blockchain
adding the page upon reading this tweet via David on open badges:
David Wiley, PhD @opencontent
We need to rebuild the #openbadges infrastructure around the #blockchain. Actually, let’s do that for all credentialing systems #openedweek
– – –
lost a bit.
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.
again lost.
i don’t know.
i’m guessing i don’t understand blockchains enough. maybe.
scribbling in the night ness..
what if our thinking about security, voting, measuring exchanges, contracts, property…is what’s getting in the way. what if they are (could/should be) irrelevant (gupta roadblock law). we have the means now – so why don’t we use tech to coordinate/regroup/re self organize us.. rather than making b more efficient… ie:
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trade recorded in bookkeeping and we use middle men (trusted 3rd parties) to maintain it
digital ledger – the blockchain
4 min – a considerable decrease in bureaucracy..
?
makes me think of that quote about Jobs and ipad.. that he created something to organize all the things we never used to think we had to do.
and David Graeber‘s B book – telling of the increase of time spent on B when we went online..
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by David Bollier shared by Michel:
whatever the real or perceived flaws of Bitcoin, relatively little attention has been paid to its “engine,” known as “distributed ledger” or “blockchain” technology. 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 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.
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mar 2015
on ethereum
The plot to replace the internet
‘Ethical hackers’ in Fulham think they have a way to make your online life truly private, secure and anonymous. The world will be very different if they succeed
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.
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To me, blockchains represent a way for unrelated groups to store, exchange, and codify worldviews in software. Huge change.
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.
pushing blockchain ness, ie: what if it has nothing to do with money ness … nothing to do with linear ness..
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
Techies are (just about) united in their enthusiasm for decentralised ledgers, but divided on whether bitcoin’s blockchain can work in its current form or whether an improved version is needed. Rival blockchains are nothing new: alternative currencies inspired by bitcoin, dubbed “alt-coins”, have proliferated ever since it was launched. Some are quasi-Ponzi schemes where the currency’s founder (and so default owner of much of the blockchain) profits when he sells bits of it to newcomers. Others have re-engineered Mr Nakamoto’s blockchain to make it more suitable for non-currency uses.
[..]
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.
beyond contracts, beyond badges..
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One well-funded new blockchain is Ripple Labs, which wants to enable “secure, instant and nearly free global financial transactions”. It is working with financial incumbents to draw up a payment protocol based on decentralised ledgers. Its aim is not to supplant the current financial system but to make it more efficient. “We are builders, not disrupters,” says its boss, Chris Larsen, a veteran of the fintech scene who founded Prosper, a lending platform. The problem Ripple is trying to solve is not the omnipotence of the banks but the antiquated way that money is transferred among them.
[..]
Seasoned crypto-anarchists are not excited by the idea of reforming the global banks’ back offices. Some complain that Ripple is taking an idea with the potential for revolutionary innovation and using it for something far more humdrum. Yet if Ripple succeeds in bringing a critical mass of the banks onto its platform, it will have rendered a service similar to the people who turned a raft of disparate academic computer networks into a single internet in the 1990s. That is not to be scoffed at.
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Vinay at fintech may 2015:
Coase’s Blockchain: can equity crowdfunding accelerate past Venture Capital?
In 2 years you’ll forget the world blockchain &just hear database &it’ll mean the same thing. Probably.
so pushing blockchain (verbiage wise) is database..?
15 min – use blockchain as saber to cut through bureaucracy
ok. but not adding it.. not making B more efficient.. ie: beyond radical econ; ps in the open…
17 min – underpinned by blockchain.. makes B less in the way
18 min – not everything can be equity crowdfunded.. mostly consumer junk
i’m hearing – it as a way to corale B – but not make it irrelevant…so then – to kindly perpetuate it….?
seems we can do better at leap frogging – to us..
23 min – wealth of nations (networks..?), benkler (not available to recommend at overdrive); coase’s penqui (not showing up at all); robin chase, peer inc (already recommended to overdrive)
wealth of networks – pdf download:
2 min – 1\ cryptography – starts out as military weapon – prob defeated hitler… cryptography gives individuals sovereign type power… individuals w powers previously only accessible to the state...change of power from institutions to other institutions or to individuals..7 min – 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 databases10 min – in essence… entire org in database… as org’s brain – originally took very long to move stuff around before databases12 min – with databases: companies/govt: only really exist as a matrix of info which human beings revolve around and serve and maintain – thru 80’s13 min – 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 privileged14 min – 1993 – aol offers net access w dial up – so more allowed in this privileged space –15 min – 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 us16 min – 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…18 min – on 2 systems on completely diff languages… you need chunk of code in middle to arbitrate thru both networks.. in daily life we hit this every time we hit a multi party business processevery govt dept has a diff bit of info on you.. databases are so inflexible.. networks so flexible.. so in all these weird balkanized silos.. and worst part – gets worse w scale… only alternative we have – hub and spoke.. but very politicalized power, ie: visa21 min – 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 lives22 min – into mess comes the blockchain guys… bitcoin comes along as summation of all knowncryptography up to that point…23 min – forming into an algebra – that could do something new: blockchain – do all (network and database) together simultaneous – produces functional machines24 min – 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 fear25 min – so using this for cash, passports, … functionally solvent entity run by anonymous people.. that’s what is out there right now (bitcoin).. running on a political ideology like classical anarchism..new layer of global governance stock – anarchist and globalist simultaneously…28 min – on people grabbing what’s working – and right now it’s fb and bitcoin33 min – ethereum – new terror of the gods… make it faster.. and can store software instead of just transactions
37 min – how do we know that when we got paid.. it was legit.. how do we know it’s legal in this jurisdiction… in uk… laws that go back 600 yrs..? have to have something that includes entire jurisdiction of the world..
40 min – copyright…
in the absence of an agreement.. impossible to write software that obeys the law… allows us to do business w/o dragging entire legacy with us… i need a bedroom/car/et al.. boom…
can anybody say life isn’t actively made worse by over regulation.. rules need to be simple enough.. complexity favors corp and state… simplicity favors individual.. so can decide if legal or not and then act..
a new way of making rules… for anybody that opts in … break thru in human liberty…
binding arbitration for physical properties..
48 min – immediate danger – global warming => starvation – we’re at 4 times our food print..54 min – state failing to protect… need new structures… blockchains for grassroots political globalism..
not going to get there unless we get thru all the things between here and there on the way
57 min – we need to build a global economy on blockchains and on top of that a global democracywhere govt is strong – blockchain weak and vice versa..
A block chain or blockchain is a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of data records that are hardened against tampering and revision, even by operators of the data store’s nodes. The most widely known application of a block chain is the public ledger of transactions for cryptocurrencies used inbitcoin. This record is enforced cryptographically and hosted on machines running the software.
The technology forms the basis of some cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, Ethereum and Dogecoin
A block chain implementation consists of two kinds of records: transactions and blocks. Transactions are the actual data to be stored in the block chain, and blocks are records that confirm when and in what sequence certain transactions became journaled as a part of the block chain database. Transactions are created by participants using the system in the normal course of business (in the case of cryptocurrencies, a transaction is created anytime someone sends cryptocurrency to another), and blocks are created by users known as “miners” who use specialized software or equipment designed specifically to create blocks.
16 min – 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…18 min – on 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.. so in all these weird balkanized silos.. and worst part – gets worse w scale… only alternative we have – hub and spoke.. but very politicalized power, ie: visa21 min – 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 lives22 min – into mess comes the blockchain guys… bitcoin comes along as summation of all knowncryptography up to that point…23 min – forming into an algebra – that could do something new: blockchain – do all (network and database) together simultaneous – produces functional machines24 min – 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
From Competition to Cooperation – Primavera De Filippi – blockchain as means to get away from competition
getting rid of middle man in all kind of transactions
io dance
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2014 – how-bitcoins-blockchain-could-power-an-alternate-internet by Scott Rosenberg
The key to implementing such a system is, you guessed it, the blockchain—a distributed method of tracking and transferring assets online without need of a trusted third party (such as a bank).
or a server?
For the hardcore blockchainiacs, even that’s not enough; they expect to dissolve governments, ..
rewire daily life,
..and pour civil society a whole new foundation made of math
or unmath.. whimsy rather .. ie: io dance ness – rev of everyday life
In other words, when you’re using a blockchain, every new transaction carries with it an unforgeable record of the entire history of the currency and all previous transactions — like a kind of financial DNA. Crazy, huh?
crazy that ‘financial’ is attached to it.. how limiting.. no?
At root, the blockchain is all about replacing the servers that power today’s online world with computing power and storage that we all share.
Every network requires what programmers call a “single source of truth” — the authority that says, “this is real,” “this user is who she claims to be,” “this transaction occurred.” To date, we have depended on servers run by corporations and governments to provide our single sources of truth. Even the Internet itself uses a handful of root servers to make the domain-name system work.
and imagine if … sources of truth.. wasn’t even our focus.. not because we don’t want truth.. but because perhaps.. focusing on verification .. is keeping us from truth..
The blockchain turns the entire network into its source of truth. It’s a mechanism for us to collectively confer legitimacy on one another.
indeed.. but by entire network.. perhaps.. that’s 7 billion people living/annotating commonplace ish books.. ourselves as books… as life. rev of everyday life.. where self-talk is our data.. and most everything else (we obsess with today) becomes irrelevant..
1\ disrupt banks
rather.. disrupt (make irrelevant) money/contracts… we stop measuring human transactions… et al blockchain (or whatevers) focus is just for facilitating curiosities/resources/people
2\ redeem net – distributed data and identity
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What if, when we wanted to be sure of who we were dealing with, we relied instead on distributed computing power and the magic of crypto? Today a host of small companies and projects are jockeying to usher pieces of this world into existence. A lot of the efforts focus on Twitter rather than Facebook — probably because it’s much easier to clone a network that delivers brief messages than one that serves as the hub for all things social.
These new crypto-Twitters eliminate the middleman central server that every large-scale social service today requires. They don’t store the content of messages themselves in the blockchain ledger — that wouldn’t work, since each user would end up storing the entire global database of messages. Instead, the blockchain verifies all the contributors’ identities, their relationships to the messages under their names, and the integrity of the messages……secure blogging on the open web
what if perhaps instead.. we just make sure everyone has something to do.. rather than focus on security et al
As Bitcoin’s Andresen suggested about Ethereum, many of these projects will vanish into the, er, ether long before they reach that threshold. Security flaws will stymie them; usability problems will cripple them; they will sink in the mire of large-scale software development. Even those projects that persevere and prosper will need to prove their utility. Why go to all this extra trouble to do stuff online? Sure, you could use the Alexandria software to, say, document all the tweets surrounding a big protest that a government might wish to pretend never happened. But for most everyday purposes, blockchain techniques might be overkill.
Then again, there are still tons of public and private needs that the Internet has failed to serve. For instance, Thor Muller, a writer-entrepreneur who has written lucidly about the distributed-ledger concept at the heart of Bitcoin, imagines the benefits of applying the blockchain to the records of public court proceedings — liberating them from the antiquated storage methods the U.S. still relies on, and making them widely and reliably available. “It’s not going to happen at the level of the federal government any time soon,” Muller says. “But maybe with the state courts you could leapfrog all that.”
leap frogging would be calling into question court proceedings et al.. no?
3\ crypto utopia – distributed everything
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The server farms will fall fallow, and the Internet will get back its inter-ness
The hurdles these visions would have to overcome are those any blockchain-decentralization scenario faces: the challenge of finding people to begin using and moving their own assets into new, unproven systems; the “discovery problem” — figuring out how users of anonymous, crypto-secured networks can find one another to transact business; and the fear that all this crypto-secured, anonymous-transaction-based tech will simply power illegal enterprises and antisocial activities.
a nother way
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A blockchain-powered economy is most likely to take root far away from the U.S., many observers believe — either in the developing world, where there’s less of a reliable financial system in place, or in places where property rules and contract law have shaky foundations (think Russia or China). Wherever it starts to take off, it will face the twin hurdles of complexity overload and government pushback.
[..]
Earlier this year, in a dazzling talk titled “Our Comrade the Electron,” Ceglowski lamented that “we’ve centralized the bejesus out of the Internet.”
I wanted to know what Ceglowski thought of Our Friend the Blockchain. Did it raise his hopes of reversing that situation? Could it move the digital world down an alternate road of privacy, peer-to-peer empowerment, and freedom?
He emailed me with a depressing but persuasive reply: It’s the wrong fight on the wrong turf.
“There is a tendency in computer-land to seek technical solutions to political problems,” Ceglowski says. “In my opinion, the focus on the blockchain (and related ideas) falls into that misguided category. The idea that we should look to algorithms and technology to reclaim our freedoms is fundamentally undemocratic. It presupposes a technical elite who would ‘fix the Internet’ for everyone else. While I can see how this appeals to romantic ideas of hacking the system, I see it as a dangerous trend at worst, and a distraction at best.
[..]
The question to ask is, do these blockchain-based enhancements of our technologies end up giving us more freedom and initiative? Or will a world of “distributed autonomous organizations,” empowered financial algorithms and bots that own themselves only hem in our human sphere of control?
It could be exciting to sit back and watch the future drive itself. But it might be smart to keep our eyes on the road and our hands on the wheel.
so let’s do that. let’s 7 billion plus of us.. do that..
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
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still wondering about blockchains.. ie: is blockchain server dependent.. or can it replace server farms.. finding this by Rachel O’Dwyer
http://commonstransition.org/the-revolution-will-not-be-decentralised-blockchains/
Blockchain innovations that manage networks, servers or natural resources really do radicalise infrastructure. We’re no longer speaking about monolithic resources with prohibitive barriers to entry, the quintessential server farm housed in some distant industrial estate. Instead, we can imagine infrastructure as something immaterial and dispersed, or managed through flexible and transient forms of ownership. Where powerful servers, channels and processing capacities seem like the primary chokepoint of open networks, the blockchain is a powerful antidote. As Buterin argues in a recent interview:
We would build a decentralised Internet network where all of us would access documents and content..
without going through a server.
It means that you will need zero infrastructure to develop and distribute applications.
without going through a server.. – Vitalik Buterin
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via Vinay (on asking him – is blockchain as you see it server dependent.. or can it replace ie: server farms..):
This depends on how blockchain scaling works out. Check out IPFS for something blockchain flavored that definitely can replace server farms.
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jan 2016 – tweet from Vinay… on blockchaim talk
I’m really happy with vimeo.com/153600491 I’m pretty sure that it’s the natural companion to medium.com/@ConsenSys/pro… for the real detail
(1 hour video)
24 min – on database and networks..
database basically silos… pkg api.. publish to web… interoperability goes through web databases… the reason this doesn’t work.. because hell is of the people.. *every org has own conception of the world.. 4 month… slowest part of org to change.. because highest reliability…. but all attributes of 70s database… are today’s database admins… treat database as sacricent… keeping interoperability at bay or extremely slow..
*this is the problem..
28 min – converter… ubiquitous… little bits of code… manually converting back and forth.. each one 10-20 000 dollars worth of work.. could be millions…
29 min – by time 5 org’s… 16 converters… 10 orgs … 50.. goes up geometrically..
30 min – want to take this slow.. because big thing of blockchain is that they solve this problem.. interoperability…… bitcoin is a side note.. as a result (of not having it yet).. we don’t do p2p…
31 min – so all the cohesion you’d expect from high tech society. ..just isn’t happening… ie: export to spreadsheet…. can’t to proper tech interoperability.. because we could never figure out how to get the database and network to play nicely…
taken us a full generation to figure out something that has features of both database and network… and some other features… we’re at the very early date… ethereum… only 4 months old…
34 min – how quickly are we going relative to previous generations…
35 min – hub and spoke… architecture is how we generally solve the bigger interoperability problems… enormously powerful… we don’t use always.. political control of hub intractable problem for human beings.. humans like to control own lives… we need completely trustworthy hubs.. and at this point we don’t know how to create them…
perhaps.. we’re focusing on wrong types of hubs.. perhaps most/all of b ish hubs.. could be abandoned.. and we could just trust us.. (gershenfeld and adichie and .. all in sync… 100% or it’s not trust.. it’s judgment/proof ness.. which will never get us there..)
37 min – hub and spoke efficient for moneys… but no autonomy…. that’s why people were so excited about bitcoin.. didn’t go through hub…
so best of hub & spoke (cheapness of interoperability) and p2p (autonomy)…. in single unit
io dance ness
38 min – this is like discovery of democracy/free market.. it’s a tech mech that solves a political problem.. which rarely happens.. tech that mediates agreements…
39 min – expectation is that we’ll see real political change..
41 min – on ie: med system.. built on control… can’t sit around and decide which company will take care of what
42 min – trustless architecture – degovernance..
43 min – turning governance into degovernance systems is kind of radical.. but over and over again find possible once to loop… so no need for governance.. policy evaporate..
begs systemic change.. where the b ness becomes irrelevant.. what if the only governance/b we need is getting us out of the mess/mistrust/mutations. (jennifer/siddhartha – rna ness) … we’ve accumulated over the years of ie: manufactured consent et al.
back to – 1:05 – this coordination problem
and letting go of thinking we have to control the coordination… rather.. we have to get rid of the things blocking the natural coordination. perhaps blockchains biggest purpose is as a placebo ish rna.. yes.. helpful beyond that… but we may need it less the more we are us (as opposed to what we are today – not us)
44 min – blockchain… each chunk is time sequenced data (in bitcoin – block is 10 min w/in system) …
45 min – special relativity tells us there no such thing as instant now.. info propagates at speed of light… enough time for computer to do a bunch of transactions… while light in transit… no static instant now.. both existing… all this calculations happening faster than it’s possible to sync machines to agree what time now is
ie: google’s internal clock is an artificial now..transactions have no canonical order.. this is what happened to physics 100 yrs ago and we’re still trying to adapt..
47 min – if someone comes up that seems better.. switch to that.. .. order of transactions.. because have no correct order.. so just pick an order…
49 min – there’s not such thing as now.. so create a czar for network… turned it into a temporary czar… makes a temp decision..
50 min – once block is agreed upon.. cannot be changed… and every block secures next block.. that ordering of blocks gives a canonical history… nothing to reconcile… it’s just there…
51 min – since no real order (physics/relativeity)… we sequence in arbitrary and take order an publish as block.. if everyone ok.. move to next block… not magic..
the magic is the selection mech by which we pick the person to order the blocks that is fair and incentivized that people would do it.. such a tiny sliver of magic…
it is someone arbitrary picked… if everyone decided freely – might pick something diff.. but if all together… how to w/o creating center/cost. something looks like hub..but not hub qualities.. network but not costs…. tiny sliver of genius
?
53 min – smart contracts. – ie: microsoft excel… program in the cell (macros)… etherum is bitcoin with macros
55 min – most contracts are 2 dozen lines…
? – do we have to have contracts..?
57 min – 1st is bitcoin.. because obsessed with sovereignty – so build national bank.. central bank of internet… insane.. people did something completely impossible… the actual situation moved outside our conceptual model … struggling for language..
1:00 technical practice so far ahead of the cultural metabolism… faster you can get accurate conceptualization faster you can make decisions… .. focusing on how to explain tech fast enough.. to go from being invisible/unthinkable …to being domesticated to work..
1:01 – getting to so cultural saturated by so much tech change we can’t actually comprehend what is happening.. ie: is it a phone.. computer.. et al..
1:02 – build muscle to deal with tech change that moves faster than our cultural metabolism..
1:03 – hack: 1\ break in and steal 2\ old: horrendous chop job.. ….mining solution in bitcoin… was ugliest possible way of solving w/ computer…. nonsense.. but kind of nonsense in a wright brothers way.. got us into the air.. just had to prove flight was possible.. after flight possible.. minds come and say: that’s a terrible plane…
1:05 – that’s where we were… computer science had given up on this coordination problem… relativity says no.. the reason you need bitcoin is relativity… you get rid of the mining by using: proof of stake.. people prove serious about doing this stuff.. by betting reputation on the fact they’ll do it.. a trust and verify system…
but not finished yet…
1:07 – on technical back end.. it looks like a web site..
who verifies data is accurate in first place… 1/ take names… if lying .. prosecute.. solve trust problems w/ big stick 2\ use lots of software mech’s ie: have to sign each transaction… so can identify you
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blockchain… via seth
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/01/3-d-printers-the-blockchain-and-drones.html
Most of the stories of Bitcoin haven’t been about the blockchain. They’ve been about speculators, winning and losing fortunes. And most of the stories of 3-D printers have been about printing small, useless toys, including little pink cacti. And most of the stories about home drones have been about peeping toms and cool videos you can watch after other people make them.
Choose your stories carefully.
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@willrich45
Is Blockchain the most important IT invention of our age? buff.ly/1QbZ16V I think I’m finally getting this… #edchat
“Distributed ledger technologies,” it claims, “have the potential to help governments to collect taxes, deliver benefits, issue passports, record land registries, assure the supply chain of goods and generally ensure the integrity of government records and services. In the NHS, the technology offers the potential to improve health care by improving and authenticating the delivery of services and by sharing records securely according to exact rules. For the consumer of all of these services, the technology offers the potential, according to the circumstances, for individual consumers to control access to personal records and to know who has accessed them.”
depends on how chained/blocked we keep our thinking…
ie: will we remain bent on measuring/proving/judging/labeling transactions/us or can we finally let go.. and simply use block chain ness to facilitate our curiosities.. coordinate us/antifragility..
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why wall street is embracing democracy – it’s biggest threat
http://www.wired.com/2016/02/wall-street-is-embracing-the-blockchain-its-biggest-threat/
because it controls the actual transactions that underlie the stock market, the DTCC is in a better position than anyone to actually make the blockchain revolution happen.
unless we call out measured transactions as irrelevant..
It’s a rather ironic development. The DTCC—and the industry it represents—are embracing a technology that could potentially overturn them. Wall Street, it appears, has learned the lesson that Silicon Valley and its allies have taught industry after industry over the past few decades: embracing your biggest threat is the only way to prevent yourself from being overturned.
and what if what we’re overturning is the whole idea of being overturned. what if we move away from sum zero ness. can we imagine that. how can we not..
i mean.. the fact that wall street can make this work for them… should be a red flag.. no..?
If the financial industry is to get ahead of the tech curve, he explains, it must do so in a considered and collaborative way.
collab\ing to get ahead.. whoa.
Given the very nature of blockchain technology, this collaborative approach is the right idea. If a company builds a blockchain-like system inside its own organization, that’s only so useful. The real power of the blockchain is as adistributed ledger that’s outside of the control of any one organization—a ledger that keeps, as Palatnick calls it, “a single indisputable version of the truth.” Over the years, Wall Street has employed the DTCC, a single organization, to oversee the truth of the settlement system. But with the blockchain, this truth can be controlled by a network of machines and an open ledger that all those parties can see. At least in theory.
outside of the control.. and.. a new game. let’s not just dress up what we’re used to. we have the potential/responsibility/imagination to go way beyond – overseeing truth of settlement ness… no?
Byrne even views the blockchain as a way of reinventing the public stock market itself.
how about .. reinventing the public ie: free ing people up to the rev of everyday life
Certainly, the DTCC is not embracing the blockchain proper—the blockchain that underpins bitcoin across the Internet on countless independent machines.
blockchain proper..? let’s go for blockchain potential.. ie: coordinating rather than measuring …. people.
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feb 2016 – satoshi roundtable – private blockchain retreat (60 people)
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io dance et al
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mar 2016 -blockchain and commons (shared by Kevin) via Michel:
@KevinCarson1
On “the blockchain as the new institutional technology that makes the commons scale.” blog.p2pfoundation.net/cryptoeconomy-…
The thing here is that this makes it very cheap to make a community and supply it with infrastructure to manage interactions on a platform,
[..]
Ostrom’s key insight: people are good at making up rules to deal with novel situations. They can in this way self-govern (or self-regulate). …
Yet the Ostrom model hinged on small groups, because cheap talk and costly punishment. The problem was that they didn’t scale. 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 decentralised incentives systems for collaboration and cooperation.
The transparent and decentralised nature of the blockchain makes it easier for small and large communities to reach consensus and implement innovative forms of self-governance
and/or perhaps… could be addressed by disengaging from consensus et al.. redefining decision making.. (based on our love for the ginormously small)
[..]
we need to look past the technological change dynamics and the marginal substitution between existing institutional economic forms and realise that what is actually being reinvented here are economies themselves.
indeed.
An economy is a designed order, as an intended outcome of a firm or a government-planned economy. A catallaxy is an emergent order that results from the divergent goals of many different individuals interacting within a market exchange.
? – why must they/we converge.. and why must it be w/in exchange..
Hayek meant this as a critique of government central planning: you can plan an economy, but never a catallaxy.
agree with that… but also think we need to let go of assumption of market ness… any kind of measurement of transactions.. rather.. let’s coordinate them… w/o any mathematical/or whatever agenda..
What connects Hayek (what decentralization does), Ostrom (how local govt forms), and Buchanan (decision mechs) is that they were all focused, in very different ways, on the problem of how communities coordinate to choose in groups, and thereby create economies. They were all obsessed with social rules, and with rules for making and choosing rules.
exactly the piece we need to let go of.. disengaging from consensus et al.. redefining decision making..
[..]
The blockchain is the secure, verifiable, trustless (i.e. cryptographically secure) mechanism to record the actions upon the rules.
And right there you have it. The blockchain is doing what prices do in markets, what commands do in firms, and what laws do in governments. It is providing a clear and unambiguous public signal, as a coherent rule-system, to coordinate private action
perhaps that’s not what our souls crave.. perhaps that’s blocking the rhythm of us.. ie: perhaps prices/commands/laws.. are what’s keeping us from us.. so finding something to do it better..? why would we ..?
blockchain.. as facilitator/connector of curiosities… let’s trust that. let’s stop measuring/judging everything..
The new economics of the blockchain is that it is a new technology for making new economies. That’s less like the invention of steam or electricity, and more like the invention of private property or government.”
?
what if blockchain is to help us dance better w/entropy ness
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Arthur on blockchain design flaw – mar 2016 (excerpts from Arthur via Michel):
https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/arthur-brock-blockchains-major-design-flaw/2016/03/15
“Stop the Nonsensus! (Nonsense Consensus):Systems will never scale if you require global consensus for local actions by independent agents
perhaps design flaw lies in not realizing/acting upon this opportunity to disengage from consensus .. (jo freeman understood – perhaps – if i’m understanding right. and.. broken record here.. i know. but .. can’t not.)
That adds an overhead of ridiculous complexity for something which needs to follow the principle of pushing intelligence and agency to the edges rather than center.
exactly… to any consensus or measurement or validation..
Bitcoin and blockchains are built around authorized tokens embedded in every transaction/record, which embeds unnecessary complexity and limitations for scalability into every interaction. Tokens are not what makes a decentralized system work,
exactly..
cryptographic signatures and self-validating data structures are.
i don’t know… why does anything have to be validated..? ie: if we stop to validate.. that takes our time.. and then others spend time looking at our validation and us at there’s. perhaps better to just let the tech/blockchain.. leave a trail (unvalidated in the sense we use/know today)
But today we have self-validating data structures like hash-chains and Merkle-trees which leave evidence of tampering by breaking structural integrity, cryptographic hash, or counterparty signatures when the data is altered. This makes it possible to distribute the storage and management of data and ensure that the people holding it can’t tamper with it.
what if we make this.. not even about not being able to tamper with.. and more about.. not having a desire to tamper with.. ie: gershenfeld something else law. seems we’d save a ton of time/energy with that. (may sound crazy impossible but isn’t trying to resist tampering moreso..? – starfish ness…)
you could be an authority to show your own account balance, yet not be able to tamper with your account history.
imagine the time/energy saved… if we weren’t dealing with any type of account balance. perhaps we just try.. a nother way.. with no measuring of transactions.
What you need to distribute in a system of collective intelligence is the ability to distribute reliable processing according to shared agreements. *Consensus then becomes something used for to ensure the integrity of the processing, rather than the medium upon which processing is executed. This approach, lets you confirm that your copy of the process is valid, so you can rely on it to work according to the agreed upon rules and proceed authoritatively without having to wait for the rest of the network to validate, verify and update itself with your state.
*or perhaps consensus is no longer needed.. tech connects us.. rather than makes us efficiently decide the same thing/rule. we have the capability for 7 billion curiosities dancing together daily. why would we hold that up with consensus. 95% of dna junk dna (entropy ness et al) if we spend time labeling/deciding it so…. perhaps instead we spend our energy listening to and being its rhythm.
One of the beautiful outcomes from this is such a massive reduction in the processing and storage requirements that it becomes feasible to run a full node on a mobile phone instead of requiring specialized mining hardware.”
agreed. imagine it even smaller – ie: ginormously smaller.. full node on chip.. then use blockchain – or whatever as server farm..
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@paulmdowling
How The Blockchain Can Unshackle Us – The Barefoot VC thebarefootvc.com/2016/04/14/936…
Because blockchain is consensual, after a certain point of centralization, the rules of the system depend on very few users.
[..]The alternative is the very basis of the distributed nature of the Internet: the distributed structure of servers.
________________
_________
RT @CaterinaRindi: @LaBlogga piece: #Crypto Enlightenment and the Social Theory of #Blockchains https://t.co/quhPQWdKCf #socialtheorists
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/mbauwens/status/738277788969537536
allowing us to re-explore our reality, and specify it as more internally-determinedblockchain technology, which is a distributed ledger, a decentralized *computational memory of human interactions
The real invitation and potentiality of blockchain technology is to radically rethink reality – what is it to decentralize everything we do and reconstitute life through a frame of abundance and immanence, attending to what is possible and desirable mindfully, not merely a reaction to a reality which seems determined by scarcity.we as individuals now taking self-responsibility for many activities such as *deciding what and how we consume news media, entertainment, financial services, (stock-trading, credit services, portfolio management), and health services. Next is economic and governance systems.
Immanence is the idea of self-determination from within; everything comes from within in a system, world, or person; structure and content are emergent and not pre-specified. Immanence contrasts with transcendence where everything comes from outside a system, world, or person; pre-determining the system externally per fixed specifications.
________
oct 2016 – via Michel share on fb – new 7 min film – blockchain changes everything
http://furtherfield.org/projects/blockchain
transcript
http://furtherfield.org/gallery-files/The-Blockchain-Change-Everthing-Forever-Trascript.pdf
The blockchain is my darkest nightmare. – ben vickers
The internet was about the exchange of information. Blockchain is about exchange of assets and exchange of value.
?
It really is a generic technology like the web you could build almost any kind of workable system on top of it, it can enhance almost any political model. So what we’re going to get depends on what we choose. – vinay
In terms of relating to each other, the number one thing as human beings we use is trust. Blockchain allows us to replace trust with proof.
ugh.. what is proof.. – rather .. it could allow us to replace bullshit job ness with luxury.. if we use it to host-life-bits.. (we have to disengage from proof ness.. from validation/assets ness – or we’ll be missing a great opp to reclaim humanity)
If you can take a penny a day off a billion people to do R&D you can begin to have collective management of quite large funds. Charities run by the poor for the poor rather than have charities run by the rich for the poor. And you can’t do that today because transactional costs eat all of the micropayments that you need to pull together to get something like that done. – vinay
or.. disengage from money all together.. and practice.. rev of everyday life
how does it change everything if we’re still assuming money as op…?
It’s something that everyone needs to participate in, the discussion about society and economy and also governance, how we rule ourselves. These are topics we’ve been discussing for thousands of years.
indeed.. so disengage from contracts, moneys, proofs, et al.. and let’s focus on that convo/experience.. ie: use blockchain to host-life-bits.. while 100% of us listen to our heart in order to live a nother way .. as the day
Particularly artists and kind of fringe groups have always been, like, very innovative in terms of governance models and the way which they organise and cooperate with one another and I think that the Blockchain creates an opportunity for those forms of governance to become legible and usable by other communities. – ben
yes that.. as long as we truly .. set people free first..
otherwise.. we’re just perpetuate\ing our broken feedback loop ness… of science of people ness et al
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fb share by Michel
In other words, rather than disintermediation, it might be more accurate to say that there is a radical process of reintermediation, the introduction of, literally, new media in which for example voting is replaced by nodes forking bits of code and the legal system replaced by self-executing smart contracts.
yes.. but go deeper.. voting replaced by detox (mech simple enough).. legal system replaced by convos (in system open enough)
[..]
Despite their ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives, technology development and devices are *still understood as things that operate under objective laws of physics and engineering, rather than being manifestations of interests, drives and desires of humans. Delegation can be a helpful concept in helping us think about how technology relates to politics and power dynamics as a whole.
*imagine we let go of that.. and let tech become simply a trail of interests, drives, desires, curiosities, connections.. dreams, noticings.. of humans..
[..]
The *political, understood as continuous negotiation between potentially incompatible positions, is resolved once and then encoded in and delegated to the technology, after which a given process is rendered apolitical
this is so not-deep-enough… ie: *political as rather a convo of free people.. doing whatever they want.. where incompatible positions become irrelevant as we disengage from any need for negotiation ness
[..]
In other words, the supposed “trustless” systems of blockchain innovations might be better understood as a shift of trust from one realm and set of processes to another, requiring an immense trust in cryptography, hardware, the ongoing availability of electricity and raw materials and, of course, in the decisions made by the evangelists of the nerd Reich themselves.
[..]
This is why some projects that seek to go against the grain and propose alternatives come across as overtly political, while others are understood as neutral: because the latter bear within them implicit assumptions, assumptions about human behaviour or values that are widespread and continuously re-enforced, such as market-based incentives to encourage or punish behaviour in the system.
science of people ness – we have no idea.. no imagination .. of us..
let’s do this first: free art-ists.
On the other hand, one of the most interesting aspects of blockchain development is exactly that other values can be encoded into these systems.
yes.. so let’s let go.. disengage from measuring transactions.. validating people.. or.. we’ll be missing it..
Blockchain technology is not being developed in a vacuum or on a tabula rasa in which a Nerd Reich can finally create sci-fi utopias for us all – unfortunately (or fortunately) existing contexts, power dynamics and inequalities affect what is made possible or not, and in whose interest.
unless we leap .. for (blank)’s sake…
__________
via sepp on fb – synereo and nf(x) guild partner to build decent internet – via blockchain 2
Is Synereo going to take off in their quest to de-centralize the Internet?
Some synergy seems to be building up…
________
via Doug‘s thought shrapnel suggestion – Ronaldo Lemos on using blockchain for public interest
The essence of the blockchain technology is trust.
? perhaps.. but more about trusting us.. then the tech.. it’s a means/mech that can facil us to live a nother way.. trusting the whimsy/curiosity of humans…. not trusting some tech to manage our B..
The blockchain is perfect for this purpose. It creates an immutable record of signatures, attached directly to the identity of the voter. Because of the blockchain and other certification mechanisms we are adopting, the possibility of fraud will be much lower than when paper signatures are used…id of voter..lower fraud..distribute consensus
lovely except.. we need to disengage from money as os.. we need to disengage from voting ness as well… redefine decision making et al
imagine we use it instead to disengage from money/consensus as os
That can significantly change the profile of democracy in Brazil, establishing a new form of dialogue between citizens and representatives
imagine new form of dialogue.. w no reps
what if our thinking about consensus is what’s getting in the way
This is only the beginning. We believe that the blockchain is a crucial step to establish many applications for the public interest, such as:
The major point here is that we can significantly change the minds and hearts of many people, creating new social practices because of this new technology. There are many pioneers working with the blockchain for profit at the moment. We need more people working with the blockchain´s capabilities for the public interest as well. These can be our new champions of openness.
convo on #openup16
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via rt by gsiemans
I am so very, very old. https://t.co/46PJwS6Srf
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/Trace_Urdan/status/799267820294914048
From a technological perspective, the legal weed space also presents another *unique opportunity: Legalized cannabis on this scale is a first for the US. This new, fast-growing sector of the economy presents challenges we haven’t dealt with before, partly because even in legalized states, there are still a lot of things cannabis-related businesses can’t do, particularly when it comes to banking and legal protection.
Technology is helping to fill in a lot of those gaps for cannabis businesses. In particular, a host of startups are beginning to tackle cannabiz issues using blockchain. This emerging sector is employing the distributed, immutable ledger technology in everything from **banking, finance, and regulatory compliance to storing cannabis strain DNA via blockchain technology to protect growers’ intellectual property (IP). We’re about to live in a blockchain-based world and the legal weed industry might be a leading early adopter.
oy to us… using tech.. that could save/wake us.. (ie: hosting-life-bits) to perpetuate our obsession with rules/laws/measurements/validations
*so not unique
**so not us
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Blockchain Meetup CH (@blockchainerCH) tweeted at 3:02 AM – 12 Dec 2016 :
The recording of #Blockchains Switzerland Meetup hosting @trentmc0 Trent McConaghy talking about @BigchainDB
https://t.co/Vhmjyio2iS https://t.co/S9TZKxjTnX (http://twitter.com/blockchainerCH/status/808250540757020672?s=17)57 min – doing this for internet.. not for profit..
still killing us.. if talking pay/tokens.. et al.. missing the capability of the tech…
58 min – it’s a myth that you need a token based network in order to be decentralized
yeah. that..
1:00 – there’s probably going to be a market for cashing.. global cashing..
? .. is that a token..?
______
juan benet – ipfs
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32 page report
David Siegel (@PullNews) tweeted at 7:41 AM – 26 Apr 2017 :
Internet of Agreements, by @leashless et al, must read: https://t.co/ANbvuM3lpM(http://twitter.com/PullNews/status/857228228909465600?s=17)
This report hopes to bring the World Government Summit a fresh perspective on the current state of blockchain technology. The report explores how the blockchain will drive positive changes in nearly every area of civic life over the next ten years. Both national and municipal governments will realise these benefits as they adapt and adopt these technologies to meet diverse requirements, smoothly integrating into the technological fabric which supports and serves their citizens. The global economy may also realise real benefits as the reduced transaction costs and increased security provided by the blockchain foster innovation in the global systems of trade which support us all. Security and reliability are core requirements of future computing systems. The blockchain is a bold new innovation that will bring this reliability and trust into every walk of life.
p 12
You could think of this model as “Globalization 2.0” The first globalization was an industrial model of globalization, where everything has to be made with the same standards before people can work together. In Globalization 2.0 computers take the strain of handling local differences in standards, regulation and consumer preference, and advanced manufacturing meets these requirements because it can run small batches tailored to local needs efficiently. Computers handle the red tape, and the blockchain is the next step.
imagine we let go of most of that.. just use blockchain to facil curiosity of 7 bn people.. a nother way
p 15
The ubiquity of connection to the Internet among an increasing number of devices and individuals is only increasing. As the world becomes “hyper–connected” blockchain technology provides an opportunity to maximize the capabilities of these interconnected computers. This can be seen in a plethora of different fields, ranging from identity, to transportation, to energy
let really max.. humanity max..
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Ilana Milkes (@IlaMilkEs) tweeted at 8:46 AM – 3 May 2017 :
“Programmable blockchains in context: Ethereum’s future, by Vinay Gupta” by @leashless https://t.co/LwgTafCDIl (http://twitter.com/IlaMilkEs/status/859781255155650560?s=17)
The Big Iron in the machine rooms and the myriads of tiny little personal computers scattered over the internet like dew on a cobweb could not find a common world-model which allowed them to interoperate smoothly.
io dance ness
When we need to translate from one world model to another, we put humans in the process, and we’re back to processes which mirror filling in paper forms rather than genuinely digital cooperation
[..]
Now we can represent simple agreements as free speech, as publication of an idea, and who knows where this leads.
hoping beyond measuring/validating transactions/people.. to hlb that io dance.. beyond words..
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article by ian bogost.. ref to adam greenfield‘s radical techs
The much needed primer on blockchain’s underlying ideology and its unintended consequences https://t.co/wf7z98rCK0
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/jkleske/status/870274495164149760
Cryptocurrency Might be a Path to Authoritarianism
Extreme libertarians built blockchain to decentralize government and corporate power. It could consolidate their control instead.
In his book Radical Technologies, the urban designer Adam Greenfield calls cryptocurrency and blockchain the first technology that’s “just fundamentally difficult for otherwise intelligent and highly capable people to understand.” I was relieved when I read this, because I have been pretending to understand cryptocurrencies—digital money based in code-breaking—for years.
Bitcoin is an expression of extreme technological libertarianism. This school of thought goes by many names: anarcho-capitalism (or ancap for short), libertarian anarchy, market anarchism. Central to the philosophy is a distrust of states in favor of individuals. Its adherents believe society best facilitates individual will in a free-market economy driven by individual property owners—not governments or corporations—engaging in free trade of that private property.
why property..?
The ancap worldview only supports sovereign individuals engaging in free-market exchange. Neither states nor corporations are acceptable intermediaries. That leaves a sparsely set table. At it: individuals, the property they own, the contracts into which they enter to exchange that property, and a market to facilitate that exchange. All that’s missing is a means to process exchanges in that market.
unless at the table: individuals, their curiosities.. bag the measuring of transactions.. bag the ownings
For anarcho-capitalism to work in earnest, it would need to divorce transactions entirely from the traditional monetary system and the organizations that run it. Central banks and corporations could interfere with transactions. And yet, if individuals alone maintained currency records, money could be used fraudulently, or fabricated from thin air.
? – doesn’t sound divorced from monetary system..
To solve these problems, Bitcoin is backed by mathematics instead of state governments.
This is the process known as “mining”—a confusing and aspirational name for what amounts to computational accounting.
still computational/measuring ness..still monetary.. still compromising us (and wasting energy et al)
This record is the blockchain, which is sometimes also called the *“distributed ledger”—a much more elucidating name. This is the missing element that’s supposed to allow the hypothetical anarcho-capitalist techno-utopia to flourish.
imagine we use a distributed ledger – for hlb – sans measuring/validating transactions
Adam Greenfield tells me that two Chinese giants can control over half of the global Bitcoin mining operations. If they collaborate, a majority-control of the blockchain could allow them to manipulate it. That’s precisely the risk a decentralized currency was meant to avoid.
currency ness is perpetuating 10 day care ness.. can’t partially free us
The same hype driving cryptocurrency speculation has also attracted banks, governments, and corporations—exactly the authorities it was designed to circumvent
Networked locks are nothing new, thanks to the internet of things. But a blockchain-backed connected lock offers some additional capabilities. A distributed-ledger lock could enter into a “smart contract,” an agreement whose terms are implemented directly in code. If attached to an AirBnB rental, such a lock could be programmed to automatically release when a smartphone belonging to a pre-paid renter approaches.
seeing contracts as cancerous (genotype-phenotype gap) to human nature…
Ethereum uses that technology to express a different aspect of the ancap model: contracts. For libertarians, contracts exist to facilitate market exchange, so smart contracts are always backed by currency (Ether, in Ethereum’s case). If Bitcoin is digital money for people, Ether is digital money for computers. It decides how to spend itself via software automation.
Why tout a private, distributed-ledger currency as an agent of liberation when it amounts to a complicated, software-backed, company-town store? One answer: It could give the workers a stake in the company store.
On that front, the anarcho-liberatarians share something in common with the plain-vanilla technolibertarians:
a belief in the wisdom and righteousness of a fully computational universe.
ugh
Who needs real-estate agents, closing attorneys, assessors, mortgage brokers, title insurers, municipal tax authorities, and all the rest? Just transfer some Ether after the computers shake hands.
how about.. just shake hands.. rather.. just share.. our one ness
It sure sounds good. But the scenario only works if the entire system of contemporary life becomes sufficiently *interconnected to make it possible. All the **departments of public health and the DMVs and the voter registration venues—not to mention the parking spaces and the automobiles and the power grids and all the rest—would have to cohere around a common understanding, so that the machines could execute smart contracts on their behalf. This would require a complete ***reinvention of public and private life.
*interconnected – io dance ness – yes.. why all the **depts..? rather inspectors.. ie: fuller too much ness.. ***disengage (aka.. truly reinvent everyday life everyday ie: 2 convos)
For Adam Greenfield, the anti-authoritarian left has profoundly misunderstood the corner into which such an ambitious aspiration paints society. “I believe distributed ledger enables the kind of central control they’ve never in their worst nightmares contemplated,” he tells me. The irony would be tragic if it weren’t also so frightening. The invitation to transform distributed-ledger systems into the ultimate tool of corporate and authoritarian control might be too great a temptation for human nature to forgo.
let’s try a nother way.. gershenfeld sel as safety net
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skepticism in blockchain hype (from bankers no less)
https://www.ft.com/content/b5b1a5f2-5030-11e7-bfb8-997009366969
executives at blockchain-investing companies have rarely been able to explain what it was that blockchain would be enhancing in their businesses or why. “You’ll have to ask my tech associate,” has been the invariable answer.
the suddenly diminished use of the term “blockchain” in the marketing of many of these ventures. The latest vogue is for distributed ledger technology (DLT) or shared permissioned databases. The linguistic pivot reflects an industry-wide realisation that blockchain has to be adapted for the real world.
who’s real world.. what does that even mean .. real made up money world..? where we’re spending our days measuring/validating transactions.. of zombie humans
By now almost all blockchain ventures have absolutely nothing to do with blockchain as it was originally described or used in bitcoin.
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via vinay rt
Kristian T. Sorensen (@KristianT) tweeted at 2:41 AM – 7 Jul 2017 :
Sweden Officially Started Using #Blockchain to Register Land and Properties
https://t.co/KFwAmqwgfOhttps://t.co/W0wX7TKn8m (http://twitter.com/KristianT/status/883244515317952514?s=17)@KristianT Sounds more like Swedish taxpayers officially paid a bunch of money just to notarize database states on Bitcoin :) (http://twitter.com/SimonOusager/status/883270446795431936?s=17)
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Ploum (@ploum) tweeted at 5:02 AM – 28 Sep 2017 :
Seems like a lot of intellectual energy today is spent to answer: “How can we use the Blockchain without changing ourselves” cc @leashless (http://twitter.com/ploum/status/913358325835878400?s=17)
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Peter Vander Auwera (@petervan) tweeted at 3:55 AM – 13 Oct 2017 :
IBM, Hyperledger Join Blockchain Identity Consortium https://t.co/8u1ziF8Nu8 via @CoinDesk (http://twitter.com/petervan/status/918777323578646529?s=17)
To achieve such self-sovereignty requires “the fundamental primitives, protocols, and tools necessary to create an interoperable ecosystem,” the group said. To that end the group is working on a set of specs and reference implementations for building blocks such as personal data stores and decentralized identifiers.
try this:
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
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via Jon fb share
I’m watching this as it unfolds because I believe the possibility is vastly important and we don’t know what it will mean or bring about.
and we’re missing it..
when we assume the measuring ness of us.. we limit the capabilities of blockchain..
Disclaimer: I am not a technologist and don’t know much about technology nor the engineering of blockchain or the Web. I do pay attention to what each of them enables and can create, especially sociologically.
http://fortune.com/2017/10/17/blockchain-berners-lee/
he (tim) said. “Coming down the pipe hot on its its heels is web authentication. Instead of all those passwords, the browser will handle your identity.”
in video:
all tied to money.. only one (nova spivak) that seemed open to go beyond.. but still saying.. decentralizing trust.. distributed trust..
guy (godaddy) at end on his son doing .. crowd swap.. like trade bigger game.. .. but still trading things.. rather than just facilitating/connecting curiosities/people..
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OuiShare (@OuiShare) tweeted at 8:54 AM on Fri, Dec 08, 2017:
#techforgood The Social Impact Of Blockchain: by @ANA_Anacoin – “According to @wef, over $1.4bn has been invested into #blockchain technology since 2013.
So far, the majority of that investment has been in the financial industry, in the form of #bitcoin’ https://t.co/jVj0MkIRLC https://t.co/XI1C4dlSrF
(https://twitter.com/OuiShare/status/939161223274344451?s=03)
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dec 2017 via Vinay:
Vinay Gupta (@leashless) tweeted at 7:12 PM on Sat, Dec 16, 2017:
Heading for 200 retweets of this. Very very surprised that people are so receptive to the message. https://t.co/UCrKVv7ZID has the whole tweetstorm as a Medium post, with some links that expand on the details. Let me know what you think! https://t.co/C06PfxxKZD
(https://twitter.com/leashless/status/942216006860238848?s=03)the great grandaddy of horrible problems blockchain can solve is terrorist and criminal financing.
how about a deeper problem.. making terrorism and financing irrelevant (which i learned from vinay)
So what do we do?
..a society without waste, including of human potential.
let’s just start there.. that energy would do it..
A very low waste society is a fascinating place: I imagine that everything has a price and an owner.
imagine ‘price and owner’ as irrelevant
a zero waste society must admit market failures need to be fixed by non-market mechanisms. But everything improves as you reduce waste: waste is entropy, and is not life the constant process of order winning against entropy, of pattern’s victory over mere chaos?
entropy ness..? mere chaos..?
There are probably four or five other big plays out there: banking the unbanked, global identity w. crypto to protect your biometrics, microtransactions, currencies backed by natural resources, and C2C versions of fintech normally used for businesses (i.e. hedging a flight or insuring your car from breaking down on a family road trip.)
only big plays based on man made money..? why..?
These big play projects are at the same general level of ambition as “let’s map the entire world using satellites and drones” or “let’s connect people to everybody they’ve ever met” or “let’s digitize all human knowledge.” The dotcom era got several more of these things done (hello, mobile phones!) and I don’t see any reason the blockhchain era should not have at least as much impact.
won’t get there if stuck in fin dom.. let go
You put all this stuff together, in an age of increasing and accelerating global change, and you break down some dumb structure around health, education, social care (i.e. medical records portability, transparent service pricing in hospitals) and the blockchain is soon indispensable to everyday life. If we play our cards right, we might even get there in a semi-regulated or only lightly regulated state.
only if we use it to facil everyday life.. if we use it to measure transactions.. facil made up money.. blockchain becomes a facilitator of that waste .. that you’re trying to get rid of
I’m doing my part here. Mattereum.com (@Mattereum) is my bid to get the necessary legal frameworks in place to make direct control of physical property using the blockchain recognized in 150+ countries. I want to break the door open to the material world so you can change the status of a *smart contract, and have a real-world court recognize that legal ownership of a fiat asset has changed hands. Fiddly, but it’s **necessary infrastructure for all of our next steps together.
*smart contracts.. **are you sure..? .. let go
Maintaining our political viability as we grow is going to need massive investments in public facing apps that solve real problems. We will need to show people things that really *make people feel they are living in a better future to maintain these valuations. It’s going to require proof that we are the future, not just carpetbagging promisers.
how about just.. *help people live better..
We need a bigger, better vision of the Bitcoin Future (and, yes, the Ethereum and general crypto future) if we are going to hold together the ship against pressure.
*we need a deeper/simpler/more-open vision..
I really believe that the Ethereum community has a ton of the pieces of that puzzle: smart contracts give us the reach to really interact with the real world. But we aren’t going to get to houses and cars on the blockchain without some real effort to find social utility in addition to the straight financial play.
I’m trying to frame the zone of aspirations, the things we should be fighting for as we go forwards into 2018 — the year that the blockchain is recognized as a global power, and has to learn to act like one.
only if we use it as it could be
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nov 2017 – 40 min video of Bettina @bwarburg explaining blockchain at 5 levels
Blockchain Expert Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty
Blockchain is something everyone should understand in 2018 and beyond. It will change our society. Here’s a good place to start. https://t.co/jpPU1CAZwY
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/courosa/status/945725355268149250
level 1: it’s actually a way we can trade
ugh – exchange ness.. let’s go deeper
level 2: have you every traded or sold anything.. it’s kind of this big ledger.. accounting system.. where all sorts of things get traded..
imagine if instead we used it to facil curiosities
tech as it could be
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
level 3: allows us to trade at scale.. w/o company in middle.. instead a bunch of software code.. beyond bitcoin.. taking any asset and transacting that.. then into id ness for security
level 4: a lot of the assumptions won’t hold true.. obviously a need to work on the trust
ie: money.. measuring transactions
to make sure avg people can use it.. need more ed/standards
oy
level 5: persistant transparent append only ledger.. thru a mech of creating consensus. parties that don’t need to trust each other.. possible apps.. ie: electricity
worries: not paying attention to *bad actors.. mech not **flexible enough.. ie: contracts need to be flexible
**hlb via 2 convos that io dance.
to trade at scale.. and make that trade more decentralized
let’s go deep/simple/open enough
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from vinay rt
Randal Whitmore (@randalwhitmore) tweeted at 1:49 AM – 30 Dec 2017 :
Blockchain in practice Walmart tracing the source of sliced mangos:
Pre-blockchain 6 days, 18 hours, 26 mins
Blockchain solution pilot 2.2 seconds
https://t.co/wzv1kfAKkO (http://twitter.com/randalwhitmore/status/947026725438926849?s=17)
imagine if we used bc for tracing like/local curiosities
reduce time between intention and action.. for 7bn..everyday
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from mikko rt
Ben Adida (@benadida) tweeted at 4:34 PM – 28 Dec 2017 :
I found the time to write up my thoughts on Blockchain and Voting. TLDR: I don’t think there’s much use for blockchain in voting because verifiable secret tallies and voter eligibility are not solved by a distributed ledger. https://t.co/doC4NuWrJ9 (http://twitter.com/benadida/status/946524757423374336?s=17)
distributed databases are not new. We’ve known for a while how to replicate a database with a sprinkle of cryptography to distribute the trust.
Blockchain isn’t just a distributed database, it’s a very specific kind of distributed database where
- the database maintainers aren’t authenticated: anyone can be a blockchain maintainer without revealing who they are or having any kind of privileged relationship with other maintainers.
- the set of maintainers changes over time. New maintainers come in, existing maintainers leave, without central planning or predictability. The maintainers of the Bitcoin blockchain 5 years ago are very different from the maintainers today.
so perhaps let’s just focus on a mech for anyone (because it has to be all of us).. that assumes changes (because what we need is to be/become antifragile)..
It’s important to realize that the true Bitcoin/Blockchain innovation is actually in this very specific trust setting of a dynamically changing set of database maintainers. If your use case doesn’t call for that, if you can designate the maintainers at the start of your protocol and have them authenticate to each other, then you don’t need the full Blockchain toolkit. You need only fairly standard cryptography and your use case was achievable 20 years ago.
Bottom line: Blockchain can help a bit with voting, but *it’s not doing the most important part of the work. It doesn’t help tally secret ballots in a publicly verifiable way. It doesn’t provide individual verifiability that a ballot was correctly encoded. And it’s not useful for voting eligibility, since that’s all about human authentication and a centrally produced voter list. At best, in voting, Blockchain can be a ledger that helps us track the voting metadata
Maybe this is about marketing, after all. I’m dubious — because Blockchain doesn’t begin to solve the most important parts of voting — but it’s possible.
maybe the *most important parts of voting (way beyond tally/verify/eligibility) is that it should/can be 24/7 by all of us (or irrelevant – however you look at it)
how about we go for more serious things.. than tallying vo
perhaps bc (or some tech from 10 yrs ago) to facil curiosities would make voting irrelevant
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Steven Johnson on bitcoin – rather perhaps.. on blockchain
beyond the bitcoin bubble
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/01/16/magazine/beyond-the-bitcoin-bubble.html
But on a technical level, something miraculous is happening — *something that would have been unimaginable just a decade ago. . t.. I’ve managed to complete a secure transaction without any of the traditional institutions that we rely on to establish trust. No intermediary brokered the deal; no social-media network captured the data from my transaction to better target its advertising; no credit bureau tracked the activity to build a portrait of my financial trustworthiness.
*cool.. but is that what we want/crave/need..? to get better at measured/secure transactions..?
And the platform that makes all this possible? No one owns it. There are no venture investors backing Ethereum Inc., because there is no Ethereum Inc. As an organizational form, Ethereum is far closer to a democracy than a private corporation. No imperial chief executive calls the shots.
who cares if no one owns it..? if the whole idea.. (of measuring transactions) is taking up our time.. we don’t own our time.. we have to get to be a people that is grokking about what matters .. everyday.. not just trying to improve on status quo ie: measuring transactions.
But in a way, the Bitcoin bubble may ultimately turn out to be a distraction from the true significance of the blockchain. The real promise of these new technologies, many of their evangelists believe, lies not in displacing our currencies but in replacing much of what we now think of as the internet, while at the same time returning the online world to a more decentralized and egalitarian system. If you believe the evangelists, the blockchain is the future. But it is also *a way of getting back to the internet’s roots..t
*indeed..as it could be – to connect us.. not measure/id us
The question is whether, after the bubble has burst, the very real promise of the blockchain can endure.
only if we let go of measuring things
The biggest problems that technologists tackled after 1995 — many of which revolved around identity, community and payment mechanisms — were left to the private sector to solve. This is what led, in the early 2000s, to a powerful new layer of internet services, which we might call InternetTwo.
how about we just go back to community.. sans payment/money.. sans id
You can’t fix the problems technology has created for us by throwing more technological solutions at it. You need forces outside the domain of software and servers to break up cartels with this much power..t
that would be.. 7bn alive people.. as energy.. let’s facil that
But the open protocols beneath them still have the potential to build something better.
If we can’t figure out a way to introduce new, rival base-layer infrastructure, then we’re stuck with the internet we have today..t
infra: 2 convos ..as the day
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
(on bitcoin) – Together, those two ideas solved the distributed-database problem and the funding problem.
what if those aren’t the problem
let’s go deeper
In a blog post published in October 2017, Fred Wilson, a founder of Union Square Ventures and an early advocate of the blockchain revolution, thundered against the spread of I.C.O.s. “I hate it,” Wilson wrote, adding that most I.C.O.s “are scams.
How would a distributed ledger and a token economy somehow challenge one of the tech giants? One of Fred Wilson’s partners at Union Square Ventures, Brad Burnham, suggests a scenario revolving around another tech giant that has run afoul of regulators and public opinion in the last year: Uber. “Uber is basically just *a coordination platform between drivers and passengers,” ..t ..Burnham says.
imagine *a coordination platform between people and people/tribe via daily curiosities
The blockchain world proposes something different. Imagine some group like Protocol Labs decides there’s a case to be made for adding another “basic layer” to the stack. Just as GPS gave us a way of discovering and sharing our location, this new protocol would define a simple request: *I am here and would like to go there. . t
imagine.. *i am curious about ___ .. and bc/mech connects us to local people curious about the same
The true test of the blockchain will revolve — like so many of the online crises of the past few years — around the problem of identity.
what if the problem is solved when we let go of id.. ie: only label.. what are you curious about today..
So much of the blockchain’s architecture is shaped by predictions about how that architecture might be abused once it finds a wider audience. That is part of its charm and its power. ..Its rules are designed with one eye on how those rules might be exploited down the line. t
next day tweet:
Steven Johnson (@stevenbjohnson) tweeted at 7:15 AM – 19 Jan 2018 :
That’s it, I will never need another blurb for any of my books again. Thank you, sir. https://t.co/6Xgku0Swcj (http://twitter.com/stevenbjohnson/status/954356707542659072?s=17)
What if i tell you *he lays out a fairly convincing complex case that blockchain infrastructure is the only hope to undermine monopoly capitalism’s control of our identities, and also it reads like cormac mccarthy hosting a podcast with adorno, einstein & the kid from war games
*if only he had
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via ahmed rt
Luma Shihabeldin (@ThinkDesignLuma) tweeted at 12:30 AM – 23 Mar 2018 :
The challenges of blockchain (and it’s transparency);
“This vast trove of data is irrevocably tainted with unremovable links to illegal child pornography, which are inevitably distributed among and by all users of the currency.” #bitcoin #blockchain https://t.co/dNWGq2ytdh (http://twitter.com/ThinkDesignLuma/status/977070066012512256?s=17)
An analysis of the Bitcoin blockchain – the publicly accessible ledger of transactions upon which the system is built – has revealed this vast trove of data is irrevocably tainted with unremovable links to illegal child pornography, which are inevitably distributed among and by all users of the currency.
The discovery of this – in addition to other questionable and possibly outlawed content stored within the blockchain – hypothetically makes Bitcoin ownership illegal in almost every country that has laws against the possession and distribution of images of child abuse.
“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based [system] as soon as it contains illegal content.”
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(only skimmed the livestream)
Joseph Lubin (@ethereumJoseph) tweeted at 4:07 PM – 4 Jun 2018 :
Missed out on the Blockchain for Social Impact Conference last weekend in DC? You can now replay all ten jam-packed hours now. Compliments to @ethereum4impact and @PeaceTechLab for hosting such an empowering and impactful event. #BSIC18 https://t.co/kgG8hH6n3s(http://twitter.com/ethereumJoseph/status/1003760276116836353?s=17)
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Civic Blockchain (@CivicBlockchain) tweeted at 4:53 AM – 19 Aug 2018 :
Decentralization may well end up in reinforcing the development of an individualistic economy: by granting everyone freedom of speech and trade, thanks to its anti censorship nature, blockchain could further put the role of central authorities into question (http://twitter.com/CivicBlockchain/status/1031132105735122951?s=17)
imagining many of today’s time/energy consuming institutions/bureaucracies irrelevant.. if we focus on a means for everyone to be heard.. everyday
[freedom of speech does little if we can’t hear it]
let bc or whatever host/facil that
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Vinay Gupta (@leashless) tweeted at 6:17 AM – 20 Sep 2018 :
How do we make physical property as accessible as data? We’ve seen Airbnb and Uber make “fleet property” (@PeersInc) work, but only by creating new aristocrats.
All that value at the centre is economic friction on P2P transactions. This was the original blockchain promise. (http://twitter.com/leashless/status/1042749482922852352?s=17)
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posted by michel – all a quote from Trent MacDonald
RT @regen_network: Blockchains: the tool of the commons
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/mbauwens/status/1052367369149063168
What blockchain does is to shift the boundaries of an economy into a space previously occupied only by catallaxies. It does so by changing the level at which the rules of governance operate.. t.. Blockchain technologies are social technologies for whole new institutional forms of economies.
those two sentences are (in my mind) opposites.. ie: new forms (blockchain or whatever could offer us) have no rules of governance..
In essence, an economy is achieved through *rules of governance,..But now go one step further, and ask what needs to be true for that to be true, and you arrive at the genius of the blockchain. **The blockchain is the secure, verifiable, trustless (i.e. cryptographically secure) mechanism to record the actions upon the rules. t
*why?
**that might be better than what we have now.. but would be a huge waste of potential.. better to record cure ios city in order to connect us
The blockchain is doing what prices do in markets, what commands do in firms, and what laws do in governments. It is providing a clear and unambiguous public signal, as a coherent rule-system, to coordinate private action. That means that the blockchain is a technology for building new economies.
This is indeed a remarkable promise. And it is attractive as a foundation for social order, built on mathematical truth as verified, rather than political force as threatened.
mathematical..? verified..?
dang.
The new economics of the blockchain is that it is a new technology for making new economies. That’s less like the invention of steam or electricity, and more like the invention of private property or government..t
dang.. the opposite of what we need.. ie: h & n property law
let’s try tech for making connections
ie: augmenting interconnectedness
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Michel Bauwens (@mbauwens) tweeted at 7:01 AM – 18 Feb 2019 :
RECONSIDERING BLOCKCHAIN: IRI Paris, with Michel Bauwens https://t.co/kdBGGaFUPlhttps://t.co/7WiJjiHHYJ(http://twitter.com/mbauwens/status/1097496400139599872?s=17)Certification is a key issue in information systems ..t
what if it isn’t.. imagine that saved/repurposed energy
*How should the global dimension of Internet communication be combined with the needs of local communities within the context of open communication systems in a way that provides **clear rules for decision making and ***traceability of exchanges?
*ie: cure ios city
**listen to your gut
***quit measuring/tracing exchanges – rather archive/gather in order to connect .. ie: g hosting-life-bits
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from planetary survival
57
the main reason bitcoin and its blockchain are inefficient in terms of energy consumption is that every new transaction has to be validated by the whole network, leading to an exponential increase in the number of resources needed to maintain the system. holochain does this significantly different. it is technically not a blockchain, but simply a way for separate ledgers to cooperate and become interoperable w each other.. hence, holochain is infinitely scalable at marginal cost
holochain for hosting-life-bits – whatever
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be you. 