Collective Identity Project

The Collective Identity Project’s goal is to build a peer to peer (p2p) infrastructure aimed at fostering true community thinking. Focused largely at text based content(XML documents/ODF) this software based mechanism is an experiment to find a social convergence on a wide range of possible topics.

The Collective Identity Project is a work in progress. It is open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community users and developers. The Collective Identity Project will be free to download and use. If you like what it can do for you, please work with us to expand and refine The Collective Idenitity Project to suit your needs.

To get this project off the ground requires:
o Research in P2P and collective conscious/identity/intelligence
o Algorithms for document/topic distribution and modification
o Algorithms for managment of the P2P network, including searching
o Algorithms for a “quality” rating for each node in the network. (Neural network like)
o Seeding mechanism for topics and nodes
o Network controls for the P2P scope (ex. limit to a corporation’s network)
o Ability to subscribe to subcultural topics
o Algorithm to cache at a node a topics database such that there is no centralized database. (knowledge in conextual to the node at which it resides and topics in a node represent the conciousness/identity of the node itself).
o An agining mechanism to move things out of the conciousness of the node itself. Limits database size and mimics how things fall out of conciousness in reality(?).
o Algorithms for searching and allowing the push of new topics (which might be rss like in structure).
o GUI and display. Pushed topics are in a section of the gui, perhaps coded by text size and boldness to represent the activity of the topic on the network to represent the social conciousness of the topic. Clicking on a topic raises the topic to conciousness (another window). Reacting to a topic services to raise the conciousness of the topic.
o Pushing of topics is probablistic based on its conciousness rating at a node. This ensures topics can be revived, while allowing very relevant topics to be constantly streamed
o Virtual and distributed betting mechanism to statistically determine the outcome of certain types of questions, especially those that don’t require essay type answers.

Comparisons
o This project vs. Digg: Digg is a centralized consiousness like mechanism, but relies on user submitted stories. Discussions follow the old paradigm of a user forum, which are difficult to navigate and noisey.
o This project vs. wikipedia: Wikipedia is again a centralized service with little to no ranking of the social relavence of a topic. Topics are discussed and refined through the edititing of a community.
o vs. usenet: usenet requires netnews type servers, but is distrubted and P2P in essence. Unfortunately, discussions are difficult to transverse as a result of the excessive noise. Flame wars are common. High noise to signal ratio. No indication, other than number of responses, as to the social relavance/consiousness of a topic. Ie. No qualititave rating on subjects, or the number of views.
o vs. user forums: Noisy and difficult to navigate. Centralized architecture. Often does indicate number of times a topic is viewed. Forums are topical.