---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Great Transition Network <[email protected]> Date: Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 11:28 PM Subject: Technology and the Future (GTN Discussions) To: Great Transition Network <[email protected]>
From Pierre Calame [[email protected]]
[Moderator's Note: The last day for comments is TODAY: MONDAY, JANUARY 3. Looking forward to your contributions! - JC] I fully agree with the analysis of Michel Bauwens. Blockchain technology applied to specific ledgers is not per se energy-intensive. There is actually a first crucial application of it: the ecological footprint of global supply chains. Such ledgers are essential for creating the accounting system of carbon dioxide equivalent individual quotas, which are the logical consequence of an obligation to fight global warming. You can find the description or the system at: blog.pierre-calame.fr/public/quotas_carbone_EN.pdf . In my opinion, pushing for the international endorsement of such a system should even be a crucial priority for GTI. Yours, Pierre Pierre Calame **************************************************** Le 30/12/2021 à 19:43, Great Transition Network a écrit :
From Michel Bauwens [[email protected]]
Great Transition Initiative: Filling in the Commons Gap Michel Bauwens Whether we believe that technology itself has its own determinism or that it is shaped by material interests, there is always a residue of human agency to transform technological tools in the service of social change. This is what we propose to do here with perhaps the most unlikely candidate: the bitcoin-generated blockchain. Our contention is that the blockchain can be used as an essential tool to construct the next cyber-physical infrastructure that will allow humanity to produce for its own needs, while respecting the material and ecological planetary boundaries, and its interdependency with the web of life. Bitcoin is the recipient of many legitimate critiques by progressives. It was designed with Austrian economics and anarcho-capitalist values in mind, is very energy-intensive in its production, and has a very unequal distribution in terms of income and property, a distribution that is not accidental in view of the ‘oligarchic protocols’ that it has chosen as incentives for its stakeholders. [1] But is it important to distinguish the existence of a global distributed ledger, i.e., an open and interoperable accounting and logistical system that can be used to coordinate production on a global scale, from its first iteration as the ledger of Bitcoin. We now have different post-blockchain distributed ledgers that attest to this, and a number of these ledger projects are operated not according to libertarian values and rules, but by integrating the insights of Elinor Ostrom. [2] The question to answer is the following: what becomes possible once we have such technology at our disposal? My contention is that an interoperable blockchain becomes the vehicle for global mutual coordination of human production within planetary boundaries. A ledger is first and most an accounting tool, recording transactions. This is obviously not trivial: the first accounting systems in Sumer, with temple administrations recording the flow of grain and debts, stand for the origins of the state apparatuses; the double entry accounting system for private competitive units created by a Franciscan monk Luca Pacioli in the Italian city-states stood for the emergence of private forms of capitalism which would eventually become dominant. Blockchain ledgers have currently inaugurated various forms of post-capitalist accounting which seem to be just as non-trivial: • Contributory accounting, which can record, value, and recompense non-commodified forms of contributions to ecosystems and networks, already signify the recognition of value outside the commodity form; it is a crucial tool signifying a transition to contributory regimes of value [3] • Flow accounting, such as the Resource-Events-Agents software, allows every transaction to be recorded as an event in a network, and has abandoned double entry; it is an accounting for externality-aware ecosystems, not externality-ignoring closed entities. • Thermodynamic accounting directly records the flow of matter and energy into an accounting system, such as the systems pioneered by R30.org and the Global Commons Alliance, who use a ‘global thresholds and allocations’ approach to determine the maximum allowed flow in particular contexts. These ledgers are linked to tokens and intelligent current-sees which can allow for expanded and complex value regimes. [4] We now have access to local currencies, which can protect and regulate local economies and domain-specific intelligent monies such as SolarCoin generated by renewable energy or FishCoin which regulates the maximum volumes for the fishing industry. Local-geographic currencies, domain-specific virtual currencies, and transformed nation-state currencies can co-exist in a regime of monetary biodiversity that is both socially aware, ecologically aware, and a global regulatory currency that insures the economy stays within agreed upon ecological limits. With these tools at hand, integrated in a cosmo-global cooperative ledger, it becomes possible to transcend the violent competition between economic coordination systems that plagued the twentieth century. Here is what is envisageable: - The primary layer of human cooperation becomes ‘stigmergy’, the gift of the commons economy that has been operating successfully within the open-source economy for two dozen years by now: open and transparent systems allow participating producers to freely coordinate their work in view of the needs and possibilities of the ecosystem as a whole, without needing central command. Collective agreements then result from negotiated coordination. The agents of this are the contributive communities, and the for-benefit associations that maintain their infrastructure of cooperation. In this particular context, the blockchain economy is best seen as an extension of this movement: it enables the creation of open and global coordination systems, in which a substantial amount of the income is devoted to paying open-source developers. - The secondary layer consists of the generative market exchange mechanisms, post-capitalist market forms that regulate genuine exchange, within planetary limits; this is necessary for the flow of all the resources that need investment and need to be renewed. The agents for this are generative and cooperative market entities that add value to the commons economy. Commons Stack, focusing on commons regulations, and RadicalXchange, focusing on the creation of generative market systems, are among the initiatives dedicated to this. - The third layer is the planning layer. This is where thermodynamic accounting systems come in, by rendering visible the flows of matter and energy in a economic system, and where the ruleset of ‘global thresholds and allocations’, allows for context-specific ‘maximums.’ Of course, to a sceptic, the description so far will sound utopian. What could be the agent of sufficient change that would lead to the adoption of such a global infrastructure? Our answer is that the commoners are the agents of such a change, following cosmo-local models, which we see as the ‘third possible future’ for humankind. [5] The first future is the continuation of multicultural neoliberalism, from now on under the hegemony of the Successor Ideology, as proposed by the World Economic Forum. [6] It is a world run by public-private partnerships and natural asset investment vehicles, with weak national governments, strong transnational capital, and instrumentalized global NGOs. Its political preference is for alliances of the urban cognitive elites, organized under group allocation rules, which can be used to manage the unruly popular classes. The second model is protectionist retreat, which aims for re-strengthening sovereign nation-states. creating solidaristic citizen-based class coalitions internally, and attempts to control global flows of capital and labor to benefit a competitive nation. The danger of the second model is armed confrontation between states aiming for control of scarce resources. The third model is the cosmo-local model: in this model, we aim for a subsidiarity of material production (intelligent relocalization), based on distributed manufacturing models, producing on demand using the maximum amount of biodegradable material. In such a model, local production units are linked to global open design communities, which we call ‘protocol cooperatives.’ The partner state concept stands for a ‘community state’ that enables and empowers individual and collective autonomy at the local scale, guarantees the equality of contributory capacity, using multi-stakeholder commons institutions, following the quintuple helix governance model pioneered for the Italian urban commons. Local alliances of public authorities, the commercial sector, the formal civil society and research organizations support commons-centric public initiatives; they are mirrored, in a fractal way, by similar transnational institutions that support a domain-specific commons institutions, which we call the ‘magisteria of the commons’. We see these networked workers, organized in common third spaces, i.e., revamped makerspaces, as both local agents, rooted in their communities, and as agents that are linked to the global open design communities which are the vehicle of their social and technical knowledge. Barring or awaiting the emergence of political forces which can represent this cosmo-local order, the priority is to network the productive nodes, and to construct the necessary transnational layer which can represent the counterforce to transnational capital. Partner state organizations are a vital link to facilitate the connection of local producers to the global streams of shared knowledge, and the new domain-specific value streams. [7] [1] To see how this differs from a commons-centric design, see the comparison table: Contrasting the Propertarian Blockchain with Commons-Based Ledger Systems, docs.google.com/document/d/1RQXhk83jrRTuWXKzPC6R5pxcbm-hqA-WiRgsfjU9NIs/edit#heading=h.cfglx2edur25 [2] The Commons Stack project, part of the Crypto Commons Alliance, is exemplary in this regard. See commonsstack.org/ [3] The P2P Value project found that 75% of the 300 studied peer production projects were using, experimenting or researching such accounting conventions and tools, wiki.p2pfoundation.net/P2P_Value [4] The concept is from Arthur Brock, founder of the Holochain post-blockchain ledger, a open and p2p-based interoperable ledger system that doesn’t require a world computer but is based on the free interconnection of autonomous ledgers. [5] Cosmo-local production models are described in a new book by the P2P Foundation, which contains 40 case studies of initiatives combining local material production with globally shared open designs: The Cosmolocal Reader. Ed. José Ramos, Sharon Ede, Michel Bauwens and Gien Wong. P2P Foundation, 2021, clreader.net/ [6] See wesleyyang.substack.com/p/welcome-to-year-zero [7] P2P Accounting for Planetary Survival: Towards a P2P Infrastructure for a Socially Just Circular Society. By Michel Bauwens and Alex Pazaitis. Foreword by Kate Raworth. P2P Foundation, June 2019. (Subtitle: How shared perma-circular supply chains, post-blockchain distributed ledgers, protocol cooperatives, and three new forms of post-capitalist accounting, could very well save the planet.), commonstransition.org/p2p-accounting-for-planetary-survival/ ******************************************************************* December 1, 2021 Dear GTN: Our December discussion—*Technology and the Future*—takes up a critical question: how might emerging technologies shape—and be shaped by—the global transition? Let us approach this knotty question at both concrete and conceptual levels: weighing the implications of *specific technologies *for a GT and establishing an adequate* theoretical framework* for making sense of the interplay between technology and society. *Specific Technologies* An astonishing array of potentially disruptive creations looms on the horizon. *In this pivotal moment, what influence, for better or worse, might vanguard technologies have on the global trajectory <https://greattransition.org/explore/scenarios> ? Which applications are inherently discordant with a Great Transition and should be resisted outright? Which have a legitimate place, in some form, in a Great Transition world and the struggle to get there? * Under prevailing Conventional World conditions, social change movements can resist specific technologies outright, advocate policies to regulate them, or, by ignoring them, cede the field to business-as-usual forces. Not surprisingly, given the diversity of environmental and social advocacy, controversy rages about such technologies as bioengineering, artificial intelligence, and the Internet. To structure our discussion of this sprawling topic, I invite you to focus on the prospects of key technologies in three arenas: *Bioengineering*: Will there be GMOs in a Great Transition? Surely we need to move from industrial agriculture to an agro-ecological model, but can this meet the nutritional needs of a growing population? Skeptics see a role for regulated GMOs, while others passionately disagree. *Artificial intelligence*: Will AI induce painful unemployment in the near term? By reducing socially necessary labor time, might it be the precondition for a post-scarcity society? What would a politically progressive AI strategy look like that balances such concerns? *Digital economy*: Consider blockchains and cryptocurrency, for example. Do they merely foreshadow new financial and environmental burdens, or hold the promise, as some claim, of hastening a post-capitalist economy? Can social movements begin to coopt elements of platform capitalism to grow the infrastructure of platform cooperativism? Please reflect on how different institutional contexts might shape the form each technology assumes and the function it plays, a consideration which segues into the second level of our discussion. *Theoretical Framework* *How should we think about the interplay between technological and social evolution? Does technology drive history? Or the reverse? Or perhaps the logic of discovery defines a channel of possibilities for social evolution that delimits the scope for human agency?* Ask a professional futurologist (or a wonderstruck layman) what our grandchildren’s world will look like, and odds are you’ll hear a story about how disruptive technology inexorably will revolutionize economies and everyday life. For many, *technological determinism*—the idea that technology drives history—is a seductive lure that offers a through-line for explaining social change. We can resist, surrender, or adapt to the robots (and much else), but they are coming! But in downplaying the other side of the equation—the ways history drives technology—technological determinism is reductive and simplistic. The robots and their ilk will not be dropped from the sky by technology gods; they will carry characteristics and functions congruent with the societies that spawn them. By insisting that the internal logic of innovation drives social evolution, technological determinism reverses that paternity. If technology marches to the beat of its own drum, we can love it (technophilia) or hate it (technophobia) but not alter its essence. Both the techno-optimist gushing about cool gadgets and the techno-pessimist indicting the machine let the reigning political economy off the hook. By contrast, the *social construction of technology* school rejects the idea of technology as an autonomous force, instead understanding it as embedded in society and subject to its choices. Social constructionism yields academic and policy insight into the regulation and management of R&D, but its granular focus cannot guide us in the big-picture challenge of shaping the social-technological culture of the future. Moreover, social constructionism’s bias—history drives technology—obscures the objective constraints imposed by the state of technology and the laws of nature. What are the contours of a systemic understanding of the technology-society dialectic? An adequate framework recognizes that technological and social conditions co-evolve at different spatial scales influenced by strengthening global forces. In stable times, the technological variants that prevail and become entrenched are those compatible with dominant interests and institutions. However, at pivotal moments of historical change like the present, techno-social systems can branch in myriad directions as disruptive innovations contribute to the stress on existing structures, helping to trigger and shape what comes next. In our time of transformation, emergent technologies powerfully affect all future trajectories, whether of Conventional Worlds, Barbarization, or Great Transition varieties. The forms they assume and the roles they play are subject to choices yet to be made and struggles yet to be waged. If it is true that the robots will look like us, the prior question remains: what will we look like? Technology scenarios are subplots of the larger story depicted in the alternative narratives of the future. With this as background for your critique and elaboration, I invite your thoughts on *Technology and the Future*, whether focused on specific innovations or on theoretical considerations. The comment period will go through *Monday, January 3*. Succinct remarks are welcome, as are extended reflections (capped at 1,200 words, please). Over to you, Paul Paul Raskin GTI Director ---------------------------------------------------------- To submit a comment for this GTN discussion, click reply or send it to [email protected]. *Expect a delay between the submission and posting.* You can review the discussion here <https://greattransition.org/gtn-discussions/technology-and-the-future#3535>, where you can also submit your comment by replying to any previously posted comment. -- P2P Foundation: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net <http://p2pfoundation.net> - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: ; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens Curation of news on p2p/commons developments: https://www.facebook.com/groups/p2p.open/