Neighbourhoods

Neighbourhoods is a design philosophy for Holochain hApps. As a new unit of social cohesion online, Neighbourhoods aim to evolve "platforms" and "DAOs", pointing the way forward for group organizing on the distributed web.

Neighbourhoods are formed around the Social Sensemaker, which we are building to help communities engage with each other, socially and commercially, while preserving what's unique about their group culture.

We hope this interoperable sense-making and reputation layer for the distributed web will unlock new forms of social coordination at scale.

What?

Community activators choose modules and widget-sized code blocks from the tokenized Neighbourhoods Bazaar. They can stitch these together, alongside the social sensemaker, to create micro-networks called neighbourhoods.

How?

A language for reaction and reputation data and computation enables groups to operate through the ratings and measurements of their choosing. That means that neighbourhoods can design for discovery, engagement, and interaction based on what matters to them and what's appropriate for their context.

The social sensemaker then enables different Neighbourhoods to get information from each other on their own terms. Neighborhoods are not meant to be mega-platforms -- they work to make behavior meaningful in small group contexts and portable outside of them.

Imagine being able to port your Uber or Lyft rating and comments into your new Couchsurfing account - The cultural premises of these groups are different, but if a trusted Couchsurfing node says "hey, that info can still help us get to know a person faster", then you don't have to start from scratch building a reputation on Couchsurfing!

This is what we call "memetic mediation" across groups, and it doesn't require consensus or any other universal governance framework!

Why?

The distributed web needs a portable social layer that enables mass coordination rather than silos. When there's no central location for interpersonal data, helping people move from community to community with their reputation in tow is no small feat. It requires a language for expressing and understanding context-sensitive, interpersonal information and a cryptographic, p2p means of establishing data provenance.

Cultural lenses, the way we determine which behaviors matter for different purposes, define Neighborhoods. Social data that explain behavior in its original context creates coherence at the group level and greater individual autonomy - users can translate the reputation they earn from one Neighbourhood to another.

Building bridges between Neighbourhoods is what makes this framework really useful. We call these "memetic bridges".