Merge pull request #1030 from adamstallard/main

Adam Stallard Oct 2024 fixes

contents/english/3-1-living-in-a-⿻-world.md

@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ Thus, even in understanding the very practice of science, a ⿻ perspective, gro
 **A future ⿻?**
 
 
-Yet the assumptions on which the Technocratic and Libertarian visions of the future discussed above diverge sharply from such ⿻ foundations.  
+Yet the assumptions on which the Technocratic and Libertarian visions of the future discussed above are founded diverge sharply from such ⿻ foundations.  
 
 In the Technocratic vision we discussed in the previous chapter, the “messiness” of existing administrative systems is to be replaced by a massive-scale, unified, rational, scientific, artificially intelligent planning system.  Transcending locality and social diversity, this unified agent is imagined to give “unbiased” answers to any economic and social problem, transcending social cleavages and differences.  As such, it seeks to at best paper over and at worst erase, rather than fostering and harnessing, the social diversity and heterogeneity that ⿻ social science sees as defining the very objects of interest, engagement, and value.
 

contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md

@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ Thus the individual that the national identity systems seek to strip away from t
 
 If (in)dividual identity is so fluid and dynamic, surely so too must be the social circles that intersect to constitute it.  As Simmel highlights, new social groups are constantly forming, while older ones decline. Three examples he highlights are for his time, the still-recent formations of cross-sectoral 'working men’s associations' representing the general interest of labor, the emerging feminist associations, and the cross-sectoral employers' interest groups. The critical pathway to creating such new circles was the establishment of places (e.g. workman’s halls) or publications (e.g. working men’s newspapers) where this new group could come to know one another and understand, and thus to have things in common they do not have with others in the broader society. Such bonds were strengthened by secrecy, as shared secrets allowed for a distinctive identity and culture, as well as the coordination in a common interest in ways unrecognizable by outsiders.[^SecretSocieties]   Developing these shared, but hidden, knowledge allows the emerging social circle to act as a collective agent.
 
-In his 1927 work that defined his political philosophy, *The Public and its Problems*, John Dewey (who we meet in [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark)) considered the political implications and dynamics of these “emergent publics” as he called them.[^PublicProblems]Dewey's views emerged from a series of debates he held, as leader of the "democratic" wing of the progressive movement after his return from China with left-wing technocrat  Walter Lippmann, whose 1922 book *Public Opinion* Dewey considered "the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived".[^Westbrook]  In the debate, Dewey sought to redeem democracy while embracing fully Lippmann's critique of existing institutions as ill-suited to an increasingly complex and dynamic world.
+In his 1927 work that defined his political philosophy, *The Public and its Problems*, John Dewey (whom we meet in [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark)) considered the political implications and dynamics of these “emergent publics” as he called them.[^PublicProblems]Dewey's views emerged from a series of debates he held, as leader of the "democratic" wing of the progressive movement after his return from China with left-wing technocrat  Walter Lippmann, whose 1922 book *Public Opinion* Dewey considered "the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived".[^Westbrook]  In the debate, Dewey sought to redeem democracy while embracing fully Lippmann's critique of existing institutions as ill-suited to an increasingly complex and dynamic world.  
 
 [^Westbrook]: Robert Westbrook, *John Dewey and American Democracy* (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
 

contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md

@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ Yet even if the attention of the US government had not shifted, the internet was
 
 The declining role of public and social sector investment left core functions/layers that leaders like Lick and Nelson saw for the internet (e.g. identity, privacy/security, asset sharing, commerce) to which we return below absent. While there were tremendous advances to come in both applications running on top of the internet and in the WWW, much of the fundamental investment in protocols was wrapping up by the time of Lick's writing. The role of the public and social sectors in defining and innovating the network of networks was soon eclipsed.
 
-Into the resulting vacuum stepped the increasingly eager private sector, flush with the success of the personal computer and inflated by the stirring celebrations of Reagan and Thatcher. While the International Business Machines (IBM) that Lick feared would dominate and hamper the internet's development proved unable to key pace with technological change, it found many willing and able successors. A small group of telecommunications companies took over the internet backbone that the NSF freely relinquished. Web portals, like America Online and Prodigy came to dominate most Americans' interactions with the web, as Netscape and Microsoft vied to dominate web browsing. The neglected identity functions were filled by the rise of Google and Facebook. Absent digital payments were filled in by PayPal and Stripe. Absent the protocols for sharing data, computational power and storage that motivated work on the Intergalactic Computer Network in the first place, private infrastructures (often called "cloud providers") that empowered such sharing (such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure) became the platforms for building applications.[^Tarnoff]
+Into the resulting vacuum stepped the increasingly eager private sector, flush with the success of the personal computer and inflated by the stirring celebrations of Reagan and Thatcher. While the International Business Machines (IBM) that Lick feared would dominate and hamper the internet's development proved unable to keep pace with technological change, it found many willing and able successors. A small group of telecommunications companies took over the internet backbone that the NSF freely relinquished. Web portals, like America Online and Prodigy came to dominate most Americans' interactions with the web, as Netscape and Microsoft vied to dominate web browsing. The neglected identity functions were filled by the rise of Google and Facebook. Absent digital payments were filled in by PayPal and Stripe. Absent the protocols for sharing data, computational power and storage that motivated work on the Intergalactic Computer Network in the first place, private infrastructures (often called "cloud providers") that empowered such sharing (such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure) became the platforms for building applications.[^Tarnoff]
 
 [^Tarnoff]: Ben Tarnoff, _Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future_ (New York: Verso, 2022).
 
@@ -212,7 +212,7 @@ Finally and perhaps most closely connected to our own paths to ⿻ have been the
 
 Noveck, in particular, is a powerful bridge between the early development of ⿻ and its future, having been a driving force behind the Online Deliberation workshops mentioned above, having developed Unchat, one of the earliest attempts at software to serve these goals and which helped inspire the work of vTaiwan and more.[^Unchat] She went on to pioneer, in her work with the US Patent and Trademark Office and later as Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the US many of the transparent and inclusive practices that formed the core of the g0v movement we highlighted above.[^Noveckwork] Noveck was a critical mentor not just to g0v but to a range of other ambitious civic technology projects around the world from the Kenya collective crisis reporting platform [Ushahidi](https://www.ushahidi.com/) founded by [Juliana Rotich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_Rotich) and collaborators to a variety of European participative policy-making platforms like [Decidim](https://decidim.org/) founded by [Francesca Bria](https://www.francescabria.com/) and collaborators and [CONSUL](https://consuldemocracy.org/) that arose from the "Indignado" movement parallel to g0v in Spain, on the board of which one of us sits. Yet despite these important impacts, a variety of features of these settings has made it challenging for these examples to have the systemic, national and thus easily traceable macrolevel impacts that g0v had in Taiwan.
 
-Other countries have, of course, excelled in various elements of ⿻. Estonia is perhaps the leading example and shares with Taiwan a strong history of Georgism and land taxes, is often cited as the most digitized democratic government in the world and pioneered digital democracy earlier than almost any other country, starting in the late 1990s.[^Estoniamodel] Finland has built on and scaled the success of its neighbor, extending digital inclusion deeper into society, educational system and the economy than Estonia, as well as adopting elements of digitized democratic participation. Singapore has the most ambitious Georgist-style policies on earth and harnesses more creative ⿻ economic mechanisms and fundamental protocols than any other jurisdiction. South Korea has invested extensively in both digital services and digital competence education. New Zealand has pioneered internet-based voting and harnessed civil society to improve public service inclusion. Iceland has harnessed digital tools to extend democratic participation more extensively than any other jurisdiction. Kenya, Brazil and especially India have pioneered digital infrastructure for development. We will return to many of these examples in what follows.
+Other countries have, of course, excelled in various elements of ⿻. Estonia is perhaps the leading example and shares with Taiwan a strong history of Georgism and land taxes, is often cited as the most digitized democratic government in the world and pioneered digital democracy earlier than almost any other country, starting in the late 1990s.[^Estoniamodel] Finland has built on and scaled the success of its neighbor, extending digital inclusion deeper into society, the educational system and the economy than Estonia, as well as adopting elements of digitized democratic participation. Singapore has the most ambitious Georgist-style policies on earth and harnesses more creative ⿻ economic mechanisms and fundamental protocols than any other jurisdiction. South Korea has invested extensively in both digital services and digital competence education. New Zealand has pioneered internet-based voting and harnessed civil society to improve public service inclusion. Iceland has harnessed digital tools to extend democratic participation more extensively than any other jurisdiction. Kenya, Brazil and especially India have pioneered digital infrastructure for development. We will return to many of these examples in what follows.
 
 [^Estoniamodel]: Gary Anthes, "Estonia: a Model for e-Government" _Communications of the ACM_ 58, no. 6 (2015): 18-20.
 

contents/english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md

@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ These identities are the most ⿻ of all we have discussed and have the least co
 2. At the same time, these sources of identification are often experienced as the most natural, appropriate and non-invasive.  They seem to arise from the natural course of human interactions, rather than from top-down mandates or power structures.  They are viewed as highly legitimate, and yet not as a definitive or external source of "legal" identity, often being seen as pseudonymous or otherwise private.
 3. They tend to record rich and detailed, personal information, but in a narrow context or slice of life, clearly separated from other contexts.  As a result, they have strong potential recovery methods based on personal relationships.
 4. They tend to have a poor digital user experience; either they are not digitized at all, or the process of managing the digital interface is unfriendly to non-technical users.  
-While these examples are perhaps most marginal to digital identity, they are also perhaps most representative of its systemic state.  Digital identity systems are heterogeneous, generally quite insecure, only weakly interoperable and have limited functionality while allowing entities with concentrated power to engage in extensive surveillance and breaking norms of privacy that in many cases they were established to protect.  This problem is increasingly widely recognized, leading to focus in many technology projects on overcoming it.
+While these examples are perhaps most marginal to digital identity, they are also perhaps most representative of its systemic state.  Digital identity systems are heterogeneous, generally quite insecure, only weakly interoperable and have limited functionality while allowing entities with concentrated power to engage in extensive surveillance and breaking norms of privacy that in many cases they were established to protect.  This problem is increasingly widely recognized, leading many technology projects to focus on overcoming it.
 
 ### Public and decentralized digital identity
 

contents/english/4-2-association-and-⿻-publics.md

@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ The potential of computers and networking to facilitate such association was the
 [^MW]: See https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/association.
 [^Karatani]: Japanese philosopher Kojin Karatani explores this concept in his book "The Principle of NAM." Karatani argues that individuals belong not only to geographical regions but also to global "regions" based on their interests. He calls this the "rhizomatic association" and depicts it as a network formation system consisting of diverse "regions." This concept resembles the network structure where small, closely-knit communities are interconnected.  Kojin Karatani (2000). "NAM原理" *太田出版* (Published in Japanese. Not translated in English). In this year Karatani founded the New Associationist Movement in Japan. It was an anti-capitalist, anti-nation-state association inspired by experiments with Local Exchange Trading Systems.
 
-Yet, perhaps paradoxically, there is an important sense in which the rise of the internet has actually threatened some of the core features of free association.  As Lick and Taylor emphasized, forming an association or community requires establishing a set of background shared beliefs, values and interests that form a *context* for the association and communication within it.  Furthermore, as emphasized by Simmel and Nissenbaum, it also requires protecting this context from external surveillance: if individuals believe their communications to their association are being monitored by outsiders, they will often be unwilling to harness the context of shared community for fear their words will be misunderstood by those these communications were no intended for.
+Yet, perhaps paradoxically, there is an important sense in which the rise of the internet has actually threatened some of the core features of free association.  As Lick and Taylor emphasized, forming an association or community requires establishing a set of background shared beliefs, values and interests that form a *context* for the association and communication within it.  Furthermore, as emphasized by Simmel and Nissenbaum, it also requires protecting this context from external surveillance: if individuals believe their communications to their association are being monitored by outsiders, they will often be unwilling to harness the context of shared community for fear their words will be misunderstood by those these communications were not intended for.
 
 The internet, while enabling a far broader range of potential associations, has made the *establishment* and *protection* of context more challenging.  As information spreads further and faster, knowing who you are speaking to and what you share with them has become challenging.  Furthermore, it has become easier than ever for nosy outsiders to spy on associations or for their members to inappropriately share information outside the intended context.  Achieving Lick and Taylor's dream, and thus enabling the digital world to be one where ⿻ associations thrive, requires, therefore, understanding informational context and building ⿻  systems that support and protect it.  
 
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@ Yet most types of information are harder to independently and immediately verify
 
 If properly combined in a new generation of networking standards, a combination of these tools could give us the capacity to move beyond the superficial traditional divide between "publicity" and "privacy" to empower true freedom of association online.  While we usually think of publicity and privacy as a one-dimensional spectrum, it is easy to see that another dimension is equally important.  
 
-Consider first information "hidden in plain sight", lost in a pile of irrelevant facts, available to all but reaching the awareness of no one a bit like Waldon in the popular American children's game "Where's Waldo?" where children must find a man in a striped shirt hidden in a picture.  Contrast this with the secret of the existence of the Manhattan Project, which was shared among roughly 100,000 people but was sharply hidden from the rest of the world.  Both are near the midpoint of the "privacy" v. "publicity" spectrum, as both are in important ways broadly shared and obscure.  But they sit at opposite ends of another spectrum: of concentrated common understanding v. diffuse availability.
+Consider first information "hidden in plain sight", lost in a pile of irrelevant facts, available to all but reaching the awareness of no one a bit like Waldo in the popular American children's game "Where's Waldo?" where children must find a man in a striped shirt hidden in a picture.  Contrast this with the secret of the existence of the Manhattan Project, which was shared among roughly 100,000 people but was sharply hidden from the rest of the world.  Both are near the midpoint of the "privacy" v. "publicity" spectrum, as both are in important ways broadly shared and obscure.  But they sit at opposite ends of another spectrum: of concentrated common understanding v. diffuse availability.
 
 This example illustrates why "privacy" and "publicity" are far too simplistic concepts to describe the patterns of co-knowledge that underpin free association.  While any simple descriptor will fall short of the richness we should continue to investigate, a more relevant model may be what elsewhere we have called "⿻ publics".  ⿻ publics is the aspiration to create information standards that allow a diverse range of communities with strong internal common beliefs shielded from the outside world to coexist.  Achieving this requires maintaining what Shrey Jain, Zoë Hitzig and Pamela Mishkin have called "[contextual confidence](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.01193)", where participants in a system can easily establish and protect the context of their communications.[^ContextualConfidence]