a circular re-gion, and those who are less and less close in over-lap to be farther away. Likewise, you belong to nu-merous other constituencies.

Of course, you are not and cannot be aware ofall these constituencies, or of the memberships ofothers. These constituencies themselves may alsobe in constant flux, as new issues come to the forein your life and others recede, and the same ishappening for other people. But conceptually, atleast, this seems to capture the reality of the


Illustration 1: You are at the center of your ownconstituency.


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changing beliefs, needs, and priorities of individu-als in relation to one another, far more accuratelythan do political parties.

Note also the critical distinction between thisconceptualization, and the more familiar notion ofinterest groups. Interest groups are generally de-fined externally, and individuals are sorted, or sortthemselves, into these groups, and this is thoughtto be a way of understanding the needs and priori-ties of people en masse. But the weakness of thisapproach, aside from the need to continually re-view and refine the group definitions themselves,is that it omits the point that what is most impor-tant about these groups is how they relate to oneanother. It is not enough simply to register thatthis segment favors increased handgun controls,and this segment favors lower taxes, and that thissegment is the intersection of the twoit is criticalto understand the system from the viewpoint ofthe individual: individuals are notinterchangeable,and the flux of influence exerted by differentgroups over one another owes its dynamism notsimply to the numerical size of different segmentmemberships at any given snapshot in time, but tothe historyfollowed by each individual as they ad- just their priorities, and positions, based on theflux itself. In other words, this is a classically non-linear system, and analytic approaches that at-tempt to view it from top-down, outside-in, mustalways falter on the shores of statistical approxi-mation. Political scientists may make predictionsabout trends in opinion, and these predictions maysometimes reach a useful degree of accuracy, butthis model cannot translate adequately to a system

that aims at empowering the individual. Hence ourinverted approach, the individual constituencymodel, is a key concept for Platformer, because itassumes from the beginning that we care mostabout an accurate model of every individual.

Note one other interesting characteristic of thismodel of constituency: there is not always a hardborder delineating who is in and who is out of aconstituency. As suggested by the illustrationabove. This characteristic becomes especially in-teresting when we consider the next concept, plat-forms.

3.2. PlatformsPolitical parties and similar organizations haveplatforms. A platform is generally understood tobe an explicit list of beliefs, and of projects orplanned actions directed by those beliefs. Thinkingagain about the traditional notion of constituen-cies, we may recognize that platforms often repre-sent the result of a process of compromise amongvarious constituencies represented by a party. Thestrength of a constituencys representation in aparty will generally determine the degree of thepartys fidelity to that constituencys priorities.

In the individual constituency model, the no-

tion of platform falls out rather directly. Again, in-stead of being an explicit product that results

from discrete exercises in compromise among par-ty constituencies, the platform of an individualconstituency undergoes continuous revision. It re-flects the explicit beliefs and planned actions di-rected by those beliefs on the part of the membersof the constituency.

But a platform, in our new sense, must still de-lineate a discrete set of individualsthe smoothlyfading constituency membership from above mustbe viewed slightly differently. We can imagine thesame figure as in Illustration 1, but this time withboundaries identified as concentric circles aroundthe center:

Each of these boundaries marks off a differentplatform. The most focused platform, likely, willbe the one in the center with the smallest member-ship; the broadest will be the one enclosed by thelargest circle, with the largest membership.

What do platforms contain? Previously we con-sidered beliefs, projects, and planned actions. In


Illustration 3: Deriving platforms from constituencies.

Illustration 2: Marking boundaries among members of a

constituency.


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Platformer, we may revise this characterizationand talk aboutpositions andpledges.

3.3. Positions

In Platformer, position means essentiallywhat it does in usual political discoursea state-ment of belief or principle. A position may bebroad in scope or very specific. In usual political

activity, positions are stated in natural languagethat is considered carefully by the group of peoplewho write the platform, and voted on by partymembership. In Platformer, since we have invertedthe situation, we recognize that different individu-als will subscribe to different variations on a givenposition. Rather than offering a simple binaryyes/no choice for a given position, we want to al-low individuals to truly represent the nuances oftheir points of view on a given issue. The processthrough which an individual chooses a variationon a position is in fact how that individual locateshim or herself within a constituency.

It is easiest to think of this as a sort of (invert-ed) tree. We may begin with a simple statement:

An individual may wish to qualify this state-ment. We link the qualified version of the state-ment with the original:

As more individuals encounter this statement,they may wish to add further qualifications. Some-times, the same qualification will be added in twodifferent locations, each addition representing a

distinct variation on the position:

This process may continue extensively. If weimagine an ideal way for an individual to negoti-

ate this process of articulating his or her own spe-cific position, we may say that it would follow thispath:

1. Look at the existing variations on the posi-tion.

2. Does one of these variations match my be-liefs? If yes, choose it.

3. If not, add a variation at the appropriateplace in the tree.

The job of the system, then, is to enable peoplewith varying degrees of skill, interest, and exper-tise to participate in this sort of process. Peoplewith appropriate skill and interest may also takeon the role of proposing edits to existing trees, andreviewing edits proposed by others. In a wiki-stylecollaborative mode, we can envision positions be-ing continually articulated and refined by this sortof process. As individuals locate themselves on dif-ferent position trees, these choices determine theirmembership in constituency space. These choic-es, in turn, produce the platforms that we mayview by drawing boundaries within a constituen-cy.

3.4. CoalitionsSo we see now how the position-based parts of

dynamic platforms may be derived. But what is tobe done with these positions?

Just as a party platform pledges certain actionsthat derive from the partys positions on variousissues, and just as the party then relies on thecommitment of its members to supporting thoseplanned actions, so too should our system incorpo-rate the notion of planned projects and actions.

But due to the special aspects of how our model isconstructed, we can offer a much more powerfulkind of coordinated action than traditional politi-cal organization.

Consider, again, the virtual platforms derivedfrom our banded constituencies. At any level ofscope (that is, tightness of focus around the cen-ter of the constituency space), we can identify aunique platformessentially, a flash politicalparty (like the flash mobs of the early 2000s). Al-though the individuals contained within thisgrouping may differ in numerous respects, weknow that they have a certain basis of commonali-

tynamely, the platform that has been identifiedby selecting them from the given constituencyspace. Now, imagine repeating this process of plat-form identification, centered on differentindividu-als. Each individual, having a unique constituencyspace, will also generate unique platforms. But theplatforms can be compared with one another.They can be ordered by similarity. And it is herethat the full power of all these concepts come to-gether. (See Illustration 7.)

By finding similar platforms derived from dif-ferent constituency spaces, we can identify coali-tions. The total set of members of any given coali-

tion may be very surprisingit may include indi-viduals who would never imagine the degree of


Illustration 6: A qualification added to two branches of a

position tree.

Illustration 5: A qualification added to a

position.

Illustration 4: A basic position.


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commonality that they share with others in theset. But share they do, and it is these unlikely al-liances that now offer the possibility to achievewholly unprecedented organizing results.

3.5. Pledges

A typical, traditional campaign asks respon-dents or members to make pledgespledge to de-

vote a certain amount of time to a cause, pledge toprovide financial support, pledge to march in arally, pledge to write to a legislator, etc. The ac-tion part of a pledge usually targets, more or lessdirectly, the audience or entity whose attention oraction is desired. The people who are asked topledge are generally people who have self-identi-fied as having a stake in the issues under discus-sion.

With our system, however, we have the poten-tial for far greater leverage of the interests,needs, abilities, positions and desires of the indi-viduals in a dynamically-identified coalition. Since

the set of concerns within a coalition may be quitediverse in nature, it is conceivable to ask membersof a coalition to lend support to the various causesencompassed by the coalition, by requestingpledges that are within the abilities of members tofulfill, and yet might never have been imagined bythe individual members. What is more, this re-quest can be accompanied by a description of theexpected outcome, with a greater degree of cer-tainty than is generally available in traditionalcampaigns.

Let us construct an example. Well consider twounrelated causes. The first, let us say, is police

brutality in Russia. The second, for contrast, con-cerns an endangered bird in a forest in Oregon.People concerned with the first cause want tocompel the Russian government to crack down ona rising wave of police brutality against non-con-formist youth in Russia. People concerned with thesecond cause want to balance out powerful paperlobbies in Oregon that are seeking to destroy thenatural habitat of the endangered bird. Superficial-ly, there would seem to be no way for these twoconstituencies to assist one anotheror, morebluntly, no reason for them to imagine trying todo so.

But Platformer has identified a substantialnumber of individuals who belong to these con-stituencies as also being members of a coalitionformed by several similar platforms. As a result,our system can propose what amounts to a tradebetween these two constituencies. The group con-cerned with Russian violence is asked to committo one pledge. The group concerned with the Ore-gon bird is asked to make a different pledge. As ithappens, the pledge made by the Oregon-interest-ed group will have an effect on the Russian situa-tion, and the pledge made by the Russian-focusedgroup will affect the Oregon situation. The system

does not need to explain the mechanics of thewhole arrangement, although this information is

available to anyone who wants to dig into it. Whatit can do is simply state, to both constituencies,that if enough individuals make the necessarypledge, a significant action will be performed thatwill target the cause with which they are con-cerned.

This situation is a relatively simple one, inwhich two constituencies are trading influence. Itis not even necessary for the two constituencies toknow of one another, or even to agree with thecause that the other supports. All that is necessaryis a willingness to commit to the pledge proposedby the system.

Of course, the obvious question here is: whataction can the system propose? This is addressedby the next major key concept of Platformer.

3.6. Deep ProfilesIn order to propose relevant actions, and in-

deed in order to identify the most potent coali-tions, it is necessary to understand the political,

economic and human power associated with eachindividual. A fatal weakness of traditional politicalorganizing is that the need to collect and central-ize this information for analysis poses an intolera-ble risk to privacy and personal security. Not onlyare there severe moral hazards in attempting tobuild comprehensive profiles of individuals for apolitical database, but in many jurisdictions this isexpressly forbidden by law. Laws rightly protectindividuals from being profiled by political organi-zations seeking to recruit them, or by corporationsseeking to market goods to them.

With Platformer, however, our model has a dif-

ferent center of gravity. Instead of locating thepower to identify, categorize, and organize in anentity like a political party, we center everythingon the individual. In the same way, so-called per-sonal data must remain the inviolable property ofthe individual. Yet, we want the individual to beable to allow the system to locate him or her with-in constituencies using this datawithout reveal-ing the data or the users identity to other users.

The precise means of accomplishing this areone of the areas of research, but an outline of thetechnical concepts already exists and builds onproven approaches to security and privacy. The

key with Platformer is that the system providesverifiable guarantees of the safety of data, and al-lows an individual to safely build up a very deepprofile (what would amount to a corporate mar-keters dream) containing a comprehensive set ofinformation about an individual encompassing ev-erything from income to reading habits to type ofabode to usual diet and so on. In todays world,the prospect of aggregating so much data mayseem frightening, but Platformer will provide sucha guarantee of security, and will allow individualsto put this data to such spectacular uses, that con-cerns will be allayed.

So to extend our fictional example above, let ussay that the system has identified a significant



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number of people concerned with the Oregon birdsituation who also buy gas regularly from Lukoil, aRussian oil company. Similarly, a large number ofthe individuals focused on the Russian police issuehave indicated that they have office jobs involvingappreciable quantities of paper usage. So the sys-tem proposes to the first group to pledge a month-long boycott of Lukoil stations unless that compa-ny lobbies the Russian government for reform of

the police system, and to the second group it pro-poses a pledge to push their employers to boycottthe paper company that is threatening the endan-gered bird unless the paper company stops ob-structing legislation to protect the bird.

While this example may seem strained, hope-fully the concept is clear. In fact, the very difficul-ty that any of us may have in constructing an ex-ample such as this is, paradoxically, an illustrationof the true power of this approach. Platformer isdesigned to discover correspondences such asthese that could never be reasoned out by merespeculation. Building on decades of research in ar-

eas like collaborative filtering and data mining,

Platformer is able to leap ahead and produce trulystunning results because of the power of deep pro-files.

3.7. Campaign ArchitectsOne remaining key concept in the system is

that of a special kind of user role. While manypeople will use applications that tie in to Plat-former without necessarily focusing on the fact

that Platformer is in action, much like most of ususe the web without thinking of its mechanics,there will be some people who take a more activerole in building resources using Platformer.Among these people will be campaign architects.In a scenario such as the bird/police example, thework of identifying coalitions and all the stepsleading up to it will be done by Platformer. Butthere will be certain steps that need human inter-vention. In general, these steps will involve com-posing some communication to a targeted entity,such as the gas company or the paper companyfrom the previous example. A campaign architect

will need to write a letter addressed to, say, thepaper company, explaining the request that the


Illustration 7: Platforms compared with one another. Similarity between two platforms is indicated by line thickness.


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coalition is putting to the company. Platformerwill provide the statistical data to back up theclaims, including the number of individuals whohave made pledges, certification that these indi-viduals are actually valid customers of the compa-ny, and so on. The campaign architect will be re-quired by Platformer to submit any communica-tions to the coalition for review before the coali-tion is prompted to initiate action on a pledge.

4. Technical Overview of SystemWhat follows is a sketch of the necessary tech-

nical characteristics of the system that will be nec-essary to provide the functionality set out above.

4.1. Fully distributedPlatformer must be a fully distributed system.

This means that there is no central server thathouses data or applications. All data and process-ing is distributed across an open network to whichanyone may add a node. The main reasons for thisare dual: first, it avoids any concern that a singleentity might use data for nefarious purposes; andsecond, it eliminates reliance on any organizationstaying in business to keep the system operating.Just as the Internet and the web do not depend onany single company to continue operating, so willthe political Internet enabled by Platformer existindependently of any organization.

4.2. Open source (free software)All of the protocols and software that make up

Platformer will be made available under licensesthat permit and preserve free distribution and

modification, and which encourage collaborativedevelopment. Not only is this a proven model forbuilding solid, reliable software, but it also offersany skeptics the possibility to audit code and besatisfied with the robustness of the security andprivacy models, the filtering and clustering algo-rithms in use, and so forth.

4.3. Secure and privateAs has already been emphasized, Platformer

must provide an ironclad guarantee of security forprivate data. Many people in the world live inregimes that mete out harsh punishments for ad-vocating unsanctioned views. Platformer should

make it possible to express opinions and committo changes without fear of identification orreprisal. It will be necessary to guarantee that nopersonal data can be retrieved without the active,willing participation of the owner of that data. De-spite the fact that data will be stored in a distrib-uted, dynamic fashion across the network of Plat-former nodes, no one should ever be able to re-assemble private data that does not belong tothem. What is more, an individual should be ableto wipe his or her personal data from the system atany time and leave no residue.

4.4. Graduated certification of identityA pledge will carry more weight the greater the

certainty is that the individuals making the pledgeare real people, and are not sock puppets. Eventhough Platformer must hide the identities of con-stituents, it must also be reliable in its characteri-zations of the individuals who form platforms and

make pledges.Rather than hard-coding a single model ofidentity verification, Platformer should have anopen model that allows different forms of identityverification to be ranked against one another.Since some forms of identity verification are notavailable to all people, and since new models oc-casionally emerge, we should be able to considerthe relative certainty that any given individual is aunique human being, compared with all others.

4.5. An open platform for applicationdevelopment

Platformer should provide protocols and tools

that allow an open range of applications to be cre-ated. Like the core technologies that power theweb, such as HTML and HTTP, Platformer shouldavoid limiting the creative potential of developers.Just as the initial creators of web technologiescould not anticipate the types of content and ap-plications that have been built on the web, neithercan we anticipate the sorts of dynamic systemsthat may be built using Platformer.

4.6. Re-implementable

The reference implementations of Platformershould serve as examples, but not necessarily asthe sole implementations of the technology. Even-tually, a full specification of all core components,not just the protocols, should be available andshould assist anyone who wants to rebuild some orall of the components using different programminglanguages or other technologies.

4.7. VerifiableAll parts of Platformer must be able to verify

one another. Without going into excessive detail,suffice it to say that this is a key aspect of thetechnological design and is especially critical dueto the fully distributed nature of the system. AnyPlatformer node must be able to query another

node and verify that that node is producing trueand faithful calculations that conform to the Plat-former protocols. Again, this system builds on es-tablished research while introducing some novelapproaches as well.

4.8. International, multiculturalConstituencies exist across all national, cultur-

al, socioeconomic and linguistic lines. Platformermust, from its inception, target full availabilityand usability in any language, and relevance forpeople of any means, including individuals who donot have personal, private access to computers.



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5. Technology Implementation PlanThe technology implementation plan has three

components. Most likely, all three will be engagedin parallel, and released together, initially, simul-taneously. Work on all components will proceed inpublic and will be available for inspection on opensource code and document repositories.

5.1. Protocol SpecificationA set of documents will be produced describing

how different components of the Platformer sys-tem must communicate with each other. This willinclude the structure of messages to be used andthe requirements for the transport mechanism bywhich they will be delivered, as well as the con-tracts that different components must fulfill withone another. This document will be drafted, re-viewed and maintained following a process similarto that employed by the W3C.

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5.2. Node Reference Implementation

A reference implementation of a Platformernode will be coded in a language or languageschosen both for suitability in producing a workingimplementation, as well as for their ability to pro-vide a clear example for study for those wishing toextend the system or reimplement it on other plat-forms. The reference implementation of the Plat-former node software should be robust enough toserve as a real-life program that can be deployedacross the Internet and enable the processes de-scribed earlier in this document.

5.3. Application Reference ImplementationsTwo or more reference implementations of

Platformer-integrated applications will also becoded and released. Examples of such applicationsmight be: Facebook applications, modules for con-tent management systems such as Drupal, Ruby onRails applications, mobile phone apps, etc. The fo-cus of these reference implementations will be todemonstrate to developers how to use Platformerand how to develop end user applications for it.

6. Community Development PlanA vital part of this project, as with any open

source project, is building a healthy and active

community. From the beginning, documents suchas this will be published, and all in-process docu-ments and code will be maintained on public re-sources that encourage collaboration. Using popu-lar discussion tools and gathering places on theweb, we will grow as a worldwide community ofdevelopers and users who seek to realize and fur-ther develop the vision of the Platformer project.

Community development will also include per-sonal visits to locations around the world wherethere is interest in use and/or development of thetechnology. It will be crucial to visit conferencesand conventions, to give talks and presentations

5 World Wide Web Consortium (http://w3.org)

describing the ideas of the project and the state ofits implementation, and to discuss open questionsand issues with thinkers in political science, ac-tivist organizing, and other relevant fields.

7. Expected ImpactAs may be gathered from the preceding discus-

sion, the expected impact of Platformer is ratherlarge. If the ideas described here can be imple-mented, we should expect to see something of asudden revolution in how progressive aims can beaddressed, especially by groups of individualsconstituencieswho previously went under- orun-represented. We should expect to see surprisingactions producing surprising resultspeople inone country who boycott a company resulting indramatic changes in government in another coun-try. And we should expect to see a new birth of en-gagement by numerous people who never thoughtthey could personally make a difference in the

world. By putting the means of control of theirown political, economic and human power back inthe hands of individuals, we may hope to empow-er humanity to demand and achieve justice, equal-ity, liberty and a higher standard of living acrossthe world.


platformer - introductory white paper - working draft v0.61

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