Melanie Swan gave a presentation on blockchain enlightenment and smart city cryptopolis. She discussed the need to rethink authority and rebuild societal trust through algorithmic trust and reinventing institutions. Blockchain solutions could include governments as service providers and governance blockchains. Her vision is of a smart city where cryptocitizens can economically self-define through participation in multiple political-economic systems and contribute to community sustainability. The goal would be enabling flourishing relationships between humans, algorithms, and machines.

1. 1st Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and
Blockchains for Distributed Systems
Munich Germany, June 15, 2018
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
Philosophy, Purdue University
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain Enlightenment and
Smart City Cryptopolis

2. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain 1
Melanie Swan, Technology Theorist
 Founder, Institute for Blockchain Studies
 Philosophy Department, Purdue University,
Indiana, USA
 Singularity University Instructor; Institute for Ethics and
Emerging Technology Affiliate Scholar; EDGE invited
contributor; FQXi Advisor
Traditional Markets Background
Economics and Financial
Theory Leadership
New Economies research group
Source: http://www.melanieswan.com, http://blockchainstudies.org
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NewEconomies

3. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Blockchain
2
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491
 To inspire us to build
this world

4. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Blockchain Research Program
 Pure research
 Apply quantitative methods from physics (renormalization/path
integrals), complexity science (entropy), and deep learning to
blockchain analysis
 Applied research
 Economics: algorithmic trust, a network mechanism that moderates
credit availability and facilitates blockchain markets to Nash equilibria
more quickly than classical markets
 Payment channels, debt, net-settled capital, programmable risk,
integrated business ledgers, blockchain health economics
 Social theory
 Smart City Cryptopolis and Blockchain Enlightenment
 Advanced conceptual research
 Blocktime, BCI cloudminds, Brain as a DAC, biocryptoeconomy
3
Source: Swan, M. Forthcoming. Blockchain Economic Networks. Palgrave Macmillan.

5. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Thesis
4
This paper argues that to reconceive and more
empoweringly enact relationships with authority, a new
sensibility is required, that of the cryptocitizen. This is the
skillset of determining oneself as an economic and
political agent in the world of digital network technologies.
In the cryptopolis smart city of the future, one goal could
be enabling the flourishing of a multi-species society of
machine, algorithm, and human.

6. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Cryptocitizen Sensibility
 Self-responsibility-taking
 Questioning and designing economic
systems, political systems, future of work,
living communities
 Governance services vs. being governed
 Industries already restructured
 News media, entertainment, stock-trading,
health services
 Industries that could be restructured
 Money, payments, economics, governance and
legal services, education
5

7. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
What is the problem?
6
1. Rethinking authority
2. Rebuilding societal trust
3. Reinventing the role of institutions
in the digital era
 Smaller footprint
 Algorithmically-based

8. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
What is the problem?
7
1. Rethinking authority
Kant, I. "Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (German: Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?). 1784.
“One ought to think
autonomously, free of the
dictates of external authority”
- Immanuel Kant

9. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
What is the problem?
8
2. Rebuilding societal trust
Edelman Trust Barometer

10. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
What is the problem?
9
3. Reinventing the role of institutions in the digital era
 Smaller footprint, Algorithmically-based
Historical Contemporary Future
Church Crown
DMV
Law
Bank Government Police
Healthcare Academia
Corporation Church
Data pillars: library of all
society’s memory and
public records
Building - Website
Columbus’s VCs: Ferdinand
and Isabella
Building – Website – CredentialBuilding
Farther Future

11. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Blockchain solutions
10
1. Rethinking authority
 Cryptoenlightenment
 Multiple self-designed political-economic system
participations
2. Rebuilding societal trust
 Algorithmic trust as a new form of social capital
3. Reinventing the role of institutions in the digital era
 Government as Service Provider (GaSP)
 Opt-in governance
 Governance blockchains (public service applications)

12. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Smart City Cryptopolis
11
1. Economic self-definition through participation
2. Civic responsibility of the cryptocitizen
3. Social theory of dignity (invite difference)
4. Future of work (Maslow smart contracts)

13. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
participation.
12
information
internet: static
information
social internet:
engage with
content
token internet:
participate in the
community economy

14. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Cryptocitizen Sensibility; Cryptosustainability
The Cryptocitizen in Society
13
The sense of duty of
the citizen to serve
the republic
Civic Duty Civic Collaboration
Ancient Greek Statesman Self-directed Cryptocitizen
The sense of meaning and
purpose in participating in
community sustainability
http://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Blueprint-New-World-Currency/dp/1491920491

15. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Invite
Celebrate
Preserve
14
Baseline
eradicationSublate
Assimilate
Ignore
Refuse
Societal Approaches to Difference
Open-ended
possibility
Encourage
Extinguish

16. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Dignity
15
Sources: Harris, L. (2016). Dignity and Subjection. Présence Africaine. 1(193):141-159; 59-77.
Cooke, Maeve. (2009). Beyond Dignity and Difference. European Journal of Political Theory. 8(1):76-95.
 Leonard Harris
 Dignity is an inalienable good (intangible social good)
 Dignity is a resource that we create (not a universal
principle or right)
 Problems can arise in treating the collective level
(honor-granting or degradation)
 Maeve Cooke
 Dignity is particularity not difference (avoid Honneth’s
struggle to the death for recognition of difference)
 Recognition is a dynamic relation based on particularity
and authenticity

17. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Future of Work
Technological Unemployment
 Definition: jobs outsourced to technology
 Estimate: Half (47%) of employment is at risk of automation in
the next two decades – Carl Frey, Oxford, 2015
 Global driverless-car market $42 billion by 2025 – BCG, 2015
 Transportation = 10% GDP – US DOT, 2002
 Why are there still so many jobs in a world that could be
automating more quickly? – David Autor, MIT, 2015
16
Source: Swan, M. "Is Technological Unemployment Real?” In Surviving the Machine Age: Intelligent Technology and the
Transformation of Human Work. James Hughes and Kevin LaGrandeur, Eds., Palgrave Macmillan, Forthcoming 2017.

18. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Flourishing of human, algorithm, and machine
17
Survive
(reach baseline)
Human-Robot Relation
Thrive
(extend baseline)
2.0: Interdependence
and mutual care-taking,
inspiration, and support
“Yes-and Bot”
1.0: Master-slave
power dynamic
 The most rewarding human-robot relationships will be those that
evolve from master-slave power dynamics to those with reciprocity,
mutual recognition, interdependence, learning, and care-taking
 Effects: robots help produce intangible social goods and solve
human Identity crisis by facilitating higher Maslow levels

19. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
risks.
tech: scalability.
political: regulation.
social: adoption.
Rapid
Adoption
Unfavorable
Regulation
Favorable
Regulation
Slow
Adoption
Future Scenarios
18

20. 15 Jun 2018
Blockchain
Thesis
19
This paper argues that to reconceive and more
empoweringly enact relationships with authority, a new
sensibility is required, that of the cryptocitizen. This is the
skillset of determining oneself as an economic and
political agent in the world of digital network technologies.
In the cryptopolis smart city of the future, one goal could
be enabling the flourishing of a multi-species society of
machine, algorithm, and human.

21. 1st Workshop on Cryptocurrencies and
Blockchains for Distributed Systems
Munich Germany, June 15, 2018
Slides: http://slideshare.net/LaBlogga
Melanie Swan
Philosophy, Purdue University
melanie@BlockchainStudies.org
Blockchain Enlightenment and
Smart City Cryptopolis