What if we could create an economic system where the barnraising was the paradigm, rather than the war or the mining operation. Which featured GPS and special ops, but directed towards those ends that result in POSITIVE EXPERIENCE, for ourselves and for future generations?

Here’s how Joe Edelman describes the motivation behind the Groundcrew project:

“I think both GPS and warfare are symptoms of a much larger, and positive, deep human desire. The desire to be synchronized, coordinated, to have beautiful choreographed teamwork across multiple scales. And to feel our power as humans in groups. Even the large industrial operations you people are critiquing involved logistics and a scale of operations that, I’m sure, got somebody excited.

People love reading about special forces operations. Even radical artists love the word “tactical.” I think this is why.

The problem is, until now, many of these vast, coordinated operations have been directed at the wrong aims. They have been destructive, of natural resources, of human life, etc, instead of constructive. This is why the Amish barn raising is such a powerful metaphor in open source discussions: because it’s an example of a constructive use of this coordinated, beautifully choreographed, human power, that many of us crave.

What if we could create an economic system where the barnraising was the paradigm, rather than the war or the mining operation. Which featured GPS and special ops, but directed towards those ends that result in POSITIVE EXPERIENCE, for ourselves and for future generations?”
(IDC mailing list, January 2009)

And here’s the official description, of what promises to be an important part of the peer to peer infrastructure for social mobilization:

“Web and mobile technologies like Facebook Events are bringing crowds together in public squares, restaurants, and all over. Often these crowds are difficult to coordinate. Our startup is about the real-time coordination of these crowds, so that real-world group behavior can be used positively and well. In particular, we help worthy projects, organizations, and businesses build “squads” of real-world helper/participant agents. Squad leaders can view data from their squad in real-time, using text messaging and GPS; they can see who’s available at any moment, and they can give assignments, either mass assignments or systems of individual assignments that help people work together.

Such a squad is useful for almost any type of business, organization, or individual. A squad can be used to help out nonprofits, to play games, to provide entertainment, for marketing events, for citizen reporting—really anything at all.”

Joe Edelman’s lifework and inspiration was explained in an earlier Mobile Manifesto:

While we continue to argue about capitalism and socialism, for the first time a third option is really possible. We can build a more sophisticated, dynamic, distributed approach to organizing labor and resources than has ever been attempted before.