“The most effective method to forecast the future is to create it.” Alan Kay
January 3rd 2009 signifies the dawn of a new age. The creation of the blockchain is a pivotal moment in technology — the sequence of symbols 36PrZ1KHYMpqSyAQXSG8VwbUiq2EogxLo2 being merelyone of the ramifications instigated by it. Owing to you and this innovation, over thirty-one thousand bitcoins will contribute to the birth of an entirely new digital universe. The unrestrained peer-to-peer global financial framework is unfolding. You enable this potential.
More than 5000 years prior, the earliest economic structures were established in Mesopotamia, laying the groundwork for contemporary civilization. The term Mesopotamia has its roots in ancient Greek, meaning “[land] between the rivers.” As a society, one of their most significant accomplishments was the creation of the so-called cuneiform script. This marked the onset of the information revolution within human society.
In contrast to Ethereum coding, this innovation involved wedge-shaped imprints on clay tablets, produced using a blunt reed. Although this may sound primitive today, this creation birthed concepts and solutions previously unknown in various domains such as accounting and legal agreements. The introduction of this new approach for storing and sharing information and resources transformed Mesopotamia into one of the largest and most prosperous societies of its time.
The unintended consequences of this invention have contributed to our present-day information age society. Before arriving at our modern information systems, our civilization experienced three significant recent information revolutions:
- Printing press
- Telecommunications
- Internet
Evidence of these information revolutions can be observed everywhere from healthcare to manufacturing sectors, all indicating a decentralized, interconnected future.
Presently, the crypto information revolution is in progress. The centralized economy model created by society millennia ago was a successful social experiment that ultimately led humanity to this point, but we have now reached a stage where we can cross the river. The technologies currently available give us a new sophisticated toolkit for distributing and storing both data and assets… at lightning speed.
This is the crypto renaissance in full motion.
the (collaborative) information age
“When you examine history, innovation doesn’t stem solely from incentivizing people; it arises from cultivating environments where their ideas can intersect.” Steven Johnson
Around the 14th century, the second substantial information revolution was emerging due to Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press. Unlike its forerunners, this innovation featured movable type fonts that enabled efficient and cost-effective print production. By expanding the reach of information dissemination more broadly than ever, this innovation nurtured a new culture that provided fresh opportunities for intellectual and social advancement.
It seems that each time a novel information technology is introduced, a series of patterns begin to arise. As a thought experiment, if we were to overlay today’s technological renaissance with the 14th-17th century renaissance, we would notice the following:
- Introduced a new approach to storing and sharing information in society
- Era characterized by significant technical advancements allowing quicker idea propagation
- Stimulated experimentation and a renewal of intellectualism
- Initiated paradigm shifts enhancing our understanding of the world, ourselves, and the universe
- Resulted in societal, political, and economic transformations
By drawing parallels, we can observe how information technologies facilitate positive development within society since the times of Mesopotamia. They advance progress in most domains by establishing accessible platforms for information, which leads to a participatory culture with fewer or no societal limitations.
During the 20th and 21st centuries, humanity as a collective has progressed tremendously. The first major step toward establishing a new medium for information that propelled our society into the information age was the creation of the microchip. This innovation enabled general computing. Subsequently, the Internet emerged as a global system of interconnected computer networks that utilize a standard protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices around the world.
Today, the Internet serves as an international mesh network connecting over two billion individuals, facilitating the unrestricted flow of information, wealth, and services across borders. This has set the foundation for an explosion of fascinating new ideas to take shape.
The waves generated by this information revolution resonate throughout the structure of our society as torrents of bits eroding the foundations of a centralized paradigm. The Internet represents one of the most powerful social experiments ever devised.
From a collaborative standpoint, the Internet and technology in general have become a catalyst for creation, dramatically elevating our collaborative capabilities. Additionally, the costs associated with coordination and collaboration have been significantly reduced by making all participants with internet access universally available and interconnected.
This has empowered us as humans to surpass limitations of time and space — keystroke by keystroke.
emerging patterns: free culture and open movements“`html
“In genuine open source, you possess the authority to steer your own future.” Linus Torvalds
Commencing in the 1970s, the initial manifestation of the free software cultural movement was sparked by Richard Stallman and his associates through their endeavors addressing access and propagation of information in this novel technological domain.
As principles of digital freedom culture permeated this new information landscape, the quantity of free software initiatives proliferated and diversified, ranging from encryption algorithms to operating systems to blockchain technologies.
Numerous established thinkers on innovation were unable to foresee the rise of a distributed and open model for innovation that could robustly compete with conventionally closed and proprietary models. Reflecting back, who could have anticipated that flocks of online individuals acting without financial motivation would construct, through distributed ad-hoc processes, the most extensive encyclopedic knowledge repository in human history, or emerge as one of Microsoft’s most formidable rivals?
In this context, open source can be regarded as a form of collaboration in itself, being part of a broader framework: open collaboration. As per Wikipedia, open collaboration is characterized as “any innovation or production system that depends on goal-directed yet loosely organized participants, who interact to create a product (or service) of economic significance, which they offer to both contributors and non-contributors”.
Open collaboration manifests as a recurring theme in numerous domains of our lives and signifies one of the fundamental principles behind several remarkable accomplishments on the Internet.
Wikipedia and Linux serve as exemplary instances of open cultures of knowledge progressing, edit by edit. Their existence symbolizes the collaborative strength of loosely affiliated groups, challenging and surpassing centralized frameworks.
The allure of open source continues to captivate numerous economists, sociologists, researchers, and many others due to its collaborative capacity to challenge economic doctrines grounded in top-down closed-control paradigms. These communities flourish owing to decentralized problem solving, self-driven participation, and self-organization resulting in open collaboration. The emergence of these organizational structures and the vast numbers of participants, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, raised questions regarding motivation: “What drives these individuals to work and engage for ‘free’?”
The prevalent perception of purely self-serving participants is evidently insufficient when many engage with no expectation of a direct financial incentive for their contributions. If writing code, designing decentralized software frameworks, and tackling challenging cryptographic issues are perceived by outsiders to be unremunerated blood, sweat, and tears, the contributors themselves are more inclined to assert that the endeavor is a source of profound satisfaction derived from the pure pleasure of involvement in the work, the group, or both.
The solution appears to reside in a more expansive perspective of ourselves as human beings that recognizes, in addition to economic incentives, themes of enjoyment and social connectivity alongside the identity and communal advantages. Challenge, enjoyment, and creativity are defining features of engagement in this framework.
Through their actions and efforts, these open source communities unveil macro homo reciprocan patterns. These patterns are significant because they can provide insights into the workings of these systems or, more precisely in this case, “how do we operate this way and what can we glean from it”.
When you begin to entertain the notion that our species may indeed be collaborative rather than competitive, you confront numerous beliefs deeply entrenched in our current society and worldview.
The prevailing globally accepted assumption is that our species appears to consist of self-serving individuals homo economicus, however this concept is contested by billions of lines of active code and millions of individuals collaborating without compensation.
ethereum project as a distributed innovation network
“If you genuinely wish to innovate, it appears that decentralization fosters experimentation. You want to find out what is effective and what isn’t.” Nicholas Bloom
Open source communities embody the most radical forefront of transparency and sharing observed thus far in complex technology advancement. The ethos of sharing and modification extends beyond mere code to the actual process of technology creation in that community members engage in collaborative problem solving through open exchange of ideas and sustained interaction. We can observe this behavior in our etherean community as well, with individuals gathering around shared interests and values.
Embracing a monolithic organizational structure was evidently not the best approach for this initiative as traditional centralized organizations typically move and adapt, if at all, at a glacial pace compared to these nimble swarms of individuals.
Thus began our quest for a decentralized organizational model, which fosters favorable conditions for innovation and experimentation. The core concepts behind distributed innovation appeared most aligned with our requirements.
Distributed innovation systems are crafted from the outset to reduce the cost of participation for contributors. Why
“`is that significant? Firstly, because fostering development at the peripheries has always been a key concept for us. Secondly, by lowering or removing obstacles to entry, you enlarge the demographic that can voluntarily integrate into the community.
The diagram above illustrates the framework of the project within the context of multiple independent entities collaborating on various initiatives. In the collaborative process, experimentation and joint experimentation are promoted, ideally triggering a surge of technologies and innovations that can be broadly regarded as beneficial for the world.
This cultivates a unique ecosystem for knowledge generation and presents both hurdles and prospects. On the positive side, it aligns with the DAO framework that we aim to implement shortly. Conversely, the experiment itself may not yield favorable results. In a genuinely open-source manner, feedback, suggestions, and enhancements are encouraged.
To conclude, numerous sectors and institutions that are deeply integrated into our society will likely experience considerable transformations in the coming years. It is probable that we will also face significant adjustments, but if anything, when considering the broader landscape, it seems that humanity’s ability for self-reinvention is the only constant throughout our history.
almost nothing has been created yet
shift could lead one to perceive the same information in an entirely distinct manner.
Man on the Train: Hey, are you a visionary?
The Visionary: Yeah.
Man on the Train: Haven’t encountered too many of you recently. Times have been difficult for visionaries. They claim that dreaming is obsolete, that no one does it anymore. It’s not obsolete; it’s merely been neglected, stripped from our vocabulary. No one teaches it, so no one recognizes it exists. Thus, the visionary is condemned to invisibility. Well, I’m attempting to alter that, and I hope you are too. By envisioning, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is confronting the most significant challenges it has ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don’t be apathetic. This is undoubtedly the most thrilling moment we could have ever wished to experience. And things are just beginning.
“Everything that can be invented has been invented” is a statement attributed to former U.S. Patent Office Director, Charles H. Duell. Allegedly, this was expressed in the 18th century when the traditional path to innovation was cloaked in secrecy and focused on the accumulation of patents and intellectual property.
Presently, owing to innumerable open innovations, we seem (very) far from having invented everything. We are merely beginning to explore – the more we create, the more others can build upon those concepts. We are standing on the shoulders of increasingly taller giants accelerating in their development.
Simultaneously, during this phase of rapid acceleration, it is becoming much clearer that for us to endure as a species, we must learn to collaborate together. The era of divide and conquer is drawing to a close. The era of unity and empowerment is illuminating its path through millions of open minds co-creating the next societal operating system.
We learned from the initial renaissance that technology facilitates constructive growth within society, through accessible channels of information stimulating a participatory culture free of social constraints. The Internet provided humanity with a global renaissance café where individuals with diverse skills and fields of knowledge can encounter each other and share ideas.
Blockchain technologies now present us with a new medium for information preservation and dissemination. A fractal of opportunities is unfolding before our minds. The technology, knowledge, and worldwide community support necessary to transcend centuries-old paradigms, moving closer to a liberated, open, and non-proprietary world, are now accessible.
This is truly the most thrilling moment we could have ever aspired to be alive.
And things are just beginning.
