Starting a superstructure is only the beginning. The real task is envisioning what it can do, how it will work, and who you need to work with. If you're not a member, consider joining now. If you are a member, be bold, jump in, and use the superstructure to start organizing for survival. Edit it, add to the vision, and make it real, online and off. And don't forget to rave.

More about Superstructures

  • The Dewey Decimal Human Organic Taxonomy Project

    Celebrating our differences, one digit at a time.
  • Founder: Quasi

    open source, social networking, translocalism, Social Engineering, open borders, global village, quantum humanity, intuitive association, opposable digits,

  • Who We Need

    Sociologists, historians, psychologists, behavioral scientists, zoologists, LIBRARIANS - for naming, ordering and balancing the different hierarchies of human categorization.

    Programmers, product engineers, industrial designers - to design the database and, more importantly, personal, easy to use client software able to be run from interent cafes, cellphones, handhelds and other remote entry points.

    Social workers, field agents, experienced pollsters, social analysts - to kickstart the project with as much initial input from as many communities as possible. Later, to keep the registration and information flowing, helping to keep the database balanced.

    People of interest (which interest? ALL interests!), for managing shifting groups of varying orders of magnitude, from the local community organizer or forum moderator to the overseeing director of operations or idealistic deep-thinker.

  • How to join
    Do you have a digit to add?
  • Mission
    Injecting hierarchical order into ever-increasing orders of organization. Making association easier across cultural, language and geographical boundaries.
  • What we can accomplish

    • Now that online manifestations of various communities are a thing of common practice, it is becoming again difficult to make heads from tails when approaching a previously unknown community online. In the past, hardship of communication and lack of recorded information was the issue facing individuals looking for others with whom to associate. Nowadays, an overabundance of this material creates the opposite issue, when an unknowledgeable person searching a simple search engine for material on a particular subject is often hit by a barrage of endles information, written by multiple people with different agendas, without being able to tell the relevant bits from the chaff.

      This project looks to categorize not interests, but human association - the ways in which people find common ground to stand on. People who have been having difficulty homing on a community fitting their needs will be able to simply start at the top level of categorization - such as hobbies, faith, art or career - and drill down in a chain of ever-converging choices until reaching their specific destination. Of course, the realization that there is not yet(!) such a community fitting your requirements will be much easier as well. In that case, the hopeful individual will be privilieged with the most exciting option of all - add another digit to the string and be the first!

  • How this superstruct works

    • There are nine main categorizations, each corresponding with one of the digits 1 through 9. 0 is saved for meta-discussions regarding managing the system itself. Just like in the Dewey Decimal System, each category has it's own ten categorizations beneath it, adding another digit to the number. The number 2.7436 might correspond with historians of the development of human language. 5.827412 might stand for the community of southern French steelworkers.

      Wherever possible, this database will be freely accessible to be read via wireless networks, for new people to be polled and initially directed for their own convenience, in the interest of making the database resemble humanity as a whole as closely as possible, as fast a possible.

      While nationality, race and other birth conditions will have to come to be represented in the database as options of association, it is our firm intention not to let those categories be favored over those stemming from free choice, thus forwarding the idea of choice-based communities, instead of genetic- or prejudice-based ones.

  • Other information
  • Discuss this superstructure

    • I love the idea of a taxonomy for organizing communities by interest and purpose -- I agree it could really facilitate interaction and cooperation and alliances. Are there examples of such a taxonomy being created, or is this idea entirely sui generis?

      If there aren't any projects to actually do this yet, we should brainstorm some strategies. We don't have to build this in the next two weeks -- but we should brainstorm what it might take to create one, and how it might get used in everyday life. -- POSTED BY AVANTGAME

      OH, CREATIVE THINKERS:

      Do you have ideas for how we would build a community human taxonomy system from scratch? -- POSTED BY AVANTGAME

      Can you imagine specific scenarios that you might employ this system if it existed? -- POSTED BY AVANTGAME

      I think our challenge is even greater than you think. It is relatively easy to find people within a community of experience or interest, even across geographic and linguistic boundaries. But too often this locks us into what Kurt Vonnegut called a "false karass" or "granfaloon"--a group of people assumed to have something in common that is, in fact, superficial. The more ambitious goal would be to find deeper, subtle, and more powerful ways to bring together people who can, in collaboration with each other, change the world. What are the important common threads, beyond profession or hobbies? Abilities? Ways of seeing the world? Even something to do with Meyers-Briggs profiles?==posted by Elizabeth Merritt 

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