I am a programmer who has spent the last three years prototyping, studying, and thinking about what software we need.
There is a lot of software that is just now becoming possible to build and I have been extremely excited to be exploring just some of those possibilities. One thing that has challenged me has been trying to determine which projects are the most important, so that I could focus my effort on them. Additionally, running at the scale required (~350 million people in the US and ~8 billion people worldwide [though only about half currently have Internet access]) presents many challenges that do not have many well-known solutions. Much of my last year-and-a-half has been spent searching, finding, researching, and creating tools that might allow the software I have been envisioning to be created and distributed.
At the top of my list of must have software is a publicly-owned, -built, -supported, and -maintained database of everything our leaders have ever said or done that has been recorded. The database will be web-accessible, so that anyone can quickly and easily access and search the entire known-history of a politician. Using technologies that have just become available to the web, anyone will be able to contribute live audio and/or video streams to the database as well.
There is a lot to think about with this project and I look forward to having many discussions about it. Ask me anything!
~~Edit: my comment votes and replies have been rate limited since starting this AMA. My apologies if I don't get a timely response to you, it is only because I can't :/~~
Edit2: I've been able to make some more responses ~~(though I cannot vote on comments for ~23 more hours apparently)~~. If I'm not responding to you, there is a good chance it is because I am rate limited and waiting to be able to submit my response.
~~Edit3: I'm going to try to get some sleep. I'll be back when I'm up!~~
Edit4: I'm back and responding~~, but rate-limited again~~. I will get to your question soon!
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[–] [deleted] 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
[–] jsprogrammer [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I think you might be right regarding violence. I thought about it quite a bit a few years ago and it seems to me that our best understanding of reality shows that coercion, in some form, may be essential. That is, things (eg. 'particles') exert some influence on other things. However, my belief in non-violence/non-coercion is at a personal-action level and it would be more correct to say "belief in not initiating violence/coercion" . I am under no illusion that violence and coercion don't actually exist.
I have considered Kickstarter in the past, but they have some particular requirements about the structure of your project. It could work, but I have been looking at GoFundMe recently. It seems a bit more simple to deal with. I'd definitely accept bitcoin donations, but I haven't set up an address specifically for funding this project yet.