Peer to Peer Distributed Social Networking

Person to person, one day at a time, one sentence at a time, one word at a time. Get organized. Do not expect the Democrat party to do this for you. The Democratic party is just a network. People exist in multiple networks. Think outside the box and think outside the Democratic party network. We are united by our values and within the Democratic party network many individuals have the same goals. Talk to people. Form friendships and relationships with people not just in the Democratic party, but with all progressives in general. Progressives as a group to be stronger must be united. United across all networks. When you go to work, or to school you enter a new network, a new system. Progressives are in each of those systems. Help your fellow progressives and be united. Hire progressives, work with progressives, and stop competiting with yourselves when you don't have to. By helping other progressives you are also helping yourself by helping people who have the same goals or values as you. By helping them you promote these values and you make the future world you aim for more likely to be brought to life.

Progressives share a reality, and they share a dream, while details of this dream may differ from person to person, the core of this dream is shared. So do what you can to make that dream a reality. Help those who help others. Help people who have values you share. Get closer to people who know and care about. Try to make life better for yourself AND everyone around you. If progressives can manage to unite, organize, and help each other as a team, they can win. Just like the new england patriots through teamwork win superbowls. Just like the boston redsox through teamwork won the world series against the yankees. In sports, having really good players is not the way to win games. I think this applies to everything. Having really rich people, really good players, really powerful players, this wont win the game. The team which wins the game is the team which works best with each other and not against each other. So just rely on sports, ants, p2p networks online, anything, any network, any system even the human body itself, grows in power as each node in the system works better with each node. By working better with your neighbors you become stronger, we become strong, and our team becomes stronger. In the human network, each human is a node. Every node has a set of properties. Every node acts as an agent in a network. Every node in a network can communicate with other nodes. Every node can create a network of nodes. Each network of nodes can connect to other networks and combine to create bigger networks. Human networking is a core component in human to human networking. Peer to peer networking just like human to human networking requires communication between nodes. By refining the message you increase the quality of communication between nodes, but this is not enough. You must communicate your values consistantly, in different ways, in whatever job you do. You can't just speak louder (big tv ads), you have to be a living advertisement. Your words have to match up with what you do. Then you can communicate in two ways, in words and in actions. Progressives need to begin to connect the networks. If this were the internet then its as if everyone is thinking only the political network is the tool of change. The church is also a network. School is also a network. The workplace is also a network. In each of these places you, a node, exists. If you only act in one network you wont be able to influence as much than as if you act in all your networks. If the progressive team wants to win this game they need to actually play ball. This means in every system or network not just the obvious political influence point.

•  Don't stop at progressives

  Progressives should spend time cultivating relationships with others in our communities who may not be progressives.

  We need to stop being some amorphous "other" that the wingers can point to as some kind of societal boogey man. The only way to counter that is to be real to people who aren't ordinarily part of our lives.

  It could be as simple has having the blue plate special at the counter of the local diner a couple days a month.  Join in the conversation.

  by mataliandy on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 09:07:04 PM PDT

  •  Yes

    But that is connecting. Connecting your network to another network so that both networks gain influence.

    by Lucian on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 09:26:50 PM PDT

  •  check it out

    http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7712.html
    http://shows.vyzygothsgrassyknoll.org:8080/nwo.mp3

    by Lucian on Fri Mar 11, 2005 at 10:06:51 PM PDT

    •  You'll probably appreciate this

      http://joi.ito.com/static/emergentdemocracy.html

      P-to-P is, I believe, the most effective way to empower the edge, also known as the grassroots.

      The biggest challenge is figuring out how to keep the people on the edges from forming silos. Once people start networking, how do you keep them from falling back into preferred networks?

      by mataliandy on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 12:01:19 AM PDT

•  thanks for pointing this out

  in your comment on my diary

  I might note that my use of dailykos is a form of peer to peer networking   ---   there are quite a few people directly or indirectly involved in the processes of K-12 Public Education, so my diaries on education often serve as stimuli to provoke further exchanges, as did the diary today (Sat.  3/12).

  by teacherken on Sat Mar 12, 2005 at 01:51:14 PM PDT

•  The Labels

  I'm not a big fan of labels, but when it comes to a large organization some uses of terminology can be very handy. For instance: The Progressive Democratic Wing Democratic Faith Wing Young Democrats for Education If we begin to align all of our progresive projects and groups under the Democratic heading from the very start we have a much greater shot of unifying people at election time. It will also enable Dems to belong to a subgroup which represents them more, which will make them more active and bring others in.

  by goplies on Sun Mar 20, 2005 at 01:11:56 AM PDT