Introduction to Xpertweb

Xpertweb is a way for non-technical people to use the Internet to buy and sell as effectively as the most tech-savvy companies. Xpertweb is similar to weblogging systems in that it makes a technical aspect of the Internet so easy to use that virtually anyone can enjoy its benefits.

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Big-Picture Grandiose Overview

Step-by-step Transaction Overview

Here are the steps of an Xpertweb setup and transaction and comments on why each step is designed as it is.

Set-up or Transaction Step		Script used Comment
Equip the user		setup.php
	Prepare a suitable web server address Every user has a server space so no one "owns" data that others don't have direct access to.	This is usually web space that the user already has available. The only requirement is that it support PHP scripts in a reasonably standard way.
	Copy tools and directory structure from Mentor's Xpertweb Site New User is assigned a unique Xpertweb ID	Users are equipped and trained by a current Xpertweb user who duplicates files and scripts and helps the new user customize the site preferences.
Customize the user's site		XWriter.php
	All providers list their offerings by category
	Specify User info, purchasing preferences and...	Everyone's equipped to buy from other Xpertweb users.
	...optionally, selling preferences	Many will want to offer their own goods & services, requiring more configuration.
User identifies value in the Xpertweb index		sellstuff.php
	Buyer reviews grades and comments given by previous buyers.	All transactions get a grade and comment
	Buyer selects product or service
	Buyer specifies delivery details (when, where, color, options, whatever the product spec offers)	Request data is saved on Seller's site in a new directory path: myxpertwebsite.com sellstuff customers thisCustomerID thisTaskID cust_first_name.xml cust_last_name.xml etc.
	Buyer confirms order details	Request data is saved on Buyer's site in a new directory path: andmyxpertwebsite.com buystuff sellers thisSellerID thisTaskID cust_first_name.xml cust_last_name.xml etc. Now their data is identical
	Email with link is sent to both users
	Seller reviews order form, commits to or declines the order...	On the Seller site ...more details in the task directory
	...and confirms the commitment	On the Buyer site ...more details in the task directory Now their data is identical
Seller delivers something to the buyer
Seller invoices the buyer		sellstuff.php
	Seller completes automatic invoice reviewing order & delivery details...	On the Seller site ...more details in the task directory
	...and confirms the invoice	On the Buyer site ...more details in the task directory Now their data is identical
	Email with link is sent to both users
Buyer and Seller grade the transaction		sellstuff.php
	Buyer gives grade & comment...	On the Seller site ...more details in the task directory
	...and confirms the rating	On the Buyer site ...more details in the task directory Now their data is identical
Customer rating affects the proposed cost		sellstuff.php
	In the case of a proposed $100 charge...
	...Grade of 85-100% pays $100
	...Grade of 50-85% pays $50-$85
	...Grade below 50% pays nothing
Electronic payment using any system the buyer chooses
	Buyer orders electronic payment
	Seller receives electronic payment
Seller rates the transaction		sellstuff.php
	Seller gives grade & comment...	On the Seller site ...more details in the task directory
	...and confirms the rating	On the Buyer site ...more details in the task directory Now their data is identical
Any Xpertweb user may mentor a new user for a proposed fee
Voluntary mentoring fees may become substantial, reinforcing any natural network effects of the Xpertweb system		Users rate their mentors each month and transmit a voluntary fee between 0-1% of business done that month

Big-Picture Grandiose Overview

What if we are all just pawns of technology rather than of history and class distinctions? If so, then we might conclude that all the actors in our culture are simply playing out a role they've been dealt by an interaction of information and financial media. From this viewpoint, appealing to CEOs to not be "greedy" is seen as a waste of effort. Hoping for politicians to act on a higher vision is obviously as useless as exhorting pigs to fly. And asking all of us to just get along would be no more effective than preaching has ever been. Under this view, ethical behavior is an interesting but unobserved theory and economic transformation is humanity's only shot at, well, humanity.

Since these are disappointments we experience each day, then we might follow Alan Kay's observation that it's easier to change the future than to predict it.

But change what? Let's assume the Internet's greatest promise IS economic, not as a dot com IPO incubator or a B2B EDI Extranet, but in the sense that the Federalist papers were an economic framework for people with free farmland to deal with each other using peer-to-peer economic protocols, unmediated by feudalists and the East India Trading Company.

Xpertweb proposes to create such a space in the place called the Internet: people using free online shops to deal with each other unmediated by companies interceding between the buyers and sellers of talent. A market in the old sense.

The Xpertweb protocols use forms that record and report all promises and actions made by people who use the forms. The grading of each transaction subjects the seller's representations to the harsh light of the buyer's post-sale regard.

Xpertweb's open data structure has no precedent. Every piece of useful data out there is stored in a proprietary format on a medium controlled by the party most motivated to use it for their own ends. The only exception to the hegemony of proprietary data is the data stored on web pages - a form of data storage so open and ubiquitous that we don't think of web pages as data. Web pages aren't really useable as data that can be searched, aggregated, parsed and disseminated, and they're still under the owner's unilateral control, but they're a start. (It's ironic that open source tools are used only to create closed source data).

The eXtensible Markup Language has unexpectedly created the means to support truly public data, but no tools have been deployed to equip parties to record matching, complementary, unrepudiable transaction data on their respective privately controlled servers. We can call this "symmetrical data."

Proprietary, asymmetrical data is based on the command, control and secrecy requirements of warfare and has always been the root of tyranny. Symmetrical data creates a level playing field of public activity typical of sports.

Xpertweb buyers and sellers will report so much more information about their dealings that they will operate in a fundamentally different economy than the rest of us. Whether this new peer-to-peer economy is significant is simply a question of whether it grows to capture a relevant share of the transactions which are currently being under-reported, compared to Xpertweb standards.

If it doesn't grow, this is just an interesting mental drill, so let's assume we can make the protocols viral enough that the participants are incentivized to evangelize it effectively. For now, let's just study these effects as if they matter.

Each Xpertweb user is trained by a more experienced user, and each inherits certain expectations when trained. User data is further copied to their respective mentor's web sites. The expected effects are:

A small but fast-growing set of buyers and sellers quantify, comment upon and symmetrically publish every transaction they conduct.
These transactions are, in the truest sense of the word, "qualified," since their quality has been recorded, in addition to being quantified. (Quantification of a transaction is the Lowest Common Denominator of the market. Qualification is the Highest Common Denominator.)
Xpertweb shared data comprises a shared accounting system as well as a public archive. Let's call an accounting system a data repository that causes its stakeholders to alter current behavior in the expectation of future reward. The special form of data called accounting systems are particularly proprietary, and particularly subject to manipulation by their owners, as is more obvious each day in the summer of 2002.
A public, open, symmetrical accounting system has breathtaking possibilities for the transformation of economic behavior. If private data has been the root of public tyranny since the invention of the cuneiform data coding system, then the automatic publishing of symmetrical transaction data lets the genie out of the bottle, perhaps to grow too large to stuff back in.

As blogging is to big-pub journalism, so is symmetrical data to the extortion of private effort by public companies. It may constitute post-capitalism.
Big movements grow only from small beginnings. As users evangelize the Xpertweb protocols, they will discover a new way of engaging talent. Some talent will be half a world away to delight you with previously unavailable performance and value. Some will be previously undiscoverable around the corner. Unwillingness to use these protocols may constitute a competitive disadvantage.
- I need to unplug a sewer line in zip code 93108. My 2002 choice is the Yellow Pages or random word-of-mouth. A 2003 option is to review area plumbers with ratings listed in an RSS Xpertweb index, organized by grade, responsiveness and earliest availability - plumbers who live in a microeconomy where, like a waiter, work is done first, subject to a customer rating which may reduce the expected price if the buyer is dissatisfied enough.
- I'm a teenager in Kearney, Nebraska. My uncle supports my native ability to code HTML and I start doing low-cost work to build a reputation and later I charge whatever the world market will bear.
- I'm a teenager in Bangalore, India. My uncle supports my native ability to code PHP and I start doing low-cost work to build a reputation and later I charge whatever the world market will bear.
- A homeowner discovers a hands-on neighbor with a power washer for which he charges $20 per hour. The handy neighbor wheels it over, trains the user, has a cup of coffee and picks it up that evening. An irksome $125 Home Depot transaction has been transformed into a pleasant $50 P2P transaction. People become skilled at putting their excess means of production into shared use.
- A Gal Friday legal assistant leaves the law firm after she accumulates eight people who need a virtual assistant. She becomes an expert at finding other experts in the Xpertweb index. She's paid directly for her time and so are the other experts, since there's no procedural hassle to paying one or five people to do work.
Xpertweb is designed to be aggressively viral. Users are incentivized by network economics to spread the gospel of collaborative effort. Buyers prefer to deal with Xpertweb sellers so they encourage their suppliers to adopt the system. Sellers prefer the reputation building, task tracking and invoicing, so they similarly encourage their customers.
Even more viral is the mentor training fee: 1% of the transaction paid by each user to each of 5 mentors above them (subject to their mentor grade). Yes, it's the notorious Amway algorithm, but administered through a shared non-proprietary accounting system. For every finicky yuppie turned off by the multi-level rewards, five regular folks are attracted by the system. When rewards prove reliable and reproducible, even the suspicious minority realize that the Amway algorithm is not intrinsically suspect when the accounting is open and unsupervised and when value is generated by the participants rather than forced into the system by the keeper of the accounting system. Like the transformation of mediaeval usury into interest charged for carrying a merchant account, the Amway algorithm may earn respectability.
- Some Xpertweb users just buy things, some mostly sell. Both incidentally introduce others to the system and receive scores or hundreds of small to medium deposits to their receiving account. Some don't do much work but get rich recruiting others, learning to make sure their people are happy with their mentoring, because it's graded for satisfaction like every other Xpertweb payment.
- Payments moving through the system are trackable, reportable and aggregable so everybody knows how much money is moving through the system and where it's moving. The reporting further incentivizes adoption by those who hate to see cash flowing past them but not through them.
- As the obvious talent is attracted to the system, those with less obvious qualities are sought out, trained and groomed to produce anything that might be useful. Unlike the old economy, those on the margins of the system at any moment are always in demand by mentors seeking to grow their mentoring fees.
As talent is drawn out of companies' proprietary accounting systems, companies become even worse at attracting, rewarding and deploying talent. Work which once seemed only possible within companies is increasingly seen as suitable to the adhocracies predicted by Alan Toffler in 1970. Large projects learn to self-organize themselves based on the post-studio Hollywood model.

System Flexibility

Unlike centralized web services, the distributed Xpertweb application has no prescribed user interface - it's just an open distributed data repository. Xpertweb people can use the forms their mentor provides or any that may be offered by those equipped to create and modify forms.

Further, the XWriter.php script allows any web page layout person to add data with no knowledge of CGIs, data protocols and processes. They just have to know which of their web directories they want to save the data to, what each data item should be called and whether to display it or ask for input. XWriter.php lowers the bar for data-driven web form development.