Lithopia / Lithopy: a design fiction nightmare of a blockchain+drone-powered transaction-based village economy

http://www.brokennature.org/lithopia-prototyping-blockchain-futures/


Lithopia: Prototyping Blockchain Futures

By  | July 4, 2019

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lithopy, curated by Denisa Kera and Petr Šourek along with a second project entitled Out of Power Tower, represents the Czech participation in the XXII Triennale di Milano, Broken Nature. The projects arise from a survey centered on the significant mineral resources of the Czech territory––in particular, lithium. Lithopy questions the practice of this mineral’s extraction and its use. The Czech pavilion was commissioned by the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague with the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.



Lithopia Design Fiction movie scene.

The Lithopia Project1 offers a design method for anticipatory governance7 of emerging blockchain and DLTs that goes against the current hype of anticipatory and frictionless design promises of full control over user decisions2,11. Instead of predicting user needs that ultimately serve one version of the (industry defined) future, anticipatory prototyping involves the users as stakeholders in the adoption of the emerging technology. It offers templates of blockchain services that present the future scenarios and dilemmas, which can be modified and iterated to support inclusive and democratic “future-making”14,15 that combines prototyping with deliberation.


The Lithopia prototyping templates consist of a dashboard featured on Figure 1 and a design fiction scenario (Figure 2 and 3). While the dashboard integrates the existing social and technical infrastructures (social institutions of marriage and property ownership on the ledger with data from satellites, Hyperledger Fabric REST API, and various open APIs), the design fiction presents exaggerated and artistically rendered use cases that hint at the potential (mis)uses. In this fictional village, some common gestures have unexpected meaning if caught by satellites, and the Lithopians are forced to invent bizarre strategies of hiding under umbrellas to escape their satellites and the blockchain. They also indulge in various techno-superstitions, such as horoscopes of satellite locations, which they use to interpret geopolitical events.


The scenarios are intentionally ambiguous and exaggerated to provoke creative uses of the Lithopia templates on the Github. In the Lithopia context “Sunny days are made for transactions. No clouds prevent satellites from keeping an eye on contracts being made and assets changing hands. People exchange goods, make payments, marry and divorce. All the hustle and bustle of sunny days is recorded by the decentralized digital ledger of the blockchain. Hugs are big and kisses are many to make sure satellites recognize and the blockchain records affection, love, and friendship. In Lithopia, all social contact is a smart contract.”8



Figure 1: Node-RED dashboard for Lithopians connecting various open APIs (Twitter, OpenWeather, and Sentinel2) with the REST API of the Hyperledger. On the dashboard you can follow the current position of the satellite, weather conditions for transactions, communicate with the blockchain (proposing a sale of property, marriage or partnership), follow cryptocurrency exchanges and Twitter sentiment analysis related to Lithium that help business decisions.

Anticipatory prototyping
The Lithopia project serves as an educational tool, but also a participatory probe to critically evaluate the promises of DLTs’ future, in which governance will merge with automation over smart contracts, and we will have a tool to control data tempering, fake news, or even AI simulations. The anticipatory prototypes explicitly connect design with ethical deliberation and policy negotiations by engaging the public directly in the design process rather than predicting user behavior and promising “anticipatory” design.
The prototypes utilize existing open source tools (Hyperledger Fabric and Composer for the blockchain contracts; Node-RED and various open APIs for the dashboard) to create templates on GitHub that support creative and exploratory uses of such technologies. The goal is to help the general public and various stakeholders to understand, experience, experiment with, and deliberate upon the future of blockchain and its integration with other existing technologies.

Blockchain governance and design
While the first decade of blockchain and DLTs was mainly on transactions between humans (Bitcoin blockchain and numerous crypto-alt-currency projects), we are entering a phase that emphasizes integration of these emerging technologies with existing infrastructures and corporate and institutional actors (Ethereum, Ripple, and Corda platforms and protocols) along increasing machine-to-machine transactions, including AI and IoT scenarios (IOTA). The original, libertarian, and crypto-anarchist emphasis on privacy and anonymity of the individuals is transforming into a pragmatic search for convergences of the DLTs with existing social, but also technological, infrastructures (satellites, IoT, banks, and supply chains)4,13 .

...


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The Lure of Whitehead; and Embodiment, Enaction, and Culture, MIT 2017

Two very different references:

The Lure of Whitehead,  Nicholas Gaskill (Editor), A. J. Nocek (Editor), 2014, Minnesota Press.

I think the Introduction  (as well as the rest of the volume) is full of insights pertinent to a lot of what we do — thinking-through-making and movement-as-thought:…   Attached is just the first few pages of the Introduction.

And in a different register”: Embodiment, enaction, and culture : investigating the constitution of the shared world 
Durt, Christoph, Fuchs, Thomas, Tewes, Christian (eds.), 2017, MIT Press.

It’s a contemporary summary of enactivism reaching out from phenomenology toward “culture” — characteristic of the “4E” work from Varela, Thompson onward.  But in light of work by Whitehead, Deleuze et al. please read the latter alert to lots of hidden abstractions — "fallacies of misplaced concreteness” -- with a grain of salt!

*“the expression of more concrete facts under the guise of very abstract logical constructions”



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Sha Xin Wei • skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
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Jakob von Uexküll: oak tree, sheer multiplicity, indeterminacy of subject as objects for other subjects

Jakob von Uexküll: oak tree, cited in D Foerster

…a subject can be a very different object to the perception of other subjects, as Uexküll describes with the example of an oak tree, being an environment for humans, beetles, foxes, birds, and so on:

In the hundred different environments of its inhabitants, the oak plays an ever- changing role as object, sometimes with some parts, sometimes with others. The same parts are alternately large and small. Its wood is both hard and soft; it serves for attack and for defense. If one wanted to summarize all the different characteristics shown by the oak as an object, this would only give rise to chaos. Yet these are only parts of a subject that is solidly put together in itself, which carries and shelters all environments – one which is never known by all the subjects of these environments and never knowable for them.*

Thereby, every organism forms, together with its surroundings, specific contexts of experience…

* Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans: With A Theory of Meaning. University of Minnesota Press ed. Posthumanities 12. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010, page 132.

Physics without determinism

Hi Emiddio,

The title seemed promising for OPG, but del Santo and Gisin resort to hiding subjectivity inside information theoretic abstractions: e.g. with these definitions:

propensity quantifies the tendency or disposition of the jth binary digit to take the value 1.

finite-information quantity (FIQ) is an ordered list of propensities {q1,q2,··· ,qj,···}, that satisfies:
1. (necessary condition): The information content is finite, i.e. ∑j Ij < ∞, where Ij = 1−H(qj) is the information content

of the propensity, and H is the binary entropy function of its argument. This ensures that the information content of FIQs is bounded from above;
2. (sufficient condition): After a certain threshold, all the bits are completely random, i.e. ∃M(t) ∈ N such that qj=1, ∀j>M(t)

I think del Santo and Gisin are merely addressing a symptom, not getting at the heart of the matter, as do Whitehead, Deleuze and Guattari, David Morris, Noah Brender, Mike Epperson in their quite diverse work.  I do not mean to conform these friends by naming them in one sentence. :)

Physics without determinism: Alternative interpretations of classical physics
Flavio Del Santo and Nicolas Gisin
Phys. Rev. A 100, 062107 – Published 5 December 2019


Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged determinism of classical physics relies on the tacit, metaphysical assumption that there exists an actual value of every physical quantity, with its infinite predetermined digits (which we name principle of infinite precision). Building on recent information-theoretic arguments showing that the principle of infinite precision (which translates into the attribution of a physical meaning to mathematical real numbers) leads to unphysical consequences, we consider possible alternative indeterministic interpretations of classical physics. We also link those to well-known interpretations of quantum mechanics. In particular, we propose a model of classical indeterminism based on finite information quantities (FIQs). Moreover, we discuss the perspectives that an indeterministic physics could open (such as strong emergence), as well as some potential problematic issues. Finally, we make evident that any indeterministic interpretation of physics would have to deal with the problem of explaining how the indeterminate values become determinate, a problem known in the context of quantum mechanics as (part of) the “quantum measurement problem”. We discuss some similarities between the classical and the quantum measurement problems, and propose ideas for possible solutions (e.g., “collapse models” and “top-down causation”).

fields

Quantum Fields: The Real Building Blocks of the Universe - with David Tong

The very best theories we have tell us that the fundamental building blocks of nature are not particles, …but … fluid-like substances which are spread throughout the entire universe and ripple in strange and interesting ways.  That’s the fundamental [physical] reality in which we live. … We call them fields.


Angela Walch, The Bitcoin Blockchain as Financial Market Infrastructure: A Consideration of Operational Risk

For another “AI”
and governance issue.

Walch’s argument can be retargetted as a problematization of 
the present financial system itself, and of any infrastructure software technology...



Abstract:

Blockchain” is the word on the street these days, with every signifi- cant financial institution, from Goldman Sachs to NASDAQ, experimenting with this new technology. Many say that this remarkable innovation could radically transform our financial system, eliminating the costs and inefficiencies that plague our existing financial infrastructures, such as payment, settlement, and clearing systems. Venture capital investments are pouring into blockchain startups, which are scrambling to disrupt the “quadrillion”- dollar markets represented by existing financial market infrastructures. A debate rages over whether public, “permissionless” blockchains (like Bitcoin’s) or private, “permissioned” blockchains (like those being de- signed at many large banks) are more desirable.

Amidst this flurry of innovation and investment, this Article inquires into the suitability of the Bitcoin blockchain to serve as the backbone of financial market infrastructure, and evaluates whether it is robust enough to serve as the foundation of major payment, settlement, clearing, or trading systems.

Positing a scenario in which the Bitcoin blockchain does serve as the technology enabling significant financial market infrastructures, this Article highlights the vital importance of functioning financial market infrastructure to global financial stability, and describes relevant principles that global financial regulators have adopted to help maintain this stability, focusing particularly on governance, risk management, and operational risk.

The Article then moves to explicate the operational risks generated by the most fundamental features of Bitcoin: its status as decentralized, open- source software. Illuminating the inevitable operational risks of software, such as its vulnerability to bugs and hacking (as well as Bitcoin’s unique “51% Attack” vulnerability), uneven adoption of new releases, and its opaque nature to all except coders, the Article argues that these technology risks are exacerbated by the governance risks generated by Bitcoin’s ambiguous governance structure. The Article then teases out the operational risks spawned by decentralized, open-source governance, including that no one is responsible for resolving a crisis with the software; no one can legitimately serve as “the voice” of the software; code maintenance and repair may be delayed or imperfect because not enough time is devoted to the code by volunteer software developers (or, if the coders are paid by private com- panies, the code development may be influenced by conflicts of interest); consensus on important changes to the code may be difficult or impossible to achieve, leading to splits in the blockchain; and the software developers who “run” the Bitcoin blockchain seem to have backgrounds in software coding rather than in policy-making or risk management for financial mar- ket infrastructure.

The Article concludes that these operational risks, generated by Bitcoin’s most fundamental, presumably inalterable, structures, strongly undermine the Bitcoin blockchain’s suitability to serve as financial market infrastructure.

backup | archive strategy (thanks SuperDuper)

backup | archive strategy which may be generally useful  (from SuperDuper)
Time to cycle out our off-site drive?

Introduction

First, a little of the background and philosophy behind SuperDuper!

Backing up is one of those things that never seems important until something goes horribly wrong, and things never go horribly wrong until the worst possible moment. Many backup programs do too much for the “normal” user: rather than making it easy and faster to get their data backed up, they overcomplicate the process to the point of frustration.

That complexity can alienate and confuse users, and a proprietary, single- vendor format leaves them without an alternative should a problem arise. We think it’s important that any solution be easy to understand, usable, and not have any “lock in”.

Staying Balanced

So, to determine whether that complexity is worth adding, it’s important to ask: when do most people need to restore? In general, we’ve found that “regular users” (and by that, I mean real “end users” like yourself) need to use their backups when:

  • They’ve made a “bad mistake”, like accidentally deleting an important file, or overwriting one (this kind of mistake is almost always recognized immediately)

  • Their drive (or computer) fails catastrophically, requiring a full restore

  • They sent their computer in for service, and it came back wiped clean

  • An application they installed, or a system update, caused their system

    to become unusable/unstable

    None of these situations require much other than a high-quality, up-to-date, full copy backup. (The last has a better solution than a backup – a “Sandbox” – which we offer in SuperDuper! as well.)

    Covering the 99% Case

    Given that, it’s pretty easy to see that most end users don’t need to retrieve a two-year-old (or even six-month old) version of a file from a backup. (An archive is a different thing: I’m talking about backups.) It’s just not that common a case. Developers, on the other hand, do need older versions of files, but they should be using a version control system: something a backup should absolutely not be.

    But, it is possible that a user won’t notice a problem in a “bad file” until they’ve already overwritten their backup, thus losing any chance of recovery with a “full copy”. While this is a problem for some, we have a good solution: rotate more than one full backup.

3

Any need for this kind of “temporal rollback” can be significantly reduced with a single rotation – say, on a weekly basis – and nearly eliminated with two, a weekly and a monthly. It’s incredibly rare that, on a non-archival basis, you’d need to go back more than four weeks.

Simple to Understand

The advantages to this kind of approach are many, not the least of which is that a non-technical user can easily understand what’s going on. It’s incredible how many people are confused by conventional backup terminology – “incremental”, “differential”, backups “sets” and the like. And, complicated storage mechanisms require a significant amount of expertise to perform a full recovery in the event of that all-too-common disaster: the total drive failure.

Simple to Restore

With SuperDuper!, recovery in that situation is literally a matter of booting from your most recent backup. And restoration – which, should you be on deadline, you need not do immediately – is just a matter of replacing the drive and copying back.

Individual files are also easy to restore: just drag and drop from the backup. (Yes, applications without drag-and-drop install, or system-level files, are harder, but can typically be reinstalled/archive-and-installed should that be necessary... or, see the Sandbox for another rather unique idea...)

Use It or Lose It

SuperDuper!’s approach is the kind of thing that regular end users like yourself can do, and feel confident about.

We know your time is valuable, and that a backup isn’t useful unless it’s recent and includes the files you expect. We’ve made the process of backing up extremely simple, and – with Smart Update – we’ve also made it fast and efficient. 



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Sha Xin Wei • skype: shaxinwei • mobile: +1-650-815-9962
Professor + Director  School of Arts, Media and Engineering  Synthesis • Topological Media Lab
CALENDAR • TEDx I-We-World • Synthesis 2019 Research-Creation
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