Normally I would not be writing a story about the Daily Kos, not because of any political leanings I have, but because it is not a mainstay of reasoned thinking that I would want to promote. But today, I found something that I think is absolutely wonderful. A group of bloggers on that site has organized a fairly comprehensive energy plan for the Democratic Party. I want to highlight not the plan itself, but the way in which it was created, and why I think that Space Advocacy would benefit tremendously from a site like the Daily Kos.
First, a bit of background, the Daily Kos is a liberal (read: democratic, not green) political blog site that has a really interesting format. There is a central figure and founder, Markos Moulitsas, surrounded by a group of moderators/editors whom all post regularly on the main page. The users of the site are allowed to maintain their own “diaries” which are effectively independent blogs. These blog entries then show up in the sidebar on the main page as soon as they are written. Readers vote on the quality of the blogs by writing comments (and maybe some temporary moderator things here too), and popular blogs move to a slightly more permanent slot on the sidebar above the latest blog entries. If the popular blog catches the attention of one of the main editors, they can promote it to the main page where it receives much more attention.
No matter what you think about the validity of the ideas expounded on Daily Kos, you have to admit that this is a wickedly effective democratic means of promoting good ideas. Bad ideas do not get read or commented, and thus effectively expire within several hours of being posted. Better ideas last for as much as a day, giving them a chance to move to the main page where they can stick around for a week or so. Then, users can build a site in the “dKospedia” where they collect ideas and information into a more permanent form. That sort of collaboration is what produced the energy plan I linked to above.
The space advocacy movement is absolutely not lacking in ideas. There is a growing list of space blogs, that is about 50 or so long right now. Beyond this are sites like the Mars Society, Red Colony, Mars Drive Consortium, and the Mars Foundation dedicated solely to creating and disseminating ideas for Mars colonization and exploration. Every so often, authors will tie together their particular mix of sources and ideas and publish them in works like “High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (Apogee Books Space Series)” (Gerard K. O’Neill), “The Case for Mars” (Robert Zubrin), “Mining the Sky: Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets, and Planets (Helix Books)” (John S. Lewis), or “Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space” (Wiley). But, as I’ve discussed before in this blog, ideas die quickly on the internet and in the blogosphere, even the good ones.
A group-oriented space advocacy blog would find great success, much more so than the boards on sites like Red Colony or Spacenow because the users would get to control the threads, and ideas would have a way of being promoted. On bulletin boards, there is no formal means of promotion, and thus no way to retain more permanently that which many users feel is really good. Such a blog, modeled after Daily Kos would require that some of the space bloggers sacrifice a bit of their independence, but it would bring space-related ideas together, and we could still republish our ideas on our own blogs (in case our audiences don’t overlap entirely).
So, here’s to hoping that someone in the space advocacy community decides to abandon the bulletin board form of discussion and move to community blogs with promotion. We need to find a way to harness so much of the creative energy that is expended every day on Space Advocacy issues. Remember, it’s not because we lack the technology or the money to get into space. Some day, someone (or a collaborative group like that on Daily Kos) will think of a way to sell space exploration to the public that will finally work.
Some good ideas, I think - I will have to check out the Daily Kos when I get back. There is already a sort of Darwinian competition for the survival and promotion of ideas on the web, with bloggers being in some sense “low on the food chain.” Maybe this is a way to evolve this into a more effective “organism,” to build strength in numbers, though this does detract somewhat from the free-wheeling “anything I want to discuss” aspect of blogging, even if the audience is small and the shelf-life short. But I will definitely give this some thought.
BTW, something just reminded me of the Ender books, where “genius kids” writing political opinion pieces “on the net” under aliases (Demosthenes and Locke) end up influencing world opinion and even policy (on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, I mean a kid). I used to think that was nonsense, but maybe mechanisms evolving from blogging will result in influential (or more influential) interest groups, or even charismatic individuals, being able to really make a difference, at least in selected areas.
-Bruce
Bruce,
I’m sure the software to operate sites like Daily Kos are widely available, and probably mostly free. I am not quite qualified to do it myself, nor do I have the time at this point in my career, otherwise I very much would do it. But I would love to participate, and I would move much of my space posting to such a site, maybe just republishing or linking here.
Peter and Valentine in Ender’s Game influenced my thinking quite a bit. The idea that an individual can shape world events is very powerful to me.
In my younger days (read: freshman at college), I remember reading a summary of Arnold Toynbee’s historical theory of civilizations. In it he presented the whole of written history as the rise and fall of civilizations based merely on how they respond to external challenges. His main idea was that civilizations that rise up to respond to challenges advance and spread, and those that do not decline.
Toynbee’s theories really disheartened me for a while, because it suggested that history is not created by the proactive, or those that would seek to expand civilization’s boundaries, but by the reactive. It de-emphasized the importance of historical figures, suggesting the aggregate response was what determined fates.
I’ve since snapped out of that a little bit, back then I had too much respect for a well-worded argument I guess. I now feel that individuals play a crucial role in the success of a venture, or of a society. I fundamentally believe that the future of our civilization lies in the stars, and that is the proactive message of positive change that I am devoting much of my efforts to spreading. I’m not saying that I’m a “Demosthenes” or “Locke” from Ender’s Game, but I hope to be part of a group of individuals that together have that kind of influence.
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The Daily Kos site is running Scoop. I thought it sounded familiar from your description. Al Differ has set up a Scoop site over at Frontier Files Online. It does not have terribly high traffic at the moment, but perhaps this could be the forum you’re looking for.
I visited Frontier Files Online and it looks very much like the kind of site I’ve been looking for. It is missing the feature that allows voting on diary entries allowing promotion, but the volumes are so low at this point that it’s not really too important maybe. I’m going to keep an eye on the site and consider posting some of my space related entries over there. Thanks!