Intro

This is Culture Blocks.

We are building a social networking app where content is produced through co-creative interactions structured to distribute voice, maximize participation, and minimize influencer/algorithm domination.

The problem

Existing social networks, both in web2 and web3, are for individual voices. Influencers and celebrities make up the bulk of consumed content, which diminishes diverse perspectives and demotivates participation. By integrating perspectives in the content creation process and leveling the playing field we incentivize greater participation, generate more novelty, and simultaneously build connections and shared context between humans which makes for a more resilient social/cultural layer.

Current progress

On Feb 8, 2023 we implemented a manual minimum viable content co-creation process. This was a version of sociocracy modified for asynchronous collaboration with the sole focus of deciding as a group what content to include in a culture block. A culture block is essentially a social media post - finite digital information in a digestible format - but instead of an individual posting, there is a collaborative process to form the post.

Because of the effort, time, and convergence it requires to co-create a new block they provide robust focal points that highlight the most significant aspects of a group's culture. Because of the alignment inherit to any content that goes into the block feed, it can inspire further autonomous and emergent coordination.

After some experimenting with and developing a basic understanding of our manual process we built a discord bot to generalize and automate the synthesis of group discussions.

cb_bot internal use: April 21 - July 20

We ran over a dozen trial discussions, called circles, with our internal community and made a number of improvements towards a stable version of the bot. We also mapped out many of the features required to offer the bot in other communities and got about halfway finished implementing them.

Demo

Future Roadmap

cb_bot external deployment: July 21 - Oct 20

• Finish development of external/multiserver MVP bot (should be ready to deploy during GG18)
• Provide bot to external communities, gathering feedback and promoting the project
• Continue to polish bot interface and circle discussion flow based on feedback and use metrics
• Grow CB community with regular fun/interesting/engaging circles
• Elevate active members to research and design focused circle discussions in preparation for dapp development

Decentralization, Dapp Outline, Prep, and Development: Oct 21+

Steps:

• From the participants of R+D focused circle discussions, form a center circle of authority
• Co-create a high level roadmap of dapp development in center circle
• Co-create subgroups with delegated responsibilities and domains
• Subgroups co-create detailed roadmaps for their domain
• Roadmaps cycle between center circle and subgroups for progressive iteration until all party's consent to detailed roadmap
• Dapp development begins

Thank you for your support!