Hi @lydialaurenson,
It is very nice to finally see another official response from the CHT organization. I have been quiet on this forum for a while - after a long period of high activity - in large part due to my disappointment on the continued lack of involvement of the CHT organization members. This community is craving to be more than just a loose discussion forum!
I already told you how much I like the idea of having a Ledger of Harms. It is a great idea, so it is fantastic to see the first alpha release! I also have some significant feedback to give you to help improve it towards its 1.0.0 release version. However - before I can provide you my input to the Ledger - I have some serious issues with the proposed way to develop the ledger. Please allow me to explain…
CHT - The community and the organization
Until now the CHT community and the CHT organization have been completely separate entities. Though the organization created the community and offered the forum, there is hardly any interaction by organization members. Furthermore, there was never a reason given for the creation of the community and the purpose for which it exists. No public roadmap or vision exists, leaving the community out in the cold.
The community itself has tremendous potential. We are all here, like-minded people, who have flocked to the cause of ‘reversing the attention crisis, and realigning technology with humanity’s best interests’. And we have posted, analyzed and discussed many great ideas and information sources. It is the follow-up to all of this that is missing, and here we hoped for guidance, leadership and plans from the CHT organization.
Instead the organization has been a black box from the beginning - almost in the sense of a Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. Are they dead, or are they alive? At least from following @tristanh’s Twitter feed, @Mamie’s previous involvement in organizing the forum, and now your Ledger of Harms announcement, we can deduce you are alive 
Don’t get me wrong. I really appreciate what the CHT has provided us so far: a common outlet for our thoughts. But the CHT could be so much more than that. Much more powerful and influential in a positive way. If you want to effect real change you have to really mobilize people, rally them to the cause, be open and transparent and together, in a concerted effort forge ahead towards common goals.
Unless, of course, this is not the CHT’s intention (anymore). Maybe the organization wants to go their own way. Operate in the political field as advisers and consultants. But then it would be fair to clearly communicate that to us, so we know what we can expect. An honest answer of this nature would not offend me in the slightest. On the contrary, any clarity you can provide would be enlightening.
On building The Ledger of Harms
With that said, back to the Ledger and your request for feedback. You are making an announcement to the community via this forum and ask us several times for feedback. That’s great…
But (there is always a but, isn’t there):
- You made the 1st announcement of the Ledger on May 31
- The initiative then disappeared for 3 months in the CHT ‘black box’
- Now you announce the alpha version of the Ledger
- And you ask us to post our feedback once again into the same black box!
- Presumably at some time in the future a beta version will suddenly appear
I personally don’t think this is a fruitful and constructive way to cooperate on this Ledger. I have in the past sent various kinds of feedback on different fill-out forms on humanetech.com and never got a response back, and even direct conversations (by email and forum) with organization members got suddenly cut off without reason provided.
Also the method of providing feedback - by the use of questionnaires asserts a one-way input stream. The products used to create them are questionable in itself. While airtable.com is okay-ish, the use of Google Forms is problematic and not in line with what the CHT stands for. Especially if you have feedback that is critical of Google, and even more so if you are also a Google employee. I already wrote about this in Researchers should use privacy-respecting survey tools!
Instead I would like to propose a different way to help bring the Ledger project come about… and thrive!
The Ledger of Harms - a crowdsourced initiative
The Ledger is about the (unseen) harms that new technology applications pose towards people in general and to our society at large. Sometimes (or oftentimes) knowledge about these harms is intentionally overlooked, underplayed, or actively suppressed. It is up to the people - us - to identify and record them so we can protect ourselves.
This then makes The Ledger of Harms project a perfect candidate to be a crowdsourced effort that is led by the CHT organization, driven forward by the community and supported by the broader public.
I hereby propose that you open-source the project and its development processes, so we can work on this together.
We already have the tools to do just that. Instead of using feedback questionnaires we can use Github (which is not just for Developers). On June 13 I had already created the organization account for the CHT:
Github offers a full-blown cooperation environment:
- Version management for the source documents and content of the Ledger itself
- Issue management and commenting to discuss open issues, bugs and improvements
- Project boards for planning and scheduling tasks
- User-editable wiki pages to outline goals, roadmap, technical notes, etc.
- Pull request feature so member and non-members can suggest, review and approve changes
- Website feature (Github Pages) that can host and automatically republish the Ledger upon changes
- And more…
I’d be willing and able to help make the Ledger of Harms an open and transparent initiative that is aligned with CHT vision and mission and in touch with the community, and I gather many community members are willing to participate too.
Please let me know your thoughts on all this, and I’d really appreciate if you’d also inform @tristanh, @randy, @Mamie, @metasj and other organization members, so they may join the discussion.
Warm regards,
Arnold.
Community member