8-1b3 The software can control the hardware

Next:

• 8-2 Blockchains-Crypto

  • 8-1b4 Blockchains are new kind of computercategories
    • Traditional computer: the hardware controls the software
    • Blockchains: the software is in charge
      • 8-1b3a A blockchain takes the code seriously

• 8-1b3b When software is in charge, designers can take full advantage of the expressivity of software

  • 12-1d Flexible media will surface contingency
    • 8-1b3c Software is a highly plastic flexible medium and almost any economic model that can be dreamed up can be implemented in software
      • 8-1b3f A blockchain economy must balance the supply (‘faucets’) and demand (‘sinks’) of native tokens to fuel sustainable growth
        • 8-1b3d Monetary policies can come first and the currency circulation can come later (or symbiotically-simultaneously), not vice versa (i.e., bottom-up vs top-down)
  • Blockchain architecture itself is a software that did away with the hardwaredevelop
    • In a way blockchains are killer-app because you don’t really have to worry about the hardware infrastructure
      • 8-1c4 ‘Killer application’ is knowledge-technology-universality that begets reflexivity between app-platform-people by pushing people over the threshold
        • 8-2b2b Key moment is when people (e.g., devs) don’t have to worry about the infrastructure (e.g., platform risks including high take rates)
    • I.e., substrate-independent
      • 5-1b1a1c1 The interoperability law - information can be copied from any system that can embody information to any other such system, irrespective of the details (i.e., substrate-independent)
  • Designers don’t need to worry about nodes turning evil
    • Can’t be evil > Don’t be evil
      • 2-1a0c1f The network won’t let anyone (particularly the state) coerce
        • 7-1b4b1 Technical truth ≠ Political truth
    • They can focus more on the designing per se [Creativity per se]
      • 8-1c2a What matters is the creativity per se, because non-creative parts will be made easier
    • The job of the founding team is to design the core software for the network and an incentive system that encourages growth
      • Structuring incentives comes first in the designing, because if it’s poorly designed no one will join such network!
        • 2-1b2b1a Get your incentives right from the beginning
        • 2-1a6 ‘Incentives’ - Incentives drive (almost) everything. Understand your incentives.
        • 2-1a6a Understanding incentives amounts to understanding its culture

Related:

• 2-6 You get what you pay for
  • Solving for the wrong variable (i.e., CO2) → The current US electrical grid situation, and the AI buildout is bringing it all to a head → Brownouts and citizens displaced from their homes near waterways.
• I think the purest form of software-hardware reflexivity can be found in the history of money—which can be interpreted as the history of de-indexing:reflexivityrevisit
  • Money itself changes:
    • pre-gold → gold → fiat money → bitcoin → zcash
  • But also the hardware that sustains the corresponding money changes:
    • centralized → decentralized
  • Related:
    • 2-1b2b0b Do not underestimate the essential—don’t risk what you have and need, to get what you don’t need]
    • 3-1a The reality doesn’t have categories, there are only problems to be solved. Be problem-project-oriented. ‘Academic subjects’ are mere social constructs.
    • 8-2b2a ‘Technologies that change society are technologies that change interactions between people’
• The hardware can control the hardware too
  • 2-1b2b0b Do not underestimate the essential—don’t risk what you have and need, to get what you don’t need
  • 3-1c2e4.2 ‘Supply and demand’ - Physical is getting expensive
  • 8-1c2 Robotics then software (likely in that order, although not necessarily) will replace Uber, Amazon, Doordash
    • 8-1c1 Potential scenario - Digital frontend + Human backend ⇒ Digital frontend + Digital backend