AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: Designing the Conversations of this Blog DATE: 2/25/2006 12:09:00 AM ----- BODY:

Hey everyone, So I had two things in mind when I asked that we do a day of blogging. The first was to organize the logistical roles and responsibilities of this community (including how to expand this blog and bring in more people, both young and old, activist and academic). The second was to set up a plan for researching/learning in this community. The roles that I and others have brought forward for the short and long term are the following: 1. A technical/visual designer of the blog. 2. A designer of the kinds, and structures, of conversations and roles in this community in order to build the best space for thinking and working. 3. People/Groups for thinking about questions and writing on them. 4. Designers/researchers of building intellectual property rights in this space. 5. Mentors and academics for guiding us in research, reviewing/editing our work, doing their own work with us or on their own 6. Someone in charge of coordinating the invitation of these mentors/intellectuals 7. Someone to manage the commitments we make, keep us on track, and handle breakdowns when they occur. 8. Others to plan the strategic future of this community in both the political world as well as the blog atmosphere (making connections with networks of bloggers/politicians, building value for these communities, etc.). I think an important conversation to have today is what are our time/people resources and which areas would we like to invest in during the short-term. Then, which areas which should explore and build in 3/6/9 months. The second part is what a lot of you have sent e-mails to me about or have called me about. What topics to research and think about? I think we should discuss this and build a space which deals with a lot of people's concerns and interests. Also, we should have a conversation about what we should research in the short-, mid-, and long term and how the conversations/groups should be designed. I would like to, by the end of today, have some commitments in place for moving forward so we can start working. I would also like to make clear that I have two roles in this conversation. One is as the administrator of this conversation (setting up the context for it in this blog and perhaps mediating/directing later on). This is not a role I will always necessarily have but have taken on for right now. The second is that I am a blogger in this community who wants to change the way things are in the political world today and who has my own opinions about what I want to do to get there. I am making this clear because I want this space to be open to everyone and not for everything to be decided by me (or have people feel that way). I'm not sure I addressed all the concerns I have heard from people, and if I left you out, post away.

----- COMMENT: AUTHOR: Sarah Cove DATE:2/25/2006 01:40:00 AM What I am about to propose as to where we start interests me in two ways: one is that I believe in order to make a substantial difference in the political world today, we need to explore the context and foundation out of which our political system is based and to find the cracks, fissures, and breaks and repair them there. The second thing is that I think what I propose can provide us with many interesting questions for a long time, can entice intellectuals to come in and think with us, and involves a lot of the questions and directions in which people I have talked to in this group want to go.


The way I see it, the 21st century is bringing with it a lot of new problems and opportunities that we haven't yet imagined. It is one where we will be coordinating globally in almost every aspect of our daily lives. The boundaries of enemies and allies will not be as clear (consider the eastern seaports being owned by the UAE). Technology will change the boundaries of what we consider "reality" (starting to be seen with video games and survivor shows). We will be confronting, in what I consider a terrifying way, the natural world that supports us. The list continues.

Our political system is based on structures from the 17th-18th century, a very different world than today. In order to produce substantial change to deal with the new world coming, we need to completely rebuild the foundation on what our political system rests. And, as all change is part of a historical discourse, I would like to explore how the change we want to bring is historical before bringing it. I think we can then begin to understand what concerns we will be facing in this coming century and begin to change the progressive side to deal with them.

In order to do this, I suggest that we do the following:

1. Write/dream/question about what the 21st century will be like and what our ideal political system/politician will be. I would like to, for a while, leave as open as possible the question of "What will be politics of the 21st century?" In doing this, interesting things will want to explore will appear.

(For instance, Tony and I were talking tonight about our government's promises to those who are no longer able to make valuable offers in our society [homeless, prisoners...]. How does our political system see these people and what breakdowns arise with this? What is our government's responsibility to its people? Who are considered "its people?" What is the boundary of ethics? Is there one? Who has written about this that can help us think? Etc.)

2. Form reading groups around different topics and questions that arise from [1.] (depending on interests and the number of people). I think it would be interesting for everyone to think about what politics is. Who created that distinction? What concerns was he trying to address with that distinction? What is Hobbes' distinction? Mill's? Rousseau's? Etc. What different opportunities does each distinction show? What breakdowns does it produce? What is politics for us today? What are the breakdowns? It can bring a context to everything else we will explore.

We can then form groups and look at the environmental/ecological discourse; the discourse of peace/war/relations between nations; that of technology; etc. I don't yet know what the different groups will be but I think it would be important to have the unifying question we are dealing with to be "What is politics of the 21st century?"


These are my ideas right now. What do you think? What do you like or not like? Do you have a completely different proposal? What is it?


I would like to also say that I mentioned this community to my boss, Guillermo Wechsler, and asked him to be a mentor for the group. He was very interested. He would be a great resource for us to talk to if we get stuck and need someone to think with, or if we need direction to certain authors, fields, etc.

To give you some background, Guillermo is from Chile and his background is in economics and philosophy. He works in a field called Ontological Design which is built from two main traditions: existential phenomenology (Heidegger, some Nietzsche, Foucault...) and legalistic language (Richter, John L. Austin, Wittgenstein...). To find out some more about his work, the best place I can think to send you is thedesigncommunity.net. To let you know, I don't see it as a site designed to answer all your questions but instead to produce more.

Okay. Bedtime for me. Hasta manana. ----- --------