While health authorities focus on top-down measures to get COVID-19 supplies to hospitals in need, home-grown initiatives are enlisting regular people to create open-source equipment. Rather than wait for the impact of government efforts to persuade manufacturers to move into emergency production of ventilators and protective equipment, the sharing economy is already saving lives with home-made masks and 3D-printed ventilators.

A dearth of adequate medical supplies was implicated in an increase in coronavirus mortality in Italy, compared with Germany and South Korea, where supply was adequate.

Meeting a desperate need for ventilators through open-sourcing

Health authorities say the immediate short-term need is to get more ventilators, which compress and decompress air for patients who are too weak to breathe on their own.

In Ireland, a community called Open Source Ventilator sprang from a Facebook discussion to develop a simplified, low-cost, emergency ventilator that can be produced at scale from mostly 3D-printed components. Developed in collaboration with frontline healthcare workers, the emergency ventilator can be fabricated from locally sourced supplies and materials so its manufacture is not dependent on a global supply chain.

Before you rush out to hack together your personal ventilator, however, health experts warn that ventilators can do more harm than good if they are not properly constructed and operated. It is necessary to have the correct timing and air pressure, filtration, humidity, and temperature. Improper use can damage lung tissue and may even induce pneumonia. Faulty equipment can aerosolize the virus, causing it to infect others. Johns Hopkins has specifications for open-source ventilators. 

Home sewing corps fashion DIY masks

There are open-source projects in numerous cities focusing on producing masks for personal uses and to protect healthcare workers. COVID-19 is one micron wide and most medical masks filter particles down to three microns. So while wearing a mask doesn’t stop all virus particles, it significantly reduces the risk of infection. There is a multitude of how-to videos for how to sew your own mask with the fabric you have but health authorities caution that cotton, as shown in this video, is not good at stopping small particles so air filters should be added to protect down to three microns.  The Federal Drug Administration has guidance on producing and wearing DIY and 3D-printed masks during the pandemic.

Home computing power is put to work for drug research

The previous initiatives are aimed at short-term relief but in order to stop the spread of the disease and curb its deadly impact, we need to develop new drugs. The SARS-CoV-2 virus depends on proteins to reproduce, including an important one called the protease. Researchers want to find a molecule that can latch onto this protein and destroy it, paving the way to a therapeutic drug. That research requires a lot of computational power, which is why computer engineers have found a way for average people to donate their computer processors when they’re not using them. The Folding@home project uses software to unite home computers in a network that functions like a distributed supercomputer that can simulate possible drugs to cure the disease. The project is now over twice the size of the world’s largest supercomputer with more than an exaflop of processing power, meaning it can do a quintillion calculations per second. So far, 77 candidate drug compounds have been identified but users have raised concerns about abuse.

There are a number of ways for average people to get involved in fighting this pandemic and it’s clear that it will take all of us to beat the coronavirus. Whether you want to build a ventilator, sew a mask or contribute your excess computing power for research, the sharing economy means we can all play a part.

##

This article is part of our reporting on the community response to the coronavirus crisis:

• The People’s COVID-19 Response needs you
• The coronavirus pandemic calls us to share more than ever
• 10 ways to share during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Coronavirus catalyzes growing wave of grassroots action despite social distancing
• 14 community-minded books to read during the 2020 quarantine
• Things got a whole lot more local than I expected due to coronavirus
• My new pandemic routine
• How these US immigrants are giving back to their new community during the COVID-19 crisis

The post Open-source medical supplies battle COVID-19 appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Image credit

As much as it may seem that the nuts and bolts of resource and waste management is about sorting machinery, storage, bins and collection systems, it is really ultimately about people.

We know that if people are to use resources mindfully, to manage them well, and to both demand and correctly use appropriate end of life systems, then we need to design systems that they are easy and convenient to use.

There are two ‘muscles’ that can be flexed in relation to resource and waste management – the Circular Economy muscle, and the Access Economy muscle. A lot of muscle-building effort has gone into the former, and the latter is a muscle we’ve only just discovered we can build.

Image credit

The Circular Economy is a concept and model which has been around for some time now, but is increasingly gaining traction – the UK’s leading waste & recycling organisation, WRAP UK have recently rebranded themselves as ‘Circular Economy and Resource Efficiency Experts’.

The Circular Economy seeks to shift activity from a linear to a circular model by making better use of materials, by keeping materials in circulation through reuse and recycling, industrial symbiosis and other efforts to divert material from landfill.

It displaces some demand for new materials, but does not address the rate at which materials enter the circle, as evidenced by total material demand continuing to grow faster than recycling rates improve.

It is vital to maintain a focus on bending the Linear Economy (‘take-make-waste’) into a Circular Economy, but it is not enough.

There is an entire, parallel area of territory yet to be explored, which I will call The Access Economy (aka Sharing Economy, Collaborative Economy) – or being able to access what we need by better using what we already have.

Image credit

The Access Economy seeks to minimise the demand for materials, and is as – if not more – significant than The Circular Economy. There are also overlaps between the two eg. reuse could be considered Circular and Access.

The rapidly-gaining momentum of the collaborative (aka sharing) economy holds huge potential for addressing how we consume resources, and ways it could result in less waste.

The Access Economy is focused not on managing material at end-of-life, of better managing ‘waste’. It is focused on designing systems that facilitate more efficient, cost effective and in many case, community-enhancing ways of enabling people to meet their needs by tapping what is already available and leveraging idle assets (be they stuff, time, space, skills).

This means looking at the design of our living systems – how we grow food and prepare it; how we clothe and transport ourselves; how we meet our daily needs. We need to look at how we can solve the pain points of people’s lives – cost of living, time poverty –in a way that also delivers on environmental objectives.

The systems for The Access Economy are different from those for The Circular Economy – and significantly they may be more appealing to people who don’t see themselves as ‘green’, or really care about recycling. 

Successfully meeting sustainability challenges means we need to stop focusing on ‘reducing’ and ‘managing’ energy, emissions, water, waste and everything else (which are symptoms, outcomes of how people live) and start looking our systems through a lens of design (not just physical design) and social innovation.

Ultimately, environmental organisations and programs are not really about ‘environment’ at all – they are social innovation, because they set out to create new patterns of behaviour among human beings in order to lessen our impacts on the ecological systems which sustain all life. And social innovation is a design process.

We are now far from the traditional, familiar territory of the Circular Economy, but into an exciting new realm we have scarcely begun to explore that is fast gathering momentum around the world.

What would we be capable of if we combined the existing strength of the Circular Economy with the emerging juggernaut of the Access Economy?

Further references:

Circular Economy – Ellen Macarthur Foundation – a series of articles about the circular economy model, its principles, related schools of thought, and an overview of circular economy news from around the world.

Shareable – an award-winning nonprofit news, action and connection hub for the sharing transformation.

OuiShare – a global community empowering citizens, public institutions and companies to build a society based on collaboration, openness and sharing.

Collaborative Consumption – comprehensive online resource for collaborative consumption worldwide and network for the global community, curating news, content, events, jobs, studies and resources from key media outlets and industry blogs, as well as original content.

If you’d like to get Cruxcatalyst via email, click here to subscribe to this blog.

If you liked this post, please consider sharing it using the buttons below or to the left of this post.

Listen

Originally published in 2014 on cruxcatalyst.com

Header image: Matthew Perkins, Flickr

The post The Circular Economy and The Access Economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Jeremy Lent: Some of the leading thinkers of our time are unleashing a stream of warnings about the threat of artificial intelligence taking over from humans.  Earlier this month, Stephen Hawking predicted it could be “the worst event in the history of our civilization” unless we find a way to control its development. Billionaire Elon Musk has formed a company to try to keep humans one step ahead of what he sees as an existential AI threat.

The scenario that terrifies them is that, in spite of the best intentions, we might create a force more powerful than all of humanity with a value system that doesn’t necessarily incorporate human welfare. Once it reaches a critical mass, this force could take over the world, control human activity, and essentially suck all life out of the earth while it optimizes for its own ends. Prominent futurist Nick Bostrom gives an example of a superintelligence designed with the goal of manufacturing paperclips that transforms the entire earth into one gigantic paperclip manufacturing facility.

These futurists are right to voice their concerns, but they’re missing the fact that humans have already created a force that is well on its way to devouring both humanity and the earth in just the way they fear. It’s called the Corporation.

“Government by corporations”

When corporations were first formed back in the seventeenth century, their inventors—just like modern software engineers—acted with what they believed were good intentions. The first corporate charters were simply designed to limit an investor’s liability to the amount of their investment, thus encouraging them to finance risky expeditions to India and Southeast Asia. However, an unintended consequence soon emerged, known as moral hazard: with the potential upside greater than the downside, reckless behavior ensued, leading to a series of spectacular frauds and a market crash that resulted in corporations being temporarily banned in England in 1720.

Thomas Jefferson and other leaders of the United States, aware of the English experience, were deeply suspicious of corporations, giving them limited charters with tightly constrained powers. However, during the turmoil of the Civil War, industrialists took advantage of the disarray, leveraging widespread political corruption to expand their influence. “This is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people no longer. It is a government of corporations, by corporations, and for corporations,” lamented Rutherford Hayes who became President in 1877.

Corporations took full advantage of their new-found dominance, influencing state legislatures to issue charters in perpetuity giving them the right to do anything not explicitly prohibited by law. The tipping point in their path to domination came in 1886 when the Supreme Court designated corporations as “persons” entitled to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been passed to give equal rights to former slaves enfranchised after the Civil War. Since then, corporate dominance has only been further enhanced by law, culminating in the notorious Citizen United case of 2010, which lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations in elections.

Sociopaths with global reach

Corporations, just like a potential runaway AI, have no intrinsic interest in human welfare. They are legal constructions: abstract entities designed with the ultimate goal of maximizing financial returns for their investors above all else. If corporations were in fact real persons, they would be sociopaths, completely lacking the ability for empathy that is a crucial element of normal human behavior. Unlike humans, however, corporations are theoretically immortal, cannot be put in prison, and the larger multinationals are not constrained by the laws of any individual country.

With the incalculable advantage of their superhuman powers, corporations have literally taken over the world. They have grown so massive that an astonishing sixty-nine of the largest hundred economies in the world are not nation states but corporate entities.

Corporations have been able to use their transnational powers to dictate their own terms to virtually any country in the world. As a result of decades of globalization, corporations can exploit the free movement of capital to build factories in nations with the weakest labor unions, or locate polluting plants in countries with lax environmental laws, basing their decisions solely on maximizing returns for their shareholders. Governments compete with each other to make their nations the most attractive for corporate investment.

Corporations wield their vast powers to control the minds of consumers, enthralling them into a state of perpetual consumption. In the early twentieth century, Edward Bernays, a mastermind of corporate empowerment, boldly stated his game plan as “the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses.” He declared ominously that “those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government that is the true ruling power of this country.” The sinister words of Wayne Chilicki, chief executive of General Mills, show how Bernays’ vision has been perpetuated: “When it comes to targeting kid consumers, we at General Mills… believe in getting them early and having them for life.”

The result of this corporate takeover of humanity is a world careening out of control, where nature is mercilessly ransacked to extract the raw materials required to increase shareholder value in a vortex of perpetual economic growth, without regard to the quality of human life and with no concern for the welfare of future generations.

Corporate takeover of global governance

Instead of being pilloried for their vast destruction, those who dedicate themselves to their corporate overlords are richly rewarded and elevated to positions of even greater power and prestige. ExxonMobil, for example, has been exposed as having lied shamelessly about climate change, knowing for decades about its consequences and yet deliberately concealing the facts, thus condemning present and future generations to havoc. Instead of facing jail time, the CEO during much of this period, Rex Tillerson, is now the U.S. Secretary of State, overseeing the global relationships of the most powerful country in the world.

In fact, the current U.S. cabinet represents the most complete takeover yet of the U.S. government by corporations, with nearly 70% of top administration jobs filled by corporate executives. In the words of Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, “In the Trump administration, auto industry lobbyists are setting transportation policy, Boeing has a top perch at the Department of Defense, Wall Street is in control of financial policy and regulatory agencies, and corporate defense lawyers staff the key positions in the Justice Department.”

Corporations are inserting themselves into international agreements, so they can further their interests even more effectively. At the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, a new Global Redesign Initiative set out an agenda for multinational corporations to engage directly in global governance. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, proudly announced in 2015 as a vision to reduce poverty, adopted their approach by inviting corporations to a seat at its table to impact UN policy, while calling for further globalization. Fossil fuel companies have infiltrated the annual global COP meetings on climate change, ensuring they can compromise any actions that might hurt them, even as the world faces the threat of climate catastrophe.

The takeover of global governance by multinational corporations has permitted them to undermine human welfare everywhere in the pursuit of profit. Nestlé remorselessly buys control of rural communities’ groundwater reservoirs to sell as bottled water, leaving them to foot the bill for environmental cleanup, with the result that in countries such as Columbia sugary bottled drinks are frequently cheaper than plain water. As a result of the chemicals sold by global agribusiness companies such as Cargill and Monsanto, it’s been estimated by UN officials that the world’s topsoil can only support about sixty more years of harvests. In these cases, and countless others like them, humans and the earth alike are mere fodder for the insatiable appetite of an amoral, inhuman intelligence run amok.

There is an alternative

The corporate takeover of humanity is so all-encompassing that it’s difficult to visualize any other possible global system. Alternatives do, however, exist. Around the world, worker-owned cooperatives have demonstrated that they can be as effective as corporations—or more so—without pursuing shareholder wealth as their primary consideration. The Mondragon cooperative in Spain, with revenues exceeding €12 billion, shows how this form of organization can efficiently scale.

There are also structural changes that can be made to corporations to realign their values system with human welfare. Corporate charters can be amended to optimize for a triple bottom line of social, environmental, and financial outcomes (the so-called “triple Ps” of people, planet, and profit.) A “beneficial” or B-Corp certification, which holds companies to social and environmental performance standards, is becoming more widely adopted and is now held by over 2,000 corporations in over fifty countries around the world.

Ultimately, if we are stop this force from completely taking over humanity, these alternative approaches need to be codified into our national and international governance. Imagine a world where corporate charters were only granted if they adopted a triple bottom line, and where shareholder lawsuits threatened every time a company broke one of its own social and environmental standards. Until that happens, it may be that the “worst event in the history of our civilization” is not the future development of modern AI, but the decision by a group of 17^th century politicians to unleash the power of the Corporation on an unsuspecting humanity.

Reprinted from the blog of Jeremy Lent

Featured image: “Loss of Ice in Greenland, Icebergs in Disco Bay” by GRIDArendal is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 

The post AI Has Already Taken Over. It’s Called the Corporation appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Science-fiction or social reality, the Blockchain. Fact. Fiction. Future. event brought together artists, activists, hackers, designers, scientists, sociologists and political scientists to analyse, question, and discuss the distruptive, cultural and creative potential of this technology. iMAL, Brussels, 4 November 2016.

Alex Pazaitis (GR) P2P Foundation / P2P Lab Blockchain and P2P value creation in the information economy The presentation will concern the techno-economic implications of the blockchain. I will briefly illustrate the economic dynamics of P2P productive relations, specifically in the context of the information economy and in relation to the digital commons. In this picture, I will argue on the potential of the blockchain, as an advanced technology for record-keeping of value, which can effectively encapsulate qualitatively different contributions of labour. About the Speaker Alexandros (Alex) Pazaitis is Research Fellow at P2P Lab, an interdisciplinary research hub, community-driven makerspace and spin-off of the P2P Foundation and the Ragnar Nurkse School of Innovation and Governance. Alex is involved in numerous research activities, including the authoring of scholarly papers and the participation in research and innovation projects. He has professional experience in project management and has worked as a consultant for private and public organizations in various EU-funded cooperation projects. His research interests include technology governance; innovation policy and sustainability; distributed manufacturing; commons and open cooperativism and blockchain-based collaboration.

The post Alex Pazaitis on Blockchain and P2P value creation in the information economy appeared first on P2P Foundation.

I said in my last post that putting good software and data into the hands of farmers can profit a local economy, and I’d like to back up that claim a little. I also hinted that the direction in which such data flows is especially important in an increasingly globalized industry, where in a few years we could reasonably expect to see most of the world’s farming data owned by one or two multinational corporations. In order for farming communities to wrest some control over their own data, I believe it needs to originate with food producers, then travel outwardly along the supply chain to the consumers, who consume that data just as they would the food.

Those are some fairly abstract terms, and I won’t pretend they’re at all unbiased either. But I believe there’s some hard, practical rationale for why farmers can profit from controlling their own data, and I can put it in terms that any farmer with enough business-savvy can understand: data adds value to the product, which means more value for the consumer, which means a better price for the farmer. Let me explain.

The Value of Data

There are a lot of ways farmers already know to add value to the food they grow: washing and bunching vegetables, making a nice display and signage at market, investing in a refrigeration unit for one’s truck, canning sauce from unsold or surplus tomatoes, etc. All these measures avail the farmer a higher price at the point of sale, either by having a fresher, more marketable product when it arrives, or by creating a new market for a product that otherwise might not have sold. Most of this value also ships with the product, meaning the value will be propagated down the supply chain until it reaches its final destination, even if it passes through a few more hands before it does so.

Reliable farm data can do all these things and more. There are some metrics which the end consumer will obviously value, and farmers can leverage those for a higher price. If a farmer can provide accessible, verifiable data regarding when the product was harvested, how it was grown, what environmental impacts could be measured during its production and the specific seed variety it was grown from, then she will find a large market of customers willing to pay a premium for the food associated with that data. That kind of data can be especially valuable to distributors and other partners further down the supply chain, where normally such information becomes more obscure the further it travels. There’s also the mere ability to verify a product was grown by someone within a small radius of the consumer, assuring them that their dollars are staying in the local economy.

These are all sources of value that traditional methods can capture as well, if not quite with the same granularity and level of persistence; however, I think the real value will be in the predictive power that data can provide, to an extent that other value-added practices can’t really replicate. This comes in especially handy with larger buyers, who have their own downstream markets to be concerned about, and who would truly value knowing a yield within a few percentage points and a harvest window within a matter of a day or two, all from perhaps two weeks out or more. If a farmer has a reasonable expectation that demand will outstrip her yield, and can predict that reliably enough ahead of time, she can offer a guarantee of availability, at a premium, to any interested buyers who order in advance. If instead she anticipates overproduction, she can offer volume discounts to potential early buyers, so that once the harvest date rolls around that abundance will be at a more manageable volume.

Through API’s (Application Programming Interfaces), this data could be propagated to buyers automatically, and prices adjusted the same way. For instance, in the case of overproduction, the sale window could be set to close once a certain number of bushels had been sold. Or if a certain quota isn’t met for premium orders, the price could be lowered after a given time. All this will help guarantee the best price for the highest volume of sales. The availability of this data via API’s also means that, once again, the value can be easily passed down the supply chain. A wholesaler or retailer with an ecommerce business can have the data relayed automatically to their website, and thus to their own customers. A chef can post a new seasonal item on his menu a week or more in advance and start promoting it via social media.

The Protocol vs the Data, Public vs Private

This raises a potentially contentious point regarding what data is made public and what is kept private. This inevitably comes back to who owns the data in the first place, but plain data, technically, cannot be copyrighted or patented, so once someone has access to it, there’s nothing to prevent them from sharing it however they see fit. It’s more a matter of who owns the computer the data is stored on, and what terms of service they’ve negotiated with the user. In that sense, farm data also cannot be made open source in strictly the same way that software or other creative works can.¹

If farm data was made publicly available from one source, and then a third party copies that data, there is nothing holding that third party to make the data or its derivatives freely available via their own platform. This means if a farmer publishes the data related to their wholesale prices and volumes via a free API, a distributor who connects to that API can still restrict access to that data via their own website, even excluding the very same farmer who grew the product. So if that farmer wanted to see what kind of markups that distributor was applying to the original wholesale price, she might have to pay a subscription fee, or perhaps wouldn’t be able to view it at all. At the same time, this doesn’t exactly create any guarantees of transparency for the consumer, who might also be restricted. Perhaps the distributor just wouldn’t be incentivized to pass that data along to the end consumer at all. We can’t just assume that opening up the data will automatically create better markets for the farmer and more transparency for the consumer.

So I’d like to clarify the difference between the need for open standards and public API’s, which I believe are absolutely essential for a transparent food shed, versus the caution which should be exercised when pushing for all farm-related data to be made public. This will take a bit of understanding of how API’s are used to store and transmit data, so we can distinguish them from the data itself. For our purposes, I’ll emphasize that API’s are mainly just the processes by which data is transmitted and stored, not the data itself. It’s the way that one computer application communicates to another.

To use an example of a human interface, rather than an Application Programming Interface, consider the process by which you log into your email account and view your inbox. You go to a URL, perhaps https://mail.gmail.com, then when the login page loads, you click on the field called “Email Address”, type your address in, then click on the field called “Password” and type it, and finally press enter or click a button called “Submit”. After that you can view your inbox, and access different mail items by a similar series of clicks. The process is the same whether it’s your inbox or your friend’s or your bosses, even though you lack the credentials to access your boss’s Gmail account (presumably). What’s most important is the process: the succession of clicks, the names of the fields you enter your credentials into, and the order in which all that happens. You probably don’t think about all those steps, but they’re all critical to a successful login attempt; if you entered your password into the wrong field, or clicked on the wrong button, you wouldn’t get to see your inbox.

API’s have similar protocols for accessing data and authenticating users, but instead of using a series of mouse clicks and keyboard entries, it uses a programming language. Like the human interface, the API is the same no matter who is logging in, and no matter the contents of their inbox. The only exceptions are the actual characters that make up your email and password, because they are themselves a type of data. They’re input data, whereas your inbox is output data. The interface needs to be flexible and generic enough to accept different inputs and respond with different outputs. If it just assumed the input data was the same every time, that the email and password were the same for everyone, then everyone would have the same inbox. This is why it’s important for any API to separate the data from the process. This also means that the process can be made public, while the data, including your password or an email from your significant other, can be kept private. Any programmer can access the Gmail API to write their own email app, but that doesn’t mean they can access your password or inbox. The same can be achieved with farm data, separating public API’s from the private data.

None of this means that there aren’t cases where it would be desirable to make certain farm data public, and perhaps expose that data over an API that is free for anyone to use, with or without credentials. But farmers, as both individuals and as businesses, have a reasonable expectation of privacy over some portion of the their data, just as a Gmail user expects the contents of their inbox will be kept (reasonably) private. Once a farmer puts a product onto the market, there are more compelling reasons to make some of that data public. For instance, it benefits both the farmer and the consumer at that point to have some level of transparency about the growing practices, freshness of the product, price, etc. Public API’s and open data can provide such transparency. Still, I think there is a strong case for leaving trade secrets, personal info, and other types of pre-market data at the discretion of the farmer to publish, whether freely or for a price, so she can thereby leverage that data for the type of value-added services I mentioned above. There needs to be a delicate balance struck between making our local farmers more competitive in a globalized market, while also making that market more transparent for the consumer.

Keeping Data in the Community

I think there is a huge need to talk about how we decide what parts of this data should be made public and what kept private, and I don’t expect to put much of a dent into that discussion here. I will assert, however, that this is something that should be decided at the community level, between farmers and the people eating their food. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the course we are currently taking.

As is well known by now, the trend among Big Data companies, like Facebook and Google, is to provide users with a nominally “free” or inexpensive service in exchange for the data they’re able to collect from those users. A similar trend is already taking over in digital agriculture, especially as big mergers like the one between Bayer and Monsanto aggregate more and more data into fewer and fewer hands. Angela Huffman, an advocate for anti-monopoly reform in the agriculture, writes in the Des Moines Register that the newly approved conglomerate “will have more in common with Facebook and Cambridge Analytica than meets the eye.” She goes on to say,

In recent years, large agrochemical companies, including Bayer and Monsanto, have been heavily investing in digital agriculture. This new platform involves collecting data from farms, then building mathematical models and algorithms aimed at giving farmers real-time information on how to grow and manage their crops. […] It stands to reason that if Bayer and Monsanto combine to increase their dominance over digital farming, they will use their near monopoly on farmer data to sell more of their chemicals and seeds to farmers.

This new data system, as it’s evolving, favors a dynamic where farmers get cheap services for analyzing their crop data, in exchange for giving away that data to Big Ag, instead of having the chance to leverage that data themselves. These services usually come bundled together with other products, like seeds, fertilizers and even tractors.

In 2015, John Deere & Company told a farmer that he would be breaking the law if he tried to fix his own tractor by accessing the firmware that controlled a faulty sensor. When it failed, that one inconsequential sensor would shut down the entire tractor and halt his farm’s production for two days while he waited for the replacement part to arrive. Cynics and digital rights advocates alike all thought this boiled down to Deere’s agreements with licensed repair shops and parts dealers, but Deere’s rationale for withholding the source code turned out to be something a lot more lucrative, as Cory Doctorow points out (video):

The first thing that happens when a Deere tractor runs around your field is that it does centimeter-accurate soil surveys using the torque sensors in the wheels. And that data is not copyrightable, because facts aren’t copyrightable in America. […] But because the only way you can get access to those facts is by jailbreaking the tractor and removing a thing that protects access to copyrighted works, which is the operating system on the tractor itself, […] it’s a felony to access that data unless you’re John Deere. So John Deere pulls that data in over the wireless network connections in these tractors, and then they bundle it all together and they sell it to a seed company. And if you want to use the centimeter accurate soil surveys of your fields to do automated, optimized seed broadcasting you have to buy seed from the one company² that licenses it. […] But it’s actually just the tip of the iceberg because if you are doing centimeter accurate soil surveys of entire regions you have insight into crop yields way ahead of the futures market. And that’s why John Deere committed PR-suicide by telling the Farmers of America that they didn’t own their tractors, that they were tenant farmers.

This case study in bad agricultural data policy perfectly highlights the concerns we should have for how farm data is used and collected, starting quite literally from the ground up. Before the seed even meets the soil, all of a farmer’s most critical data — which brings with it the power to increase yields, decrease waste and command a better price at market — is being siphoned away to large corporate data stores half a world away. Then the derivatives of that data are sold back to the same farmer who generated it with every pass of his tractor. We can’t blame Big Ag for concocting such a clever scheme to profit its shareholders, but we can learn from it. We can learn to take active measures to restore control of that data back to the local communities where it originated, and with it, return all the value it held.

We as consumers should also have a chance to say how this data is used. Do we want this data to boost the sales of the chemicals which run off into our backyards and are responsible for emitting one third of humanity’s annual contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere? Or do we want to leverage the full potential of farm data to eventually render the extensive farming technologies of last century obsolete, replacing them with smarter, cleaner, more efficient technologies that could save us from environmental catastrophe in this century?

An Alternative Model

Instead of being forced to buy seed from the only company that is licensed to provide services like precision planting, under a different model a farmer could shop around for seed companies that provide other data services. These services would include the ability to import seed data into the farmer’s preferred crop planning software at the time of purchase. Soil surveys could be taken with sensor widgets, which could be installed cheaply on even the oldest, non-computerized tractors and would include their own light-weight, off-grid networking capabilities. This data, combined with the integrated seed data, could be sent to publicly funded university extension programs, who could analyze that data and provide services to help farmers calibrate their machinery to optimize planting.

The benefits of this system over the John Deere model would be numerous. The farmer would get higher yield from each seed planted, which is a tremendous value in its own right, but retrofitting such hardware could also present significant cost savings, compared to the price of a new tractor with computer diagnostics built-in, some of which reach seven figures. Such an arrangement would also provide data to public research institutions, who could be trusted to anonymize and aggregate the data from a wider distribution of growers, and could publish the results of their analysis for others to use. Instead being used to push chemicals, this data could aid research into new intensive growing practices that are better for the environment, and could even help monitor the total soil health of vital growing regions. Plus, if anything ever happened to the sensors, they could be easily repaired by any third party, or by the farmer herself, because they would be built with open source hardware and software.

This data would continue to profit the farmer when she brought the product to market. Instead of giving Bayer/Monsanto the trade insights to hedge on commodities markets, the farmer could use this data herself to get the best price possible. Over time, the data from these soil surveys could be used to train programs that optimize prices, just as the extension’s analytical programs were optimized for planting. The planting data itself could be correlated with data from the National Weather Service to calculate the growing degree days necessary for each crop to reach full maturity. This would have a tremendous pricing advantage if the farmer could start offering more reliable delivery dates. Additional sensors on the farm could make these predictions even more precise, and if it was known that favorable weather conditions in her own micro-climate could bring her crop to market even a few days before other nearby farms, that could provide a real competitive edge.

Again, as I suggested above, forward-thinking distributors and retailers could receive this data and forward it to end consumers. The consumers would be able to anticipate having the spring’s first snap peas or strawberries weeks in advance, and could count down the days on the calendar. They could know when they were harvested and know just how many hours they spent in transit before reaching their table. That transit time could be reduced by innovative software for food hubs, and CSA programs and farmers markets, which could all pull data from such crop planning software and pass along the value.

We shouldn’t be skeptical about the technology itself — that it seems too futuristic or that modern farms wouldn’t have a practical use for it. That technology is certainly coming and will be used. A lot of it has already arrived. We should be skeptical about how that technology will be used, and who it will favor. Ultimately, whoever controls the data will determine where the value of that data flows. Will it all go to a few private interests and controlling shareholders? Or will it benefit the people growing the food, and those who are nourished by that food, as well as the environment that food depends on to grow? That is not a decision the technology will make for us, and it most certainly won’t be an easy one to make or execute. It’s a choice, nevertheless, which we need to make as a community, and it’s one we need to make soon, before others make the decision for us.

¹ There is, of course, a corresponding Open Data movement, which shares a lot in common with Open Source, but in a legal sense it operates entirely differently. Also, there is a myriad of different legal interpretations that I’m glossing over here, but a good primer, if you’re curious, is Feist v. Rural Telephone.

² Doctorow indicates that this seed company is in fact Monsanto, but I have been unable to verify that claim through other sources.

Originally published at jgaehring.com.

The post Farm Data as Value Added appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The interest for citizens co-production of public services is increasing and many digital participatory platforms (DPPs) have been developed in order to improve participatory democratic processes.

During the Sharing City Summit in Barcelona last November we discovered the DDDC, i.e. the Digital Democracy and Data Commons, a participatory platform to deliberate and construct alternative and more democratic forms of data governance, which will allow citizens to take back control over their personal data in the digital society and economy.

Barcelona is already known as a best practice in this field: the city and its metropolitan area constitute anexceptional ecosystem in terms of co-production of public policies and citizen science initiatives. The City Council has created an Office of Citizens Science and the Municipal Data Office, as well as the first Science Biennial that just took place in Barcelona (from 7th-11th February 2019). At the same time citizen science projects abound.

In this frame Barcelona is famous to have launched in February 2016 Decidim.Barcelona (we decide), a project of the City Council to give citizens the opportunity to discuss proposals using an interface for group-discussions and comments. Decidim is indeed an online participatory-democracy platform that embodies a completely innovative approach. First of all it is entirely and collaboratively built as free software. As remembered by Xabier Barandiaran Decidim is a web environment that using the programming language Ruby on Rails allows anybody to create and configure a website platform to be used in the form of a political network for democratic participation. Any organization (local city council, association, university, NGO, neighbourhood or cooperative) can create mass processes for strategic planning, participatory budgeting, collaborative design for regulations, urban spaces and election processes. It also makes possible the match between traditional in-person democratic meetings (assemblies, council meetings, etc.) and the digital world (sending meeting invites, managing registrations, facilitating the publication of minutes, etc.). Moreover it enables the structuring of government bodies or assemblies (councils, boards, working groups), the convening of consultations, referendums or channelling citizen or member initiatives to trigger different decision making processes. The official definition of Decidim is: a public-common’s, free and open, digital infrastructure for participatory democracy.

Barandiaran remembers also that “Decidim was born in an institutional environment (that of Barcelona City Council), directly aiming at improving and enhancing the political and administrative impact of participatory democracy in the state (municipalities, local governments, etc.). But it also aims at empowering social processes as a platform for massive social coordination for collective action independently of public administrations. Anybody can copy, modify and install Decidim for its own needs, so Decidim is by no means reduced to public institutions”.

As of march 2018 www.decidim.barcelona had more than 28,000 registered participants, 1,288,999 page views, 290,520 visitors, 19 participatory processes, 821 public meetings channeled through the platform and 12,173 proposals, out of which over 8,923 have already become public policies grouped into 5,339 results whose execution level can be monitored by citizens. […] It comes to fill the gap of public and common’s platforms, providing an alternative to the way in which private platforms coordinate social action (mostly with profit-driven, data extraction and market oriented goals)”.

But Decidim is more than a technological platform, it is a “technopolitical project” where legal, political, institutional, practical, social, educational, communicative, economic and epistemic codes merge together. There are mainly 3 levels: the political (focused on the democratic model that Decidim promotes and its impact on public policies and organizations), the technopolitical (focused on how the platform is designed, the mechanisms it embodies, and the way in which it is itself democratically designed), and the technical (focused on the conditions of production, operation and success of the project: the factory, collaborative mechanisms, licenses, etc.). In this way thousands of people can organize themselves democratically by making proposals that will be debated and could translate into binding legislation, attending public meetings, fostering decision-making discussions, deciding through different forms of voting and monitoring the implementation of decisions (not only the procedures but also the outcomes).

Coming back to our DDDC, the main aim of this pilot participatory process is to test a new technology to improve the digital democracy platform Decidim and to collectively imagine the data politics of the future. It was developed inside the European project DECODE[1] (Decentralized Citizen Owned Data Ecosystem – that aims to construct legal, technological and socio-economic tools that allow citizens to take back control over their data and generate more common benefits out of them); it is led by the Barcelona Digital City (Barcelona City Council) and by the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute of the Open University of Catalonia (Tecnopolitica and Dimmons), in collaboration with the Nexa Center of Internet & Society, Eurecat, CNRS, Dribia, aLabs, Thoughtworksand DYNE.

The pilot project was launched in October 18^th 2018 and will end April 1^st 2019, for a total of 5 months. It has mainly three goals:

1. to integrate the DECODE technology with the Decidim digital platform in order to improve processes of e-petitioning, to provide more safety, privacy, transparency and data enrichment;
2. to enable a deliberative space around data law, governance and economics within the new digital economy and public policy, in order to provide a vision oriented to promote a greater citizen control over data and their exploitation in Commons-oriented models[2];
3. to experiment with the construction and use of a data commons generated in the process, in order to improve the inclusion of the participatory process itself.

The goals will be reached through several phases that foresee also face-to-face meetings, inside the dddc.decodeproject.eu platform. The infographic illustrates the phases:

Figure 1 DDDC’s phases. Source: https://dddc.decodeproject.eu/processes/main

The pilot project is currently in its second phase. The first 1 was that of  presentation & diagnosis,dedicated to the elaboration of a brief diagnosis of the state of regulations, governance models and data economy. The diagnosis emerged from a kick off pilot presentation workshop, the DECODE Symposium, aimed to imagine possible proposal to move towards a society where citizens can control what, how and who manages and generates values from the exploitation of their data; i.e. to imagine how use digital technologies to facilitate the transition from today’s digital economy of surveillance capitalism and data extractivism to an alternative political and economic project. In this phase a sociodemographic survey was also launched to collect information about the perceptions on the digital economy and to design communicative actions to improve the inclusiveness of the process.

The current phase (2) is that of proposals for a digital economy based on data commons, lunached considering the current situation of data extraction and concentration and based on the diagnosis made on the digital society in the first phase. During the Sharing Cities Summit for example a dedicated meeting took place, divided into a talk and four group work sessions, one for each axes of the pilot project (legal, economic, governance and experimental – see below). During this workshop 64 proposal were collected and in the next phases they will be voted, discussed and signed. The DDDC staff underlines that the process is prefigurative since they are trying to create and practice data commons while deliberating and talking about data commons.

In this phase the results of the survey on sociodemographic data were also analyzed with the aim to define, implement and experiment data use strategies for inclusion in participation (these strategies can potentially be used in future by platforms such as Decidim). The analysis is made by the Barcelona Now – BCNNOW.

The next phases are:

Phase 3 – Debate: discussion on the proposals received.

Phase 4 – Elaboration by the DECODE team and the interested participants

Phase 5 – Signing: collection of support for the pilot project results using DECODE technology for secure and transparent signature (based on encryption techniques and distributed ledger technologies). Crucial phase: this technology, integrated with DECIDIM, will help in the construction of a more secure, transparent and distributed networked democracy.

Phase 6 – Evaluation: closing meeting and launch of a survey to help in the assessment of the satisfaction or participants with the process and with the DECODE technology

Legal aspects, governance issues and economic topics are the three main axes followed during the different phases, since they provide a differential approach to discuss around data. A fourth axis is the experimental one, dedicated to the use and definition of collective decisions around the database resulting from the data shared during the pilot project. Il will become a kind of temporary commons useful to improve the deliberative process itself, a practice that could be incorporated in future Decidim processes.

At the end of the pilot project a participatory document, with paper or manifesto around the digital economy will be released.

The importance of this kind of pilot project is clear if we think to the huge amount of data that everyday every citizens is able to produce… By now we live in a “datasphere”, an invisible environment of data, quoting Appadurai, a virtual data landscape rich in information, cultural and social data. Our data indeed constitute digital patterns that reveal our behaviors, interests, habits. Some actors, especially big corporations and States, can act upon this data, can use them to surveil and influence our lives, through strategies such as ad hoc advertisements or even intervention in elections (see the case of the Cambridge Analytica or the referendum on an EU agreement with Ukraine) or generation of citizens rankings (such as the Chinese case). These “data misuses” can even influence and affect democracy. Nevertheless, if successful, the knowledge and insight created by the datasphere may become a powerful managing and intelligence tool and the debate about the so-called “datacracy” is indeed growing.

In this frame, and considering the little awareness still surrounding the topic, the DDDC pilot project on the one hand tries to stir critically consciousness and common construction in this arena, on the other tries to provide the necessary tools to go in this direction, improving Decidim and pushing forward the DECODE vision of data sovereignty.

[1]For more information about DECODE browse the projects documents: partners, funding, FAQs or the official website

[2] That is, models where people share data and allow for open use while remaining in control over their data, individually and collectively

The post Digital Democracy and Data Commons (DDDC) a participatory platform to build a more open, transparent and collaborative society. appeared first on P2P Foundation.

It’s hard to believe that current systems are the best we can do. They appear dysfunctional now and suicidal in the long run. It’s time to investigate what might work best.

It’s not news that human civilization and ecosystems are at risk of collapse in our lifetime or that of our children. Biologists, sociologists, ecologists and others have been issuing dire warnings for easily half a century on all the big issues. We’re well aware of them: climate change, habitat loss, pollution, topsoil degradation, groundwater depletion, rising rates of species extinction, financial meltdown, poverty and wealth inequality, and nuclear war, to name a few. A recent headline captures the flavor: Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature.

What might be news is that we can do something to help change course, without waiting for governments to act, or even asking governments to act.

First, let’s clarify the goal. We wish to thrive, not just survive. We want healthy communities where collective wellbeing runs high and the environment is protected and restored. Among other things, this means access to quality and affordable education and health care, meaningful jobs, eradication of poverty and excessive income inequality, and systems of organization that are just, transparent, and deeply democratic.

I believe we can reach this goal, in our lifetime, if we think outside the box. The first step is to ask this seemingly obvious question: Out of all conceivable designs for systems of social self-organization, which ones might improve wellbeing, resilience, and sustainability the most?

It’s a scientific question at heart, begging for rigorous study, not mere opinions. And yet it’s also a question to be pondered by everyone on the planet.

It has a natural follow up: If we were to develop new, high quality systems, how could we best implement and monitor them? This too is a scientific question at heart.

These two questions have the power to change our world. At face value both are utterly sensible to ask. Why wouldn’t we want to know the answers? But beyond that, they embody several profound realizations.

First, if we want bold change, we should look to science for demonstration and assessment of the possibilities, more so than to politics. While science might not have all the answers, it would certainly have a tremendous amount to say. We need and could obtain clear evidence of which system designs might serve us best, and how and to what degree our lives might improve.

Second, our big problems are symptoms of a deeper defect. As societies, we could have long ago taken sensible actions to address pressing problems. But we didn’t. Why? Because the systems by which we self-organize — governance, legal, economic, financial, and more — are too often inadequate, even dysfunctional, when it comes to solving problems, especially big problems.

The dysfunction isn’t due to bad leaders in business or politics, although these exist. The rise to power of too many selfish, dangerous, or unqualified leaders is just another symptom. Rather, the dysfunction is due to the mechanics of our systems — their very designs, built-in motivations, concentration of power, and embodied world views. Because of these, they lack the capacity for solving today’s big problems.

This failing should not be a surprise. Our systems largely evolved to solve a different, older problem, which is how to maintain and concentrate wealth and power for those who already have it. In this they have been wildly successful. Consider how quickly the billionaire class is growing, and how fewer and fewer corporations control ever larger swaths of the world’s economy. Consider how the legal system favors the rich.

The last realization embodied in the question is that bold change is possible. Given advances in science and technology over the past 50 years, the hard work of many on issues of social and environmental justice, and the looming threat of collapse, we’re overdue for an evolutionary jump. We’re ripe for sweeping change.

You might think that universities or research groups would have long ago started work on such important questions. But almost no one has. Perhaps political pressures or funding realities have gotten in the way. Or perhaps it’s because core fields like complex systems science, cognitive science, and ecology needed to mature a bit before questions about societal self-organization could arise. Whatever the reason, the work has barely started.

So let’s get on with it. After all, it’s hard to believe that current systems are the best we can do. They appear dysfunctional now and suicidal in the long run. It’s time to investigate what might work best.

If in this moment you’re thinking about comparing socialism to capitalism, I’d ask you to think bigger and further outside the box. Those are economic systems, not whole-system, integrated approaches to demonstrably improve wellbeing, resilience, and sustainability.

Rather than thinking of isms, it might be better to think of biology. Humans are highly social animals. Our communities and societies are akin to living organisms — metaorganisms, if you will, composed of many interacting individuals. Just like biological organisms, the natural purpose of a society is to learn, rise to challenges, adapt to changing conditions, and solve problems that matter. Learning requires information, and so also information processing. Action requires decisions and thus decision-making processes.

Start there. What kinds of designs for whole, integrated systems might best help us to perceive, process, communicate, learn, predict, make decisions, and orchestrate action, at scale, as communities and societies, in order to solve problems and thereby increase social and environmental wellbeing? And how would they be monitored and measured?

Keep an open mind. In this exploration, the very concepts of business, money, wealth, voting, governance and more might evolve into something new. Wealth, for example, might be understood not as personal financial gain but as the degree of shared wellbeing. Money might be understood not so much as a static store of value but as a transparent voting tool in economic democracy, valuable only through use.

A Viable Path to Development and Implementation

The task of developing and implementing new systems of organization might seem daunting at first glance. But on closer examination, a viable and affordable path can be seen. I’ve described it elsewhere, along with results of a computer simulation that illustrates potential benefits (including eradication of poverty, higher and more stable incomes, greater income equality, and economic democracy).

One bedrock characteristic of the approach is that it’s science based. An R&D program lies at its core. New systems would be thoroughly tested, similar to the way new designs for a jet airliner would be tested. This means simulations, field trials, and more, using various measures of quality that address wellbeing, resilience, sustainability, and problem-solving capacity.

Another key characteristic of the approach is that new systems are designed for implementation at the local, community level through a club model. This allows progress without waiting for governments to act. And it allows for rapid field testing of multiple systems in parallel. A club can be started with just a small percentage of an urban population, perhaps a thousand people, without any legislation. Participation in a club is voluntary and free.

Once field trials demonstrate that better systems are both possible and popular, interest will naturally spread and new clubs will form in new communities. As they do, networks of clubs will also form. Part of the R&D effort is to ensure that these display the same characteristics that make individual clubs successful — like rich communication, deep democracy, and high transparency.

The R&D program is affordable. The annual budget in the first decade would likely be no more than several tens of millions of dollars, which is modest enough that the world’s young adults could fund the program alone through donations, if sufficiently motivated to do so. So too could any other group or set of groups. A social investor could fund it, and receive reasonable economic returns — a social business model exists.

We could fund it — the collective we who are aware, concerned, willing to think outside the box, and willing to take action and try something new. For arguments sake, let’s say we’re 5 to 15 percent of the world population. We’re large enough and powerful enough to see this through to fruition. It doesn’t matter if the other 95 percent or so have no interest. Enough will, later. All that’s needed to start are early supporters; feedback, ideas, and assistance during bench scale and usability testing; and in time, early adopters who will participate in scientific field trials. The rest will follow naturally.

If we initiate this R&D program, much of the scientific community will be on our side. They’ll understand its potential and view the project as exciting and timely. Even the big players — the Harvards, MITs, and Stanfords of the world — might eventually join in.

The potential gains are large and downsides small. With better systems of self-organization we could increase our capacity to solve problems and improve conditions within our communities. Transparent and deeply democratic systems could build trust and engender a greater sense of shared purpose and hope.

If systems are well designed and deliver what they promise, worldwide participation will grow. At some point along the way, and it might take several decades, a tipping point will be reached where new systems spread like wildfire to become the norm. When that happens, communities almost everywhere, or maybe everywhere, will be enjoying greater wellbeing, resilience, and sustainability. They will cooperate, by design and by choice, in successfully solving problems that matter.

By John Boik, PhD. To learn more about the wellbeing centrality R&D program, the LEDDA economic democracy framework, or to download (free) Economic Direct Democracy: A Framework to End Poverty and Maximize Well-Being (2014), visit https://principledsocietiesproject.org.

Please share and republish.

The post Two Questions Could Help Save Us From Collapse appeared first on P2P Foundation.

‘Environ-Mental Health’
on Saturday 23 February 2019,
from 1:00 to 6:30pm

Click here for booking

featuring special guest Nora Bateson

Nora Bateson , based in Sweden and the USA, is an award-winning filmmaker, social justice-oriented systems thinker, writer and educator.

Her work asks the question:

“How we can improve our perception of the complexity we live within,
so we may improve our interaction with the world?”

Nora wrote, directed and produced the award-winning documentary, An Ecology of Mind, a portrait of her father, Gregory Bateson. Her work brings the fields of biology, cognition, art, anthropology, psychology and information technology together in a study of the patterns in ecology of living systems.

Her book, Small Arcs of Larger Circles released by Triarchy Press, UK, 2016, a revolutionary personal approach to the study of systems and complexity is the core text of the Harvard University LILA program 2017-18. Her new book, Warm Data, will be released in 2019 by Triarchy Press.

A big shout out to VMIAC – https://www.vmiac.org.au/  – The Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council – who have generously provided their spacious event venue for this independent ‘not-for-profit’ public forum.

The event is ticketed – to book please go to Trybooking – https://www.trybooking.com/BARTZ

Any proceeds will go to the International Bateson Institute – http://internationalbatesoninstitute.org/

Nora Bateson’s father, Gregory, the subject of her award-winning film, ‘An Ecology of Mind’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnL0ZB1SzZY and https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson

critiqued the biomedical model of mental illness (genetic determinants and chemical changes) and proposed a much broader, more integrated socio-ecological epistemology of mental health.

He developed the notion of the double-bind and contributed enormously to the growth of family therapy, and community and ecological systems approaches to communicative and relational health and our understanding of mental illness.

“Rigor alone is paralytic death, but imagination alone is insanity.”

― Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature

“We are most of us governed by epistemologies that we know to be wrong” 
― Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind

Gregory Bateson’s first wife was the anthropologist Margaret Mead, who went on to become president of the World Federation for Mental Health.

“Never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem. All social movements

are founded by, guided by, motivated and seen through by the passion of individuals.”

― Margaret Mead

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

― Margaret Mead

Environ-Mental Health will be conducted over four sessions from 1:00 to 6:30pm:

1. a ‘scene-setting’ Warm Data and Mental Illness short presentation from Nora Bateson
2. a dialogue on resistance to and transcendence of the status quo hegemonic model with VMIAC Human Rights Adviser and mental health advocate and consultant, Indigo Daya
3. a dialogue on attachment, love and biological, psychological, socio-cultural diversity with systems family therapist, educator and author of ‘Rethinking Love’, Claire Miran-Khan
4. a dialogue on climate/environmental/relational threats/opportunities – mutual self-help, media ecology open dialogue and peer support with MemeFest founder Oliver Vodeb and Laceweb curator Les Spencer.

Intention: The purpose of the event is to engage with and explore the full range of situations, contexts and relationships and determinants and dynamics that influence mental health and mental illness in the 21^st Century.

What to expect: to participate in a lively, thought provoking exploration of our current global and local social, cultural, political, economic, ecological and cosmological challenges and opportunities and how they impact our individual and collective emotional, psychological and mental health.

Anticipate: the offering up of many solutions to currently intractable mental health system crises, a broadening and deepening of the context and relationships relevant to mental health and mental illness and much ‘food for thought’ for the forthcoming Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health.

Consumers: Consumer/survivors of institutional psychiatric services are encouraged to attend; as are mental health professionals; carers, family and community members; as well as human rights and social, cultural, democratic, ecological and climate justice advocates and activists. 

Here’s the ticket booking link again: https://www.trybooking.com/BARTZ

Inclusion: If cost is a barrier for you, please contact Daryl Taylor on 0497 097 047 to discuss how you can secure a place.

Nora Bateson’s social media sites and links are listed below:

Engaging Emergence: https://vimeo.com/258433882 

Twitter https://twitter.com/NoraBateson?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

WordPress: https://norabateson.wordpress.com/ 

Medium: https://medium.com/@norabateson 

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nora-bateson-b4a2456/detail/recent-activity/posts/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/norabateson 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/norabateson/ 

Website: https://batesoninstitute.org/ 

Film: http://www.anecologyofmind.com/ 

Reviews: http://www.anecologyofmind.com/reviews.html 

Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/bateson  

In 2019 the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health will begin deliberations.

‘The royal commission is going to give us the answers we need. It is going to change lives. It is going to save lives. Only a royal commission will help us build the mental health system our community deserves.’
― Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria

“VMIAC welcomes the Labor Party’s promise of a Royal Commission if re-elected. We believe that an inquiry into mental health services in our state is long overdue and urgently needed. As a peak organisation representing Victorian people with an experience of mental distress or emotional issues, VMIAC hear hourly from people who are hurt and distressed by their lack of access to support, or their treatment within Victoria’s mental health system. The impact of treatment is often worse than the problem people presented with. VMIAC believes that the terms of reference to this Royal Commission must be wide ranging and led by the people experiencing these traumas. We need the Royal Commission to have the same focus as any royal commission: the people who’ve been hurt, not the people with the power to harm.”

― Maggie Toko, VMIAC CEO

https://youtu.be/cC0txyEaRQ0 and: https://www.vmiac.org.au/royal-commission-into-mental-health/

“Mental illness remains a serious health issue in Victoria and throughout the country, with one in five Australians experiencing a mental health illness or disorder, and almost half experiencing a mental health condition at some point in their lives. In addition, the national suicide rate has spiked to its highest rate in the past decade, more than 3000 Australians, and more than 600 Victorians, taking their own lives in a year. In the face of these challenges, however, Victoria also has the lowest funding per head of population of all the states and territories for mental health – despite significant funding boosts from the State Government. This has led to what many refer to as a ‘broken’ mental health system, which is what Premier Andrews has said he hopes to fix with the results of the royal commission.”

― Amanda Lyons, Journalist, RACGP

Source: https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/will-the-promised-victorian-royal-commission-into

“The dominant model of progress and development reflects one particular worldview: modernity. Modernisation is a pervasive, complex, multidimensional process which characterises our era. Industrialisation, globalisation, urbanisation, democratisation, scientific and technological advance, capitalism, secularism, rationalism, individualism and consumerism, all part of the processes of cultural Westernisation and material progress (measured as economic growth) …. In contrast, psycho-social dynamics are all about relationships: between us, separately and together, and with other things or entities, both physical and metaphysical. They describe the ways in which social conditions affect individual psychology and behaviour and vice versa, and how perceptions, expectations and values influence the intrinsic meanings of life events and social situations, and so affect our emotional responses. These interactions can bring satisfaction, happiness, contentment and fulfilment – or cause stress, depression, anxiety, isolation, insecurity and hostility. They frame how we see the world and our place in it, and so what we do in the world, shaping our personal lives and, collectively, the societies in which we live.”

― Richard Eckersley, Is the West Really the Best?

The post ‘Environ-Mental Health’ – a dialogue with Nora Bateson appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The following abstract is republished from academia.edu.

BA Dissertation: In blockchain they trust. Now, power to the people or to the invisible hand? An analysis of the ideological tensions and affinities between crypto-libertarian and crypto-commonist visions, projects and aspirations for the blockchain revolution.

By Mateo Peyrouzet Garc’a-Si–eriz BA Dissertation University of Exeter Department of Social Sciences and International Studies, May 2018

Abstract

This dissertation provides an analysis of the ideological component behind the crypto-anarchist enthusiasm for the highly topical emerging technology of distributed ledger technology, commonly known as blockchain. Philosophy of technology scholars have drawn attention to the fact that technologies can possess political properties and serve to reinforce or challenge power structures. Public blockchains have an unquestionable social and political character due to their capacity to facilitate the emergence of cryptographic, decentralized and reliable peer-to-peer networks. The exponential adoption of this disruptive technology, which is poised to cause transformational changes across socio-technical systems and organizational structures, means that both its political properties and the ideological forces behind its development as a political technology must be recognized. Accordingly, this dissertation engages with some of the most ideologically-driven projects aiming to tap into blockchainÕs political and economic potential, namely those of Bitcoin, FairCoin, Democracy Earth and Bitnation. These projects exemplify what is posited as the main ideological cleavage within crypto-anarchism, which revolves around the privileged agent and vision that should be empowered and trusted to capture the decentralizing potential offered by blockchain technology. The paper offers an original contribution by conceptualizing the cleavage as separating; crypto-libertarians, whose neo-Hobbesian individualistic vision sees the invisible hand of the free market as the privileged agent driving a trustless technology; and crypto-commonists, whose collectivist vision regards blockchain as a trust-enabling technology that should be used to facilitate collaborative economic paradigms and participatory forms of e-democracy. The dissertation concludes that while both strands of blockchain enthusiasts have a shared interest in promoting personal privacy, radical transparency, and eroding the authority of nation-states, their diametrically opposed views on human nature and socio-economic organization seem presently irreconcilable. The research undertaken for this paper has covered a substantial breadth of the existing academic material concerning the philosophy and politics of blockchain technology, consulting books, journals, white papers and online articles. This dissertation contributes with an ideological conceptualization to the fields of techno-politics and blockchain studies, an academic intersection still in its infancy, but which will undoubtedly attract increasing academic attention.

Contents

Given the dissertation’s focus on ideological features, the first chapter is dedicated to framing a proper framework to understand the ideologies of crypto-libertarianism, which has been commented by several scholars, and crypto-commonism, a neologism proposed by this paper. The former is characterized by its individualist approach to human interaction, its capitalist approach to economic organization, and its market-based approach to governance. The latter is characterized by its collectivist view of social interaction, its commonist approach to economic organization, and its democratic approach to governance. Decades after the emergence of crypto-anarchism, these differences remain largely under-conceptualized in academic and informal circles, creating an epistemic void that requires attention given the relevance of these ideological forces in the digital era.

Having constructed the ideological profiles that configure the crypto-anarchist divide concerning blockchain technology’s political and economic potential, Chapter 2 will present the technical specifics of the technology and its ontological properties, situating it within the debate regarding the political nature of technologies that was mentioned earlier. Then, the philosophical and political values embodied and advanced by blockchain will be examined. This will make it easier to understand how crypto-libertarian and crypto-commonist ideas fit within the technical properties of blockchain technology and its potential applications.

Chapter 3 will evaluate the radically different socio-economic visions held by crypto-libertarians and crypto-commonists. By analysing Bitcoin and FairCoin it will be shown that a crypto-commonist approach prioritizes blockchainÕs potential to enhance collaborative models of economic organization and commons-based peer production, while the crypto-libertarian perspective revolves around blockchainÕs facilitation of a trustworthy platform for unfettered markets to emerge. Following this, a consideration of how blockchain can affect data ownership and privacy from governments and tech giants will bring to light several affinities within the crypto-anarchists, as well as other points of contention.

Finally, Chapter 4 will focus on several approaches to governance that have either been proposed or, indeed, been made possible by the decentralized and transparent qualities of blockchain technology. This chapter will look at how blockchain enthusiasts are aiming to transform voting, democracy and governance, focusing on Democracy Earth’s application of ‘liquid democracy’ through blockchain technology and Bitnation’s project of ‘decentralized borderless voluntary nations’ Pinpointing the differences between these approaches will provide a comprehensible image of the way in which positioning along the libertarian-commonist axis influences visions of governance in an ideal blockchain future. The dissertation finishes by answering the second question, concluding that although crypto-libertarians and crypto-commonists may share an interest in eroding the power of states and grounding socio-economic organization on voluntary interactions facilitated by blockchain technology, their ideological aspirations are ultimately incompatible. While crypto-anarchists may be seen as a single ideological force, their differing visions on whether blockchain projects should facilitate unfettered capitalism or a commonist and democratic system seem currently irreconcilable.

References

• Scott, Brett. Visions of a Techno-Leviathan: The Politics of the Bitcoin Blockchain. E- International Relations, 1 June 2014, www.e-ir.info/2014/06/01/visions-of-a-techno-leviathan-the-politics-of-the-bitcoin-blockchain/.

• De Filippi, Primavera, and Benjamin Loveluck. The Invisible Politics of Bitcoin: Governance Crisis of a Decentralised Infrastructure. Internet Policy Review, vol. 5, no. 3, 30 Sept. 2016
• Dyer-Witheford, Nick. Species-Being and the New Commonism: Notes on an Interrupted Cycle of Struggles. The Commoner , no. 11, 2006, pp. 15Ð32. (p. 30)
• Gielen, Pascal, and Nico Dockx. Exploring Commonism – A New Aesthetics Of The Real. Valiz, 2018
• Velasco, Pablo R. Computing Ledgers and the Political Ontology of the Blockchain. Metaphilosophy, vol. 48, no. 5, 2017, pp. 712Ð726. (p. 721)

Alternative Strategies

• Scott, Brett. How Can Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology Play a Role in Building Social and Solidarity Finance? United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, Feb. 2016. (p. 19)

Photo by tompagenet

The post Ideological Tensions and Affinities Between Crypto-Libertarian and Crypto-Commonist Visions appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Dehui Chen: This is an idea about a new model of social network, to solve some common problems we have on the current social network platforms, such as data safety, the life span of personal data, distribution of personal data, fake news…this new model can also bring new features that we have never experienced until now.

ANYI network system is a decentralized social network composed by personal data units which is managed by users themselves. The data unit represents the individual of ANYI network, the units and the connections among them constitute the entire network.

General principle: Like physical properties, An individual should have full authority of his/her personal information, including personal data, social relationships, and so on.

Goal: To improve the social network both online and offline by rebuilding the relationships among the individuals, based on personal information units.

Features:

• Individuals manage their personal information by themselves and contact with others directly without using any servers.
• Ensure the security of data storage and transmission by using the asymmetric encryption technology.
• Achieve efficient and reasonable info resource interaction based on personal information units.
• Realize the circulation of reputation, help to spot fake news, amplify the effect of reputation in the real world.
• Realize the circulation of information resource in the social network which to maximize the benefits of social resources.

1. Current Troubles in Social Lives

We are enjoying the excellent benefit and convenience of the rapid development of the Internet and various technologies both online and offline. However there are still many outdated processes and new problems which are followed by the rapid changes.

• Data breaches occur frequently on various network platforms, It has already become a worldwide problem. Most people don’t think it is safe to save and manage important information on social softwares, And “Delete XX” movement also got massive support. Current social softwares only stay at the entertainment level and it is difficult for the social softwares to assist people’s social lives better without getting enough trust.
• Large amount of fake news and vague information on the Internet are seriously bothering us. The bad information spread so fast that we can not protect innocent people such as children from them.
• People identify information based on their own judgment. The limitation of individuals’ judgment gives the fake news much space. Furthermore, the fake news on the internet influences more widely and endless.
• It is an important way for people to get information from real social environment in daily lives. Currently, the information on the internet is disordered, Most of times, people obtain useful information from social environment occasionly. People cannot utilize the resource information in their social environment with high efficiency.
• Crisis of Trust. The Internet makes people’s social scope wider but there is no corresponding credibility support system. People don’t know the credibility of a new friend, so we are bearing the risks of being cheated or losing opportunities.
• It is common to use personal sensitive information (such as name,address, phone number, email…) as keyword to build the the relationships with different institutions. Our sensitive information is spreading widely due to the diversification nowadays.The risk of personal information leakage is high. Correspondingly, the institutions also have to cost on keeping these data safely. Moreover people can not manage the relationships easily.
• Nowadays, Filling out the application forms online or offline is normal to submit personal information. Everyone suffers the process of filling out the forms and waiting in long queues for the clerks to check. It will be worst if some mistakes happen. This incompetent way is wasting so much time again and again.
• In most business models, the customers’ data are stored and managed centralized. that makes individuals exist around various platforms like “fragments”. Personal social information is heavily dependent on the commercial platforms, influenced by the the rules and life cycle of them. Individual autonomy in current information age is rarely noticed.

To solve these above mentioned issues, We strongly believe that the ANYI network system is the best solution.

2. Introduction

Personal information unit is the basic element of ANYI network system. (hereinafter collectively referred to as ‘node’) The nodes are interconnected by peer-to-peer network technology (P2P) to form ANYI social network.

The node is composed of two parts: data and software (processing of data). In order to secure the data, the software part should be subdivided into two layers: intermediate layer and application layer.

The asymmetric cryptography technology is used to ensure the security of data storage and transmission, and the public key is used as the unique ID for the node in ANYI network.

The peer-to-peer network technology is used to realize direct communication among nodes by unified interaction rules, and center server is not needed anymore.

Individuals manage their own personal information autonomously; ANYI community customizes and maintains the interaction rules. The software that obeys the rules can be freely provided by any software vendor. No one can access or use any data without node owner’s permission.

2.1 Data

Personal data are only controlled by the node owner.
Data are independent of the application and users can freely choose applicaions to manage the data.

The data are divided into personal information (personal basic information, resource information, social information, access control, etc.) and ANYI network system setting information. Personal information is stored encrypted, the items is stored in a key-value form and the item-keys are uniformed defined. The owner can store any information on the node, including the information from outside.

ANYI node uses asymmetric cryptography technology to secure data. We also use the public key of the asymmetric cryptography as infividual’s ID at ANYI network. The ID will be used when building new relationships, sending/receiving messages with other nodes, and manage the access control. Moreover, multiple IDs can be derived from the original ID, to satisfy the anonymity requirements fo certain scenarios.

2.2 Intermediate layer

The intermediate layer is responsible for data processing, network interface and application software layer interfaces.

In the aspect of data, the intermediate layer realizes encryption/decryption of data and accesses data by using item-keys; In the aspect of interaction with the network, the common interaction interface of ANYI network should be realized; In the user interface aspect, the intermediate layer encapsulates data and keys to provide basic functional interfaces to the application layer.

2.3 Application Layer

The application layer uses the interfaces provided by the intermediate layer to perform data processing and network interaction, and provides a user-friendly operation interface.

To ensure security, the application layer does neither directly process data and keys, nor interact with the network directly.

2.4 Basic rules of personal nodes

ANYI network system runs on a peer-to-peer network protocol and adheres to the following rules to ensure network communication:

• When a node logins to the network, it broadcasts IP to the network if necessary and refreshes the IP info of the related nodes.
• The IPs are used to send messages to ohter nodes.
• If there is no IP of the target node, or the IP is invalid, the message will be sent by broadcast, The IP info will be updated when a valid response is received.
• The IP info will be auto-maintained if necessary when current node receives request or response.

Information exchange rules between personal nodes:

• Can send message or request proactively and have fault-tolerant processing when communication fails.
• Receives message.
• Synchronizes the updates in the network automatically.
• Responds query requests: Checks the permission and returns the result automatically.

3. Application Scenarios of ANYI Network System

3.1 Social network +

ANYI network system implements social functions by obeying the common interaction rules in the real world. User ID (The public key of the asymmetric cryptography) serves as the core part for the functions.

3.1.1 Establishing Relationships and Sending Messages

The two individuals establish the relationship by exchanging IDs, and manage the authorities and groups by using ID.

Messages for a certain node are encrypted. The sender encrypts the message with the recipient’s ID, a signature generated by the sender’s private key is also attached. The receiver can decrypt the message with his private key and verify the signature to confirm the message is not from a impostor.

3.1.2 Groups

Groups can be created and managed freely.

The group management is also based on IDs. There could be multiple administrators, and rules of the group can be freely customized. There will be no more limit from any platform, such as maximum number limit of members.

The sender uses the hashcode generated by all members’ ID to encrypt group messages, using a multi-signature rule (1-N) with a threshold of 1, so any member who contributed to the hashcode can decrypt the group message.

3.1.3 Management of different types of information

Personal daily life information can usually be divided into the following categories:

• Private information for oneself, such as schedule, memo.
• Instant information shared in a small scopes like family, friends, such as moments.
• Resource information such as business-related, like job opportunities, product discount, etc.

The life circles and targets of the above information are different. ANYI nodes can manage different kinds of information by classification and authority designation for each category.

For resource information, it is necessary to obey appropriate rules so that others can judge if the resource is still avalible. Generally, time, period, location, target people and conditions should be clear. The appropriate rules for different field will not be the same, ANYI community will keep on improving them.

Within the permission scope, the node can obtain real-time information updates of other nodes, and can search with keywords for certain resource information in the personal social network scope. Every node maintains their own node well, post resource to share with family or other scopes. So everyone can get precious resouce information based on trust.

3.1.4 Social network with Reputation

Reputation is an extremely important part of human social activities. Credit management in business has a long history. Personal credit management in the financial industry involves almost every social individual.

However, we don’t have a social product that can help managing and circulating dignified information in the daily lives. Offline people can only use reputation information in their social networks occasionally. People often miss opportunities or suffer losses because they can not get reputation information timely and effectively. This also provides huge space for continued scams and fraudulent business activities.

ANYI network system seeks to achieve the circulation of reputation information:

• Store the reputation info on ANYI node, and share it to social network.
• Relate people’s daily activities with their reputations.

The circulation of reputation can make people in social networks more self-disciplined, enable people to be able to identify a new face by referring to the reputation info from the proper network scope. The circulation of reputation can help to identify and mark the fake news and the creator, can amplify the influence of reputation and can also affect the development of the real society.

3.1.5 Management of Authority

As the amounts of information is increasing so fast that people can not catch up with it. People are losing the control of massive information. Currently we are involved in more and more social relationships. It is necessary for us to start managing information around us.

ANYI node supports flexible authority management which is based on the public keys(ID). We can manage the authority by minimum unit(each information item).

1. Pre-set permissions: The application processes the information according to such permissions. This is suitable for social relationships.

• You can classify various kinds of relationships.
• You can classify different types of information.
• You can set authority for any information (or information category).

1. Temporary authorization: It is for the situations such as the submission of personal information forms to non-friendship organizations.

3.2 Individual-centric new application scenarios

3.2.1 One-click information submission

Submitting personal information by means of paper or electronic forms is a very common routine. This is necessary but cumbersome, and it is easy to become a bottleneck in busy places such as airports. It will be worst if hand mistakes happen.

ANYI network system can improve this interaction. Using ANYI System, an individual can finish the submission by clicking one button.

• The organization prepares the request for ANYI interface. The request contains the specific request items and associated information.
• The individual scan the request with the node app and the app extracts the information from the node and generates the response content for the owner to confirm.
• The individual confirms the content and clicks the confirmation button to approve the submission,then the response content will be transferred to the organization at once.

Advantages:

• Efficient (fast, accurate):
  People can do the submission without filling out their basic information by hand repeatedly. There is nothing to worry about hand mistakes, and we don’t need to wait long in a queue for the clerks to check the papers.
• The interaction records will also retain on the personal node, so that the individual starts to be able to master personal interaction history.
• Organizations also can save costs accordingly.

Standardization:
Users have the right to know why these data are collected and how these data will be used. There should also be regulations to make sure the data are properly collected and used.

3.2.2 Reducing the usage of sensitive information & de-entity membership cards

Once one person has a node It means he has at least one ID that uniquely identifies himself. The ID can be used to establish relationships with organizations in daily life.
Sensitive information such as name, address, phone number, email, etc. are not necessary anymore in such cases. It will become safer because the frequency of sensitive information usage will be significantly reduced. Correspondingly, the organizations side can also save cost on keeping sensitive information.

On the other hand, the ID can take place of the entity membership cards or point cards. It does’n only eliminate the cumbersome card management for individuals, but also saves the costs around card issuance.

3.2.3 Individual-centered use of basic information

At the moment, our basic information is scattered in various organizations such as banks, insurance companies, government departments etc. When the basic information changes, we have to inform the organizations of the change one by one. And because we can not list up all the concerned organizations easily, it is possible that we forget some less important organizations like online shops. So we will be affected correspondingly, and the organizations also suffer the loss caused by the outdated data.

ANYI network system can solve this problem by this way:
The organizations stop storing customers’ data. They request the data from individual nodes if necessary.

• When establishing a relationship, the organization requests the individual’s permission of accessing certain items of data(without collecting the data at the moment).
• When some data changes, node owners just update the node.
• The organization requests the latest data through ANYI network system when necessary. (Personal nodes serve as unique source of personal basic data)

Advantages:

• When personal data changes, the only thing for a person to do is just to update his own node.
• We start to be able to manage the relationships, which means all are stored in our personal nodes. We can also inform concerning organizations of the change easily through ANYI network if necessary. When a certain business service is no longer needed, just disable the permission, so that the corresponding organization can not obtain the data anymore.
• The organizations can reduce the period of holding customers’ information or avoid to keep it, low-risk or no risk on leaking customers’ information. Confidentiality matters the most.
• The organizations can avoid the loss caused by outdated information.

3.2.4 Rationalization of information assets

We are used to more and more information services, such as online music, e-books, online education, insurance and so on. These services are our assets. However, we can not deal with such assets like the tangible assets, such as the exchange of ownerships.

Why can’t we sell/give an e-book or music to others?
In ANYI network system, we can use node ID to declare the ownership of the information assets, and the exchage of the ownerships can be realized through a change of the owner ID.

Let us take the online e-book as an example to explain how to realize it:

When the platform delivers a book to a purchaser A, First the platform uses A’s public key to declare that the e-book belongs to A, and encrypts the e-book with A’s public key. In this way, only A can decrypt the e-book.

When A wants to give/sell the e-book to B, A requests the platform to change the owner to B. After the platform verifies the ownership of A, the platform uses B’s pulbic key to re-declare the owner of the e-book and re-encrypts the e-book with B’s public key.

As a result, the e-book is available for the new owner, meanwhile the former owner of the e-book can not decrypt the e-book anymore.

Similarly, physical assets can also be managed by this mode. Because there is no easy-to-copy feature, the transfer of physical assets is simpler.
Furthermore, the manuals, quality guarantees, etc. of physical products can aslo exist in form of electronic information in ANYI network system. So we can get rid of the management of mass appendant materials of various products.

3.3 The future of individual information management

In addition to the cases above, there should be much more possibilities in all aspects of our daily lives. In current information era. the individuals are fragmented:

• In the field of e-commerce, the shopping histories are kept on the e-shops side. It is difficult for one person to view his all shopping history from a personal perspective.
• In medical aspect, medical institutions have personal medical records, but the individuals don’t . We have no a easy way to collect our health information from the medical institutions.
• In the social network aspect, people have their preference on different social network platforms. To keep necessary relationships, many people have to “seperate” themselves to use multi-social softwares.
• For education, a person may use different schools, websites, apps to learn a certain skill. we can not add up how much time we spent on it. This might be a strong encouragement if we can review the process of studying.

The personal node model of ANYI network system ensures personal priority. Individuals are able to collect all the information regularly, so that we can manage all the transaction information and points status across the organizations in the e-commerce aspect; We can check and use our own health information; We can manage social relationships naturally without being restricted by any third-party platforms; And also, referring clearly to studying our history data, we can adjust how to study in a better way.

On the internet world,the equality with the organizations ensures that we get back our own rights for information. Based on this, I believe everyone will enjoy a better life.

4. Centralization

4.1 Commercial decentralisation

Individual users are not free to migrate data between different social platforms. They cannot freely sell/give out information resources (such as music and e-books) they purchased. Users are enduring the risks of personal information being abused and leaked. Legitimate decision-making changes of commercial companies may affect ordinary users seriously(such as the termination of Email service).
These restrictions and risks on users are the inevitable outcome of the commercial centralization model. Without revolutionary change, the status quo cannot be changed or even prevented from deterioration.

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) issued by the EU declares the rules for business and organizations and rights for citizens, However, GDPR only restricts enterprises by punishment after bad things happened, there is no effective damage recovery measures.

ANYI network system separates personal data from business platforms, individuals will not be so seriously influenced by the business organizations whatever happen on the business organization side.

The controversies about who is the data owner and who has right to control data also can be settled easily.

4.2 Administrative Centralization

As per mentioned in 3.2.1, we need professional judgement if the items collected are reasonable. We need the corresponding legal protection. The legitimate enforcement agency is needed when the information asset is treated the same as the properties. When keys are lost or stolen, we need a mechanism to help recover the control of our own nodes. ANYI network system also requires a real-name authentication mechanism to meet some certain needs.

In conclusion, we need legal lawmakers and law enforcers to protect and manage the world of information assets. This responsibility should only be taken by the governments.

5 Conclusions

Limited by the development of hardware and technology, the server-serving mode(both the client-sever mode and the browser-server mode) of software applications is the best long term solution. Commercial companies provided the resources that not everyone can afford, such as, storage, computing, security and so on that almost everyone can enjoy the applications easily.
However, In such server-serving structures, almost all the users’ data are stored on the servers. There is no independent existence of individuals on the internet. People are fragments around the platforms and anyone could be heavily influenced by the changes of the center platform, even if the changes are legit. Everyone can not collect all the personal data easily. It is impossible to build a real personal priority internet enviroment. As of now it is hard to say that we can continue to improve well in such condition.

Currently, we have got all the necessary conditions of hardware and technology to go without center-platforms. These are the following:

• The popularity of smartphone has enabled people to have independent storage, computing, management and network interaction capabilities.
• P2P network technology makes it possible for individuals to communicate without the third party.
• Asymmetric cryptography technology proves the security of information storage and transmission from theoretical and practical applications.

ANYI network system hopes to establish a new network that is reliable, persistent, efficient and reasonable to people’s lives.

Photo by z.b.p.

The post ANYI: A Dcentralized Social Network System Constituted by Personal Information Units appeared first on P2P Foundation.