Presentation for Badgechain call, 8 June 2016. Topics include an ethical look at the emerging use of Bitcoin's blockchain in education, specifically open digital badges, a critical appraisal of the motives for utilizing such technology, and a set of ethical principles to guide development.

1. Educational Regimes of Truth:
Blockchain, Badgechain, and
the Ethics of the Repository
Or, how ethics can help us devise better
digital architectures
James E. Willis, III, Ph.D.
Indiana University - Bloomington
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2. Ethics: An Approach
• Lack of objectivity; varying perspectives; ambiguity.
• We tend to fit in neat categories like “privacy” and
“legal” issues.
• Ethical inquiry is inherently messy. Rightly so.
• 3 messy functions:
– Pastorally-driven dignity: Snappy acronyms don’t cut it.
– Techniques & Analysis: Implicit utilitarianism
– Checks on power & productive criticism
• Interview w/ Ian O’Byrne: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbQGDIUwDpk
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3. The Logics of Blockchain
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Compliments of Ian O’Byrne, “What is Blockchain?”
The structural, societal, economic, and political “baggage” of Bitcoin
• Distributed, de-centralized, replicated, and with lack of authority
• And, some unsavory outcomes…ala the black market
http://bitcoinist.net/2015-review-bitcoins-
resilience-face-adversity/
http://www.cringely.com/2013/09
/30/doubts-bitcoin/

4. Application to Open Digital Badges
and (Larger) Education
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Complements of Serge Ravet, “The Trustworthy BadgeChain”
Immediate Implications:
(Re)Envisaging trusted
sources
Transparency of
credentials
De-centralized, earner-
controlled repository for
all curricular/co-/extra-
curricular activities
Governance issues for
school registrars

5. Key Ethical Questions
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Repository: Archival Power
Pastorally-driven dignity: Should educational
records be publicly viewable for the far
future, even when the learner consents?
Techniques & Analysis: Will increasing
amounts of extra-educational data be
inserted into blocks? Can emerging
analyses (i.e. sentiment analysis) detect
deficiencies in that data?
Checks on power & productive criticism: What
recourse does an individual have when
the repository is inaccurate? Who
oversees changes to the Genesis block?
What are the limits of stored
data?
Who protects that data?
How can we account for risk
and unforeseen consequences?
When do we become what
the record says about us?
When do we relinquish
control of our narrative?

6. The Genesis Block
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Complements of Justin O’Brien & David Harding, “View the Genesis Block”
ShutterStock.com
Are we carrying our biases unfairly into the
future? Are we writing the future with the past?
Do emerging technologies like Blockchain allow
us to radically re-envision education?

7. What are we trying to do?
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Permanence? An illusion?
http://www.fourbythreemagazine.com/issue/nihilism/12-fragments-on-nihilism
Verifiability? At what cost?
http://www.slashgear.com/trent-reznor-working-on-music-streaming-
service-expected-to-launch-early-next-year-10260188/
https://www.pinterest.com/gbbyn/trent-reznor/
Truth?
http://quotes.humoropedia.com/simone-de-beauvoir-quotes/

8. Regimes of Truth: Data and Authority
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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/297378381622203341/
http://www.azquotes.com/quote/652819
An Either / Or Solution?
A repository controlled by the individual (like a digital SSN) OR (?)
A repository available to, but not directly controlled by, the individual
The promise of Badgechain: verifiable, distributed, permanent,
independently-controlled digital toolbox to display credentials

9. Regimes of Truth: Data and Authority
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Do we “tap into” the badgechain, like
foam accesses an ocean, or do we
surrender control to the data crumbs
we leave behind?
http://www.relatably.com/q/shirley-manson-quotes
How do we design our technologies to
enable dissent, challenge, and revolution,
without stifling them?
http://www-evasion.imag.fr/~Fabrice.Neyret/images/fluids-
nuages/waves/Jonathan/catalog.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TInfxe7c7yA

10. Unbundling Education
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Complements of Vala Afshar, “Disruption of Higher Education”
Badgechain = New
Possibilities for Badges?
Internal and external
verification processes?
Post-Backpack
repository?
Is the over-
compensation for online
“fakes” a new narrative
of truth?
Is our obsession with “verifiable truth” going to
create new myths?

11. A Challenge
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Thinking of Badgechain as a “non-narrative” (ex., Strawson, 2016).
We currently conceive of Badgechain as a surrogate memory-holder to
capture some of our student, professional, and credentialed “self.”
Yet, we are defined more in the fragments, so why not our micro-
credentials, too?
If we unbundle education, we essentially re-wire the logic of curricula to
fit today’s needs. So-called subscription education will adopt Badgechain
tech widely.
Badgechain / Blockchain…like our data…cannot be neutral, detached,
disinterested.

12. An Idea
(because ethics shouldn’t be shrill)
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What’s really going on here is the search for how to exact some sort of control
and authority in an environment that is, by definition, uncontrollable with
distributed authority.
Core Process and Development Principles
Dignity
Techniques & Analysis
Checks on power & productive criticism
Make students / earners part of
the collaborative and iterative
processes
Genesis block in Bitcoin:
Necessary for it to remain static
Genesis block in Badgechain:
Trackable change = increased
verifiability
Mutability ought be rethought as
a virtue, not a liability

13. Discussion
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James E. Willis, III, Ph.D.
@Willis3James