Dear Geek

Remember your mom warning you about total strangers addressing you? In particular about middle aged men? I hope not.

Well, hi there. I just wanted to tell you that you have to save the world, because, you know, nobody else will - or can for that matter. I know that is kind of tough, you being a geek and all. But it has always been like this. Geeks prefer to be left alone but end up changing the way we live. Ever heard about this guy Laozi or Confucius? I bet Jesus was also a Geek, that or just crazy - tough distinction that one. Copernicus and Galileo, Da Vinci, Newton, Darwin, Marx, Edison, Freud, Einstein, Oppenheimer, Zuse, Turing, Neumann, RMS, Gates. Geeks.

And now you. So what's the mission? Planet Earth is threatened by the empire of intangible evil. We bastards let children die by the millions, try to wipe out every higher life form in reach (except for some selected lifeforms that can be used in agriculture, experiments, zoos, or factories), eradicate every ancient culture and their achievements, and steam up the boilers to raise the Flood that will cleanse the traces of these crimes that nobody committed. Yes, that's right, that is the best part: it is nobodies fault, the ``world'' just happens to work that way.

When the survivors stare back at history with glazed eyes, blinking away tears of rage, not comprehending how that could happen, all they see is us, staring into the future with glazed eyes, blinking away tears of frustration, not comprehending how this can happen. Not knowing what one human could do. Because one human can do so very little. Therefore we have to become many, we have to organize!

[the sound of air escaping that balloon, leaving just a wrinkled hull]

Trouble is, organize we did, and look at the mess! The proven forms of human organization have either failed or led us here into the empire of intangible evil. And that's where you come in. Your mission is to provide an alternative form of organization. The good thing is you're not alone. It's a cooperative MMOG. Each guild develops its own favorite form of organization and looks for followers. People looking for a guild do so on the fair (see section II). And that's one way how the empire of intangible evil might be overthrown - by luring it's constituents into less destructive forms of organizations. The Geek's secret weapon in this quest is modern technology that catalyzes new forms of organization or makes them possible in the first place.

You doubt that approach will lead anywhere? So do I. But until somebody convinces me of another approach I hope this one doesn't do too much evil by itself. The organization of any society can be considered a set of rules. If geeks from around the world can develop the extraordinarily intricate set of rules that makes up GNU/Linux, than you can develop a set of rules for a better society - hopefully with a fraction of the effort. At the very least society is dealing with much more intelligent building blocks than an operating system.

When I started writing this, few people understood the terms blog or wiki. That was only a couple of years ago. Now these tools by themselves have changed the way society is organized. But Wikipedia will not save the world by itself. We will need such tools and others that we haven't thought of yet. But we also need visions of how to employ them to get us out of this mess fast.

Let's throw in a bit of meat. I told you it's a MMOG, but no game code has been implemented (like a Website for starters), no players have subscribed. If you are a technical geek, that would be a good starting point.

The kernel of the game engine is the fair, the meta constitution. Any adventurous thinker can tackle that problem, no technical knowledge is required for that. It is not merely a fair, it is also a compatibility layer that allows interoperability of different implementations of human societies. Knowledge of standards development may be an advantage here.

The real fun may be coming up with as many different implementations of society as you can imagine. Some are already there, but I think at least my culture's implementation is incompatible with cultural diversity. Thus it has to be adapted. Adapting your personal favorite ideal to be compatible with other ideals might be a good start to approach this task. Only the final stages of such development may profit from sound judicial knowledge.

I have started working on all these issues. You may find the following positively inspiring. Great, please make it happen, I'll join your guild. You may find it negatively inspiring. Great, please provide an interesting alternative. I believe that diversity will be the only way to success. Monoculture is a central part of the problem.