“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
Work in progress (discussion welcome). Please no voting until this notice is removed
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ac·count
/əˈkount/
Verb
1.) To present a detailed summary and/or record of a course of events. Ex: The government official was unable to account for the missing equipment and money.
[ Etm: From Latin computare “to sum up” ]
Work in progress (discussion welcome). Please no voting until this notice is removed
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Love
/ləv/
Noun
1.) a:Active concern for the well being of family b:Favor.
Work in progress (discussion welcome). Please no voting until this notice is removed
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re·li·gion
/riˈlijən/
Noun
1.) a:The human habit of forming ideological alliances with one another, regarding issues commonly accepted as being of highest importance. b:An institution, organization, or group based on such alliances.
HOW TO USE THIS BIBLE
Being an owner/user of Free Press Bible, you are required to decide whether you will be using all, some, or none it's features.
Since the Free Press Bible process is by it's very nature a self guided process, please do not look for any sort of official guidance as to what specifically is worth keeping in your collection, as that would essentially defeat the purpose.
If you are inclined to use only the tangible printed product, the directions for use are most simple and straight forward:
Remove the cover and you will notice binding screws that hold the pages of your bible together. Loosen and remove the screws with a screwdriver and your bible can be disassembled for adding or removing pages.
The pages of Free Press Bible are half-letter sized. This means that suitable pages for your collection can be made by folding an ordinary piece of paper in half, punching holes into it, and assembling it into your book.
The Free Press Bible Process, also referred to as “Self-Canonization” is essentially a self guided process.
This particular collection belongs to:____________________________
Who began self-canonization on: __________________________________
The contents of this collection (if it belongs to you) are to be accepted, rejected or modified. The articles are printed in a gray color. Darken in black articles you accept, Blot out articles found not to be worth inclusion. Highlight articles, relocate articles, note your own thoughts next to those who have influenced you.
Consider what is more or less important to include. Though modern technology allows easy creation of libraries of considerable size, a collection printable within the confines of a single book requires a much more discerning approach.
Some possible sources for content for your collection are
3. Your own memory and imagination
4. Conversations you have
5. Public and Private Libraries
6. The Internet
Getting started is easy. Start by filling the various sections with articles that you either strongly agree, or disagree with. Place the articles you feel most strongly about at the forefront of the section you've categorized them in. This task can be done in complete privacy for however long you like. Attractive articles can be found all over the place, and building a collection of favourites is a good way to start. The things you find attractive, reveal important aspects of your personality.
Content for your collection can come from anywhere. Any material that can be printed on a piece of paper, you are free to include in the bible that you hold in your hands. Just as no law can justly stop you from committing to memory the things you read and witness, no law can justly prevent you from utilizing tools like Free Press Bible to develop your personal philosophy. What some might call religion.
The act of self-canonization involves prioritizing some articles ahead of others. This is a great way to refine the way you think.
Start with a blank collection, a collection you already value, or the promotional publication if you so choose.
If you choose to build your collection from the promotional publication, please keep in mind that it was not compiled with any hope or expectation that owner/users would wholeheartedly agree with and accept every portion. Much of the content is included only because of it's controversial nature.
It may well be that you will prefer not to base your collection on active and open public controversies, debates and discussions like the promotional release is.
How closely, you choose to involve others in the development of your collection is up to you. You will find that without being stimulated by others, progress will be painfully slow. Conversations with other people are very useful for helping to challenge the way you think, and for finding more effective ways to express the way you think.
Important conversations are worth keeping a record of. There is a section entitled “suspicions”. This section is for material of suspect, or potential value. Things you want to look through, consider, “distill” or “mine” valuable content from.
There is no need to limit your collection to printable material, unless for some reason you do not have access to the internet or a computer.
Since the directions for how to use the digital media based features are different for different computer systems the how to use sections for those can be found either at:
or on the Free Press Bible DVD
There is more than one way that the Free Press Bible product can be acquired and used.
For users who have no interest in buying a copy, they are free to download one. All the current content of the promotional release, (including all the software included on the Free Press Bible DVD) can be downloaded from http://www.freepressbible.net/download/
If you want the snazzy Free Press Bible binder and it's accompanying DVD though you'll have to purchase it at http://freepressbible.com.
If for some reason you cannot get a copy through the website, please write to:
FORWARD
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The FREE PRESS BIBLE is a special sort of Bible. It is in a very important sense non-religious. It is emphatically non-sectarian, and by virtue of it's promoting owner/users to modify it in whatever way they desire, it is in essence authentically non-denominational. It differs from predominate collections in that it was designed specifically to be modified, continually updated and personalized by ordinary people. It is meant to inspire readers and owner/users to collect, create and prioritize their most valued texts, documents, and recordings how they see fit. It is meant to be useful to people who think of themselves as anti-religion or simply have no particular religious affiliation, as well as those who do consider themselves religious. It is meant to contain articles that the owner/user wishes to identify with, and also articles that show aspects of ideologies they are opposed to and fighting against. It is meant to contain symbolic expression of strongly held sentiments and philosophical ideals, prioritized in a unique way by any individual who works to adapt it to their purposes. It is meant to be published in such a format that derivative and competing works can be easily made by anyone so inclined. It is meant to be not only a book, binder and journal, but also a set of tools that encourages and better enables people to respectfully and safely compare their strongly held beliefs with each other. It is meant to promote the preservation and expansion of intellectual rights. It is meant to help owner/users become and remain philosophically self critical. It is meant to provoke open controversy and debate on as broad a scale as possible. It is meant to be criticized. It is meant to become a catalyst for cooperation and collaboration among people that have common values. It is an expression of faith in symbolic language's usefulness and intrinsic goodness. It has been put together collaboratively utilizing peer influence. It is meant to be entirely non-sexist. It is a joint product with a software based content creation/selection and archiving system, operating freely and openly according to creative commons, open source and GPL standards and principles as both a personal binder, (Bible) and personal media management tool.
I hope you find this approach as inspiring as I have and that we find the opportunity to have many great conversations.~ atypican
Copyright 2009-2013 FREE PRESS BIBLE™
The printable or text portion of this publication is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License.
This means there are no legal restrictions to prevent the copying, distributing, or creation of derivative works from it,except that any derivative work must also “Share Alike” and not just allow, but specifically stipulate that the same liberties, and liberty preserving restrictions must extend to any subsequent derivative works. Also attribution must be given to the original author or copyright holder in a manner prescribed by the copyright holder.
The computer software portions of the Free Press Bible publication are released under the GNU General Public License Version 3 and include third party software products also released under that license.
Owner/users of the Free Press Bible product need not concern themselves with the restrictions explained in the licenses unless they intend to distribute a modified or derivative work.
With the primary intent of Free Press Bible being to encourage the creation of derivative works by owner/users, it is fitting to mention that if the derivative work in question is to be offered for sale commercially, neither the Free Press Bible name, or the cover design or artwork may be used. These are trademarks belonging to freepressbible.com
MADE ON THE INTERNET WITH OPENSOURCE GPL SOFTWARE
How so?
By promoting personal responsibility as opposed to finger pointing.
I would prefer that I got paid for bothering at all.
Not saying that an arrangement couldn't possibly be made but your statement calls attention to what I am struggling with. How to make the project seem (to others besides me) like something worth bothering with. I have benefited profoundly through the practice of self-canonization, and it's something I started out only dabbling with in my spare time.
Notice that no one else seems the slightest bit interested?
You can stop rubbing it in any time now!
Why do you suppose that is?
I imagine the word bible keeps a number of people from giving the concept deep consideration, also I am sure it's partly because I need to improve the project description. I do get quite a bit of people popping in to check out the site and I do think that if I had a downloadable software product that functions like I envision, people would try it and see the value in it rather quickly. I need to hire or partner with a programmer for that, and that takes money, or finding someone who is passionate about the idea and either works well with me, or wants to compete. I am working on a promo video for kickstarter, and I am trying to write the narrative right now. And shame on me I am trying to get help with that too!
Why?
Ok so the primary purpose of the promotional publication is to popularize self canonization, to facilitate more robust philosophical self criticism. In other words..I want to improve my collection, and in order to do that more effectively, I need to see how my articles stand up to the scrutiny of my peers, and be able to compare articles with them. I am the ultimate authority over what is included in or excluded from MY personal collection, however I have decided that the decision making process regarding what articles are included in the promotional publication will be subject to an open public debate/discussion using the createdebate platform. Now the possibility does exist that the article inclusion debate forum could be flooded with material that will have the effect of making the Free Press Bible Project look sectarian in nature. The reason I think this can be prevented is that sectarian ideologies are easy to logically dismantle and should anyone participate for reasons other than improving their collection or helping to develop the promotional publication their contributions will stand out like a sore thumb and will be either be ignored by users who are already having in-depth discussions or their unwillingness to logically engage will quickly be made apparent with sharp questions and retorts.
What is the difference between your collection and what you intend to publish?
The articles (which includes everything from literature, to audio and video files, and computer software applications) that constitute the "promotional publication" or "promotional release" are to be selected through a peer-to-peer process of open public debate and discussion using the createdebate platform. Nothing but freely licensed media will be included in the promotional release.
The contents of my personal collection are determined solely by me
If you want people to decide for themselves what to include, what are you publishing?
A set of software tools and an example of the quality of publication that can result from a peer based free exchange of ideas.
If you did have the technical skills you see as being required to move this project forward, what would you use them to do?
I would create a repository using strictly FOSS, that users could submit articles to, that they regard as valuable. The contents of this article archive would be displayed in a random manner that wouldn't give priority to one article over another. Users would be able to either keyword search the archive or view articles in a random manner.
I would create an application that makes use of a web browser plug-in that would interact with an ODT file on the users computer that is specially formatted to print on half letter sized paper, that can also convert and save multimedia files to an open format on a folder on their computer and/or one that is cloud based. This would enable users to conveniently add material they find while surfing the internet to their collection. It would be a bundle of GPL licensed content curation software.
So far I see nothing particularly novel or compelling.
We have the ability to search and manipulate literature and other data like no time before in history. Certainly important personal record keeping is nothing new, but it is being done in new ways, and more people than ever have access to immense libraries like no time before in history. I understand that I haven't done anything close to amazing, and that I am shamelessly piggy backing off of other peoples work, but I feel like if I could explain the project succinctly yet thoroughly, I could attract people to help me make it into something that would improve the ideological atmosphere in neat ways. I prefer your good questions to your harsh commentary.
So suppose you attract a bunch of "collaborators" whose input you don't value, how will you keep that from projecting an image contrary to the one you'd like to?
This is a real risk. The way I see it right now is that this can only happen if the initial collaborators don't grok the non-sectarian approach and start posting a bunch of articles that will make people jump to erroneous conclusions about the nature of the project. Those who think of themselves as secularists might think it promotes superstition, and those who think of themselves as religious may think it aims to invalidate their tradition. Since there is to be an article archive that anyone can post articles to, I will try to make sure that there are so many diverse articles being displayed (randomly) that it will be clear that no specific ideological tradition is being given priority. I imagine that I will at some point have to delete some articles. When I do I will be transparent about it so anyone who disagrees with the moderation policy can fork the project. As far as the inclusion debates for the promotional release, all I can say is that I have faith that reason will be diligently applied and the worst articles will fade into obscurity in it's light.
I checked out your site and it doesn't look like you have accomplished much.
Ouch! Well my personal collection is where the bulk of my work is. I have some strong biases that I think will put off too many potential users should I publicize everything in my collection too soon.
It looks to me like you want people to team up with you and basically make up for your lack of passion.
While I certainly would like to attract collaborators, they don't need to be "teamed up" with me. The project encourages competing works, and is licensed in a manner that specifically preserves the right to do so. I even have another domain registered called "amenablebible" for someone who might be interested in a competitive relationship. It's not so much a lack of passion I need to make up for, as a lack of technical skills.
I hope you see the hypocrisy in trying to "get others to focus on themselves"
Actually my primary focus is improving my own collection. This is the reason why I need to be public about it. I am seeking help to improve my own collection.
Isn't the internet already taking care of that much better than your little pipe dream could ever hope to?
I do not expect my project to compete with the internet as a means of expanding intellectual liberty, but rather to make use of the internet in a novel and compelling way.
Why do you suppose anyone would be impressed enough by the very little you seem to have accomplished to want to jump on your little bandwagon?
I have to start somewhere, and if there is a "bandwagon", it is that of those who are keeping a prioritized collection of valuable articles, and it's no more my bandwagon then that of anyone who is into keeping a collection and enriching it through interactions with others.
The project is a publication, NOT a membership organization.
