Zcom_simple

Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

Cui bono?

By Michael McGehee at Feb 25, 2009


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[this was originally written as an introductory explanation to the purpose of a proposed project for a participatory society in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex...]

This infamous maxim is Latin for "To whose benefit?" and it gets to the heart of what this project can and should be about.

If you look around at our society this should be the initial question you ask when looking at how social relations are structured: To whose benefit?

The next important question is: Why?

If we want to look at property relations we would ask who benefits by having property rights defined the way they are. Once we see who benefits we might ask, "Why should it be so?" If no justifiable answer can be given then it is up to us to redefine it.

The same goes for sexual, gender, familal, racial, community and other forms of social relations. Where there is a social relation - at home, school, work, government - we should look for areas of dominance or authority, inquire into who is gaining by it and verify its legitimacy.

If we live in a society where people have meaningful say over their lives and the answer to "Cui bono?" is the benefit is equitably spread out amongst those who are affected, and if we answer the "why" question with, "Becauseit is fair and just" then there is a reasonable basis to conclude that is legitimate.

Thus, a Participatory Society is not only about broadening democracy beyond the political sphere (and certainly beyond Representative Democracy), but providing an adequate and meaningful foundation for people to have a say in managing their lives so that they can fulfill their desires in accordance with others.

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