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__NOTOC__ Below is a brief description of some of the projects I've been working on - or would like to work on. ==Convivial Tools== :''Main article:'' [[Convivial Tools]] As originally defined by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Illich Ivan Illich] in his book "Tools for Conviviality," a convivial tool is one which allows the user to work with independent efficiency and with minimal reliance on external expertise. The underlying theme of all of Illich's work is how to give back to the average citizen some part of the control over knowledge and technology which is typically exercized by specialized elites. My original wish was to foster design of household appliances that could be more easily repaired by their users. (See [[Reparable Tools]].) It was only later that I discovered that this project could be presented in terms of Illich's ideas. I thus created a [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org Convivial Tools] website to promote Illich's ideas. However, my project relating to Convivial Tools got bogged down in the task of writing detailed content for the websites that I created on the subject. ==The Convivial Internet== :''Main article:'' [[Convivial Internet]] The [http://conviviality.ouvaton.org/article.php3?id_article=2 characteristics] that make a tool "convivial" can also be sought after in the design of software or in the development of websites. For software design this involves aiming to help the average user to descend within the program, to understand how it works, and to modify or configure it without disastrous consequences. Currently software for use on the interent, including even open source software, remains far from the ideals of conviviality. Websites themselves are "tool" in the broad sense, as objects designed to help us learn (such as books are). There exist a great many sites that provide some sort of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_help online help], such as [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_site review sites], [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rating_sites rating sites], question-and-answer sites, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_forum online forums] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki wikis]. However, help websites too often have low [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability usability]. Searching for answers in online [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_forum forum]s, for example, can resemble searching for a needle in a haystack, and may often provide information that is unreliable. A convivial help site needs strong editing, to limit the bias and to provide verified answers. As an experiment I began working on an [http://iuserguide.com/index.php?title=Main_Page Internet User Guide] website to share my own (limited) knowledge of basic Internet use and possibly help others avoid all of the false leads I followed. But Most of my websites are hosted on [http://www.ouvaton.coop Ouvaton], which is a French web-hosting cooperative. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative Cooperatives] are a viable economic alternative to less democratic forms of enterprise. While the Internet abounds in examples of cooperative endeavors, from wikis to open source software, economic cooperatives are rarely found in the field of high-tech - but how often have they actually been tried? A [[Cooperative Social Network]], similar to social networks such as Facebook or Friendfeed but structured as a coop. *A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative worker cooperative] for the team that develops and runs the website *A [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_cooperative consumer's cooperative] for the users (which could be limited to the paying premium memberships) This social network could be based on the same business model as existing social networks: free accounts for the majority of users, paying accounts for premium users, and operating revenues from advertising and data mining. [[Category:Projects]]
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