This document discusses how blockchain technology could be used to facilitate interoperability and data sharing across platforms like Wikipedia, WordPress, and the wider web. It envisions a system where each person's self-generated data could be hosted on a shared platform that makes transactions, credentials, and other records irrelevant by prioritizing free expression and interconnection over management and oversight. While recognizing blockchain's potential to support online communities, it cautions against using the technology to manage or monitor people, and argues for exploring how it could help disengage from irrelevant systems and free individuals.

3. [world wide webwikipedia&wordpressblockchain (or whatever) interoperability dance]

4. perhaps blockchain ..
(only because* Vinay is saying it’s the means to get databases and networks to **dance)
..used as a scraper/facilitator/holder/platform of data (via self-talk)
for some..
wikipedia/wordpress ish /www ish
(zoom-in) (zoom out)
..type dance.
note:
*Vinay quotes throughout in green
**dance ability is huge. but not as huge as the why we are dancing. ie: we can be excellent at dancing for
policing/verifying/fighting/commodifying/et al. the dance our souls crave is one that frees/facilitates all of us. a dance we haven’t
yet seen/done. sync/tempo/inclusion matters.

5. imagining the need to leapfrog to life
• 7 billion plus
• each w/self-talk-as-data (zoom in ) platforms
• dancing interoperably
• on some (zoom out) platform of us
[something that makes measured transactions, currencies,
badges, privacies, securities, contracts, .. poverty, war, …
i r r e l e v a n t ]

6. working on this deck… while reading the next system’s report 2, listening to presidential debates, reading/listening to debates/insights on
education/research/health/climate/incarceration/whistleblowing/poverty/drones/war/innovation/immigrations/chains of mental illness w africa..
and blockchains.
we have to let go.
perhaps we’re not yet there/us.. because we can’t seem to let go of things that could/should be/become irrelevant. we keep trying to make them
fit/stay/improve.
our not letting go is perpetuating what we spend our days complaining about. is perpetuating our suffocation… the death of us.
we color/cram our world with… i r r e l e v a n t s .
so perhaps.. w/this deck.. i’m highlighting/reaffirming the assumptions we make, the baggage we bring, while seeking ie: a new system.
i’m suggesting we already have the tech’s we need for the utopian life we crave.. but we keep hijacking them with supposed to’s.
hoping we find it w/in our wills to push past pluralistic ignorance enough to..
wake up.

7. It’s not hard to assess whether what you are doing matters.
It is hard to choose to make that assessment, and to.. disengage with what is irrelevant.
we can.
we can’t not.
http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000282

8. databases store what’s considered fact.. inflexible.
problem of databases talking to other databases has never been solved..
database never intended to interoperate..
networks ..data from multiple world models. info silo’d.
when move house have to re address each node.. flexible.
on probing into the potential of blockchains ..
Vinay State of the Net 2015 (talk linked later)
blockchain ..simply a database that works like a network.. or network that works like database.
blockchain as a laboratory for experimental governance.. and the need for the tempo of things..

9. 1 i don’t get how that would work. chronological order as prevention.
2 what if we can prevent things by making them irrelevant.
why would we want.. or even think we could.. create anything linear/chronological..
makes me think of the Kafka movie, on bureaucracy et al. (i watched while reading David
Graeber‘s the utopia of rules and re-reading Hannah Arendt‘s the promise of politics)
perhaps the only thing crazier than taking the time/energy for that is thinking we still
need and/or can use such a system to document/actualize/credential human value.
David Wiley, PhD @opencontent
We need to rebuild the #openbadges infrastructure around the #blockchain.
Actually, let’s do that for all credentialing systems #openedweek
http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator-life/spectator-life-life/9477812/the-utopia-algorithm/
Ethereum uses something called a ‘block chain’ to record information on a public
database in a chronological way that prevents copying, tampering, fraud or
deletion.

10. Move beyond the superficial public discussions about Bitcoin, and
you’ll discover a software breakthrough that could be of enormous
importance to the future of commoning on open network platforms.
[..]
Blockchain technology is significant because it can validate the
authenticity of an individual bitcoin … Or to extend this idea: How do
you know that a given document, certificate or dataset — or a vote or
“digital identity” asserted by an individual — is the “real thing” and
not a forgery?
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/the-blockchain-a-promising-new-infrastructure-for-online-commons/2015/03/12
***David Bollier seeing blockchain as promising new infrastructure for online commons
so.. what if that’s not the question/problem.. ie: validation.
what if we assume people are good. validation irrelevant. way beyond superficial.
note: ***David quotes in blue

11. Blockchain technology can help solve this problem by using a
searchable online “ledger” that keeps track of all transactions of all
bitcoins. The ledger is updated about six times an hour, each time
incorporating a new set of transactions known as the “block” into the
ledger. What makes the blockchain so revolutionary is that the
information on it is shared by everyone on the network using the
Bitcoin software. The ledger acts as a kind of permanent record
maintained by a vast distributed peer network, which makes it far
more secure than data kept at a centralized location. You can trust the
authenticity of a given bitcoin because it’s virtually impossible to
corrupt a ledger that is spread across so many nodes in the network.
so ..what if we rechannel/upcycle these energies…
ie: take self-talk as data to 1help people find their people and to 2 leave a trail for
future findings. that’s it. until we get ourselves back to ourselves. do this first: free us.
not as a policing platform. not as a validation/security/trust check. not as a cost/profit
transaction.

12. What does all this have to do with the commons? you might ask. A
recently released report suggests that blockchain technology could
provide a critical infrastructure for building what are called
“distributed collaborative organizations.” (One variation is called
“decentralized autonomous organizations.”) A distributed
organization is one that uses blockchain technology to give its
members specified rights within the organization, which are managed
and guaranteed by the blockchain. This set of rights, in turn, can be
linked to the conventional legal system to make those rights legally
cognizable.
any talk of rights scares me. rights managed. rights legally cognizable. oy.

13. It’s important to recognize that blockchain technology is not confined
to digital currency applications. It can be applied to a wide variety of
circumstances in which a community of players – in markets,
commons or other circumstances – want reliable systems to manage
their inter-relationships on network platforms.
ok. but imagining we want a system to facilitate relationships.. not manage them.
perhaps not a big difference. but perhaps a big difference. perhaps why we haven’t yet
done any of this we keep talking about doing.

14. My research focuses on the new opportunities offered by blockchain technology, in particular with regard to community governance. It is my belief that
the blockchain can help implement new forms commons-based governance that could greatly benefits the CBPP ecosystem.
[..] Today, traditional issues related to shared common-pool resources—such as the free rider problem or the tragedy of the commons—could be
addressed with the implementation of blockchain-based governance, through the adoption of transparent decision-making procedures and the
introduction decentralized incentives systems for collaboration and cooperation.
… the blockchain allows for such procedures to be entirely crowdsourced, delegating to the community’s collective intelligence the responsibility to
monitor and evaluate its own achievements. [..] Thus far, while commons-based peer-production communities have flourished in many fields of
endeavor, they have had a hard scaling up, without turning into more bureaucratic and centralized institutions. It is my hope that, with the new
opportunities provided by blockchain technologies, we can come up with new applications that can support the operation of these communities (both in
the digital and physical world) in a more distributed and decentralized manner.
In a comment to a blog post a few days ago, Primavera de Filippi, one
of the leading tech/legal thinkers about blockchain technology, wrote:
This is the vision, at least. I happen to agree with Primavera that new
generations of blockchain technologies could overcome many collective-action
challenges that cannot be easily solved by conventional institutions today.
challenges not easily solved by conventional institutions. agreed.
what if one of those institutions is believing we must monitor and evaluate achievements.
must we?
perhaps free rider/tragedy of commons ness won’t be addressed by a platform/incentives. but
rather from everyone having the luxury to do whatever they want.. w/o any raised eyebrows
toward free riding and tragedy ness.. believing there’s never nothing going on..

15. In addition, the trustworthiness of even “reputable” third-party
guarantors can be problematic, as we saw during the 2008 financial
crisis (e.g., the unreliability of the SEC, ratings agencies and other
oversight authorities). Who guards the guards? Blockchain
technology represents an advance over many of the corruptible
institutional systems that we labor under today by providing less-
corruptible algorithmic ways to manage interactions within a group.
(Ah, but how shall the designed-in biases of any algorithms be
assessed by the community that labors under them, especially when
such algorithms cannot be easily understood by the non-techie? A
worthy question!)
no third party. no guards. to worthy question – a simple enough mechanism.
for a deep enough problem.
in an open enough system.

16. Blockchain systems should not be seen as a magic bullet in the sense
that human wiles and trickery are not going to go away. Yet blockchain
technology does offer more formidable tools for better protecting the
perimeter of the commons and for empowering commoners to decide
their own fate. Imagine a future of distributed collaborative
organizations whose internal relations could be improved through
software-enabled “smart contracts, reliable deliberation and voting
mechanisms, community currencies and other co-operative systems.
Far more versatile and secure than Web 2.0, blockchain-based social
networks could be new infrastructures for commoning at a much
larger scale than today.
contracts, voting mechanisms, currencies.. all become irrelevant.
imagine all the energy we could upcycle by …disengaging from that irrelevancy.

17. I could imagine distributed collaborative organizations — commons —
leapfrogging over some of the dysfunctional politics and bureaucratic
treachery that is rife in conventional institutions. Not a techno-fix, but
a new, less “gameable” platform for competitive politics. In a world
that is increasingly mediated by network platforms, blockchain
technology could help us build some refreshing, effective and socially
progressive types of commons. This world is still a way off, but it is a
rich horizon worth exploring.
leapfrog yes.
platform for competitive politics no.
and not way off.
because.. leapfrog yes.

18. on blockchain, may 9 2015
http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21650295-or-it-next-big-thing
This system of consensus by distributed co-operation sounds complicated, but it allows something
of value to be transferred from one person to another without a middleman to verify the
transaction. Fans think this is a way of changing the centralised, institution-dominated shape of
modern finance. It is genuinely new. The question is whether it is useful.
Proponents envisage an “internet of value” that can make money flow as freely as data are flowing
already. Ridding the world of credit-card fees and foreign-exchange charges would be merely the
first step of a much broader revolution. In the same way that e-mail did much more than replace
letters sent in stamped envelopes, the internet of value would be a platform for myriad as-yet-
unthought-of innovations. Just as nobody forecast social networks, blogging or Netflix in the
1990s, the absence for now of any tangible applications other than bitcoin for the blockchain
merely points to humankind’s deficient imagination.
indeed. let’s awaken our imagination.
ie: imagine a moneyless dance.

19. All that is needed, blockchain boosters argue, is a “killer app” to find a use for the
breakthrough, in the same way that web browsers made the internet useful. Some still think
that a currency is the most promising application, but plenty of engineers are throwing other
ideas against the wall to see what sticks. CoinSpark, based in Tel Aviv, is among those who
want to be able to add messages to the bitcoin blockchain. That would be a way of cheaply
notarising information: once something is in the blockchain, it cannot be removed (crypto-
geeks post their wedding vows there).
deep address ness, … as means to document everything and nothing.. if
output matters… input matters
Ethereum, widely seen as the most ambitious crypto-ledger project, wants its blockchain to go
beyond transferring value: it should also be able to execute simple tasks such as verifying if a
party to a contract has fulfilled its side of the bargain. Its boosters think such a machine could
support “smart contracts”, where a computer can verify or enforce an agreement. The next step
is for robots to go into business for themselves, for example a computer server renting out
processing capacity, and using the profits to upgrade itself.
perhaps beyond contracts, beyond badges.
imagine a nother way to live.

20. We’re stuck in an attention economy feedback loop that doesn’t allow us
silent spaces to reflect on issues without news pegs, and in which many of
our areas of collaboration have become toxic, or worse, a toxic
bureaucracy.
We’re stuck in an attention economy feedback loop where we react to the
reactions of reactions … s (while fearing further reactions), and then we
wonder why we’re stuck with groupthink and ideological gridlock.
http://hapgood.us/2014/11/06/federated-education-new-directions-in-digital-collaboration/
- Mike Caulfield

21. 1 cryptography
starts out as military weapon. gives individuals sovereign type power. individuals w powers
previously only accessible to the state.
Vinay sept 2015 – blockchains-databases-networks (next 9 slides)
https://soundcloud.com/vinay-gupta-17/blockchains-databases-networks
2 databases
(70s-80s) – once you’ve got an abstract algebra you’re able to program. instruct to do what you
want and we’ve got golden age of databases. in essence entire org in database as org’s brain –
originally took very long to move stuff around before databases.
3 networks
(90s) – turn out way better for individuals than for companies. and turns out once they can be
connected all they want to do is talk with each other. but privileged. 1993 – aol offers net access w
dial up – so more allowed in this privileged space. goes from privilege academic space to an
enormous market space – until almost impossible to maintain continuity in or culture w/o channeling
a huge amt of time/attention thru corp that advertise to us.

22. real crux of this
data bases and networks never actually get together…
structures are unlike each other…
networks
fluid.. not structured.. and fantastic for culture but
legibility problem… result – have to continually
innovate in your ability to listen…
2 systems
on completely diff languages… you need chunk of
code in middle to arbitrate thru both networks.
databases are so inflexible..
networks so flexible..

23. as these become civilianized
(rather than military as in creation) – tech so far
ahead of social application to tech that nothing works
properly… tech brokenness evades every area of our
lives
into mess comes the blockchain guys
… bitcoin comes along as summation of all known
cryptography up to that point… forming into an
algebra – that could do something new: blockchain –
do all (network and database) together simultaneous
– produces functional machines
promise of blockchain land
is computers that actually work – to get a medium of
exchange between human beings… so has all
attributes we want and none we fear

24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMCPTX806ns
oct 2015 – State of the Net 2015 – Vinay (next 11 slides)
what is a blockchain
• 70s: databases
• 90s: networks
• network/database interop problems
• blockchains good networked databases
• smart contracts store software in blockchains
what is a bureaucrat
• an imperial tax collector
• works for the people
• in modern democracy/socialism
• but B=imperialsm
never been repurposed for democracy… incentive for tearing
down B structure w/o taking down society
• there is on B who works for you – agency problem

25. what is transparency
• law you can read
• open sessions in court
• name who made decisions (always systems
decision… no one has to get fired)
• public analysis of fact
• learning changes decisions (so need mechanism
that adapts)
what are our options
• blockchain basic income
• identify each citizen
• transparent payments
• transparent spending
• we could fully understand how people use basic
income
radical econ ish

26. this is a jump – sci fi ish to see what you think
leapfrogging vital
can it really be that easy…
try basic income at whole of society level..
indeed.. something not yet tried.. but need a
bit more.. or we won’t really see us.. our
potential.
ie: deep/simple/open: 3 ship ables
take new tech – implement ie: basic income on top of
laboratory ie: blockchain.. code literally is the law..
connected adjacency ness

27. “Anyone can create money,” according to Minsky. “The challenge is to have
it accepted.” Money, remember, is “whatever you can use to repay your
debts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_Minsky
http://www.thenextsystem.org/monetarily-we-are-already-in-the-next-system-we-just-dont-act-like-it/
Jesse Myerson
many realizing money is man made…
we need to disengage. live life w/o it..
and all its sidekicks, ie: security, property, contracts, credentials, … war, poverty..

28. it’s gotta be a for/with all of us

29. perhaps ..let’s try this..