The Timelines Project
The following is an extract from the Google Doc i have written and shared earlier, as is available from this link
“Multi-Universe” Space-Time: An Experimental Tutorial
By: Timothy Holborn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ubiquitous/
DATE: 3rd March 2023 | Document Version: v.0.1
Preface:
Works are underway to form “Human Centric AI” tooling and related derivatives. This is the embodiment of many years of work, by many. Each, with their own stories, their own history, values, achievements, struggles and ambitions. Every one of us, feeds our own story, and our own memory, which can be fed into the great rivers via our roles in advancing our technological capacities as members of our human family. The ability for us to better understand each-others journeys, will provide us an improved capacity to better understand one another, who we are, and what is important to us as people, and as members of various different communities.
Through our ability to produce timelines of our stories, we will be better placed, to support one another and through us, the communities more broadly that surround us, to better navigate this difficult time of complex, rapid, technological advancement.
A Lot of people talk about the notion of trust, yet the term is becoming increasingly difficult to better understand. Through the clarity of producing timelines, in a manner that’s not unlike the creation of a wikipedia of knowledge in other forms; we should thereby, through the illustration of socio-spatio-temporal - verifiable claims - illustrate and furnish the means for one-another to gain an improved basis upon which, we form a comprehension of each-other via internet.
Complex Implications:
Part of the purposeful intent, associated with the intended derivative benefits of this work, is to better - via experiential means - illustrate complex concepts, that relate to the notion of consciousness, ‘truth’, subjective vs. objective realities; and thereby, improve our capacity to understand better - how to design fit-for-purpose Human Centric AI, that acts as an aid for us, rather than alternative AI systems, that others may seek to use to rule us.
This in-turn intrinsically relates to the notion of ‘identity’, both as is manifestly related to the concept as it is applied to groups; as well as, how it is also applied, by observers, in relation to other human beings, and thereby as observers and active natural agents - also, ourselves.
The importance of seeking to ensure that we have a comprehension about temporal semantics, is essential if we are to forge tools that accurately and supportively improve our capacities to support human rights; including but not limited to, the right to be ruled by law, not tyranny.
Entity Centricity Relations
It is often claims by many, that they are the first to have done something; or various other forms of claims, that may well sound incredibly impressive to audiences, hearing about an investment opportunity or whatever it is that relates to any such claims; but the distinction, between claims that are true vs. those that are not, is not a simple matter. Whilst it is most certainly the case that some make false claims, and act in a manner that is not considered to be ‘good’, others may simply have a belief, upon the basis of what it is that they know, that they are making a genuine claim; and indeed, it may be genuine in relation to what it is that they know, their state of consciousness or as it may be described in a different way - their personal ontological ‘universe’ of mind.
In other circumstances, claims that may give rise to concerns at an earlier time, may then lead to circumstances where the continued declaration of the same claim, when the broad ‘common sense’ capacities to understand that the claim is neither valid, nor reasonably continued to be made; gives rise to another area of consideration, in relation to what may be considered as a form of ‘temporal attack’ or minimally, a temporal vector. When it was first discovered that the world was not flat, whomever made the discovery undoubtedly was not considered believable.
Yet now, so many centuries on - one might hope that the opposite has become true. In yet another complex area of consideration, is the temporally differentiated requirements, between making decisions based upon a claim of wrong-doing, vs. empowering, supporting and maintaining respect, for the implications associated with rule of law. There is no form of lawful determination that we should ever seek to be applied upon us, as to warrant ‘future crime’, as is the nature of the story line in the film minority report, which should thereby also be considered in relation to the duties that many should consider more important, of considering the requirements that are placed upon us all, for seeking to ensure judgements are made in court-rooms and not social media feeds or mainstream media publications.
The Intended benefit of this exercise, intends to improve our cognisance of the relationships between information, claims, human agency, human experience and in-turn what it is that we need, in relation to our means to form appropriate means to navigate temporal relations, both publicly and in future also, with various forms of privacy controls; to support our needs, as defined by our shared values.
METHOD
Presently, the easiest approach to collect the information is via the KnightLab Timeline package. The link for this application can be found: https://timeline.knightlab.com/ and notes about how to use it, are provided on that site.
The timeline supports the means to add content from Google Drive, such as PDFs, Images, etc. and Information about the Media Types and what sorts of web-links it supports, can be found: https://timeline.knightlab.com/docs/media-types.html
Recommended Approach
- https://archive.org/ is incredibly useful, when trying to find old records. If a link you are referring to is a ‘live website’, it is recommended that you use Archive.org “Save Page Now” feature, that can be found by pressing the ‘web’ button, in the header menu. This helps to ensure that the reference that you’re making is linked to the statements that can be found on that web-page, as was the case at the time when you made the reference.
- This tool is useful for downloading youtube playlists: https://syncwith.com/youtube/export-youtube-playlist-to-csv https://jolantahuba.github.io/YT-Backup/ (this one is better)
- Always seek to ensure that whatever claim is being made, has electronic evidence of some sort, that you are able to reference.
- Using Google Drive / Docs
I recommend setting-up a Google Drive folder, to add all the artefacts that you’re going to add to the timeline. NOTE: when uploading content to Google Drive, it may strip the metadata from the file, so its best to make a copy of it before you do so. Many PDFs have the date information in the files metadata. 4.1. All content that is to be presented by the timeline must be publicly accessible. So, provide public view permissions for the folder, and then select each file, open it, press the share button and get the file url to add to the timeline spreadsheet. (I hope to support creating the ability to create private ones in future) 4.2. I also Set-up Set up a separate Google Sheet, to create a table of information relating to the practical process of generating the information for the timeline; although this document doesn’t necessarily need to be shared with anyone other than the people that you’re collaborating with to produce the timeline. - If a resource is a web page or something similar, whilst an
<iframe>can be used, I generally take a screenshot; then link the page in the media credits section... - If you would like to add your timeline to our projects collection, please alert us to it via one of the discord groups noted below.
Community Support
If you need some help trying to figure out how to do it, or if you need a community space to collaboratively produce one with others - the Following Discord Servers are available to support the project. Noting, it would be good to know which topics are being done, so that people can cooperatively support one-another, rather than potentially duplicating works done by others.
Human Centric AI (INVITE LINK) | Web Civics (INVITE LINK)
The Peace Infrastrastructure Project (INVITE LINK)