Talk:Main Page

The intro essay is the only thing that makes sense on this page. Thankfully it contains links to all the good starting points. So maybe what's needed is just to divide up by advocate, developer, designer roles? So that we figure out what people can do for Consumerium, and send them to the right place?

---

Shouldn't this be linked from the Main Page as "Consumerium Services" or something?

Brief Introduction to The Concept of Consumerium

From the consumption perspective Consumerium is about enabling a shift from affective buying behaviour based on illusions to affective buying behaviour based on information on the social and environmental impacts of the production and naturally the perceived quality of the product.

We hope to achieve this by building two, consumer accessible, complementary facilities:

• The Content Wiki where we hope people will build an abundance of neutral information about products and their production processes and all involved factors. The integrity of this information will be negotiated and upheld by peer review in a similar manner as in Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia and furthermore by maintaining a backend data storage called The Consumerium Vault which mostly validates the existance or non-existance of things the articles in The Content Wiki claim to refer to. The goal of the Content Wiki is to be objective.

• The Consumerium Exchange or The Opinion Wiki - Where strictly formed datastructures are used to record, archive and enable the aggregation of information on the popularity of different opinions, mostly in the form of competing campaigns on issues related to production and consumption. The Consumerium Exchange is very rigid internally, but the view it provides to consumers and producers alike is very fluid and based on ones subjective preferences.

Both of these facilities will be accessible through the Internet, but we hope to work together with the retailers of the world, who seek an competitive advantage by providing a better shopping experience for their clients, to bring access to the shelf front via short-range wireless connections, optimally Bluetooth, for zero cost to the consumer.

"Bluetooth" is not "zero cost". It costs money to buy hardware and more money to keep it up to date. Also wireless services usually cost money. The cheapest devices to do this would certainly not be Bluetooth but dumber analog FM or other RF devices. Don't "Require" hardware that isn't required.

...to be continued...

---

It is one of several essential projects that will make moral purchasing a daily reality. Consumerium focuses this moral purchasing power.

Advice will probably be seen by the end user as a red/yellow/green light traffic-type signal, or as a score easily translated into a price premium, or as a note in Simple English about issues with, or merits of, the product. All rely on opinion wiki comments compiled by software using a wikitext standard. Semantic link standards may be required also.

In any case, the release of this advice is keyed to bar codes, and may rely on frequently updated data embedded in hand-held devices, and/or dynamic retrieval via short-range wireless to the shelf front. Where possible, reasons for making buying decisions, or refusing a certain product, will go as feedback to the producers. This will enhance the consumer experience, advance product development and keep this planet as hospitable as possible for human and other natural life.

The alternative, of course, is for us all to be blissfully ignorant.