The book Complexity was a big influence on Dee Hock, founder of Visa. He writes about it in his book, One from Many: "...I excitedly shared my amazement that concepts now emerging in science were surprisingly similar to organizational concepts that I had been working with for decades."
And if anyone foreshadows web3, it's Dee Hock. Here's what he wrote in 2005:
"If electronic technology continued to advance, and that seemed certain, two-hundred year old banking oligopolies controlling the custody, loan, and exchange of money would be irrecoverably shattered. Nation-state monopolies on the issuance and control of currency would erode."
"...people are willing to spend money to be part of something bigger than themselves (particularly if there’s the potential for a return). " This was the meta lesson that can be duplicated you summed up really well, great article loved it.
There is some naivete (and despite all the talk of web3, actually some old-fashioned neo liberal thinking) here. If you're going down the 'greed is good' route for solving climate change, you are competing with the financial incentives of raping the world's resources for financial gain. And for many decades to come, that is going to be a hell of a lot more profitable than the 'simulated currency' you describe here. What we need is more education, more expertise, more collaboration - but in a way that appeals to our common humanity and a sense of shared place in society - not our instincts for personal gain. When you're fighting the profit incentive war, we will continue going down the capitalistic route that is ultimately indifferent to the climate.
I'd recommend the book Thinking in Systems by the late Donella Meadows as a great primer on complex systems frameworks. Also The Flux blog (https://read.fluxcollective.org/) is a great overview of complex systems in today's world + future scenarios by (ex/current)Googlers. Whenever I think of DAOs I think of Conway's game of life where a small set of boundary conditions create complex behaviors.
I love how this builds upon your other ideas around idea legos/composability - if we continue to introduce new ideas, eventually (or suddenly) we'll take the best components of those ideas and tie them in with another set of components of another idea to build something even better.
Thanks for the write up. I feel it's an extremely expensive laboratory? There will be learnings, winners and losers and what I wonder is who will be holding the bag at the end. It could also be me 🤷🏻♂️
It is an interesting theory. But these simulations includes (mostly) younger moneyed crowd (i.e. with money to spare and/or just gamble with) or large corporations that already have a larger than needed influence on the world and the people that live in it. So what do you make of the fact that the results will be biased towards their ethos? Feels like a very big flaw in this AI model. Or the recipe for a scary dystopian future for the Average Joe.
The connection between emergence & Web 3 is a great one. reminds me of phase transitions in chemistry (ex. Liquid water freezing to ice) that appear to happen rapidly but are really a function of energy building until it hits a critical point. The web3 bits could be viewed as isolated incidents of insanity or they could be viewed as an evolving system.
The Laboratory for Complex Problems
The book Complexity was a big influence on Dee Hock, founder of Visa. He writes about it in his book, One from Many: "...I excitedly shared my amazement that concepts now emerging in science were surprisingly similar to organizational concepts that I had been working with for decades."
And if anyone foreshadows web3, it's Dee Hock. Here's what he wrote in 2005:
"If electronic technology continued to advance, and that seemed certain, two-hundred year old banking oligopolies controlling the custody, loan, and exchange of money would be irrecoverably shattered. Nation-state monopolies on the issuance and control of currency would erode."
"...people are willing to spend money to be part of something bigger than themselves (particularly if there’s the potential for a return). " This was the meta lesson that can be duplicated you summed up really well, great article loved it.
There is some naivete (and despite all the talk of web3, actually some old-fashioned neo liberal thinking) here. If you're going down the 'greed is good' route for solving climate change, you are competing with the financial incentives of raping the world's resources for financial gain. And for many decades to come, that is going to be a hell of a lot more profitable than the 'simulated currency' you describe here. What we need is more education, more expertise, more collaboration - but in a way that appeals to our common humanity and a sense of shared place in society - not our instincts for personal gain. When you're fighting the profit incentive war, we will continue going down the capitalistic route that is ultimately indifferent to the climate.
I'd recommend the book Thinking in Systems by the late Donella Meadows as a great primer on complex systems frameworks. Also The Flux blog (https://read.fluxcollective.org/) is a great overview of complex systems in today's world + future scenarios by (ex/current)Googlers. Whenever I think of DAOs I think of Conway's game of life where a small set of boundary conditions create complex behaviors.
I love how this builds upon your other ideas around idea legos/composability - if we continue to introduce new ideas, eventually (or suddenly) we'll take the best components of those ideas and tie them in with another set of components of another idea to build something even better.
Here's to a wacky 2022! 🍻
Thanks for the write up. I feel it's an extremely expensive laboratory? There will be learnings, winners and losers and what I wonder is who will be holding the bag at the end. It could also be me 🤷🏻♂️
It is an interesting theory. But these simulations includes (mostly) younger moneyed crowd (i.e. with money to spare and/or just gamble with) or large corporations that already have a larger than needed influence on the world and the people that live in it. So what do you make of the fact that the results will be biased towards their ethos? Feels like a very big flaw in this AI model. Or the recipe for a scary dystopian future for the Average Joe.
The connection between emergence & Web 3 is a great one. reminds me of phase transitions in chemistry (ex. Liquid water freezing to ice) that appear to happen rapidly but are really a function of energy building until it hits a critical point. The web3 bits could be viewed as isolated incidents of insanity or they could be viewed as an evolving system.
You make it seem so easy man, I love your writing.