Project History¶
TL;DR
The ten‑year journey from a research project into context‑aware apps to an open scientific programme investigating Collective IQ. Each pivot responded to a structural obstacle—platform gatekeepers, funding misalignment, the inadequacy of existing organisational forms—and gradually revealed the research question that now drives Timeline0: How can socio‑technical systems augment the Collective IQ of communities working toward a shared mission?
🟢 Research Status: Historical Record — The path that led to the current experiment.
From Apps to Emergency Infrastructure to Research Programme¶
-
Phase 1: Transient Apps (2016‑2017) --- The Origin. A research collaboration between TNO and RS New Media Concepts to solve app overload using a "Context Engine." The concept worked technically, but platform gatekeepers (Apple/Google) blocked the path—the first encounter with infrastructure that communities do not control.
Transient Apps Report -
Phase 2: "Onlive" Social Networks (2017‑2019) --- The First Pivot. Instead of connecting individuals online, we repurposed the Context Engine to connect groups in the real world. Delivered a working Android PoC. The technology worked; the question of who would own and govern it remained unanswered.
Onlive Research Report -
Phase 3: The Governance Pivot (2019‑2020) --- Birth of the Smartup Concept. We recognised that a traditional VC‑backed startup could not protect a public‑good mission. The idea of a collectively owned, democratically governed organisation emerged—not as ideology, but as a structural necessity. This was the first glimpse of the hypothesis that would later become the research programme.
Original Smartup Whitepaper -
Phase 4: Academic Validation (2020‑2022) --- The COVID Pivot. The pandemic provided an urgent test case. Partnering with the Erasmus Programme, we validated the user experience and security model for crisis communication. The need for emergency infrastructure that communities themselves could own and operate became undeniable.
UX Research Report -
Phase 5: Mesh Networking (2023‑2024) --- Technical Deep Dive. Partnering with HanzeHogeschool, we built open‑source, smartphone‑native mesh protocols capable of 75+ node networks without internet. The technology was no longer the bottleneck. The bottleneck was the social and organisational layer: how to build and govern this technology without traditional corporate structures.
Mesh Protocol Design -
Phase 6: Timeline0 & Smartup Zero (2025‑Present) --- The Research Programme Launches. A decade of building had converged on a single realisation: the most important thing we could build was not a product, but a way to study how communities become more collectively intelligent. Timeline0 was founded as an open scientific research programme. Smartup Zero became Experiment #1—a real community using SmartupOS to build ONLIFE, while simultaneously generating the data that tests the Smartup Hypothesis against Engelbart’s eight indicators of Collective IQ.
ONLIFE is no longer the destination. It is the experimental output. The evidence it generates—about governance, memory, collaboration, and coordination—is the real product.
The Dual Innovation¶
What makes this history unique is that two innovations emerged from the same struggle:
- ONLIFE — An emergency communication protocol that works without internet or cell service, built openly and owned collectively.
- SmartupOS — The socio‑technical operating system that makes democratic ownership, shared institutional memory, and constitutional autonomy operational and measurable.
Both emerged from the same observation: existing systems—technical and organisational—are not designed for communities solving complex, shared problems. The research programme now studies whether systems that are designed for that purpose actually improve Collective IQ.
From Product to Evidence¶
The history of this project is itself a case study in the problem it now investigates. At every stage, the group encountered the very structural faults described in the Observation:
- Platform gatekeepers (Phase 1) — infrastructure controlled by external corporations
- Funding misalignment (Phase 3) — capital that would have distorted the mission
- Organisational inadequacy (Phase 5) — no existing structure could hold the technology and the mission together
The research programme that now exists is the product of learning from those failures. It is an attempt to test whether the organisational form that emerged from necessity—democratic ownership, shared memory, constitutional autonomy—actually works.
What This History Means for the Experiment¶
Smartup Zero is not a startup that pivoted into research. It is an experiment that was born from the observation that traditional structures cannot solve the problems they claim to address. The history provides the empirical grounding for the hypothesis.
As the experiment generates evidence, this page will be updated to reflect what was learned and how the hypothesis evolved.
Ways to Participate¶
-
Join Smartup Zero
Become an participant in the first experiment.
-
Start Your Own Smartup
Take SmartupOS and run your own experiment.
-
Sponsor the Research
Support Timeline0 and Smartup Zero through funding.
-
Collaborate as Researcher
Work on the research programme itself.