Prof. David Chalmers
NYU, New York NY, Nov 15, 2016
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Philosophy of Technology
Melanie Swan
Blockchain Theorist
Philosophy & Economic Theory
New School for Social Research, NY NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology 1
Melanie Swan
 Blockchain Theorist, Philosophy and Economic
Theory, New School for Social Research, NY
 Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
 Instructor, Singularity University; Affiliate Scholar,
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology (IEET);
Contributor, EDGE; Advisor FQXi
Traditional Markets Background Economic Theory Leadership
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Book: Blockchain:
Blueprint for a New
Economy

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
 Contemporary Philosophy of
Technology
 Historical view and Capacity vs
Morphology
 Unthinkability
 Complexity
 Temporality
 Overall theme: composable reality
 Philosophy of Blockchain
2
One source: recent conferences: HSS: History of Science & Society, PSA: Philosophy of Science Association, SPEP:
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Central Issue in the
Contemporary Philosophy of Technology
3
http://www.robotandhwang.com/attorneys/
San Francisco CA law firm
Human-Machine
Collaboration:
How might we develop human-
machine collaborations that
empower both parties?

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Human-Machine Collaboration
 Effectuating an orderly transition to the Automation
Economy and Technological Unemployment
 “Technological breakthroughs endanger up to 47% of
total employment in the US” – Carl Frey, Oxford, 2015
 “Endanger jobs” or “invite opportunity”?
4
Source: Book chapter: Swan, M. "Automation Economy: An Abundance Philosophy of Economics" In Surviving the
Machine Economy. Eds. Hughes, LaGrandeur, Palgrave Macmillan. 2017.

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
The Prosthetic Relation
Extending body and brain into composable reality
5
I. Addition
Accepting the foreign
into the body
Merging body-brain
with the foreign
Blind man’s cane
Extending the reach of
the physical body
Heart transplant
II. Integration III. Synthesis
BCI cloudminds
Time and space are
fixed and immobile
Time and space start to
become contingent
Time and space are fully
contingent and composable
Melanie Swan, Philosophy, New School, Oct 29, 2016

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Human Integration Relation with Technology
6
1. The Prosthetic Relation 2. The Drone Relation
L’Intrus (The Intruder) – Jean-Luc Nancy Théorie du drone (Drone Theory)
– Gregoire Chamayou
Impoverished relation:
roving invisible Panopticon, never
safe from unseen eyes
Intimate relation: Accepting the
foreign into our own body

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
3. The Data Relation
 Cloud, background, crunching away,
silent tracking, continuous uploading
 Algorithms predicting and defining our
preferences
 What is our relation? Impoverished:
neither side has full mental model of
the other (the very basis for
conducive interaction with another)
 Data models humans as a sketch:
purchasing agent not aspirational being
 Humans have no way see, grasp or act
on big data, it acts on us (drone relation)
7

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology 8
Thinking through the problem of human-machine
collaboration in one of the most vulnerable cases:
opening brains up to big data in BCI Cloudminds
Cloudmind: digitally-linked minds (human or otherwise) in the Internet cloud for integrated processing , collaborative problem-
solving, and idea generation. Source: Swan, Melanie. (2016). The Future of Brain-Computer Interfaces: Blockchaining Your Way
into a Cloudmind, JET 26(2).

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Brain-Computer Interface applications
 A brain-computer interface (BCI) is any
technology linking the human brain to a
computer
 A computational system implanted in the brain
that allows a person to control a computer
using only brainwaves; for example reading the
electrical signals from the brain as a person
focuses on a computer screen
 Key new functionality of BCIs
 24-7 connectivity to the Internet and other
minds
 Implication: applications such as cloudminds
(linked human and machine minds)
9
Source: http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Cochlear-Implant-Frequently-Asked-Questions/

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Short History of Philosophy of Technology
Historical Moments
10
Source: Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology, 1954.
“Our attunement to technology as an
enabling background helps us see the
possibilities for the true
meaningfulness of our being”
 From the farther future how did we get here?
 Aristotle: distinguishes between technology and nature
 Always-already technological: making tools out of tools
 Heidegger: warns of the danger, right-wrong relation
 Spinoza: capacity vs morphology

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Spinoza and Conatus
11
Conatus: perseverance as our “vital
[life] force” in interacting with the
environment we encounter, our “actual
essence,” where as individuals, we
strive to sustain and increase our
power of acting in the world, to “affect
and be affected by”
Not about what we are (classification); it is
about our capacity for action in the world
Source: Spinoza, The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 1, 1985, Ethics, IVP18S, IVP35c2
Spinoza, Dutch
Philosopher
1632-1677

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Short History of Philosophy of Technology
Modern Moments
 Cybernetics, Systems Theory, French Theorists
 George Canguilhem, "Machine and Organism," 1947
 Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, 1948
 Gilbert Simondon, On the Mode of Existence
of Technical Objects, 1958
 Cyborg
 Manfred Clynes & Nathan Kline, “Cyborgs
and Space,” 1960
 Donna Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” 1985
 Kevin Warwick, I, Cyborg, 2002
 Posthumanism, Transhumanism
 Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism?, 2009
 Rosi Braidotti, The Posthuman, 2013
12

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Not all Reality is Thinkable
 Problem of Unthinkability
 Becoming aware of and coming to terms with
phenomena that are “bigger” than humans
 Features of the world that are outside our
perceptual and experiential domains
 Existing situations
 Quantum physics, black holes, global
warming, the Florida everglades, the
biosphere, derivatives, capitalism,
neuroscience, big data, blockchains
 Radically-different future-tech situations
 Life extension, digital societies, cloudminds
13

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Thinking Unthinkability
14
 Need new models for conceiving the correspondence
between internal experience and the external world like
radical contingency
 Ancestrality (Meillassoux), hyperobjects (Morton), superjects
(Hansen), object-oriented ontologies (Harman), black swans
and convexification (linear regression) (Taleb)
 Result: human existence decentered

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
 Contemporary Philosophy of
Technology
 Historical view and Capacity vs
Morphology
 Unthinkability
 Complexity
 Temporality
 Overall theme: composable reality
 Philosophy of Blockchain
15
One source: recent conferences: HSS: History of Science & Society, PSA: Philosophy of Science Association, SPEP:
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Systems Theory
 Interdisciplinary study of the abstract organization of
complex phenomena,
 independent of their substance, type, or spatial-temporal scale of
existence,
 investigating and describing principles common to all complex
entities or systems of behavior
16
Source: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/systheor.html

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Complexity
 Systems that are non-
linear, dynamic,
emergent, open,
unknowable at the
outset, interdependent,
self-organizing
17
Sources: Morin, Edgar. (2007). "Restricted complexity, general complexity." Trans. C. Gershenson. In Worldviews, Science
and Us: Philosophy and Complexity, ed. C. Gershenson, D. Aerts, and B. Edmonds, 5–29. World Scientific, Singapore.

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Big Data: Complexity and Machine Learning
18
1. Science and
Biology become a
math problem
2. Simple Machine
Learning algorithms
running over large
data corpora
3. Deep-learning algorithms: real-time
image & video processing, lip-reading
transcription, emotion-recognition
Sources: http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.6209, http://karpathy.github.io

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Complexity and Big Data Analytics
19
Source: https://medium.com/@akelleh/if-correlation-doesnt-imply-causation-then-what-does-c74f20d26438#.mrmot5t7t
 Contemporary era: Algorithmic reality, big data,
machine learning analytics
 Similar goals in causal analysis frameworks
 Whether structural equation modeling, causal
graphical models, potential outcomes…
 ...mindset shift from Causality to Predictability

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Relational Processes
 Beyond the morphology-capacity binary
 The relations between entities, and the
effects produced by interactions are more
relevant than the underlying substance,
morphology, or classification
 Relational Ontology (Barad): replace
agential realist conceptions of causality
 Process Philosophy (Alfred North
Whitehead): substance is temporary
patterns produced by processes
 Assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari)
 Fusion of horizons (Gadamer)
20
Source: Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist Performativity

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
 Contemporary Philosophy of
Technology
 Historical view and Capacity vs
Morphology
 Unthinkability
 Complexity
 Temporality
 Overall theme: composable reality
 Philosophy of Blockchain
21
One source: recent conferences: HSS: History of Science & Society, PSA: Philosophy of Science Association, SPEP:
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Humans and machines are running different
temporality paradigms
 Human-time
 Continuous flow of physics-biology time
 Compute-time: computing clocktime eras
1. General: time becomes stoppable and
malleable
2. Machine learning/big data temporality: time
becomes future-addressable
 All human and natural patterns modeled
 Shifts focus from reactive response to proactive
attending to the real-time present and future
3. Blocktime: time becomes future-assignable,
future-creatable with blockchain-based smart
contracts
22

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Inspiration: Light’s Wave-Particle Duality
 The first ever photograph
of light as both a particle
and wave (Mar 2015)
 Light's wave-particle
duality imaged in physical
reality for the first time
 Schrödinger's cat: dead
or alive?
23
Source: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-particle.html, http://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-first-ever-photograph-of-light-as-both-a-parti
The bottom 'slice' of the image
shows the particles, while the top
image shows light as a wave
Particle
Wave

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology 24
1. Retention 1. Protention
Present
Now
Primal
Impression
2. Recollection
(Discrete) (Discrete)
A middle kind of time: time as a ‘raw material’ existing uncollapsed as
simultaneously discrete and continuous; a snapshot and a flow (like light as a
superposition of a particle and a wave); a perdurant khôra-spacing; time is an
uncollapsed raw material until deployed into a specific situation
Adds to our conceptual model of time
(Continuous) (Continuous)
Husserl’s Internal Time Consciousness
Adding a New Kind of Time
Husserl’s Missing Middle Third time term
3. X-tention 3. X-tention
2. Expectation
(Discrete and Continuous) (Discrete and Continuous)
Source: Extended from Husserl, Edmund. (1991, 1964). On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1893-1917).
Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht NL.
Past Future

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Composability of Physical Time
 Information Theory
 Formulate spacetime as
simultaneously discrete and
continuous (Shannon’s sampling)
 Time and matter are
composable at small scales
 Matter at the atomic scale
(1×10−9) via positional
nanoassembly (actual)
 Possibly time and matter at the
Planck scale (1×10−35) via Lego-
like time fabric bricks (loop
quantum gravity) (theoretical)
25
Source: http://www.dedoimedo.com/physics/what-is-time.html, Kempf, Achim. (2010). “Spacetime could be simultaneously
continuous and discrete, in the same way that information can be.” New Journal of Physics. 12.
Atomic-scale Positional
Nanoassembly of Matter
Planck-scale ‘Lego-like’
Assembly of Spacetime

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Future Temporalities
 Radically-different situations
 Life extension, digital societies, cloudminds
 Temporality and spatiality have been the
fundamental organizing parameter in the
physical world but less relevant in digital situations
 Example: “location” not among 20 features in WoW
event-recording software Prat
 Need new models for correspondence between
internal mind/experience and external objects
 Meillassoux: conceptual grounds for the necessary
contingency of reality
26
Source: WoW = World of Warcraft http://www.wowace.com/addons/prat-3-0

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
“More time” Parallelism Argument
 Conjecture: make more time
 Any compute-time creates a differential with
human-time
 Since there are multiple time regimes, one
can experience “more time” by accessing
events in other time trajectories
 History is a form of time parallelism
 Time parallelism already exists via history
where we access events pre-dating and
existing outside of our own direct experience
of time as individuals
27
Source: Carr, D. (2014). Experience and History: Phenomenological Perspectives on the Historical World.

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
More philosophical questions raised…
 Do we need “more time”?
 How can we experience the
benefit and meaning of more
time and alternative time
trajectories?
 How to integrate myriad
subjective time regimes and
event trajectories?
 Moore’s Law for time?
 Limits of computational
complexity and time?
28

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Temporality Thesis Statement
29
A concept of temporality is needed that is
adequate to the future; a model that has an open
possibility space for both the form and content of time;
that is multiple and complex; discrete and continuous;
and integrates the unstoppable flow of physics and
biology human-time with manipulable compute-time

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
 Contemporary Philosophy of
Technology
 Historical view and Capacity vs
Morphology
 Unthinkability
 Complexity
 Temporality
 Overall theme: composable reality
 Philosophy of Blockchain
30
One source: recent conferences: HSS: History of Science & Society, PSA: Philosophy of Science Association, SPEP:
Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain
31
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Thesis Statement
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology
 No other technology has the power to…
1. …uplift 2 billion people out of poverty
overnight
 intermediary-free international remittance
2. …produce a safe and orderly transition
to the automation economy
 humans and machines in collaboration,
friendly artificial intelligence enacted
3. …fundamentally transform the only
remaining sectors not yet re-
engineered for the Internet era:
economics and politics
32
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
I. Blockchain technology: What is it?
 Automation economy
II. Singularity-class applications
 Farther-future
 Friendly AI
 Bio-cryptoeconomy
 Nanotech/Synbio
 Blockchains in Space
 Nearer-term
 Financial services, Energy, Logistics
 IOT, Health, Economic Development
III. Conclusion: our Singularity futures
33

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain Technology: What is it?
34
 Blockchain technology is the secure distributed ledger
software that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin
 “Internet of Money” leapfrog technology; Skype is an app allowing
phone calls via Internet without POTS; Bitcoin is an app allowing
money transfer via Internet without banks; ‘decentralized Paypal’
Internet
(decentralized network)
Blockchain
Bitcoin
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Application
Layer
Protocol
Layer
Infrastructure
Layer
SMTP
Email
VoIP
Phone
calls
OSI Protocol Stack:

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain (not Bitcoin) is the revolution
35
 Internet phase transitions
 Phase I: transfer information
 Modernize publishing, books, music,
news, information
 Phase 2: transfer value (money,
property)
 Modernize of economics and finance
 Providing the digital payments layer the
Internet never had
 Instantiating the qualitative good of
trust in the infrastructure
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Smartnetwork vision
Pushing more complexity through the Internet pipes
36
Information
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Sci-fi inspiration: Accelerando, Lady of Mazes, Blindsight, The Golden Age, Glasshouse
Confirmation of Automated
Distribution of
Transfer of
 Growing classes of activities for smartnetwork execution
 I: Information; II: Money, finance, economics; energy; supply chain, logistics,
transportation; health; IOT; III: identity, preference, intangible resources
Value Identity Preference
Registration of
20161990 2025e 2050e 2075e
Automated
Propagation of
Voting
Policy
Opinion
Participation
GBI
Energy
Trust
Autonomy
Recognition
Economics Politics
Ideas
Health
Collaboration
opportunities
Instantiation
Upload integrity
Smart-
resources
Smart-
currencies
2090e
Internet Smartnetwork

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology 37
Currency
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Property:
Assets
Inventory
Securities: stocks, bonds, government issue, futures and
options, FX contracts
Hard assets: cars, houses, global supply chain, medical
inventories; Intangible assets: IP
Money, digital payments, remittance
Programmable smartmoney
Fundamental enabling infrastructure
Economics
Governance
& Legal
Services
Global-scale
projects
Politics
Singularity
All contractual arrangements
Blockchain’s vast reach beyond currency
Financial instruments: mortgage, loans
Million-person genome banks, supply chain
management, autonomous driving fleets
Voting, identity, citizenship, civic services
Legal documents, contracts, wills, agreements

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Why is it called blockchain?
Blockchain: a chain of transaction blocks
 Every 10 minutes, the latest
block of submitted
transactions is validated (by
cryptographic mining) and
posted to a single distributed
ledger
 Each new block of
transactions calls the last
block, so that the
transactions are chained
together sequentially, hence
the word blockchain
38
Source: Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf, https://blockexplorer.com

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Permissioned (identity-known) and
Permissionless (anonymous) Ledgers
39
Source: Swan, M. Blockchain Consensus Protocols. http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-consensus-protocols extended
from: Swanson, T. (2015). Consensus as a service: a brief report on the emergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems
New car: Enduser freedom
• Censorship-resistant
• ‘Brave new world’ apps
• Anonymous validators (network
vulnerable to anonymous attack)
Better horse: Enterprise efficiency
• Identity-confirmed
• ‘Reinvent the existing world’
improvement apps
• Official legal registry
Stellar

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain crucial for the
Singularity-class project: Financial Inclusion
 Just as the Printing Press and
the Internet flattened access to
communicating information...
 …blockchains are giving the
power of the printing press to
banking, credit, and money
 Access to economic and financial
systems (credit) as a basic human
right (4 billion under-banked)
 Long-tail economics: eBay of
money
 Blockcerts, digital academic
certifications, MIT Media Lab
40
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491,
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mit-media-lab-releases-blockcerts-blockchain-credential-brian-ahier

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Issue: hierarchy is not scalable
41
Sources: What is Decentralization? http://futurememes.blogspot.com/search?q=datt.co,
http://blog.midem.com/2016/04/blockchain-broken-music-industry/
 Blockchains are a form of trust-making technology
 A system of checks and balances that is universal and
planetary-scale (Kardashev-level)
 New tiers of scalability are needed
 Million-genome repositories (largest is 3700 currently),
connectome databases to reveal brain structure

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Smartnetwork theme: design Optimality
 Optimal mix of centralized and
decentralized models
 Rethinking Coase’s firm size
 Manufacturing reorganization per
electricity; industries rethought per
decentralized networks
 Tighter supply chain integration
 Complexity design principles
 Decentralization here to stay
 Proven decentralized scalability
paradigm: Internet
 Bitcoin, blockchain, decentralization
42
Sources: Coase, RH, The Nature of The Firm, 1937, http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~jsfeng/CPEC11.pdf
Decentralization
Blockchain
Bitcoin

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain Economics and Finance
Apparatus for constituting the present and the future
43
Bitcoin, Crypto-currencies Smart Contracts
Economics Finance
Spot, Cash Market Futures, Options
Market
Present Future
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-payment-systems, http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-financial-
networks, http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-temporality-smart-contract-timespecifiability-with-blocktime
Real-time payments Utility Settlement Coin
(USC) (8/24/16)
Temporality
Regime

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Decentralized Economics and Finance
Current mode is one kind of system for organizing access to resources
44
The organizing assumption of
economic systems has been
scarcity; an orientation to the
production and distribution of scarce
material goods. This no longer holds
in an era of digital services, non-rival
goods, and complementarity
Mindset Shifts:
1. Scarcity to Abundance
2. Labor to Fulfillment
3. Hierarchy to Decentralization
The organizing assumption of
financial systems has been the
control or at least prediction of
the future value of assets and
liabilities; finance = credit (credit
is really about trust). Also no
longer holding.
Mindset Shifts:
1. Access instead of Ownership
2. Topological Ranges instead
of Point Values
3. Assurity instead of
Insufficiency
Sources: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2016/09/defining-blockchain-economy-what-is.html and New Economies and Finance at
the New School: http://blockchainstudies.org/NSNE.pdf
Economics Finance
Present FutureTemporality
Regime

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
I. Blockchain technology: What is it?
 Automation economy
II. Singularity-class applications
 Farther-future
 Friendly AI
 Bio-cryptoeconomy
 Nanotech/Synbio
 Blockchains in Space
 Nearer-term
 Financial services, Energy, Logistics
 IOT, Health, Economic Development
III. Conclusion: our Singularity futures
45

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Singularity-class Problems
(Kardashev-scale; impact 1 billion people within 10 years)
46
 Artificial Intelligence and deep learning
 Friendly AI and “What is consciousness?”
 Multi-species intelligence
 BCI cloudmind collaborations (>1 thinking)
 Virtual reality
 Integrating virtual and physical reality
 Nanotechnology and synthetic biology
 Space settlement
 Automation economy
 Autonomous driving
 Medical nanorobotics
 Manufacturing and social robotics
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340
BCI: brain computer interface

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Argument: Blockchain can help all
Singularity-class Problems
47
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340
 Any significant future operation running on
digital smartnetworks, needing coordination
 Blockchain properties
 Secure, trackable, automated coordination of
large-scale projects with many items
 Automated system of checks and balances; all
transactions must confirm via smartnetwork
 Moves any sort of quantized/unitized packets on
the smartnetwork: energy, cars, synapse firings
 Fleet management
 Autonomous vehicles, IOT sensors, social
robotics, synaptic connections, deep-learners,
medical nanorobots, planet terraformers, synbio
agents, environmental cleanup bots

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain AI Apps
Enact Friendly AI (Artificial Intelligence)
48
 Digital intelligences running on
consensus-managed
smartnetworks
 Not in isolation
 Good reputational standing
required to conduct operations
 Transactions to access resources
(like fund-raising), provide services,
enter into contracts, retire
 Smartnetwork consensus only
validates and records bonafide
transactions from ‘good’ agents
Sources: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113368/blockchain-ai-5-top-reasons-the-blockchain-will-deliver-friendly-ai,
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/swan20141117

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Basic Application
Deep-thinkers Registry
 Register deep learners with
blockchains
 Tracking
 Security
 Remuneration
 Examples
 Autonomous lab robots
 On-chain IP discovery tracking
 Roving agricultural bots
 Manufacturing bots
 Intelligent gaming
 Go-playing algorithms
49
Source: Swan, M. Blockchain Thinking: The Brain as a DAC. Neural Turing Machines: https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5401.
IPFS (Benet): https://medium.com/@ConsenSys/an-introduction-to-ipfs-9bba4860abd0#.bgig18cgp

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Advanced Application
BCI Cloudminds and Chainbrains
 Cloudmind: cloud-based thinking
entity, comprised of >1 brains
 Problem: Safe collaboration of minds
 Joining a cloudmind
collaboration, blockchains
(cryptographic ledgers) to
administer cloudminds
 Line-item tracking and credit-
assignation (like Github, or
SVN/CVS for brainstorming)
 Privacy, security, remuneration
 Protect against personal identity loss
and absorption into a groupmind
50
Source: http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-cloudminds-humanmachine-pooledmind-dacs; Mind’ is generally
denoting an entity with some capacity for processing, not the volitionary action and free will of a consciousness agent

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Nanotech Grey Goo and runaway Synbio
51
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340
 Worry: Grey Goo (unchecked
nanotech proliferation), DNA-
printed synthetic bio-plague
 Science fiction examples: Blood
Music, Prey
 Solution: signing logged to
blockchains
 As physical-world engineers sign
the bridges they build, likewise
synbio engineers sign DNA and
nanotech designs
 Unavoidable “signing” per
detectable origins

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
 Medical nanorobotics as the coming-
onboard repair platform for the human
body
 Vision: a nanorobot in every cell
 Bio-Nano Repair DACs
 DAC: Decentralized Autonomous
Corporation (packages of smart contracts)
 Bio-cryptoeconomic principles
 High number of agents and “transactions”
 Secure automation is obvious requirement
 Bio-Nano Repair DACs for secure,
trackable automation and coordination of
medical nanorobotics for cellular repair
52
Sources: Bio-Cryptoeconomy: Nanorobotic DACs for Cell Repair and Enhancement
http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2016/08/bio-cryptoeconomy-nanorobotic-dacs-for.html
Bio-cryptoeconomy
Medical nanorobotic DACs to coordinate cell repair

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Spacechains: Blockchains in Space
53
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340
 Advances in space
 Launch: microsats, small rockets, commercial
launch (reusability, rocket design), regular
Mars launches planned each 26 months with
large-cargo drops, communications networks,
 Light sail and optical propulsion
 Asteroid mining, space settlement, transport
 Exoplanet discovery in habitable zones (Alpha
Centauri, TRAPPIST-1)
 Singularity-class blockchain functionality
 Secure, trackable, automated coordination of
high numericity and dimensionality at scale
 Autonomous entities, Bitsat backup network

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchains and Singularity-class Problems
 Argument: smartnetworks thesis that
complex future operations will involve
automated coordination via
smartnetworks, using some kind of
technology like blockchains
 Blockchain smartnetwork properties:
 Asset registry and fleet coordination of
items (registry, ownership and transfer of
“quantized” units)
 Security
 Trackability
 Automation
 Coordination
54
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Crypto-Enlightenment
55
“One ought to think
autonomously, free of the
dictates of external authority”
- Immanuel Kant
Kant, I. "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (German: Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?). 1784.

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
 Level 1: the new literacy: digital literacy
 Manage private key access
 Back-up your money
 Manage digital identity, EMR health wallet
 Level 2: self-authority taking
 Designing personalized long-tail economic,
political, and social systems
 Civic project participations (P2P micropolis),
provide peergrid resources
Digital Cryptocitizen Sensibility
56
Source: Swan, M. Crypto Enlightenment: A Social Theory of Blockchains http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/the-crypto-
enlightenment-social-theory-of-blockchains; EMR: electronic medical record; P2P: peer-to-peer
Sense of duty in serving the republic
Civic Duty Civic Collaboration
Greek Statesman Cryptocitizen
Sense of meaning in sustaining community

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
I. Blockchain technology: What is it?
 Automation economy
II. Singularity-class applications
 Farther-future
 Friendly AI
 Bio-cryptoeconomy
 Nanotech/Synbio
 Blockchains in Space
 Nearer-term
 Financial services, Energy, Logistics
 IOT, Health, Economic Development
III. Conclusion: our Singularity futures
57

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Financial Services
 Distributed ledger
 Instant transaction validation
 Settlement, clearing, audit
 Simpler, more secure, less
expensive financial services
 Use case applications
 Industry-wide collaboration
 Securities asset registries
 Value chain efficiency:
custody, titling, insurance
 Financial-inclusion
addressable market
 Digital identity, banking
58
Source: https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/financial-services-corporate-blockchain-investments

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Energy grid smartnetworks
 Concept: the power grid of every
continent is an energy Internet
 “Quantized units” are energy:
kWh/kWm
 Use case applications
 Automatic markets: off-hour and
lowest cost demand fulfillment
 Smart grid management
 Energy price and trade validation
 Resource self-pricing
 Source fungibility: wind, solar power
 P2P microgrid infrastructure
59
Sources: Rifkin, J. The Zero Marginal Cost Society; https://www.newscientist.com/article/2079334-blockchain-based-
microgrid-gives-power-to-consumers-in-new-york/
Cryptosustainability Micropolis Example:
Peer-to-peer Microgrids

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Supply chain & logistics grid smartnetworks
 Tamper-proof record-keeping
 Register assets and inventory
 Assure provenance, custody
 Track quantity and transfer of assets
(pallets, trailers, containers) moving
through supply chain nodes
 Track purchase orders, change orders,
receipts, shipment notifications
 Assign and verify custody and product
certification
 Link physical goods to serial numbers,
bar codes, RFID tags
 Virtual reality rapid simulation and
event-history keeping (>transactions)
60

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Autonomous Driving
 Fleet coordination of “quantized
units” of km/miles and vehicles
 Autonomous passenger cars
 Singapore self-driving taxis - 8/24/16
 Uber’s first self-driving fleet arrives in
Pittsburgh – Aug 2016
 Commercial trucking
 “Autonomous Driving Long-Distance
Trucks within Ten Years” - 2014
61
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/hail-progress-singapore-launches-worlds-first-self-driving-taxi-
service, http://truckyeah.jalopnik.com/autonomous-driving-long-distance-trucks-will-be-a-reali-1603746933
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-08-18/uber-s-first-self-driving-fleet-arrives-in-pittsburgh-this-month-is06r7on

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain IOT
62
Sources: http://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-of-things-market-to-hit-7-1-trillion-by-2020-idc/,
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
 Blockchain-based IOT connected objects
 M2M/IOT Bitcoin payment network to
enable the machine economy
 IOT 2020: 26 bn devices in a $7 tn market
 The economic layer the web never had
 Smarthome IOT networks
 Self-mining ecologies
 Privacy orchestration: devices, robotics, digital
personal health assistants
 Blockchains: economic principle-driven
large-scale resource allocation and
coordination mechanism Smartcity Connected
Car Coordination
Smarthome IOT and
Personal Robotics
Coordination

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain Social Robotics
 Personal voice assistants, social
robotics
 Implication: voice interfaces, all apps
become voice-activated and
interactive; “My Dad, the App”
 Requirements: security, financial
transactability, liability tracking
 Cross-cloud interconnection (IOT
smarthome, connected car, smartcity)
 Fleet coordination functionality
 Automated, secure, tracking/logging,
remuneration, transaction coordination,
apps/processes (smart contracts),
coordination (updates), audit log
63
Source: Swan, M. Philosophy of Social Robotics: Abundance Economics. Sociorobotics, 2016.
http://www.melanieswan.com/documents/SocialRobotics.pdf.

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
1. EMRs (electronic medical records)
 Personal health record access and administration
 Users key-permission doctors into records
2. Health insurance billing chains
 Blockchain-based health insurance claims processing:
automated proof of identity and insurance; claims payment
 Enable ahead of time service price-quoting
3. Digital health wallet
 Private key identity + EMR (medications) + health insurance info
+ payment data + basic income health plan administration
 Doctor vendor RFP services; preventive longevity treatments
4. Health Data Research Commons
 Biobanks, QS (DNA.bits), genome and connectome files
64
Source: http://futurememes.blogspot.fr/2014/09/blockchain-health-remunerative-health.html
Blockchain Health

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology 65

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Bitcoin MOOCs
Long-tail of learning
 Blockchain-based “Kiva for literacy”
 Long-tail peer-to-peer learning contracts
 Literacy beyond reading
 Technical, agricultural, vocational literacy
 Blockchain-based personal development
contracts
 QS-biometric utility function imputation and tracking
 Maslow chains, subjectivation and actualization chains
 Development Economics 2.0: CoinDrops
 Literacy contracts, remittances, blockchain-tracked
aid, microcredit, decentralized credit bureaus
 Open-source FICO scores
 Peer-vouched reputation
66

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Politics: Legal services and Governance
67
 High impact, low current activity
 Local government RFPs for title registries
 Legal services: IP, contract registry, attestation
 Register contracts, agreements, wills, IP
 Functionality: hash + timestamp + blockchain record
 Voting: electronic ballot, identity confirmation
 Futarchy, delegative democracy, random sample
elections
 Opt-in personalized governance services
 Composting vs education; digital identity system,
voting, dispute resolution, basic income distribution,
public document registry
 Blockchain weddings (Bitcoin, Ethereum)
Sources: http://merkle.com/papers/DAOdemocracyDraft.pdf, http://www.proofofexistence.com/, https://bitnation.co/ , World’s First
Blockchain Marriage: David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, 10/5/14, ConsenSys wedding : Kim Jackson and Zach LeBeau, 11/2/15

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Agenda
I. Blockchain technology: What is it?
 Automation economy
II. Singularity-class applications
 Farther-future
 Friendly AI
 Bio-cryptoeconomy
 Nanotech/Synbio
 Blockchains in Space
 Nearer-term
 Financial services, Energy, Logistics
 IOT, Health, Economic Development
III. Conclusion: our Singularity futures
68

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Blockchain downside and risks?
ISSUE
69
Satoshi Roundtable #3: Scaling Bitcoin Milan
Oct 8-9, 2016
Hacking Scandals
Mt Gox, Ethereum DAO, Bitfinex
Silk Road, drug dealers,
terrorists, criminals
Scalability, evolution
Block size, sidechains
Mining Centralization
RESPONSE
Centralization temporary; wide-spread at higher-
scale; move to 16 nm, solar/hydro-powered chips
Building resilient system constantly under open
attack 24/7 (remember early Internet DNS attacks)
Blockchains are a universal technology available to
all; non-criminal activity predominates
Early Internet: “this will never scale, insecure, not resilient;” Yahoo, AltaVista down for days due to DNS attacks
Source: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-scaling-conference-italy
Technology Risk
Perception Risk
Regulatory Risk, Economic Risk
National government
regulation, bans
Governments modernizing economic infrastructure
with blockchains too; licensing, open dialogue

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Thesis Statement
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology
 No other technology has the power to…
1. …uplift 2 billion people out of poverty
overnight
 intermediary-free international remittances
2. …produce a safe and orderly transition
to the automation economy
 humans and machines in collaboration,
friendly artificial intelligence enacted
3. …fundamentally transform the only
remaining sectors not yet re-
engineered for the Internet era:
economics and politics
70
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340

Nov 15, 2016
Philosophy of Technology
Decentralized Economics and Finance
Blockchain academic collaboration
 New Economies and Finance at the New School
 Mission statement: http://blockchainstudies.org/NSNE.pdf
 Join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/NewEconomies
 CFPs: books, special journal issues, conferences
 Decentralized Blockchain Economics and Finance
 http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2016/09/defining-blockchain-
economy-what-is.html
 “Blockchain Philosophy” 4,000 words, Wiley and Sons,
Metaphilosophy
 http://blockchainstudies.org/Metaphilosophy_CFP.pdf
 Events: NY and CA
 Rethink/ECONOMICS, Thursday, September 15, 7-9 pm
 http://www.meetup.com/NYC_Ethereum/events/233643675/
71
Sources: http://blockchainstudies.org and http://blockchainstudies.org/NSNE.pdf

Prof. David Chalmers
NYU, New York NY, Nov 15, 2016
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Philosophy of Technology
Melanie Swan
Blockchain Theorist
Philosophy & Economic Theory
New School for Social Research, NY NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Thank You! Questions?