Platformer

A typical, traditional campaign asks respondents or members to make pledges—pledge to devote a certain amount of time to a cause, pledge to provide financial support, pledge to march in a rally, pledge to write to a legislator, etc. The action part of a pledge usually targets, more or less directly, the audience or entity whose attention or action is desired. The people who are asked to pledge are generally people who have self-identified as having a stake in the issues under discussion.

With our system, however, we have the potential for far greater “leverage” of the interests, needs, abilities, positions and desires of the individuals in a dynamically-identified coalition. Since the set of concerns within a coalition may be quite diverse in nature, it is conceivable to ask members of a coalition to lend support to the various causes encompassed by the coalition, by requesting pledges that are within the abilities of members to fulfill, and yet might never have been imagined by the individual members. What is more, this request can be accompanied by a description of the expected outcome, with a greater degree of certainty than is generally available in traditional campaigns.

Let us construct an example. We’ll consider two unrelated causes. The first, let us say, is police brutality in Russia. The second, for contrast, concerns an endangered bird in a forest in Oregon. People concerned with the first cause want to compel the Russian government to crack down on a rising wave of police brutality against non-conformist youth in Russia. People concerned with the second cause want to balance out powerful paper lobbies in Oregon that are seeking to destroy the natural habitat of the endangered bird. Superficially, there would seem to be no way for these two constituencies to assist one another—or, more bluntly, no reason for them to imagine trying to do so.

But Platformer has identified a substantial number of individuals who belong to these constituencies as also being members of a coalition formed by several similar platforms. As a result, our system can propose what amounts to a trade between these two constituencies. The group concerned with Russian violence is asked to commit to one pledge. The group concerned with the Oregon bird is asked to make a different pledge. As it happens, the pledge made by the Oregon-interested group will have an effect on the Russian situation, and the pledge made by the Russian-focused group will affect the Oregon situation. The system does not need to explain the mechanics of the whole arrangement, although this information is available to anyone who wants to dig into it. What it can do is simply state, to both constituencies, that if enough individuals make the necessary pledge, a significant action will be performed that will target the cause with which they are concerned.

This situation is a relatively simple one, in which two constituencies are trading influence. It is not even necessary for the two constituencies to know of one another, or even to agree with the cause that the other supports. All that is necessary is a willingness to commit to the pledge proposed by the system.

Of course, the obvious question here is: what action can the system propose? This is addressed by the next major key concept of Platformer.