Civic.Net: A Manifesto & A Call to Arms (Draft)

For Your Consideration, Review, Comment, and Participation.

Miles Fidelman, Systems Architect & Chief Engineer, Civic.Net
Life, The Universe, and Everything, Planet Earth, The Human Condition Experience, and Enterprise, Civic.Net, 2025
A Draft Pamphlet, Talk (maybe a motivational or stump speech), Article, Workshop & Book Intro - Working Title: Civic Engineering 101, Playing God in the Internet Age
Your Comments, Suggestions, and Assistance Requested & Gratefully Accepted.

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My Fellow Humans, Citizens, Family, Friends, Colleagues, Engineers Professional & Citizen, Entrepreneurs, Makers, Mappers, Builders, Doers, Deadheads, and Outlaws,

We are as gods and might as well get good at it (Brand, 1968). In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face (Licklider & Taylor, 1968). The best way to predict the future is to invent it (Kay, 1971). We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code (Clark, describing the Internet Engineering Task Force, 1992 - the year the Internet opened to the public). civic networking: interacting with others regarding civil affairs; using computer or other electronic networks to interact regarding civil affairs (Miles Fidelman, The Center for Civic Networking, at the Birth of Civic.Net, 1992).

Our species has spread across the world & beyond. We’ve networked our planet, wired 6 of our 8 billion into the beginnings of a planetary nervous system, brain, mind, and consciousness. Each of us, and all of us, can be anywhere and everywhere all at once - and make our presence felt. We wield great engines of creation & destruction. When we think & work together, we can vaporize cities & lay waste to continents. We can move mountains, change the course of rivers, build global systems organizations & cultures, build worlds & steer the course of history, shape reality around us. We’ve been to the Moon & returned. We have become the Borg. We live in the Matrix. We’re 3-D Printing Westworld in real time.

100 years ago, our parents faced Plague, Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and Nazis – and they prevailed. They cleaned up the world, built new infrastructure, brought water & power to desserts and made them bloom, vanquished Nazis & Soviets, rebuilt America, Europe, and much of Asia, and for good measure, went to the Moon for, because it is there.

Danger Will Robinson: We Face a Clear & Present Danger of Imminent Demise

And now, as the modern world we built crumbles around us, we use our powers to share cat pictures, watch porn, and shout political polemics at each other. We blinked. We fell asleep at the wheel. Monsters arise from the Id of our collective subconscious. We let Disney build residential communities. And we handed the keys to the kingdom, and the nuclear codes, to a Clown Circus of Confederates, Nazis, Soviets, Con Artists, and Thieves.

We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities (Walt Kelley).

With great power comes great responsibility (Uncle Ben).

Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs).

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate (Captain.)

We have met the enemy, and he is us (Kelley).

Turning and turning in the widening gyre, The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere; The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity (Yeats).

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Collaboration is Our Superpower as a Species, a Human Family, a Human Enterprise

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
(we) have (our) exits and (our) entrances,
And (each of us) in (our) time plays many parts (Shakespeare).

The best way to predict the future is to invent it (Kay).

The play’s the thing, wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king (Shakespeare).

There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures (Shakespeare).

Voltaire Declared, "If there is no god, we should be forced to invent him." And John wrote, in the beginning there was the word, and the word was with god, and the word was god. Blake wrote, To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

Out of a Burning Bush came אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה‎ - I am that I am, I will become what I chose to become, I will be what I will be, I create whatever I create, I am the Existing one. And we Jews invented the committee (Minyan) to interpret the word. The Buddha brought us the Dharma & the Sangha, the Iroquois the Great Law of Peace and the Iroquois Confederacy - inspiration for the US Constitution and Robert’s Rules of Order.

Jesus proclaimed, For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Congregationalists invented the Congregation & Congregational Polity - the basis for Town Meeting Direct Democracy - and Quakers learned to listen for the still small voice within and share it with each other. Unitarians covenant with each other, and with god, to live together in peace, seek truth in freedom, serve humankind in fellowship, to the ends that all souls shall grow into harmony with the divine. The Transcendentalists brought us Thoreau who went to the woods because (he) wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if (he) could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when (he) came to die, discover that (he) had not lived. And Frost, who wrote, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference, and proclaimed Only where love and need are one, And the work is play for mortal stakes, Is the deed ever really done For Heaven and the future's sakes.

The Founders of America Declared: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all (people) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes, their Sacred Honor to its support, and then ordained and established a Constitution & a Bill of Rights to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to (themselves) and (their) Posterity.” They created a Novo Ordo Seclorum and sealed it, E Pluribus Unum.

Lincoln called on We the People to resolve that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." And the people did.

Teddy Roosevelt declared Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat, ushering in the Progressive Era.

100 years ago, our grandparents faced Plague, Dust Bowl, Great Depression, and Nazis – and they prevailed. Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed, The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Our parents, The Greatest Generation, cleaned up the world, built new infrastructure, brought water & power to desserts and made them bloom, vanquished evil and rebuilt America, Europe, and much of Asia. Our numbers quadrupled, from 2 billion in 1920, to 8 billion today.

And now it’s time again for We the People to take charge of our destiny. To live deliberately. To Roll Up Our Sleeves and Remake our World - Better, Stronger, Greener - A World of Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination where We & Our Posterity May Live Long and Prosper. Where We Can Be All That We Can Be, Be Excellent to Each Other, and Party On for Another 250 Years of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health, Happiness, Wealth, and Wisdom.

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Network we Must for a Better Tomorrow: A Call to Roll Up Our Sleeves and Bare Arms

A Republic, if (We) Can Keep It (Franklin). The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants (Jefferson). You can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility (Churchill). Only when everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong, can we start making things go right (Fidelman’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law).

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Clarke).

Modern production … is not based on raw materials or gadgets but on principles of organization – organization not of machines but of human beings, i.e., on social organizations, & the central feature of the Next Society, as of its predecessors, will be new institutions and new theories, ideologies, and problems (Drucker).

In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face (Licklider Taylor).

I was born in Manhattan in 1954, under flags reading Excelsior, E Pluribus Unum, and Dig We Must for a Better (Tomorrow). I attended John Kennedy’s Inauguration and grew up in an Early Levittown in the 1960s, attended The Wheatley School (Veritas) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“Mens et Manus”), and worked at Bolt Beranek & Newman (Where Wizards Stayed Up Late Networking the Planet). In 1992, the Internet opened to the public, and a group of us started The Center for Civic Networking, coined the term Civic Networking & started building Civic Networks, organizing Civic Forums, and redeveloping community infrastructure. And now I’m On the Road Again, Still Networking the Planet with My Friends, Building Neighborhood Networks & Civic Forums, Integrating a Civic Internet for the Civil Body Politic of the Human Enterprise on Planet Earth, and Launching a Civic Engineering Leadership Campaign - Engineers as Citizens & Citizen Engineers, Rebuilding our World for a New Millenium of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Health, Happiness, Wealth, and Wisdom.

John Kennedy proclaimed, Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. This much we pledge--and more. And called on us thusly: And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man." We did, we went to the Moon, we networked our planet, and our minds. We (chose) to go to the moon … and do the other things, not because they (were) easy, but because they (were) hard, because (those goals served) to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge (was) one that we (were) willing to accept, one (were) unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend(ed) to win, and the others, too.

And then we blinked. Jerry Brown called on us to Protect the Earth, Serve the People, Explore the Universe” - but we choose the Moral Equivalent of War and fell asleep at the wheel. We wired our minds together: 6 billion of us can be anywhere and everywhere all at once - and make our presence felt. When we think & work together we have the power of gods to move mountains, lay waste to continents, to build global systems & civilizations. We have become the Borg, Living in the Matrix, Building Westworld around us with great engines of creation & destruction.

And now, as the world we built crumbles around us we use our powers to share cat pictures, watch porn, and shout political polemics at each other. Monsters arise from the Id of our collective subconscious. While neighborhoods, built in the 1950s fall apart, Disney builds theme parks, resort communities, and residential subdivisions. A Clown Circus of Confederates, Nazis, Soviets, Con Artists, and Thieves dismantles our government & economy from within.

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It’s Up to Us - We the People - To Build our Future World & Write our Future History - Let Us Be All That We Can Be, Be Excellent to Each Other, and Party On

Code is Law (Lessig). Language, Law, Regulations, Standards & Practices, Rules of Order & Engagement, Standard Operating Procedures… Protocols of Community, Collaboration, and Creation. It’s time for We the People to Dare Mighty Things. To Design New Worlds, New Games, and Write New Stories. To Launch New Networks & New Protocols. To Seek New Visions, Draw New Maps, Make New Plans, Organize New Programs, Form New Teams, and Set Out on New Ventures & Adventures.

The value or influence of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (Metcalfe’s Law). As a network grows, the noise level grows to drown out all constructive thought (Fidelman’s Corollary to Metcalfe’s Law). Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept (Postel’s Law). Come hear Uncle John's band, By the riverside. Got some things to talk about, Here beside the rising tide. I got me a violin And I beg you call the tune. You know all the rules by now, And the fire from the ice. Anybody's choice I can hear your voice. Ain't no time to hate, Barely time to wait Woah, oh, what I want to know, How does the song go (Hunter)?

It's time again for We the People to take our destiny into our own hands. To take our Anger & Frustration and channel it into Action & Creation. To organize in our communities, and across the Internet - that we may Be All That We Can Be, Be Excellent to Each Other & Party On in Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination for Another 250 Years of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

We live in a quantum world. One theory states that consciousness is the experience of making choices within the limits of quantum uncertainty - we literally create our future by choosing among an infinity of possible paths. The Many Worlds Hypothesis ventures that our future branches as different people make different choices. Some think all life is a dream, others a video game.

It’s time to gather round the whiteboard, reach some rough consensus, roll up our sleeves, and start building some running code for a new millennium. It’s time for us to Come Together, Share Our Visions & Aspirations, and Join Together for Mutual Support & Collaboration.

Network We Must for a Better Tomorrow, for Ourselves & Our Posterity
Miles Fidelman, Systems Architect & Chief Engineer, Civic.Net