The Propaganda Project Balloon expands, and expands, and expands....

This is a taster for the type of update you'll get as a subscriber :)

You can see the expanding Brain at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnUHRHNB8U8.

All great research projects expand like massive balloons in the beginning. This one is getting kind of ginormous.

Helping it along is my new friend Anthony Judge, who is a prolific writer and researcher in the field of meta frameworks. He's been emailing me once or twice a week with new suggestions, new papers, and ideas. It's quite nice, actually; I described it to my research pal as "The Project Has A Supervisor"; Tony asked me just yesterday what I need to further my understanding of metaframeworks, and that enabled me to think about it.

What do I need, actually?

Right now, I'm in the wilds of meta models, criteria for meta models, and other mind-bending things. I learned today that if you are modelling a social something, then it's going to me massively complicated because social elements are about the most complex things that exist. And then - here's the kicker - if you have a highly complex model but the model is capable of capturing the behaviour, do you have a model or just a copy of the behaviour? And if you have just a copy of the behaviour, what does that actually mean? My assumption right now is that it means that you can't claim that you're working with a model any more, and that it's going to impact how you represent the work.

Sheesh.

Go think about that for a week, brainy friends!

In any case, the loosey goosey plan is to establish the foundation. This is where I found myself staring down the barrel of the exact same territory I trod through as an Honours student. A huge part of this project is going to work through the philosophy of interpretation; hermeneutics is a huge part of that, so I'll be revisiting my friends Heidegger and Gadamer.

And yet, here's one amazing thing that I learned today:

There is no definition of meta-social; not on Wikipedia, anyway. I intend to inspire the creation of that page.

And here's another amazing thing that I learned today:

The principles of meta-programming (in computer science) are massively relevant for this project. It's difficult to explain right now, because I'm not familiar enough with the model. But think of it like this:

Meta-programming is creating a program that can modify other programs.

In terms of propaganda, this is a beautiful description of deploying what we'll call (for want of another term) a program. It will:

• Rewrite code without specifying data type. Which means that in People Terms, take any piece of code; for example, "discrimination"; and then let the program run. Without specifying a data type, it will apply itself to everything from race and gender to ridiculous things like "rights" of fairness.

• Write a program. In People Terms, this means that (if created correctly) a set of tactics can write the conditions for the campaign to replicate itself but with another focus. In other words, it can establish the conditions, and create the behaviours required to replicate and vary itself. Kind of like a virus, eh? :)

• Compilers "step outside the language completely" and transform a language by extending its own into that situation. So, in People Terms take a concept like 'ecosystem', which has a very specific meaning; if the program steps outside its own language (biology), it will extend meanings into another language (like, I dunno, marketing).

Right now there is so much going on in my head, and I haven't even really started reading. I'm still annotating, thinking, proposing ideas to myself.

My natural inclination is to jump into text analysis, but it's way too risky for a meta-level project. And here's why:

Postmodernism (and postmodernist theories) focus on the local. They don't like global narratives or meta narratives; and yet it's in the local focus that we've seen social splintering, and resultant discourses of violence (which are inherent in postmodernist theory). Right? So, the way this project must work is meta first; then, in order to illustrate the model in practice, to weave in an analysis (postmodernist, potentially) of singular pieces.

The question then becomes: What is statistical significance?

Oof, what a question. Nothing I am even close to understanding yet!!

Anyway - that's been my work so far this week! I'm doing my best not to do just this work full-time, and to also go to work and do what I have to do to grow my company, but man it's HARD.