To
Contents Page...................................................................................................................................................................................To
Proposal Page
An Introduction to WISdom
WISdom's Commonality of Vision and Values:
Community
and Consumers,
Not
Corporatism and Consumerism
Cooperatives Beat Big Box for Consumers!
The December 2000 special edition of the NCBA Cooperative Business Journal is an appropriate lead into this proposal. "Big box" retail brick and mortar superstores (e.g., Wal-Mart which outsells all e-commerce by 4 to 1 as of 02-03) stores are just too big to be really be convenient for consumers, and they present the specter of local area monopoly. This proposal will address the "big/complex" problem with a simple, convenient "find what you want fast" type of user interface to the WISdom Network directory and Virtual Specialties Markets, thus creating a bigger but far more easily accessible box, and it is proposed to fight fire with fire by creating a consumers' monopoly in e-commerce. The WISdom network can offer local members and other consumers virtually unlimited choices of goods, services, and information, on the member's desired delivery date and times, and at or below current market prices.The WISdom Proposal specifies consumer goods and services purchasing cooperatives at the metro area/regional and national levels, serving local (zip code) area network service businesses that can be either franchised for-profit businesses or, preferably, local area consumer cooperatives. A virtual private network with a unified software interface to consumers is proposed, enabling cooperative e-commerce to show itself as clearly superior to anything even achievable by consolidated big business.
Although this proposal is not radical technically, it is radical in that it would ferment a (bloodless?) revolution in Internet consumer commerce, Intranet culture, and beyond. Consumers need to think outside the box! The WISdom Network is not seen as a panacea in itself, but rather as a universal infrastructure within which many of the world's social, economic, political and technical problems can be more effectively addressed.
This proposal would be likely to result in a mixture of consumer cooperatives and for-profit businesses at the local (zip code) area level, at least during the ramp-up of this consumers' natural monopoly networked business to "critical; mass", which is expected to occur before one half market saturation at the national level, wherever that first national roll out may be.
Assumption: At least theoretically, the consumer can evaluate more possible purchases better and more conveniently than any amount of seeing and handling the physical consumer goods or browsing of available services and information can offer. Electronic ordering is preferable to physical selection even when done in store, as in the use of ordering kiosks. And the goods can be delivered on your schedule. So, why isn't e-commerce the dominant form? Partly because it hasn't been practiced properly at the consumer's local area. And partly because it is practiced in such various ways, with a mass of "proprietary" websites, that both the open internet experience itself, from user logon thru logoff, and e-commerce have no single "face" to trust, except maybe Microsoft's desktop (and usually their browser), SBC/Yahoo's internet portal, and Amazon.com's as the would-be Master Consumer E-commerce Proprietor.
Psychologists tell us that, in general, women as "gatherers" like to browse and take their time checking out the available merchandise and frequently overspend, while men as "hunters" don't like to "mess around" but usually prefer to "get it over with quickly". Both men and women will find browsing and shopping environments on the WISdom Network that are fun and perhaps even addictive, but men will probably like WISdom best, because of its "no-nonsense" VSM ReSearch and Analysis facilities, which enable BPEL standardized WISdom Co-op member services.
Recent research indicates that relatively affluent Americans shop for the experience of indulgence, not for necessities. This trend would be countered by the WISdom Network.
A lot of consumers are waiting until they can have "a computer that they can Talk with as a Trusted, Helpful Servant". I do not mean to imply that they are Luddites. They "know it's coming", and they don't want adjust themselves and their lifestyles to temporary expedients!Business in general is finally showing productivity increases due to computerization, because business is no longer merely mimicking previously manual processes But consumers are still having to spend too much time and money doing chores like shopping for goods and/or services or information. Actually e-commerce still comprises a small percentage of consumer goods and services, and the entire Web experience keeps deteriorating rather than improving. How can we help fulfill the internet's promise, and bring the future to ourselves, faster and better?
A unified field theory of dot com Failure, and the way up for consumers everywhere:
E-commerce as practiced thus far has not met the most basic consumer requirements of convenient, safe, trustworthy, consumer proprietary control of home and neighborhood computer shopping. Individual proprietors of Web sites have been trying to do something that no for-profit enterprise can do: e-commerce requires software knowledge of the consumer's private information, the more the better for both consumer and provider. But there's the rub - no one in their right mind would trust that information to anyone or anything except a cooperative business of which he is a member/owner. Communications at the level of near-teleportation capabilities is on the horizon, but he relative physical location of communicants is of interest to group members, and the location of services facilities will always be of concern, and is of major importance in distribution and procurement-oriented communications networks. Inadequate consideration for this currently exists on the open internet, and proper consideration would only be paid by locally and regionally cooperating members who own the business.Online Trust any other way is a compromise. Maximum Trust requires individualized group control powers.Distribution Networks are about the Perceived Context of Interaction, i.e., the Relationships of the Players!
Perhaps the biggest problem with internet e-commerce is the lack of a comprehensive, complete and easily accessible directory of all consumer goods and services including information.Naturally consumers are wary of remote merchants, but in this historic case when computers and the open internet are not trusted by anybody, avoidance has been a rational alternative for most. And, as currently practiced, e-commerce and internet Web Services computing has no chance of reaching sustainable "Consumer Information Services Nirvana", when/where business processes are controlled via BPEL by WISdom Co-op members, and the provider of consumer information guarantees information reliability, and will be morally, and perhaps legally, liable for inadequate information about anything! I believe that this is attainable by consumer cooperative efforts now!
"Proprietors" are replaced with network interface software and locally acountable cooperative services. A major source of distrust is eliminated. This level of privacy, security, and trustworthyness is only available to consumers as members of the WISdom Co-op!Why isn't TV obsoleted by computers as nodes on a network? Bandwidth, due for a leap soon (6-04). Will the network go the way of TV, with proprietary broad/narrow casting, and reult in a new kind of wasteland with novelties? Who owns the network?
The widespread prescription of anti-depressants indicates "anger turned inward" syndrome is rampant in the free world. I believe we know that we could do something basic much better, that something very basic is wrong, but we're not sure what it is or how to change it, so we're mad with ourselves.
"Unsafe at Any Speed"
.
Piece work for knowledge workers and seekers?
or network information pollution?Amazon.com makes a good bookstore!........Rejoice!XML can transform it into a "universal service" for other on-line retailers,
but WISdom Network can serve their customers much better. Amazon.com sure can't match WISdom Network's Services!
....................................................A Consumers' Declaration of Independence
and
a Paradigm Shift to
WISdom.Co-op.InterDependence!
The major problem with e-commerce on the Web is that it retains an ages old real world relationship between consumers and providers as proprietors of retail stores that the consumer must "enter" to shop for goods and/or services and to complete transactions. This relationship has always put the provider/proprietor at an advantage vis-a-vis the consumer. The consumer is on (actually, "in") the proprietor's territory, and every proprietor's website is different, even, or especially when the providers directly compete, making member-customized comparison of offerings awkward, even requiring the use of notes, etc. as short-term memory.
Much as in the physical world, the unspoken message is "Come into my website, said the Web spider to the consumer". Of course, once the consumer is in the store, the pitch is on, but proprietors spend a lot of money trying to disguise their intent. The resulting marketplace velvet pressures consumers to BUY something and providers to SELL something, but, even with the best of intentions, individual provider/proprietors would not be able to approach the scale, scope, and quality of member services available with the WISdom Network. Web search engine results are not much more than a mere mimicry of physical shopping at stores and almost all radio, television or print media.Under the "proprietary website" approach, impulse buying is further coaxed by reasonable consumer thoughts like, "I might as well look around and buy whatever I want while I'm in here, since shopping (despite its tendency to become an addiction) is so much of a necessary chore", or "I'll read the ads while I'm here if they are pitching something I might want to indulge in", etc. Retail merchants, including master e-commerce merchants, like this situation of course, but the open internet e-commerce consumer is not really much better off than he was with "brick and mortar" shopping, and is frequently less safe at home than in physical stores.
Providers have always collected information about their customers, and often they'll sell it to the highest bidder too. In terms of privacy the consumer is now worse off than before e-commerce, because the consumer's personal information that is collectable by proprietors (cookies, sites visited lists, etc.) often results in an invasion of the consumer's privacy. Proprietorship is too often a perversion of the relationship that should exist between consumers as clients and providers as servers.
There is a much better way to do all consumer e-commerce and research. Consumers must realize their existential position, stop submissively accepting their fate, and take legitimate control by actively supporting this proposal that would replace consumer marketplaces with consumer "Cyberealspacetime Virtual Specialties Markets" on their own private network.Compounding this problem is the emergence of a rapidly increasing monopoly in local retail (Wal-Mart). As providers go, Wal-Mart has been beneficial (so far) to consumers, but should consumers ever rely on single sources other than consumer cooperatives? If WISdom Network rates WAL-Mart retail goods unfavorably on its social responsibility index, that may help restrain some monopoly powers, but for-profit monopolies will always be enemies to the WISdom Network.
A single middleman for consumers is required to optimize producer and provider competition for the consumer's dollar. For-profit middlemen are limited by the incompleteness of private customer information that their customers are willing to divulge. Reasonable lack of buyer trust is the limitation of-profit provider/proprietors as middlemen.
Consumers (even more than software) want to be free, and they always demand better treatment!The consumer's situation can be greatly improved by a world wide consumers cooperative's ownership of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) with an intelligent, personalized, trustable VPN Portal as the member's network interface:
The WISdom Prospector
as the members' ONLY way in and around the WISdom Network.
Think outside the Box:
of
commercial
cyberspaceWISdom Network's member "shopping = research" should be fun, and even addictive, but actual buying need not be part of the "kick"; instead of promoting actual buying, the member is encouraged during his Prospector shopping to indicate his interest, preference and tentative or firm plans to purchase in his encrypted client resident MINE. Members can save money by Tentative Orders in MINEs Aggregation to boost the kick of planning consumer goods purchases, instead of buying on credit or impulsively purchasing from pricey local providers. This feature of the WISdom Network may help affected members to kick bad consumer habits and recover from "immediate gratification syndrome"", and it certainly will help with the *WISdom Network's economic order aggregation.
........................................................
Mozilla becomes The Big Appleof Document Centered Computing!
The WISdom Network would create a synergy between physical local communities and virtual community via the "cyberealspacetime" objects called Virtual Specialties Markets (VSMs). The "market molding" capabilities of all cooperative businesses are accelerated and maximized by the WISdom Network's design, and VSMs with The Member as the Proprietor play a central role in a process of establishing and maintaining member trust and loyalty.Taking a peek at the future of the WISdom Prospector platform, WISdom Network members can play Living in DebtTM in virtual reality 3D (rendered in "XVRML") if they feel that this would help get it out of their systems and be fun, by setting up an unlimited line of play credit for unreserved "buying" and "owning" of stuff in CyberUnrealTimeSpace ("the eternal now") VR environments of their own destruction, complete with fancy walk-through houses and cars, ignorable mounting bills, etc. The one with the most extravagant lifestyle and expensive toys on a VR trip wins! On a more serious fun side, the creation and comparison of lifestyles VR environments that can be as detailed with currently available,or even hypothetical, consumer goods and/or services as the lifestyle artist interacts with avatars representing the actual actors (in changeable costumes, and maybe after a physical conditioning program - or just relentlessly accurate to the actors' real life, warts and all) in choreographed scenes or just freely associating - this sort of lifestyle architecture can be serious art and modeling, just good fun, or very boring.But creating and playing "what if" games like Devil's AdvocateTMmay be more to your liking.The actualization of the above scenario would require producers content standards for network VR objects that the WISdom Network alone would be capable of establishing and enforcing. These capabilities would replace human models with more flexibly useful and malleable or realistic VR avatars.Stuff like Living in DebtTM would provide some interesting data for WISdom Co-op Purchasing Data Mining, and these games would improve the WISdom Prospector's support for members' actual buying decisions, consistent with the WISdom Network ideal: "advertising = requested information in member determined formats from producers and providers".
You can make them all do it together with your tools!VSMs help enable member services like periodic consumer replenishment shopping and buying, which are made quick and easy by the use of MINE information about the member's product preferences and standard orders, with local metro area shopping pickup and delivery route optimization for lowest total cost.The single consumer/user/member interface that is proposed offers members a way to sort through the ever growing mass of choices available to consumers from many sources, present their alternatives in familiar formats and versatile side-by-side comparisons of offerings from competing producers and providers of the same "GSI Type" of goods, services, or information, with the end of sequencing and resequencing their choices from the most to the least desirable for them.This is a completely different way of doing consumer e-community and e-commerce in the broadest sense, including all consumer information (media) and services. And it belongs to everybody!
The educational facilities for all levels on the WISdom Network will be first-rate, with special facilities for cooperative pre-school, elementary, secondary and college level individualized research with parent/teacher intimate monitoring and legitimate control of student progress. The monitoring and control capabilities of the WISdom Prospector, as a highly individualized and analytical member to network interface, present exciting (and fearsome!) opportunities for education and training at all levels!
The WISdom Network supports Lifetime Learning through HomeSchooling and Cooperative Education!Instead of producers and providers publishing their offerings on open Internet websites, after WISdom Network Registration they would merely provide required information about their offerings to the WISdom Network to be posted to the Intranet Web and gathered to the CGSIDb for efficient accessing, to be presented to the member via his trustable, and personalized point of contact with providers: the WISdom Prospector via the WISdom Network's Virtual Specialties Markets ReSearch and Analysis function.Anarchy may be attractive in principle, but it is unworkable in practice. The maturation of internet media implies increasing regulation; it could not be avoided even if we wished to. So, regulate yourselves!.. Sorry,............Be sure it's You!
Somebody IS Going
....to be in Charge
......The conventional wisdom about "many inconsistent, uncoordinated, loosely-coupled modules of doubtful origin and ancestry" on a peer to peer network bestowing some sort of magical "good" qualities on the overall store and presentation of information available on the open internet Web is sheer nonsense.
Many of these open internet websites are unsafe for consumers. Caveat emptor? Beware of what? Consumers are" beware'ing" in droves, and that's the major problem with the open internet for e-commerce. When Sears first entered the mail order business, it was found necessary to pioneer satisfaction or refund guarantees that were reliable. Sears' success made money back guarantees common everywhere. To do all consumer commerce on an electronic network, WISdom Network will need to demonstrate its trustworthiness daily and in many ways! Will WISdom Network's success do the same for trustworthiness everywhere?
The good that has come from the Web is the realization that network-wide information standards are required for the users' common good. The network user needs two coordinated components of impeccable ancestry to present verified information in a consistent, personalized, and secure way: WISdom Network Intranet websites with free or PPV via micropayments content built to WISdom Network standards, and a won't quit until told to self-destruct network client that really understands you (and the needs of your network)! And these two components must be coupled and coordinated by a database structure that provides for strategic and tactical business intelligence for both members and their suppliers.
The open internet Web, with its many examples of professional and amateur construction does provide a good set of practicesto avoid or emulate and adapt to a more mature information network with evolution controlled by its member/owner/users. See one open internet Community Support Services offering.Non-commercial websites that of course have their own proprietary organization can benefit greatly from the private network facilities available to them via the WISdom Network and its Extranets. This feature would help preserve the worthwhile open internet content (a subset of Mozilla's Open Directory) on the WISdom Network.
Because Virtual Specialties Markets are organized by zip code areas, localized and centralized information like employment related information and real estate, autos, and other new or used consumer goods can be readily bought, sold and traded via VSMs.
Essentially, I propose WISdom Network Services to augment, and for many members to replace, the sadly deficient open Internet for WISdom Co-op members and their visitors.
Why Not, ""Many inconsistent, uncoordinated, loosely-coupled modules
of doubtful origin and ancestry"?or: "How About Those Popup Ads!"
Spyware is simple software intimacy, and Datamining can't beat or Abuse
Your Strongest Competitive Market Tool,
when
You Control Your MINEd
and all the software that executes
via the personalized member'sWISdom Prospector
with "code signing" standards
on the WISdom Network.MINEd reading generates Consumer Power
and it can improve on voting practices in democracies?Back when I was about 12 years old and TV was clearly going to be The Media, I pontificated with youthful exuberance about the proper role of advertising, believing that smart advertisers would someday evolve TRUTH. I was 12 remember?Advertising has nearly ruined the TV viewing experience, and it threatens to do the same to the open internet, which is all advertising; Nobody puts anything out here without pushing something! This once-free Tripod website was mutilated by popups and stuff (some of which is relevant to the content) was then a good example of the way mixing pertinent information and advertising hype passes for free information services.
Removing advertising revenue frequently means subscription or PPV content facilitated by micropayments, but the growth of serious new media developers is thereby stimulated, so the WISdom Network would remain commercial free throughout, eliminating not just "objectionable" advertising, but requiring TRUTH in advertising through adherence to WISdom Co-op standards.All unsolicited advertising would be prohibited on the WISdom Network. Instead, goods and/or services information in WISdom Network formats developed by consumer GSI type specialists would be posted by producers and providers. WISdom Network product (consumer goods, services and information) category specialists and/or an independent product rating service would also initially rate the quality of the goods, services, and information, and to augment this information, members would be requested to rate the quality of received goods and/or services.Consumer cooperatives usually let non-members use some of their facilities, and WISdom Network would do this with its PPV for non-members content.
This consumer Goods, Services or Information (GSI) rating would be posted with other item information and used, along with the member's position along a continuum of economy vs. high quality for the GSI type, to individually sequence (and resequence) providers' offerings for the member, presenting the best values for the member first.Shopping via the WISdom Network should be convenient, engaging, rapid and entertaining as well as an enlightening experience, enabled by unique WISdom Network producer and provider information requirements, network features and software tools.The WISdom Network and/or an independent consumer service will offer information about the product type: new developments, "How to Buy" stuff, etc. The member may optionally specify virtually any possible comparison presentation of alternative GSI's (Goods, Services, and/or Information) of the same GSI type. The effective result is an interactive, individualized, complete GSI type "comparison engine", right where and when it's needed at the point of (tentative?) purchase to support the WISdom Proposal ideals of "shopping=research" and "advertising=requested information".
Members can select for or against the option of receiving personalized, highly targeted alerts and helpful links when price and/or product availibility conditions are met, or when the member elects to review his outstanding alerts on products and GSI types in which he is interested. Attempts to intrude upon and manipulate members by Web advertising or e-mail spam in order to peddle goods, services or information will not be tolerated on the WISdom Network.
Distrust is inherent in the Consumer/Provider as Proprietor relationships of the open internet The members' Trust of WISdom Network's Information Services should never have reason to waver:
Information Reliability is Guaranteed "Advertising = Requested Information'
and No MoreBig business is becoming Big Brother! In addition to employers having the right to investigate their employees and affilliates, sales and customer data is collected and passed around, especially to government as part of its investigative efforts to control terrorism. The potential for governmental abuses ofprivacy is high.Poor privacy and security on the Internet have been major issues for many years. The government is finally (10-23-03) beginning to limit peer-to-peer networking on its computers, and now members of congress are talking about more drastic measures, even removing public facing websites from government networks. WISdom Network users will enable secure extranets with government services.
Near-absolute privacy and security on the WISdom Network can be achieved, and privacy means good money for WISdom Co-op members!
Privacy for WISdom Network members means much more than internet privacy. Providers, especially those in financial services, have been sharing and abusing their customers' privacy since long before the internet. To cut off providers' access to WISdom Network members' private information, and for other reasons too, WISdom's Order Aggregation/relay and delivery services keep providers in the dark, and WISdom services would encompass local ISP and complete financial services via Credit Unions that will effectively guard members' privacy.
WISdom Co-op members will have the capability of doing business with a sole provider/proprietor of their own creatioon and maintenance.
By insisting upon absolute privacy and security of the private network members, and thereby preventing most marketing spam and junk snail mail, the WISdom network software can vastly increase personalization and convenience, and make money for the members too! The WISdom Prospector really knows the member, but he'll never tell because his owners/members won't let him.
Since the WISdom Co-op must follow cooperative principles and values, it must benefit the total community of which its members are a part. Being broadly beneficial is to be accomplished by sharing privacy and security information with the broader community soon after WISdom Co-op members are notified and supplied with remedies for discovered security and privacy vulnerabilities.WISdom leads the way for the public good, but it's safer to be a member.
Open Source is crutial to members security, but don't let the WISdom Prospector software or Network Management fall into the wrong hands!
Intelligent selective disintermediation of Central and Local Providers by item would be facilitated by local order aggregation/relay and shopping pickup/delivery services, by an intimate knowledge via the WISdom Network member's MINE of members' planned and actual purchases and current provider prices and movement volumes to members. To enable automated comparison of prices and real time purchasing decision support, all prices on the WISdom Network are CybeRealisticSpaceTime prices.. .This feature means progressive, intelligent, controlled disintermediation can be facilitated for significant member GSI item and shipping/handling savings, along with vastly improved services. Less well targeted disintermediation would have to be done with non-WISdom Network providers. The Local WISdom Service will be positioned to be sole consumer/member provider ("middleman").
The problems addressed by his proposal are having complex and cumulative detrimental effects upon us. Public health problems like widespread stress-related illnesses (the "hurried woman syndrome") with depression and immune system suppression will respond favorably in an environment of facilitated cooperation and service that effectively reduces the stress level and increases the perceived personal control of all members.The open Internet Web's lack of organization has produced overwhelming information clutter. The open Internet Web and newsgroups contain a lot of junk in wildly disparate formats producing much frustration to degrade the user's experience; a VPN Intranet has its own Web and newsgroup servers, and only WISdom Network standards-compliant and approved member-rated content is allowed.Open Internet search engines are difficult to use properly, results are unreliable and time consuming to browse through, and payment for preferred position is not uncommon. The consumer is spending more, not less time shopping and trying to sort through it all for their most relevant information and best selections of content that may be PPV. The pace of life seems to steadily increase, so less time is spent with family and friends. Internet "portals" (AOL, Yahoo, etc.) can do little to improve their members access to the possible riches of the Internet, nor do they encourage the growth of the commonwealth of information and services. These problems can only be solved by the use of a virtual private network for cooperating consumer/members.
The reorganization of information that is proposed here would be implemented by establishing a directory structure with WISdom Central Services or independent consumer service supplied information about types of goods, services and information, and by establishing formatted Intranet Web pages to which producer and provider offerings must be dynamically built and posted or RSS fed.
Individual members, such as independent authors and journalists, will also use WISdom Network approved software for their postings which will gather required and optional information for categorization of research material and facilitate member ratings of information. The ease of navigation, the high production quality, and relevance of the information to the member's stated research needs in these categories will be key to the WISdom Network's success.
Many people do not trust remote Web providers or open internet technology, and sometimes they don't even trust local proprietors. But fellow owners and members of a local co-op and/or the owners of many local franchises serviced by and serving their network are in an entirely different category, and trust means loyalty.
The trust inherent in cooperatives is why members will allow the WISdom Prospector to know the member even better than he knows himself, enabling the full personalization of individual member services. The extent of personal information carried in the encrypted MINE is well beyond anything allowable to any for-profit networked business, but cooperation provides legitimacy to what may well be the single most powerful reason why this is the best way to approach the distribution of all consumer goods, services, and information.
TRUST is a primary value for the WISdom Co-op, especially trust in information reliability.
Many consumers do not trust, and/or are afraid of their own desktop OS, mostly because they are imperfectly familiar with it. Often it is the case that they will never be "familiar" with it.
WISPER lets the WISdom Prospector rapidly navigate the entire WISdom Intranet, select options, input text, etc. by easily-tailored voice~control by any member, regardless of language or dialect.WISdom Network Guarantees to "Let the buyer become aware!"The operating system on a universal consumers' desktop needs a simple to operate and secure interface on top of the underlying NOS. Members with little or no knowledge of Linux or Open BSD must be able to normally operate the WISdom Prospector, and network facilitated help with client desktop administration from other members and/or WISdom Local Services personnel can make this simplifying solution to network security viable.This has important implications for electronic in-store ordering!
Locally-Controlled WISdom Co-op Absorbtion of the Consumer Economy The Internet is about community, not commerce, but open Internet virtual communities of interest are unrelated to any physical community.Virtual and physical communities can augment the vitality of the culture they create when they are related. Interrelating virtual and physical community, communications, content and commerce will be the key to the WISdom Network's success.
Franchisees or elected local area cooperative executives and their employees would provide the local accountability and trust most desired by consumers, and most conspicuously missing from open Internet e-commerce. Local area services include shopping pickup and delivery services (enabling "selective disintermediation by product" of local providers), ISP services, Credit Union services, etc.
Local and remote WISdom Network member help from other appropriate volunteer members who are online Voice over IP, augmented by remote sharing of certain WISdom Prospector control functions, can provide member services and promote community cohesion, from help with software operation to questions and chat about local matters, that are unmatchable by ordinary phone "help lines".The WISdom Network can support generalized free local area shopping pickup and delivery services, with automated routing of multi-member shopping and deliveries optimized for lowest total cost, and with intelligent selective by product disintermediation when possible. Deliveries by bonded, unassailably honest employees could be made and stored in local co-op member homes as pre-arranged and scheduled, even when the members are not at home.
Markups are generally low in consumer replenishment items, and establishing a monopoly here is difficult, but free and facilitated local area shopping, ordering, pickup and delivery services for members should do it!
The WISdom Network seeks to:
provide order aggregation/relay and free delivery services
and
local shopping pickup/delivery services,
and
ban advertising on the network,
and
pay state and local sales taxes,
and
save members money!The media runs America. Isn't it better that the people run the media? Media in the larger sense includes information about available goods and/or services, in addition to news, weather, sports, general and special interest articles and books, consumer software, etc. The WISdom Network as proposed would provide a generalized directory of information sources, and will itself be a source of complete consumer information. This is an appropriate facility for the WISdom Network to include, since this network would be a "natural monopoly", with central, regional. metro area, and local (zip code) area facilities.WISdom Network media would be organized like the rest of this network, into cooperating/collaborating local (zip code), metro/regional, and central coverage areas.
" Rich, Analyzed Media "
Software expands in relation to the hardware resources available to it. A second generation network requires a RIA client with active, predictive, managed cache to facilitate the WISdom Network's "rich media" content on narrowband optimized connections, using just popular hardware or better.WISdom Network GSI item type producer posting standards enforce, -- and network software enables -- professional Intranet website access while conserving bandwidth for applications such as audio/video streaming/download and the WISdom Network Prospector's usage of VoIP over Extranet for remotely WISPERed member services.When the member is not active himself on the Intranet, downloads of images, rich media, etc. are intelligently anticipated by the highly personalized WISdom Prospector, stored in special client resident caches, and presented to the member when needed. This provides faster than broadband client side access, and enables client analysis and dsiplay of highly complex information from a wide variety of sources.
Data transmission delays do occur but mostly they can be easily avoided with minimum forethought by pre-loading and automated updating of client-side VSMs.Whenever any delays in serving the member's current task occur, The Prospector will initiate low priority media player presentations, such as self scrolling network news, short movies, or other useful member information presentations that are sure to be of interest to the member.There may be still (2004) a way to go in desktop processing speed and video caching facilities to achieve an optimal user experience via "Consumer Information Nirvana", but the use of BPEL standards to compose business processes from XML Web Services basic elements will put the user experience in a new dimension of speed and simplicity in the ordering and delivery of WISdom Co-op member services.The WISdom Prospector's cache management facilitated user experience of blazingly fast response with all types of connections, using just popular hardware or better will help set life with the WISdom Co-op's Network well apart from the open internet experience.RIA and the tabbed custom browser portion of the WISdom Prospector will help perceived responsiveness by lessening the need for page redraws, especially noticable when the informatin may be already displayed due to the Prospector's anticipatory actions.
The member is responsible for it, so it's great, naturally!
Law controlling a world wide internet must be international in scope. This presents legitimacy problems that seem insurmountable by the open internet, so a private network, with secure extranet connections nation and world wide is proposed. These extranet connections must be carefully evaluated by WISdom Co-op before they are established to assure full compliance with all governmental and trade agreements.
Joe and Jane Consumer are likely to see the WISdom Network's facilities as not really amazing, but as awesome - powerful, and conveniently at hand.Of course the house (their house) wins - the cards are even stacked in its favor.
The WISdom FoundationSupports
the
Corporate Information Security Accountability Act of 2003
and
Goes it "one" Better!The cost of government regulation of corporations should be borne by the corporations being regulated!Proactively Heed
The Spirit of the Law,
or Pay for somebody else to enforce it!
Criminals must participate in and pay for their rehabilitation.Maybe for-profit corporations will get the message
and voluntarily regulate themselves?
Good Luck!Technology that can be abused will be abused. Control of privacy, security and other individual network member rights by a natural monopoly consumers cooperative is preferable to control by law, especially when law is unduly influenced by highly paid lobbyists for special interests.Legislation and enforcement of the conditions for an optimized open internet user experience is ineffective and often futile. Everybody is a consumer, so a natural monopoly consumers cooperative that provides all consumer goods and/or services and information could legitimately democratically control more than just privacy and security.
TRUST is a primary value for the WISdom Co-op, especially trust in information reliability.
Since government is just about the most inefficient way to do anything, many quasi governmental services could be better provided by a not-for-profit democratically managed cooperative business.
Copyright and Patent laws have become draconian, and they need control by a natural monopoly of consumers. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has many notable opponents. One major goal of publicizing this proposal is to prevent attempts of patenting its unique business methods by for -profit business.Code<>Culture<>Law The WISdom Network as proposed here would achieve control of copyright protection by simply requiring that all WISdom Network providers of information relinquish all copyrights (Big "C") for conversion to CreativeCommons either initially, or after a reasonable time, as determined by the WISdom Co-op members.
WISdom is an advancing WIPO of the people!
An official WISdom Co-op policy regarding copyright will need to be promulgated, and Creative Commons is enabling creative fine tuning of supporting code/legaleze. See: Lawrence Lessig's take on copyright, creativity, and culture.
Creativity must be supported, and the use to which any content is put is more significant than its copy protection!
The WISdom Network's software must enable not only "who was first" investigations, but monitoring and investigation of commercial uses of material not originating with the defendant, including the commercial uses of personal information!Share the artifacts of culture or try to find some other venue.Perpetual Peeping? When do we get back to consumer = member/citizen privacy? Are we ever going to be terrorism-free?Since this consumers' natural monopoly can provide many quasi governmental services, or even governmental services, it can protect members' consumer rights, and it can help spread democracy world wide because of its private network support for strictly secret assisted (links to specialist representatives for various types of issues) individual member voting on all designated cooperative voting/referenda issues.The WISdom Co-op would represent consumers'/members' interests world wide.
Everybody hates it, but nobody does anything effective to restore full e-mail functionality. Unsolicited e-mail and address "spoofing" can be stopped, usually before it even gets started on a consumers cooperative natural monopoly owned private network that requires positive client authentication andWISdom Network standard email metainformation.This required metainformation for unsolicited email contents would help this private network solve the spam problem by forcing email initiators to pay the price of individual attention to the recipient's unique, Communally-Shared Interests - inconsistent metainformation and contents may be grounds for stopping violators use of the WISdom Network entirely. Spammers won't know about the members' buying habits, etc., the lifeblood of spam, because of the WISdom Network's near absolute privacy and security.
This private network has recourse to effective punitive action against spammers and other would-be "spoofers" (and all others that break the network's rules) by fining offenders or simply withdrawing the cooperative's private network membership from them. That could be severe punishment, indeed. Ostracism beats incarceration, but Don't Push It!
The WISdom ISP Network supports fully secured e-mail.
Pyramids and porn can be prevented or controlled effectively on this private network, especially since the private networked business is a consumers cooperative natural monopoly. A VPN Intranet has its own Web and newsgroup servers, and only WISdom Network-approved and signed member-rated content is allowed.Individual member standards are used to control access to all available WISdom Network Content. Porn will, of course, be available if the members vote to permit it, but it would not be available to minors on the WISdom Network. Authenticated signing of member reviewers enables some control by community standards. Larry Flint's reviews would have to be allowed if they meet the member's standards.
*WISdom Services Guarantees the reliability of its Consumer Information,
and it may be liable for unreliable Product Information
or
member ratings-moderated Service defects.fundamentally non-democratic world economic institutions (the "holy trinity": the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO) need to be effectively augmented or replaced with powerful cooperative democratic organizations that are accountable to consumers world wide. The Control Revolution needs to get underway in a big way, and in a consumer controlled fashion. CPSR's Participative Design principles and techniques should be consulted to suggest effective participative methods between the WISdom Co-op and these institutions.Particularly in the USA, there needs to be more effective consumer lobbying influence over "the best government money can buy" ~ CNN.
American corporations operate in the world with the advantage of generally lower tax rates, at the expense of individual taxpayers to support the government. This situation needs to be better balanced to make American corporations fairly compete with countries that value their citizens wellbeing and prosperity (e.g., education and health care) above that of their potentially international corporations. American business leadership needs to see more value in international cooperation, and less value in international competition.
America should be a free world leader through cooperation, not by economic world domination through international corporative powers. The free countries of the world must prosper together. No country can go it alone to their seeming advantage without alienating allies and creating enemies that need not be powerful to be destructive.American political disagreements are often ignited by personal alignments to the left or the right ~ alignments adopted without careful regard for the actors' economic self-interest. If "left" means power to the people, in opposition to prevailing corporate powers, then the WISdom Proposal is resoundingly leftist. But if "left" means socialized government control, or the American kind of left resulting in extensive government regulation of business, often associated with infringement upon individual liberties, then the WISdom Proposal is definitely rightist.
See: Consumer Co-op InternationalThe control of the air waves or transmission frequencies has been improperly ceded to non-democratic institutions. The WISdom Co-op can be instrumental in recovering what is rightfully ours. The American ideal of freedom has been perverted to mean the power of the wealthiest. Our image in the world is suffering, right along with the personal suffering of consumers. Exercise legitimate control, or somebody else will continue to dominate. WISdom TV/Radio to the rescue?
Economic democracy is often confused with something else. The American experience with Cooperative Business should be carefully evaluated before one perpetuates lies and confusion.
In addition to the WISdomNetwork's extreme internet privacy, WISdom Services would encompass complete financial services via Credit Unions that will effectively guard members' online and offline privacy from prying providers' eyes. The WISdom Network could even keep private and exclusively use only its own member credit ratings.The sharing of private customer information by producers and providers can be effectively controlled only by the WISdom Network!
Since the WISdom Co-op must follow cooperative principles and values, it must benefit the total community of which its members are a part. Being broadly beneficial is to be accomplished by sharing privacy and security information with the broader community soon after WISdom Co-op members are notified and supplied with remedies for discovered security and privacy vulnerabilities.WISdom leads the way for the public good, but it's safer to be a member.
can be effectively countered by the Open Sources WISdom Network
The WISdom Prospector will be Netscape's Revenge!
According to security experts the security of consumers on the internet is menaced by a MS Windows monoculture. The real security promise of The WISdom Co-op's Prospector Platform Advancement Project is in its following of the self-evident truth that one should never be without an operational alternative in case of network-wide viral pollution: The Prospector would counter the monoculture by favoring a dual-boot Lenix installation with a possible Lenix fork to facilitate secure WISPER-compliant handling of MINE information, and to build other security features into the OS. Many members may elect to stay with Windows, even with a competing OS that is more compelling than JDS with "Looking Glass", unless the real security advantages of such a dual-boot installation are made apparent to WISdom Co-op members.Open Software projects like Mozilla, Open Directory, ManyOne, OpenOffice.org, Firebird Foundation, Mono, etc. would be among the activities, including cooperative development, that are most likely to be supported, both financially and otherwise, by the world wide consumers cooperative, accelerating the accumulation of Open Source software. This association can result in Open Source becoming much more competitive with and perhaps leading proprietary software technologies.Monopoly is to be expected in networked consumer services. We now have Yahoo, Amazon and Ebay, none of which promises relief from the monopolization process inherent in networked consumer services, and for-profit business is limited in the personalized consumer services that they can offer by a logically justified, and by poor performance earned, lack of consumer trust in the proprietary relationship. They're hobbled, and we're and headed for more problems like Microsoft. Open Sources Cooperative Business to the rescue!
With Wal-Mart and K-Mart/Sears alone in local retail, consumers don't get adequate choices, and while we don't yet know, we have every reason to suspect that consumers will ultimately lose when Wal-Mart gets to the monopoly in the local retail sector that is coming. With WISdom Network Services, local consumers will always have all the choices that producers continue to make available on the national market.
Monopolies require regulation to protect consumers,See National Cooperative Bank's website for financing and franchise development information and services.
and the self-regulation of consumers cooperative business is the best, most efficient way to get it.National branches of the world wide WISdom Co-op must intermix WISdom Network standardized content of their own creation at the national, language-regional, and local area levels. International consumer commerce should be promoted and facilitated when possible and practical.
WISdom Network's Open (FreeShare) Source can benefit small or medium businesses that are building or enhancing their network.
The public perception in America is that CEOs in large and international corporations not only don't earn their pay; they frequently don't provide a timely and compelling vision of their organization's role in the world, and too often there really isn't one!
Responsible governance in business can best be achieved by making the leaders accountable to the followers. This automatically makes the followers accept and exercise more responsibility for the success of the organization.
The spiritual element is not present or is suspect in government sponsored education, producing institutionalization as opposed to socialization in students. The spirit of cooperation is most appropriate to democratic education.It costs too much for individual consumers/citizens in Ameerica and elsewhere to pay out of pocket or entirely governmental purse. Governments are bureaucratically bound by usually antiquainted practices. Cooperative health insurance (HMO type) forWISdom Co-op members is the proposed remedy, as opposed to solely tax supported socialized medicine. Can IT help health care problems?I believe that the WISdom Proposal presents a cooperative business that is a natural monopoly. Who wouldn't join when it can be demonstrated that they will save money by cooperating with other members and making better informed decisions while experiencing vastly improved information services with unparalleled privacy and security, and they can continue to have an effective voice in the management of the cooperative? Since the WISdom Network is to be a world wide democratically governed natural monopoly, it could become an effective, legitimate and trustable world governing body. Because of the increasing proliferation of potentially disastrous technology, world (or at least nations) wide cooperation of individual consumers may be our best hope for peace.
that should be addressed by The WISdom Proposal.
Some Implications
A World Federation of National WISdom Co-ops
means
Power to The World's People!A Strong Voice for Labor
in
The Capital~Controlled World of "Free" Trade
is required to counter the tide that would drift us toward
world wide class~related strife and warfare,
and
to promote political and economic democracy world wide!"Europe lives by Lord Palmerston's axiom: nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests.
The postwar alliance that once structured and indeed defined our world
is dead. It died in 2003." ~ Charles Krauthammer, Time, Jan. 12, 2004A new alliance is needed to represent the interests of political and economic democracy in the world.
American government needs to reduce its dependence on
for-profit market corporate ecomonic power
in favor of all of its people.
America should not stand alone as the leader of the free world!Next Stop: An Effective UN,
World Bank/IMF, WTO, , ,
The People of the world are not adequately represented
in a "democratic" organization
whose members are overwhelmingly (about 75%) non-democratic politically,
and almost all of whom represent capital
and not labor."Viral" economic democracy is key to reconcilliation of the free and non-free worlds.
WISdom Network strongly facilitates economic democracy
and disintermediation of many governmental services.
It can be used to reconstruct formerly autrocratic regimes.
But don't let a world wide organization handle
Your National WISdom Network security and privacy
(yet, if ever.)
WISdom is a way of life whose time has come!See: "Common Sense for a New Century"
by
Howard DeanHear: "Beware the Excesses of the Merchant Mind"
and other relevant speeches
by
Ra;ph NaderBrowse: "Beware the Deficiencies of the Merchant Mind"
"Common Sence for a New Millennium"
and other relevant stuff
by "Pops"
See: The Potential of E-Democracy
Once we have some economic democracy at home,
in the provision of governmental services
such as healthcare and education,
and of all other consumer goods and/or services,
then we can take democracy on the road with a better working model!
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Top..............................................................................To
Proposal Page
