Chapter 3
As A Story:
A user named Henrietta is told she needs to learn more about Calculus to accomplish her goal of becoming an animator. Options for education are presented, one of which being for a website called Khan Academy. If Henrietta looks at this box of information on her screen but does not move her cursor inside of it, this will be interpreted as Henrietta not wanting this help enough to click on a link. As soon as Henrietta’s cursor enters the box a dial gui pops up on the screen. (It is simply a dial with a label of Level of Assistance. And there was no problem with finding space to put the gui on the page because Henrietta’s Personal setting is for wide margins on the sides of pages.) If Henrietta now moves her cursor out of the assistance box she will notice the dial move past the red tick at 0.5 which showed where she was before and well into 0.63 territory. The options in the box are now presented as a bulleted list. Any images or links are gone.
If Henrietta put her mouse on the dial and spins it more towards the 1.0 direction, the assistance box disappears all together. Should Henrietta wish to change her mind she can wait for the dial to come up naturally again, or can she click on a button that creates the dial by command, or she can go into user settings. It is possible to adjust all settings according to a single 0.0-1.0 value or as a collection of said values. But which settings exist at which numbers is somewhat arbitrary.
How much hand-holding exactly is a 0.3? A user is allowed to set his or her settings to 0.6 on the general assistance scale. But then they could go into settings and select features from the 0.55 level. This will average out to a custom assistance level of 0.598. You see how there are now three digits after the decimal? It is impossible to express User Assistance Settings to a precision of greater than the tenths place without said user selecting specific settings.
Therefore we know for certain that Henrietta’s score of 0.598 is a custom score. A C program would be capable of noticing that this value has crossed the “custom value” threshold and would likewise be able to update the documentation of Henrietta’s Settings. The boolean known as “Custom Assistance Settings” is flipped from holding false to holding true. User Assistance can be adjusted on this one scale with a dial gui; or perhaps with more specific types of user assistance dials which are secretly what the single, larger, more general dial is made up of. Or a User can go right into settings and start fine tuning their experience.
A user can also choose to adjust specific settings in the settings menu, which can be accessed about 12 different ways. (The people who are best at developing realistic synthetic vocal technology will be paid more by Facilitator than by anywhere else. Any users who want better voice synthesis can choose to make this desire explicit on a survey or something. The more people say they want better voice synthesis technology, the more of Facilitator’s research budget is sent to this. Users have various ways of expressing, directly or indirectly, what they want research money to be spent on. Or even the maintenance budget. The users decide where money is spent. The users decide how exactly this decision is made, and one what levels of resolution. In the chain of command, users are individually there own highest order of boss. They direct themselves. From here they interact with the site, and through this interaction authority over the site is distributed in what is collectively considered that best possible way at any given point in time. In this sense users will elect for themselves who, or what, plays various roles of authority in their work.
An author might request that an actual human being be responsible for giving him deadlines, punishing him for missing deadlines, and answering his questions. Such people will be managers. After going through the best possible training for specific types of management and generally proving one is capable of said work (This includes on the job training where one’s early on mistakes are more forgivingly considered) one will be assigned to manage other employees at Facilitator. If you can handle more employees, and if we have more of them who are to be managed, then you will allotted more and more employees. More and more authority. Until you bite off more then you can chew. Because you will be moving up this scale slowly, we will know exactly when you bite off more than you can chew.
In fact, if you want to meet a greater potential, you would allow us to track your progress, in a sense watching you chew, and learn exactly what your best fit is. Every person born into this world has the potential to do a number of things. Some of these things they will enjoy, and a few things they will enjoy immensely. There are some very talented managers who would love nothing more than to manage for 40 hours a week. They can do so. We have opportunities for you to not only work, but learn about what work you might like. Or we facilitate your education so you can accomplish your dream job, as long as you hold sufficient promise. In fact there is now only one person standing in your way, and that is you!
Regarding what the main logo of this website should be: It is similar to that page on reddit which consists of pixels which users can manipulate in real time. The middle of the logo is an open free for all, next “ring” can only be edited by people who are proven to have at least a little skill “drawing” and at be at least somewhat trustworthy. The outermost frame of the logo is updated only by the best of the best. It will change slowly, perhaps all of these brilliant artists will request some kind of committee be formed. This committee is responsible for approving any changes that are made to the size shape or color of this portion of the logo. But regardless of whether they like it or not, the very core of this logo is being updated by anyone and everyone in real time. The fact that some these users will be drawing swastikas or other symbols of hatred is unavoidable. But how big will these symbols be compared to the whole symbol? And how big is the symbol in the context of the website? And how long will that swastika be around before all the do-gooders erase it? Graffiti is nothing to be worried of. Actually the outermost edge of the logo is one of 19 beautiful user generated masterpieces. A user picks one of these for their own personal manifestation of the main logo of this site. These middle people are setting up swirls and other kinds of patterns. And then the middle layer has nineteen main categories, each with 19 sub-categories. In other words, the middle-people-artists have prepared 19 kinds of swirl. They have control over 80% of the detail of these 19 types of swirl. But the other 20% of the detail is public domain.
The artists are allowed to work with programmers to create guis for the public to manifest their will with. Perhaps the artists have, with the coders, created a little toggle. This little toggle varies the sharpness or the blur between the borders of different colors that are being swirled. A jury considers the Beta version of the Public Domain Pattern Detail Analogizer GUI and approves or disapproves of it. Reasons for disapproval must be given. One of these reasons might be something like, “Failure of Artist to give public their 10% fine detail influence.” Back to Henrietta. She clicks the Khan Academy link. Because Facilitator and Khan Academy have a certain kind of deal, the content of their site is being displayed inside of Facilitator. If Henrietta wants a checklist of lessons that must be learned then she need only request this.
(Edited) Excerpt From Harmony
Herein is described a website that I think could make a lot of people a lot of money. The core of this system is Trust. If a user wanted to take a look at the current lyrics of a song which a band is working on, they would likely already have to have contributed to their work. Perhaps such users start out by contributing to anonymous music. If they get lucky and a famous band was secretly the author of what portion of the song was finished when the user happened across it, then that user might end up gaining trust with that band through work that they do. The band would start out by releasing information of little value to a mass number of users. As the users gain trust the information they are given becomes more valuable. There is also an effective authentication system (Encryption.Eye-Scan, Passwords. Google Authenticate type of app, but not really necessarily using Google for anything, ever. )
Users are given trust according to a trust value which is calculated by formulas and programs people get paid to tweak constantly. The value of work is judged collectively through such systems, and perhaps others. If someone was helping a student with Java code for free, perhaps even through a verified Stack Overflow account, they would earn an appropriate amount of trust. But also other things. The code written by anyone could be analysed systematically. A Java program could be written to read Java code and sort it by...complexity or anything else. This way, all of those Java Competency variables can be systematically updated. To really understand a person’s ability to code, simply reading code that they’ve written only gets you so far. Being able to watch them code in real time will offer more information. One might be told that one has a particular weakness with using this or that component of the Java language. If code correctly utilizes inheritance than that could be a sign that its complexity is at least level x. If the code is literally just one if condition and statement than its probably level 1 code.
Another part of the website allows one to submit code one needs help with. A program analyses the code and gives a very specific 7(?) digit code. This code tells users exactly what kind of Java tools you’re messing around with. The user would have had already said if they were a student or employee or coding for fun etc. Appropriate programmers are identified and messaged with this tutor-like opportunity. They will know what kind of work is involved and what they will make.
Some users will want help for free but any assistance they require would be valuable. This possible problem has two solutions. Solution One, some users will help others for free just to earn capability points, trust, or maybe for charity in some instances. Solution Two, The poor user will have options available to them. Maybe if there really are users who can’t be afforded help, then all such users will help each other. Individuals who are stuck in the same boat, so to speak, should be offered the opportunity to communicate with the other inhabitants of said boat.
Here’s an example of why people might be able to earn money from the system even with just a few basic skills. A person’s mere attention may be able to solve problems. Users who create games like the one mentioned in the link below concerning the structure of a retrovirus enzyme may get paid. A creative person makes a game and users play it and then some thing occurs as a result. In this sense wealth isn’t just being distributed but created. Information can always be valuable
http://www.washington.edu/news/2011/09/19/gamers-succeed-where-scientists-fail/