“To save democracy, tech needs guardrails, journalism and facts need protection, community needs to be built.”
I have something for that pain. Time to share and collaborate. I’ve written about this before. I want to gamify the learning of the world’s complex dynamics - with a daily online brainteaser the public can play, backed by an educational framework for journalism in the social age.
Introducing a framework and game I’ve been playing for the past few years as the personal pursuit of an infovore and dot connector. It’s a fun daily puzzle, addictive even, calms the overwhelm of following current affairs, and helps clarify the bigger picture — and eases voting, among other things. I want to share it with the rest of you.
Geopolitics is the book I’ve been reading the last 7 years, the show I’ve been watching, the game I’ve been playing. I made a new game out of it, a game of concentration where I’d make visual cards - and then screenshots - of points people make, and then match those cards and their quotes to relevant moments in the conversation. It had a calming effect, like people feel when they play solitaire cards. I also found new meaning in earlier cards.
I had to store the images to be found later so started a system of categories I brain dumped in an afternoon. Soon it was my own game of concentration, taking a screenshot of a bit of information and placing it on a related card, multiple related cards. Tagging that bit of info in the network. The cards amassing in the categories told new stories. Stories of connections we might have missed. New cards every day, tracking with the headlines, or the quieter discussions.
What is this game?
It’s a Wikipedia + Wordle for Current Affairs to make better citizens and voters. It’s a project to promote information-literacy, media-literacy, civics-literacy, and global dynamics-literacy. It’s a Fifth Estate social journalism framework.
This open source information literacy project currently called “Knowledge Is Power” is two things: 1) an educational framework based on global dynamics for journalism students, data science students, political science students, and 2) a public game for understanding the links between corruption, rising authoritarianism, the climate crisis and more in this moment of hybrid war.
A peek at the pilot of this card game and wiki that I've played on Trello for several years
If you're not familiar, The Fifth Estate is a form of social impact journalism. (The Fourth Estate is what we know as mainstream media and journalism.)
From Wikipedia: “The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and social media.”
More from Wikipedia: “The use of "fifth estate" dates to the 1960s counterculture, and in particular the influential The Fifth Estate, an underground newspaper first published in Detroit in 1965. Web-based technologies have enhanced the scope and power of the Fifth Estate far beyond the modest and boutique conditions of its beginnings.”
I want to make the Knowledge Is Power experience available more widely to other people who can also benefit from its calming affect in this confusing information space, and have fun, meet others who care, and learn things too.
In doing so, I aim to help people follow what's happening in current affairs, and enable them to better think and act in a crucial moment for democracy.
“A current affairs viral brainteaser backed by a wiki community versed in global dynamics could make better citizens, become a Global Fifth Estate holding power to account, and strengthen democracy worldwide. Let’s do it together.”
How a current affairs viral brainteaser backed by a wiki community on global dynamics could become a Global Fifth Estate holding power to account and strengthening democracy worldwide
Mindmapping what this new information initiative is, how it came about, who benefits from it, the deliverables.
“ A comprehensive project that aims to promote trust and transparency in democracy while combating disinformation and corruption. The deliverables can be used individually or collectively to empower citizens with the knowledge and tools needed to critically evaluate information and build a network of trustworthy sources. ”
This project has peers, all working to develop solutions to the problem. Chris Soderquist is one.
Feedback loop models from ‘sysIQ’ thinker Chris Soderquist of global dynamics can be added to the categories of the Knowledge Is Power framework while Soderquist’s mental model of strengthening democracy pinpoints the context in which Knowledge Is Power’s informational framework works to strengthen democracy.
Knowledge Is Power helps building belonging and civic muscle, by illuminating the real-world dynamic pressures to weaken the very democracy that supports our well-being and that we need to thrive. Playing or contributing to the wiki will illuminate efforts by the powerful to capture judicial and legislative bodies, and weaken global order.
For a refresher of what systems thinking can be like, it calms the chaos all around, that’s for sure, and helps us make sense.
“Play with the data in a sensemaking system and what do you get? Clarity, calm, connections!”
Feedback loop models of global dynamics that can be added to the categories of the Knowledge Is Power framework