New Society Project

Group Name: The New Society project, AKA the NSP
Created by: Jay and Garry
Appearance: 2014, suggested by Steven Ashby
Number of Members: Unknown, small yet and growing.
Nature of Members: Scholars who are trying to organize history and sociology into in a harder science.
Organization: Not much. There is the central council, a group of "Wise People" set to manage the project and to try an act as a gate of sensibility. Then there are Scholars - people who read voraciously all the data that's being gathered and trying to make some larger sense of the patterns seen. and then there are Field Scholars, people who venture forth into this world and all the others to try and bring back Data relevant to the NSP's purpose.
Game Role: to act as a generator for missions where the McGuffin is knowledge about societies
World Role: To gather knowledge of various human societies and then using this data create a sensible set of root principles to build a sensible society with.
Relative Influence: Currently very little except for stirring controversy. In time it may be extreme
Public or Secret: Public, rigorously public. (The secret part is so secret that not even the people that are part of it know about it. Some peoples' children.)
Publicly Stated Goal: "The Social Inch" To gather as much knowledge of various societies as possible, to create a yard stick by which to measure societies and then create a better one deliberately. In short to make Sociology a hard science.
Relative Wealth: Compared to the Warp Drive Project small. Compared to the Collegium Arcane, about equal.
Group advantages: Smart people who aren't afraid to go to distant places. They know the CoD and Julian so they can travel to other worlds.
Special Abilities: Stellar travel and dimensional travel courtesy of friends and allies
Group disadvantages: An insanely huge project, and no clear objective yard stick for measuring - they're making that up.
Special disadvantages: As naive travelers to foreign lands, they are bait for things that like to eat travelers
Those who favor them: Scientists, Scholars, diplomats, the curious
Those opposed to them: Cranky misanthropes who just hate people or any effort spent on people. libertarians who fear a badly planned society (Described as any society planned without them, or any society planned for that matter.), Social "Science" Scholars who fear they may be aced out of the new "NSP" hierarchy.
Area of Operation: Everywhere they can reach.
Headquarters Location: Los Angeles at USC and at the Long Beach WDP facility. Informally part of Warp Drive Tech.
Public Face: Earnest Scholars of the Human Condition.
Notable Members: 13 core "Wise people" who act as the main coordinators and arrangers of peer review for their gathering work, the "Steering Committee".
*Dr. Fatima Collins -- Professor Emeritus USC -- Current chair of the Steering Committee. She was picked more for her organizational skills and unique ability to let people work without inserting her own ego than any brilliance at sociology.
*AbSykLan -- Ane Healer -- Expert in multi-species abnormal physiology. She knows what the edges of what is being looked for looks like.
*Dr. Craig Lee Fetours -- Anthropologist -- A professional anthropologist that turned TV face. Late of the National Geographic Greyhawke Expedition. He is an actual serious scientist. Once you get TV on you it is devilishly hard to get off.
*Dr. James Smythe -- Anthropologist, Archeologist, several other 'ogists. Immensely old and very wise. Someone experienced in the darker sides and how to avoid them.
Several senior field scholars ala Indiana Jones. More are typically Librarian Jones as digging though the literature to find out what we do know is a major goal.
What you do not see are dyed in the wool sociological experts that will not look beyond the Woo woo and Kumbya of "established social science" that is clearly not working. Yea they are butthurt over it.
History of the Organization:
Created in 2014, as a way to create a means of reasonably and rationally addressing social ills that threaten to become much worse with added technology and magic. Their first goal is to brush aside the Woo woo and Kumbya to find the social inch. The means of truly measuring social systems.
In May 2016 the New Society Project published the first concrete steps in the building of the Social Inch, On the Building Blocks of Social Interaction, This is a stunning breakthrough so soon in the project's work. They are cautiously working around this and making sure they got it right.
The paper has opened a flood of data in the Galan Database. 
The goals so far:<BR>
Find out everything we can about Human society. Be they on Earth or off Earth. Be that ancient literature, old people, the Galan Database or direct observation. Such sources as the National Geographic Greyhawke Expedition and Discovery Kentari are goldmines of information.
Find out everything we can about non-Human society. Ane, Tellerites, Vulcans, Dragons. Get everyone's ideas. You do not know what you might find useful. (An impossible task. You will always find yet more people.)
Discuss the impact of coming technologies and magic. Where the rubber hits the road. The purpose of the project is to not have a catastrophic social collapse when this stuff, which is not a maybe, hits the public. Replicators are coming, easy magic and tons of not Human people are a certainty. Let's deal now.
Reaction: They are barely out of the gate and are already being called a Star Chamber of the Illuminati. Except for the ones saying they are way to obvious and are just public targets while the real action is secret. The general public hasn't even noticed. One commentator even claimed they couldn't be real, just a rumor. Must like the taste of crow.
Several socialist/technocratic organizations are already working to get control of the New Society Project. They at not likely to succeed as it has used the Warp Drive Project’s framework of organization. A group that has proven devilishly difficult to seize control of. At least one book by a hard line old sociologist "The Failure of the New Society Project, how and Why" has been written dismissing them before they had published a single paper.
Karl Kolchak wrote The Replicator & You as a warning for people to be aware of the New Society Project. At least he doesn't dismisses it or call it out right evil. 
The Coffee Caucus and Derp squad have been working over time on this. They clearly have not a clue and want control anyway. The goals of the NSP are clearly evil and only they have the wisdom to see that those goals are met. 
Progress is noted in the Timeline
Category:Groups
Category:CoD
Category:Politics
Category:Advocate