Curioso soprattutto il fatto che a proporre un contraltare ai walled
garden delle grandi aziende private multinazionali sia una persona che
utilizza OnlyOffice per poter usare il formato proprietario Microsoft,
che è la massima espressione del walled garden.
Spiace dirlo, ma chi utilizza il formato Microsoft per i propri
documenti è estraneo al mondo del software libero e open source, in
quanto supporta la principale strategia di lock-in di Microsoft e dei
suoi "soci" come OnlyOffice, e non aiuta a educare il resto del mondo
all'utilizzo degli standard aperti (OOXML non è uno standard sotto
nessun punto di vista, e ovviamente non è aperto).
On 7/7/22 17:18, Giuseppe Attardi wrote:
Curioso.
Nel mio TedTalk a ottobre scorso su "Distopia o Utopia:
l’Intelligenza Artificiale nel 2050”, introdussi il concetto di Utopia
Virtuale, ossia di gruppi di persone che si costituiscono in comunità
rette dalle proprie regole, ispirate a principi condivisi dalla comunità.
Le Utopie Virtuali dovrebbero superare gli stati nazionali e costituire
un contraltare alle grandi aziende private multinazionali, che
ingabbiano le persone all’interno dei loro walled garden, obbligandole a
seguire le loro regole, orientate a massimizzare loro interessi privati.
Ho elaborato l'idea in questo articolo:
https://personal.onlyoffice.com/products/files/doceditor?fileid=drive-63308-%7c1XF2Oe9Sziz6l8kly5sq3MsHI5_OAInfg&doc=YkF4WGRYY0VuUHVqdUlvM21Hc1JlTjlPVVczV0QvQWFuRVRGMTBKS2tlUT0_ImRyaXZlLTYzMzA4LXwxWEYyT2U5U3ppejZsOGtseTVzcTNNc0hJNV9PQUluZmci
<https://personal.onlyoffice.com/products/files/doceditor?fileid=drive-63308-%7c1XF2Oe9Sziz6l8kly5sq3MsHI5_OAInfg&doc=YkF4WGRYY0VuUHVqdUlvM21Hc1JlTjlPVVczV0QvQWFuRVRGMTBKS2tlUT0_ImRyaXZlLTYzMzA4LXwxWEYyT2U5U3ppejZsOGtseTVzcTNNc0hJNV9PQUluZmci> ho
Stavo aspettando qualcuno che mi aiutasse ad articolare questa visione e
a farla circolare, e mi auguro che sia Srinivasan a riuscirci.
In realtà avrei preferito che la visione nascesse dal b asso, da una
elaborazione condivisa, comunque un libro può essere un buon punto di
partenza.
— Beppe
On 5 Jul 2022, at 15:46, [email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]> wrote:
From: Alberto Cammozzo <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
To: Nexa <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: [nexa] Could new countries be founded – on the internet? |
Sam Venis
Message-ID: <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
<https://es.sonicurlprotection-fra.com/click?PV=2&MSGID=202207051346200259984&URLID=9&ESV=10.0.17.7319&IV=3882C14053852A03893CADE76004619B&TT=1657028781835&ESN=c9uHQ2RKOD2Ov6nxC9PixG0pkgJqaYJNyx7vhNlPC5Y%3D&KV=1536961729280&B64_ENCODED_URL=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tL2NvbW1lbnRpc2ZyZWUvMjAyMi9qdWwvMDUvY291bGQtbmV3LWNvdW50cmllcy1iZS1mb3VuZGVkLW9uLXRoZS1pbnRlcm5ldA&HK=0D093797125AF26AD66EA9C23A9C7E2B4DCF3CC8A678DE217B94AEB2A07243CA
<https://es.sonicurlprotection-fra.com/click?PV=2&MSGID=202207051346200259984&URLID=9&ESV=10.0.17.7319&IV=3882C14053852A03893CADE76004619B&TT=1657028781835&ESN=c9uHQ2RKOD2Ov6nxC9PixG0pkgJqaYJNyx7vhNlPC5Y%3D&KV=1536961729280&B64_ENCODED_URL=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlZ3VhcmRpYW4uY29tL2NvbW1lbnRpc2ZyZWUvMjAyMi9qdWwvMDUvY291bGQtbmV3LWNvdW50cmllcy1iZS1mb3VuZGVkLW9uLXRoZS1pbnRlcm5ldA&HK=0D093797125AF26AD66EA9C23A9C7E2B4DCF3CC8A678DE217B94AEB2A07243CA>>
In The Network State, a buzzy new book by Balaji Srinivasan, the
former chief technology officer of Coinbase, poses a devious question:
how do you Larp a country into existence?
Released provocatively this 4 July, the book presents Srinivasan’s
case for a new model of digital statehood run and managed in the
cloud. A network state, as he describes it, is basically a group of
people who get together on the internet and decide that they’re going
to start a country. With a social network to connect them, a leader to
unite them, and a cryptocurrency to protect their assets, Srinivasan
says a country can be born with laws, social services and all. A
network state is a country that “anyone can start from your computer,
beginning by building a following” – not unlike companies,
cryptocurrencies, or decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In
a world where billionaires can run companies larger than countries,
Srinivasan asks, could such a state achieve recognition from the
United Nations?
Like all utopian visions, this one, too, is diagnostic – an answer to
a growing list of “wicked” social problems like surveillance
capitalism, economic stagnation, political polarization, and conflict
among great powers. Just when we need leaders to solve our problems,
Balaji argues, they are failing, and the reason isn’t just corruption
or incompetence – the reason is technological. Central government is
simply no longer capable of addressing our needs because the world for
which it was designed has changed.
The internet, for example, has made place less important, so national
borders seem increasingly arbitrary. And cryptocurrencies like bitcoin
have proven that if enough people believe in the value of an idea you
can create something worth trillions of dollars. Software has made it
so that a few engineers can outcompete nations (think hacker groups
and startups). And, in the age of social networks, millions of
anonymous people can fit into groups that act and coordinate together;
just look at r/wallstreetbets and Gamestop.
“Very few institutions that predated the internet will survive the
internet,” Srinivasan said recently, in a lecture describing the book.
So the solution, he argues, is to build an institution based on it.
Here’s how it would work: a person on Twitter decides to start a
country so they float the idea to their pals and begin to gather
recruits. They put together a vision statement and a list of values,
and soon enough people begin to join and tell their friends. It starts
off like a social network.
By pooling their money and lending their skills, the community begins
to develop social services and spawn its own mini-culture, providing
things like healthcare and insurance and passports and dope parties.
With something like a hybrid of Twitter and Discord, they could
connect, share ideas, and vote (think up- and down-voting on your
favorite legislation). And with a currency like bitcoin, they could
control their own money supply and protect their funds from
encroaching governments. First they would buy small plots of land,
like a national Soho house, and eventually, they would begin to
migrate into chosen cities – probably to sympathetic jurisdictions
like Miami, which, Srinivasan says, will compete to acquire these
brave new digital citizens.
To make it happen, no wars need to be fought and no laws need to be
violated. With rockstar leaders to blaze their path and negotiate on
the international stage, these new states would slowly but surely
obtain rights and recognition, eventually breaking off from their home
countries once and for all. When it works, Srinivasan writes, “it will
eventually become a template … the modern version of Jefferson’s
natural aristocracy.” First, there was Brexit; then other movements
like Wexit; now, a few years later, there’s a new romantic vision of
escape for techies – “Texit”?
When The Network State drops this week it is likely to solicit a
number of heated reactions. Some, grumbling about rightwing Silicon
Valley figures like Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin, will call the ideas
of The Network State fascist and tyrannical, and others, likely those
on the libertarian right, will call it visionary and scholarly.
Srinivasan, you might hear from them, is a soothsayer – a
truth-teller. But beneath the posturing there will be a lingering
question: is any of this actually possible?
While the concept might bend our idea of nationality, the fact remains
that a lot of precursors already exist. Consider Dudeism, a religion
based on a character from the Coen Brothers’ 1998 film, with a
reported population of 450,000 Dudeist priests. Or even, as Srinivasan
points out, the state of Israel, which brought together a people
scattered around the world and organized them around a common ideal.
Many countries, Srinivasan says, that are recognized by the UN have
populations around five to 10 million people with economies much
smaller than what an equal size of tech workers might produce. That a
bunch of crypto bros might test their fate on an eccentric leader
doesn’t seem too far-fetched. Plus, the tech already exists.
And with over 650,000 Twitter followers – an army of young, tech-savvy
and politically credulous acolytes – Srinivasan might just be the man
to do it. There’s an expression that circulates on Twitter about him
every so often: that “Balaji was right” is the most terrifying phrase
in the English language. Among the crypto-rich and the billionaire
class this book will be positioned as a north star, levied to support
the long-running claim that technologists can run society better than
the bureaucrats. And now, with this book, Srinivasan has given them
the framework to prove it.
What doesn’t fit so neatly into Srinivasan’s vision are little things
like death and ageing and sickness. How will poverty be dealt with in
a network state? “The future,” he wrote in 2015, “is nationalists vs
technologists. A full-throated, jealous defender of borders, language,
and culture. Or a rootless cosmopolitan with a laptop, bent on callow
disruption.” It’s romantic, sure, but one could ask: what about people
that just want a stable job?
Of course, Srinivasan isn’t the first technologist to offer a tarot
reading of our tech-mediated future. In 2019, the theorist Aaron
Bastani wrote another popular formulation, this one from the left,
explaining how robots will make us all rich. His book Fully Automated
Luxury Communism starts with the same general diagnoses: that we’re
going into the third industrial revolution, that we’re at an epochal
moment of human history, that technology has rendered our systems
obsolete. But his conclusion, as the title suggests, is that we need
more centralization, not less. Let the robots do our work, the book
argues, and let us enjoy the spoils. Hunger, disease, energy crises,
jobs – these will all be relics of a scarce and squalid past that came
before the age of abundance. The future is the nanny state, Bastani
suggests – only better.
What these visions point to is a growing cleavage among the strange
cohort of people who call themselves futurists. On the one hand, there
are those who imagine a world of centralization, marked by super-blocs
and mass redistribution of wealth. And on the other, there are those
who claim that the world already mirrors the feudal systems of yore.
In this sort of vision, like the one offered by Balaji Srinivasan,
fragmentation is on the docket and rugged individualism is the
outstanding moral code. And this book, or better yet, this playbook,
is just the first attempt to make it official.
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