How hard can it be?
Well for a corporation very hard. But fortunately my solution to this problem that seems to be vexing everyone lately doesn’t rely on a corporate sponsor, and places the future of web search in OUR hands.

My vision of search is that each website takes a small share of responsibility, indexing sites that website finds relevant and/or useful and sharing its results with other search engines that request the info via a standard API, much like blogs share feeds using standards such as RSS and ATOM. Each webmaster can control how much weight to give to each set of imported results in comparison to sites it indexes itself and how the results are merged. I have the following basic vision, but as different developers get involved in ironing out the final details of the standard things may change. None the less the basic principles of my idea are as follows:

API:
Each search engine should accept requests in either/both http and/or https, probably with search parameters passed in the query string. The results then get sent back in an standard XML format, which may look something like:

<results source="http://example-search-engine.com">
	<site weight="200" url="http://example-result.org" title="Example Results">
		<favicon url="http://example-result.org/favicon.ico" />
		<page weight="150" url="http://example-result.org/page1.php" title="">
			<match><title>This title contains the search terms</title></match>
			<match><p>This paragraph contains one of the search terms</p></match>
			<match><img src="someimage.jpg" alt="This image description contains one of the search terms" /></match>
		</page>
		<page weight="150" url="http://example-result.org/page2.php">
			<match><p>This paragraph contains one of the search terms</p></match>
		</page>
	</site>
	<site ...>
		...
	</site>
</results>

CMS:
With the API open, different CMS systems can be developed that both index selected sites and process results from other search engines that implement the API. Each CMS can process the results in their own way, and allow the webmaster to configure various options in their own way also. For example, they can either integrate imported results, show them separately in a side panel or some mixture of the two depending on source. They can determine whether to show multiple results for one site or whether to group them. They may be configured to show country of the webserver of each result, or warnings if they appear on a malware list, or any other number of options. They may have options for doing image search, or map results etc, linking to whatever service they choose for these specialist searches.

A basic CMS may involve no login at all, with configuration handled via a file, whilst others may implement the API as a plugin to existing CMS systems such as Wordpress, Elgg, MediaWiki or whatever. Some may allow each logged in user to configure their own preferences and weightings, suggest relevant sites to index, report sites as spam, etc.

Plugins:
More complex dedicated search systems may themselves allow plugins or feature advanced options. This may include scraping results from existing search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo, in the manner that <a href=”https://scroogle”>Scroogle</a> currently does with Google results. Again these results may have weightings applied to them by the webmasters.

Conclusion:
A distributed solution to search means we don’t have to have massive datacenters under our control in order to compete with Google, each of us can take responsibility for indexing portions of the web important to ourselves, and share that data with each other freely for the benefit of all. To make a distributed system work we don’t need to abandon the huge stores of data provided by google until we are ready, we can in the mean time scrape from them, but ultimately a distributed system, based on qualified trust, should prove better at promoting sites that are useful over sites with good SEO but useless content.

Google is becoming less and less useful as each search tends to produce 100 sites all with the same article scraped from wikipedia, interspersed with adfarms, and I can’t help think such sites wouldn’t make it to prominence in the distributed model, as it won’t be in any webmasters interest to index useless sites. Unlike google who actually profit from many of the adfarms that host google advertisements. But yet despite this I fail to see why Microsoft or Yahoo would prove better, as both also suffer from corrupt corporate agendas. Rather than looking for another closed top-down corporate ’saviour’ to rescue us from the latest tyrant, I believe a bottom up emergent approach can prove not only successful, but also something that will become the dominant means of doing search.

Doesn’t this exist already?
Often when I come up with a good idea, I’m not surprised to find that something like it already exists.  However I can’t find anything quite like this idea at present, although some similar Peer-to-Peer based systems exist, such as FAROO and YaCy.  However I don’t see P2P as quite the solution, as this involves each user installing software on their own computer.  My proposed web based model lacks this requirement and thus has quite a few advantages, without precluding the idea of programs users can install that integrate searches from various sites.  Also, the above proposed model precludes the ability for malicious links to be injected, as webmasters who index such sites will unlikely be trusted by others, and users will likely not use engines that fail to exclude such links.

For some time I have documented the spread of Open Source Sorcery by starting a page in the KIAwiki just for that specifically.  This followed the spread of the Open Source movement in computing that believed in sharing the code that programs ran on to allow community feedback on parts of the code that needed improving.  Some Open Source licenses went further, releasing code on permissive licenses that allowed for branching, or even protected the code so that all branches need to be released on the same license.

As the buzz word grew some new occult groups formed and adopted the term.  Mainly they seem to have used it to mean open participation, or that the rituals, theories and other writings of the group are made public, albeit often on a still restrictive license.  Sometimes without even permission for others to republish.

Others however have begun wiki projects with licenses such as the GNU Free Documentation License or Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.  These licenses qualify not just as Open Source, but moreso as Free Cultural Works.  These can be copied, modified and redistributed, by others, provided they give credit and provided they use the same license for the work they release it as a part of.  There is no restriction on commercial use, but exploitation is protected against by the Share Alike license.  If some Hollywood producer were to try and use some clips from a CC AT SA film, they would have to release their whole film on that license, or pay the copyright holders of the clip for rights to use it without those terms.  But if somebody wants to use it on a blog with an advertising banner, no problem.

Wikipedia and other projects show the power behind the kind of collaborative approach that a Free Cultural Works can provide in the realm of reference texts.  The GNU/Linux operating system and most of the software that runs on it demonstrate the power of this approach in writing software.  Less well known projects such as Kaltura video are forming and will in time demonstrate the power of this approach in the realm of film, soundtracks and other creative projects.

With this in mind I started a page in the KIA wiki called ‘Free Cultural Sorcery‘, which is an attempt to catalogue those open source sorcery projects that opperate on a Free Cultural Works approved license. Projects that I organise that fit with this definition include the content on this blog (excluding the nest which remains copyright of its contributors), the KIA wiki, and now the films on alchemical.tv.

For the latter, I am hoping to draw together artists, musicians, script writers and film makers willing to collaborate on Free Cultural Sorcery film projects.  Whether or not others join us, Lolita Perdurabo and I will be working on such projects in any case…

A while ago, about the time KIA was entering version 4 I wrote an article giving a history of KIA’s progress, entitled ‘KIA Network, Forum and Wiki Integrated‘. I mostly intended this as a promotional announcement about how KIA had evolved to encompass a social network, a forum and a wiki with single sign on (a big achievement for me at the time, as I’d been planning it for years), but I also gave a look back on how KIA had got to where it was back then, including its logo history and name changes.

One of the things about KIA has always been its openness, and whilst I am not aware of anyone taking advantage of it yet, the fact the logos are released as creative commons, means anyone so inclined can take them in modified or unmodified form, and use them in their own projects (provided they release any modifications and redistributions on the same license). This was to facilitate the growth of KIA as a decentralised movement that didn’t revolve solely around activities on kiamagic.com. However this hasn’t happened as far as I’m aware, and I’m left wondering if its even necessary. Probably a valuable contribution regardless of necessity.

The reason is that free open occult network already exists and doesn’t need to revolve around any particular image, flag or name in order to exist. KIA can be seen as a small part, or node, within an already existing open occult network that spans all cultures across the globe. Another such node within this network might be Free Illuminism (aka Congregational Illuminism). This describes itself as a bottom-up, decentralised open system, non-hierarchical and non-authoritarian. They say that by doing away with hierarchy, they do away with the pointless politics that can prove so much distraction in the work. They say they have ‘an ever-growing number of sincere and dedicated Illuminists who have voluntarily come together in free association with each other to work in unity, openness and peace.’ This sounds good to me, and rather in tune with what KIA has been trying to achieve since its inception. To me, KIA and Free Illuminism seem eminently compatible, to the extent they seem like different names for the same thing.

Other examples include the growing number of open source occult resources and wiki’s on various occult subjects that can share content with each other via permissive licenses.

Perhaps the importance of KIA within that network relates to the importance of what we do together within it. How well it delivers something of value to its participants given the effort of their contributions. This of course leads to the question ‘what do we consider something of value?’ We may have to answer that each for ourselves, but to really take things forward some kind of consensus on where to from here may need to be reached. This may include common esoteric projects as well as simply developing more features for the website. Back in its early days, KIA didn’t shy away from big collaborative rituals that spanned the world. This may or may not be what we are looking for today.

Another thing I have been looking into lately is the idea of hosting user websites on subdomains of kiamagic.com. The idea behind this was not so much to monetise KIA but to raise a fund that could be used to develop KIA further. This would likely be in the form purchasing the development of plugins for Elgg, which KIA would release on a GPL license. I have ideas for not yet existing plugins that would be great not just for KIA, but for all Elgg websites, but I don’t have the time develop these myself, nor the money to pay for them. Which is why I got the idea of a development fund. Of course, subdomain websites are not the only means by which money can be raised for this. I conceived of it as a way of giving something back to those that contribute.

Some of my more observant readers will have already noticed the new look I’ve give this website. The previous design lasted for nearly a year and I was generally quite proud of it, but felt the time had come for some improvements. Hopefully most of you like the new look.

The new look has actually been live on this website for the last couple of weeks, but I’ve only just finished tidying up the last few issues with the new look tonight, one year, one month and one day after publishing the first article on this site, Open Source Democracy.

I will also consider exchanging links with other magical related websites and blogs, but I reserve the right to say no. There are websites out there that I just plain disagree with…

If any of you have any constructive criticism concerning the new look, I would appreciate if you left a comment. Thanks!

I’ve noticed some discussions on irreality.net about sharing culture, which usually revolved around justifications for music piracy and stuff.  Now I’ve got nothing against music piracy.  Many a band I own on vinyl and cd, and have attended concerts of, I first listened to on pirate tapes made for me by friends.  Sometimes I didn’t even like the music until I’d heard it a few times.  Some music really does need to grow on you.  So I’m not down on piracy or anything.  I think many bands whose music is not immediately accessible have benefited from piracy.  Its corporate capitalism that’s killing music, not home taping.

But this article is not about piracy, or even musicians that are giving their music away for free, but rather a more relevant movement to the culture of sharing.  I am talking about Open Source and Creative Commons.

Open Source software, especially Free Software (free as in libre, as well as in beer), has been incredibly successful so far, and is continuing to grow and challenge previously complacent corporate software monoploies for dominance.  Most of the web is hosted on the Open Source apache webhost for example.

I am writing this article on a GNU/Linux PC (an open source operating system) and using the open source Mozilla Firefox web browser.

What is open source?  Well at the basic level it means that the source code is open for to all see.  But proper open source software is released on a license that allows that source code to be reused and modified by other open source projects.  In the case of some licenses, such as Apache and FreeBSD (the open source OS used as the basis for Mac OS X), the license also allows for non open source derivatives to be reproduced.  Essentially it is a challenge to the existing copyright paradigm by presenting a freer alternative.  Ironically these licenses are built upon and rely upon the very copyright laws they are challenging.  But this doesn’t make them less useful.

A number of sorcery and magick related groups have adopted the open source banner, sometimes just to mean their rituals are public, but at other times adopting rather more of the open source philosophy and methodology in the sharing and developing of ideas.  This includes the KIA Illuminated Adepts, which has a wiki article listing those open source sorcery groups we’ve discovered so far.  This includes key23/key64, The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn, SourceryForge and frequency23.

Creative Commons is a movement to extend this philosophy into the realm of art, photography and other creative pursuits.  I have already released all the internal illustrations from the books Chaos Monkey and Kaos Hieroglyphica on Creative Commons licenses and plan to release more.  The KIA logos, current and historical are also available on these licenses.  These images can be found in my deviant art gallery.  Not everything in there has been released on said license, but good portion has been.

I am very interested to see what other creatives are able to do in terms of derivations on these works.  The license I have chosen allows derivations, allows commercial works, but requires that the new image be released with the same license.

I have just finished reading my first ever on-line book from the Project Gutenburg library. Well, more like a pamphlet really, but inspiring none the less. It was Open Source Democracy by Douglas Rushkoff. I came across it searching on the title. I’d never actually heard of it, and although the authors name is familiar to me, I can’t actually remember where I’ve come across it in the past. Probably several places.

His argument is about how new knowledge emergent, or bottom-up, organisation, such as one might find in chaos mathematics, the behaviour of coral colonies and perhaps more importantly considering the pamphlet title the Open Source Software movement, will eventually impact and revitalise democracy, returning power and participation to the people. This knowledge will in largely be experiential. In that we as individuals have slowly gained control over the spectacle of media. With the advent of of television, we were passive viewers of a strange ‘magic’. Remote controls, video recorders, camcorders all played their part in giving us more control and power over what we watched. Finally video games, computers and the internet played their share in reducing our attention to corporate and government controlled centralised programming and allowed us to use media as a means of communication. As people get used to the participatory nature of the web, they will start to realise how unresponsive the current democratic system is. This, he argues, is why participation in elections are falling. Apparently though, people will start to demand a more participatory democratic experience, rebuilding it in such a way as to make it more responsive.

The actual argument is slightly more complex than my brief summary, and well worth a read in full if you have time. It is not my intent to reproduce it here. I have my own argument to add…

The reason I was searching on the term was because I had an idea. And the term ‘Open Source Democracy’ summed up that idea. I wanted to see if anyone had already thought of it. Rushkoff is heading in the right direction, but falls short of the idea that came to mind. Although I might be one of the people he mentions that will rewrite the rules. That’s not a role I object to playing! So I shall put my idea out there right now. The sooner people start building towards the realisation of this idea the better really…

My idea was at first a reaction against the take over of democracy by corporate closed source electronic voting systems, with no paper trail, verifiability or accountability. Of course, being a software engineer, I realised the problem was not with electronic voting, but with trusting the building and running of electronic voting systems to closed source and unaccountable corporations. After all, with old paper voting systems, we wouldn’t have trusted a private company to count the votes in secret. Yet this is effectively what we allow electronic voting companies to do today. Whether they have actually abused their position yet is besides the point. They shouldn’t be given the power to do so in the first place.

Why would an Open Source e-voting system be different? For one thing, it would allow the public to see the source code and submit improvements, meaning better security, ensured anonymity of voters, and guaranteed accuracy. Any flaws in the system would be spotted and corrected without vested interests hiding the flaws for fear of losing profits.

But why stop there? Such a system has the potential to do so much more than simply recreate the paper based system. We could rethink democracy and make it much more responsive and participatory. Here is my idea for a new democratic system:

1. Every member of society can register as a voter, and must be uniquely identifiable to prevent voting fraud from duplicate voting counts.

2. Voters can also register as a candidate, with their own personal manifesto, and if they have them details of party allegiances.

3. Voters can register and change their support for candidates at any time. Via a secure website systems, local public booths or where available via a traditional paper ballot.

4. The position of every candidate is clear at every stage of the voting process, so voters can see whether they feel the need to back a different horse.

5. At the beginning of each month, week, day or even hour depending on the model required, the top n candidates are awarded seats, where n is the number of seats.
6. Seat holder with the most backers gets to propose the agenda for the next debate, and the other seat holders are given a set amount of time to prepare counter arguments before the debate starts.

7. After all the debate, amendments to the proposal by the lead seat holder must be declared, and each successive seat holder may propose an alternative option to the proposal.

8. Seat holders then vote on the proposal and the alternative options, using a single transferable vote.

9. Each seat holder represents the total backers they currently hold, which may be different from the total they had when they were first selected. In this way, everyone gets to vote on each proposal, not just the seat holders.

Well, at the moment it is little more than a pipe dream. And I would add some caveats to prevent the system from being taken over by tyrants. This reflects that I do not stop at support for Open Source, but take things one step further by supporting the principles of the Free Software Foundation.

First, all truly democratic systems have limits on the power of the government over its people. Most people recognise freedom of speech as an important cornerstone of democratic liberty. However, I extend this to suggest complete individual sovereignty in matters of mind, body and soul. Not only should it be beyond the remit of government to violate an individuals sovereignty, it should be considered treason against democracy for them to make an attempt to do so, resulting in an immediate ban from candidacy at the very least.

Of course, it would be good to see this system developed and tested in experimental communities before attempting to introduce it for a real government, so that any flaws in my proposal or the initial implementations of it, can be ironed out. But I think I have come up with a basic blue print for advancing on the road to a better and freer society that early democratic efforts set us upon. Later I would like to see the system tested in a real governmental situation. With all the controversy over the House of Lords reforms in the UK, our parliaments second house might well prove to be the ideal testing ground.

The UK government has already started the Open Source Academy to promote the use of cost saving Open Source Software in local government and with the Conservative Party already promising a level playing field for Open Source Software in the UK, the early signs of political momentum building in this direction are already there. But the nature of emergent behaviour politics is such that we have to build it from the bottom up rather than waiting for the powers that be to do it for us.