I’m planning to write a book over the next year. The working title is Move Slow and Fix Things. I’m not in love with this title; it will likely change; feel free to propose something better. Here are some other ideas: “Cryptopia”, “Bending the Curve” (inspired by Jaron Lanier).
I want to talk about the intersection of technology, economics, and politics/human systems/institutions. In particular, I want to explore how tools such as Bitcoin and Ethereum transform the relationship between the person and the machine, and between the institution and the person. This is in an absolutely primordial state right now, and I am totally out of my league, so I can use all the help I can get to make this a reality.
My motivation in writing a book is a. to explain to myself why I’m so excited about Ethereum and related tech, why I’m working on it, and where I think it’s going/how we get there, and b. to reframe the public discourse about tools like blockchain and Ethereum away from the token/scam/finance angle and towards the social angle which, IMHO, is much more important and has more potential to change the world.
I intend to do a TON of reading to prepare for this. I’ll use this forum as a place to share what I’m reading and my findings.
What follows is an early list of themes I’d like to cover in the book. It’s not quite an outline yet since it’s not in any particular order. Would love feedback!
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The pace of change has quickened enormously in recent years and existing institutions are completely failing to keep up
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The idea of the nation state is not that old in the first place and it has run its course. Is it time for something better? Can this be done incrementally? Put this in context: some history on the nation state, previous attempts, is this time different?
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Everyday people - hackers - have more power than any group of people ever before in history to build and experiment and effect massive change.
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The attention economy, fragmentation of attention, loss of a single uniting narrative, drifting apart as a people and as a nation, loss of the concept of truth and facts.
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Mistrust of authority - and trust in general. What role does blockchain, and other “trustless” systems, have to play here? Is there such a thing as “trustlessness”?
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Recognition of the fact that the “move fast and break things” hacker Facebook mentality doesn’t cut it anymore, that we’re playing with fire and with people’s lives and livelihood and data and that it’s time we grow up and act responsibly
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Self-sovereignty
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Social scalability
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The importance of data and the monopoly effect it leads to
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Data as labor, a la Lanier and Radical Markets