reality as an integrated hierarchy of organizations
of matter and energy
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James Grier Miller, Living Systems (1978) - 0 views
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General living systems theory is concerned with a special subset of all systems, the living ones
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a space is a set of elements which conform to certain postulate
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s. Euclidean space
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metric space
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topological space
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Physical space is the extension surrounding a point
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My presentation of a general theory of living systems will employ two sorts of spaces in which they may exist, physical or geographical space and conceptual or abstracted spaces
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Physical or geographical space
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Euclidean space
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distance
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moving
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maximum speed
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objects moving in such space cannot pass through one another
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friction
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The characteristics and constraints of physical space affect the action of all concrete systems, living and nonliving.
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information can flow worldwide almost instantly
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Physical space is a common space
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Most people learn that physical space exists, which is not true of many spaces
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They can give the location of objects in it
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Conceptual or abstracted spaces
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Peck order
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Social class space
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Social distance
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Political distance
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life space
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semantic space
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Sociometric space
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A space of time costs of various modes of transportation
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space of frequency of trade relations among nations.
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A space of frequency of intermarriage among ethnic groups.
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These conceptual and abstracted spaces do not have the same characteristics and are not subject to the same constraints as physical space
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Social and some biological scientists find conceptual or abstracted spaces useful because they recognize that physical space is not a major determinant of certain processes in the living systems they study
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interpersonal relations
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one cannot measure comparable processes at different levels of systems, to confirm or disconfirm cross-level hypotheses, unless one can measure different levels of systems or dimensions in the same spaces or in different spaces with known transformations among them
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It must be possible, moreover, to make such measurements precisely enough to demonstrate whether or not there is a formal identity across levels
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fundamental "fourth dimension" of the physical space-time continuum
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is the particular instant at which a structure exists or a process occurs
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or the measured or measurable period over which a structure endures or a process continues.
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durations
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speeds
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rates
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accelerations
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irreversible unidirectionality of time
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thermodynamics
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negentropy
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"time's arrow."
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Matter and energy
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Matter is anything which has mass (m) and occupies physical space.
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Energy (E) is defined in physics as the ability to do work.
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kinetic energy
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potential energy
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rest mass energy
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Mass and energy are equivalent
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Living systems need specific types of matter-energy in adequate amounts
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Energy for the processes of living systems is derived from the breakdown of molecules
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Any change of state of matter-energy or its movement over space, from one point to another, I shall call action.
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It is one form of process.
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information (H)
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Transmission of Information
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Meaning is the significance of information to a system which processes it: it constitutes a change in that system's processes elicited by the information, often resulting from associations made to it on previous experience with it
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Information is a simpler concept: the degrees of freedom that exist in a given situation to choose among signals, symbols, messages, or patterns to be transmitted.
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The set of all these possible categories (the alphabet) is called the ensemble or repertoire
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.) The unit is the binary digit, or bit of information
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. The amount of information is measured as the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of alternate patterns
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Signals convey information to the receiving system only if they do not duplicate information already in the receiver. As Gabor says:
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[The information of a message can] be defined as the 'minimum number of binary decisions which enable the receiver to construct the message, on the basis of the data already available to him.'
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meaning cannot be precisely measured
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Information is the negative of uncertainty.
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information is the amount of formal patterning or complexity in any system.
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The term marker was used by von Neumann to refer to those observable bundles, units, or changes of matter-energy whose patterning bears or conveys the informational symbols from the ensemble or repertoire.
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If a marker can assume n different states of which only one is present at any given time, it can represent at most log2n bits of information. The marker may be static, as in a book or in a computer's memory
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Communication of almost every sort requires that the marker move in space, from the transmitting system to the receiving system, and this movement follows the same physical laws as the movement of any other sort of matter-energy. The advance of communication technology over the years has been in the direction of decreasing the matter-energy costs of storing and transmitting the markers which bear information.
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There are, therefore, important practical matter-energy constraints upon the information processing of all living systems exerted by the nature of the matter-energy which composes their markers.
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organization is based upon the interrelations among parts.
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If two parts are interrelated either quantitatively or qualitatively, knowledge of the state of one must yield some information about the state of the other. Information measures can demonstrate when such relationships exist
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The disorder, disorganization, lack of patterning, or randomness of organization of a system is known as its entropy (S)
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the statistical measure for the negative of entropy is the same as that for information
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entropy becomes a measure of the probability
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Increase of entropy was thus interpreted as the passage of a system from less probable to more probable states.
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according to the second law, a system tends to increase in entropy over time, it must tend to decrease in negentropy or information.
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therefore no principle of the conservation of information
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The total information can be decreased in any system without increasing it elsewhere
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but it cannot be increased without decreasing it elsewhere
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. Making one or more copies of a given informational pattern does not increase information overall, though it may increase the information in the system which receives the copied information.
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transforms information into negative entropy
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smallest possible amount of energy used in observing one bit of information
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calculations of the amount of information accumulated by living systems throughout growth.
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the concept of Prigogine that in an open system (that is one in which both matter and energy can be exchanged with the environment) the rate of entropy production within the system, which is always positive, is minimized when the system is in a steady state.
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in systems with internal feedbacks, internal entropy production is not always minimized when the system is in a stationary state. In other words, feedback couplings between the system parameters may cause marked changes in the rate of development of entropy. Thus it may be concluded that the "information flow" which is essential for this feedback markedly alters energy utilization and the rate of development of entropy, at least in some such special cases which involve feedback control. While the explanation of this is not clear, it suggests an important relationship between information and entropy
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amount of energy actually required to transmit the information in the channel is a minute part of the total energy in the system, the "housekeeping energy" being by far the largest part of it
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In recent years systems theorists have been fascinated by the new ways to study and measure information flows, but matter-energy flows are equally important. Systems theory is more than information theory, since it must also deal with energetics - such matters as
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the flow of raw materials through societies
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Only a minute fraction of the energy used by most living systems is employed for information processing
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I have noted above that the movement of matter-energy over space, action, is one form of process. Another form of process is information processing or communication, which is the change of information from one state to another or its movement from one point to another over space
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Communications, while being processed, are often shifted from one matter-energy state to another, from one sort of marker to another
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transformations go on in living systems
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One basic reason why communication is of fundamental importance is that informational patterns can be processed over space and the local matter-energy at the receiving point can be organized to conform to, or comply with, this information
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the delivery of "flowers by telegraph."
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Matter-energy and information always flow together
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Information is always borne on a marker
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. Conversely there is no regular movement in a system unless there is a difference in potential between two points, which is negative entropy or information
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If the receiver responds primarily to the material or energic aspect, I shall call it, for brevity, a matter-energy transmission; if the response is primarily to the information, I shall call it an information transmission
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Moreover, just as living systems must have specific forms of matter-energy, so they must have specific patterns of information
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example
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example
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develop normally
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have appropriate information inputs in infancy
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pairs of antonyms
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one member of which is associated with the concept of information (H)
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the other member of which is associated with its negative, entropy (S)
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System
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A system is a set of interacting units with relationships among them
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.The word "set" implies that the units have some common properties. These common properties are essential if the units are to interact or have relationships. The state of each unit is constrained by, conditioned by, or dependent on the state of other units. The units are coupled. Moreover, there is at least one measure of the sum of its units which is larger than the sum of that measure of its units.
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Conceptual system
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Units
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terms
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Relationships
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a set of pairs of units, each pair being ordered in a similar way
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expressed by words
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or by logical or mathematical symbols
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operations
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The conceptual systems of science
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observer
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selects
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particular sets to study
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Variable
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Each member of such a set becomes a variable of the observer's conceptual system
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conceptual system may be loose or precise, simple or elaborate
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Indicator
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an instrument or technique used to measure fluctuations of variables in concrete systems
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Function
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a correspondence between two variables, x and y, such that for each value of x there is a definite value of y, and no two y's have the same x, and this correspondence is: determined by some rule
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Any function is a simple conceptual system
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Parameter
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An independent variable through functions of which other functions may be expressed
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The state of a conceptual system
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the set of values on some scale, numerical or otherwise, which its variables have at a given instant
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Formal identity
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variables
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varies comparably to a variable in another system
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If these comparable variations are so similar that they can be expressed by the same function, a formal identity exists between the two systems
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Relationships between conceptual and other sorts of systems
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Science advances as the formal identity or isomorphism increases between a theoretical conceptual system and objective findings about concrete or abstracted systems
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A conceptual system may be purely logical or mathematical, or its terms and relationships may be intended to have some sort of formal identity or isomorphism with units and relationships empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer
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Concrete system
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a nonrandom accumulation of matter-energy, in a region in physical space-time, which is organized into interacting interrelated subsystems or components.
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Units
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are also concrete systems
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Relationships
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spatial
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temporal
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spatiotemporal
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causal
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Both units and relationships in concrete systems are empirically determinable by some operation carried out by an observer
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patterns of relationships or processes
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The observer of a concrete system
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distinguishes a concrete system from unorganized entities in its environment by the following criteria
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physical proximity of its units
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similarity of its units
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common fate of its units
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distinct or recognizable patterning of its units.
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Their boundaries are discovered by empirical operations available to the general scientific community rather than set conceptually by a single observer
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Variable of a concrete system
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Any property of a unit or relationship within a system which can be recognized by an observer
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which can potentially change over time, and whose change can potentially be measured by specific operations, is a variable of a concrete system
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Examples
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number of its subsystems or components, its size, its rate of movement in space, its rate of growth, the number of bits of information it can process per second, or the intensity of a sound to which it responds
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A variable is intrasystemic
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not to be confused with intersystemic variations which may be observed among individual systems, types, or levels.
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The state of a concrete system
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its structure
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represented by the set of values on some scale which its variables have at that instant
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Open system
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Most concrete systems have boundaries which are at least partially permeable, permitting sizable magnitudes of at least certain sorts of matter-energy or information transmissions to pass them. Such a system is an open system. In open systems entropy may increase, remain in steady state, or decrease.
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Closed system
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impermeable boundaries through which no matter-energy or information transmissions of any sort can occur is a closed system
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special case
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No actual concrete system is completely closed
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In closed systems, entropy generally increases, exceptions being when certain reversible processes are carried on which do not increase it. It can never decrease.
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Nonliving system
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the general case of concrete systems, of which living systems are a very special case. Nonliving systems need not have the same critical subsystems as living systems, though they often have some of them
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Living system
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a special subset of the set of all possible concrete systems
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They all have the following characteristics:
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open systems
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inputs
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throughputs
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outputs
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of various sorts of matter-energy and information.
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maintain a steady state of negentropy even though entropic changes occur in them as they do everywhere else
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by taking in inputs
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higher in complexity or organization or negentropy
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than their outputs
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The difference permits them to restore their own energy and repair breakdowns in their own organized structure.
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In living systems many substances are produced as well as broken down
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To do this such systems must be open and have continual inputs of matter-energy and information
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entropy will always increase in walled-off living systems
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They have more than a certain minimum degree of complexity
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They either contain genetic material composed of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
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or have a charter
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blueprint
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program
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of their structure and process from the moment of their origin
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may also include nonliving components.
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They have a decider, the essential critical sub-system which controls the entire system, causing its subsystems and components to interact. Without such interaction under decider control there is no system.
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other specific critical sub-systems or they have symbiotic or parasitic relationships with other living or nonliving systems
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Their subsystems are integrated together to form actively self-regulating, developing, unitary systems with purposes and goals
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They can exist only in a certain environment
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change in their environment
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produces stresses
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Totipotential system
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capable of carrying out all critical subsystem processes necessary for life is totipotential
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Partipotential system
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does not itself carry out all critical subsystem processes is partipotential
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A partipotential system must interact with other systems that can carry out the processes which it does not, or it will not survive
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parasitic
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symbiotic
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Fully functioning system
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when it
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Partially functioning system
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it must do its own deciding, or it is not a system
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Abstracted system
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Units
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relationships abstracted or selected by an observer in the light of his interests, theoretical viewpoint, or philosophical bias.
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Some relationships may be empirically determinable by some operation carried out by the observer, but others are not, being only his concepts
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Relationships
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The relationships mentioned above are observed to inhere and interact in concrete, usually living, systems
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these concrete systems are the relationships of abstracted systems.
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The verbal usages of theoretical statements concerning abstracted systems are often the reverse of those concerning concrete systems
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An abstracted system differs from an abstraction, which is a concept
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representing a class of phenomena all of which are considered to have some similar "class characteristic." The members of such a class are not thought to interact or be interrelated, as are the relationships in an abstracted system
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Abstracted systems are much more common in social science theory than in natural science.
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are oriented toward relationships rather than toward the concrete systems
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spatial arrangements are not usually emphasized
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their physical limits often do not coincide spatially with the boundaries of any concrete system, although they may.
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important difference between the physical and biological hierarchies, on the one hand, and social hierarchies, on the other
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Most physical and biological hierarchies are described in spatial terms
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we propose to identify social hierarchies not by observing who lives close to whom but by observing who interacts with whom
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intensity of interaction
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in most biological and physical systems relatively intense interaction implies relative spatial propinquity
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To the extent that interactions are channeled through specialized communications and transportation systems, spatial propinquity becomes less determinative of structure.
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This is the case of SENSORICA, built on web-based communication and coordination tools.
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PARSONS
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the unit of a partial social system is a role and not the individual.
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culture
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cumulative body of knowledge of the past, contained in memories and assumptions of people who express this knowledge in definite ways
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The social system is the actual habitual network of communication between people.
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RUESCH
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A social system is a behavioral system
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It is an organized set of behaviors of persons interacting with each other: a pattern of roles.
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The roles are the units of a social system
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On the other hand, the society is an aggregate of social subsystems, and as a limiting case it is that social system which comprises all the roles of all the individuals who participate.
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What Ruesch calls the social system is something concrete in space-time, observable and presumably measurable by techniques like those of natural science
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To Parsons the system is abstracted from this, being the set of relationships which are the form of organization. To him the important units are classes of input-output relationships of subsystems rather than the subsystems themselves
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system is a system of relationship in action, it is neither a physical organism nor an object of physical perception
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evolution
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differentiation
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growth
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from earlier and simpler forms and functions
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capacities for specializations and gradients
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[action] is not concerned with the internal structure of processes of the organism, but is concerned with the organism as a unit in a set of relationships and the other terms of that relationship, which he calls situation
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Abstracted versus concrete systems
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One fundamental distinction between abstracted and concrete systems is that the boundaries of abstracted systems may at times be conceptually established at regions which cut through the units and relationships in the physical space occupied by concrete systems, but the boundaries of these latter systems are always set at regions which include within them all the units and internal relationships of each system
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A science of abstracted systems certainly is possible and under some conditions may be useful.
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If the diverse fields of science are to be unified, it would be helpful if all disciplines were oriented either to concrete or to abstracted systems.
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It is of paramount importance for scientists to distinguish clearly between them
99More
Beyond Blockchain: Simple Scalable Cryptocurrencies - The World of Deep Wealth - Medium - 0 views
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I clarify the core elements of cryptocurrency and outline a different approach to designing such currencies rooted in biomimicry
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This post outlines a completely different strategy for implementing cryptocurrencies with completely distributed chains
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Rather than trying to make one global, anonymous, digital cash
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we are interested in the resilience that comes from building a rich ecosystem of interoperable currencies
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What are the core elements of a modern cryptocurrency?
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Digital
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Holdings are electronic and only exist and operate by virtue of a community’s agreement about how to interpret digital bits according to rules about operation and accounting of the currency.
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Trustless
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don’t have to trust a 3rd party central authority
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Decentralized
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Specifically, access, issuance, transaction accounting, rules & policies, should be collectively visible, known, and held.
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Cryptographic
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This cryptographic structure is used to enable a variety of people to host the data without being able to alter it.
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Identity
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there must be a way to associate these bits with some kind of account, wallet, owner, or agent who can use them
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Other things that many take for granted in blockchains may not be core but subject to decisions in design and implementation, so they can vary between implementations
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It does not have to be stored in a synchronized global ledger
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does not have to be money. It may be a reputation currency, or data used for identity, or naming, etc
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Its units do not have to be cryptographic tokens or coins
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It does not have to protect the anonymity of users, although it may
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if you think currency is only money, and that money must be artificially scarce
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Then you must tackle the problem of always tracking which coins exist, and which have been spent. That is one approach — the one blockchain takes.
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You might optimize for anonymity if you think of cryptocurrency as a tool to escape governments, regulations, and taxes.
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if you want to establish and manage membership in new kinds of commons, then identity and accountability for actions may turn out to be necessary ingredients instead of anonymity.
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In the case of the MetaCurrency Project, we are trying to support many use cases by building tools to enable a rich ecosystem of communities and current-sees (many are non-monetary) to enhance collective intelligence at all scales.
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Managing consensus about a shared reality is a central challenge at the heart of all distributed computing solutions.
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If we want to democratize money by having cryptocurrencies become a significant and viable means of transacting on a daily basis, I believe we need fundamentally more scalable approaches that don’t require expensive, dedicated hardware just to participate.
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We should not need system wide consensus for two people to do a transaction in a cryptocurrency
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Blockchain is about managing a consensus about what was “said.” Ceptr is about distributing a consensus about how to “speak.”
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how nature gets the job done in massively scalable systems which require coordination and consistency
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Replicate the same processes across all nodes
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Empower every node with full agency
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Hold this transformed state locally and reliably
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Establish protocols for interaction
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Each speaker of a language carries the processes to understand sentences they hear, and generate sentences they need
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we certainly don’t carry some kind of global ledger of everything that’s ever been said, or require consensus about what has been said
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Language IS a communication protocol we learn by emulating the processes of usage.
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Dictionaries try to catch up when the usage
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there is certainly no global ledger with consensus about the state of trillions of cells. Yet, from a single zygote’s copy of DNA, our cells coordinate in a highly decentralized manner, on scales of trillions, and without the latency or bottlenecks of central control.
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Imagine something along the lines of a Java Virtual Machine connected to a distributed version of Github
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Every time this JVM runs a program it confirms the hash of the code it is about to execute with the hash signed into the code repository by its developers
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This allows each node that intends to be honest to be sure that they’re running the same processes as everyone else. So when two parties want to do a transaction, and each can have confidence their own code, and the results that your code produces
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Then you treat it as authoritative and commit it to your local cryptographically self-validating data store
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Allowing each node to treat itself as a full authority to process transactions (or interactions via shared protocols) is exactly how you empower each node with full agency. Each node runs its copy of the signed program/processes on its own virtual machine, taking the transaction request combined with the transaction chains of the parties to the transaction. Each node can confirm their counterparty’s integrity by replaying their transactions to produce their current state, while confirming signatures and integrity of the chain
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If both nodes are in an appropriate state which allows the current transaction, then they countersign the transaction and append to their respective chains. When you encounter a corrupted or dishonest node (as evidenced by a breach of integrity of their chain — passing through an invalid state, broken signatures, or broken links), your node can reject the transaction you were starting to process. Countersigning allows consensus at the appropriate scale of the decision (two people transacting in this case) to lock data into a tamper-proof state so it can be stored in as many parallel chains as you need.
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When your node appends a mutually validated and signed transaction to its chain, it has updated its local state and is able to represent the integrity of its data locally. As long as each transaction (link in the chain) has valid linkages and countersignatures, we can know that it hasn’t been tampered with.
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If you can reliably embody the state of the node in the node itself using Intrinsic Data Integrity, then all nodes can interact in parallel, independent of other interactions to maximize scalability and simultaneous processing. Either the node has the credits or it doesn’t. I don’t have to refer to a global ledger to find out, the state of the node is in the countersigned, tamper-proof chain.
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Just like any meaningful communication, a protocol needs to be established to make sure that a transaction carries all the information needed for each node to run the processes and produce a new signed and chained state. This could be debits or credits to an account which modify the balance, or recoding courses and grades to a transcript which modify a Grade Point Average, or ratings and feedback contributing to a reputation score, and so on.
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By distributing process at the foundation, and leveraging Intrinsic Data Integrity, our approach results in massive improvements in throughput (from parallel simultaneous independent processing), speed, latency, efficiency, and cost of hardware.
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You also don’t need to incent people to hold their own record — they already want it.
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Another noteworthy observation about humans, cells, and atoms, is that each has a general “container” that gets configured to a specific use.
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Likewise, the Receptors we’ve built are a general purpose framework which can load code for different distributed applications. These Receptors are a lightweight processing container for the Ceptr Virtual Machine Host
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Ceptr enables a developer to focus on the rules and transactions for their use case instead of building a whole framework for distributed applications.
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how units in a currency are issued
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Most people think that money is just money, but there are literally hundreds of decisions you can make in designing a currency to target particular needs, niches, communities or patterns of flow.
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Blockchain cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies. They create tokens or coins from nothing
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These coins are just “spoken into being”
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the challenging task of
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ensure there is no counterfeiting or double-spending
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Blockchain cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies
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These coins are just “spoken into being”
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the challenging task of tracking all the coins that exist to ensure there is no counterfeiting or double-spending
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You wouldn’t need to manage consensus about whether a cryptocoin is spent, if your system created accounts which have normal balances based on summing their transactions.
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In a mutual credit system, units of currency are issued when a participant extends credit to another user in a standard spending transaction
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Alice pays Bob 20 credits for a haircut. Alice’s account now has -20, and Bob’s has +20.
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Alice spent credits she didn’t have! True
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Managing the currency supply in a mutual credit system is about managing credit limits — how far people can spend into a negative balance
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Notice the net number units in the system remains zero
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One elegant approach to managing mutual credit limits is to set them based on actual demand.
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concerns about manufacturing fake accounts to game credit limits (Sybil Attacks)
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keep in mind there can be different classes of accounts. Easy to create, anonymous accounts may get NO credit limit
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What if I alter my code to give myself an unlimited credit limit, then spend as much as I want? As soon as you pass the credit limit encoded in the shared agreements, the next person you transact with will discover you’re in an invalid state and refuse the transaction.
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If two people collude to commit an illegal transaction by both hacking their code to allow a normally invalid state, the same still pattern still holds. The next person they try to transact with using untampered code will detect the problem and decline to transact.
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Most modern community currency systems have been implemented as mutual credit,
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Hawala is a network of merchants and businessmen, which has been operating since the middle ages, performing money transfers on an honor system and typically settling balances through merchandise instead of transferring money
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Let’s look at building a minimum viable cryptocurrency with the hawala network as our use case
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To minimize key management infrastructure, each hawaladar’s public key is their address or identity on the network. To join the network you get a copy of the software from another hawaladar, generate your public and private keys, and complete your personal profile (name, location, contact info, etc.). You call, fax, or email at least 10 hawaladars who know you, and give them your IP address and ask them to vouch for you.
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Once 10 other hawaladars have vouched for you, you can start doing other transactions because the protocol encoded in every node will reject a transaction chain that doesn’t start with at least 10 vouches
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seeding your information with those other peers so you can be found by the rest of the network.
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As described in the Mutual Credit section, at the time of transaction each party audits the counterparty’s transaction chain.
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Our hawala crypto-clearinghouse protocol has two categories of transactions: some used for accounting and others for routing. Accounting transactions change balances. Routing transactions maintain network integrity by recording information about hawaladar
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Accounting Transactions create signed data that changes account balances and contains these fields:
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The final hash of all of the above fields is used as a unique transaction ID and is what each of party signs with their private keys. Signing indicates a party has agreed to the terms of the transaction. Only transactions signed by both parties are considered valid. Nodes can verify signatures by confirming that decryption of the signature using the public key yields a result which matches the transaction ID.
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Routing Transactions sign data that changes the peers list and contain these fields:
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As with accounting transactions, the hash of the above fields is used as the transaction’s unique key and the basis for the cryptographic signature of both counterparties.
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Remember, instead of making changes to account balances, routing transactions change a node’s local list of peers for finding each other and processing.
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a distributed network of mutual trust
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operates across national boundaries
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everyone already keeps and trusts their own separate records
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Hawaladars are not anonymous
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“double-spending”
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It would be possible for someone to hack the code on their node to “forget” their most recent transaction (drop the head of their chain), and go back to their previous version of the chain before that transaction. Then they could append a new transaction, drop it, and append again.
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After both parties have signed the agreed upon transaction, each party submits the transaction to separate notaries. Notaries are a special class of participant who validate transactions (auditing each chain, ensuring nobody passes through an invalid state), and then they sign an outer envelope which includes the signatures of the two parties. Notaries agree to run high-availability servers which collectively manage a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) servicing requests for transaction information. As their incentive for providing this infrastructure, notaries get a small transaction fee.
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This approach introduces a few more steps and delays to the transaction process, but because it operates on independent parallel chains, it is still orders of magnitude more efficient and decentralized than reaching consensus on entries in a global ledger
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millions of simultaneous transactions could be getting processed by other parties and notaries with no bottlenecks.
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There are other solutions to prevent nodes from dropping the head of their transaction chain, but the approach of having notaries serve out a DHT solves a number of common objections to completely distributed accounting. Having access to reliable lookups in a DHT provides a similar big picture view that you get from a global ledger. For example, you may want a way to look up transactions even when the parties to that transaction are offline, or to be able to see the net system balance at a particular moment in time, or identify patterns of activity in the larger system without having to collect data from everyone individually.
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By leveraging Intrinsic Data Integrity to run numerous parallel tamper-proof chains you can enable nodes to do various P2P transactions which don’t actually require group consensus. Mutual credit is a great way to implement cryptocurrencies to run in this peered manner. Basic PKI with a DHT is enough additional infrastructure to address main vulnerabilities. You can optimize your solution architecture by reserving reserve consensus work for tasks which need to guarantee uniqueness or actually involve large scale agreement by humans or automated contracts.
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It is not only possible, but far more scalable to build cryptocurrencies without a global ledger consensus approach or cryptographic tokens.
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Article written by Arthur Brook, founder of Metacurrency project and of Ceptr.
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shared by Steve Bosserman on 31 May 11
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Instead of Student Loans, Investing in Futures - NYTimes.com - 0 views
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...ent-loans-investing-in-futures
risk_management investment milton_friedman human_capital
shared by Steve Bosserman on 31 May 11
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So how do we finance something that is extremely valuable both for individuals and for society - something that, in most cases, should happen, but often won't happen because the risks are too high? The best way is to spread the risk. That's how insurance works. In Lumni's case, students share the risk with investors, who make more or less based on how well the students do. But they also share it with one another. Lumni pools its investments into funds to balance out the risks. They know that some students will run into difficulties, some will achieve average success, and some will do very well - but they don't know in advance how any individual student will fare. And students don't know this themselves. Through diversification, however, their funds can achieve stable returns. What this means is that the students who have the biggest problems benefit the most. And, in effect, those who decide to become investment bankers end up subsidizing the ones who decide to become social workers. Since a good society needs many different roles fulfilled, everyone benefits. That, at least, is the theory. Economists are skeptical about human capital contracts - which were first proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1950s - because they have many potential problems and little track record. But Lumni seems to be making them work - at least on a small scale. Whether it can succeed at a larger level remains to be seen.
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Crowding Out - P2P Foundation - 1 views
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The curve indicates that while workers will initially chose to work more when paid more per hour, there is a point after which rational workers will choose to work less
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in other words, people are financially motivated until they are financially secure, then other motivations come in
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"leaders" elsewhere will come and become your low-paid employees
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At that point, the leaders are no longer leaders of a community, and they turn out to be suckers after all, working for pittance, comparatively speaking
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so part of the dynamic is that everyone is paid fairly, if not there is the feeling of exploitation
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- ...36 more annotations...
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under certain structural conditions non-price-based production is extraordinarily robust
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There is, in fact, a massive amount of research that supports the idea that when you pay people to do something for you, they stop enjoying it, and distrust their own motivations. The mysterious something that goes away, and that “Factor X” even has a name: intrinsic motivation.
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the real question though is why, and whether it is the paying them that is the problem, or perhaps how that is determined, and who else gets what on what basis.. if you have to have them question the fairness of the situation, they will likely check out
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giving rewards to customers can actually undermine a company’s relationship with them
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It just is not so easy to assume that because people behave productively in one framework (the social process of peer production that is Wikipedia, free and open source software, or Digg), that you can take the same exact behavior, with the same exact set of people, and harness them to your goals by attaching a price to what previously they were doing in a social process.
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Extrinsic rewards suggest that there is actually an instrumental relationship at work, that you do the activity in order to get something else
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If you pay me for it, it must be work
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It’s what we would call a robust effect. It shows up in many contexts. And there’s been considerable testing to try to find out exactly why it works. A major school of thought is that there is an “Overjustification Effect.” (http://kozinets.net/archives/133)
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interesting examples of an effect called crowding
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Offering financial rewards for contributions to online communities basically means mixing external and intrinsic motivation.
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A good example is children who are paid by their parents for mowing the family lawn. Once they expect to receive money for that task, they are only willing to do it again if they indeed receive monetary compensation. The induced unwillingness to do anything for free may also extend to other household chores.
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Once ‘gold-stars’ were introduced as a symbolic reward for a certain amount of time spent practicing the instrument, the girl lost all interest in trying new, difficult pieces. Instead of aiming at improving her skills, her goal shifted towards spending time playing well-learned, easy pieces in order to receive the award (Deci with Flaste 1995)
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this is a more troubling example, as playing the harder pieces is also practicing - I would take this as a more complex mechanism at work - perhaps the reinterpretation by the girl that all playing was considered equal, due to the pricing mechanism, in which case the proximal solution would be to pay more for more complex pieces, or for levels of achievement - the question remains of why the extrinsic reward was introduced in the first place (unwillingness to practice as much as her parents wanted?) - which would indicate intrinsic motivation was insufficient in this case
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Suddenly, she managed to follow the prescription, as her own (intrinsic) motivation was recognized and thereby reinforced.
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or perhaps the key was to help her fit the medication into her day, which she was having trouble with...
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The introduction of a monetary fine transforms the relationship between parents and teachers from a non-monetary into a monetary one
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absolutely, in some sense the guilt of being late is replaced by a rationalization that you are paying them - it is still a rationalization, and parents in this case need to be reminded that staff have lives too to reinforce the moral suasion
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"The effects of external interventions on intrinsic motivation have been attributed to two psychological processes: (a) Impaired self-determination. When individuals perceive an external intervention to reduce their self-determination, they substitute intrinsic motivation by extrinsic control. Following Rotter (1966), the locus of control shifts from the inside to the outside of the person affected. Individuals who are forced to behave in a specific way by outside intervention, feel overjustified if they maintained their intrinsic motivation. (b) Impaired self-esteem. When an intervention from outside carries the notion that the actor's motivation is not acknowledged, his or her intrinsic motivation is effectively rejected. The person affected feels that his or her involvement and competence is not appreciated which debases its value. An intrinsically motivated person is taken away the chance to display his or her own interest and involvement in an activity when someone else offers a reward, or commands, to undertake it. As a result of impaired self-esteem, individuals reduce effort.
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these are finally very useful - so from (a) as long as self determination is maintained (actively) extrinsic reward should not shut down intrinsic motivation AND (b) so long as motivations are recognized and reward dimensions OTHER THAN financial continue to operate, extrinsic reward should not affect intrinsic motivation
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External interventions crowd-out intrinsic motivation if the individuals affected perceive them to be controlling
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External interventions crowd-in intrinsic motivation if the individuals concerned perceive it as supportive
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In that case, self-esteem is fostered, and individuals feel that they are given more freedom to act, thus enlarging self-determination
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so effectively a system needs to ensure it is acting on all dimensions of reward, or at least those most important to the particular participant, ego (pride, recognition, guilt reduction, feeling needed, being helpful, etc), money (sustenance, beyond which it is less potent), meaning/purpose etc. If one ran experiments controlling for financial self sufficiency, then providing appreciation and recognition as well as the introduced financial reward, they might yield different results
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cultural categories that oppose marketplace modes of behavior (or “market logics”) with the more family-like modes of behavior of caring and sharing that we observe in close-knit communities (”community logics”)
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this is labor, this is work, just do it.
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When communal logics are in effect, all sorts of norms of reciprocity, sacrifice, and gift-giving come into play: this is cool, this is right, this is fun
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So think about paying a kid to clean up their room, paying parishioners to go to church, paying people in a neighborhood to attend a town hall meeting, paying people to come out and vote. All these examples seem a little strange or forced. Why? Because they mix and match the communal with the market-oriented.
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and perhaps the problem is simply the conversion to money, rather than simply tracking these activities themselves (went to church 50 times this year!, helped 50 orphans get families!) (the latter being more recognition than reward
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Payment as disincentive. In his interesting book Freakonomics, economist Steven Levitt describes some counterintuitive facts about payment. One of the most interesting is that charging people who do the wrong thing often causes them to do it more, and paying people to do the right thing causes them to do it less.
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You direct people _away_ from any noble purpose you have, and instead towards grubbing for dollars
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and we are left with the challenge, how to work to purpose but still have our scarce goods needs sufficiently provided for? it has to be for love AND money
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When people work for a noble purpose, they are told that their work is highly valued. When people work for $0.75/hour, they are told that their work is very low-valued
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so pay them highly for highly valued labour, and don't forget to recognize them as well... no?
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you're going to have to fight your way through labour laws and tax issues all the way to bankruptcy
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this is a non argument, these are just interacting but separate problems, use ether or bitcoin, change legislation, what have you
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Market economics. If you have open content, I can copy your content to another wiki, not pay people, and still make money. So by paying contributors, you're pricing yourself out of the market.
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exactly, so use commonsource, they can use it all they want, but they have to flow through benefit (provide attribution, recognition, and any financial reward must be split fairly)
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You don't have to pay people to do what they want to do anyways. The labour cost for leisure activities is $0. And nobody is going to work on a wiki doing things they don't want to do.
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wow, exploitative in the extreme - no one can afford to do work for free, it cuts into paid work, family time etc. if they are passionate about something they will do it for free if they cannot get permission to do it for sustenance, but they still need to sustain themselves, and they are making opportunity cost sacrifices, and if you are in turn making money off of this you are an asshole.. go ahead look in the mirror and say "I am an asshole"
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No fair system. There's simply no fair, automated and auditable way to divvy up the money
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this is an utter cop out - figure out what is close enough to fair and iterate forward to improve it, wow
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too complicated to do automatically. But if you have a subjective system -- have a human being evaluate contributions to an article and portion out payments -- it will be subject to constant challenges, endless debates, and a lot of community frustration.
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yes to the human evaluation part, but "it's too complicated" is disingenuous at the least
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Gaming the system. People are really smart. If there's money to be made, they'll figure out how to game your payment system to get more money than they actually deserve
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yes indeed, so get your metrics right, and be prepared to adjust them as they are gamed - and ultimately, as financial penalties are to BP, even if some people game the system, can we better the gaming of the capitalist system.. it's a low bar I know
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They'll be trying to get as much money out of you as possible, and you'll be trying to give as little as you can to them
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If you can't convince people that working on your project is worth their unpaid time, then there's probably something wrong with your project.
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People are going to be able to sense that -- it's going to look like a cover-up, something sleazy
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Donate.
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Thank-you gifts
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Pay bounties
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good way to get people to compete ineffectively instead of cooperating on a solution, the lottery mechanism is evil
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while good issue are brought up in this article, the solutions offered are myopic and the explanations of the observed effects not satisfying
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shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Jun 16
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Access control - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
en.wikipedia.org/...Access_control
blockchainaccess_project wikipedia paper access passport IoPA tech
shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 09 Jun 16
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The act of accessing may mean consuming, entering, or using.
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Permission to access a resource is called authorization.
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Locks and login credentials are two analogous mechanisms of access control.
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Geographical access control may be enforced by personnel (e.g., border guard, bouncer, ticket checker)
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n alternative of access control in the strict sense (physically controlling access itself) is a system of checking authorized presence, see e.g. Ticket controller (transportation). A variant is exit control, e.g. of a shop (checkout) or a country
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access control refers to the practice of restricting entrance to a property, a building, or a room to authorized persons
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can be achieved by a human (a guard, bouncer, or receptionist), through mechanical means such as locks and keys, or through technological means such as access control systems like the mantrap.
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Physical access control is a matter of who, where, and when
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Historically, this was partially accomplished through keys and locks. When a door is locked, only someone with a key can enter through the door, depending on how the lock is configured. Mechanical locks and keys do not allow restriction of the key holder to specific times or dates. Mechanical locks and keys do not provide records of the key used on any specific door, and the keys can be easily copied or transferred to an unauthorized person. When a mechanical key is lost or the key holder is no longer authorized to use the protected area, the locks must be re-keyed.[citation needed] Electronic access control uses computers to solve the limitations of mechanical locks and keys. A wide range of credentials can be used to replace mechanical keys. The electronic access control system grants access based on the credential presented. When access is granted, the door is unlocked for a predetermined time and the transaction is recorded. When access is refused, the door remains locked and the attempted access is recorded. The system will also monitor the door and alarm if the door is forced open or held open too long after being unlocked
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Credential
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Access control system operation
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The above description illustrates a single factor transaction. Credentials can be passed around, thus subverting the access control list. For example, Alice has access rights to the server room, but Bob does not. Alice either gives Bob her credential, or Bob takes it; he now has access to the server room. To prevent this, two-factor authentication can be used. In a two factor transaction, the presented credential and a second factor are needed for access to be granted; another factor can be a PIN, a second credential, operator intervention, or a biometric input
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There are three types (factors) of authenticating information:[2] something the user knows, e.g. a password, pass-phrase or PIN something the user has, such as smart card or a key fob something the user is, such as fingerprint, verified by biometric measurement
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Passwords are a common means of verifying a user's identity before access is given to information systems. In addition, a fourth factor of authentication is now recognized: someone you know, whereby another person who knows you can provide a human element of authentication in situations where systems have been set up to allow for such scenarios
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When a credential is presented to a reader, the reader sends the credential’s information, usually a number, to a control panel, a highly reliable processor. The control panel compares the credential's number to an access control list, grants or denies the presented request, and sends a transaction log to a database. When access is denied based on the access control list, the door remains locked.
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A credential is a physical/tangible object, a piece of knowledge, or a facet of a person's physical being, that enables an individual access to a given physical facility or computer-based information system. Typically, credentials can be something a person knows (such as a number or PIN), something they have (such as an access badge), something they are (such as a biometric feature) or some combination of these items. This is known as multi-factor authentication. The typical credential is an access card or key-fob, and newer software can also turn users' smartphones into access devices.
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An access control point, which can be a door, turnstile, parking gate, elevator, or other physical barrier, where granting access can be electronically controlled. Typically, the access point is a door. An electronic access control door can contain several elements. At its most basic, there is a stand-alone electric lock. The lock is unlocked by an operator with a switch. To automate this, operator intervention is replaced by a reader. The reader could be a keypad where a code is entered, it could be a card reader, or it could be a biometric reader. Readers do not usually make an access decision, but send a card number to an access control panel that verifies the number against an access list
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monitor the door position
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Generally only entry is controlled, and exit is uncontrolled. In cases where exit is also controlled, a second reader is used on the opposite side of the door. In cases where exit is not controlled, free exit, a device called a request-to-exit (REX) is used. Request-to-exit devices can be a push-button or a motion detector. When the button is pushed, or the motion detector detects motion at the door, the door alarm is temporarily ignored while the door is opened. Exiting a door without having to electrically unlock the door is called mechanical free egress. This is an important safety feature. In cases where the lock must be electrically unlocked on exit, the request-to-exit device also unlocks the doo
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Access control topology
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Access control decisions are made by comparing the credential to an access control list. This look-up can be done by a host or server, by an access control panel, or by a reader. The development of access control systems has seen a steady push of the look-up out from a central host to the edge of the system, or the reader. The predominant topology circa 2009 is hub and spoke with a control panel as the hub, and the readers as the spokes. The look-up and control functions are by the control panel. The spokes communicate through a serial connection; usually RS-485. Some manufactures are pushing the decision making to the edge by placing a controller at the door. The controllers are IP enabled, and connect to a host and database using standard networks
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Access control readers may be classified by the functions they are able to perform
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and forward it to a control panel.
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Basic (non-intelligent) readers: simply read
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Semi-intelligent readers: have all inputs and outputs necessary to control door hardware (lock, door contact, exit button), but do not make any access decisions. When a user presents a card or enters a PIN, the reader sends information to the main controller, and waits for its response. If the connection to the main controller is interrupted, such readers stop working, or function in a degraded mode. Usually semi-intelligent readers are connected to a control panel via an RS-485 bus.
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Intelligent readers: have all inputs and outputs necessary to control door hardware; they also have memory and processing power necessary to make access decisions independently. Like semi-intelligent readers, they are connected to a control panel via an RS-485 bus. The control panel sends configuration updates, and retrieves events from the readers.
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Systems with IP readers usually do not have traditional control panels, and readers communicate directly to a PC that acts as a host
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a built in webservice to make it user friendly
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Some readers may have additional features such as an LCD and function buttons for data collection purposes (i.e. clock-in/clock-out events for attendance reports), camera/speaker/microphone for intercom, and smart card read/write support
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shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 10 Oct 23
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Making the Tools to Do-It-Together: Open-source Compression Screw Manufacturing Case St... - 0 views
www.cairn.info/-economics-2023-1-page-109.htm
paper bussiness model economic model Joshua Pearce OSH open source model IoPA economic level
shared by Tiberius Brastaviceanu on 10 Oct 23
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"Making the Tools to Do-It-Together: Open-source Compression Screw Manufacturing Case Study"
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Private 'Distributed Ledgers' Miss the Point of a Blockchain | Bank Think - 0 views
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a new buzzword making waves throughout the financial industry: “distributed ledger.”
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Some say it's a tool to enable transparency by ensuring that all members of a group receive cryptographically secured messages about participants’ activities
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Some are even bold enough to predict that distributed ledgers will end the madness of managing multiple database and reconciliation structures.
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Distributed ledgers have primarily claimed to supplant the need for Bitcoin's mining process by introducing trust requirements among participants. These ledgers also promise users the immutability of Bitcoin without the need for expensive mining operations.
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the technology powering distributed ledgers predates blockchains by well over 20 years.
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Proponents of distributed ledgers argue that they can displace centralized providers such as SWIFT,
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by moving money faster
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There’s no doubt that blockchain technology will facilitate disruptive innovations in finance
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But a world of private ledgers sounds eerily similar to a range of “private Internets.”
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Blockchain technology is useful not because it offers efficiency in a world of message-passing but because it uses a complex process to settle value between untrusted parties.
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But distributed ledgers do not offer users the ability to easily convert their tokens and messages into fungible units of value. Nor do distributed ledgers escrow value between parties that don't trust each other.
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If a ledger is not a public resource, it will have the pressures incumbent to existing settlement systems plus the overhead of maintaining a shared database among competitors. What efficiency will remain thereafter remains dubious.
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Permissioned Blockchains
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their institutional users will probably find it expedient to hash their private-chain transactions and use those hashes to create bitcoin addresses and then send tiny fractions of a bitcoin to them to register their data at a location that cannot be hacked or changed.
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This is also a problem with access, if an access event needs to be recorded in a way that cannot be altered, in a data location that cannot be altered, it will need to be stored on a block chain.
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In other words, all private ledger/blockchains will lead to Bitcoin's Rome, driven there by its low cost and high public accountability.
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The FLOK Society Vision of a Post-Capitalist Economy | David Bollier - 1 views
Business case - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 2 views
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The Dead Are Wealthier Than the Living: Capital in the 21st Century - Pacific Standard:... - 0 views
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you needed at least 20 to 30 times the income of the average person, and the most lucrative professions paid only half that
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Consequently, “society” (i.e., the rich) consisted almost entirely of rentiers living off inherited wealth
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In recent memory, the way to get rich has been to do it yourself
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But it’s income that mostly interests us, not wealth, because income is the currency of the modern economy. Gone are the days when the only way to acquire an upper-class income was to marry into a family fortune.
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Being born into or marrying wealth never stopped being the easiest path to acquiring a fortune
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A fanatical miser, Getty was ever-fearful that his fortune would dissipate.
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The return on capital (r) almost always exceeds economic growth (g).
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“a very large share, perhaps a majority, of corporate profit hinges on rules and regulations that could in principle be altered.”
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The clearest such pattern is that r really was, at most points in history, greater than g, if only because g was seldom much to write home about, especially back when economies were primarily agricultural. (Inflation, I learned from reading this book, didn’t really exist before the 20th century.)
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The big driver of income inequality, Piketty says, isn’t labor income. It’s capital.
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Only when you add in capital income does the gap widen to 15 percentage points
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really, the 0.01 percent, a cohort Piketty dubs “supermanagers”—to receive much of its remuneration in the form of stock options and other capital holdings.
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Typically, r is four to five times g, but the ratio gets larger as capital accumulates across generations
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Baker also suggests that the tendency for large amounts of capital to realize a higher return isn’t solely attributable to the superior financial instruments they have access to; it may also have something to do with rampant insider trading, which could be policed more closely.
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just in case we get too caught up in determining incomes, disrupting private capital and inheritance needs to be on the agenda. Private goods tend to eventually become public goods (paid a royalty for paper lately?) but the rate at which private goods become public needs to increase (patent reform, inheritance tax etc)
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Towards a Material Commons | Guerrilla Translation! - 0 views
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the modes of communication we use are very tightly coupled with the modes of production that finance them
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I’m focused on the policy formation around this transition to a new, open knowledge and commons-based economy, and that’s the research work I’m doing here
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The problem is I can only make a living by still working for capital.
- ...88 more annotations...
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We now have a technology which allows us to globally scale small group dynamics, and to create huge productive communities, self-organized around the collaborative production of knowledge, code, and design. But the key issue is that we are not able to live from that, right
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A lot of co-ops have been neo-liberalizing, as it were, have become competitive enterprises competing against other companies but also against other co-ops, and they don’t share their knowledge
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We cannot create our own livelihood within that sphere
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instead of having a totally open commons, which allows multinationals to use our commons and reinforce the system of capital, the idea is to keep the accumulation within the sphere of the commons.
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The result would be a type of open cooperative-ism, a kind of synthesis or convergence between peer production and cooperative modes of production
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then the material work, the work of working for clients and making a livelihood, would be done through co-ops
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But it hasn’t had much of a direct connection to this emerging commons movement, which shares so many of the values and principles of the traditional cooperative movement.
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There’s also a lot of peer-to-peer work going on, but it’s not very well versed around issues like cooperative organization, formal or legal forms of ownership, which are based on reciprocity and cooperation, and how to interpret the commons vision with a structure, an organizational structure and a legal structure that actually gives it economic power, market influence, and a means of connecting it to organizational forms that have durability over the long-term.
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The young people, the developers in open source or free software, the people who are in co-working centers, hacker spaces, maker spaces. When they are thinking of making a living, they think startups
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They have a kind of generic reaction, “oh, let’s do a startup”, and then they look for venture funds. But this is a very dangerous path to take
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Typically, the venture capital will ask for a controlling stake, they have the right to close down your start up whenever they feel like it, when they feel that they’re not going to make enough money
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Don’t forget that with venture capital, only 1 out of 10 companies will actually make it, and they may be very rich, but it’s a winner-take-all system
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we don’t have what Marx used to call social reproduction
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I would like John to talk about the solidarity co-ops, and how that integrates the notion of the commons or the common good in the very structure of the co-op
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They don’t have a commons of design or code, they privatize and patent, just like private competitive enterprise, their knowledge
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Cooperatives, which are basically a democratic and collective form of enterprise where members have control rights and democratically direct the operations of the co-op, have been the primary stakeholders in any given co-op – whether it’s a consumer co-op, or a credit union, or a worker co-op.
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Primarily, the co-op is in the service of its immediate members
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What was really fascinating about the social co-ops was that, although they had members, their mission was not only to serve the members but also to provide service to the broader community
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In the city of Bologna, for example, over 87% of the social services provided in that city are provided through contract with social co-ops
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democratically run
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much more participatory, and a much more engaged model
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The difference, however, is that the structure of social co-ops is still very much around control rights, in other words, members have rights of control and decision-making within how that organization operates
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And it is an incorporated legal structure that has formal recognition by the legislation of government of the state, and it has the power, through this incorporated power, to negotiate with and contract with government for the provision of these public services
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In Québec they’re called Solidarity co-ops
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So, the social economy, meaning organizations that have a mutual aim in their purpose, based on the principles of reciprocity, collective benefit, social benefit, is emerging as an important player for the design and delivery of public services
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This, too, is in reaction to the failure of the public market for provision of services like affordable housing or health care or education services
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This is a crisis in the role of the state as a provider of public services. So the question has emerged: what happens when the state fails to provide or fulfill its mandate as a provider or steward of public goods and services, and what’s the role of civil society and the social economy in response?
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we have commonses of knowledge, code and design. They’re more easily created, because as a knowledge worker, if you have access to the network and some means, however meager, of subsistence, through effort and connection you can actually create knowledge. However, this is not the case if you move to direct physical production, like the open hardware movement
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I originally encountered Michel after seeing some talks by Benkler and Lessig at the Wizard of OS 4, in 2006, and I wrote an essay criticizing that from a materialist perspective, it was called “The creative anti-commons and the poverty of networks”, playing on the terms that both those people used.
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In hardware, we don’t see that, because you need to buy material, machines, plastic, metal.
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Some people have called the open hardware community a “candy” economy, because if you’re not part of these open hardware startups, you’re basically not getting anything for your efforts
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democratic foundations like the Apache foundation
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They conceive of peer production, especially Benkler, as being something inherently immaterial, a form of production that can only exist in the production of immaterial wealth
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From my materialist point of view, that’s not a mode of production, because a mode of production must, in the first place, reproduce its productive inputs, its capital, its labor, and whatever natural wealth it consumes
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From a materialist point of view, it becomes obvious that the entire exchange value produced in these immaterial forms would be captured by the same old owners of materialist wealth
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different definition of peer production
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independent producers collectively sharing a commons of productive assets
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I wanted to create something like a protocol for the formation and allocation of physical goods, the same way we have TCP/IP and so forth, as a way to allocate immaterial goods
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share and distribute and collectively create immaterial wealth, and become independent producers based on this collective commons.
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One was the Georgist idea of using rent, economic rent, as a fundamental mutualizing source of wealth
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Mutualizing unearned income
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So, the unearned income, the portion of income derived from ownership of productive assets is evenly distributed
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This protocol would seek to normalize that, but in a way that doesn’t require administration
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typical statist communist reaction to the cooperative movement is saying that cooperatives can exclude and exploit one another
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But then, as we’ve seen in history, there’s something that develops called an administrative class, which governs over the collective of cooperatives or the socialist state, and can become just as counterproductive and often exploitive as capitalist class
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So, how do we create cooperation among cooperatives, and distribution of wealth among cooperatives, without creating this administrative class?
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This is why I borrowed from the work of Henry George and Silvio Gesell in created this idea of rent sharing.
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This is not done administratively, this is simply done as a protocol
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The idea is that if a cooperative wants an asset, like, an example is if one of the communes would like to have a tractor, then essentially the central commune is like a bond market. They float a bond, they say I want a tractor, I am willing to pay $200 a month for this tractor in rent, and other members of the cooperative can say, hey, yeah, that’s a good idea,we think that’s a really good allocation of these productive assets, so we are going to buy these bonds. The bond sale clears, the person gets the tractor, the money from the rent of the tractor goes back to clear the bonds, and after that, whatever further money is collected through the rent on this tractor – and I don’t only mean tractors, same would be applied to buildings, to land, to any other productive assets – all this rent that’s collected is then distributed equally among all of the workers.
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The idea is that people earn income not only by producing things, but by owning the means of production, owning productive assets, and our society is unequal because the distribution of productive assets is unequal
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This means that if you use your exact per capita share of property, no more no less than what you pay in rent and what you received in social dividend, will be equal
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But if you’re not working at that time, because you’re old, or otherwise unemployed, then obviously the the productive assets that you will be using will be much less than the mean and the median, so what you’ll receive as dividend will be much more than what you pay in rent, essentially providing a basic income
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venture communism doesn’t seek to control the product of the cooperatives
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It doesn’t seek to limit, control, or even tell them how they should distribute it, or under what means; what they produce is entirely theirs, it’s only the collective management of the commons of productive assets
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On paper this would seem to work, but the problem is that this assumes that we have capital to allocate in this way, and that is not the case for most of the world workers
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how do we get to that stage?
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other two being counter politics and insurrectionary finance
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do we express our activism through the state, or do we try to achieve our goals by creating the alternative society outside
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pre-figurative politics, versus statist politics
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My materialist background tells me that when you sell your labor on the market, you have nothing more than your subsistence costs at the end of it, so where is this wealth meant to come from
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I believe that the only reason that we have any extra wealth beyond subsistence is because of organized social political struggle; because we have organized in labor movements, in the co-op movement, and in other social forms
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To create the space for prefiguring presupposes engagement with the state, and struggle within parliaments, and struggle within the public social forum
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Instead, we should think that no, we must engage in the state in order to protect our ability to have alternative societies
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We can only get rid of the state in these areas once we have alternative, distributed, cooperative means to provide those same functions
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We can only eliminate the state from these areas once they actually exist, which means we actually have to build them
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What I mean by insurrectionary finance is that we have to acknowledge that it’s not only forming capital and distributing capital, it’s also important how intensively we use capital
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I’m not proposing that the cooperative movement needs to engage in the kind of derivative speculative madness that led to the financial crisis, but at the same time we can’t… it can’t be earn a dollar, spend a dollar
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We have to find ways to create liquidity
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to deal with economic cycles
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they did things the organized left hasn’t been able to do, which is takeover industrial means of production
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if they can take over these industrial facilities, just in order to shut them down and asset strip them, why can’t we take them over and mutualize them?
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more ironic once you understand that the source of investment that Milken and his colleagues were working with were largely workers pension funds
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idea of venture communism
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pooling, based on the capture of unearned income
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in Québec, there is a particular form of co-op that’s been developed that allows small or medium producers to pool their capital to purchase machinery and to use it jointly
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The other idea I liked was trying to minimize a management class
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much more lean and accountable because they are accountable to boards of directors that represent the interests of the members
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I’ve run into this repeatedly among social change activists who immediately recoil at the notion of thinking about markets and capital, as part of their change agenda
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I had thought previously, like so many, that economics is basically a bought discipline, and that it serves the interests of existing elites. I really had a kind of reaction against that
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complete rethinking of economics
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recapture the initiative around vocabulary, and vision, with respect to economics
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reimagining and reinterpreting, for a popular and common good, the notion of market and capital
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advocating for a vision of social change that isn’t just about politics, and isn’t just about protest, it has to be around how do we reimagine and reclaim economics
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markets actually belong to communities and people
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capital wasn’t just an accumulated wealth for the rich
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I think what we’re potentially talking about here is to make the social economy hyper-productive, hyper-competitive, hyper-cooperative
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The paradox is that capital already knows this. Capital is investing in these peer production projects
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Part of the proposal of the FLOK society project in Ecuador will be to get that strategic reorganization to make the social economy strategic
Buy PIPO Max-M1 9.7" IPS Screen Android 4.0 Tablet PC w/ Dual Core / Camera /... - 0 views
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Card reader - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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Smart card
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There are two types of smart cards: contact and contactless. Both have an embedded microprocessor and memory. The smart card differs from the proximity card in that the microchip in the proximity card has only one function: to provide the reader with the card's identification number. The processor on the smart card has an embedded operating system and can handle multiple applications such as a cash card, a pre-paid membership card, or an access control card.
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A contactless card does not have to touch the reader or even be taken out of a wallet or purse. Most access control systems only read serial numbers of contactless smart cards and do not utilize the available memory. Card memory may be used for storing biometric data (i.e. fingerprint template) of a user. In such case a biometric reader first reads the template on the card and then compares it to the finger (hand, eye, etc.) presented by the user. In this way biometric data of users does not have to be distributed and stored in the memory of controllers or readers, which simplifies the system and reduces memory requirements.
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RW Series Desktop/Instrument Electronic Enclosure - 0 views
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Free-Form Authority Models - P2P Foundation - 0 views
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‘authority models’in peer production, contrasts owner-centric authority models from free-form models
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define the authority models at work in such projects. The models define access and the workflow, and whether there is any quality control.
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the owner-centric model, entries can only be modified with the permission of a specific ‘owner’ who has to defend the integrity of his module.
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The free-form model connotes more of a sense that all users are on the “same level," and that expertise will be universally recognized and deferred to.
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the owner-centric authority model assumes the owner is the de facto expert in the topic at hand
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In the case of the Wikipedia, the adherents of the owner-centric model, active in the pre-Wikipedia "Nupedia" model, lost out, and presumable, the success of Wikipedia has proven them wrong
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dominance of difficult people, trolls, and their enablers
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Far too much credence and respect accorded to people who in other Internet contexts would be labelled "trolls."
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Wikipedia has, to its credit, done something about the most serious trolling and other kinds of abuse: there is an Arbitration Committee that provides a process whereby the most disruptive users of Wikipedia can be ejected from the project. But there are myriad abuses and problems that never make it to mediation, let alone arbitration.
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most people working on Wikipedia--the constant fighting can be so off-putting as to drive them away
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any person who can and wants to work politely with well-meaning
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root problem: anti-elitism, or lack of respect for expertise.
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Wikipedia lacks the habit or tradition of respect for expertise
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nearly everyone with much expertise but little patience will avoid editing Wikipedia
Sepp Hasslberger: Occupy Economy: The case for soft money - 2 views
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Value Accounting System - P2P Foundation - 0 views
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are not exchanging anything among themselves
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A value creation process that requires more than one individual can be based on following 3 arrangements
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stigmergic coordination
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collaboration
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cooperation,
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The problem is that this economic dependency is not symmetrical
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All labor is transferred into fluid equity through a value accounting system, which grants ownership to the participant member to a percentage of the future revenue generated for the lifetime of the product created
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risk is shared among all contributors
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based on contributions
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anyone can add value
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decentralized in terms of allocation of resources
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horizontal governance system
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A prearrangement on revenue is impossible in this context
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impossible to do time management
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no one can force anyone else to work more
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the value equation embodies positive and negative (intrinsic) incentives
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contains parameters to incentivise periodic and frequent contributions
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quality of execution
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priority level of tasks.