Beyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, and governance, smart property and smart contracts, blockchains secure automated fleet coordination
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich digital smartnetwork societies of the future
Distributed ledgers imply peer-banking services offered by every network node to others for a small fee. Money becomes an accounting ledger running on a distributed computer network, a transaction, credit, and payment graph. Digitized money and payments, and activity possibly being securely forward-committed in payment contracts, suggests that the economy could settle on the basis of net rather than gross transfers. A net-clearings contracts-for-difference economy could enable us to rethink debt, replacing crippling monolithic capital structures with streaming money disgorged in smaller chunks that are more closely tied to costs and repayment possibilities. Pre-paid consumption and 30-60-90 day vendor credit terms models could be offset to facilitate a directed payment graph economy of just-in-time money. A wide slate of contemporary economic challenges might be addressed including health care price rationalization, global energy management, entitlements, and the automation economy.
Blockchain Economics
http://timreview.ca/article/1109
Blockchain Philosophy
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.2017.48.issue-5/issuetoc
Future of AI: Blockchain and Deep LearningMelanie Swan
The Future of AI: Blockchain and Deep Learning
First point: considering blockchain and deep learning together suggests the emergence of a new class of global network computing system. These systems are self-operating computation graphs that make probabilistic guesses about reality states of the world.
Second point: blockchain and deep learning are facilitating each other’s development. This includes using deep learning algorithms for setting fees and detecting fraudulent activity, and using blockchains for secure registry, tracking, and remuneration of deep learning nets as they go onto the open Internet (in autonomous driving applications for example). Blockchain peer-to-peer nodes might provide deep learning services as they already provide transaction hosting and confirmation, news hosting, and banking (payment, credit flow-through) services. Further, there are similar functional emergences within the systems, for example LSTM (long-short term memory in RNNs) are like payment channels.
Third point: AI smart network thesis. We are starting to run more complicated operations through our networks: information (past), money (present), and brains (future). There are two fundamental eras of network computing: simple networks for the transfer of information (all computing to date from mainframe to mobile) and now smart networks for the transfer of value and intelligence. Blockchain and deep learning are built directly into smart networks so that they may automatically confirm authenticity and transfer value (blockchain) and predictively identify individual items and patterns.
Beyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, blockchains are a singularity-class technology that enables the secure, trackable, automated coordination of very large-scale projects, fleets, and swarms
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich human-machine collaboration in the digital smartnetwork societies of the future
The cryptographic asset market turns institutional with regulated ICOs, exchanges, and options. The retail market allows the long tail of personalized economic services to meet in “eBay for money” digital marketplaces and global financial inclusion. Digitized money and payments, and activity possibly being securely forward-committed in payment contracts, implies that the economy could settle on the basis of net rather than gross flows. A net-clearings contracts-for-difference economy could rethink crippling monolithic debt structures with streaming money disgorged in much smaller chunks that are more closely tied to costs and repayment possibilities. Pre-paid consumption and 30-60-90 day vendor credit terms models could be offset to facilitate a directed payment graph economy of just-in-time money.
Crypto tokens imply optionality and the ability to better manage risk. The thesis of this talk is that smart contracts are options, and as such, can be used to control risk (unwanted future uncertainty) in a wider range of areas than has been possible previously, in finance, and in other areas too such as medicine. Options as a financial market instrument have long been used to control the amount and timing of risk in specific ways and tailor exposure with granularity. Smart contracts are an even more flexible species of options because they are programmable contracts that can be used to confer the right to buy or sell any blockchain-based asset or liability at a future moment in time (blocktime or “fiat” (regular) time) per certain terms and consideration. Therefore, smart contracts allow a greater variety in the degree and type of risks that might be brought under management. The impact of having greater control over risk is that intangible social goods are produced such as surety, confidence, and reliability, which help to engender a more trustful society.
Smart Network Economics:
Debt, Risk, and Payment Channels
Smart networks are intelligent autonomous networks, a new form of global computational infrastructure in which intelligence is built directly into the software such that an increasing degree of autonomous operation is facilitated. More formally, smart networks are state machines that make probabilistic guesses about reality states of the world and act upon this basis, particularly in economic domains, hence, smart network economics.
Future of AI: Blockchain & Deep LearningMelanie Swan
Future of AI: intelligence “baked in” to smart networks, blockchains to confirm authenticity and transfer value, and Deep Learning algorithms for predictive identification. This talk presents two high-impact contemporary emerging technologies: big data and deep learning algorithms, and blockchain distributed ledgers, and discusses their implications for the future of artificial intelligence.
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology - No other technology has the power to
pull 2 billion people out of poverty overnight (with intermediary-free international remittances), produce a safe and orderly transition to the automation economy (with humans and machines in collaboration, and enacting friendly artificial intelligence), and fundamentally transform the only remaining sectors not yet re-engineered for the Internet era: economics and politics. There are growing classes of activities for smartnetwork execution, moving up the stack, pushing different qualitative states through the Internet pipes, building future smartnetworks. The smartnetworks thesis is that complex future operations will involve automated fleet coordination of “quantized” items via smartnetworks, using some kind of technology like blockchains with algorithmically-derived trust.
Distributed ledgers imply peer-banking services offered by every network node to others for a small fee. Money becomes an accounting ledger running on a distributed computer network, a transaction, credit, and payment graph. Digitized money and payments, and activity possibly being securely forward-committed in payment contracts, suggests that the economy could settle on the basis of net rather than gross transfers. A net-clearings contracts-for-difference economy could enable us to rethink debt, replacing crippling monolithic capital structures with streaming money disgorged in smaller chunks that are more closely tied to costs and repayment possibilities. Pre-paid consumption and 30-60-90 day vendor credit terms models could be offset to facilitate a directed payment graph economy of just-in-time money. A wide slate of contemporary economic challenges might be addressed including health care price rationalization, global energy management, entitlements, and the automation economy.
Blockchain Economics
http://timreview.ca/article/1109
Blockchain Philosophy
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.2017.48.issue-5/issuetoc
Future of AI: Blockchain and Deep LearningMelanie Swan
The Future of AI: Blockchain and Deep Learning
First point: considering blockchain and deep learning together suggests the emergence of a new class of global network computing system. These systems are self-operating computation graphs that make probabilistic guesses about reality states of the world.
Second point: blockchain and deep learning are facilitating each other’s development. This includes using deep learning algorithms for setting fees and detecting fraudulent activity, and using blockchains for secure registry, tracking, and remuneration of deep learning nets as they go onto the open Internet (in autonomous driving applications for example). Blockchain peer-to-peer nodes might provide deep learning services as they already provide transaction hosting and confirmation, news hosting, and banking (payment, credit flow-through) services. Further, there are similar functional emergences within the systems, for example LSTM (long-short term memory in RNNs) are like payment channels.
Third point: AI smart network thesis. We are starting to run more complicated operations through our networks: information (past), money (present), and brains (future). There are two fundamental eras of network computing: simple networks for the transfer of information (all computing to date from mainframe to mobile) and now smart networks for the transfer of value and intelligence. Blockchain and deep learning are built directly into smart networks so that they may automatically confirm authenticity and transfer value (blockchain) and predictively identify individual items and patterns.
Beyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, blockchains are a singularity-class technology that enables the secure, trackable, automated coordination of very large-scale projects, fleets, and swarms
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich human-machine collaboration in the digital smartnetwork societies of the future
The cryptographic asset market turns institutional with regulated ICOs, exchanges, and options. The retail market allows the long tail of personalized economic services to meet in “eBay for money” digital marketplaces and global financial inclusion. Digitized money and payments, and activity possibly being securely forward-committed in payment contracts, implies that the economy could settle on the basis of net rather than gross flows. A net-clearings contracts-for-difference economy could rethink crippling monolithic debt structures with streaming money disgorged in much smaller chunks that are more closely tied to costs and repayment possibilities. Pre-paid consumption and 30-60-90 day vendor credit terms models could be offset to facilitate a directed payment graph economy of just-in-time money.
Crypto tokens imply optionality and the ability to better manage risk. The thesis of this talk is that smart contracts are options, and as such, can be used to control risk (unwanted future uncertainty) in a wider range of areas than has been possible previously, in finance, and in other areas too such as medicine. Options as a financial market instrument have long been used to control the amount and timing of risk in specific ways and tailor exposure with granularity. Smart contracts are an even more flexible species of options because they are programmable contracts that can be used to confer the right to buy or sell any blockchain-based asset or liability at a future moment in time (blocktime or “fiat” (regular) time) per certain terms and consideration. Therefore, smart contracts allow a greater variety in the degree and type of risks that might be brought under management. The impact of having greater control over risk is that intangible social goods are produced such as surety, confidence, and reliability, which help to engender a more trustful society.
Smart Network Economics:
Debt, Risk, and Payment Channels
Smart networks are intelligent autonomous networks, a new form of global computational infrastructure in which intelligence is built directly into the software such that an increasing degree of autonomous operation is facilitated. More formally, smart networks are state machines that make probabilistic guesses about reality states of the world and act upon this basis, particularly in economic domains, hence, smart network economics.
Future of AI: Blockchain & Deep LearningMelanie Swan
Future of AI: intelligence “baked in” to smart networks, blockchains to confirm authenticity and transfer value, and Deep Learning algorithms for predictive identification. This talk presents two high-impact contemporary emerging technologies: big data and deep learning algorithms, and blockchain distributed ledgers, and discusses their implications for the future of artificial intelligence.
Blockchain: a Singularity-class technology - No other technology has the power to
pull 2 billion people out of poverty overnight (with intermediary-free international remittances), produce a safe and orderly transition to the automation economy (with humans and machines in collaboration, and enacting friendly artificial intelligence), and fundamentally transform the only remaining sectors not yet re-engineered for the Internet era: economics and politics. There are growing classes of activities for smartnetwork execution, moving up the stack, pushing different qualitative states through the Internet pipes, building future smartnetworks. The smartnetworks thesis is that complex future operations will involve automated fleet coordination of “quantized” items via smartnetworks, using some kind of technology like blockchains with algorithmically-derived trust.
Blockchain 3.0, the Encryption of Innovation. This talk looks beyond the immediate economic benefits and risks of distributed ledgers and considers the broader societal innovations implied by blockchain technology. The possibility of innovation and creating and participating in different and multiple self-determined political and economic systems could mobilize how we create ourselves as individuals and societies. Blockchain technology invites the possibility of creating a social world that gives greater weight to the values we apparently care about: freedom, trust, and dignity
Blockchain Investing: Economics Implications of Distributed LedgersMelanie Swan
The investment market for cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly institutional. In July 2017 (in the wake of the “ICO dotcom bubble”), the SEC signaled its stance on ICOs. “Stock-like” ICOs are likely to be deemed securities, and as such, would need to be registered offerings, which by implication, would target institutional investors. Also in July 2017, the CFTC granted a derivatives clearing license to New York-based LedgerX for cryptocurrency derivatives, and options listings may appear on the CBOE later in 2017. Since derivatives markets are already part of the institutional ecosystem, this means that cryptocurrency derivatives might be a more accessible, liquid, and large-scale means of obtaining exposure to crypto asset classes than investing in the underlying cryptocurrencies themselves. Finally, there is greater emphasis on institutional liquidity aggregation platforms for large-size cryptocurrency trading (i.e. $20+ million positions), with Genesis Trading, Cumberland Mining, Circle, and Project Omni.
Blockchain Economics: Tackle Debt and Systemic RiskMelanie Swan
Financial Resilience and Sustainability. Crypto tokens imply optionality and the ability to better manage risk. The thesis of this talk is that smart contracts are options, and as such, can be used to control risk (unwanted future uncertainty) in a wider range of areas than has been possible previously, in finance, and in other areas too such as medicine. Options as a financial market instrument have long been used to control the amount and timing of risk in specific ways and tailor exposure with granularity. Smart contracts are an even more flexible species of options because they are programmable contracts that can be used to confer the right to buy or sell any blockchain-based asset or liability at a future moment in time (blocktime or “fiat” (regular) time) per certain terms and consideration. Therefore, smart contracts allow a greater variety in the degree and type of risks that might be brought under management. The impact of having greater control over risk is that intangible social goods are produced such as surety, confidence, and reliability, which help to engender a more trustful society.
Blockchain distributed ledger technology is evolving from the hype phase into one of greater maturity and long-term value creation. This graduate course overview examines how blockchains, networks, and social interaction patterns are related.
This talk proposes that the future of artificial intelligence is smart networks that have intelligence "baked in" in the form of Blockchain Distributed Ledgers for confirming authenticity and transferring value, and Deep Learning Algorithms for predictive identification. Smart networks are not a far-off possibility but already needed as deep learning systems are going online in connected apps for Autonomous Driving and Drone Delivery, and Human-Robot Interaction. Two high-impact contemporary emerging technologies for the future of AI are Blockchain Distributed Ledgers and Deep Learning Algorithms, and discusses their implications for the future of artificial intelligence.
This presentation covers why blockchain technology uniquely addresses payments challenges. It also covers case studies of companies doing cross-border payments, payroll and identity management on private and public blockchains. For the narrative to these slides, please see this recording: http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1253290/A48EFF87AF53E87670B41D1D98EADB6D
Technological Unemployment and the Robo-EconomyMelanie Swan
Technological Unemployment (jobs outsourced to technology) is coming and the challenge is to steward an orderly and beneficial transition to more intense human-technology collaboration
The Crypto Enlightenment: Social Theory of Blockchains Melanie Swan
Text Write-up: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2015/10/crypto-enlightenment-social-theory-of.html
Introduction
What is Bitcoin, blockchain, decentralization?
Stakes: Transition from labor economy to actualization economy
Crypto Enlightenment
Rethinking Authority (Self, Society)
Philosophy of Immanence (open-ended upside)
Theory of Crypto Flourishing
Scarcity as a social pathology
Abundance theory of Flourishing
Practicalities and extensive blockchain applications
\\
Disruptive Future of Blockchain for Brasil Melanie Swan
Tudu acaba em blockchain: Productivity gains: Capital investment in technology, Provide data centers with Blockchain as a Service
Skilled work force development: Train 1000 software developers: Hyperledger, Ethereum, Corda
Focus on global markets beyond the internal economy: Scale efficiencies
Natural resources, regional strength, large companies
Low-hanging fruit: secure information transfer
Block chain for the humanitarian sector - future opportunitiesPablo Bredt Torres
Interesting presentation related to a next generation data sharing system applicable within the humanitarian supply chain and logistics sector.
Surely, still lots of obstacles but with limitless impact.
Blockchain: it's much more than BitcoinKuba Tymula
In this brief presentation (originally from an event that Harris Partners has run with Bank of America Merril Lynch in March 2016) we cover the basics of blockchain and bitcoin, incl. consensus in a blockchain, public key cryptography, public vs. private blockchains, permissionless vs. permissioned blockchains, advantages of blockchain, and some current case studies
There is increasing interest in the potential impact of Blockchain globally, across the business world. Blockchain is transforming data storage, security, digital property management, transactions in a variety of forms, and much, much, more. And the impact will be felt across a number of industries, including manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, retail, logistics, and more.
We believe Blockchain presents a unique opportunity for enterprises to leverage a revolutionary new technology and redefine how they function. The Blockchain Landscape Report 2019 by [X]cubeLABS discusses everything Blockchain ranging from its history, mechanism, and industry-wide adoption to its future potential.
The Stellar Blockchain and The Story of the Federated Consensus — Blockchain ...Ory Band
We'll dive deeper into the Federated consensus networks, focusing on Stellar and Ripple,
and discuss how they differ from other popular decentralized consensus solutions such as Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake.
We'll assess their pros and cons, and discuss the business requirements that drive companies to adopt these solutions over others.
Video of the presentation is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSpG6a9bmu0
Related blog post in Blockchain Academy TLV: https://medium.com/kinblog/the-stellar-blockchain-and-the-story-of-the-federated-consensus-blockchain-academy-f332eaadefc1
Exploring Session Context using Distributed Representations of Queries and Re...Bhaskar Mitra
Search logs contain examples of frequently occurring patterns of user reformulations of queries. Intuitively, the reformulation "san francisco" → "san francisco 49ers" is semantically similar to "detroit" →"detroit lions". Likewise, "london"→"things to do in london" and "new york"→"new york tourist attractions" can also be considered similar transitions in intent. The reformulation "movies" → "new movies" and "york" → "new york", however, are clearly different despite the lexical similarities in the two reformulations. In this paper, we study the distributed representation of queries learnt by deep neural network models, such as the Convolutional Latent Semantic Model, and show that they can be used to represent query reformulations as vectors. These reformulation vectors exhibit favourable properties such as mapping semantically and syntactically similar query changes closer in the embedding space. Our work is motivated by the success of continuous space language models in capturing relationships between words and their meanings using offset vectors. We demonstrate a way to extend the same intuition to represent query reformulations.
Furthermore, we show that the distributed representations of queries and reformulations are both useful for modelling session context for query prediction tasks, such as for query auto-completion (QAC) ranking. Our empirical study demonstrates that short-term (session) history context features based on these two representations improves the mean reciprocal rank (MRR) for the QAC ranking task by more than 10% over a supervised ranker baseline. Our results also show that by using features based on both these representations together we achieve a better performance, than either of them individually.
Paper: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=244728
Blockchain 3.0, the Encryption of Innovation. This talk looks beyond the immediate economic benefits and risks of distributed ledgers and considers the broader societal innovations implied by blockchain technology. The possibility of innovation and creating and participating in different and multiple self-determined political and economic systems could mobilize how we create ourselves as individuals and societies. Blockchain technology invites the possibility of creating a social world that gives greater weight to the values we apparently care about: freedom, trust, and dignity
Blockchain Investing: Economics Implications of Distributed LedgersMelanie Swan
The investment market for cryptocurrencies is becoming increasingly institutional. In July 2017 (in the wake of the “ICO dotcom bubble”), the SEC signaled its stance on ICOs. “Stock-like” ICOs are likely to be deemed securities, and as such, would need to be registered offerings, which by implication, would target institutional investors. Also in July 2017, the CFTC granted a derivatives clearing license to New York-based LedgerX for cryptocurrency derivatives, and options listings may appear on the CBOE later in 2017. Since derivatives markets are already part of the institutional ecosystem, this means that cryptocurrency derivatives might be a more accessible, liquid, and large-scale means of obtaining exposure to crypto asset classes than investing in the underlying cryptocurrencies themselves. Finally, there is greater emphasis on institutional liquidity aggregation platforms for large-size cryptocurrency trading (i.e. $20+ million positions), with Genesis Trading, Cumberland Mining, Circle, and Project Omni.
Blockchain Economics: Tackle Debt and Systemic RiskMelanie Swan
Financial Resilience and Sustainability. Crypto tokens imply optionality and the ability to better manage risk. The thesis of this talk is that smart contracts are options, and as such, can be used to control risk (unwanted future uncertainty) in a wider range of areas than has been possible previously, in finance, and in other areas too such as medicine. Options as a financial market instrument have long been used to control the amount and timing of risk in specific ways and tailor exposure with granularity. Smart contracts are an even more flexible species of options because they are programmable contracts that can be used to confer the right to buy or sell any blockchain-based asset or liability at a future moment in time (blocktime or “fiat” (regular) time) per certain terms and consideration. Therefore, smart contracts allow a greater variety in the degree and type of risks that might be brought under management. The impact of having greater control over risk is that intangible social goods are produced such as surety, confidence, and reliability, which help to engender a more trustful society.
Blockchain distributed ledger technology is evolving from the hype phase into one of greater maturity and long-term value creation. This graduate course overview examines how blockchains, networks, and social interaction patterns are related.
This talk proposes that the future of artificial intelligence is smart networks that have intelligence "baked in" in the form of Blockchain Distributed Ledgers for confirming authenticity and transferring value, and Deep Learning Algorithms for predictive identification. Smart networks are not a far-off possibility but already needed as deep learning systems are going online in connected apps for Autonomous Driving and Drone Delivery, and Human-Robot Interaction. Two high-impact contemporary emerging technologies for the future of AI are Blockchain Distributed Ledgers and Deep Learning Algorithms, and discusses their implications for the future of artificial intelligence.
This presentation covers why blockchain technology uniquely addresses payments challenges. It also covers case studies of companies doing cross-border payments, payroll and identity management on private and public blockchains. For the narrative to these slides, please see this recording: http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1253290/A48EFF87AF53E87670B41D1D98EADB6D
Technological Unemployment and the Robo-EconomyMelanie Swan
Technological Unemployment (jobs outsourced to technology) is coming and the challenge is to steward an orderly and beneficial transition to more intense human-technology collaboration
The Crypto Enlightenment: Social Theory of Blockchains Melanie Swan
Text Write-up: http://futurememes.blogspot.com/2015/10/crypto-enlightenment-social-theory-of.html
Introduction
What is Bitcoin, blockchain, decentralization?
Stakes: Transition from labor economy to actualization economy
Crypto Enlightenment
Rethinking Authority (Self, Society)
Philosophy of Immanence (open-ended upside)
Theory of Crypto Flourishing
Scarcity as a social pathology
Abundance theory of Flourishing
Practicalities and extensive blockchain applications
\\
Disruptive Future of Blockchain for Brasil Melanie Swan
Tudu acaba em blockchain: Productivity gains: Capital investment in technology, Provide data centers with Blockchain as a Service
Skilled work force development: Train 1000 software developers: Hyperledger, Ethereum, Corda
Focus on global markets beyond the internal economy: Scale efficiencies
Natural resources, regional strength, large companies
Low-hanging fruit: secure information transfer
Block chain for the humanitarian sector - future opportunitiesPablo Bredt Torres
Interesting presentation related to a next generation data sharing system applicable within the humanitarian supply chain and logistics sector.
Surely, still lots of obstacles but with limitless impact.
Blockchain: it's much more than BitcoinKuba Tymula
In this brief presentation (originally from an event that Harris Partners has run with Bank of America Merril Lynch in March 2016) we cover the basics of blockchain and bitcoin, incl. consensus in a blockchain, public key cryptography, public vs. private blockchains, permissionless vs. permissioned blockchains, advantages of blockchain, and some current case studies
There is increasing interest in the potential impact of Blockchain globally, across the business world. Blockchain is transforming data storage, security, digital property management, transactions in a variety of forms, and much, much, more. And the impact will be felt across a number of industries, including manufacturing, insurance, healthcare, retail, logistics, and more.
We believe Blockchain presents a unique opportunity for enterprises to leverage a revolutionary new technology and redefine how they function. The Blockchain Landscape Report 2019 by [X]cubeLABS discusses everything Blockchain ranging from its history, mechanism, and industry-wide adoption to its future potential.
The Stellar Blockchain and The Story of the Federated Consensus — Blockchain ...Ory Band
We'll dive deeper into the Federated consensus networks, focusing on Stellar and Ripple,
and discuss how they differ from other popular decentralized consensus solutions such as Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake.
We'll assess their pros and cons, and discuss the business requirements that drive companies to adopt these solutions over others.
Video of the presentation is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSpG6a9bmu0
Related blog post in Blockchain Academy TLV: https://medium.com/kinblog/the-stellar-blockchain-and-the-story-of-the-federated-consensus-blockchain-academy-f332eaadefc1
Exploring Session Context using Distributed Representations of Queries and Re...Bhaskar Mitra
Search logs contain examples of frequently occurring patterns of user reformulations of queries. Intuitively, the reformulation "san francisco" → "san francisco 49ers" is semantically similar to "detroit" →"detroit lions". Likewise, "london"→"things to do in london" and "new york"→"new york tourist attractions" can also be considered similar transitions in intent. The reformulation "movies" → "new movies" and "york" → "new york", however, are clearly different despite the lexical similarities in the two reformulations. In this paper, we study the distributed representation of queries learnt by deep neural network models, such as the Convolutional Latent Semantic Model, and show that they can be used to represent query reformulations as vectors. These reformulation vectors exhibit favourable properties such as mapping semantically and syntactically similar query changes closer in the embedding space. Our work is motivated by the success of continuous space language models in capturing relationships between words and their meanings using offset vectors. We demonstrate a way to extend the same intuition to represent query reformulations.
Furthermore, we show that the distributed representations of queries and reformulations are both useful for modelling session context for query prediction tasks, such as for query auto-completion (QAC) ranking. Our empirical study demonstrates that short-term (session) history context features based on these two representations improves the mean reciprocal rank (MRR) for the QAC ranking task by more than 10% over a supervised ranker baseline. Our results also show that by using features based on both these representations together we achieve a better performance, than either of them individually.
Paper: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=244728
Construisons ensemble le chatbot bancaire dedemain !LINAGORA
Retrouvez les slides réalisées pour notre Meetup collaboratif du jeudi 9 novembre 2017 : "Construisons ensemble le chatbot bancaire de demain !"
Après la publication de son étude sur les chatbots de l'écosystème bancaire "ChatBots et intelligence artificielle arrivent dans les banques : y êtes-vous préparé(e) ?", LinDA, l'agence digitale du groupe LINAGORA, à réaliser un atelier de co-conception du chatbot bancaire de demain.
Cet atelier gratuit d'idéation fut l'occasion d'imaginer, avec plusieurs participants du monde bancaire, la meilleure solution d'agent conversationnel pour leur banque.
Nos animateurs, Christophe Clouzeau (UX Digital Strategist) et Jean-Philippe Mouton (Head of digital consulting), ont appliqué des méthodes de conception UX, utilisées avec nos clients et par les startups innovantes.
Invited Talk for the SIGNLL Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning 2017 (CoNLL 2017) Chris Dyer (DeepMind / CMU) 3 Aug 2017. Vancouver, Canada
State of Blockchain 2017: Smartnetworks and the Blockchain EconomyMelanie Swan
Blockchain is a fundamental IT for secure value transfer over networks. For any asset registered in a cryptographic ledger, the whole Internet is a VPN for its confirmation, assurity, and transfer. Blockchain reinvents economics and governance for the digital age. The long-tail structure of digital networks allows personalized economic and governance services. Smartnetworks are a new form of automated global infrastructure for large-scale next-generation projects.
Deep Learning in practice : Speech recognition and beyond - MeetupLINAGORA
Retrouvez la présentation de notre Meetup du 27 septembre 2017 présenté par notre collaborateur Abdelwahab HEBA : Deep Learning in practice : Speech recognition and beyond
Visual-Semantic Embeddings: some thoughts on LanguageRoelof Pieters
Language technology is rapidly evolving. A resurgence in the use of distributed semantic representations and word embeddings, combined with the rise of deep neural networks has led to new approaches and new state of the art results in many natural language processing tasks. One such exciting - and most recent - trend can be seen in multimodal approaches fusing techniques and models of natural language processing (NLP) with that of computer vision.
The talk is aimed at giving an overview of the NLP part of this trend. It will start with giving a short overview of the challenges in creating deep networks for language, as well as what makes for a “good” language models, and the specific requirements of semantic word spaces for multi-modal embeddings.
Economics, broadly defined, is concerned with the description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Also related is how individuals and groups make choices about these goods and services, and the consequences of their decisions. Decisions might be explicitly in regard to money and resources, but the same principles pertain to any kind of decision. The general form of the problem is that wants are bigger than resources, and even if two choices are both free, there is an opportunity cost in terms of deploying resources or focus into one area and not another. The same structure of decision-making among multiple options, with there being an opportunity cost to the road not taken, may persist regardless of domain, whether in classical economics or distributed ledger economics.
eyond digitalizing money, payments, economics, and finance, blockchains are a singularity-class technology that enables the secure, trackable, automated coordination of very large-scale projects, fleets, and swarms
The implications could be an orderly transition to the automation economy and trust-rich human-machine collaboration in the digital smartnetwork societies of the future
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF BLOCKCHAIN: A SYMPOSIUM. INTRODUCTION MELANIE SWAN AND...eraser Juan José Calderón
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF BLOCKCHAIN: A SYMPOSIUM. INTRODUCTION
MELANIE SWAN AND PRIMAVERA DE FILIPPI.
Abstract:This article introduces the symposium “Toward a Philosophy ofBlockchain,” which provides a philosophical contemplation of blockchaintechnology, the digital ledger software underlying cryptocurrencies such asbitcoin, for the secure transfer of money, assets, and information via the Internetwithout needing a third-party intermediary. The symposium offers philosophicalscholarship on a new topic,blockchain technology, from a variety of perspectives.The philosophical themes discussed include mathematical models of reality,signification, and the sociopolitical institutions that structure human life andinteraction. The symposium also investigates the metaphilosophical theme ofhow to create aphilosophy of anything, specifically a new topic such as blockchaintechnology. Repeated themes are identified, in all areas of philosophical inquiry(ontology, epistemology, and axiology), and conceptual resources are elaboratedto contribute to a philosophical understanding of blockchain technology. Thus,philosophy as a metaphilosophical approach is shown to be able to provide anunderstanding of the conceptual, theoretical, and foundational dimensions ofnovelty and emergence in the world, with a particular focus on blockchaintechnology.
Keywords: blockchain, cryptocurrency, smart asset, smart contract, smart net-works, ontology, epistemology, axiology, economic theory, algorithmic trust.
From Bitcoin to Blockchain: Industry Review April 2017 from OLMA NEXT LtdOLMA Capital Management
When the Bitcoin cryptocurrency was released in 2009, its underpinning, the blockchain distributed ledger system was the real technological breakthrough, a formulation that promises to change the basis of all types of transactions globally.
Blockchain technology has paved the way for an Internet of Transactions. Blockchain technology has already proved its worth in such areas as means of payment, interbank exchanges and international remittances. Touted as the next digital revolution, blockchain technology has the potential to transform traditional industries and alter society through disintermediation of trade. Any situation that involves an intermediary that is expensive or fallible represents an opportunity to create a blockchain application case. No industry is immune to the blockchain’s disruption potential.
In 2017, the blockchain technology is at an inflection point. The industry is in a state of transition and must move to Blockchain 2.0, which means the adoption of more sophisticated applications, such as micro-payments and smart contracts. Having outgrown its original bitcoin community, the majority of blockchain applications have yet to pass beyond the prototype stage to make blockchain technology the greatest restructuring technology of the next decade.
This talk provides a speculative contemplation of philosophical topics that might arise with brain-machine interface technology and explores the new ways that individuals and society might self-enact as a result. Brain-machine interfaces that could be pervasive, continuous, and widely-adopted suggest interesting new possibilities for our future selves. From a philosophical perspective, these possibilities concern the definition of what it is to be human, our current existence and interaction with reality, and how all of this could be dramatically different in a scenario of digitally-linked cloudmind collaborations. This talk looks at some of the foundational ontological questions of how the progression of the existence of the classic human might evolve. Perhaps the most pressing question that currently-minded potential adopters have is how to avoid getting irreparably pulled into a groupmind. To protect against this, there could be an expansion and letting go of the term and concepts of personal identity, and humans as a unit of organization, in favor of instead self-relying on a decentralized permissioning structure like blockchain technology for managing empowered and resilient crowdmind participations.
Blockchain Technology and Decentralized Governance: Is the State Still Necess...eraser Juan José Calderón
Blockchain Technology and Decentralized Governance: Is the State Still Necessary?
Marcella Atzori, Ph. D.*
ABSTRACT
The core technology of Bitcoin, the blockchain, has recently emerged as a disruptive innovation with a wide range of applications, potentially able to redesign our interactions in business, politics and society at large. Although scholarly interest in this subject is growing, a comprehensive analysis of blockchain applications from a political perspective is severely lacking to date. This paper aims to fill this gap and it discusses the key points of blockchain-based decentralized governance, which challenges to varying degrees the traditional mechanisms of State authority, citizenship and democracy. In particular, the paper verifies to which extent blockchain and decentralized platforms can be considered as hyper-political tools, capable to manage social interactions on large scale and dismiss traditional central authorities. The analysis highlights risks related to a dominant position of private powers in distributed ecosystems, which may lead to a general disempowerment of citizens and to the emergence of a stateless global society. While technological utopians urge the demise of any centralized institution, this paper advocates the role of the State as a necessary central point of coordination in society, showing that decentralization through algorithm-based consensus is an organizational theory, not a stand-alone political theory.
Keywords: Bitcoin, blockchain, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, decentralization, democracy, Ethereum, encryption, governance, politics, State, peer-to-peer networks
Blockchain insider | Chapter 3 : Smart MoneyKoh How Tze
What we have now is truly borderless, programmable money
backed by immutable computer systems based on pure logic & mathematics.
3.1 ABCDs That Are Changing The World
3.2 A Century of Technology Innovation
3.3 Two Monetary Worlds
3.4 Three Phases of Cryptocurrencies
Corporate Currency
CBDC, Central Bank-issued Digital Currency
The Money Flower
Money Trees
3.5 The Creation of Capital In Its Simplest Form
3.6 Incentivizing Good Behaviour
Smart Mobility - Ethical Driving and Data Sharing
Resilient City - Impactful Positive Behaviors
Social Contributions - Datanomics
3.7 Bringing Down Borders
Assets Backed Tokens
Security Token Offering
Do We Need A Nation-State Backed Crypto Exchange?
Blockchaining Sukuk
3.8 Summary
Programmable Money for Effective Resources Distribution
CRYPTOCOLLEGE: HOW BLOCKCHAIN CAN REIMAGINE HIGHER
EDUCATION
J. David Judd*
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Inxeption, 379 Oyster Point Blvd., South San
Francisco, California 94080, USA
Blockchain, whose origins are blended (and often blurred) with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is a disruptive technology with the potential to transform how goods and services are exchanged over the internet. Blockchain allows complex transactions to be carried out transparently and securely, on a distributed interaction model that ousts multiple established intermediaries, eradicating the control held by central authorities in traditional methods of digital transaction.
Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for educationeraser Juan José Calderón
Exploring blockchain technology and its potential applications for education
Guang Chen1,2, Bing Xu1
, Manli Lu1 and Nian-Shing Chen3*
Abstract
Blockchain is the core technology used to create the cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin. As part of the fourth industrial revolution since the invention of steam engine, electricity, and information technology, blockchain technology has been
applied in many areas such as finance, judiciary, and commerce. The current paper focused on its potential educational applications and explored how blockchain technology can be used to solve some education problems. This article first introduced the features and advantages of blockchain technology following by exploring some of the current blockchain applications for education. Some innovative applications of using blockchain technology were proposed, and the benefits and challenges of using blockchain technology for education were also discussed.
Keywords: Blockchain, Educational evaluation, Instructional design, Learning is earning
The Blockchain is a technology created with the bitcoin, which has become the world's 8th currency in terms of amounts exchanged. The Blockchain brings with it new promises of innovation in all sectors, but also of disruption of dominant economic models. By taking an interest now in its potential applications, we can be one step ahead of the next stage of the digital revolution and the advent of a "horizontal" society,
without intermediaries or centralized authority...
The Blockchain is probably set to revolutionize transactions and exchanges; in the same way that Internet enabled peer-to-peer communication, in the years to come the Blockchain will provide the means for peer-to-peer transactions under a decentralized and autonomous rationale.
One of the most hyped IT buzzwords to have emerged in the last couple of years. Blockchain has found its way into major media headlines on a near-daily basis, but a year and a half ago, it was a word used by a relatively small number of people to describe the peer-to-peer distributed ledger technology.
Blockchain Theory of Abundance EconomicsMelanie Swan
Blockchain Theory of Abundance Economics
1. Survival to Fulfillment
2. Scarcity to Availability
3. Centralization to Decentralization
Problem Statement: Algorithmic Reality of Complexity, Emergence, and non-Thinkability with effects of Technological Unemployment, Income Inequality
Solution: Blockchain Theory of Abundance Economics
Governance in the Blockchain Economy: A Framework and Research Agenda. Roman...eraser Juan José Calderón
ABSTRACT
Blockchain technology is often referred to as a groundbreaking innovation and the harbinger of a new economic era. Blockchains may be capable of engendering a new type of economic system: the blockchain economy. In the blockchain economy, agreed-upon transactions would be enforced autonomously, following rules defined by smart contracts. The blockchain economy would manifest itself in a new form of organizational design—decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)—which are organizations with governance rules specified in the blockchain. We discuss the blockchain economy along dimensions defined in the IT governance literature: decision rights, accountability, and incentives. Our case study of a DAO illustrates that governance in the blockchain economy may depart radically from established notions of governance. Using the three governance dimensions, we propose a novel IT governance framework and a research agenda for governance in the blockchain economy. We challenge common assumptions in the blockchain discourse, and propose promising information systems research related to these assumptions.
Blockchain Healthcare Situation Report (BC/HC SITREP) Volume 1 Issue 19, 06 - 12 Nov 2017. A weekly newsletter curating news and events relating to blockchain and healthcare by Sean Manion, CEO of Science Distributed.
Transhuman Crypto Cloudminds
Melanie Swan, Technology Theorist, Philosophy Department, Purdue University USA, Founder, Institute for Blockchain .
Studies and DIYgenomics.
Abstract
Considering the mutual benefits of blockchain and transhumanism, this essay
proposes crypto cloudminds as a safe mechanism by which the human mind might
transcend its unitary limitations by permissioning partial resources to join a multiparty mind (comprised of human and machine minds) in a cloud-based
environment. Cloudminds could have diverse purposes including problem solving
(addressing future-of-work issues with Maslow Smart Contracts), learning,
experience, exploration, innovation, artistic expression, and other personal
development activities. Crypto cloudminds could be multicurrency, operating with
payment remuneration, security, and (especially) ideas as the denominations of
measure. For thriving in the future, mind node peers could enter “Yes-and”
Payment Channels with one another for collaborative idea development. For
surviving in the future, good-player behavior could be game-theoretically enforced
with the simultaneous privacy-transparency property of blockchains, together with
the immutable peer-confirmed consensus algorithm and audit-log checks and
balances system. Overall, blockchains might serve as an institutional technology
that is the basis for treaties and progress in a multi-species society of human,
algorithm, and machine, guiding the way to positive transhuman futures.
Similar to Blockchain Smartnetworks: Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained (20)
AI Health Agents: Longevity as a Service in the Web3 GenAI Quantum RevolutionMelanie Swan
Health Agents are a form of Math Agent as the concept of a personalized AI health advisor delivering “healthcare by app” instead of “sickcare by appointment.” Mobile devices
can check health 1000 times per minute as opposed to the standard one time per year doctor’s office visit, and model virtual patients in the digital twin app. As any AI agent, Health Agents “speak” natural language to humans and formal language to the computational infrastructure, possibly outputting the mathematics of personalized homeostatic health as part of their operation. Health Agents could facilitate the ability of physicians to oversee the health of thousands of individuals at a time. This could ease overstressed healthcare systems and contribute to physician well-being and the situation that (per the World Health Organization) more than half of the global population is still not covered by essential health services.
The computational infrastructure is becoming a vast interconnected fabric of formal methods, including per a major shift from 2d grids to 3d graphs in machine learning architectures
The implication is systems-level digital science at unprecedented scale for discovery in a diverse range of scientific disciplines
We know that we are in an AI take-off, what is new is that we are in a math take-off. A math take-off is using math as a formal language, beyond the human-facing math-as-math use case, for AI to interface with the computational infrastructure. The message of generative AI and LLMs (large language models like GPT) is not that they speak natural language to humans, but that they speak formal languages (programmatic code, mathematics, physics) to the computational infrastructure, implying the ability to create a much larger problem-solving apparatus for humanity-benefitting applications in biology, energy, and space science, however not without risk.
This work introduces “quantum intelligence” as a concept of intelligence for operating in the quantum realm may help in a potential AI-Quantum Computing convergence (~2030e), and towards the realization of SRAI for well-being (economics, health, energy, space). “Scale-free intelligence” is formulated as a generic capacity for learning.
AI did not spring onto the scene with chatGPT, but is in an ongoing multi-year adoption. A transition may be underway from an information society to a knowledge society (one tempered and specifically using knowledge to improve the human condition). AI is a dual-use technology with both significant risk and upleveling possibilities.
SRAI for well-being is a social objective, and also a technological objective. SRAI is part of AI development and within the technological trajectory of harnessing all scales of physical reality ranging from quantum materials to space exploration.
Conceptually, thinking in quantum and relativistic terms expands the physical worldview, and likewise the social worldview of entities inhabiting the larger world. Practically, SRAI may be realized in phases: short-term regulation and registries, medium-term agents learning to implement human values with internal reward functions, and long-term responsible human-AI entities acting in partnership in a future of SRAI for well-being.
The Human-AI Odyssey: Homerian Aspirations towards Non-labor IdentityMelanie Swan
The visionary progression in The Odyssey from shipbuilding to seafaring to advanced civilization informs contemporary tension in the human-AI relation forcing a broader articulation of human-identity beyond labor-identity. Edith Hall analyzes why one of the earliest known literatures, The Odyssey, remains a central cultural trope with numerous references in the storytelling vernacular of all eras, ranging from 1860s British theater to a highly-watched 1990 episode of The Simpsons. The argument is that The Odyssey provides a constant aspirational reference for human identity – who we think we are and where we are going on the epic journey of life, especially at the current crossroad in our relationship with technology.
The contemporary moment finds humanity, and the humanities, experiencing an identity crisis in the relationship with technology. Information science is having an ever more pervasive role in academia, and the machine economy continues to offload vast classes of tasks to labor-saving technology giving rise to two questions. First, at the level of labor-identity, humans wonder who they are as they have long defined their sense of self through their professional participation in the economy. Second, at the level of human-identity, with AI now performing cognitive labor in addition to physical labor, humans wonder if there is anything that remains uniquely human.
The effect of The Odyssey is to provide world-expanding imaginaries to change the way we see ourselves as subjects; in this way, Homer is an early modernist in reconfiguring our self-concept.
This work applies a philosophy (of literature)-aided information science method to discuss how Homer’s Odyssey persists as a literary imaginary to help us think through potential futures of human-AI flourishing as rapid automation continues to impact humanity. The intensity of the human-AI relation is likely to increase, which invites thought leadership to steward the transition to a potential AI abundance economy with fulfilling human-technology collaboration.
The shipbuilding-seafaring-advanced civilization progression in The Odyssey identifies that the human-AI relation is not one of the labor-identity-crisis of “robots stealing our jobs,” but rather one of the more difficult challenge of envisioning who we can be in the new larger world of human-AI partnership addressing a larger set of planetary-scale problems. Towards this new configuration of human-AI relation, the longer-term may hold radically different notions of identity, as we become physical-virtual hybrids, augmented post-disease entities in the health-faring, space-civilizing, energy-marshalling post-scarcity cultures of the future.
AdS Biology and Quantum Information ScienceMelanie Swan
Quantum Information Science is a fast-growing discipline advancing many areas of science such as cryptography, chemistry, finance, space science, and biology. In particular AdS/Biology, an interpretation of the AdS/CFT correspondence in biological systems, is showing promise in new biophysical mathematical models of topology (Chern-Simons (solvable QFT), knotting, and compaction). For example, one model of neurodegenerative disease takes a topological view of protein buildup (AB plaques and tau tangles in Alzheimer’s disease, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson’s disease, TDP-43 in ALS). AdS/Neuroscience methods are implicated in integrating multiscalar systems with different bulk-boundary space-time regimes (e.g. oncology tumors, fMRI + EEG imaging), entanglement (correlation) renormalization across scales (MERA, random tensor networks, melonic diagrams), entropy (possible system states), entanglement entropy (interrelated fluctuations and correlations across system tiers), and non-ergodicity (implied efficiency mechanisms since biology does not cycle through all possible configurations per temperature (thermotaxis), chemotaxis, and energy cues); Maxwell’s demon of biology (partition functions), conservation across system scales (biophysical gauge symmetry (system-wide conserved quantity)), and the presence of codes (DNA, codons, neural codes). A multiscalar AdS/CFT correspondence is mobilized in 4-tier ecosystem models (light-plankton-krill-whale and ion-synapse-neuron-network (AdS/Brain)).
Humanity’s constant project is expanding the range of attainable geography. Melville’s romance of the sea gives way to Kerouac’s romance of the road, and now the romance of space. In expanding into new geographies, markets (commerce) is the driving impulse, entailing a legal and judiciary system to order the new larger continuous marketplace, which brings a bigger overall scope of world under our control, and hence a new idea of who we are as subjects in this bigger domain.
Space Humanism is a concept of humanism based on the principles of inclusion, progress, and equity posited as a condition of possibility for a potential large-scale human movement into space. A philosophy of literature approach is used to contextualize Space Humanism, first through Melville-Foucault to articulate the mind-frame of extra-planetary geographies as one of human expansion, and second through posthuman philosophy extending from Shakespeare’s Renaissance humanism to contemporary enhancement-based theories of subjectivation.
Historical imaginaries outline subjectivation moments that have changed the whole notion who we are as humanity. Four examples are: the concept of the “new world” in Hegel’s philosophy, von Humboldt’s infographic maps, Baudelaire as the Painter of Modern Life, and Keats’s seeing the world in a new way upon reading an updated translation of Homer.
The reach to beyond-Earth geographies is a two-cultures project involving both arts and science. Technical competence is necessary to realize the aspirational, explorational, and survivalist aims of humanity pushing beyond planetary limits. Space was once a fantastic dream that is becoming quotidian with fourteen U.S. spaceports, six completed Blue Origin space tourist missions, and SpaceX having over 155 successful rocket launches including human space flights to and from the International Space Station. The notion of Space Human articulated through Shakespeare, Moby-Dick, and neuroenhancement informs the project of our reach to awaiting beyond-Earth geographies.
Quantum Information Science and Quantum Neuroscience.pptMelanie Swan
Mathematical advance in quantum information science is proceeding quickly and applies to many fields, particularly the complexities of neuroscience (here focusing on image-readable physical behaviors such as neural signaling, as opposed to higher-order operations of cognition, memory, and attention). Quantum mathematical models are extensible to neuroscience problem classes treating dynamical time series, diffusion, and renormalization in multiscalar systems. Approaches first reconstruct wavefunctions observed in EEG and fMRI scans. Second, single-neuron models (Hodgkin-Huxley, integrate-and-fire, theta neurons) and collective neuron models (neural field theories, Kuramoto oscillators) are employed to model empirical data. Third, genome physics is used to study time series sequence prediction in DNA, RNA, and proteins based on 3d+ complex geometry involving fields, curvature, knotting, and information compaction. Finally, quantum neuroscience physics is applied in AdS/Brain modeling, Chern-Simons biology (topological invariance), neuronal gauge theories, network neuroscience, and the chaotic dynamics of bifurcation and bistability (to explain epileptic and resting states). The potential benefit of this work is an improved understanding of disease and pathology resolution in humans.
Quantum information science enables a new tier of scientific problem-solving as exemplified in early-adopter fields, foundational tools in quantum cryptography, quantum machine learning, and quantum chemistry (molecular quantum mechanics), and advanced applications in quantum space science, quantum finance, and quantum biology
Grammatology and Performativity: A Critical Theory of Silence: Silence is a crucial device for subversion, opposition, and socio-political commentary, the theoretical underpinnings of which are just starting to be understood. This work illuminates another position in the growing field of critical silence studies, theorizing silence as an asset whose ontological value has been lost in a world of literal and figurative noise. Part 1 philosophizes silence as a continuation of Derrida’s grammatology project. Such a grammatology of silence valorizes silent thinking over noisy speaking, and identifies the deconstructive binary pairing not as silence-speaking, but rather as silence-noise. Noise has a simultaneous physical-virtual existence as Shannon entropy calculates signal-to-noise ratios in modern communications networks. Part 2 employs the philosophy of noise to assess what is conceptually necessary to overcome noise in a critical theory of silence. Malaspina draws from Simondon to argue that noise is a form of individuation, essentially a living thing with unstoppable growth potential, not defined by a binary on-off switch but as a matter of gradation. Hence different theory resources are required to oppose it. Part 3 then develops a critical theory of silence to oppose noise in both its physical and virtual instantiations, with the two arms of a deeply human positive performativity (Szendy, Bennett) and a beyond-computational posthumanism (Puar). The result is a novel critical theory of silence as positive performativity that destabilizes noise and recoups the ontological status of silence as not merely an empty post-modern reification but a meaningful actuality.
Philosophy-aided Physics at the Boundary of Quantum-Classical Reality The philosophical themes of truth-knowledge and appearance-reality are used to interrogate the contemporary situation of the quantum-classical boundary, and more broadly the quantum-classical-relativistic stratification of physical scale boundaries. The contemporary moment finds us at breakneck pace in the industrial information revolution, digitizing remaining matter-based industries into a seamless exchange between physical-digital reality. Digitized news is giving way to digitized money and perhaps in the farther future, digitized mindfiles (such as personalized connectome files for precision medicine, autologous (own-DNA) stem cell therapies, and CRISPR for Alzheimer’s disease prevention). Our technologies are allowing us control over vast new domains, the relativistic with GPS and space-faring, and the quantum with quantum computing, harnessing the properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Philosophy provides critical thinking tools that can help us understand and master these rapid shifts in science and technology to avoid an Adornian instrumental reality (subsuming humanity under societal structures) and to maintain a Heideggerian backgrounded and enabling relation with technology (versus technology enframing us into mindless standing reserve).
The philosophical theme underlying the investigation of the scales of planets, persons, and particles is the relationship between truth and knowledge (or appearance and reality). The truth-knowledge problem is whether knowledge of the truth, true knowledge, the reality under the appearance, is even possible. Three salient moments in the history of the truth-knowledge problem are examined here. These are the German idealism of Kant and Hegel, the deconstructive postmodernism of Foucault and Derrida, and the unclear leanings of the current moment. The German idealism lens incorporates the self-knowing subject as agent into the truth and knowledge problem. The postmodernist view breaks with the subject and emphasizes the hidden opposites in the formulations, the constant reinterpretation of meaning, and porous boundaries. The contemporary moment wonders whether truth-knowledge boundaries still hold, in a Benjaminian view of non-identity between truth and knowledge, and truth increasingly being seen as a Foucauldian biopolitical manufactured quantity. Contemporaneity has a bimodal distribution of the subject: the hyperself (the constantly digitally represented selfie self) and the alienated post-subject subject.
These moments in the truth and knowledge debate inflect into the scale considerations of relativity, classicality, and quantum mechanics. Whereas general relativity and quantum mechanics are domains of universality, totality, and multiplicity, everyday classical reality is squeezed in as a belt between the two multiplicities as the concretion of drawing a triangle or tossing a ball. Recasting truth and k
Comprehensive philosophical programs arise within a historical context (for Hegel and Derrida in the democracy-shaping moments of the French Revolution (1789) and the student-worker protests (1968) in which French politics serve as a global harbinger of contemporary themes). In the Derrida-Hegel relationship, there is more rapprochement concerning core notions of difference, history, and meaning-assignation than may have been realized. In particular, Hegel’s philosophy, despite being assumed to be a totalizing system, in fact indicates precisely some of the same kinds of revised metaphysics-of-presence formulations that Derrida exhorts, namely those that are flexible, expansive, and include non-identity and identity.
A crucial Derrida-Hegel interchange is that of différance and difference. Derrida develops the notion directly from Hegel (“Différance,” “The Pit and the Pyramid”), but only draws from the Encyclopedia, not Hegel’s masterwork, the Phenomenology of Spirit. For Derrida, the “A” in différance is inspired by the form of the pyramid in the capitalized letter and in Hegel’s comparing the sign “to the Egyptian Pyramid” (“Différance,” p. 3). Derrida invokes the symbolism of the pyramid, antiquity, and Egyptian hieroglyphics as an early semiotic system. However, when considering Hegel’s central definition of difference in the dialectical progression of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in the Phenomenology of Spirit (§§159-163), the articulations of différance and difference are remarkably aligned.
Parallel formulations are also seen in history as a series of reinterpretable events, and indexical wrappers as a mechanism for meaning assignation. The thinkers examine the universal and the particular by exploring regulative mechanisms such as law (natural and social). In Glas, Derrida highlights not the singular-universal relation, but the law of singularity and the law of universality relation as being relevant to Hegel’s Antigone interpretation (Glas, p. 142a), a theme continued in “Before the Law.” Finally (time permitting), there is a question whether the most valid critiques of Hegel (Nietzsche’s unreason and Benjamin’s non-synthesis), as alternatives to Hegelian dialectics, are visible in Derrida’s thought.
The upshot is that the two thinkers produce similar formulations, derived from different trajectories of philosophical work; a situation which points to the potential universality of fundamental solution classes to open-ended philosophical problems, including the future of democracy.
Quantum Moreness: Kantian Time and the Performative Economics of Multiplicity
There is no domain with greater moreness than that of the quantum. A philosophy-aided physics approach (postmodernism and Continental philosophy) examines the contemporary situation of quantum moreness (more time and space dimensions than are available classically). Quantum moreness is configured by quantum reality being probabilistic; a multiplicity of outcomes all co-existing in superposition until collapsed in measurement. The quantum mindset uses quantum moreness to solve problems by thinking in terms of the greater scalability afforded in time and space with the quantum properties of superposition, entanglement, and interference. Quantum studies fields proliferate in arts and sciences, raising the Levi-Straussian raw-cooked dilemma of how “traditional humanities” are to be named alongside “digital humanities” and “quantum humanities.” Kant facilitates the conceptualization of quantum moreness by insisting on the dual nature of time as transcendentally ideal and empirically real. Kant’s moreness is allness, the absolute totality and multiplicity of time at the ideal level. Each faculty (sensibility, understanding, reason) has its own species of the a priori synthetic unity of ideal time that precedes and conditions the operation of the faculty. Each faculty also has a concretized formulation of empirically-real time as the time series, which is the basis for the faculties to interoperate to perform the conception of any empirical object. Kant’s achievement of time interoperability has potential extensibility to other areas of temporal incompatibility such as the scales of general relativity, Newtonian mechanics (human-scale), and quantum mechanics. The quantum moreness mindset with which Kant connects the ideal-real is visible in the domain of economics, itself too an ideal-real construction. The quantum moreness of money configures the postmodern abstraction of global cryptocurrencies and smart contract pledges, the implicative hope of which is a post-debt capital world that restores the human esprit in the face of an increasingly intense technologized reality.
Blockchain Crypto Jamming: Subverting the Instrumental Economy
The ultimate subversion is money, refusing the pecuniary resources of the state. This project applies a philosophical and critical theory lens to examine the use of nomenclature in one of the most radical longitudinal transformations in contemporary times, the shift away from state-run monetary resources towards cryptocurrencies and smart contracts in citizen-determined decentralized financial networks.
A Cryptoeconomic Theory of Social Change is presented in which linguistic progression serves as a tracking mechanism. The steps to lasting change have their own vocabulary (Brandom). First, there is the social critique, the complaint about what is wrong, the negative side (Adorno and Horkheimer highlight instrumental reason and the empty culture industry). Second, there is the antidote, an alternative that can overcome the complaint, the positive side. Third, the solution becomes the new reality, and as a consequence, the whole of reality is now seen in this context, adopting its vocabulary (“fiat health” system for example, referring to the antiquated method). The social movement graduates from language game (Wittgenstein) to form of life (Jaeggi).
Blockchains are Occupy with teeth, notable in the level of personal responsibility-taking by individuals to steward their own financial resources. The crypto citizen is not merely trading CryptoKitties and Bored Ape Yacht Club tokens, but getting blocktime loans through DeFi liquidity pools instead of fiat banks, earning labor income in crypto, and shifting all economic activity to blockchain networks. The artworld signals mainstream acceptance with Christie’s non-fungible token digital artwork auctioned from Beeple for $61 million. At the global level, coin communities constitute a new form of Kardashev-level (planetary-scale) democracy. Blockchains emerge as a robust smart network automation technology for super-class projects ranging from space-faring to quantum computing and thought-tokening. The further stakes of this work are having a language-based theory of social change with broad applicability to social transformation.
This work argues that the emerging understanding of time in quantum information science can be articulated as a philosophical theory of change. Change and time are interrelated, and one can be used to interrogate the other, namely, a theory of change can be derived from a theory of time. What is new in quantum science is time being regarded as just another property to be engineered. At the quantum scale, time is reversible in certain ways, which is quite different from the everyday experience of time whose unidirectional arrow does not allow a dropped egg to reassemble. At the quantum scale of atoms, though, a particle retains the history of its trajectory, which may be retraced before collapsed in measurement.
Quantum scientists evolve systems backward and forward in time, controlling phase transitions with Floquet engineering. Quantum systems are entangled in time and space, with temporal correlations exhibiting greater multiplicity than spatial correlations. The chaotic time regimes of ballistic spread followed by saturation are implemented in quantum walks for faster search and heightened cryptosecurity. In quantum neuroscience, seizure may be explained by chaotic dynamics and normal resting state by Floquet-like periodic cycles. Time is revealed to have the same kinds of repeating structures as space (described by entanglement, symmetry, and topology), differently instantiated and controlled.
The quantum understanding of time can be propelled into a macroscale-theory of change through its connotation of a more flexible, malleable, probabilistic interface with reality. Change becomes less rigid. Probability is the lever of change, but notoriously difficult for humans to grasp, as we think better in storylines than statistics. The idea of manipulating quantum system properties in which time, space, dynamics (change), are all just parameters, is an empowering frame for the acceptance of change. The quantum mindset affords greater facility with probability-driven events (change).
Blockchains in Space: Non-Euclidean Spacetime and Tokenized Thinking - Two requirements for the large-scale beyond-terrestrial expansion of human intelligence into the universe are the ability to operate in diverse spatiotemporal regimes and to instantiate thinking in various formats. Newtonian mechanics describe everyday reality, but Einsteinian physics is needed for GPS and the orbital technologies of telescopes and spacecraft. Space agencies already integrate the Earth-day and the slightly-longer Martian-sol. A more substantial move into space requires facility with non-Euclidean spacetimes. One challenge is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are non-interoperable. However, the theories can be formulated together when considering black holes and quantum computing since geometric theories and gauge theories are both field-based. Quantum blockchains instantiate blockchain logic in quantum computational environments. Blockchains have their own temporal regime (blocktime: the number of blocks for an event to occur), and hence quantum blocktime is a non-classical functionality for operating in diverse spatiotemporal regimes. Thinking is a rule-based activity that is unrestricted by medium. Central to thinking is concepts, which are referenced by words. Word-types include universals, particulars, and indexicals which can be encoded into a formal system as thought-tokens, and registered to blockchains. Blockchains are contemplated as an automation technology for asteroid mining and space settlement construction, and thought-tokening adds an intelligence layer. Time and tokenized thinking come together in the idea of smart networks in space. In blockchain quantum smart networks, spatiotemporal regimes and thought-tokens are simply different value types (asset classes) coordinated with blockchain logic, towards the aim of extending human capabilities into the farther reaches of space.
Cryptography, entanglement, and quantum blocktime: Quantum computing offers a more scalable energy-efficient platform than classical computing and supercomputing, and corresponds more naturally to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. Blockchains are a decentralized digital economic system made possible by the 24-7 global nature of the internet.
Quantum Neuroscience: CRISPR for Alzheimer’s, Connectomes & Quantum BCIsMelanie Swan
This talk provides an introduction to quantum computing and how it may be deployed to study the human brain and its diseases of pathology and aging. Refined to its present state over centuries, the brain is one of the most complex systems known, with 86 billion neurons and 242 trillion synapses connected in intricate patterns and rewired by synaptic plasticity. Research continues to illuminate the mysteries of the brain. Quantum computing provides a more capacious architecture with greater scalability and energy efficiency than current methods of classical computing and supercomputing, and more naturally corresponds to the three-dimensional structure of atomic reality. The vision for quantum neuroscience is to model the nature of the brain exactly as it is, in three-dimensional atomically-accurate representations. Neuroscience (particularly genetic disease modeling, connectomics, and synaptomics) could be the “killer application” of quantum computing. Implementations in other industries are also important, including in quantum finance, quantum cryptography using Shor’s factoring algorithm (“the Y2K of Crypto”), Grover’s search, quantum chemistry, eigensolvers, quantum machine learning, and continuous-time quantum walks. Quantum computing is a high-profile worldwide scientific endeavor with platforms currently available via cloud services (IBM Q 27-qubit, IonQ 32-qubit, Rigetti 19Q Acorn) and is in the process of being applied in various industries including computational neuroscience.
Art Theory: Two Cultures Synthesis of Art and ScienceMelanie Swan
Thesis: Aesthetic resources contribute broadly to the human endeavor of progress, self-understanding, and science, beyond the immediate experience of art. Aesthetic Resources are frameworks, concepts, and modes of expression in art, literature, and philosophy that capture the imagination and the intellect through the senses. The role of art is to inspire the future: the romance of the sea, the open road, space.
The arts are a hallmark of civilization, but can their benefit be crystallized as aesthetic resources that can be mobilized to new situations? How can aesthetic resources help in moments of crisis?
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Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
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Watch this recorded webinar about real-time monitoring of application performance. See how to integrate Apache JMeter, the open-source leader in performance testing, with InfluxDB, the open-source time-series database, and Grafana, the open-source analytics and visualization application.
In this webinar, we will review the benefits of leveraging InfluxDB and Grafana when executing load tests and demonstrate how these tools are used to visualize performance metrics.
Length: 30 minutes
Session Overview
-------------------------------------------
During this webinar, we will cover the following topics while demonstrating the integrations of JMeter, InfluxDB and Grafana:
- What out-of-the-box solutions are available for real-time monitoring JMeter tests?
- What are the benefits of integrating InfluxDB and Grafana into the load testing stack?
- Which features are provided by Grafana?
- Demonstration of InfluxDB and Grafana using a practice web application
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Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
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Blockchain Smartnetworks: Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained
1. U Penn, Philadelphia PA, Dec 9, 2016
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained
Melanie Swan
Philosophy & Economic Theory
New School for Social Research, NY NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain Smartnetworks
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained
Part of a Series on Cryptophilosophy
cryptophilosophy
2. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Thesis
1
Beyond digitalizing money, payments,
economics, and finance, and governance,
smart property and smart contracts,
blockchains secure automated fleet
coordination
The implications could be an orderly transition
to the automation economy and trust-rich
digital smartnetwork societies of the future
3. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained 2
Melanie Swan, Blockchain Futurist
Philosophy and Economic Theory, New School
for Social Research, New York NY
Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
Singularity University Instructor; Institute for Ethics and
Emerging Technology Affiliate Scholar; EDGE
Essayist; FQXi Advisor
Traditional Markets Background
Economics and Financial
Theory Leadership
New Economies research group
Source: http://www.melanieswan.com, http://blockchainstudies.org/NSNE.pdf, http://blockchainstudies.org/Metaphilosophy_CFP.pdf
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NewEconomies
5. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Bitcoin-FinTech-Blockchain Growth
4
https://angel.co/bitcoin, http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2015/02/the-fintech-scene-is-so-hot-its-boiling.html
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/04/16/bitcoin-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-idea/
Silicon Valley Bank:
Global investment in
FinTech is set to
double from $10
billion in 2014 to
$19.7 billion in 2015,
and reach $46.1
billion by 2020
6. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Gartner Emerging Technology Hype Cycle
5
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/04/16/bitcoin-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-idea/
Cryptocurrencies added July 2014
7. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
How does Bitcoin work?
6
1. Download software wallet app
Blockchain.info, Mycelium, etc.
2. Transfer Bitcoin via QR Code / public key address
3. See your transaction confirm, post to the blockchain
8. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Technology: What is it?
7
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:
9. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain (not Bitcoin) is the revolution
8
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
10. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Smartnetwork vision
Pushing more complexity through the Internet pipes
9
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
11. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained 10
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
12. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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
11
Source: https://blockexplorer.com
13. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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 (2 billion under-banked)
Long-tail economics: any two
parties can transact on the
network (eBay of money)
12
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
14. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Issue: hierarchy is not scalable
13
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
15. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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
14
Sources: Coase, RH, The Nature of The Firm, 1937, http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~jsfeng/CPEC11.pdf
Decentralization
Blockchain
Bitcoin
16. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Economics and Finance
Apparatus for constituting the present and the future
15
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
17. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Decentralized Economics and Finance
Current mode is one kind of system for organizing access to resources
16
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
18. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Abundance Philosophy of Economics
Realization of decentralized economics and finance
17
Source: Swan, M. "Automation Economy: An Abundance Philosophy of Economics" In Emerging Technology and
Unemployment. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming.
Phase I: transition to Automation Economy
Phase II: transition to Actualization Economy
A
B
C
Trust, Autonomy,
Recognition
19. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Technological Unemployment
Key singularity-class challenge: orderly transition to the
Automation Economy
Half (47%) of employment is at risk of automation in the next
two decades – Carl Frey, Oxford, 2015
Why are there still so many jobs in a world that could be
automating more quickly? – David Autor, MIT, 2015
18
Source: Swan, M. "Automation Economy: An Abundance Philosophy of Economics" In Emerging Technology and
Unemployment. Palgrave Macmillan. Forthcoming.
20. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Use Bitcoin to avoid Digital Identity theft
19
Amazon,
Overstock,
Newegg, etc.
www.bitcoinvalues.net/who-accepts-bitcoins-payment-companies-stores-take-bitcoins.html
21. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Economic and privacy arguments for Bitcoin
Vendor payments market
1-3% merchant transaction fee
Hack-able ‘honey pot’ identity databases
Banking services market
5 bn individuals worldwide without access
to banking, financial, credit services
Remittances market
$4 tn global market, 5-30% transaction
fee; immediate funds transfer solution
Successful examples suggest
demand for digital payments
Starbucks mobile app, Apple Pay
20
http://www.bitcoinvalues.net/who-accepts-bitcoins-payment-companies-
stores-take-bitcoins.html
22. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
How big is the market and is it liquid?
Which cryptocurrency should I use?
21
https://coinmarketcap.com/
24. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
What is the blockchain?
23
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin, https://bitcoin.org/en/download, https://getaddr.bitnodes.io/
The open-source software upon which
Bitcoin runs
A technology protocol layer like TCP/IP
A transaction database, a decentralized
public ledger of all transactions
Giant ‘interactive Google doc spreadsheet’
that anyone can view and administrators
(miners) continually verify and update to
confirm that each transaction is valid
Literally blocks (batches of
transactions) in a chain, a sequential
ledger of transactions
25. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
How robust is the network?
24
https://bitnodes.21.co/
5404 Global Nodes running full Bitcoind (Dec 2016)
26. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Financial and Public Records Applications
Financial instruments
1. Currency
2. Private equities
3. Public equities
4. Bonds
5. Derivatives Commodities
6. Spending records
7. Trading records
8. Mortgage/loan records
9. Servicing records
10. Crowdfunding
11. Microfinance
25
http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1402/how-to-get-started-your-first-dapp-under-one-hour
Public Records
1. Land titles
2. Vehicle registries
3. Business incorporations
4. Criminal records
5. Passports
6. Birth certificates
7. Death certificates
8. Voter Registration
9. Voting Records
10. Health/safety inspections
11. Building permits
12. Court records
27. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
What is Smart Property?
Register assets to blockchain via unique key
Blocktrace ledger tracks diamonds
Real-time GPS LoJack tracking for any asset
Blockchain becomes an inventory, tracking,
and buy-sell mechanism for all hard assets
Decentralized asset exchange
Digital authentication access system
Blockchain-based keyless entry
26
Asset-backed tokens, https://openbazaar.org/, http://www.edgelogic.net/blocktrace
28. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Decentralized Application (Dapp) Ecosystem
27
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Project Name and URL Activity Centralized
Equivalent
OpenBazaar, BitMarkets, BitPremier
https://openbazaar.org
Buy/sell items locally Craigslist
LaZooz
http://lazooz.org
On-demand ride service Uber, Lyft
Twister
http://twister.net.co
Social networking, peer-to-peer
microblogging
Twitter, Facebook
Gems
http://getgems.org
Social networking, private
token-based social messaging
Twitter, SMS apps
Bitmessage
https://bitmessage.org
Secure messaging (individual or
broadcast)
SMS services
Storj
http://storj.io/
File storage Dropbox, Google Drive
Onename
https://onename.com/
BitID
https://github.com/bitid/bitid
Bithandle
http://www.hackathon.io/bithandle
Digital identity verification VeriFone, Verisign, Facebook
29. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
What are Smart Contracts?
28
Agreements between parties posted to the
blockchain for automated execution
Cryptolaw: intersection of technological (inexorable,
uninfringeable) and legal frameworks (flexible)
Smart Contract Examples:
Bet on high temperature tomorrow
Inheritance pay-out at age 21 or death of benefactor
Mortgage with automatic interest-rate resets
Code: Ethereum and Eris
https://github.com/ethereum/
https://erisindustries.com/
https://eng.erisindustries.com/smart%20contracts/2014/12/17/dennys-smart-contracting/ ,
http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1402/how-to-get-started-your-first-dapp-under-one-hour,
http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001555.html
30. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Smart Contract
Law Firm?
29
http://www.robotandhwang.com/attorneys/
Law is something to be
radically reshaped by
the emergence of
technology, it is about
the management and
manipulation of data on
an entirely new scale -
Richard Susskind
31. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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
30
Source: https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/financial-services-corporate-blockchain-investments
32. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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
31
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
33. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
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)
32
34. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Fleets: Secure, Automated Coordination
33
Source: Blockchain Singularities :http://www.slideshare.net/lablogga/blockchain-singularities-65443340
Modern fleet management operation via
digital smartnetwork 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
35. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain IOT
34
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
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/09/check-out-ibms-proposal-for-an-internet-of-things-architecture-using-bitcoins-block-chain-tech/
M2M/IOT Bitcoin payment network to
enable the machine economy
The economic layer the web never had
IOT 2020: 26 bn devices in a $7 tn market
Smarthome IOT networks (dist. privacy)
Self-mining ecologies
Privacy orchestration: devices, personal
robotics, digital health assistants
IBM Adept
Blockchain + Messaging + BitTorrent
Blockchains as scalable communication and
coordination mechanism
Smartcity Connected
Car Orchestration
Smarthome IOT and
Personal Robotics
Coordination
36. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Health
Blockchain technology in health-related applications
1. EMRs: Personal Health Record Storage and Access
Personal health records stored and administered via blockchain
Users key-permission doctors and other parties into records
2. Health Research Commons (info processing)
Aggregated personal medical records, quantified self data
commons (DNA.bits), genome and connectome files
3. Health Document Notary Services
Proof-of-insurance, test results, prescriptions, status, condition,
treatment, physician referrals
4. Doctor Vendor RFP Services
(Like Uber drivers) doctors and health practices bid to supply
medical services; automated bidding via tradenets
35
http://futurememes.blogspot.fr/2014/09/blockchain-health-remunerative-health.html
37. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Genomics
36
Jurisdictional regulation prevents
individuals from having access to
their own genetic data
http://genomesunzipped.org/2011/03/people-have-a-right-to-access-their-own-genetic-information.php
38. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchains: Global and Liberty-enhancing
37
Global governance for transnational organizations
WikiLeaks, ICANN, Wikipedia
Benefits of blockchain administration
Uplift to cloud from local jurisdictional regulations
Universal administration mechanism for global organizations
Structure promotes transparency, accountability, freedom
Namecoin: decentralized DNS
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2010/12/07/visa-mastercard-move-to-choke-wikileaks/
Snowden Affair
39. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Government
Opt-in Personalized Government
Composting vs education
Reputation-based ID system, voting,
dispute resolution, national income
distribution, public documents
registration and repository
Neighbor.ly
Self-directed community bonds
Precedentcoin
Crowdsourced legal services, justice
entrepreneurs, blockchain arbitration
Sidekik
On-demand tele-attorney, private police
38
http://www.bitnation.co/, https://bitcoinmagazine.com/17066/first-blockchain-wedding-2/,
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/19813/sidekik-decentralized-video-streaming-storage/
World’s First Blockchain Marriage:
David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, October
5, 2014, Disney World FL, Coins in the
Kingdom Bitcoin Conference, Jeffrey
Tucker (Liberty.me) presiding
40. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Representation and Voting
Delegative democracy (Liquid Democracy)
Voting power temporarily vested in
delegates not long-term representatives
Group proposition development
Futarchy, two-step program
1. Traditional vote on outcomes (ex: GDP)
2. Prediction markets to determine specific
proposals for achieving the outcome
Random Sample Elections
Randomly selected individuals vote on a
single issue, blockchain orchestration
Convergent Facilitation
Register group needs as smart assets
39
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/17066/first-blockchain-wedding-2/,
http://www.bitnation-blog.com/latest-update-dec-22nd-2014/
41. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Legal
Notary Service, Attestation
Register contracts, agreements, wills (Proof of Existence, Factom)
Register, protect, and transact IP (Monegraph, Ascribe)
How it works
Hash + timestamp + blockchain record
40
http://www.proofofexistence.com/
42. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Science and What is Mining?
Bitcoin: world’s largest supercomputer @ 42 petahashes/second
Mining is the process of adding
transaction records to the public
ledger by performing a computing
task that is costly to execute but
easy to verify
Issue: mining is purposefully
wasteful to deter malicious players
‘Green’ mining projects
Primecoin
Foldingcoin
Gridcoin
Zennet
41
http://www.righto.com/2014/02/bitcoin-mining-hard-way-algorithms.html,
http://codinginmysleep.com/bitcoin-mining-in-plain-english/
43. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Smartnetwork Application: Friendly AI
Argument…
1. Digital intelligences will be
running on consensus-managed
smartnetworks
2. Good reputational standing is
required to conduct operations
Resource access, fund-raising,
services-providing, contracts
3. Consensus only validates and
records bonafide transactions
from ‘good’ agents
4. Therefore all agents ‘good’
42
Swan, M. Cognitive Applications of Blockchain Technology. Cognitive Science 2015: The Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society:
Mind, Technology, and Society, Pasadena CA, July 2015. submitted. Swan, M. Blockchain Thinking: The Brain as a DAC (Decentralized
Autonomous Organization). Texas Bitcoin Conference, Austin TX, March 27-29, 2015. accepted.
44. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Derrida: Ontology of Joycean Consensus
43
Derrida. Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes In Joyce. Pp. 267, 296.
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Affirmation is not solo, “saying yes” is dependent
upon another to hear it and acknowledge receipt
The affirmation relation is liberty-enhancing and
totalization-resisting, the affirming and acknowledging
parties, and the yes itself, remain distinct
“The two responses refer to each other without having any
relationship between them. The two sign yet prevent the
signature from gathering itself together [totalizing].”
The yes “addresses itself to some other which it does not constitute”
The yes avoids its own totalization, “The yes, by responding and
countersigning, does not let itself be counted or discounted [totalized].”
Well-formed consensus: preserve the integrity of
entities in a network of ad-hoc relations
45. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Cryptocitizen Sensibility
A new relationship with authority and
responsibility-taking
Digital safety: Backing up our money
Governance services vs. being governed
Trend: happened with news media,
entertainment, stock-trading, health services;
now happening with economics and politics
Freedom of choice, autonomy, and self-
determination of economic and political
systems as basic human rights
Responsibility for trust-generating
behavior per reduced government
involvement in decentralization
44
46. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Philosophy
Smartnetwork Trust & Consensus Realities
Trust is manufactured on
smartnetworks though consensus
protocols and independent
confirmations of truth states
Smartnetworks are a way of making
new and pluralistic reality
Different network consensus protocols
come to different truth states about the
world, thus…
…creating mulitple realities, and
…the notion that realitiy is maleable and
can be created; gives portability with reality
45
47. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Art
46
Rio, Tel Aviv, Hamburg, Barcelona, Seoul, Tokyo, New York
http://bitfilm.com/festival.html
48. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Art
47
http://cryptoart.com/
Fine art paper wallets
49. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Art
48
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=98392.0
Cryptographic art
Someone used Bitcoin's ability to
embed arbitrary text inside a
transaction to put an ASCII Art Ben
Bernanke into the Bitcoin blockchain
50. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Art
49
http://fiatleak.com/
Data visualization as art
51. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Art
50
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-best-Bitcoin-visualizations
Data visualization as art
52. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Literacy
‘Bitcoin MOOCs,’ ‘Kiva for literacy’
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
Decentralized credit bureaus, literacy contracts,
remittances, blockchain-tracked aid, microcredit,
Open-source FICO scores
Peer-vouched reputation
51
53. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Applications by Sector (selected)
52
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
Crucial Blockchain Properties
• Cryptoledger
• Decentralized network
• Trustless
counterparties
• Independent
consensus-confirmed
transactions
• Permanent record
• Public records
repository
• Notarization time-
stamping hashes
• Universal format
• Accessibility
Government
& Legal
• Transnational orgs
• Personalized
governance services
• Voting, propositions
• P2P bonds
• Tele-attorney services
• IP registration and
exchange
• Tax receipts
• Notary service and
document registry
Economics
and Markets
• Currency
• Payments &
Remittance
• Banking & Finance
• Clearing &
Settlement
• Insurance
• FinTech
• Trading & Derivatives
• QA & Internal Audit
• Crowdfunding
IOT
• Agricultural & drone
sensor networks
• Smarthome networks
• Integrated smartcity,
connected car,
smarthome sensors
• Self-driving car
• Personalized robots,
robotic companions
• Personalized drones
• Digital assistants
• Communication
(messaging)
• Large-scale
coordination
• Entity ingress/egress
• Transaction security
• Universal format
• Large-scale multi-
data-stream
integration
• Privacy and security
• Real-time
accessibility
Health
• Universal EMR
• Health databanks
• QS Data Commons
• Big health data
stream analytics
• Digital health wallet
• Smart property
• HealthToken
• Personal
development
contracts
• Large-scale
infrastructural
element for
coordination
• Checks-and-
balances system
for ‘good-player’
access
• Community
supercomputing
• Crowd analysis
• P2P resourcenets
• Film, dataviz
• AI: blockchain
advocates, friendly
AI, blockchain
learners, digital
mindfile services
Science,
Art, AI
54. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain downside and risks?
ISSUE
53
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
55. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Strategies
Leadership Edge
Blockchain is not a separate industry as
much as a new underlying technology
with applications in every industry
New kind of more sophisticated Internet
technology for transferring value
Multiple blockchains by industry with different
classes of encryption and mining paradigms
Money and financial assets
Energy, health, IOT, transportation fleets
Developing a blockchain strategy
Educate, via industry user groups
Engage with consulting firms
Prototype, test, launch applications
54
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
56. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Blockchain Strategies
Leading with New Applications
Re-invent value chain, identify…
Digital value transfer opportunities
Network intermediaries and coupling points
Automation possibilities and new markets
Example: banks targeting larger customer base
through blockchain-based eWallet solutions
1. Revenue-generating, customer-facing
Offer blockchain-based services to clients
Lead industry-wide blockchain initiatives: “Better EDI,”
single-ledger, supply chain inventory management
Digital billing customer interface, tokenized interaction
2. Internal cost-savings, efficiency-improvement
Quality assurance, test, audit, compliance, sales RFQ
Finance, treasury, accounting, expense management
55
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
57. Dec 9, 2016
Blockchain Explained
Conclusion
56
Beyond digitalizing money, payments,
economics, and finance, and governance,
smart property and smart contracts,
blockchains secure automated fleet
coordination
The implications could be an orderly transition
to the automation economy and trust-rich
digital smartnetwork societies of the future
58. U Penn, Philadelphia PA, Dec 9, 2016
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained
Melanie Swan
Philosophy & Economic Theory
New School for Social Research, NY NY
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain Smartnetworks
Bitcoin and Blockchain Explained
Part of a Series on Cryptophilosophy
cryptophilosophy
Thank You! Questions?