<div dir="ltr"><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Linton</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:michael.linton@gmail.com">michael.linton@gmail.com</a>></span><br>Date: Tue, Apr 25, 2017 at 6:31 AM<br>Subject: Fwd: the hi:project and the Digital Life Collective<br>To: Michael Linton <<a href="mailto:mwl@lets.net">mwl@lets.net</a>><br><br><br><div dir="ltr">This is a profound pleasure, perhaps the end of a beginning, maybe the begnning of something entirely different.<div><br></div><div>I came across Philip Sheldrake and his work only a few months ago, almost by chance, and have been delighting since then in the people he's been drawing into this project, the excellence of their process and the products in prospect.</div><div><br></div><div>The core message here, in case you are really short of time - </div><div><br></div><div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><font size="4"><i><b><span style="color:rgb(88,88,88);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Technology of, by and for the people. </span><span style="color:rgb(88,88,88);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif">Our tech, not their tech</span><span style="color:rgb(88,88,88);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif">. Find out more now at </span><a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5kaWdsaWZlLmNvbQ" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;text-decoration-line:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">www.diglife.com</a><span style="color:rgb(88,88,88);font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif">.</span><br></b></i></font></div><br></blockquote>But I really recommend you find the time to read this message too. And even more I hope you will act on it.</div><div><br></div><div>Thank you very much indeed Philip (et alia) - a great start to a great project.</div><div><br></div><div>cheers, m</div><div><br></div><div><div style="font-size:19.5px;text-align:center">an occasional bcc list on open money</div><div style="font-size:19.5px;text-align:center">to change/remove/add an email</div><div style="font-size:19.5px;text-align:center">please just ask </div><div><br></div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">The hi:project</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:hi@hi-project.org" target="_blank">hi@hi-project.org</a>></span><br>Date: Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 1:44 PM<br>Subject: the hi:project and the Digital Life Collective<br>To: Michael Linton <<a href="mailto:michael.linton@gmail.com" target="_blank">michael.linton@gmail.com</a>><br><br><br><u></u>
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<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Hello hi:project newsletter subscribers. All 255 of you. I’ll get to the point.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">The hi:project team is collaborating with others interested in trustworthy and empowering technologies. We’re working to launch the Digital Life Collective and we'd love you to be part of it.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Now for anyone interested in the trials and tribulations of an ambitious, open-source, nonprofit vision such as the hi:project, I provide a fuller debrief below. For those who prefer their updates bitesize, everything you need is contained in the next six paragraphs.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">...</p>
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<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">You’ll recall the hi:project has some mighty challenges in its sights. We will help: solve personal data & privacy; secure a citizen-centric Internet of Things; transform accessibility & digital inclusion.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Just as for many free open source software projects, no-one profits <em>with</em> the hi:project but rather everyone <em>because</em> of it. And therein lies both the broad opportunity and the deep problem. If everyone secures the return on investment, if the profit cannot be privatised, who exactly is going to make the investment?</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">In other words, markets aren’t designed to address such particular potential, but that hasn’t stopped us appealing to commercial players – more on how that works below. Moreover, it doesn’t seem foundations can fund and foster such fundamental architecture. And our brush with academic funding was a brush off. In all, we’ve been working across four fronts, failing at these three, and seeing if we can succeed at the fourth.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">At first the fourth appears counter-intuitive ... if the hi:project seemed too big, fifty of us have banded together so far to go bigger. The Digital Life Collective is a co-operative dedicated to “tech we trust for the world we want”, and today is the day we go all official. Today we put the incorporation paperwork in the post and invite you to become a co-founding member so that together we can give the market a miss for the moment, pause the powwow with foundations, give up grinding the grant applications … and start simply co-operating.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Technology of, by and for the people. <em>Our tech, not their tech</em>. Find out more now at <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5kaWdsaWZlLmNvbQ" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">www.diglife.com</a>.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">As for engineering the hi:project … well we’ll be making our case to the Collective in due time.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">###</p>
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<h1 style="font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-size:20px;letter-spacing:-1px;margin-bottom:16px;margin-top:4px;line-height:24px">THE DEBRIEF</h1>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">From the moment we started talking about the hi:project, we contrasted the user interface (UI) and the human interface (HI), the former describing the status quo in which you, the mere <em>user</em>, are actually the <em>used</em>, where you are in fact <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL2hpLXByb2plY3Qub3JnLzIwMTYvMDgvbGVzcy1zaGFwZWQtbWFuaXB1bGF0ZWQtZW5qb3ktZW5qb3lpbmcv" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">the product being sold, the civilian being controlled</a>. By adopting HI as our terminology, we communicate the intent to reinstate your sovereignty, your dignity, your humanity.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">In the ensuing four years we’ve witnessed a new type of UI emerge that feels sufficiently transformed as to warrant its own acronym. Some call them conversational interfaces, or intelligent personal assistants, or chatbots, which sounds ever so friendly. I prefer to name them after their primary function however … the <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL2hpLXByb2plY3Qub3JnLzIwMTYvMTAvaW50cm9kdWNpbmctZ29vZ2xlLWFzc2lzdGFudC1zdXJ2ZWlsbGFuY2UtaW50ZXJmYWNlLXNpLw" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">surveillance interface</a> (SI). Google Assistant. Amazon Alexa. Apple Siri. Microsoft Cortana. And Facebook appears intent on developing similar capabilities. The only thing more alarming than SI’s intrusive, opaque, and society-altering capabilities is the way in which tech pundits have ladled out the accolades, pundits whose worldview appears as limited as a magpie’s regard for shiny things.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Very very few companies are positioned to offer SI because it requires a huge amount of context (the surveillance ideally pre-dates the SI), enormous computing power, and therefore an existing dominant position in the consumer electronics and web services marketplace. Consequently, our global digital infrastructure is further centralized – saying that half a dozen companies are left in the race is likely an overestimate.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">And yet it’s tricky to convey the criticality of decentralization. In the here and now it seems irrelevant compared to the facility to utter “Alexa, play Sheeran’s Shape of You”. We were invited to write an article on the topic by the World Wide Web Foundation, and we hope the title alone does it justice: <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL2hpLXByb2plY3Qub3JnLzIwMTYvMTEvZGVjZW50cmFsaXphdGlvbi1kZWVwLWNhdXNlLWNhdXNlcy1jYXJlLWRlZXBseS8" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">Decentralization – a deep cause of causes you care about deeply</a>.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">We need to redecentralize the interface layer in ‘the stack’. We need to re-center things on you so you can chose to work <em>with</em> companies to create shared value rather than have them work <em>on</em> you. And we need to make sure everyone is invited.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Now I’ve touched on some of the context, here’s a brief look at the challenge we face trying to fund such an enterprise.</p>
<h2 style="font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-size:18px;margin-bottom:12px;margin-top:2px;line-height:24px">1. FOUNDATIONS.</h2>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">We haven’t spoken to every foundation with an Internet or Web related programme I’m sure. Nevertheless, the story I related in my last update (Feb 2016) hasn’t progressed any. We’re consistently aligned with these programmes, but our scope is waaaay too ambitious. As someone with more experience of foundations describes it ... if you’re transforming the relationship between civilians and their police service, then here’s some funding, but seek to reconfigure our relationships with all variety of public, private and governmental organizations and you’re clearly smoking something.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">(For the record, she was merely employing metaphor.)</p>
<h2 style="font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-size:18px;margin-bottom:12px;margin-top:2px;line-height:24px">2. ACADEMIC RESEARCH.</h2>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">On the back of the hi:project, I find myself pursuing a PhD on the issues. This is wonderful. Less so my experience of a multi-university application for European funding. We failed. And personally speaking, it’s not something I have any intention of ever doing ever again ever.</p>
<h2 style="font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-size:18px;margin-bottom:12px;margin-top:2px;line-height:24px">3. OLD-FASHIONED SELF-INTEREST.</h2>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">In <em><a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5odXAuaGFydmFyZC5lZHUvY2F0YWxvZy5waHA_aXNibj05NzgwNjc0NTQ1NDcy" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">Virtual Competition: The Promise and Perils of the Algorithm-Driven Economy</a></em> (Nov 2016), the authors question whether the invisible hand of the market still holds sway over some of those very privileged companies I listed above. I spent a good part of 2015 and 2016 talking to tier 2 tech firms (i.e. massive firms who didn’t make this tier 1 algorithmic hegemony) about staying tier 2 forever and paying the tier 1 tollgates forever. Would they not rather invest together in re-levelling the playing field to everyone's benefit including their own?</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">I’m delighted we secured the interest of a well-known organization that hosts collaborative development of open, non-differentiating tech, but no breakthrough yet on securing collaborative investment from their members or beyond. Still working on it.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">As it becomes increasingly obvious to the leadership and technologists across many sectors – automotive, financial services, home automation, healthcare, sports, entertainment, etc. – that they’ve been mediated out of contending for a direct relationship with any customer or indeed any stakeholder, this must change.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">And so to our fourth way forward ...</p>
<h2 style="font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:normal;font-size:18px;margin-bottom:12px;margin-top:2px;line-height:24px">4. CO-OPERATION.</h2>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">I recently learned two things about Franklin D. Roosevelt. He’s considered one of the top three US presidents (<a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnL3dpa2kvSGlzdG9yaWNhbF9yYW5raW5nc19vZl9wcmVzaWRlbnRzX29mX3RoZV9Vbml0ZWRfU3RhdGVz" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">ref</a>), and in a <a href="tel:1912" value="+661912" target="_blank">1912</a> speech at the People’s Forum in New York he proclaimed: “Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Competition has ‘left off’ and we’re left with growing, numbing centralization. We’re resigned to deepening, meticulous surveillance. We’re abdicating to the pervasive, unknowable influence of opaque algorithms. Where once others constructed digital profiles of us, we are now the mere biological shadows of these digital entities.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Hang on a minute, you say. Did he mention something earlier about smoking something?!... well allow me to ground this last observation.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">When your home and car insurance premiums are determined, who exactly do you think the insurer is quantifying? The remote, inaccessible, biological you, or one or more of those digital fabrications? The latter of course, and irrespective of the corresponding omissions or accuracy. Now combine your lack of control over the digital entities that are taken to <em>be</em> you with your lack of control over your interface into and onto this digital world, and your situation doesn’t look too bright. <em>Our</em> situation doesn’t look too bright.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">It’s plain to me that we can’t wait for tier 2 business leaders to wake up. If they only view things through the lens of direct competition, the best they can achieve is number 1 of tier 2.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">No. We must co-operate amongst ourselves to address this mess, and they can come and co-operate with us once we’ve got things rolling.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">The co-operative way dates back to the 18th Century, and the Rochdale principles set out the operational ideals for co-operatives in <a href="tel:1844" value="+661844" target="_blank">1844</a>. Working co-operatively is perfectly suited to our challenge here, and in an interesting synergy identified and championed by <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL3BsYXRmb3JtY29vcC5uZXQvYWJvdXQ" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">Platform Cooperativism</a>, our work will actually enhance the vibrancy of the co-operative way in the digital age.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">If we don’t co-operate to help ourselves, no-one will.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">You’re invited to become a co-founder right now. You can find out more at <a href="http://hi-project.org/mailster/1182/5cb11474d828b5295be5c9bd38f61526/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5kaWdsaWZlLmNvbQ/1" style="color:rgb(92,168,205);text-decoration:none;padding:2px 0px" target="_blank">www.diglife.com</a>.</p>
<p style="line-height:24px;color:rgb(88,88,88);margin:1em 0px">Best wishes, Philip @Sheldrake.</p>
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</div><br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: <a href="http://commonstransition.org" target="_blank">http://commonstransition.org</a> </div><div><br></div>P2P Foundation: <a href="http://p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://p2pfoundation.net</a> - <a href="http://blog.p2pfoundation.net" target="_blank">http://blog.p2pfoundation.net</a> <br><br><a href="http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation" target="_blank"></a>Updates: <a href="http://twitter.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/mbauwens</a>; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens" target="_blank">http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens</a><br><br>#82 on the (En)Rich list: <a href="http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/" target="_blank">http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/</a> <br></div></div></div></div>
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