From rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Mon Dec 26 11:57:55 2005 Received: with ECARTIS (v1.0.0; list llg-board); Mon, 26 Dec 2005 11:57:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from rlpowell by chain.digitalkingdom.org with local (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1EqyTh-0001Us-R6 for llg-board@lojban.org; Mon, 26 Dec 2005 11:57:53 -0800 Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 11:57:53 -0800 To: llg-board@lojban.org Subject: [llg-board] Re: Two organizations Message-ID: <20051226195753.GB5289@chain.digitalkingdom.org> Mail-Followup-To: llg-board@lojban.org References: <20051219070640.GB3514@ccil.org> <43AB97DF.8030703@lojban.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 From: Robin Lee Powell Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-archive-position: 35 X-ecartis-version: Ecartis v1.0.0 Sender: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org Errors-to: llg-board-bounce@lojban.org X-original-sender: rlpowell@digitalkingdom.org Precedence: bulk Reply-to: llg-board@lojban.org X-list: llg-board On Fri, Dec 23, 2005 at 11:45:44AM -0500, Matt Arnold wrote: > In the meantime I'd like to bring up a proposal of my own. I've > been giving it a lot of thought. > > The members have to have something to do. Every group has to have > something they are coming together for. No group is just a mutual > interest; if it were, we already have that group, called the > Lojban community. A social organization only exists when those > with a mutual interest come together for a mutual activity. I know > from personal experience, when no activities exist under the aegis > of a group, the group is de-facto nonexistent. Erm. While that's an interesting thesis, the large membership of the LLG would seem to disagree with you. On the other hand, most of the members don't *do* anything, so maybe not. :-) > The activity can't just be speaking Lojban to each other. You > don't need to pay a membership fee to do that. We already have > lists and IRC and phone groups for that. Paying for your name to > be on a specious "membership" list would not give them more access > to that than they had before. Some people (myself included) really like that sort of thing. By calling it "specious" you're effectively saying that all those people are idiots, which you might want to reconsider. > On the way back from Logfest my friend Bill said in order to > thrive, Lojban needs a franchise, like Klingon has Star Trek. I > couldn't agree more. My personal reason for learning Lojban has > always been in the hope of creating that franchise. (Don't get me > wrong, it doesn't need television or hollywood or book publishers > or any other gatekeepers or money. Orions Arm ( > http://www.orionsarm.com/ ) doesn't have that and look how far > they've come. *nod* Good site, that, although it desperately needs a copy editor. > Well, I came up with an idea that I think is pretty good. What is > associated with language? Nations. People who learn a new language > usually do so in order to visit or live or work in another nation. > I propose an imaginary Lojban-speaking nation, and we'll offer > "citizenship." I'll design some beautiful faux immigration > paperwork, a passport, a naturalization certificate and > everything. It achieves the goal of seeming official, while > simultaneously not interfering with business aspect of the LLG. It > taps into the mystique while requiring no prerequisite > qualifications at all. Sounds like a lot of fun to me. Go for it. > An imaginary physical presence in this land is conferred (and > sustained) by making donations to the LLG. No one actually needs > to actively participate, or even actually learn Lojban, if they > only wish to have a nominal citizenship and leave it at that. > Citizens can shape the culture, landscape and governmental system > by playing the game of Nomic ( > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/writing/nomic.htm ) in Lojban on > the Wiki. We'd probably want to start with something more like a parliamentary rule system than the base Nomic rules, but sure. Don't forget to focus on physical matter as well: give people the option of receiving an up-to-date pretty printout of the cultural documents once a year or whatever. > The way it works is, a resident of Lojbanistan (or whatever its > name becomes) Not that, I sincerely hope. :-) > has the power to open up a terminal in midair and type Lojban into > it (on the Wiki). This is the language of an ancient civilization > that uploaded themselves into computers and sleep solipsistically > beneath the sea. They created a logical language that hacks into > root access in the fabric of reality. Create a description in > Lojban of a building / species of animal / acre of landscape / > imaginary character who lives there. Stone giants who stride the > land as custodians of the ancients will instantly transform the > landscape to your description; so long as it doesn't contradict a > previous statement. Sounds like a good background for the MOO, actually. I'm going to try to do some more work on that today. > A travelogue and a mythos will form through these descriptions in > the same shape as a roleplaying sourcebook. But everything that > has an effect must be spoken in correct Lojban, or a player with > poor Lojban skills must persuade someone else to say it for him. *nod* > I and some other Lojbanists with art skills I wish I was joking here, but you may be the only one. > will illustrate it and the map image will grow larger and larger > on the web. The API for Google Maps is open, so maybe somebody > will hack together a Google Maps hack just like the one that shows > the surface of the moon. You know, I had some trepidation about this idea on a first skim of this e-mail, but I take it all back: this is an excellent idea. I'd like there to be facilities (even if we never use them) for offline people to participate, but other than that, it seems deeply snazzy. You should stick it on a Wiki page for commentary. Feel free to link it off the Projects page (let me know if you need special access for that; I can't remember). -Robin -- http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/ Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!" Proud Supporter of the Singularity Institute - http://singinst.org/