textPrelude to a Mission Statement



"Progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things."
-Robert A. Heinlein

The Administrator isn’t much of a totalitarian, but I do realize a little organization can help build a structure. Therefore I kicked around a few ideas until they came to enough cohesion to form a statement of goals. These objectives are based on my outlook for this expansive tool I’ve obtained ownership over.

The most important maxim is that the website is an individual development tool. That in part means the goal is to help nourish the growth of individuals around the world.

Confused? Then I’ll put it another way. Websites built from a model similar to this one are usually put together to allow many individuals to collaborate toward a collective goal. Many are dedicated to things that no doubt work toward a positive good, like the ones dedicated to informing people about open source software, the one dedicated to promoting a universal construct language, and of course, Wikipedia.

Many of these are dedicated to social and political tasks as well, but to my knowledge, none of them cater to the needs of the individual to thrive outside of a larger social or political framework, or outside of a certain idea about software and computing. None are attempting to coordinate an emergent artistic and cultural revolution.

Consider for a moment the Renaissance. Previously, men were living in a pretty stagnant environment. Then, in around 1300 A.D, an emergent pattern started taking place; a horse-drawn plow, better seed, and the mill increased food output. Meanwhile scholastics started thinking differently, Venetians and the Hanseatic League started trading at a large scale, and then people started drinking coffee over alcohol. These and other factors started emerging together to birth a culture boom with no central master.

Ultimately, the new tools being employed by grassroots political action groups, PHPbb message boards, web logs (perhaps made with Wordpress), and content management systems like Drupal, mimic the coffeehouses, printed journals, and encyclopedias (and other collaborative knowledge bases) that pushed Western Civilization thoroughly into the modern age. However, because they’re focusing on “self-government,” they’re missing nongovernmental culture, the “private sector.”

Let me tell what I won’t do. When I want something done, I won’t put together another “grassroots political website” to get it done. I won’t collect signatures to send to Washington. I won’t delegate to those appointed to office.

Summarizing,
The site’s content is meant to be utilized by individuals so they can enhance their own lives. Imagine if their were no leaders, and we were just getting along by ourselves. In a way, you may want to think like a survivalist when doing things here. We’re all alone, and we’re taking the steps to rebuild society all by ourselves. This has a practical purpose, as this site would probably remain untouched by a massive distributed denial of service attack on the larger web. As a matter of fact, as the site grows, it could be considered a survival guide, of sorts. At least in terms of building morale.

I’d like to do what I can to contribute actual growth to the online application of literature, art, science and the humanities, and all those things, and demonstrate I don’t need a federal grant to get those things done.

When I first started, my main preoccupation was making sure I could properly work around the problem of so many stagnant websites, that being the typical personal website with nothing but static content. I’ve seen too many websites that haven’t updated in years. Many sites dating back to 1999 never change, or even say “site under construction,” with a promise that the site will be updated in a few months. Therefore, it has been my goal to implement, even pioneer, as many entertaining active and regularly updated content as possible. This will probably be a never ending mission.

Using open standards is also important to my goal for the site. Building a site that’s accessible to the largest amount of people possible sounds so egalitarian, right? That’s one reason why the site tries to avoid using content that would have net nannies filter us out. If we have something important to say, I think we can say it in a way that kids can listen in. Also, if we have something important to display, it should be important enough to bother making sure it can be accessed from the different web browsers and operating systems. Lynx users will obviously miss the pictures, but most others should ideal can at least capable of installing plugins that will let them see everything available. At least, we’ll try.

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