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From Computing to a sustainable P2P - Society

From Computing to a sustainable P2P - Society

I was inspired to start contributing to our.status by two things:

This tweet:

This talk by jarrad hope:

What is computing

Technology is a kind of immersive thing and I argue that humans today, especially in the so called western or modern world, are closer to technology in terms of culture than ever before in the history of humanity.

Let's Quote wikipedia here on what Computation means:

Computation is any type of calculation that includes both arithmetical and non-arithmetical steps and follows a well-defined model, for example an algorithm.

Back to our two questions from the beginning, Jarrad is looking for a another way the Web could look, and the white board is looking for Computation. In this way we try to extend our vision of what computing could look like beyond typical known devices classes such as desktop or mobile.

I will try to describe what I think is a better Medium than a white board.

Introducing Worrydream

How to introduce someone like Bret Victor? It may sound lazy but I will simply link to his site.

There are so many incredible pieces on his site that it took me years to explore them all and build up a context in which I could understand them better.

I seriously suggest to you dear reader, spend some time there and try to explore the contents. I'm sure you will be able to find something you can relate to, be it electrical engineering, comics, climate change, programming, design, math or something I missed listing here.

To stay very focused on our initial goal we jump right to the project which can answer our two questions from the beginning:

Entering Dynamicland

Let's bring in two quotes from the Dynmicland website, to get a kind of initial idea of what Dynamicland is:

Our mission is to incubate a humane dynamic medium
whose full power is accessible to all people.

We are building a community
workspace in the heart of
Oakland, CA. The entire
building is the computer

If we look at the examples, we can easily see how this is already better then a plain old white board.

Although there is plenty of room to expand on how this would be better for the individual user in comparison to a white board or a webbrowser, I want to focus on how this is better for the community of people using it.

Adoption and Community Centers

One thing I'm always wondering about, is how long it will take to build the web3 and moving slowly towards sustainable technology. Technical issues aside, and there are still huge issues there, the biggest challenge to me seems getting people to trust each other and then to trust technology.

Looking from that point of view I ask myself what are all these people actually going to do about it.

The critical question would be how to bridge efforts like status from the software world into the real world?

Now that we have seen the Dynmicland "computer" - the community center an actual physical building, I think it becomes more tangible.

I think a very good way for the web3 community to foster adoption and knowledge about how to build a sustainable P2P Society is to have these small community centers where people could interact and exchange knowledge about relevant matters.

Diversity and Inclusion

I think these buildings could be:

  • libraries
  • maker spaces
  • or dedicated community centers

If people of the web3 want society to be a better place why not just give them an actual place. Let people meet physically and then extend their experience into the world using other -mobile - technologies.

Imagine status being able to guide you to your next web3 community center or many other geolocation based services.

I imagine it is possible for these centers to be as self governed possibly with their own - renewable - energy supply. A lot can be said about what sustainable technology means.

Evgeny Morozov for example has also written a bit about this in these studies (german and english)

What can we do to include more of academia or other researchers into the web3 domain?

Finish

A blog post these days is almost certainly a one way street which is in my opinion a sad thing. I still hope people find some interest in the topics discussed and the motivation to take the discussion further and finally into action: How can a status or web3 community center be build? Can civil engineers from Egypt or teachers from Germany help?

How can we include all people in building a better society? :)

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