Background History

What could the potential positive impacts on the world be if a vast network of people sharing ecological and social justice values could come together, and come to see themselves as a whole, using the Internet?

What kind of information technology might help to facilitate, and even catalyze, the emergence of an electronically mediated "chaordic" network on a global scale?

These questions played a central role in the genesis of PlaNetwork, Inc., a California 501c3 founded in 1998. They also were the core of the motivation behind the first invitational held in July 1999, as well as the international Planetwork Conference held at the Presidio in May 2000. Soon after that conference an informal group calling itself the Webcabal started meeting to discuss various possibilities and potential implementation strategies. In 2001 this process became LinkTank, operating as a fiscal project of Planetwork, Inc. LinkTank is officially a network of twenty three voting participants, from a variety of professional backgrounds, largely in the Bay Area and New York, with a nine member board. However, the conversation expanded to include participation by more than fifty people spanning many organizations in several counties. The Link Tank process distilled the following statement of pupose:

We are dedicated to the creation and maintenance of a digital communications platform, operated as a public interest utility, that will strengthen civil society by enabling people to connect, communicate, make transactions, and self-organize in a manner that is consistent with the highest principles of democracy and reflects an enlightened understanding of the fragile beauty of our planet. We will bring together, develop, promote, and hold as a global public commons, software tools and infrastructure that facilitate the emergence, growth, and vitality of networks of individuals and organizations who share ecological and social justice values, as articulated in the Earth Charter.

Many organizations, and even networks of networks, are now represented in online databases, but each remains largely an island unto itself. Many sites have sought to be "the" portal to the larger whole, but this approach only insured that none could ever succeed. The LinkTank Principles were articulated in response:

• Any solution must appeal to the perceived objectives of existing constituent entities.
• Any solution must facilitate the creation of an "interoperable" network of networks.
• Any larger "meta-network" must be an emergent property, an epiphenomenon of many individual decisions and actions.
• There must be no specific center to the network; its center must be everywhere and nowhere.

The most effective approach will be to facilitate the development of tools that will allow organizations to better interact with their own memberships. Then, by virtue of many people in many overlapping networks using interoperable tools, a very large virtual network can be formed - a vast array of databases representing individuals and their relationships as if in a virtual peer-to-peer network.

Schematic Chronology

In late winter of 2001 LinkTank began to support Net Deva in development of unique software to enable the electronic representation of networks of trust embodying the six degrees of separation phenomenon so that they can be leveraged under mutually agreed terms by a brokering agent.

In January of 2002 the LinkTank commissioned a report by Jan Hauser on social network software. Jan in turn asked Steven Foster to co-author a section of the report on metadata ontology's. Their report has been completed in draft form and is undergoing review and editorial prior to release on, or about, September 1, 2002. It will subsequently be published by the Benton Foundation.

In February a spontaneous group formed at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil to discuss the potential for a new Internet mediated social networking phenomenon to emerge.

In March, in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sergio Lub, Victor Grey and a group of people active on the Friendly Favors system came together with a large number of the local members of the LinkTank to form the Social Network Tools discussion group.

In April the Buckminster Fuller Institute development group entered into a partnership with ESRI which will lead to their bringing GIS data to the desktop through their browser based EARTHscope. Marshall Lefferts brought Joe Firmage to present ManyOne to BFI following the ESRI meeting.

In May Joe Firmage and Matt King met with the SNT group and presented ManyOne initiating a sense of urgency to move forward rapidly and prepare to bring forward a public initiative at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg.

In June the Quantum VIZ invitational brought together the most innovative cutting edge graphical software available including, GeoFusion, Navagent and ManyOne, organized by Bonnie DeVarco and John Graham at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, under the auspices of PlaNetwork, Inc.

By July it became clear in the SNT discussions that a number of the most critical social networking functions that had been at the core of the LinkTank discussions remained beyond what ManyOne could implement by itself. It was also clear that all of the parties to these discussions, and uncounted others we had not yet discovered, would need a way to loosely partner with each other as coequal participants. Perhaps most urgently, there needed to be a not-for-profit funding source to act as the customer for greater interoperability.

In late July the SNT group met Bob Stilger from the Berkana Institute which had been studying the need for an integrated suite of collaborative tools for dispersed communities of practice from the users perspective and had developed a spec for NewWorkSpaces, a virtual community of practice builder, learning and inquiry tools, knowledge center and a virtual workplace incorporating social networking tools.

In August the SNT group and representatives of other associated efforts finalized the consortium initiative to be launched at the Earth Summit using the Planetwork Consortium name and logo. The group recognized the fundamental value of bringing together the purpose represented by the Earth Charter with the principle of user control of their own identity and relationships represented by CHI. The group adopted the Venture Collective as the overall fundraising infrastructure for a variety of directed funds including its revolving fund as well as a social network tools grant fund as a project of PlaNetwork, Inc.

updated: August 30, 2002 - 7:10 pm CET