WHO WE ARE
The Network Theory Applied Research Institute is a nonprofit advancing network society through crowdfunded research and development, organization and education
Organize | Research | Educate
Network society is social and economic effects caused by the internet. Today, more than 75% of humans on Earth (and 100% in space) use this technology. The Network Theory Applied Research Institute is a 501(c)(3) organization in the United States established by veterans of the United States Marine Corps' communication strategy and operations mission. Our mission is to advance network society through R&D, organization and education.
Before the ARPANET was designed in 1969, people could only imagine a structure that decentralized human authority across the entire world, but today, the internet plays a key role in like-minded people assembling support and distributing information around shared goals. National governments and niche social media groups are both forms of collective intelligence--
Effective, decentralized, and agentic decision-making across individuals and communities to produce best-case outcomes for the collective.
-the Collective Intelligence Project
A great example of collective intellect in the natural world is an ant colony or bee hive. Each worker represents a productive node within a network of actors centered around and supporting a queen. The queen births them and gives them a community to participate in. The workers protect the queen and the young, ensuring the society will continue. Ants, bees, wasps and similar insects have direct effects on their environment. Their authority is instinct and these effects don't come so much from the individual, but the entire corps of the society.
At the Network Theory Applied Research Institute, we organize collective intelligence networks toward peaceful productive goals
Humans have been using collective intelligence in various forms since before the stone age. Alpha males, matriarchs, chieftains and kings were succeeded by nobles, councils, senates, parlaments and congresses-- each one creating new freedoms and capabilities for the society under their care. Each form of the proverbial "queens" of human civilization have used the latest communication tools to coordinate their territories. Law books have been around since The Code of Hammurabi, postal systems since ancient Egypt. These artifact communications were slow, but effective for the time. When radio began sending telecommunications around the world, things began changing drastically. Information could suddenly be sent across oceans and only 19 years after its invention, World War 1 began.
By the time the internet came online in 1969, international laws kept new large scale conflicts from breaking out, but smaller regional conflicts like the Arab Spring and the January 6, 2021 attack on Washington D.C. would be coordinated through the net. These conflicts grew within the noisy environment of social media.
In contrast to the civilian channels used in those conflicts, military communication systems have clearly defined objectives between clearly coordinated units. In the wake of 2021, Donald Trump was banned from the Twitter social media platform for essentially using it as a collective intelligence network for supporters who didn't want him to leave office. Immediately, he went about establishing the Truth Social network, structured to recognize him as the "queen" and provide supporters with clear channels to coordinate intelligence and real world operations.
Internet-based collective intelligence networks are faster than radio telecommunications, can be distributed farther and coordinate more decentralized individuals than ever possible in human history. While some will continue to use them for selfish-violent means, at the Network Theory Applied Research Institute we organize collective intelligence networks toward peaceful productive goals. We also release them open-source to ensure people everywhere have the opportunity to use them in their language, with respect to their local preferences. We develop platform projects like those in the Forge Laboratory, where currently the Agrinet Project is underway.
We also organize networks based on human-based computation theory. HBC networks involve computer-based processes that end where the human user begins, allowing users to make decisions, provide input or respond to prompts. HBC networks provides a technological alternative to futures ruled by AI (artificial intelligence). Right now we're using our hope in this technology to organize small groups around the practice of the scientific method in the humanities and natural sciences in the Lost Sheep Research Fellowship and the Journal of Citizen Science and Working Memory.
How You Can Help
There are two ways to get involved with the Network Theory Applied Research Institute. As a patron, you support open-source development in Forge Labs, and the organization of citizen research with the Journal of Citizen Science and Working Memory and Lost Sheep Research Fellowship. But don't stop there...
You can participate in programming digital platforms in Forge Labs or in research with JCSWM and the Lost Sheep. Start a fellowship in your area, or get paid to research at a local library with the Journal of Citizen Science.
NTARI collective intelligence is about all 10 billion of us thinking together-- resolving conflict, and settling the social and economic demands of human society
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