data would be constantly fed, digested, and reflected back to millions of personal computers to be visualized and analyzed by countless people for countless purposes.

Fuller and Gelernter described a common vision: that technology has made it possible for individuals to apprehend the world and its activities as a single system. For the first time, the slogan "Think globally, act locally" can cease to be a vague platitude and instead become the modus operandi of a more rational and humane world.

The maturing of the Internet, plus new distributed database technologies and peer-to-peer (P2P) networking have brought us to the threshold of a true "Information Commons," capable of achieving this vision. The Civium Foundation, as an endowed not-for-profit Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), international in scope, will set in motion the fulfillment of this vision. Its mission is to:
(a) Set in order the basic facts of the world;
(b) Make them freely available to all as part of the human commonwealth;
(c) Develop this resource as a venue for collaborative exploration, creation, and recreation.

The Opportunity
A vast amount of “public” information exists. But, most of it resides in scattered "data silos"--isolated and often poorly-designed web pages that sometimes feel more like lock boxes than efficient media for sharing.

The stunning success of Wikipedia bears witness to what can be accomplished by diverse, loose knit individuals, given the right technology and a modicum of organization. But it and similar efforts are essentially literary in nature: their end result is not a model of the world, but rather a set of documents—very useful for human perusal, but unsuited as a reliable infrastructure upon which to build a rational future.

The so-called “Semantic Web”, albeit intended to address this deficiency, represents local hill climbing from ad hoc, poorly architected systems, largely uninformed by even basic design-science principles.

It is time to move past pre-scientific approaches to this issue.

Our challenges are technical, social, and political. We must:

• maximize information liquidity: the ability for information to flow freely to where and when it is needed. For deep reasons, today’s client-server Web, backed by relational databases, exhibits very poor liquidity. In contrast, P2P networks (with small chunks of data replicated in widely distributed data stores) are intrinsically liquid. Unfortunately, P2P has become associated with such legally questionable activities as music “sharing”. Moreover, commercial interests often see P2P as a threat to prevailing business models that depend on the localization of data assets in tightly controlled databases.



• develop a consistent, persistent world model. The Web today is a medium for sharing fragmented bits of ephemera. Information on a page remains available only as long as its owner remains motivated to maintain that page, which often is not long. In contrast, traditionally published texts comprise a highly persistent, self-correcting, cumulative space of deeply cross-referenced documents. On the Web, hypertext links inevitably go "dead" sooner or later. But a print citation rarely does.
  
  Civium employs an information architecture and database technology in which: (a) All structures are layered upon small, modular units of information (called “U-forms”), each with a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID); (b) ownership of sets of data is separated from ownership of data items themselves; (c) massive P2P replication guarantees independence from central infrastructure and censorship threats and maximizes persistence; (d) cryptographic signatures ensure data integrity and proper attribution; (e) metadata such as provenance, change history, etc, can be maintained at unprecedented granularity. The ability to do time-series analysis is integral.



• reverse the erosion of the public domain. Information entering the Commons will in no case bear greater restrictions than those demanded by its contributor. It will actively advocate for the public domain and will favor open sources when available.

Background
I am a research psychologist and psycholinguist, (Ph.D. Cornell, 1981). Jeff Senn is a Computer Scientist and Electrical Engineer (B.S. Carnegie-Mellon, 1988). We have for nearly 20 years led a team in an effort to develop a science-based model of Information Centric computing-seeking comprehensive design patterns encompassing hardware, software, information architecture, interaction design, and visualization. The work has been done at MAYA Design, an interdisciplinary R&D consultancy-under the project name “Visage”-largely funded by DARPA. In 1998, we spun-out Maya Viz to commercialize Visage-led by the late Steve Roth, a founder of the field of Information Visualization.

From Weaponry to Livingry
A striking and unplanned series of events led to the technology’s deployment to Baghdad in 2004 (http://tinyurl.com/2qm2g5) under the name “Command Post of the Future”. It received DARPAs highest awards and is now a program of record in the DOD. In 2005, Maya Viz was sold to General Dynamics (http://tinyurl.com/3ymgjc), under terms that reserve for MAYA the rights to use Visage for the development of Civium.

We are committed to moving beyond military application. We now have the technical resources, the legal rights, and the financial means to dedicate Visage and our efforts to the success of the planet. In 1997 I co-founded 3-Rivers Connect, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit, to prototype the Commons in the region. Its efforts have received national attention. We are ready for the next step.

Comprehensive/Ecologically Responsible
Our work comprises two rigorous models: The Information Device Architecture (IDA) for modeling physical computation devices; and the Visage Information Architecture (VIA), which deals with abstract patterns of information.

Fuller’s strong sense of “system” and the concept of “frequency” as the dimension of recursive decomposition toward primitive structures led to our pervasive use of universally identified “u-forms” in IDA and recursively-defined “Infotrons” in VIA. The u-form/infotron contrast is one of many examples of parallel application of design patterns in the device/information (or, “physical/metaphysical”, if you will) realms.

Also key is Herb Simon’s notion of “nearly-decomposable systems” (see “The Architecture of Complexity”, in Sciences of the Artificial, 1969). To build information systems that scale without limit, the use of patterns that support low but non-negligible interactions among subsystems is necessary.

Finally, our Information Centric visualization model is deeply informed by the work of psychologist James J. Gibson, whose work on “Ecological Perception” has been crucial to creating a collaborative visualization environment to empower non-experts to perceive and explore patterns and trends at a global scale.

Anticipatory
The sum result of these techniques is a “place” to put the world’s public data: A place controlled by no one; that will outlive any single agenda or physical database; and will comprise a transparent, fully-public, trustworthy record of the choices we make. The approach carefully anticipates a future of “pervasive computing”—it is designed to become simpler and more robust, not more complex and fragile, as computing becomes more distributed.

Replicable
The Commons will scale without bounds because it is built upon simple, ecological principles that can be verified and reasoned about. And, by its very nature, no one’s permission is needed to use, annotate, or contribute data. Competing implementations are legal and encouraged. The core visualization platform (Visage) will be available for free download.

Verifiable
Over the past 18 years, numerous implementations of Visage have been built and externally validated. For example, in controlled experiments on CPoF, DARPA has measured a 400% improvement of situational understanding (http://tinyurl.com/2w5hd4 page 40). The Human Services project finished among the top 10 of Infoworld’s “Top 100 IT projects of 2006” (http://tinyurl.com/35fdu7). All Commons data are—by deep design—fully exposed to public scrutiny and accountability.

Achievable
This is not an early-stage project. All of our basic premises, both technical and pragmatic, have been well-validated in real-world contexts and at realistic scales. The challenge now is universal adoption.

The plan for Civium is as follows:
1) All core specifications will be placed in the public domain
2) I will personally lead a national fundraising effort to raise an initial endowment of $20M
3) This fund will be restricted—only net revenue from the endowment will be available for operations, ensuring at least basic services in perpetuity
4) MAYA will license all necessary technologies to Civium without cost
5) Initially I will personally lead Civium. I am fortunate enough to be able to do so without drawing a salary

At the core will be a data group to maintain the Commons information space. Around this will accrue secondary activities (funded by project-based grants rather than endowment), including R&D, special projects such as on-line exhibitions, and a visiting scholars program.

We are not naive about the difficulties of this plan. I have launched three successful businesses and have served on numerous non-profit boards (including as chair of the Bayer Center for Non-Profit management). Endowments are not easy to fund, but the logic behind this one is clear to many people, and I have every confidence of success.

Trimtab
If we are fortunate enough to win this competition, we will use the entire prize money (and more importantly, the prestige and publicity) to seed the endowment’s fundraising effort. We will turn $100K into $20M, and turn that into a core staff funded in perpetuity. With that, we will set in motion the fulfillment of an important piece of Fuller’s long, clear vision.

Links
Project: http://tinyurl.com/2bshrk
Technical: http://tinyurl.com/ywyf2m