Date: 2003/03/12 23:04
From: Gerry Gleason <gerry@geraldgleason.com>
To: "discuss@ggpl.org" <discuss@ggpl.org>
Carl Vilbrandt wrote:
>Dear members of the ggpl discussion group. I am submitting to the Osaka
>design competition the "Orgains Design". Your help or collaboration
>with the submission of an "Orgains" design to the Osaka design
>competition would be warmly accepted. :-) Carl The Osaka design
>competition is about designs for environmental sustainablity and that
>includes business plans...
>
Cool! Based on the information I just skimmed from www.jdf.or.jp, we
have until Mar 31 to complete the initial design for screening. I will
get right to feedback on the substance and worry about typos and grammar
at a later stage. Just for grins, I searched google for "organis" and
George's paper is the first thing listed. Is there any more background
on the use and origin of this term? I'm just curious. Did you or
George coin it for talking about this, or did you borrow it from another
source?
>
>
>The Orgains design
>
>Orgains is a basic design for a digital based operating system for the
>space craft called earth. The Orgains design is hyper function micro
>kernel business organisational system derived from a set of simple
>cellular automata rules governing the interactions of individual
>geographical located networked computational farms nodes of Micro
>Cooperatives. The Organis design supports Virtual Networked
>Organisations (VNO's) which are dynamic decentralized adaptive complex
>digital social structures that are self regulating capable of producing
>very complex and reliable digital services. The goals of VNO's
>cellular automata rules of the Orgains design is create a large number
>of decentralized small sustainable cellular for more than only profit
>business structures that incorporate the ethics of digital freedom,
>human rights and environmental sustainability with personal
>remuneration.
>
I know what you are saying here, but more because of a history of
conversation. It gets a bit thick ... I hope you don't mind if I take
the liberty of restating this paragraph:
Organis is a set of design rules and organizing principles that will
begin to realize a digital operating system for Spaceship Earth.
Physically, Organis is a network of individual geographically dispersed
Micro Cooperative nodes and a (hyper functional) micro kernel business
organizational system. Each node encompasses both physical
computational farms which are linked together with the global internet
to form a resilient and powerful grid computer, as well as a social
organizational cell. These organizational cells provide the physical
support to enable individual members to contribute human capital to
building Virtual Networked Organizations (VNOs) which are the organs of
Gaia's emerging personification. VNOs are dynamic decentralized
adaptive digital social structures that are self-regulating and capable
of producing very complex and reliable digital products and services.
In contrast to typical business structures, VNOs are organized to
support communities of users and to sustain communities of authors
rather than to just provide profits to owners and investors. As such,
monitary profits are managed to sustain the organization's mission and
provide fair renumeration for contributing authors and other workers,
but just as important are the community based ethics of digital freedom,
human rights and environmental sustainability.
I think I got all the important concepts from the original, and also
added one or two. I dropped out the "cellular automata" concept, but I
don't think that is critical here (can be introduced later if needed),
and I really like the progression from Micro Coop -> VNOs -> The Earth
Personified which parallels the progression cell -> organs -> organism.
I trust most are familiar with the idea of Gaia as the organic spirit
of the earth as a whole, living system, but the Gaia concept is more
spirit than personality. Fully realized, Organis can be thought of as
Gaia with a human face, and although I'm not completely happy with how
this came out in the middle of the paragraph, I'm not sure it would be
good to be much more direct with this concept as it would seem
presumptuous and grandiose.
>
>The Virtual Networked Organisations (VNO's) are orgamistic trans-human
>digitally networked cellular business structures who's sustainable is
>based on the creation of charters for novel non profit Micro
>Cooperatives (MicroCo-Ops) business entities geographically grouped in
>computational farm grids. Virtual Network(ed) Organisation (VNO)
>allows any number of geographically dispersed MicroCo-Ops of knowledge
>workers to virtually collaborate on a project under no central planning
>and were for many various central areas of focus, the roles of
>co-ordination and management arise from any of the project knowledge
>workers based on level of knowledge and interest. The definition and
>recognition of the operations of VNOs structures are base on the case
>studies of the Linux Project done by George Dafermos.
>
I like this pretty much as is with e a little cleanup. The only thing I
don't like is the negative idea of "no central planning", but how to
restate this positively? What we really have is "distributed planning
based on transparent sharing of goals, ideas, code, etc."
There are some organizational functions that could/should be more
centrally controlled. I'm not sure about exactly where this fits, but I
am primarily thinking about financial controls and governance issues.
Without this, corruption can destroy the entire enterprise.
Ultimately, a VNO would be controlled by democratic input from its
communities, and the Micro Co-ops would be similarly controlled (by a
smaller constituency). Common standards and operating principles would
be developed and shared between VNOs, and it might be useful to
establish one of more VNOs whose mission is to develope and maintain
these standards and principles, and provide services to raise and
maintain a high standard for organizational governance for all the VNOs.
Of course, this wouldn't be dictated from headquarters, but rather
emerges from the self-organizing principles and a large network of VNOs
all trying to solve these problems in parallel and sharing results and
tools.
>
>CompuFarms (CF) the physical equavelence of the VNO type structure is
>being envisioned and developed in Japan by Carl Sunburg. CF is the
>large geo political grouping of MicroCo-Ops that form a peer to peer
>computational farming grid nodes for various types of active data
>repositories, disaster recovery resources, and for government, finical
>and scientific simulations. The data storage and computational
>resources provide one source of income for the MicroCo-Ops. MicroCo-Ops
>would also provide digital services for local government and educational
>services.
>
This is very cool. Is there more from Carl S. about this plan? I've
also been working on ideas to build an Open Source based consulting
business using geraldgleason.com (GG.com). My thinking is that the main
obsticle for small to mid-sized businesses (and probably local
governments and schools too) adopting Linux and Free Source systems is
the lack of hands-on local support. Typically, they need a high level
expert to help navigate potential pitfalls, choose mature tools, train
systems people and such, but they don't want or need that sort of person
on staff. They end up with Microsoft products because it seems like the
most effective way to go and their software is easy on the surface.
What they don't know is that the compromises that MS has made to make
it look easy also make it insecure and unstable without equal systems
expertise to help install, configure and maintain these systems.
The reason I digressed here is for background to the idea that the best
way for most small to mid-sized enterprises to deploy systems is with
local workstations, plus print/file services, and offsite resources for
almost everything else. This is essentially the Application Service
Provider (ASP) model for information services, and these CompuFarms
would probably be perfect for deploying ASP services for a wide variety
of enterprises.
I realize that this also opens up a can of worms relating to non-profit
status, particularly in the US. To maintain your charitable non-profit
status, you can't really engage in a lot of activities that would
compete with services offered by commercial entities. It's the
"charitable" part that is the problem as there are many trade
association type non-profits that have no such restrictions, but then
you can't accept tax deductable donations. On the other hand, you can
structure the organization to partition charitable and more commercial
activities, and keep them separate financially and in terms of governance.
As long as I have digressed this far, I might as well bring up my
concern about limiting VNO and Organis design activities strictly to
non-profits (whether charitable or trade association like). My concern
is that some of these ideas have a great deal of commercial viability in
addition to being attractive in terms of holistic ethics and such. My
point is that it might be easier to secure commercial funding for some
ideas, and as it develops and gets profitable, you can expand more
quickly with equity financing, and if you don't plan to expand quickly,
you might be overshadowed by a commercial entity that take the idea and
runs with it. The point is to maintain flexibility to be able to use
the financial model most appropriate to each project. Besides, you can
always use the profits to fund non-profit activities, but you can't use
retained earning from a non-profit to invest in expanding your network.
>
>The novelty of the proposed VNO MicroCo-Ops based on Greater Good Public
>License agreement is that the VNO/CF MicroCo-Ops create the necessary
>local micro business structures providing each each person that is an
>active member of the Geo. positioned MicroCo-Ops cells with the
>communications, computational and finical resources needed. The The
>VNO type Linux Projects, would still be base on voluntary participation
>in a matrix type of management were the local resources and employees
>pay is removed from the VNO projects and they would continue to operate
>as they currently do, but achieve a level of sustainablity that is not
>available because of there current voluntary nature.
>
I'm getting confused with this. Would CF be basically a network of
MicroCo-Ops which actually own and operate the physical farms? I'm
trying to think about how this would evolve from the current situation
where the bigger projects are basically non-profit VNOs, managing all
their own resources, and large numbers of small projects are hosted by
the likes of SourceForge or FreshMeat, etc. It seems like CompuFarms
would compete with these, or would it try to join the smaller
competitors of these into a cooperative network?
Thinking about this from the standpoint of my "GG.com" planning, I could
operate a facility in my locality, but I wouldn't want to commit all the
financial resources needed to build and pay for this facility and its
ongoing expenses. On the other hand, if CF was able to make the
financial commitment to start it and keep it going, I would be in a very
good position to sell the computational services along with my own
service offerings to commercial and non-profit entities in my region.
Also, I wouldn't need a local facility to start the process forward.
Location is essentially irrelevant to providing computational resources
for ASP services, so I could build the business up based on remote
facilities, and deploy our own facility when the need develops.
>
>MicroCo-Ops growth will be based on transformation of services from
>analog to digital
>
At best this analog to digital concept is unclear, and at worst it is
wrong and/or misleading. To a large extent, the analog to digital
transition is complete, at least in communications and information
storage and management. I claim the transition we are approaching, and
this proposal seeks to address is fundamentally about the way the
Internet enables and facilitates group formation (ala the Group Forming
Networks (GFN) ideas I sent around a while back). The technology is in
place for the most part now, but the social and organizational
innovations are just starting to emerge.
> and by cellular replication. MicroCo-Ops upon
>reaching a certain size of I/0 and resources will temporally swell its
>number of personal and then divide or reproduces it self in various and
>complex ways base on a set of simple rules governing its behavior and
>particularly MicroCo-Ops interaction with each other.
>
>NanoCorp or MicroCo-Ops rule base / founding charter.
>
>1. They are base on phyical and Geo. location.
>
Yes, promotes face-to-face interactions and connectons to community.
>
>2. The limiting size factor for personal is 1 to 26
>
Is there some research to base this size factor on? My experience with
small organizations suggests that there is often a serious breakdown in
communications that becomes critical somewhere between 50 and 100
employees, so I agree completely with the idea, but I'm not sure
where/how to draw this line.
>
>3. The limiting I/O factor is based localy
>
I/O factor? Are you refering to the scale of the local operation?
Something else?
>
>4. payment of personal is based on local wages
>
Yes, basically. I would want to also create opportunities for expanded
rewards for the most important contributions. Profit can be a good
motivator for certain types of activities, and we shouldn't write it out
of the equations. You do have to be careful that it doesn't interfere
with more important goals.
>
>5. They subdivide in to separate organization
>
I would base this on divergence of missions as much or more than pure
size considerations. The way I see it, the VNOs are more the visible,
marketable face of this, and the MicroCo-ops are where the work actually
gets done, and customer/clients interact with workers. Wouldn't this
work sort of like a franchise?
>
>6. They have inheritance base on ?? and need for diversification.?
>
The "daughter cells" should have a balanced set of physical resources
from the parent cell, and all of the infomation (genetics).
Diversification is based on enabling different genes in different
cells, which is probably based in a large part on the differential
skills and specialization of the individuals in each cell (interests
too, of course). Programs to promote people moving between cells would
have value as well.
>
>7. As a non profit they must achieve their goals by not growing larger
>in size, but by their reproduction. However at the same time they are in
>competition with each other to provide services under GGPL at
>continually
>
I don't really see this as based on being non-profit. Non-profits can
grow by building up membership as well, and at the VNO level, I expect
some of the organizations will be quite large indeed, based on how
universal the need they address is. Splits are mandated by
inefficiencies of scale. Most of the efficiencies of scale that are the
basis of increasing size of commercial entities are based on limiting
the free exchange of ideas, which ends up being a net cost to the
society as a whole. Name recognition via mass marketing is another big
one, but that will be a function of the VNOs, and not the MicroCo-Ops,
right?
Competition can be good in some contexts, but if you look at the farm
analogy, there are problems. I don't doubt that market competition has
made food productions very efficient, but often at the expense of the
very things we are interested in protecting. Of course, competition
under the GGPL would factor in some of the externalities, but there are
still problems. In the growth phase, things are ok because price
signals are both promoting more production and prividing a good margin
for existing producers, but eventually the demand is met and prices
start to fall. In the steady state, demand doesn't change that much
either way, but prices are based on current supply, so if there is a
good year there is over supply and if there is a bad year, at least some
farmers are hurting from low yields. Your body does not place your
cells in competition with one another (in general), but there are a lot
of regulatory processes that keep things in balance. Regulatory
processes use signals that are processed by an information system and
fed back as control signals to slow down or speed up other body systems.
The point of all this is that you have to be careful about when to use
pure market competition, and when you need to tweak the market signals
or introduce another system of signals altogether.
>
>The proposed rules attempt to develop computer orgnisational growth
>models, that exhibit both continuous sustainable growth through
>transformation and replication and complex unpredictable random
>behaviors necessary to realize the hyper functional organizational
>qualities including decentralize control, self organising, dynamic
>response, and efficiency as witnessed in the Linux project and appears
>to be occurring with other Libre Source projects.
>
When you talk about "continuous sustainable growth", I think you must
look at the stuff from Paul Romer. The core of his proposals is that
continuous growth in wages and GNP is only possible by being smarter and
sharing more knowledge or information, and this is good because it is
consistent with the Organis conception. In one paper he talks about why
stimulating the demand side of technology is often conterproductive
because adding funding for R&D (demand side) might be good for the
salaries of scientists and engineers, but this price signal doesn't
translate well to an increase in the supply of skilled workers.
For effective promotion of Open/Free Source development and deployment,
there is both the supply of skilled workers as well as the supply of
paying jobs. The issue here is that many people want to do this sort of
development, but also need a paycheck to support themselves and their
families, so the question is more one of establishing revenue streams
that grow in response to usage of OS software, and feeding some of this
back to the development side. Clearly some organizations like RedHat
and IBM are extracting revenues from the sales and services end, and
they are feeding back some of it to development, but the scale of this
is still very small compared to the demand. Others like Dell and Sun
seem to just be taking away and not giving anything back of note.
So, let's go back to my GG.com concept as an example. If something like
it already existed, I wouldn't bother (I'd just apply there for a job),
and if generating good leads (i.e. ones leading to sales) was as easy as
contacting all the Linux distribution vendors, the concept would be a
slam dunk. So, instead, the only viable path is the painful process of
generating leads myself and following up, etc., etc. etc. So, one way
to go is to build something like CompuFarms as a VNO, and provide all
sorts of community services under a "Virtual Roof" and market the whole
thing as a much larger concept, then GG.com is just a MicroCo-Op member
of the CompuFarms VNO. Actually, this could be a viable model, but only
if together CF and GG.com generate enough business (in GG.com's geo
region) to keep GG.com viable, and the collective revenues from all the
MicroCo-Ops under CF generate enough excess revenue to support CF's
operations as well as feeding some of this back to development.
Microsoft has extracted billions of dollars from its customers over the
years, so it shouldn't be that hard to provide free software for the
masses with top notch support for a fair price for far less than the
going rate.
>
>"the state of nature" The Garden of Eden "that a set of simple "natural
>rules" genitic code (like programing ) that repsent combintory
>solutions worked out over centures stemming from the laws of physics of
>matter that express themselves in complex biological systems with no
>centeral control system. The "natural rules" and resulting self
>governing and self replcation of biological structures of gentic code
>really have no most no parallel to any other human social strutcture
>other than the Linux project.
>
>The type of noncentralized control evolution and development of
>biological growth base on gentic blueprints and physical law as that
>respectively can not be broken or can not be easly changed because of
>the many levels of interactive complex behaviour does not seem to have
>any thing in common with anarchy nor libertarianism. The "natural
>rules" are simple, but exibit high level both localy and global of very
>controled highly organised codes boundaries and interactions, that
>repesent sets of various solutions for a given set of physical
>boundaries and indeed rules that cannot be broken and leave very little
>choice for a given life form.
>
These two paragraphs need a bit of work. I'll wait for another draft
before taking a stab at it. Maybe a few more ideas from my little
anarchy screed (at http://www.geraldgleason.com/projects/anarchy.html)
would connect the ideas better. Another helpful concept that this
suggests to me is the idea of "autopoesis" from Maturana and Varella,
_The_Tree_of_Knowledge_. At first glance, it seems you are saying that
organisms "cannot be easily changed", but I think you are trying to make
a different point in reality. I would say that these systems are both
relilient and adaptable, so that they tend to resist change in most
situations and actively try to restore the original state, but finding
themselves in a very different state, the "law" is change or die, so
change they do.
>
>
>We envision the Organis to be a business model by which payment for
>development and services can be introduce to the Liber / free source
>Projects with out disturbing the above mentioned organisational
>qualities. It is our hope, that a digital based type of "hyper
>fictional micro kernel structured" :-) earth operating system can be
>created that will have the capabilities to compete with and dissolve the
>large inefficient global corporate structures. NanoCorp or MicroCo-Ops
>entities who rather that merely express a "code of ethics
>duty/obligation" for the greater good of the public, actually provide
>legal binding agreements as a non-proift entity to provide a real
>services locally promoting digital freedom, human rights and a
>sustainable future for all.
>
I think it is important to remember that there are organic aspects to
how these "large inefficient global corporate structures" came to be
what they are and they will both resist and adapt to the changing
landscape, and do so in ways that are as surprising and hard to predict
as anything that will emerge from the structures proposed here.
Ultimately we need to use both the power of "organis growth" in
addition to the power of the markets and other existing systems to put
things on the right track.
Anyway, hope this helps, and I look forward to the next revision of this.
Gerry