• an [[essay]].
  • Or part of :) Very much a draft.

In short: an Agora is what Google could be

When I say, perhaps provocatively, that "Google" could or should be more like "an Agora", I mean not the [[Agora]] and [[Google]] exactly as they are in their current form, but rather in their full potential or [[entelechy]]; as per the set of values and intentions most closely aligned with the intent of the [[founders]] or [[stewards]] of a [[company]] or [[community]].

The [[Agora]], in summary, is what I call the umbrella proposal that I mentioned above, presented as a [[prototype]], to help us “fix” (improve) Google and similar carbon-silicon systems :) That is, in this letter I make the argument that the project I started personally and then developed as an informal 120% since around 2020 (see [[Agora project]]), represents a step forward in a good direction as we navigate the mid 20s together. You, [[dear reader]], will be the judge of these claims.

On aspiring to greater fairness

Google is a corporation and a community of employees (traditionally "Googlers", assumed to be practicing "Googlyness" :) In this letter, I comment on how Google was and how Google is, and what Google could be (again?).

Being mostly profit driven as of the time of writing, Google need not be free at all times; but in this letter I make the argument that, given its position of relevance and control at this stage of the evolution of the [[first known internet]], it should try to become increasingly fair ("democratic") within available market-reality-bound possibilities.

As you read these proposals, keep in mind: if not these proposals, which? This, in a nutshell, is if nothing else the spirit of the [[Agora]] I am proposing and have been trying to build: it is a [[commons]] focused on finding [[rational]] [[incremental improvements]] achievable by its community. Put another way: if you share proposals for the betterment of society, our endeavors together, or any interesting subset of them, an Agora can be defined that will be interested by default.

We could experiment with being more democratic

Most corporations have historically not been democratic at all; governance wise they tend to be (or become) highly hierarchical, in particular as they age and emergent hierarchies solidify and negotiate market pressures. As far as governmental structures go, companies are stuck in the time of [[kings]] and [[feudalism]].

Google toyed with a form of anti-hierarchy early in its lifetime, way before I joined in 2012. The story goes that Larry and Sergey thought that they could do away (relatively still few but ever growing) layers of management, and decided that everyone would report directly to one of them -- I think it was Sergey (I will, of course, check). The experiment was cancelled after a few months due to the resulting overload and dysfunction. It seems to me that it makes sense it failed, even that early in the lifecycle of the company. Hierarchies seem to have evolved to reduce coordination overhead and they have strong points which yield demonstrable evolutionary fitness.

My proposal here is that Google should experiment again with some of the concepts and strategies it explored around the time the original [[founders letter]] was published, instead of becoming yet another profit-driven not-putting-users-first in [[digital capitalism]]. I am not suggesting it should risk immolation by becoming chaotic or straying away from market expectations altogether. Rather that it should dare to be one of the first companies of this 21st century to learn from governance tools that have have demonstrably helped other human groups scale beyond the obvious limits imposed by what -- again, organizationally speaking -- amounts to an early form of monarchy.

I started the Agora because I believe that the answer to the scaling, growing, aging pains that Google (and other tech corporations) went through in the [[last twenty years]] is not to double down on hierarchy, cease to put the user first, focus on maximizing profits while bowing down to market and government pressure and becoming informationally-opaque -- as any "[[traditional company]]" would do.

Instead I believe the answer is to try to inch closer to what could be called an informed [[heterarchy]], in one of our proposals one yielded by gradually adopting principles of [[liquid democracy]] on top of [[traditional corporate governance]]. The Agora project came to life as a demo of a proposal for a free, transparent governance layer to facilitate this process and others similar.

On healing processes

With this, again, I don't mean that it is the Agora I started or I'm developing that will solve many of these problems and heal these systems; but rather that this Agora is an expression of the idea that will allow us to do so in the future, and that also makes sense as a direction that Google could explore in the mid-to-late 2020s.

To remain what amounts to a good steward of the internet for billions of users, though, Google should try to strive to be better in certain ways as this happens.

Google could be fairer, freer and more alive

Google should strive to be as fair as it was around 2004. Fairer to all: fairer to employees, fairer to users (a.k.a. [[people]]), fairer to society at large and the greater internet ecosystem.

Google should strive to be freer or closer to free. By this I mean not that it should become a non-profit or self-immolate in the market but rather that profits should not get in the way of providing good quality services to people at minimum monetary cost, as expressed by the letter and manifested by the company's attitudes in the 00s. By this I mean alternatively that Google should more adequately compensate the users for their attention.

In which specific ways could Google be fairer? In which specific ways could Google be freer? By seriously considering the proposals and ideas in this open letter, and others that improve overall happiness and utility while remaining affordable.

This might surprise you, but I think Google has been able to stay relatively close to this promise that seems very core to its original mission ([[to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful]]). Still, we could do better even.

Right intent

I'm a random guy (and nerd) who got lucky, as others I know :) After coming of age in Argentina in the digital context that seems to be becoming known as the [[golden age of the internet]] around the turn of the millenium, I studied literature and computer science and joined Google in [[2012]] believing the [[founders]] cared about the health of the internet and the good of society ahead of profits, and showed it through their public actions and their treatment of employees and users.

During the 00s Google used and developed open protocols like [[XMPP]] and [[WebRTC]]. Google contributed to [[open source]] and the internet [[commons]] before it was cool. Google proved that companies could treat their employees very well -- clearly better than average! high-percentile-well -- and still make a more than sufficient (i.e. a shitload) of money. Google, what is more, had encoded these values in their [[founders letter]], the public declaration of intents and purposes centered around [[don't be evil]] and a great pithy mission: [[to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful]].

Sure, [[free]] was not in it -- but then again, Google offered a fair deal; we could pay with our attention. And it had shown that it could make plenty enough money while offering this fair deal.

So why become evil, indeed, if you can be good and get away with it? If you know you can make money while offering better than average, while being generous to users and employees?

Manichean labels like 'good' (googly) or 'evil' (ungoogly) aside, the question is: why do companies degrade over time? (is [[enshittification]] unavoidable?)

The answer, I believe, is on first approximation relatively straightforward: because all systems will tend to degrade with time, as a manifestation of entropy; because of the emergent forces within social systems that tend to seek to consolidate themselves in hierarchies and occasionally abuse or mismanage their positions of power; because things on the whole tend not to be, or remain, as good as they seem like they can be in general. Because of inefficiencies and lack of trust and coordination.

Because of [[Moloch]], some say. If so: it is to help defeat [[Moloch]] and improve human-computer systems that I'm writing this, and that I started building the [[Agora]].

And it is with the Agora that I intend to [[heal Google]], heal the [[Internet]].

Why an Agora is part of my proposal

The Agora you are likely reading this in, https://anagora.org, is a prototype for a proposed platform that tries to meaningfully improve the status quo in the fields of corpus management, knowledge discovery and governance. This Agora is developed as [[free software]] and in the open, with the intent of helping solve problems that ail human groups, corporations and commons as they grow, learn and age together.

This Agora is informed by the principles expounded in the [[founders letter]], which is why I've decided to make it an integral part of my proposals.

The Agora, being a [[commons]], contains a minimum viable governance platform: a space for debate and group decision making coupled with individual exploration. This is done with the intent to help a participating community shape policies, essentially defining "don't be evil".

The Agora puts the user first -- although currently only those of some users :) It is currently relatively user unfriendly, being early stage and a work in progress. Even at this stage, it does put the user first in two key ways. First of all, it tries to make it easy to explore alternatives. The 'web results' bar that shows up just below the query tries to link out directly to as many useful sites as we can reasonably show to a visiting user. As of the time of writing Google is highlighted because I still believe it is the best search engine in the internet; and Marginalia is highlighted as a good (and distinct/quirkly fun) fully free/independent alternative. Second of all, it always has the Wikipedia article up top if one is found. Enough said, I believe? :) Third of all: after that, what we show is exactly what the users have literally written -- meaning both full Agora users (people who sign up to contribute notes) and social media users who opt into crawling.

More information

(...) link to [[go/agora chapter]] for more (...)

Your Agora might be better than this one

As I said in the beginning, I started writing this letter because nobody else seemed to have yet done so and I thought it was worth writing, apropos of the news and all things considered. Beyond the relative value of my positions contained here I would love it if it were to prompt others; to prompt people like you to write your own and do better, or just explore complementary ideas and approaches.

If you write an open letter, please share it and I will link it here and elsewhere. You can also comment on this one in the [[Agora]], using [[hypothes.is]] or [[social media]], and I will do my best to respond and learn from your feedback.