Wired covers Global Square: “a Facebook for the 99%”

Tech magazine Wired just covered our proposal for the Global Square, an online platform for the Occupy movement and a model for direct global democracy.

Dear friends and followers,

We’ve been taking a much-needed break for the past 2 weeks — but it’s not like the revolution has been standing still. In an excellent article, leading technology magazine Wired just covered The Global Square, a new independent social network we proposed back in November in collaboration with Take the Square, European Revolution and United for Global Change #15oct. Referring to the Global Square as “a Facebook for the 99%”, Sean Captain writes that:

A move away from mainstream social networks is already happening on several levels within the Occupy movements — from the local networks already set up for each occupation to an in-progress, overarching, international network project called Global Square, that Knutson is helping to build. Those networks are likely to be key to Occupy’s future, since nearly all of the largest encampments in the United States have been evicted — taking with them the physical spaces where activists communicated via the radically democratic General Assemblies.

The idea behind the Global Square, as we proposed it, was to create an online platform for our movement that could eventually transition into a functional model for direct global democracy, where local assemblies are linked together through an open-source network allowing them to coordinate grassroots activities and formulate common aspirations at the global level. Much more than building just another Facebook, the Global Square project aims to be a revolutionary experiment in radical self-organization at the global level.

The initiative, which received early support from Wikileaks and Richard Stallman, has since taken on a life of its own, with some extremely clever and creative people making major strides forward in its realization. As Captain reports, “The Global Square Knutson is helping to build is finalizing its tech and will launch, probably in January, with basic linkages for various Occupy sites to trade messages, re-publish articles and allow cross-commenting on them.”

As usual, we will keep you posted on the most relevant developments. We thank you for your support in spreading this proposal far and wide — and most of all we thank the techies like Knutson who are helping to transform the dream of global participatory democracy into reality.

La Lucha Sigue — The Struggle Goes On!