The Basics
Neighbourhoods is a project building tools and services for a new framework for creating and organizing online communities.
Neighbourhoods makes it easy to bundle together different “groupware” modules and to pair these with tags, reactions, ratings, and reputation systems chosen to fit your group’s culture and purpose.
neighbourhoods are unique instances of the Neighbourhoods framework.
We're sick of "being the product" in centralized systems, and we're sick of inheriting the generic, corporate culture of mega-platforms.
The distributed web promises greater individual and collective autonomy and control over data. Yet, it still needs to solve for many of the things client-server models are really good at: algorithmic discovery, curation, engagement, and matchmaking of people, goods, and services.
The success of the distributed web depends on its ability to make good on these promises, outperforming centralized platforms entirely. Neighbourhoods is our attempt!
Neighbourhoods infrastructure, including the Social Sensemaker, is built using Holochain. Additionally, neighbourhoods are composed of Holochain "hApp" modules.
A large part of Neighbourhoods is about creating pathways and incentives for developing hApps, and for this reason we consider ourselves a crucial part of the Holochain ecosystem more broadly.
Most members of our team have been involved with Holochain and/or Holo since its inception and are deeply aligned with the mission, purpose, and values of a truly p2p Internet.
An applet is, in essence, a Holochain hApp that is compatible with Neighbourhoods' social sensemaking capabilities. There are three possible degrees, or 'levels' of compatibility with Neighbourhoods:
Level 1: A holochain hApp that can run inside the Neighbourhoods Launcher and has a Sensemaker configuration file, that allows social interactions using the Sensemaker Dashboard only
Level 2: A Level 1 applet that introduces UI elements that interact directly with the Sensemaker, like displaying cultural contexts, or creating assessments and running methods.
Level 3: A level 2 applet that introduces mutable UI components that can react to Sensemaker configuration changes and customizations by a Community Activator(s), like changing assessments from "likes" to "claps" , or changing how cultural contexts are displayed automatically.
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Web 3.0 is poorly defined in the first place, but with that in mind:
Web 3.0 is typically associated with some subset of the crypto space, as Neighbourhoods is. More importantly, neighbourhoods are meant to evolve the organizing principle of the "platforms" of web 2.0 through distributed data ownership, agent-centricity, and alternative funding structures.
Given the unique scalability of Holochain relative to other distributed ledgers and blockchains, it is possible to build the type of social apps we're familiar with - except, this time, making them more fair, more culturally heterogenous, more customizable, and more autonomous from the profit-motive of platforms.
All in all, yes, we think this effort is as "web 3.0" as any - maybe even more ;)
Last modified 1mo ago