From 4218058efd5680338c2067c82233d28b17ec101c Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: techxorcist Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2024 14:10:17 -0600 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] minor edits from reading notes --- ...echnology-and-democracy-a-widening-gulf.md | 4 +- contents/english/2-1-a-view-from-yushan.md | 6 +- contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md | 2 +- contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md | 8 +- .../english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md | 2 +- ...2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" | 2 +- contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md | 2 +- ...-collaborative-technology-and-democracy.md | 8 +- .../5-1-post-symbolic-communication.md | 4 +- .../english/5-3-creative-collaborations.md | 2 +- .../english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md | 2 +- .../english/5-5-adaptive-administration.md | 2 +- contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md | 6 +- contents/english/6-1-workplace.md | 4 +- contents/english/7-0-policy.md | 453 +++++++++--------- 15 files changed, 254 insertions(+), 253 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/2-0-information-technology-and-democracy-a-widening-gulf.md b/contents/english/2-0-information-technology-and-democracy-a-widening-gulf.md index eaee9a17..44ebcf65 100644 --- a/contents/english/2-0-information-technology-and-democracy-a-widening-gulf.md +++ b/contents/english/2-0-information-technology-and-democracy-a-widening-gulf.md @@ -122,11 +122,11 @@ How did we end up here? Are these conflicts the natural course of technology and A range of work suggests that technology and democracy could co-evolve in a diversity of ways and that the path most democracies are on is a result of collective choices they have made through policies, attitudes, expectations, and culture. The range of possibilities can be seen through a variety of lenses, from science fiction to real-world cases. -Science fiction shows the astonishing range of futures the human mind is capable of imagining. In many cases, these imaginings are the foundation of many of the technologies that researchers and entrepreneurs end up developing. Some of these correspond to the directions we have seen technology take recently. In his 1992 classic, [Snow Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash), Neal Stephenson imagines a future where most people have retreated to live much of their lives in an immersive “metaverse”.[^Crash] In the process they undermine the engagement necessary to support real-world communities, governments, and the like, making space for mafias and cult leaders to rule and develop weapons of mass destruction. This future closely corresponds to elements of the “antisocial” threats to democracy from technology we discussed above. Stephenson and other writers further extend these possibilities, which have had a profound effect in shaping technology development; for example, Meta Platforms is named after Stephenson’s metaverse. Similar examples are possible for the tendency of technology to concentrate power through creating “superintelligences” as in the fiction of [Isaac Asimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) and [Ian Banks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series), the predictive futurism of [Ray Kurzweil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines) and [Nicholas Bostrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies), and films like [Terminator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies) and [Her](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)).[^AISciFi] +Science fiction shows the astonishing range of futures the human mind is capable of imagining. In many cases, these imaginings are the foundation of many of the technologies that researchers and entrepreneurs end up developing. Some of these correspond to the directions we have seen technology take recently. In his 1992 classic, [Snow Crash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Crash), Neal Stephenson imagines a future where most people have retreated to live much of their lives in an immersive “metaverse”.[^Crash] In the process they undermine the engagement necessary to support real-world communities, governments, and the like, making space for mafias and cult leaders to rule and develop weapons of mass destruction. This future closely corresponds to elements of the “antisocial” threats to democracy from technology we discussed above. Stephenson and other writers further extend these possibilities, which have had a profound effect in shaping technology development; for example, Meta Platforms is named after Stephenson’s metaverse. Similar examples are possible for the tendency of technology to concentrate power through creating “superintelligences” as in the fiction of [Isaac Asimov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics) and [Iain M. Banks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series), the predictive futurism of [Ray Kurzweil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Spiritual_Machines) and [Nicholas Bostrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies), and films like [Terminator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintelligence:_Paths,_Dangers,_Strategies) and [Her](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_(film)).[^AISciFi] [^Crash]: Neal Stephenson, *Snow Crash* (New York: Bantam, 1992). -[^AISciFi]: Isaac Asimov, *I, Robot* (New York: Gnome Press: 1950). Ian Banks, *Consider Phlebas* (London: Macmillan, 1987). Ray Kurzweil, *The Age of Spiritual Machines* (New York: Viking, 1999). Nicholas Bostrom, *Superintelligence* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014). +[^AISciFi]: Isaac Asimov, *I, Robot* (New York: Gnome Press: 1950). Iain M. Banks, *Consider Phlebas* (London: Macmillan, 1987). Ray Kurzweil, *The Age of Spiritual Machines* (New York: Viking, 1999). Nicholas Bostrom, *Superintelligence* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014). But these possibilities are both very different from each other and are far from the only visions of the technological future to be found in sci-fi. In fact, some of the most prominent science fiction shows very different possibilities. Two of the most popular sci-fi television shows of all time, *The Jetsons* and *Star Trek*, show futures where, respectively, technology has largely reinforced the culture and institutions of 1950s America and one where it has enabled a post-capitalist world of diverse intersecting alien intelligences (on which more below). But these are two among thousands of examples, from the post-gender and post-state imagination of Ursula Le Guin to the post-colonial futurism of Octavia Butler. All suggest a dizzying range of ways technology could coevolve with society[^ScienceFiction]. diff --git a/contents/english/2-1-a-view-from-yushan.md b/contents/english/2-1-a-view-from-yushan.md index fa86a1b4..1e75d454 100644 --- a/contents/english/2-1-a-view-from-yushan.md +++ b/contents/english/2-1-a-view-from-yushan.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ [^TROC]: This is an alternate interpretation of 中華民國 (lit. "amidst" "cultures" "citizens" "nation"), usually translated as "Republic of China". -Standing at the summit of East Asia's highest peak, [Yushan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Shan) (Jade Mountain), one can not only look down on Taiwan, but also feel how this small, mountainous island nation is a global crossroad. Located at the junction of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, Taiwan's geological fault line yearly pushes it up, even as it also regularly causes earthquakes against which rigorous building code protect inhabitants. In the same way, the clash of Taiwan's diverse culture, history and values has built a prosperous and innovative society, while pro-social digital innovation has managed to protect it from polarization. +Standing at the summit of East Asia's highest peak, [Yushan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yu_Shan) (Jade Mountain), one can not only look down on Taiwan, but also feel how this small, mountainous island nation is a global crossroad. Located at the junction of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, Taiwan's geological fault line yearly pushes it up, even as it also regularly causes earthquakes against which rigorous building codes protect inhabitants. In the same way, the clash of Taiwan's diverse culture, history and values has built a prosperous and innovative society, while pro-social digital innovation has managed to protect it from polarization. Today, with a voter turnout rate over 70%[^twelectionv], second-highest religious diversity in the world[^ReligiousDiversityIndex], and 90% of global supply capacity for advanced chips, Taiwan has broken through geographic constraints and demonstrated the resilience of a democratic society to collaborate with its region and the world. @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Two dramatic personal experiences of the lead authors of this book illustrate th Perhaps most importantly, the movement led to a deeper and more lasting shift in politics, as the government at the time gained respect for the movement and ministers invited younger "reverse mentors" to help them learn from youth and civil society. One particularly proactive such minister, one of the world's first ministers in charge of digital participation, Jaclyn Tsai recruited one of us to begin our journey of public service. Eventually this led to her taking that role in 2016 and in 2022 becoming the first Minister of Digital Affairs. -Almost a decade after these events, the other primary author of this book visited to witness the general election held January 13, 2024, which launched a "year of elections" in which more people than in any previous year will vote and followed hot on the heels of the "year of AI", when generative models like GPT burst into the public consciousness. Many expect these models to turbocharge information manipulation and interference by authoritarian actors. This election seemed a test case, with a more concerted, better-funded adversary focused on a small population than anywhere in the world.[^VDemInfo] Walking the streets of Taipei on the eve of that election, he saw no shortage of divisions for such attacks to exploit. At the rally of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) he found not a single official flag, only placards of the island, the party's signature green color and occasional rainbow flags 🏳️‍🌈. At the rally of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) party, he saw only the flag of the Republic of China (ROC) 🇹🇼. It made him imagine how much more extreme the divisions of his American home would be if Democrats waved a historical British flag and Republicans the stars and stripes. +Almost a decade after these events, the other primary author of this book visited to witness the general election held January 13, 2024, which launched a "year of elections" in which more people than in any previous year will vote and followed hot on the heels of the "year of AI", when generative models like GPT burst into the public consciousness. Many expect these models to turbocharge information manipulation and interference by authoritarian actors. This election seemed a test case, with a more concerted, better-funded adversary focused on a considerably smaller population.[^VDemInfo] Walking the streets of Taipei on the eve of that election, he saw no shortage of divisions for such attacks to exploit. At the rally of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) he found not a single official flag, only placards of the island, the party's signature green color and occasional rainbow flags 🏳️‍🌈. At the rally of the opposition Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) party, he saw only the flag of the Republic of China (ROC) 🇹🇼. It made him imagine how much more extreme the divisions of his American home would be if Democrats waved a historical British flag and Republicans the stars and stripes. [^VDemInfo]: “Disinformation in Taiwan: International versus Domestic Perpetrators,” V-Dem, 2020. https://v-dem.net/weekly_graph/disinformation-in-taiwan-international-versus @@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ The 1960s, parallel to the American Civil Rights movement, saw an outburst of de The United Nations was central to the ROC's early identity under the White Terror as it was not only one of the founding members of the UN, but also the only Asian permanent member of the Security Council. This prominent international role was the leading irritant to the People's Republic of China (PRC) regime, preventing it from participating in international affairs and leading the CCP to change its position from initially supporting Taiwanese independence to an ideological focus on conquering Taiwan. However, as the US sought to contain its failures in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon secretly pursued accommodation with the PRC, including supporting an Albanian-sponsored Resolution 2758 by the General Assembly on October 25, 1971 that transferred recognition of "China" from the ROC to the PRC, finally culminating in Nixon's visit to PRC in 1972. As a result, the ROC "withdrew" from the UN, transforming its identity and international standing. -On the one hand, this withdrawal internationally greatly limited the scope of Taiwan's international activities and its ability to engage in economic and trade activities. It also led the US and much of the non-Communist world to shift from a position of unconditional alliance with the ROC to one of careful balancing of interests and ambiguity, seeking to prevent PRC's violence over Taiwan while also supporting a policy of acknowledging its "One China" position. +On the one hand, this withdrawal internationally greatly limited the scope of Taiwan's international activities and its ability to engage in economic and trade activities. It also led the US and much of the non-Communist world to shift from a position of unconditional alliance with the ROC to one of careful balancing of interests and ambiguity, seeking to prevent PRC violence over Taiwan while also supporting a policy of acknowledging its "One China" position. Internally, this change in identity undermined much of the rationale for the White Terror, as the prospect of global support for a war to suppress the "Communist rebellion" withered and undermined the aspirational identity of "free China". The contradictions between the increasingly egalitarian, Third Sector-driven and highly progressively educated population, on the one hand, and an authoritarian repressive state on the other thus became increasingly overwhelming, especially with the development of labor unions and political civic associations and the death of Chiang all before the end of the 1970s. The lives of the parents of one of the authors of this book are a perfect illustration of these trends: as pioneers of community college and consumer cooperative movements, they benefited from the cooperative support in the ROC constitution. Yet, as journalists, they covered and helped support those repressed by the state, such as in the Kaohsiung Incident of 1979 when leaders of the political opposition were imprisoned, building the foundation for democratization. diff --git a/contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md b/contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md index 0e14ec38..45701a47 100644 --- a/contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md +++ b/contents/english/3-2-connected-society.md @@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ Prior to modernity, individuals were born into families rooted within kin-based [^universalreg]: It is worth noting, however, that universal birth registration is a very recent phenomenon and only was achieved in the US in 1940. Universal registration for Social Security Numbers did not even begin until 1987 when Enumeration at Birth was instituted at the federal level in collaboration with county level governments where births are registered. -This helped circumvent the reliance on personal relationships, building the foundation of identity in a relationship to a state, which in turn served as a trust anchors for many other types of institutions ranging from children's sports teams to medical care providers. These abstract representations enabled people to navigate the world not based on "who they know" or "where they fit" in a tight social world but as who they are in an abstracted universal sense relative to the state. This "WEIRD" (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) universalism thus broke with the social embedding of identity while thereby "freeing" people to travel and interact much more broadly using modern forms of identification issued by governments like passports and national identity cards. While other critical credentials, such as educational attainment are more diverse, they almost uniformly conform to a limited structure, implying one of a small number of "degrees" derived from courses with a particular "Carnegie unit" structure (in theory, 120 hours spent with an instructor), in contrast to the broad range of potential recognition that could be given to learning attainment as illustrated in Figure A. In short, just as modernity abstracted ownership private property, removing it from its many social entanglements, it also abstracted personal identity from the social anchoring that limited travel and the formation of new relationships. +This helped circumvent the reliance on personal relationships, building the foundation of identity in a relationship to a state, which in turn served as a trust anchors for many other types of institutions ranging from children's sports teams to medical care providers. These abstract representations enabled people to navigate the world not based on "who they know" or "where they fit" in a tight social world but as who they are in an abstracted universal sense relative to the state. This "WEIRD" (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) universalism thus broke with the social embedding of identity while thereby "freeing" people to travel and interact much more broadly using modern forms of identification issued by governments like passports and national identity cards. While other critical credentials such as educational attainment are more diverse, they almost uniformly conform to a limited structure, implying one of a small number of "degrees" derived from courses with a particular "Carnegie unit" structure (in theory, 120 hours spent with an instructor), in contrast to the broad range of potential recognition that could be given to learning attainment as illustrated in Figure A. In short, just as modernity abstracted ownership private property, removing it from its many social entanglements, it also abstracted personal identity from the social anchoring that limited travel and the formation of new relationships. diff --git a/contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md b/contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md index a0cc025a..69e2f443 100644 --- a/contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md +++ b/contents/english/3-3-the-lost-dao.md @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ Despite the apparent threat it posed to that private interest, packet switching

-If one path to networked thinking was thus motivated by technical resilience, another was motivated by creative expression. Ted Nelson trained as a sociologist, was inspired in his work by a visit to campus he hosted in 1959 by cybernetic pioneer Margaret Mead's vision of democratic and pluralistic media and developed into. an artist. Following these early experiences, he devoted his life beginning in his early 20s to the development of "[Project Xanadu](https://www.xanadu.net/)", which aimed to create a revolutionary human-centered interface for computer networks. While [Xanadu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx6li5dbEY) had so many components that Nelson considered indispensable that it was not released fully until the 2010s, its core idea, co-developed with Engelbart, was "hypertext" as Nelson labeled it. +If one path to networked thinking was thus motivated by technical resilience, another was motivated by creative expression. Ted Nelson trained as a sociologist, was inspired in his work by a visit to campus he hosted in 1959 by cybernetic pioneer Margaret Mead's vision of democratic and pluralistic media and developed into an artist. Following these early experiences, he devoted his life beginning in his early 20s to the development of "[Project Xanadu](https://www.xanadu.net/)", which aimed to create a revolutionary human-centered interface for computer networks. While [Xanadu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqx6li5dbEY) had so many components that Nelson considered indispensable that it was not released fully until the 2010s, its core idea, co-developed with Engelbart, was "hypertext" as Nelson labeled it. Nelson imagined hypertext as a way to liberate communication from the tyranny of a linear interpretation imposed by an original author, empowering a "[pluralism](https://cs.brown.edu/people/nmeyrowi/LiteraryMachinesChapter2.pdf)" (as he labeled it) of paths through material through a network of (bidirectional) links connecting material in a variety of sequences.[^Nelson] This "choose your own adventure"[^ChooseYourOwnAdventure] quality is most familiar today to internet users in their browsing experiences but showed up earlier in commercial products in the 1980s (such as computer games based on hypercard). Nelson imagined that such ease of navigation and recombination would enable the formation of new cultures and narratives at unprecedented speed and scope. The power of this approach became apparent to the broader world when Tim Berners-Lee made it central to his "[World Wide Web](https://www.w3.org/History.html)" approach to navigation in the early 1990s, ushering in the era of broad adoption of the internet. @@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ Nelson imagined hypertext as a way to liberate communication from the tyranny of While Engelbart and Nelson were lifelong friends and shared many similar visions, they took very different paths to realizing them, each of which (as we will see) held an important seed of truth. Engelbart, while also a visionary, was a consummate pragmatist and a smooth political operator, and went on to be recognized as the pioneer of personal computing. Nelson was an artistic purist whose relentless pursuit over decades of Xanadu embodying all of his [seventeen enumerated principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu#Original_17_rules) buried his career. -As an active participant in Lick's network, Engelbart conversely tempered his ambition with the need to persuade other network nodes to support, adopt or at least inter-operate with his approach. As different user interfaces and networking protocols proliferated, retreated from the pursuit of perfection. Engelbart, and even more his colleagues across the project, instead began to develop a culture of collegiality, facilitated by the communication network the were building, across the often competing universities they worked at. The physical separation made tight coordination of networks impossible, but work to ensure minimal inter-operation and spreading of clear best practices became a core characteristic of the ARPANET community. +As an active participant in Lick's network, Engelbart conversely tempered his ambition with the need to persuade other network nodes to support, adopt or at least inter-operate with his approach. As different user interfaces and networking protocols proliferated, retreated from the pursuit of perfection. Engelbart, and even more his colleagues across the project, instead began to develop a culture of collegiality, facilitated by the communication network they were building, across the often competing universities they worked at. The physical separation made tight coordination of networks impossible, but work to ensure minimal inter-operation and spreading of clear best practices became a core characteristic of the ARPANET community. This culture manifested in the development of the "Request for Comments" (RFC) process by Steve Crocker, arguably one of the first "wiki"-like processes of informal and mostly additive collaboration across many geographically and sectorally (governmental, corporate, university) dispersed collaborators. This in turn contributed to the common Network Control Protocol and, eventually, Transmission Control and Internet Protocols (TCP/IP) under the famously mission-driven but inclusive and responsive leadership of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn between 1974 when TCP was first circulated as RFC 675 and 1983 when they became the official ARPANET protocols. At the core of the approach was the vision of a "network of networks" that gave the "internet" its name: that many diverse and local networks (at universities, corporations and government agencies) could inter-operate sufficiently to permit the near-seamless communication across long distances, in contrast to centralized networks (such as France's concurrent Minitel) that were standardized from the top down by a government.[^Minitel] Together these three dimensions of networking (of technical communication protocols, communicative content and governance of standards) converged to create the internet we know today. @@ -126,7 +126,7 @@ While Nelson was something of an oddball, his concerns were surprisingly broadly 7. Government data and statistics becoming increasingly inaccurate and irrelevant. 8. Control by private entities of the fundamental platforms for speech and public discourse. -The wider internet adoption spread, the the less relevant such complaints appeared. Government did not end up playing as central of a role as he imagined, but by 2000 most of the few commentators who were even aware of his warnings assumed we were surely on the path of Lick's scenario 2. Yet in a few places, concern was growing by late in the first decade of the new millennium. Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier sounded the alarm in two books _[You are Not a Gadget](https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307389979)_ and _[Who Owns The Future?](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Who-Owns-the-Future/Jaron-Lanier/9781451654974)_, highlighting Nelson's and his own version of Lick's concerns about the future of the internet.[^Jaron] While these initially appeared simply an amplification of Nelson's fringe ideas, a series of world events that we discuss in the [Information Technology and Democracy: a Widening Gulf](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/?mode=dark) above eventually brought much of the world around to seeing the limitations of the internet economy and society that had developed, helping ignite the Techlash. These patterns bore a striking resemblance to Lick and Nelson's warnings. The victory of the internet may have been far more Pyrrhic than it at first seemed. +The wider internet adoption spread, the less relevant such complaints appeared. Government did not end up playing as central of a role as he imagined, but by 2000 most of the few commentators who were even aware of his warnings assumed we were surely on the path of Lick's scenario 2. Yet in a few places, concern was growing by late in the first decade of the new millennium. Virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier sounded the alarm in two books _[You are Not a Gadget](https://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307389979)_ and _[Who Owns The Future?](https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Who-Owns-the-Future/Jaron-Lanier/9781451654974)_, highlighting Nelson's and his own version of Lick's concerns about the future of the internet.[^Jaron] While these initially appeared simply an amplification of Nelson's fringe ideas, a series of world events that we discuss in the [Information Technology and Democracy: a Widening Gulf](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/?mode=dark) above eventually brought much of the world around to seeing the limitations of the internet economy and society that had developed, helping ignite the Techlash. These patterns bore a striking resemblance to Lick and Nelson's warnings. The victory of the internet may have been far more Pyrrhic than it at first seemed. [^Jaron]: Jaron Lanier, _You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto_ (New York: Vintage, 2011) and _Who Owns the Future?_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014). @@ -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). diff --git a/contents/english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md b/contents/english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md index d38fe66a..9a1849d1 100644 --- a/contents/english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md +++ b/contents/english/4-1-identity-and-personhood.md @@ -128,7 +128,7 @@ On the other hand, if privacy is protected, as in Worldcoin, by using biometrics -Starting from a very different place, another set of work on identity has reached a similar challenging set of trade-offs. Work on "decentralized identity" grew from many of the concerns about digital identity we have highlighted above: fragmentation, lack of natural digital infrastructure, issues with privacy, surveillance and corporate control. A key founding document was Microsoft identity architect Kim Cameron's "Laws of Identity" [^LawsOfIdentities], which emphasized the importance of user control/consent, minimal disclosure to appropriate parties, multiple use cases, pluralism of participation, integration with human users and consistency of experience across context. Kim Cameron worked on developing the cardspace [^CS] system while at MSFT and this became the InformationCard [^icard] standards. These did not get market adoption in part because they were too early - smartphones were not widely adopted yet and the idea that this device could hold a wallet for people. +Starting from a very different place, another set of work on identity has reached a similar challenging set of trade-offs. Work on "decentralized identity" grew from many of the concerns about digital identity we have highlighted above: fragmentation, lack of natural digital infrastructure, issues with privacy, surveillance and corporate control. A key founding document was Microsoft identity architect Kim Cameron's "Laws of Identity" [^LawsOfIdentities], which emphasized the importance of user control/consent, minimal disclosure to appropriate parties, multiple use cases, pluralism of participation, integration with human users and consistency of experience across context. Kim Cameron worked on developing the cardspace [^CS] system while at MSFT and this became the InformationCard [^icard] standards. These did not get market adoption in part because they were too early - smartphones were not widely adopted yet and, further, the idea that this device could hold a wallet for people was not adopted by application developers. The emergence of blockchain-distributed ledgers renewed interest in the decentralized identity community on achieving individual control over identifiers rather than being excessively tied to a single issue. This spurred the creation of the Decentralized Identifiers (DID) standard at the W3C that defines a way to have decentralized globally resolvable endpoints with associated public keys.[^DID] This creates a way to grant individuals "ownership" over identities, rooted in "public" data repositories such as blockchains, and create standardized formats for a variety of entities to issue digital credentials referencing these identifiers. diff --git "a/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" "b/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" index ba7a1a66..f81b13ba 100644 --- "a/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" +++ "b/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-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. diff --git a/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md b/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md index 6da9ee56..718407ca 100644 --- a/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md +++ b/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md @@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ This realization interestingly parallels the development of one of the first maj [^X]: Today's PayPal was a merger of the original PayPal with X.com, founded by Elon Musk, Harris Fricker, Christopher Payne and Ed Ho, the name of which is now being revived by Musk as the successor to Twitter. -Seeking to bring these services at lower cost and more inclusively especially in markets incompletely served by these US and PRC-based services, several major developing-world governments have created publicly supported instant payment services, including Singapore's FAST system in 2014, Brazil's Pix system in 2020 and India's Unified Payments Interface in 2016. Even the US has followed with [FedNow](https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow) in 2023. While there are still significant impediments to international inter-operation, there is an increasing consensus that the immediate gap in making instant payments online and in person through digital channels has been met. +Seeking to deliver these services less expensively and more inclusively, especially in markets incompletely served by these US and PRC-based services, several major developing-world governments have created publicly supported instant payment services, including Singapore's FAST system in 2014, Brazil's Pix system in 2020 and India's Unified Payments Interface in 2016. Even the US has followed with [FedNow](https://www.frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow) in 2023. While there are still significant impediments to international inter-operation, there is an increasing consensus that the immediate gap in making instant payments online and in person through digital channels has been met. Yet the challenges raised by cryptocurrencies cannot be laid to rest quite so easily, as suggested by the resilience of interest and recent currency values in the space. The decline of cash, heralded by defenders of sanction regimes and battlers against financial criminals like economist Kenneth Rogoff, has been bemoaned by privacy advocates and civil libertarians, who argue that the collapse of private payments will have systemic effects individual users fail to account for when choosing how to pay.[^Priv] The oft-touted privacy benefits of Bitcoin have largely proven illusory given that it has become increasingly easy for well-resourced analysts to uncover the controllers of pseudonymous accounts.[^Bitcoinprivacy] However, interest in privacy technology has become a primary focus in the space, stimulating the development of highly private currencies like [Zcash](https://z.cash/) and "mixer" services like [Tornado cash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash) on top of other currencies. These have stimulated controversy over the trade-offs between privacy and legal accountability, leading to forceful government actions to shut down various privacy features in some jurisdictions. These conflicts have also been at the root of the challenges of achieving seamless international inter-operation for digital payments systems, as countries fight over who can surveil and regulate what activity. diff --git a/contents/english/5-0-collaborative-technology-and-democracy.md b/contents/english/5-0-collaborative-technology-and-democracy.md index 7189641f..dcbaf82f 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-0-collaborative-technology-and-democracy.md +++ b/contents/english/5-0-collaborative-technology-and-democracy.md @@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ This book was created to demonstrate ⿻ in action and as well as describe it: to show as well as tell. As such, it was created using many of the tools we describe in this section. The text was [stored on and updated](https://github.com/pluralitybook/plurality) using the [Git protocol](https://git-scm.com/) that open source coders use to control versions of their software. The text is shared freely under a [Creative Commons 0](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/) license, implying that no rights to any content herein are reserved to the community creating it and it may be freely reused. At the time of this writing, dozens of diverse experts and citizens from every continent contributed to the writing as highlighted in our [credits](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/0-1/eng/?mode=dark) above and we hope many more will the continued evolution of the text after physical publication, embodying the practices we describe in our [Creative Collaboration](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-3/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. -Work was collectively prioritized and rewards determined using a "crowd-funding" approach we describe in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below. Changes to the text in future evolution will be approved collectively by the community using a mixture of the advanced voting procedures described in our [⿻ Voting](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below and prediction markets. Contributors were recognized using a community currency and group identity tokens as we described in our [Identity and Personhood](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-1/eng/?mode=dark) and [Commerce and Trust](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-3/eng/?mode=dark) chapters above, which in turn was used in voting and prioritization of outstanding issues for the book. These priorities in turn determined the quantitative recognition received by those whose contributions addressed these challenges, an approach we have described with other as a "[⿻ Management Protocol](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4688040)".[^PMP] All this was recorded on a distributed ledger through an open-source protocol, [GitRules](https://gitrules.ai/), grounded on open-source participation rather than financial incentives. Contentious issues were resolved through tools we discuss in the [Augmented Deliberation](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below. The book has been translated and copy-edited by the community augmented by many of the cross-linguistic and subcultural translation tools we discuss in our [Adaptive Administration](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-5/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. +Work was collectively prioritized and rewards determined using a "crowd-funding" approach we describe in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below. Changes to the text in future evolution will be approved collectively by the community using a mixture of the advanced voting procedures described in our [⿻ Voting](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-6/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below and prediction markets. Contributors were recognized using a community currency and group identity tokens as we described in our [Identity and Personhood](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-1/eng/?mode=dark) and [Commerce and Trust](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-3/eng/?mode=dark) chapters above, which in turn was used in voting and prioritization of outstanding issues for the book. These priorities in turn determined the quantitative recognition received by those whose contributions addressed these challenges, an approach we have described with others as a "[⿻ Management Protocol](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4688040)".[^PMP] All this was recorded on a distributed ledger through an open-source protocol, [GitRules](https://gitrules.ai/), grounded on open-source participation rather than financial incentives. Contentious issues were resolved through tools we discuss in the [Augmented Deliberation](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter below. The book has been translated and copy-edited by the community augmented by many of the cross-linguistic and subcultural translation tools we discuss in our [Adaptive Administration](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-5/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ While using migratory distance from Africa (where diversity is maximum as noted * Geographic type: People live in different types of geographic regions: rural v. urban, cosmopolitan v. more traditional cities, differing weather patterns, proximity to geographic features etc. * Profession: Most people spend a large portion of their lives working and define important parts of their identities by a profession, craft or trade. * Organizations: People are members of a range of organizations, including their employers, civic associations, professional groups, athletic clubs, online interest groups etc. -* Ethno-linguistics: People speak a range of languages and identify themselves with and/or are identified by others with a "ethnic" groups associated with these linguistic groupings or histories of such linguistic associations, and these are organized by historical linguists into rough phylogenies. +* Ethno-linguistics: People speak a range of languages and identify themselves with and/or are identified by others with "ethnic" groups associated with these linguistic groupings or histories of such linguistic associations, and these are organized by historical linguists into rough phylogenies. * Race, caste and tribe: Many societies feature cultural groupings based on real or perceived genetic and familial origins that partly shape collective self- and social perceptions, especially given the legacies of severe conflict and oppression based on these traits. * Ideology: People adopt, implicitly or explicitly, a range of political and social ideologies organized according to schema that themselves differ greatly across social context (e.g. "left" and "right" are key dimensions in some contexts, while religious or national origin divides may be more important in others). * Education: People have a range of kinds and levels of educational attainment. @@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ Optimization, especially in the pursuit of a "social welfare function" carries a At the same time, there is an opposite extreme danger. If we simply pursue designs that imitate features of life and thus engage our attention with little sense of purpose or meaning, we can easily be co-opted to serve the darkest of human motives. The profit motives and power games that organize so much of today's world do not naturally serve any reasonable definition of a common good. The dystopian novels of Neal Stephenson, the [*Black Mirror*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror) series and the predicament of technologist Tunde Martins in the recent Nigerian science fiction show [Iwájú](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iw%C3%A1j%C3%BA) remind us of how technical advance decoupled from human values can become traps that fray social bonds and allow the power-hungry to loot, control and enslave us. -Nor do we look to hypothetical scenarios to perceive the danger of compelling technologies pursued without a broader guiding mission. The dominant online platforms of the "Web2" era such as Google, Facebook and Amazon grew precisely out of a mentality of bringing critical features of real-world sociality (viz. collectively determined emergent authority, social networks and commerce) to the digital world. While these services have brought many important benefits to billions of people around the world, we have extensively reviewed above, their many shortcomings and the dangerous path they have brought the world without a broader set of public goals to guide them. We must build tools that serve the felt needs of real, diverse populations, meeting them where they are, and yet we cannot ignore the broader social contexts in which they sit and the conflicts that we might exacerbate in meeting those perceived needs. +Nor do we look to hypothetical scenarios to perceive the danger of compelling technologies pursued without a broader guiding mission. The dominant online platforms of the "Web2" era such as Google, Facebook and Amazon grew precisely out of a mentality of bringing critical features of real-world sociality (viz. collectively determined emergent authority, social networks and commerce) to the digital world. While these services have brought many important benefits to billions of people around the world, we have extensively reviewed above their many shortcomings and the dangerous path they have brought the world without a broader set of public goals to guide them. We must build tools that serve the felt needs of real, diverse populations, meeting them where they are, and yet we cannot ignore the broader social contexts in which they sit and the conflicts that we might exacerbate in meeting those perceived needs. Luckily, a middle, pragmatic, ⿻ path is possible. We need neither take a God's eye nor a ground-level view exclusively. Instead, we can build tools that pursue the goals of a range of social groups, from intimate families and friends to large nations, always with an eye to limitations of each perspective and on the parallel developments we must connect to and learn from emanating from other parallel directions of development. We can aim to reform market function by focusing on social welfare, but always doing so based on adding to our models' key features of social richness revealed by those pursuing more granular perspectives and expecting our solutions will at least partly founder on their failures to account for these. We can build rich ways for people to empathize with others' internal experience, but with an understanding that such tools may well be abused if not paired with the discipline of deliberation, regulation and well-structured markets. @@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ Yet, as noted above, even if we manage to avoid these pitfalls and successfully Yet homogenization is not an inevitable outgrowth of bridging, even when one effect is to recombine existing culture and thus lessen their average divides. The reason is that bridging plays a positive, productive role, not just a defensive one. Yes, interdisciplinary bridging of scientific fields may loosen the internal standards of a field and thus the distinctive perspective it brings to bear. But it may also give rise to new, equally distinctive fields. For example, the encounter between psychology and economics has created a new "behavioral economics" field; encounters between biology, physics and computer science have birthed the blossoming field of "systems biology"; the encounter between computer science and statistics has helped launch "data science" and artificial intelligence. -Similar phenomena emerge throughout history. Bridging political divides may lead to excess homogenization, but it can also lead to the birth of new political cleavages. Families often bear children, who diverge from their parents and bring new perspectives. Most artistic and culinary novelty is born of "bricolage" or "fusion" of existing styles.[^Levi] The syntheses that emerge when thesis and antithesis meet are not always compromises, but instead theremay be new perspectives that realign a debate.[^Fichte] +Similar phenomena emerge throughout history. Bridging political divides may lead to excess homogenization, but it can also lead to the birth of new political cleavages. Families often bear children, who diverge from their parents and bring new perspectives. Most artistic and culinary novelty is born of "bricolage" or "fusion" of existing styles.[^Levi] The syntheses that emerge when thesis and antithesis meet are not always compromises, but instead there may be new perspectives that realign a debate.[^Fichte] [^Fichte]: This concept is often erroneously attributed to the work of G.W.F. Hegel, but actually originates with Johann Gottlieb Fichte and was not an important part of Hegel's thought. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, "Renzension des Aenesidemus", *Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung* 11-12 (1794). diff --git a/contents/english/5-1-post-symbolic-communication.md b/contents/english/5-1-post-symbolic-communication.md index ff4da3e2..ee424f2a 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-1-post-symbolic-communication.md +++ b/contents/english/5-1-post-symbolic-communication.md @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ Intimate experience today is rich with examples that touch upon the edges of pos Today, we stand on the cusp of a Cambrian explosion in technologies that can advance post-symbolic communication and enable participants to communicate their physiological, psychological, and even phenomenological states of being. The Park of Aging is an example of an early experiment, but we can expect deeper, immersive, wholly sensorial experiences with novel integrations of technology that combine in supermodular ways. A number of these technologies include: - Neural and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI): devices that connect directly to the brain capture neural activity and offer a direct pathway for communicating complex thoughts and emotions.[^B2B] [BCIs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface) enable direct communication between the brain and external devices. Future developments could allow for the sharing of thoughts, emotions, and experiences directly from one mind to another, allowing for an unprecedented level of interaction. -- Haptic feedback and homuncular flexibility: [Haptic devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_technology) provide tactile sensations, simulating touch and physical interactions in virtual environments and allowing users to feel and respond to virtual stimuli as if they were real. Similarly, with homuncular flexibility, individuals can learn to control virtual bodies that differ significantly from their own, thereby transcending the limitations of their physical bodies.[^Homuncular] A leading examples is the near-universal capacity of humans to "regain" from their evolutionary past a sense of agency over a tail, given sufficient feedback and control in a virtual world.[^tail] +- Haptic feedback and homuncular flexibility: [Haptic devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_technology) provide tactile sensations, simulating touch and physical interactions in virtual environments and allowing users to feel and respond to virtual stimuli as if they were real. Similarly, with homuncular flexibility, individuals can learn to control virtual bodies that differ significantly from their own, thereby transcending the limitations of their physical bodies.[^Homuncular] A leading example is the near-universal capacity of humans to "regain" from their evolutionary past a sense of agency over a tail, given sufficient feedback and control in a virtual world.[^tail] - 3D audio and immersive soundscapes: Advanced sound technologies that create three-dimensional auditory experiences can deeply enhance the sense of immersion in a virtual space, conveying emotions and atmosphere in a way that traditional stereo sound cannot. - Wearable tracking of affect and physiology: Devices that monitor heart rate, skin conductance, and other physiological markers can provide insight into a user's emotional and physical state, enabling shared experiences that are responsive to these states. - Projection mapping and spatial computing: Technologies allow for the transformation of physical spaces into interactive, digitally augmented environments. They can create shared, multi-sensory experiences that blend the physical and digital worlds. @@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Today, we stand on the cusp of a Cambrian explosion in technologies that can adv When combined with GFMs, these technologies will further enable us to generate visual representations of our thoughts at a pace that closely mirrors the speed of our imagination. These technologies together are unlocking responsive, adaptive environments or characters in virtual spaces that can react in real-time to users' emotions, actions, or choices beyond simple interpretation of natural language inputs.[^RealTime] Researchers have already shown how brain implants can connect the intentions of a paralyzed patient into physical movements, demonstrating the remarkable potential of neural interfaces to bridge the gap between thought and action.[^WalkingNat] -Combined, these capabilities enable the transmission of ideas and emotions that can occur directly and seamlessly and have profound implications for how we share and understand one another's internal experiences, creative visions, aspirations and even past traumas to facilitate reconciliation, healing and forgiveness. For example, imagine a child immersing themselves in the sensory experiences of their parents at the same age. Or two waring groups experiencing the pain and loss of their adversary’s family members. +Combined, these capabilities enable the transmission of ideas and emotions that can occur directly and seamlessly and have profound implications for how we share and understand one another's internal experiences, creative visions, aspirations and even past traumas to facilitate reconciliation, healing and forgiveness. For example, imagine a child immersing themselves in the sensory experiences of their parents at the same age. Or two warring groups experiencing the pain and loss of their adversary’s family members. ### Frontiers of post-symbolic communication diff --git a/contents/english/5-3-creative-collaborations.md b/contents/english/5-3-creative-collaborations.md index 918ca2d1..e4014b28 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-3-creative-collaborations.md +++ b/contents/english/5-3-creative-collaborations.md @@ -56,7 +56,7 @@ Tomorrow, we expect digital tools to unlock a symphony of minds, amplified and h The “symphony of minds,” assisted and amplified by technology, is poised to transcend beyond the mere exchange of ideas and creations to a realm where collective consciousness redefines creativity. - Telepathic creative exchanges: With advancements in post-symbolic communication, collaborators will be able to share ideas, visions, and creative impulses directly from mind to mind. This telepathic exchange will enable creators to bypass the limitations of language and physical expression, leading to a form of collaboration that is instantaneously empathetic and deeply intuitive. - - Inter-specific collaborative projects: The expansion of communication technologies to include non-human perspectives will open new frontiers in creativity. Collaborations could extend to other intelligence species (e.g., dolphins, octopuses), incorporating their perceptions and experiences into the creative process. Such projects could lead to unprecedented forms of art and innovation, grounded in a more holistic understanding of our planet and its inhabitants. + - Inter-specific collaborative projects: The expansion of communication technologies to include non-human perspectives will open new frontiers in creativity. Collaborations could extend to other intelligent species (e.g., dolphins, octopuses), incorporating their perceptions and experiences into the creative process. Such projects could lead to unprecedented forms of art and innovation, grounded in a more holistic understanding of our planet and its inhabitants. - Legacy and time-travel collaborations: With the creation of digital legacies and immersive experiences that allow for time travel within one's consciousness, future collaborators might engage not only with contemporaries but also with the minds of the past and future. This temporal collaboration could bring insights from different eras into conversation, enriching the creative process with a multitude of perspectives and wisdom accumulated across generations. - Collective creativity for global challenges: The challenges facing humanity will be met with a unified creative force, as collaborative platforms enable individuals worldwide to contribute their ideas and solutions. This collective creativity will be instrumental in addressing issues such as climate change, harnessing the power of diverse perspectives and innovative thinking to create sustainable and impactful solutions. diff --git a/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md index 57e11d02..2408ee5a 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -1,7 +1,7 @@ # Augmented Deliberation -As we [have noted above](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/?mode=dark), one of the most common concerns about social media has been its tendency to entrench existing social divisions, creating "echo chambers" that undermine a sense of shared reality.[^Sunstein] News feed algorithms based on "collaborative filtering" selects content that is likely to maximize user engagements, prioritizing like-minded content that reinforces users' existing beliefs and insulates them from diverse information. Despite mixed findings on whether these algorithms truly exacerbate political polarization and hamper deliberations, it is natural to ask how these systems might be redesigned with the opposite intention of “bridging” the crowd. The largest-scale attempt at this is the Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) system in the [X](https://www.twitter.com) (formerly Twitter) social media platform. +As we [have noted above](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-0/eng/?mode=dark), one of the most common concerns about social media has been its tendency to entrench existing social divisions, creating "echo chambers" that undermine a sense of shared reality.[^Sunstein] News feed algorithms based on "collaborative filtering" select content that is likely to maximize user engagements, prioritizing like-minded content that reinforces users' existing beliefs and insulates them from diverse information. Despite mixed findings on whether these algorithms truly exacerbate political polarization and hamper deliberations, it is natural to ask how these systems might be redesigned with the opposite intention of “bridging” the crowd. The largest-scale attempt at this is the Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) system in the [X](https://www.twitter.com) (formerly Twitter) social media platform.
A screenshot with an example of Community Notes. One user claimed, with questionable reasoning, that whales are not mammals. A second box is displayed below it stating that 'readers added context' and included referenced information on why they are indeed mammals. diff --git a/contents/english/5-5-adaptive-administration.md b/contents/english/5-5-adaptive-administration.md index 9d319f55..2999b7ad 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-5-adaptive-administration.md +++ b/contents/english/5-5-adaptive-administration.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ This demonstration built on years of work and multi stakeholder collaborations i


-Building on these demonstrations, Indian business, civil and government entities have launched services to harness these capabilities at scale. These include a government-provided chatbot to support applications to [farmer financial support programs](https://opengovasia.com/2023/09/23/ai-based-chatbot-to-support-indian-farmers/) and a free What's App based multilingual chatbot that offers guidance on a variety of public services. +Building on these demonstrations, Indian business, civil and government entities have launched services to harness these capabilities at scale. These include a government-provided chatbot to support applications to [farmer financial support programs](https://opengovasia.com/2023/09/23/ai-based-chatbot-to-support-indian-farmers/) and a free WhatsApp-based multilingual chatbot that offers guidance on a variety of public services. --- diff --git a/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md b/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md index eb03d763..12644b87 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md +++ b/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md @@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ Many textbooks have been written, including some by some of our close friends, o 1. Increasing returns and public goods: Perhaps the most restrictive condition, highlighted by the founding fathers of the "marginal revolution" that ushered in modern economics, is "decreasing returns", the opposite of the supermodularity we used to define collaboration. This requires that production have "decreasing marginal returns" or more generally and less formally, that "the whole is less than the sum of its parts". Only then can profitable production be consistent with the principle of, for example, paying workers their marginal contributions to production; when there are increasing returns, paying everyone their marginal product yields a loss, as shown in Figure C. Public goods that benefit a large number of people at little additional cost and are hard to stop people from using are an extreme case and economists have long argued that markets dramatically under-supply these. But even less extreme cases of increasing returns/supermodularity are severely under-provided by capitalism. Nobel Prizes, among others, to Paul Romer and Paul Krugman for showing how fundamental these goods are to growth and development.[^Pauls] In short, perhaps the greatest paradox of global capitalism is that it is at once the largest scale example of collaboration and yet has trouble precisely supporting the forms of technological collaboration that it heralds. 2. Market power: In some cases where exclusion from shared goods can be imposed by barriers or violence, funding of such collaboration can be partially alleviated by charging for access. But this tends to create monopolistic control that concentrates power and reduces the value created by scaling collaboration, undermining the very collaboration it aims to support. -3. Externalities: At the core of John Dewey's 1927 classic *The Public and its Problems*, is recognizing the genius of innovation to create new forms of interdependence, both for good and ill.[^Dewey] The motors of the nineteenth century transformed human life, yet also turned out to transfigure the environment in unanticipated ways. Radio, flight, chemicals...all redesigned how we can cooperate, but also created risks and harms that previous systems of "property rights" and rules generally did not account for. The victims (or in some cases beneficiaries) of these "externalities" are, by construction, not directly partly to market transactions. Thus, precisely to the extent that new means of collaboration developed in markets are revolutionary, markets and the corporations they spawn will not directly involve those affected by their innovations, preventing either their benefits from being fully tapped or their risks from being mitigated. +3. Externalities: At the core of John Dewey's 1927 classic *The Public and its Problems*, is recognizing the genius of innovation to create new forms of interdependence, both for good and ill.[^Dewey] The motors of the nineteenth century transformed human life, yet also turned out to transfigure the environment in unanticipated ways. Radio, flight, chemicals...all redesigned how we can cooperate, but also created risks and harms that previous systems of "property rights" and rules generally did not account for. The victims (or in some cases beneficiaries) of these "externalities" are, by construction, not directly party to market transactions. Thus, precisely to the extent that new means of collaboration developed in markets are revolutionary, markets and the corporations they spawn will not directly involve those affected by their innovations, preventing either their benefits from being fully tapped or their risks from being mitigated. 4. Distribution: Theoretically, markets are simply indifferent to distribution and "endowments" can be rearranged to achieve desired distributive goals. But achieving this ideal redistribution faces enormous practical hurdles and thus markets tend to often yield shockingly inegalitarian outcomes, sometimes for reasons fairly divorced from their alleged "efficiency" benefits. In addition to the direct concerns these create, they also often help undermine the greater equality often assumed or harnessed in other collaborative forms described in previous chapters. [^Pauls]: Paul Krugman, "Scale Economies, Product Differentiation and the Pattern of Trade", *American Economic Review* 70, no. 5 (1980): 950-959. Paul Romer, "Increasing Returns and Long-Term Growth", *Journal of Political Economy* 94, no. 5 (1986):1002-1037. @@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ As we highlighted in the [Connected Society](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapter - Partial common ownership: To overcome the challenges of administering land taxes, a variety of historical thinkers, including Founder of the Chinese Republic Sun Yat-Sen (who we discussed extensively in our [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter) and economist [Arnold Harberger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Harberger), have proposed having owners self-assess the value of their property under penalty of having to sell at this self-assessed value.[^Harberger] This has the simultaneous effect of forcing truthful valuations for taxation and of forcing turnover of underutilized or monopolized assets to broader publics. It is particularly easy to enforce in digital asset registries, such as blockchains, and thus has gained popularity in recent years, especially for non-fungible token (NFT) [art works](https://www.radicalxchange.org/wiki/pco-art/), as well having been used for many years for land in Taiwan.[^Tan] - Quadratic and ⿻ funding: As described at the start of this chapter, a natural way to fund public/supermodular goods without relying excessively on the limited knowledge of administrators is for such an administrator, philanthropist, or public authority to match contributions by distributed individuals. Mechanism design theory, similar to the logic supporting quadratic voting in the previous chapter, can be used to show that under similar assumptions of atomized behavior, matching funds should be proportioned to the square of the sum of square roots of individual contributions, giving greater weight to a large number of small contributors than to a few large ones.[^Hitzig] Recently designs have stretched beyond traditional individualistic designs to account for ⿻ group interests and affiliations.[^Pluralfunding] -- Stakeholder corporation: While partial common ownership and quadratic funding may help ensure the turnover of organization and asset control, they do not directly ensure that organizations serve rather than exercising illegitimate power over their "stakeholders", such as customers and workers. Drawing on the traditions we described above, there a variety of renewed movements in recent years to create a "stakeholder" corporation, including Environmental, Social and Governance principles, the platform cooperativism, the distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs), "stakeholder remedies" in antitrust (viz. using antitrust violations to mandate abused stakeholders have a voice), data unions and the organization of many of the most important large foundation model companies (e.g. OpenAI and Anthropic) as partial non-profits or long-term benefit corporations.[^Stakeholder] +- Stakeholder corporation: While partial common ownership and quadratic funding may help ensure the turnover of organization and asset control, they do not directly ensure that organizations serve rather than exercising illegitimate power over their "stakeholders", such as customers and workers. Drawing on the traditions we described above, there are a variety of renewed movements in recent years to create a "stakeholder" corporation, including Environmental, Social and Governance principles, the platform cooperativism, the distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs), "stakeholder remedies" in antitrust (viz. using antitrust violations to mandate abused stakeholders have a voice), data unions and the organization of many of the most important large foundation model companies (e.g. OpenAI and Anthropic) as partial non-profits or long-term benefit corporations.[^Stakeholder] - Participatory design and prediction markets: Digital platforms and mechanisms are also increasingly used to allow more dynamic resource allocation both within corporations and in connections between corporations and their customers.[^interact] Examples include ways for customers to contribute and be rewarded for new product designs, such as in entertainment platforms like [Roblox](https://www.roblox.com/) or [Lego Ideas](https://ideas.lego.com/), and prediction markets where stakeholders can be rewarded to predict company-relevant outcomes like sales of a new product. - Market design: The field of market design, for which several Nobel Prizes have recently been awarded, applies mechanism design to create market institutions that mitigate problems of market power or externalities created by ignoring the social implications of transactions. Examples include markets for tradable carbon permits, the auction design examples we discussed in the [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter above and a number of markets using community currencies or other devices to facilitate market-like institutions in communities (e.g. education, public housing or organ donation) where using external currency can severely undermine core values.[^Marketdesign] - Economies esteem: Related to these local currency markets are online systems where various quantitative markers of social esteem/capital (e.g. badges, followers, leaderboards, links) partly or fully replace transferable money as the "currency" of accomplishment.[^Esteem] These can often, in turn, partly interoperate with broader markets through various monetization channels such as advertising, sponsorship and crowdfunding. @@ -143,4 +143,4 @@ Yet despite all their manifest dangers and limitations, those pursuing ⿻ shou [^interact]: See Erich Joachimsthaler, _The Interaction Field: The Revolutionary New Way to Create Shared Value for Businesses, Customers, and Society_, PublicAffairs, 2019. See also Gary Hamel, and Michele Zanini, _Humanocracy: Creating Organizations as Amazing as the People inside Them_, (Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020). [^Arnott]: William Vickrey, "The City as a Firm" in Martin S. Feldstein and Robert P. Inman, eds., *The Economics of Public Services*: 334-343. Richard Arnott, and Joseph Stiglitz, “Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size,” _The Quarterly Journal of Economics_ 93, no. 4 (November 1979): 471. https://doi.org/10.2307/1884466. [^Robinson]: Robinson, op. cit. -[^CollabNote]: Pooling across diversity is a very general principle. Although size matters, bigger is not always better, and the strength of the connections formed can matter more. For example, families, teams or troops – small networks connected by high-value interactions – can outperform much larger ones in the production of ⿻ goods. If we consider the record of Paleolithic art, banding together to perform key social functions is extremely ancient, so collaborative pooling at a range of scales, albeit by non-state and non-market actors, seems an exception to the rule that 'public goods' are always under-supplied. +[^CollabNote]: Pooling across diversity is a very general principle. Although size matters, bigger is not always better, and the strength of the connections formed can matter more. For example, families, teams or troops – small networks connected by high-value interactions – can outperform much larger ones in the production of ⿻ goods. If we consider the record of Paleolithic art, banding together to perform key social functions is extremely ancient, so collaborative pooling at a range of scales, albeit by non-state and non-market actors, seems an exception to the rule that 'public goods' are always under-supplie \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md b/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md index 109a2f6d..56ee256a 100644 --- a/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md +++ b/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ The advances we discuss, which are just a sampling of potential implications of ### Strong remote teams -The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of work, bringing changes expected for decades to fruition in a year. A leading study by Barreto et al., for example, found that work from home rose from 5% of the American workforce to a high above 60%.[^Barreto] Perhaps the most extreme manifestation has been the rise of so-called "digital nomads", who have harnessed the increasing opportunity for remote work to travel continuously and work a variety of remote jobs as encouraged by programs like Sardinia regional program for digital nomads and Estonia and Taiwan's [e-citizenship](https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/) and [gold cards](https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/en/) respectively, that one author of this book holds. While there has been a substantial return to physical work since the end of the pandemic, at least a part of the change appears here to stay; Barreto et al. find that after the pandemic, workers on average want to work about half the week from home and believe their productivity is similar or better in that setting. While some studies have found some evidence of mildly reduced productivity, these effects do not seem large enough to overcome the persistent demands for hybrid work styles.[^reduce-productivity] +The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of work, bringing changes expected for decades to fruition in a year. A leading study by Barrero et al., for example, found that work from home rose from 5% of the American workforce to a high above 60%.[^Barrero] Perhaps the most extreme manifestation has been the rise of so-called "digital nomads", who have harnessed the increasing opportunity for remote work to travel continuously and work a variety of remote jobs as encouraged by programs like Sardinia regional program for digital nomads and Estonia and Taiwan's [e-citizenship](https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/) and [gold cards](https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/en/) respectively, that one author of this book holds. While there has been a substantial return to physical work since the end of the pandemic, at least a part of the change appears here to stay; Barreto et al. find that after the pandemic, workers on average want to work about half the week from home and believe their productivity is similar or better in that setting. While some studies have found some evidence of mildly reduced productivity, these effects do not seem large enough to overcome the persistent demands for hybrid work styles.[^reduce-productivity] Yet there is little question that remote work has real downsides. Some of these, such as ensuring work-life balance, avoiding distractions and unhealthy at-home working conditions, are not easily addressed through remote collaboration tools. But many others are: lack of organic interactions with colleagues, missing opportunities for feedback or forming deeper personal connections with colleagues, etc.[^remote-shift-impact] While ⿻ can be used to address most of these, we will focus on one in particular: the building of strong and deeply trusting teams. @@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ Putting these together, we can imagine a future where remote teams can form the [^Calc]: If, as noted in the chapter, about 50% of formal sector work will be remote and, as in this study, if team-building exercises increase team performance by about 25%, if this applies to about half of formal sector work and if about half the benefit goes into cost, we should expect a gain of about 2% of GDP from improved remote team-building. If agglomeration benefits are about 12% for work facilities and this applies again to half of formal sector work and can be improved by 50%, again we get 2% of GDP. If meetings are 25% of formal sector work time and can be improved by 25%, this is about 4% of GDP. Standard economic estimates of the costs of labor search and matching are about 4% of GPD, similar to the cost spent on human resources; if mitigated by 50% this would raise GDP by 2% (not to mention significantly dampen the cost of business cycle unemployment). Finally, most GDP growth (of roughly 2-3% annually globally) has been traced by economists to technological advance through the research and development of new products, which is now about 80% in the private sector according to the figures we discussed in the introduction. If the efficiency of this could be increased by a quarter through more flexible intrapreneurship, this could raise global GDP growth annually by half a percent. Cameron Klein, Deborah DiazGranados, Eduardo Salas, Huy Le, Shawn Burke, Rebecca Lyons, and Gerald Goodwin, “Does Team Building Work?” _Small Group Research_ 40, no. 2 (January 16, 2009): 181–222. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046496408328821. Michael Greenstone, Richard Hornbeck, and Enrico Moretti, “Identifying Agglomeration Spillovers: Evidence from Winners and Losers of Large Plant Openings,” _Journal of Political Economy_ 118, no. 3 (June 2010): 536–98. https://doi.org/10.1086/653714. [^Coinbase]: Ellen Huet, “Basecamp Follows Coinbase In Banning Politics Talk at Work,” _Bloomberg_, April 26, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-26/basecamp-follows-coinbase-in-banning-politics-talk-at-work. Ibid. -[^Barreto]: Jose Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. 2023, “The Evolution of Working from Home,” __Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Working Paper_ no. 23-19 (July 2023): https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/working-paper/evolution-working-home. +[^Barrero]: Jose Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, and Steven J. Davis. 2023, “The Evolution of Working from Home,” __Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) Working Paper_ no. 23-19 (July 2023): https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/working-paper/evolution-working-home. [^reduce-productivity]: Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington, and Amanda Pallais, “The Power of Proximity to Coworkers: Training for Tomorrow or Productivity Today?” _National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper_ no 31880 (November 2023): https://doi.org/10.3386/w31880. [^Meetings]: Michael Gibbs, Friederike Mengel, and Christoph Siemroth, “Work from Home and Productivity: Evidence from Personnel and Analytics Data on Information Technology Professionals,” _Journal of Political Economy Microeconomics_ 1, no. 1 (February 1, 2023): 7–41, https://doi.org/10.1086/721803. [^remote-shift-impact]: Longqi Yang, David Holtz, Sonia Jaffe, Siddharth Suri, Shilpi Sinha, Jeffrey Weston, Connor Joyce, et al., “The Effects of Remote Work on Collaboration among Information Workers,” _Nature Human Behaviour_ 6, no. 1 (September 9, 2021): 43–54. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01196-4. diff --git a/contents/english/7-0-policy.md b/contents/english/7-0-policy.md index c995283d..87c04709 100644 --- a/contents/english/7-0-policy.md +++ b/contents/english/7-0-policy.md @@ -1,226 +1,227 @@ -# Policy - -If ⿻ succeeds, in a decade we imagine a transformed relationship among and across governments, private technology development and open source/civil society. In this future, public funding (both from governments and charitable initiatives) is the primary source of financial support for fundamental digital protocols, while the provision of such protocols in turn becomes a central item on the agenda of governments and charitable actors. This infrastructure is developed trans-nationally, by civil society collaborations and standard setting organizations supported by an international network of government leaders focused on these goals. The fabric created by these networks and the open protocols they develop, standardize, safeguard and become the foundation for a new "international rules-based order", an operating system for a transnational ⿻ society. - - -Making these a bit more precise opens our eyes to how different such a future could be. Today, most research and development and the overwhelming majority of software development occurs in for-profit private corporations. What little (half a percent of GDP in an average OECD country) funding is spent on research and development by governments is primarily non-digital and overwhelmingly funds "basic research." This is in contrast to open source code and protocols that can be directly be used by most citizens, civil groups and businesses. Spending on public software R&D pales by comparison to the several percent of GDP most countries spend on physical infrastructure. - - -In the future we imagine that governments and charities will ensure we devote roughly 1% of GDP to digital public research, development, protocols, and infrastructure, amounting to nearly a trillion US dollars a year globally or roughly half of currently global investment in information technology. This would increase public investment by at least two orders of magnitude and, given how much volunteer investment even limited financial investment in open-source software and other public investment has been able to stimulate, completely change the character of digital industries: the "digital economy" would become a ⿻ society. Furthermore, public sector investment has primarily taken place on a national or regional (e.g. European Union) level and is largely obscured from broader publics. The investment we imagine would, like research collaborations, private investment, and open-source development, be undertaken by transnational networks aiming to create internationally inter-operable applications and standards similar to today's internet protocols. It would be at least as much a focus for the public as recently hyped technologies such as AI and crypto. - ---- - - -As we emphasized in the previous section, ⿻ innovation does not take policy by a single government as a primary starting point: it proceeds from a variety of institutions of diverse and usually middling sizes outward. Yet governments are central institutions around the world, directing a large share of economic resources directly and shaping the allocation of much more. We cannot imagine a path to ⿻ without the participation of governments as both users of ⿻ technology and supporters of the development of ⿻. - -Of course, a full such embrace would be a process, just as ⿻ is, and would eventually transform the very nature of governments. Because much of the book so far has gestured at what this would mean, in this chapter we instead focus on a vision of what might take place in the next decade to achieve the future we imagined above. While the policy directive we sketch is grounded in a variety of precedents (such as ARPA, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent India) that we have highlighted above, it does not directly follow any of the standard models employed by "great powers" today, instead drawing, combining, and extending elements from each to form a more ambitious agenda than any of these are today pursuing. To provide context, we therefore begin with a stylized description of these "models" before drawing lessons from historical models. We describe how these can be adapted to the global scope of today's transnational networks, how such investments can be financially supported and sustained, and finally the path to building the social and political support these policies will need, on which the next chapter focuses. - - -### Digital empires - -The most widely understood models of technology policy today are captured by legal scholar Anu Bradford in her *Digital Empires*.[^Bradford] In the US and the large fraction of the world that consumes its technology exports, technology development is dominated by a simplistic, private sector-driven, neoliberal free market model. In People's Republic of China (PRC) and consumers of its exports, technology development is steered heavily by the state towards national goals revolving around sovereignty, development, and national security. In Europe, the primary focus has been on regulation of technology imports from abroad to ensure they protect European standards of fundamental human rights, forcing others to comply with this "Brussels effect". While this trichotomy is a bit stereotyped and each jurisdiction incorporates elements of each of these strategies, the outlines are a useful foil for considering the alternative model we want to describe. - -[^Bradford]: Anu Bradford, *Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023). - -The US model has been driven by a broad trend widely documented since the 1970s for government and the civil sector to disengage from the economy and technology development, focusing instead on "welfare" and national defense functions.[^Yergin] Despite pioneering the ARPANET, the US privatized almost all further development of personal computing, operating systems, physical and social networking and cloud infrastructure.[^Tarnoff] As the private monopolies predicted by J.C.R. Licklider (Lick) came to fill these spaces, US regulators primarily responded with antitrust actions that, while influencing market dynamics in a few cases (such as the Microsoft actions) were generally understood as too little too late.[^Lick] In particular, they are understood as having allowed monopolistic dominance or tight oligopoly to emerge in the search, smartphone application, cloud services and several operating systems markets. More recently, American antitrust regulators under the leadership of the "New Brandeis" movement have doubled down on the primary use of antitrust instruments with limited success in court and have seen the challenges of emerging monopolies only expand in the market for chips and generative foundation models.[^NewBrandeis] - -[^Yergin]: Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, *The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy* (New York: Touchstone, 2002). -[^Tarnoff]: Tarnoff, op. cit. -[^Lick]: Licklider, "Comptuers and Government", op. cit. Thomas Philippon, *The Great Reversal* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). -[^NewBrandeis]:Lina Khan, "The New Brandeis Movement: America’s Antimonopoly Debate", *Journal of European Competition Law and Practice* 9, no. 3 (2018): 131-132. Akush Khandori, "Lina Khan's Rough Year," *New York Magazine Intelligencer* December 12, 2023 at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/lina-khans-rough-year-running-the-federal-trade-commission.html. - -The primary rival model to the US has been the PRC, where the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has drafted a series of Five-Year plans that have [increasingly in recent years](https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/) directed a variety of levers of state power to invest in and shape the direction of technology development.[^Plan] These coordinated regulatory actions, party-driven directives to domestic technology companies and primarily government-driven investments in research and development have dramatically steered the direction of Chinese technology development in recent years away from commercial and consumer applications towards hard and physical technology, national security, chip development and surveillance technologies. Investment that has paralleled the US, such as into large foundation models, has been tightly and directly steered by government, ensuring consistency with priorities on censorship and monitoring of dissent. A consistent crackdown on business activity not forming part of this vision has led to a dramatic fall in activity in much of the Chinese technology sector in recent years, especially around financial technology including web3. - -[^Plan]: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, *14th Five-Year Plan*, March 2021; translation available at https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/. - -In contrast to the US and the PRC, the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) have (despite a few notable exceptions) primarily acted as importers of technical frameworks produced by these two geopolitical powers. The EU has tried to harness its bargaining power in that role, however, to act as a "regulatory powerhouse", intervening to protect the interests of human rights that it fears the other two powers often ignore in their race for technological supremacy. This has included setting the global standard for privacy regulation with their [General Data Protection Regulation](https://gdpr-info.eu/), taking the lead on regulation of generative foundation models (GFMs) with their [AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/the-act/), and helping shape the standards for competitive marketplaces with a series of recent ex-ante competition regulations including the [Digital Services Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package), the [Digital Markets Act](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en) and the [Data Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-act). While these have not defined an alternative positive technological model, they have constrained and shaped the behavior of both US and Chinese firms who seek to sell into the European market. The EU also aspires to tight interoperability across the markets they serve, often leading to copycat legislation in other jurisdictions. - -### A road less traveled - -Just as Taiwan's Yushan (Jade) Mountain rises from the intersection of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, the policy approach we surveyed in our [Life of a Digital Democracy](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/?mode=dark) chapter from its peak arises from the intersection of the philosophies behind these three digital empires as illustrated in Figure A. From the US model, Taiwan has drawn the emphasis on a dynamic, decentralized, free, entrepreneurial ecosystem open to the world that generates scalable and exportable technologies, especially within the open source ecosystem. From the European model, it has drawn a focus on human rights and democracy as the fundamental aspirations both for the development of basic digital public infrastructure and on which the rest of the digital ecosystem depends. From the PRC model, it has drawn the importance of public investment to proactively advance technology, steering it toward societal interests. - -
-Figure shows reshaped flags of the People's Republic of China, the United States of America and the European Union as if they were continental shelves, intersecting at a central island of Taiwan, topped by Yushan. The PRC is symbolized by a puppeteer, the US by a child running wild and Europe by a traffic cop. Taiwan, in the center, is symbolized by people collaborating. - -**
Figure 7-0-A. An illustration of how the Taiwan policy model emerges from the intersection of PRC, US, and EU competing alternatives. Source: generated by authors, harnessing logos from the Noun Project by Gan Khoon Lay, Alexis Lilly, Adrien Coquet and Rusma Trari Handini under CC BY 3.0 at https://thenounproject.com/.
** -
-

- -Together these add up to a model where the public sector's primary role is *active investment and support* to empower and protect *privately complemented but civil society-led, technology development* whose goal is *proactively* building a digital stack that *embodies in protocols principles of human rights and democracy*. - -The Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan is a prime example of this unique model, blending public sector support with civil society innovation. Since its inception in 2018, this annual event has drawn thousands of social innovators and public servants, as well as teams from numerous countries, all collaborating to enhance Taiwan's ⿻ infrastructure. Each year, five outstanding teams are honored with a presidential commitment to support their initiatives in the upcoming fiscal year — elevating successful local-scale experiments to the level of national infrastructure projects. - -A key feature of the Presidential Hackathon is its use of quadratic voting for public participation in selecting the top 20 teams. This elevates the event beyond mere competition, transforming it into a powerful coalition-building platform for civil society leadership. For instance, environmental groups focused on monitoring water and air pollution saw their contributions gain national prominence through the Civil IoT project — backed by a significant investment of USD $160 million — showcasing how the Taiwan model effectively amplifies the impact and reach of grassroots initiatives. - -### Lessons from the past - -Of course, the "Taiwan model" did not emerge *de novo* over the last decade. Instead, as we have highlighted above, it built on the synthesis of the Taiwanese tradition of public support for cooperative enterprise and civil society (see our [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter) with the model that built the internet at the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which we highlighted in [The Lost Dao](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/). At a moment when the US and many other advanced economies are turning away from "neoliberalism" and towards "industrial policy", the ARPA story holds crucial lessons and cautions. - -On the one hand, ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) led by Lick is perhaps the most successful example of industrial policy in American and perhaps world history. IPTO provided seed funding for the development of a network of university-based computer interaction projects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Carnegie Technical Schools (now Carnegie Mellon University or CMU) and University of California Los Angeles. Among the remarkable outcomes of these investments were: - -1. The development of this research network into the seeds of what became the modern internet. -2. The development of the groups making up this network into the many of the first and still the among the most prominent computer science and computer engineering departments in the world. -3. The development around these universities of the leading regional digital innovation hubs in the world, including Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 corridor. - -Yet while these technology hubs have become the envy and aspiration of (typically unsuccessful) regional development and industrial policy around the world, it is critical to remember how fundamentally different the aspirations underpinning Lick's vision were from those of his imitators. - - Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was not Lick's intention. He was instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking and the computer as a communication device. ⿻ builds closely on Lick's very much unfinished vision. Lick selected participating universities not based on an interest in regional economic development, but rather to maximize the chances of achieving vision of the future of computing. - - Industrial policy often aims at creating large-scale, industrial "nation champions" and is often viewed in contrast to antitrust and competition policies, which typically aim to constrain excessively concentrated industrial power. As Lick described in his 1980 "Computers and Government" and in contrast to both of these traditions, the IPTO effort took the rough goals of antitrust (ensuring the possibility of an open and decentralized marketplace) but applied the tools of industrial policy (active public investment) to achieve them. Rather than constraining the winners of predigital market competition, IPTO aimed to create a network infrastructure on which the digital world would play out in such a way as to avoid undue concentrations of power. It was the failure to sustain this investment through the 1970s and beyond that Lick predicted would lead to the monopolization of the critical functions of digital life by what he at the time described as "IBM" but turned out to be the dominant technology platforms of today: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. Complementing this approach, rather than directly fostering the development of private, for-profit industry as most industrial policy does, Lick supported the civil society-based (primarily university-driven) development of basic infrastructure that would support the defense, government, and private sectors.[^Lick2] - - [^Lick2]: Licklider, "Computers and Government", op. cit. - - While Lick's approach mostly played out at universities, given they were the central locus of the development of advanced computing at the time, it contrasted sharply with the traditional support of fundamental, curiosity-driven research of funders like the US National Science Foundation. He did not offer support for general academic investigation and research, but rather to advance a clear mission and vision: building a network of easily accessible computing machines that enabled communication and association over physical and social distance, interconnecting and sharing resources with other networks to enable scalable cooperation. - -Yet while dictating this mission, Lick did not prejudge the right components to achieve it, instead establishing a network of "coopetitive" research labs, each experimenting and racing to develop prototypes of different components of these systems that could then be standardized in interaction with each other and spread across the network. Private sector collaborators played important roles in contributing to this development, including Bolt Beranek and Newman (where Lick served as Vice President just before his role at IPTO and which went on to build a number of prototype systems for the internet) and Xerox PARC (where many of the researchers Lick supported later assembled and continued their work, especially after federal funding diminished). Yet, as is standard in the development and procurement of infrastructure and public works in a city, these roles were components of an overall vision and plan developed by the networked, multi-sectoral alliance that constituted ARPANET. Contrast this with a model primarily developed and driven in the interest of private corporations, the basis for most personal computing and mobile operating systems, social networks, and cloud infrastructures. - - -As we have noted repeatedly above, we need not only look back to the "good old days" for ARPANET or Taiwan for inspiration. India's development of the "[India Stack](https://indiastack.org/)" has many similar characteristics.[^Indiastack] More recently, the EU has been developing initiatives including [European Digital Identity](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en)and [Gaia-X](https://gaia-x.eu/). Jurisdictions as diverse as [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast) have experimented successfully with similar approaches. While each of these initiatives has strengths and weaknesses, the idea that a public mission aimed at creating infrastructure that empowers decentralized innovation in collaboration with civil society and participation but not dominance from the private sector is increasingly a pattern, often labeled "digital public infrastructure" (DPI). To a large extent, we are primarily advocating for this approach to be scaled up and become the central approach to the development of global ⿻ society. Yet for this to occur, the ARPA and Taiwan models need to be updated and adjusted for this potentially dramatically increased scale and ambition. - -[^Indiastack]: Vivek Raghavan, Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, "India Stack—Digital Infrastructure as Public Good", *Communications of the ACM* 62, no. 11: 76-81. - -### A new ⿻ order - -The key reason for an updated model is that there are basic elements of the ARPA model that are a poor fit for the shape of contemporary digital life, as Lick began realizing as early as 1980. While it was a multisectoral effort, ARPA was centered around the American military-industrial complex and its collaborators in the American academy. This made sense in the context of the 1960s, when the US was one of two major world powers, scientific funding and mission was deeply tied to its stand-off with the Soviet Union and most digital technology was being developed in the academy. As Lick observed, however, even by the late 1970s this was already becoming a poor fit. Today's world is (as discussed above) much more multi-polar even in its development of leading DPI. The primary civil technology developers are in the open source community, private companies dominate much of the digital world and military applications are only one aspect of the public's vision for digital technology, which increasingly shapes every aspect of contemporary life. To adapt, a vision of ⿻ infrastructure for today must engage the public in setting the mission of technology through institutions like digital ministries, network transnationally and harness open source technology, as well as redirecting the private sector, more effectively. - - -Lick and the ARPANET collaborators shaped an extraordinary vision that laid the groundwork for the internet and ⿻. Yet Lick saw that this could not ground the legitimacy of his project for long; as we highlighted central to his aspirations was that "decisions about the development and exploitation of computer technology must be made not only 'in the public interest' but in the interest of giving the public itself the means to enter into the decision-making processes that will shape their future." Military technocracy cannot be the primary locus for setting the agenda if ⿻ is to achieve the legitimacy and public support necessary to make the requisite investments to center ⿻ infrastructure. Instead, we will need to harness the full suite of ⿻ technologies we have discussed above to engage transnational publics in reaching an overlapping consensus on a mission that can motivate a similarly concerted effort to IPTO's. These tools include ⿻ competence education to make every citizen feel empowered to shape the ⿻ future, cultural institutions like Japan's [Miraikan](https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/) that actively invite citizens into long-term technology planning, ideathons where citizens collaborate on future envisioning and are supported by governments and charities to build these visions into media that can be more broadly consumed, [alignment assemblies](https://cip.org/alignmentassemblies) and other augmented deliberations on the direction of technology and more. - - -Digital (hopefully soon, ⿻) ministries, emerging worldwide, are proving to be a more natural forum for setting visionary goals in a participatory way, surpassing traditional military hosts. A well-known example is Ukraine's [Mykhailo Fedorov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Fedorov), the [Minister of Digital Transformation](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/yevropejska-integraciya/coordination/cifrova-transformaciya) since 2019. Taiwan was a forerunner in this domain as well, appointing a digital minister in 2016 and establishing a formal [Ministry of Digital Affairs](https://moda.gov.tw/en/) in 2022. Japan, recognizing the urgency of digitalization during the pandemic, founded its [Digital Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Agency) at the cabinet level in 2021, inspired by discussions with Taiwan. The EU has increasingly formalized its digital portfolio under the leadership of [Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Vice_President_of_the_European_Commission_for_A_Europe_Fit_for_the_Digital_Age) [Margrethe Vestager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager), who helped inspire both the popular television series [Borgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgen_(TV_series)) and the middle name of the daughter of one of this book's authors.[^Vestager] - -[^Vestager]: Danny Hakim, "The Danish Politician Who Accused Google of Antitrust Violations", *New York Times* April 15, 2015. - -These ministries, inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the [G20 digital ministers identified DPI](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure/) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals.[^Planning] In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involve the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, more nations are likely to appoint digital ministers, fostering an open, connected digital community. - -Yet national homes for ⿻ infrastructure constitute only a few of the poles holding up its tent. There is no country today that can or should alone be the primary locus for such efforts. They must be built as at least international and probably transnational networks, just as the internet is. Digital ministers, as their positions are created, must themselves form a network that can provide international support to this work and connect nation-based nodes just as ARPANET did for university-based nodes. Many of the open source projects participating will not themselves have a single primary national presence, spanning many jurisdictions and participating as a transnational community, to be respected on terms that will in some cases be roughly equal to those of national digital ministries. Consider, for example, the relationship of rough equality between the Ethereum community and the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs. - -Exclusively high-level government-to-government relationships are severely limited by the broader state of current international relations. Many of the countries where the internet has flourished have at-times had troubled relationships with other countries where it has flourished. Many civil actors have stronger transnational relationships than their governments would agree to supporting at an intergovernmental level, mirroring consistent historical patterns where civil connections through, for example, religion and advocacy of human rights have created a stronger foundation for cooperation than international relations alone. Technology, for better or worse, often crosses borders and boundaries of ideology more easily than treaties can be negotiated. For example, web3 communities and civic technology organizations like g0v and RadicalxChange have significant presences even in countries that are not widely understood as "democratic" in their national politics. Similar patterns at larger scales have been central to the transnational environmental, human rights, religious and other movements.[^Wendt] - -While there is no necessary path from such interactions to broader democratization, it would also be an important mistake to miss the opportunity to expand the scope of interoperation in areas where it is possible while waiting for full government-to-government alignment. In her book *A New World Order*, leading international relations scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter sketched how such transnational policy and civil networks will increasingly complement and collaborate with governments around the world and form a fabric of transnational collaboration.[^Slaughter] This fabric or network could be effective than current international bodies like the United Nations. As such we should expect (implicit) support for these kinds of initiatives to be as important to the role of digital ministries as are their direct relationships with one another. - -[^Wendt]: Alexander Wendt, *Social Theory of International Politics* (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a recent case study of the role of religion in Middle East cooperation, see Johnnie Moore, "Evangelical Track II Diplomacy in Arab and Israeli Peacemaking", Liberty University dissertation (2024). -[^Slaughter]: Anne-Marie Slaughter, *A New World Order* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). This book has a special place in one of our hearts, as obtaining a prerelease signed copy was the first birthday present one author gave to the woman who became his wife. - - - -Some of the transnational networks that will form the key complements to digital ministries may be academic collaborations. Yet the element of the digital ecosystem most neglected by governments today is not academia, which still receives billions of dollars of research support. Instead, it is the largely ignored world of open source and other non-profit, mission-driven technology developers. As we have extensively discussed, these already provide the backbone of much of the global technology stack. Yet they receive virtually no measurable financial support from governments and very little from charities, despite their work belonging (mostly) fully to the public domain and their being developed mostly in the public interest. - -Furthermore, this sector is in many ways better suited to the development of infrastructure than academic research, much as public infrastructure in the physical world is generally not built by academia. Academic research is heavily constrained by disciplinary foci and boundaries that civil infrastructure that is broadly usable is unlikely to respect. Academic careers depend on citation, credit and novelty in a way that is unlikely to align with the best aspirations for infrastructure, which often can and should be invisible, "boring" and as easily interoperable with (rather than "novel" in contrast to) other infrastructure as possible. Academic research often focuses on a degree and disciplinary style of rigor and persuasiveness that differs in kind from the ideal user experience. While public support for academic research is crucial and, in some areas, academic projects can contribute to ⿻ infrastructure, governments and charities should not primarily look to the academic research sector. And while academic research receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding globally annually, open source communities have likely received less than two billion dollars in their entire history, accounting for known sources as we illustrate in Figure B. Many of these concerns have been studied and highlighted by the "[decentralized science](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9)" movement.[^DeSci] - -
-Figure compares cumulative historical funding of OSS projects v. venture capital, illustrating that the latter is roughly 3 orders of magnitude larger. - -** Figure 7-0-B. Comparing known funding of open source software and venture capital investment. Source: Chart by authors, sources various see footnote.[^Sources] ** -
-

- -[^Sources]: Jessica Lord, "What's New with GitHub Sponsors", *GitHub Blog*, April 4, 2023 at https://github.blog/2023-04-04-whats-new-with-github-sponsors/. GitCoin impact report at https://impact.gitcoin.co/. Kevin Owocki, "Ethereum 2023 Funding Flows: Visualizing Public Goods Funding from Source to Destination" at https://practicalpluralism.github.io/. Open Collective, "Fiscal Sponsors. We need you!" *Open Collective Blog* March 1, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/fiscal-sponsors-we-need-you/. Optimism Collective, "RetroPGF Round 3", *Optimism Docs* January 2024 at https://community.optimism.io/docs/governance/retropgf-3/#. ProPublica, "The Linux Foundation" at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801. - - -[^DeSci]: Sarah Hamburg, "Call to Join the Decentralized Science Movement", *Nature* 600, no. 221 (2021): Correspondence at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9. - -Furthermore, open source communities are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what may be possible for public-interested, civil society-driven technology development. Organizations like the [Mozilla](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/) and [Wikimedia](https://wikimediafoundation.org/) Foundations, while primarily interacting with and driving open source projects, have significant development activities beyond pure open source code development that have made their offerings much more accessible to the world. Furthermore, there is no necessary reason why public interest technology need inherit all the features of open source code. - - - -Some organizations developing generative foundation models, such as [OpenAI](https://openai.com/charter) and [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust), have legitimate concerns about simply making these models freely available but are explicitly dedicated to developing and licensing them in the public interest and are structured to not exclusively maximize profit to ensure they stay true to these missions.[^OAI] Whether they have, given the demands of funding and the limits of their own vision, managed to be ideally true to this aspiration or not, one can certainly imagine both shaping organizations like this to ensure they can achieve this goals using ⿻ technologies and structuring public policy to ensure more organizations like this are central to the development of core ⿻ infrastructure. Other organizations may develop non-profit ⿻ infrastructure but wish to charge for elements of it (just as some highways have tolls to address congestion and maintenance) while others may have no proprietary claim but wish to ensure sensitive and private data are not just made publicly available. Fostering a ⿻ ecosystem of organizations that serve ⿻ publics including but not limited to open source models will be critical to moving beyond the limits of the academic ARPA model. Luckily a variety of ⿻ technologies are available to policymakers to foster such an ecosystem. - -[^OAI]: OpenAI, "OpenAI Charter", *OpenAI Blog* April 9, 2018 at https://openai.com/charter. Anthropic, "The Long-Term Benefit Trust", *Anthropic Blog* September 19, 2023 at https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust. - - -Furthermore, whatever the ideal structures, it is unlikely that such public interest institutions will simply substitute for the large, private digital infrastructure built up over the last decades. Many social networks, cloud infrastructures, single-sign-on architectures, and so forth would be wasteful to simply scrap. Instead it likely makes sense to harness these investments towards the public interest by pairing public investment with agreements to shift governance to respect public input in much the way we discussed in our chapters on Voting, Media and Workplace. This closely resembles the way that a previous wave of economic democracy reform with which Dewey was closely associated did not simply out-compete privately created power generation, but instead sought to bring them under a network of partially local democratic control through utility boards. Many leaders in the tech world refer to their platforms as "utilities", "infrastructure" or "public squares"; it stands to reason that part of a program of ⿻ digital infrastructure will be reforming them so they truly act as such. - - -### ⿻ regulation - -To allow the flourishing of such an ecosystem will depend on reorienting legal, regulatory, and financial systems to empower these types of organizations. Tax revenue will need to be raised, ideally in ways that are not only consistent with but actually promote ⿻ directly, to make them socially and financially sustainable. - -The most important role for governments and intergovernmental networks will arguably be one of coordination and standardization. Governments, being the largest actor in most national economies, can shape the behavior of the entire digital ecosystem based on what standards they adopt, what entities they purchase from and the way they structure citizens' interactions with public services. This is the core, for example, of how the India Stack became so central to the private sector, which followed the lead of the public sector and thus the civil projects they supported. - -Yet laws are also at the center of defining what types of structures can exist, what privileges they have and how rights are divided between different entities. Open source organizations now struggle as they aim to maintain simultaneously their non-profit orientation and an international presence. Organizations like the [Open Collective Foundation](https://opencollective.com/foundation) were created almost exclusively for the purpose of allowing them to do so and helped support this project, but despite taking a substantial cut of project revenues [was unable to sustain itself](https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/) and thus is in the process of dissolving as of this writing. The competitive disadvantage of Third-Sector technology providers could hardly be starker.[^OCFdiss] Many other forms of innovative, democratic, transnational organization, like Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) constantly run into legal barriers that only a few jurisdictions like the [State of Wyoming](https://www.wyoleg.gov/2024/Introduced/SF0050.pdf) have just begun to address. While some of the reasons for these are legitimate (to avoid financial scams, etc.), much more work is needed to establish legal frameworks that support and defend transnational democratic non-profit organizational forms. - -[^OCFdiss]: Open Collective Team, "Open Collective Official Statement - OCF Dissolution" February 28, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/. - -Other organizational forms likely need even further support. Data coalitions that aim to collectively protect the data rights of creators or those with relevantly collective data interests, as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter, will need protection similar to unions and other collective bargaining organizations that they not only do not have at present but which many jurisdictions (like the EU) may effectively prevent them from having, given their extreme emphasis on individual rights in data. Just as labor law evolved to empower collective bargaining for workers, law will have to evolve to allow data workers to collectively exercise their rights in order to avoid either their being disadvantaged relative to concentrated model builders or so disparate as to offer insuperable barriers to ambitious data collaboration. - -Beyond organizational forms, legal and regulatory changes will be critical to empowering a fair and productive use of data for shared goals. Traditional intellectual property regimes are highly rigid, focused on the degree of "transformativeness" of a use that risk either subjecting all model development to severe and unworkable limitations or depriving creators of the moral and financial rights they need to sustain their work that is so critical to the function of these models. New standards need to be developed by judges, legislators and regulators in close collaboration with technologists and publics that account for the complex and partial way in which a variety of data informs the output of models and ensures that the associated value is "back-propagated" to the data creators just as it is to the intermediate data created within the models in the process of training them.[^Holland] New rules like these will build on the reforms to property rights that empowered the re-purposing of radio spectrum and should be developed for a variety of other digital assets as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. - -[^Holland]: An interesting line of research suggesting possibility here is that of neural network and genetic algorithm pioneer John H. Holland, who tried to draw direct analogies between networks of firms in an economy linked by markets and neural networks. John H. Holland and John M. Miller, "Artificial Adaptive Agents in Economic Theory", *American Economic Review* 81, no. 2 (1991): 365-370. - -Furthermore, if properly concerted with such a vision, antitrust laws, competition rules, interoperability mandates and financial regulations have an important role to play in encouraging the emergence of new organizational forms and the adaptation of existing ones. Antitrust and competition law is intended to ensure concentrated commercial interests cannot abuse the power they accumulate over customers, suppliers and workers. Giving direct control over a firm to these counterparties is a natural way to achieve this objective without the usual downsides in competition policy of inhibiting scaled collaboration. ⿻ technologies offer natural means to instantiate meaningful voice for these stakeholders as we discussed in the [Workplace](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/6-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. It would be natural for antitrust authorities to increasingly consider mandating such governance reforms as alternative remedies to anticompetitive conduct or mergers and to consider governance representation as a mitigating factor in evaluating the necessity of punitive action.[^econdem] - -[^econdem]: Hitzig et al., op. cit. - -Mandating interoperability, in cooperation with standard setting processes that develop the meaning and shape of these standards, is a critical lever to make such standards workable and avoid dominance by an illegitimate private monopoly. Financial regulations help define what kinds of governance are acceptable in various jurisdictions and have unfortunately, especially in the US and UK, weighed heavily towards damaging and monopolistic one-share-one-vote rules. Financial regulatory reform should encourage experimentation with more inclusive governance systems such as Quadratic and other ⿻ voting forms that account for and address concentrations of power continuously, rather than offsetting the tendencies of one-share-one-vote to raiding with bespoke provisions like "poison pills".[^QVcorp] They should also accommodate and support worker, supplier, environmental counterparty and customer voice and steer concentrated asset holders who might otherwise have systemic monopolistic effects towards employing similar tools. - -[^QVcorp]: Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, "Quadratic Voting as Efficient Corporate Governance", *University of Chicago Law Review* 81, no. 1 (2014): 241-272. - - -### ⿻ taxes - -However, rules, laws and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation and development. Without those to complement, they will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation. Thus, public and multisectoral investment is the core they must complement and making such investments obviously requires revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how it can be raised to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining. While directly charging for services largely reverts to the traps of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate. Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻. It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention. - -The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax, because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible. For example, data and networks of collaboration and know-how among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if they mostly occur in jurisdictions with higher rates. Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit. While [recent reforms](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/oecd-minimum-tax-rate/) to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge. - -Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than, in a fairly arbitrary way, to wherever the corporation may choose to domicile. Ideally such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria: - -1. Directly ⿻ (D⿻): Digital taxes should ideally not merely raise revenue, but directly encourage or enact ⿻ aims themselves.[^Ext] This ensures that the taxes are not a drag on the system, but part of the solution. -2. Jurisdictional alignment (JA): The jurisdictional network in which taxes are and can naturally be raised should correspond to the jurisdiction that disposes of these taxes. This ensures that the coalition required to enact the taxes is similar to that required to establish the cooperation that disposes of the revenue. -3. Revenue alignment (RA): The sources of revenue should correspond to the value generated by the shared value created using the revenue, ensuring that those disposing of the revenue have a natural interest in the success of their mission. It also ensures that those who pay for the tax generally benefit from the goods created with it, lessening political opposition to the tax. -4. Financial adequacy (FA): The tax should be sufficient to fund the required investment. - - -The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter suggests that eventually they can all be generally jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values sources. Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used. - -Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying practicable taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy part of the book. Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further: - -1. Concentrated computational asset tax: Application of a progressive (either in rate or by giving a generous exemption) common ownership tax to digital assets such as computation, storage, and some kinds of data.[^Siegmann] -2. Digital land tax: Taxing the commercialization or holding of scarce digital space, including taxes on online advertising, holding of spectrum licenses and web address space in a more competitive way and, eventually, taxing exclusive spaces in virtual worlds.[^Romer] -3. Implicit data/attention exchange tax: Taxes on implicit data or attention exchanges involved in "free" services online, which would otherwise typically accrue labor and value added taxes. -4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens and non-fungible token. -5. Commons-derived data tax: Profits earned from models trained on unlicensed, commons-derived data could be taxed. -6. Flexible/gig work taxes: Profits of companies that primarily employ "gig workers" and thus avoid many of the burdens of traditional labor law could be taxed.[^Gray] - -[^Siegmann]: See the ongoing work developing this idea of Charlotte Siegmann, "AI Use-Case Specific Compute Subsidies and Quotas" (2024) at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11nNPbBctIUoURfZ5FCwyLYRtpBL6xevFi8YGFbr3BBA/edit#heading=h.mr8ansm7nxr8. -[^Romer]: Paul Romer, "A Tax That Could Fix Big Tech", *New York Times* May 6, 2019 advocated related ideas. -[^Gray]: Gray and Suri, op. cit. - - -While a much more detailed policy analysis would be needed to comprehensively "score" these taxes according to our criteria above, a few illustrations will hopefully illustrate the design thinking pattern behind these suggestions. A concentrated computational asset tax aims simultaneously to encourage more complete use of digital assets (as any common ownership tax will), deter concentrated cloud ownership (thus increasing competition while decreasing potential security threats) and to drag on the incentives for accumulating the kind of computational resources that may allow training of potentially dangerous-scale models outside public oversight, all instantiating D⿻. Most forms of digital land tax would naturally accrue not to any nation state, but to the transnational entities that support internet infrastructure, access and content achieving JA. An implicit data exchange tax would provide a clearer signal of the true value being created in digital economies and encourage infrastructure facilitating this to maximize that value, achieving RA. - -Of course, these are just the first suggestions and much more analysis and imagination will help expand the space of possibilities. However, given that these examples line up fairly closely with the primary business models in today's digital world (viz. cloud, advertising, digital asset sales, etc.) it seems plausible that, with a bit of elaboration, they could be used to raise a significant fraction of value flowing through that world and thus achieve the FA necessary to support a scale of investment that would fundamentally transform the digital economy. - - - - -While this may seem a political non-starter, an illuminating precedent is the gas tax in the US, which while initially opposed by the trucking industry was eventually embraced by that industry when policymakers agreed to set aside the funds to support the building of road infrastructure.[^Gas] Though the tax obviously put a direct drain on the industry, its indirect support for the building of roads was seen to more than offset this by providing the substrate truckers needed for their work. Some would, rightly, object that there may have been even better targeted taxes for this purpose (such as road congestion charges), but gas taxes also carried ancillary benefits in discouraging pollution and were generally well-targeted at the primary users of roads at a time when charging for congestion might have been costly. - -[^Gas]: John Chynoweth Burnham, "The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution" *Mississippi Valley Historical Review* 48, no. 3 (1961): 435-459. - -It is just possible to imagine assembling today an appropriate coalition of businesses and governments to support such an ambitious set of digital infrastructure supporting taxes. Doing so would require correct set asides of raised funds, more clever tax instruments harnessing the abundant data online, sophisticated, and low friction means of collecting taxes, careful harnessing of appropriate but not universal jurisdictions to impose and collect the taxes in a way that cajoles others to follow along and, of course, a good deal of public support and pressure as we discuss below. Effective policy leadership and public mobilization should, hopefully, be able to achieve these and create the conditions for supporting ⿻ infrastructure. - - - -### Sustaining our future - - -To embody ⿻, the network of organizations that are supported by such resources cannot be a *de novo* monolithic global government. Instead, it must be ⿻ itself both in its structure and in its connection to existing fora to realize the commitments of ⿻ to uplift diversity and collective cooperation. While we aspire to basically transform the character of digital society, we cannot achieve ⿻ if we seek to tear down or undermine existing institutions. Our aim should be, quite the reverse, to see the building of fundamental ⿻ infrastructure as a platform that can allow the digital pie to dramatically expand and diversify, lifting as many boats as possible while also expanding the space for experimentation and growth. - -Different elements of our vision require very different degrees of government engagement. Many of the most intimate technologies, for example, such as [immersive shared reality](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/?mode=dark) intend to operate at relatively intimate scales and thus should be naturally developed in a relatively "private" way (both in funding models and in data structures), with some degree of public support and regulation steering them away from potential pitfalls. The most ambitious reforms to the structure of markets, on the other hand, will require reshaping basic governmental and legal structures, in many cases cutting across national boundaries. Development of the fundamental protocols on which all of this work rests will require perhaps the greatest degree of coordination but also a great deal of experimentation, fully harnessing the ARPA coopetitive structure as nodes in the network (such as India and Taiwan) compete to export their frameworks into global standards. An effective fabric of ⿻ law, regulation, investment, and control rights will, as much as possible, ensure the existence of a diversity of national and transnational entities capable of matching this variety of needs and deftly match taxes and legal authorities to empower these to serve their relevant roles while interoperating. - -Luckily, while they are dramatically underfunded, often imperfectly coordinated and lack the ambitious mission we have outlined here, many of the existing transnational structures for digital and internet governance have roughly these features. In short, while specific new capabilities need to be added, funding improved, networks and connections enhanced and public engagement augmented, the internet is already, as imagined by the ARPANET founders, ⿻ in its structure and governance. More than anything, what needs to be done is build the public understanding of and engagement with this work necessary to uplift, defend and support it. - -### Organizing change - - -Of course, achieving that is an enormous undertaking. The ideas discussed in this chapter, and throughout this book, are deeply technical and even the fairly dry discussion here barely skims the surface. Very few will deeply engage even with the ideas in this book, much less the much farther ranging work that will need to be done both in the policy arena and far beyond it in the wide range of research, development and deployment work that policy world will empower. - - -It is precisely for this reason that "policy" is just one small slice of the work required to build ⿻. For every policy leader, there will have to be dozens, probably hundreds of people building the visions they help articulate. And for each one of those, there will need to be hundreds who, while not focused on the technical concerns, share a general aversion to the default Libertarian and Technocratic directions technology might otherwise go and are broadly supportive of the vision of ⿻. They will have to understand it at more of an emotive, visceral and/or ideological level, rather than a technical or intellectual one, and build networks of moral support, lived perspectives and adoption for those at the core of the policy and technical landscape. - -For them to do so, ⿻ will have to go far beyond a set of creative technologies and intellectual analyses. It will have to become a broadly understood cultural current and social movement, like environmentalism, AI and crypto, grounded in a deep, both intellectual and social, body of fundamental research, developed and practiced in a diverse and organized set of enterprises and supported by organized political interests. The path there includes, but moves far beyond, policymakers to the world of activism, culture, business, and research. Thus, we conclude by calling on each of you who touches any of these worlds to join us in the project of making this a reality. - - -[^Planning]: Benjamin Bertelsen and Ritul Gaur, "What We Can Expect for Digital Public Infrastructure in 2024", *World Economic Forum Blog* February 13, 2024 at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure. Especially in the developing world, many countries have ministries of planning that could naturally host or spin off such a function. -[^Ext]: Economists would refer to such taxes as "Pigouvian" taxes on "externalities". While a reasonable way to describe some of the below, as noted in our Markets chapter, externalities may be more the rule than the exception and thus we prefer this alternative formulation. For example, many of these taxes address issues of concentrated market power which do create externalities, but are not usually considered in the scope of Pigouvian taxation. +# Policy + +If ⿻ succeeds, in a decade we imagine a transformed relationship among and across governments, private technology development and open source/civil society. In this future, public funding (both from governments and charitable initiatives) is the primary source of financial support for fundamental digital protocols, while the provision of such protocols in turn becomes a central item on the agenda of governments and charitable actors. This infrastructure is developed trans-nationally, by civil society collaborations and standard setting organizations supported by an international network of government leaders focused on these goals. The fabric created by these networks and the open protocols they develop, standardize, safeguard and become the foundation for a new "international rules-based order", an operating system for a transnational ⿻ society. + + +Making these a bit more precise opens our eyes to how different such a future could be. Today, most research and development and the overwhelming majority of software development occurs in for-profit private corporations. What little (half a percent of GDP in an average OECD country) funding is spent on research and development by governments is primarily non-digital and overwhelmingly funds "basic research." This is in contrast to open source code and protocols that can be directly be used by most citizens, civil groups and businesses. Spending on public software R&D pales by comparison to the several percent of GDP most countries spend on physical infrastructure. + + +In the future we imagine that governments and charities will ensure we devote roughly 1% of GDP to digital public research, development, protocols, and infrastructure, amounting to nearly a trillion US dollars a year globally or roughly half of currently global investment in information technology. This would increase public investment by at least two orders of magnitude and, given how much volunteer investment even limited financial investment in open-source software and other public investment has been able to stimulate, completely change the character of digital industries: the "digital economy" would become a ⿻ society. Furthermore, public sector investment has primarily taken place on a national or regional (e.g. European Union) level and is largely obscured from broader publics. The investment we imagine would, like research collaborations, private investment, and open-source development, be undertaken by transnational networks aiming to create internationally inter-operable applications and standards similar to today's internet protocols. It would be at least as much a focus for the public as recently hyped technologies such as AI and crypto. + +--- + + +As we emphasized in the previous section, ⿻ innovation does not take policy by a single government as a primary starting point: it proceeds from a variety of institutions of diverse and usually middling sizes outward. Yet governments are central institutions around the world, directing a large share of economic resources directly and shaping the allocation of much more. We cannot imagine a path to ⿻ without the participation of governments as both users of ⿻ technology and supporters of the development of ⿻. + +Of course, a full such embrace would be a process, just as ⿻ is, and would eventually transform the very nature of governments. Because much of the book so far has gestured at what this would mean, in this chapter we instead focus on a vision of what might take place in the next decade to achieve the future we imagined above. While the policy directive we sketch is grounded in a variety of precedents (such as ARPA, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent India) that we have highlighted above, it does not directly follow any of the standard models employed by "great powers" today, instead drawing, combining, and extending elements from each to form a more ambitious agenda than any of these are today pursuing. To provide context, we therefore begin with a stylized description of these "models" before drawing lessons from historical models. We describe how these can be adapted to the global scope of today's transnational networks, how such investments can be financially supported and sustained, and finally the path to building the social and political support these policies will need, on which the next chapter focuses. + + +### Digital empires + +The most widely understood models of technology policy today are captured by legal scholar Anu Bradford in her *Digital Empires*.[^Bradford] In the US and the large fraction of the world that consumes its technology exports, technology development is dominated by a simplistic, private sector-driven, neoliberal free market model. In People's Republic of China (PRC) and consumers of its exports, technology development is steered heavily by the state towards national goals revolving around sovereignty, development, and national security. In Europe, the primary focus has been on regulation of technology imports from abroad to ensure they protect European standards of fundamental human rights, forcing others to comply with this "Brussels effect". While this trichotomy is a bit stereotyped and each jurisdiction incorporates elements of each of these strategies, the outlines are a useful foil for considering the alternative model we want to describe. + +[^Bradford]: Anu Bradford, *Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023). + +The US model has been driven by a broad trend widely documented since the 1970s for government and the civil sector to disengage from the economy and technology development, focusing instead on "welfare" and national defense functions.[^Yergin] Despite pioneering the ARPANET, the US privatized almost all further development of personal computing, operating systems, physical and social networking and cloud infrastructure.[^Tarnoff] As the private monopolies predicted by J.C.R. Licklider (Lick) came to fill these spaces, US regulators primarily responded with antitrust actions that, while influencing market dynamics in a few cases (such as the Microsoft actions) were generally understood as too little too late.[^Lick] In particular, they are understood as having allowed monopolistic dominance or tight oligopoly to emerge in the search, smartphone application, cloud services and several operating systems markets. More recently, American antitrust regulators under the leadership of the "New Brandeis" movement have doubled down on the primary use of antitrust instruments with limited success in court and have seen the challenges of emerging monopolies only expand in the market for chips and generative foundation models.[^NewBrandeis] + +[^Yergin]: Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, *The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy* (New York: Touchstone, 2002). +[^Tarnoff]: Tarnoff, op. cit. +[^Lick]: Licklider, "Comptuers and Government", op. cit. Thomas Philippon, *The Great Reversal* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). +[^NewBrandeis]:Lina Khan, "The New Brandeis Movement: America’s Antimonopoly Debate", *Journal of European Competition Law and Practice* 9, no. 3 (2018): 131-132. Akush Khandori, "Lina Khan's Rough Year," *New York Magazine Intelligencer* December 12, 2023 at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/lina-khans-rough-year-running-the-federal-trade-commission.html. + +The primary rival model to the US has been the PRC, where the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has drafted a series of Five-Year plans that have [increasingly in recent years](https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/) directed a variety of levers of state power to invest in and shape the direction of technology development.[^Plan] These coordinated regulatory actions, party-driven directives to domestic technology companies and primarily government-driven investments in research and development have dramatically steered the direction of Chinese technology development in recent years away from commercial and consumer applications towards hard and physical technology, national security, chip development and surveillance technologies. Investment that has paralleled the US, such as into large foundation models, has been tightly and directly steered by government, ensuring consistency with priorities on censorship and monitoring of dissent. A consistent crackdown on business activity not forming part of this vision has led to a dramatic fall in activity in much of the Chinese technology sector in recent years, especially around financial technology including web3. + +[^Plan]: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, *14th Five-Year Plan*, March 2021; translation available at https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/. + +In contrast to the US and the PRC, the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) have (despite a few notable exceptions) primarily acted as importers of technical frameworks produced by these two geopolitical powers. The EU has tried to harness its bargaining power in that role, however, to act as a "regulatory powerhouse", intervening to protect the interests of human rights that it fears the other two powers often ignore in their race for technological supremacy. This has included setting the global standard for privacy regulation with their [General Data Protection Regulation](https://gdpr-info.eu/), taking the lead on regulation of generative foundation models (GFMs) with their [AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/the-act/), and helping shape the standards for competitive marketplaces with a series of recent ex-ante competition regulations including the [Digital Services Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package), the [Digital Markets Act](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en) and the [Data Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-act). While these have not defined an alternative positive technological model, they have constrained and shaped the behavior of both US and Chinese firms who seek to sell into the European market. The EU also aspires to tight interoperability across the markets they serve, often leading to copycat legislation in other jurisdictions. + +### A road less traveled + +Just as Taiwan's Yushan (Jade) Mountain rises from the intersection of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, the policy approach we surveyed in our [Life of a Digital Democracy](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/?mode=dark) chapter from its peak arises from the intersection of the philosophies behind these three digital empires as illustrated in Figure A. From the US model, Taiwan has drawn the emphasis on a dynamic, decentralized, free, entrepreneurial ecosystem open to the world that generates scalable and exportable technologies, especially within the open source ecosystem. From the European model, it has drawn a focus on human rights and democracy as the fundamental aspirations both for the development of basic digital public infrastructure and on which the rest of the digital ecosystem depends. From the PRC model, it has drawn the importance of public investment to proactively advance technology, steering it toward societal interests. + +
+Figure shows reshaped flags of the People's Republic of China, the United States of America and the European Union as if they were continental shelves, intersecting at a central island of Taiwan, topped by Yushan. The PRC is symbolized by a puppeteer, the US by a child running wild and Europe by a traffic cop. Taiwan, in the center, is symbolized by people collaborating. + +**
Figure 7-0-A. An illustration of how the Taiwan policy model emerges from the intersection of PRC, US, and EU competing alternatives. Source: generated by authors, harnessing logos from the Noun Project by Gan Khoon Lay, Alexis Lilly, Adrien Coquet and Rusma Trari Handini under CC BY 3.0 at https://thenounproject.com/.
** +
+

+ +Together these add up to a model where the public sector's primary role is *active investment and support* to empower and protect *privately complemented but civil society-led, technology development* whose goal is *proactively* building a digital stack that *embodies in protocols principles of human rights and democracy*. + +The Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan is a prime example of this unique model, blending public sector support with civil society innovation. Since its inception in 2018, this annual event has drawn thousands of social innovators and public servants, as well as teams from numerous countries, all collaborating to enhance Taiwan's ⿻ infrastructure. Each year, five outstanding teams are honored with a presidential commitment to support their initiatives in the upcoming fiscal year — elevating successful local-scale experiments to the level of national infrastructure projects. + +A key feature of the Presidential Hackathon is its use of quadratic voting for public participation in selecting the top 20 teams. This elevates the event beyond mere competition, transforming it into a powerful coalition-building platform for civil society leadership. For instance, environmental groups focused on monitoring water and air pollution saw their contributions gain national prominence through the Civil IoT project — backed by a significant investment of USD $160 million — showcasing how the Taiwan model effectively amplifies the impact and reach of grassroots initiatives. + +### Lessons from the past + +Of course, the "Taiwan model" did not emerge *de novo* over the last decade. Instead, as we have highlighted above, it built on the synthesis of the Taiwanese tradition of public support for cooperative enterprise and civil society (see our [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter) with the model that built the internet at the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which we highlighted in [The Lost Dao](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/). At a moment when the US and many other advanced economies are turning away from "neoliberalism" and towards "industrial policy", the ARPA story holds crucial lessons and cautions. + +On the one hand, ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) led by Lick is perhaps the most successful example of industrial policy in American and perhaps world history. IPTO provided seed funding for the development of a network of university-based computer interaction projects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Carnegie Technical Schools (now Carnegie Mellon University or CMU) and University of California Los Angeles. Among the remarkable outcomes of these investments were: + +1. The development of this research network into the seeds of what became the modern internet. +2. The development of the groups making up this network into many of the first, and still the among the most prominent, computer science and computer engineering departments in the world. +3. The development around these universities of the leading regional digital innovation hubs in the world, including Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 corridor. + +Yet while these technology hubs have become the envy and aspiration of (typically unsuccessful) regional development and industrial policy around the world, it is critical to remember how fundamentally different the aspirations underpinning Lick's vision were from those of his imitators. + + Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was not Lick's intention. He was instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking and the computer as a communication device. ⿻ builds closely on Lick's very much unfinished vision. Lick selected participating universities not based on an interest in regional economic development, but rather to maximize the chances of achieving vision of the future of computing. + + Industrial policy often aims at creating large-scale, industrial "nation champions" and is often viewed in contrast to antitrust and competition policies, which typically aim to constrain excessively concentrated industrial power. As Lick described in his 1980 "Computers and Government" and in contrast to both of these traditions, the IPTO effort took the rough goals of antitrust (ensuring the possibility of an open and decentralized marketplace) but applied the tools of industrial policy (active public investment) to achieve them. Rather than constraining the winners of predigital market competition, IPTO aimed to create a network infrastructure on which the digital world would play out in such a way as to avoid undue concentrations of power. It was the failure to sustain this investment through the 1970s and beyond that Lick predicted would lead to the monopolization of the critical functions of digital life by what he at the time described as "IBM" but turned out to be the dominant technology platforms of today: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. Complementing this approach, rather than directly fostering the development of private, for-profit industry as most industrial policy does, Lick supported the civil society-based (primarily university-driven) development of basic infrastructure that would support the defense, government, and private sectors.[^Lick2] + + [^Lick2]: Licklider, "Computers and Government", op. cit. + + While Lick's approach mostly played out at universities, given they were the central locus of the development of advanced computing at the time, it contrasted sharply with the traditional support of fundamental, curiosity-driven research of funders like the US National Science Foundation. He did not offer support for general academic investigation and research, but rather to advance a clear mission and vision: building a network of easily accessible computing machines that enabled communication and association over physical and social distance, interconnecting and sharing resources with other networks to enable scalable cooperation. + +Yet while dictating this mission, Lick did not prejudge the right components to achieve it, instead establishing a network of "coopetitive" research labs, each experimenting and racing to develop prototypes of different components of these systems that could then be standardized in interaction with each other and spread across the network. Private sector collaborators played important roles in contributing to this development, including Bolt Beranek and Newman (where Lick served as Vice President just before his role at IPTO and which went on to build a number of prototype systems for the internet) and Xerox PARC (where many of the researchers Lick supported later assembled and continued their work, especially after federal funding diminished). Yet, as is standard in the development and procurement of infrastructure and public works in a city, these roles were components of an overall vision and plan developed by the networked, multi-sectoral alliance that constituted ARPANET. Contrast this with a model primarily developed and driven in the interest of private corporations, the basis for most personal computing and mobile operating systems, social networks, and cloud infrastructures. + + +As we have noted repeatedly above, we need not only look back to the "good old days" for ARPANET or Taiwan for inspiration. India's development of the "[India Stack](https://indiastack.org/)" has many similar characteristics.[^Indiastack] More recently, the EU has been developing initiatives including [European Digital Identity](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en)and [Gaia-X](https://gaia-x.eu/). Jurisdictions as diverse as [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast) have experimented successfully with similar approaches. While each of these initiatives has strengths and weaknesses, the idea that a public mission aimed at creating infrastructure that empowers decentralized innovation in collaboration with civil society and participation but not dominance from the private sector is increasingly a pattern, often labeled "digital public infrastructure" (DPI). To a large extent, we are primarily advocating for this approach to be scaled up and become the central approach to the development of global ⿻ society. Yet for this to occur, the ARPA and Taiwan models need to be updated and adjusted for this potentially dramatically increased scale and ambition. + +[^Indiastack]: Vivek Raghavan, Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, "India Stack—Digital Infrastructure as Public Good", *Communications of the ACM* 62, no. 11: 76-81. + +### A new ⿻ order + +The key reason for an updated model is that there are basic elements of the ARPA model that are a poor fit for the shape of contemporary digital life, as Lick began realizing as early as 1980. While it was a multisectoral effort, ARPA was centered around the American military-industrial complex and its collaborators in the American academy. This made sense in the context of the 1960s, when the US was one of two major world powers, scientific funding and mission was deeply tied to its stand-off with the Soviet Union and most digital technology was being developed in the academy. As Lick observed, however, even by the late 1970s this was already becoming a poor fit. Today's world is (as discussed above) much more multi-polar even in its development of leading DPI. The primary civil technology developers are in the open source community, private companies dominate much of the digital world and military applications are only one aspect of the public's vision for digital technology, which increasingly shapes every aspect of contemporary life. To adapt, a vision of ⿻ infrastructure for today must engage the public in setting the mission of technology through institutions like digital ministries, network transnationally and harness open source technology, as well as redirecting the private sector, more effectively. + + +Lick and the ARPANET collaborators shaped an extraordinary vision that laid the groundwork for the internet and ⿻. Yet Lick saw that this could not ground the legitimacy of his project for long; as we highlighted central to his aspirations was that "decisions about the development and exploitation of computer technology must be made not only 'in the public interest' but in the interest of giving the public itself the means to enter into the decision-making processes that will shape their future." Military technocracy cannot be the primary locus for setting the agenda if ⿻ is to achieve the legitimacy and public support necessary to make the requisite investments to center ⿻ infrastructure. Instead, we will need to harness the full suite of ⿻ technologies we have discussed above to engage transnational publics in reaching an overlapping consensus on a mission that can motivate a similarly concerted effort to IPTO's. These tools include ⿻ competence education to make every citizen feel empowered to shape the ⿻ future, cultural institutions like Japan's [Miraikan](https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/) that actively invite citizens into long-term technology planning, ideathons where citizens collaborate on future envisioning and are supported by governments and charities to build these visions into media that can be more broadly consumed, [alignment assemblies](https://cip.org/alignmentassemblies) and other augmented deliberations on the direction of technology and more. + + +Digital (hopefully soon, ⿻) ministries, emerging worldwide, are proving to be a more natural forum for setting visionary goals in a participatory way, surpassing traditional military hosts. A well-known example is Ukraine's [Mykhailo Fedorov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Fedorov), the [Minister of Digital Transformation](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/yevropejska-integraciya/coordination/cifrova-transformaciya) since 2019. Taiwan was a forerunner in this domain as well, appointing a digital minister in 2016 and establishing a formal [Ministry of Digital Affairs](https://moda.gov.tw/en/) in 2022. Japan, recognizing the urgency of digitalization during the pandemic, founded its [Digital Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Agency) at the cabinet level in 2021, inspired by discussions with Taiwan. The EU has increasingly formalized its digital portfolio under the leadership of [Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Vice_President_of_the_European_Commission_for_A_Europe_Fit_for_the_Digital_Age) [Margrethe Vestager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager), who helped inspire both the popular television series [Borgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgen_(TV_series)) and the middle name of the daughter of one of this book's authors.[^Vestager] + +[^Vestager]: Danny Hakim, "The Danish Politician Who Accused Google of Antitrust Violations", *New York Times* April 15, 2015. + +These ministries, inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the [G20 digital ministers identified DPI](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure/) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals.[^Planning] In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involve the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, more nations are likely to appoint digital ministers, fostering an open, connected digital community. + +Yet national homes for ⿻ infrastructure constitute only a few of the poles holding up its tent. There is no country today that can or should alone be the primary locus for such efforts. They must be built as at least international and probably transnational networks, just as the internet is. Digital ministers, as their positions are created, must themselves form a network that can provide international support to this work and connect nation-based nodes just as ARPANET did for university-based nodes. Many of the open source projects participating will not themselves have a single primary national presence, spanning many jurisdictions and participating as a transnational community, to be respected on terms that will in some cases be roughly equal to those of national digital ministries. Consider, for example, the relationship of rough equality between the Ethereum community and the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs. + +Exclusively high-level government-to-government relationships are severely limited by the broader state of current international relations. Many of the countries where the internet has flourished have at-times had troubled relationships with other countries where it has flourished. Many civil actors have stronger transnational relationships than their governments would agree to supporting at an intergovernmental level, mirroring consistent historical patterns where civil connections through, for example, religion and advocacy of human rights have created a stronger foundation for cooperation than international relations alone. Technology, for better or worse, often crosses borders and boundaries of ideology more easily than treaties can be negotiated. For example, web3 communities and civic technology organizations like g0v and RadicalxChange have significant presences even in countries that are not widely understood as "democratic" in their national politics. Similar patterns at larger scales have been central to the transnational environmental, human rights, religious and other movements.[^Wendt] + +While there is no necessary path from such interactions to broader democratization, it would also be an important mistake to miss the opportunity to expand the scope of interoperation in areas where it is possible while waiting for full government-to-government alignment. In her book *A New World Order*, leading international relations scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter sketched how such transnational policy and civil networks will increasingly complement and collaborate with governments around the world and form a fabric of transnational collaboration.[^Slaughter] This fabric or network could be more effective than current international bodies like the United Nations. As such we should expect (implicit) support for these kinds of initiatives to be as important to the role of digital ministries as are their direct relationships with one another. + +[^Wendt]: Alexander Wendt, *Social Theory of International Politics* (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a recent case study of the role of religion in Middle East cooperation, see Johnnie Moore, "Evangelical Track II Diplomacy in Arab and Israeli Peacemaking", Liberty University dissertation (2024). +[^Slaughter]: Anne-Marie Slaughter, *A New World Order* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). This book has a special place in one of our hearts, as obtaining a prerelease signed copy was the first birthday present one author gave to the woman who became his wife. + + + +Some of the transnational networks that will form the key complements to digital ministries may be academic collaborations. Yet the element of the digital ecosystem most neglected by governments today is not academia, which still receives billions of dollars of research support. Instead, it is the largely ignored world of open source and other non-profit, mission-driven technology developers. As we have extensively discussed, these already provide the backbone of much of the global technology stack. Yet they receive virtually no measurable financial support from governments and very little from charities, despite their work belonging (mostly) fully to the public domain and their being developed mostly in the public interest. + +Furthermore, this sector is in many ways better suited to the development of infrastructure than academic research, much as public infrastructure in the physical world is generally not built by academia. Academic research is heavily constrained by disciplinary foci and boundaries that civil infrastructure that is broadly usable is unlikely to respect. Academic careers depend on citation, credit and novelty in a way that is unlikely to align with the best aspirations for infrastructure, which often can and should be invisible, "boring" and as easily interoperable with (rather than "novel" in contrast to) other infrastructure as possible. Academic research often focuses on a degree and disciplinary style of rigor and persuasiveness that differs in kind from the ideal user experience. While public support for academic research is crucial and, in some areas, academic projects can contribute to ⿻ infrastructure, governments and charities should not primarily look to the academic research sector. And while academic research receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding globally annually, open source communities have likely received less than two billion dollars in their entire history, accounting for known sources as we illustrate in Figure B. Many of these concerns have been studied and highlighted by the "[decentralized science](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9)" movement.[^DeSci] + +
+Figure compares cumulative historical funding of OSS projects v. venture capital, illustrating that the latter is roughly 3 orders of magnitude larger. + +** Figure 7-0-B. Comparing known funding of open source software and venture capital investment. Source: Chart by authors, sources various see footnote.[^Sources] ** +
+

+ +[^Sources]: Jessica Lord, "What's New with GitHub Sponsors", *GitHub Blog*, April 4, 2023 at https://github.blog/2023-04-04-whats-new-with-github-sponsors/. GitCoin impact report at https://impact.gitcoin.co/. Kevin Owocki, "Ethereum 2023 Funding Flows: Visualizing Public Goods Funding from Source to Destination" at https://practicalpluralism.github.io/. Open Collective, "Fiscal Sponsors. We need you!" *Open Collective Blog* March 1, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/fiscal-sponsors-we-need-you/. Optimism Collective, "RetroPGF Round 3", *Optimism Docs* January 2024 at https://community.optimism.io/docs/governance/retropgf-3/#. ProPublica, "The Linux Foundation" at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801. + + +[^DeSci]: Sarah Hamburg, "Call to Join the Decentralized Science Movement", *Nature* 600, no. 221 (2021): Correspondence at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9. + +Furthermore, open source communities are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what may be possible for public-interested, civil society-driven technology development. Organizations like the [Mozilla](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/) and [Wikimedia](https://wikimediafoundation.org/) Foundations, while primarily interacting with and driving open source projects, have significant development activities beyond pure open source code development that have made their offerings much more accessible to the world. Furthermore, there is no necessary reason why public interest technology need inherit all the features of open source code. + + + +Some organizations developing generative foundation models, such as [OpenAI](https://openai.com/charter) and [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust), have legitimate concerns about simply making these models freely available but are explicitly dedicated to developing and licensing them in the public interest and are structured to not exclusively maximize profit to ensure they stay true to these missions.[^OAI] Whether they have, given the demands of funding and the limits of their own vision, managed to be ideally true to this aspiration or not, one can certainly imagine both shaping organizations like this to ensure they can achieve these goals using ⿻ technologies and structuring public policy to ensure more organizations like this are central to the development of core ⿻ infrastructure. Other organizations may develop non-profit ⿻ infrastructure but wish to charge for elements of it (just as some highways have tolls to address congestion and maintenance) while others may have no proprietary claim but wish to ensure sensitive and private data are not just made publicly available. Fostering a ⿻ ecosystem of organizations that serve ⿻ publics including but not limited to open source models will be critical to moving beyond the limits of the academic ARPA model. Luckily a variety of ⿻ technologies are available to policymakers to foster such an ecosystem. + +[^OAI]: OpenAI, "OpenAI Charter", *OpenAI Blog* April 9, 2018 at https://openai.com/charter. Anthropic, "The Long-Term Benefit Trust", *Anthropic Blog* September 19, 2023 at https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust. + + +Furthermore, whatever the ideal structures, it is unlikely that such public interest institutions will simply substitute for the large, private digital infrastructure built up over the last decades. Many social networks, cloud infrastructures, single-sign-on architectures, and so forth would be wasteful to simply scrap. Instead it likely makes sense to harness these investments towards the public interest by pairing public investment with agreements to shift governance to respect public input in much the way we discussed in our chapters on Voting, Media and Workplace. This closely resembles the way that a previous wave of economic democracy reform (with which Dewey was closely associated) did not simply out-compete privately created power generation, but instead sought to bring it under a network of partially local democratic control through utility boards. Many leaders in the tech world refer to their platforms as "utilities", "infrastructure" or "public squares"; it stands to reason that part of a program of ⿻ digital infrastructure will be reforming them so they truly act as such. + + +### ⿻ regulation + +To allow the flourishing of such an ecosystem will depend on reorienting legal, regulatory, and financial systems to empower these types of organizations. Tax revenue will need to be raised, ideally in ways that are not only consistent with but actually promote ⿻ directly, to make them socially and financially sustainable. + +The most important role for governments and intergovernmental networks will arguably be one of coordination and standardization. Governments, being the largest actor in most national economies, can shape the behavior of the entire digital ecosystem based on what standards they adopt, what entities they purchase from and the way they structure citizens' interactions with public services. This is the core, for example, of how the India Stack became so central to the private sector, which followed the lead of the public sector and thus the civil projects they supported. + +Yet laws are also at the center of defining what types of structures can exist, what privileges they have and how rights are divided between different entities. Open source organizations now struggle as they aim to maintain simultaneously their non-profit orientation and an international presence. Organizations like the [Open Collective Foundation](https://opencollective.com/foundation) were created almost exclusively for the purpose of allowing them to do so and helped support this project, but despite taking a substantial cut of project revenues [was unable to sustain itself](https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/) and thus is in the process of dissolving as of this writing. The competitive disadvantage of Third-Sector technology providers could hardly be starker.[^OCFdiss] Many other forms of innovative, democratic, transnational organization, like Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) constantly run into legal barriers that only a few jurisdictions like the [State of Wyoming](https://www.wyoleg.gov/2024/Introduced/SF0050.pdf) have just begun to address. While some of the reasons for these are legitimate (to avoid financial scams, etc.), much more work is needed to establish legal frameworks that support and defend transnational democratic non-profit organizational forms. + +[^OCFdiss]: Open Collective Team, "Open Collective Official Statement - OCF Dissolution" February 28, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/. + +Other organizational forms likely need even further support. Data coalitions that aim to collectively protect the data rights of creators or those with relevantly collective data interests, as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter, will need protection similar to unions and other collective bargaining organizations that they not only do not have at present but which many jurisdictions (like the EU) may effectively prevent them from having, given their extreme emphasis on individual rights in data. Just as labor law evolved to empower collective bargaining for workers, law will have to evolve to allow data workers to collectively exercise their rights in order to avoid either their being disadvantaged relative to concentrated model builders or so disparate as to offer insuperable barriers to ambitious data collaboration. + +Beyond organizational forms, legal and regulatory changes will be critical to empowering a fair and productive use of data for shared goals. Traditional intellectual property regimes are highly rigid, focused on the degree of "transformativeness" of a use that risk either subjecting all model development to severe and unworkable limitations or depriving creators of the moral and financial rights they need to sustain their work that is so critical to the function of these models. New standards need to be developed by judges, legislators and regulators in close collaboration with technologists and publics that account for the complex and partial way in which a variety of data informs the output of models and ensures that the associated value is "back-propagated" to the data creators just as it is to the intermediate data created within the models in the process of training them.[^Holland] New rules like these will build on the reforms to property rights that empowered the re-purposing of radio spectrum and should be developed for a variety of other digital assets as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. + +[^Holland]: An interesting line of research suggesting possibility here is that of neural network and genetic algorithm pioneer John H. Holland, who tried to draw direct analogies between networks of firms in an economy linked by markets and neural networks. John H. Holland and John M. Miller, "Artificial Adaptive Agents in Economic Theory", *American Economic Review* 81, no. 2 (1991): 365-370. + +Furthermore, if properly concerted with such a vision, antitrust laws, competition rules, interoperability mandates and financial regulations have an important role to play in encouraging the emergence of new organizational forms and the adaptation of existing ones. Antitrust and competition law is intended to ensure concentrated commercial interests cannot abuse the power they accumulate over customers, suppliers and workers. Giving direct control over a firm to these counterparties is a natural way to achieve this objective without the usual downsides in competition policy of inhibiting scaled collaboration. ⿻ technologies offer natural means to instantiate meaningful voice for these stakeholders as we discussed in the [Workplace](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/6-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. It would be natural for antitrust authorities to increasingly consider mandating such governance reforms as alternative remedies to anticompetitive conduct or mergers and to consider governance representation as a mitigating factor in evaluating the necessity of punitive action.[^econdem] + +[^econdem]: Hitzig et al., op. cit. + +Mandating interoperability, in cooperation with standard setting processes that develop the meaning and shape of these standards, is a critical lever to make such standards workable and avoid dominance by an illegitimate private monopoly. Financial regulations help define what kinds of governance are acceptable in various jurisdictions and have unfortunately, especially in the US and UK, weighed heavily towards damaging and monopolistic one-share-one-vote rules. Financial regulatory reform should encourage experimentation with more inclusive governance systems such as Quadratic and other ⿻ voting forms that account for and address concentrations of power continuously, rather than offsetting the tendencies of one-share-one-vote to raiding with bespoke provisions like "poison pills".[^QVcorp] They should also accommodate and support worker, supplier, environmental counterparty and customer voice and steer concentrated asset holders who might otherwise have systemic monopolistic effects towards employing similar tools. + +[^QVcorp]: Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, "Quadratic Voting as Efficient Corporate Governance", *University of Chicago Law Review* 81, no. 1 (2014): 241-272. + + +### ⿻ taxes + +However, rules, laws and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation and development. Without those to complement, they will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation. Thus, public and multisectoral investment is the core they must complement and making such investments obviously requires revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how it can be raised to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining. While directly charging for services largely reverts to the traps of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate. Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻. It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention. + +The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax, because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible. For example, data and networks of collaboration and know-how among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if they mostly occur in jurisdictions with higher rates. Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit. While [recent reforms](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/oecd-minimum-tax-rate/) to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge. + +Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than, in a fairly arbitrary way, to wherever the corporation may choose to domicile. Ideally such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria: + +1. Directly ⿻ (D⿻): Digital taxes should ideally not merely raise revenue, but directly encourage or enact ⿻ aims themselves.[^Ext] This ensures that the taxes are not a drag on the system, but part of the solution. +2. Jurisdictional alignment (JA): The jurisdictional network in which taxes are and can naturally be raised should correspond to the jurisdiction that disposes of these taxes. This ensures that the coalition required to enact the taxes is similar to that required to establish the cooperation that disposes of the revenue. +3. Revenue alignment (RA): The sources of revenue should correspond to the value generated by the shared value created using the revenue, ensuring that those disposing of the revenue have a natural interest in the success of their mission. It also ensures that those who pay for the tax generally benefit from the goods created with it, lessening political opposition to the tax. +4. Financial adequacy (FA): The tax should be sufficient to fund the required investment. + + +The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter suggests that eventually they can all be generally jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values sources. Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used. + +Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying practicable taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy part of the book. Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further: + +1. Concentrated computational asset tax: Application of a progressive (either in rate or by giving a generous exemption) common ownership tax to digital assets such as computation, storage, and some kinds of data.[^Siegmann] +2. Digital land tax: Taxing the commercialization or holding of scarce digital space, including taxes on online advertising, holding of spectrum licenses and web address space in a more competitive way and, eventually, taxing exclusive spaces in virtual worlds.[^Romer] +3. Implicit data/attention exchange tax: Taxes on implicit data or attention exchanges involved in "free" services online, which would otherwise typically accrue labor and value added taxes. +4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens and non-fungible token. +5. Commons-derived data tax: Profits earned from models trained on unlicensed, commons-derived data could be taxed. +6. Flexible/gig work taxes: Profits of companies that primarily employ "gig workers" and thus avoid many of the burdens of traditional labor law could be taxed.[^Gray] + +[^Siegmann]: See the ongoing work developing this idea of Charlotte Siegmann, "AI Use-Case Specific Compute Subsidies and Quotas" (2024) at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11nNPbBctIUoURfZ5FCwyLYRtpBL6xevFi8YGFbr3BBA/edit#heading=h.mr8ansm7nxr8. +[^Romer]: Paul Romer, "A Tax That Could Fix Big Tech", *New York Times* May 6, 2019 advocated related ideas. +[^Gray]: Gray and Suri, op. cit. + + +While a much more detailed policy analysis would be needed to comprehensively "score" these taxes according to our criteria above, a few illustrations will hopefully illustrate the design thinking pattern behind these suggestions. A concentrated computational asset tax aims simultaneously to encourage more complete use of digital assets (as any common ownership tax will), deter concentrated cloud ownership (thus increasing competition while decreasing potential security threats) and to drag on the incentives for accumulating the kind of computational resources that may allow training of potentially dangerous-scale models outside public oversight, all instantiating D⿻. Most forms of digital land tax would naturally accrue not to any nation state, but to the transnational entities that support internet infrastructure, access and content achieving JA. An implicit data exchange tax would provide a clearer signal of the true value being created in digital economies and encourage infrastructure facilitating this to maximize that value, achieving RA. + +Of course, these are just the first suggestions and much more analysis and imagination will help expand the space of possibilities. However, given that these examples line up fairly closely with the primary business models in today's digital world (viz. cloud, advertising, digital asset sales, etc.) it seems plausible that, with a bit of elaboration, they could be used to raise a significant fraction of value flowing through that world and thus achieve the FA necessary to support a scale of investment that would fundamentally transform the digital economy. + + + + +While this may seem a political non-starter, an illuminating precedent is the gas tax in the US, which while initially opposed by the trucking industry was eventually embraced by that industry when policymakers agreed to set aside the funds to support the building of road infrastructure.[^Gas] Though the tax obviously put a direct drain on the industry, its indirect support for the building of roads was seen to more than offset this by providing the substrate truckers needed for their work. Some would, rightly, object that there may have been even better targeted taxes for this purpose (such as road congestion charges), but gas taxes also carried ancillary benefits in discouraging pollution and were generally well-targeted at the primary users of roads at a time when charging for congestion might have been costly. + +[^Gas]: John Chynoweth Burnham, "The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution" *Mississippi Valley Historical Review* 48, no. 3 (1961): 435-459. + +It is just possible to imagine assembling today an appropriate coalition of businesses and governments to support such an ambitious set of digital infrastructure supporting taxes. Doing so would require correct set asides of raised funds, more clever tax instruments harnessing the abundant data online, sophisticated, and low friction means of collecting taxes, careful harnessing of appropriate but not universal jurisdictions to impose and collect the taxes in a way that cajoles others to follow along and, of course, a good deal of public support and pressure as we discuss below. Effective policy leadership and public mobilization should, hopefully, be able to achieve these and create the conditions for supporting ⿻ infrastructure. + + + +### Sustaining our future + + +To embody ⿻, the network of organizations that are supported by such resources cannot be a *de novo* monolithic global government. Instead, it must be ⿻ itself both in its structure and in its connection to existing fora to realize the commitments of ⿻ to uplift diversity and collective cooperation. While we aspire to basically transform the character of digital society, we cannot achieve ⿻ if we seek to tear down or undermine existing institutions. Our aim should be, quite the reverse, to see the building of fundamental ⿻ infrastructure as a platform that can allow the digital pie to dramatically expand and diversify, lifting as many boats as possible while also expanding the space for experimentation and growth. + +Different elements of our vision require very different degrees of government engagement. Many of the most intimate technologies, for example, such as [immersive shared reality](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/?mode=dark) intend to operate at relatively intimate scales and thus should be naturally developed in a relatively "private" way (both in funding models and in data structures), with some degree of public support and regulation steering them away from potential pitfalls. The most ambitious reforms to the structure of markets, on the other hand, will require reshaping basic governmental and legal structures, in many cases cutting across national boundaries. Development of the fundamental protocols on which all of this work rests will require perhaps the greatest degree of coordination but also a great deal of experimentation, fully harnessing the ARPA coopetitive structure as nodes in the network (such as India and Taiwan) compete to export their frameworks into global standards. An effective fabric of ⿻ law, regulation, investment, and control rights will, as much as possible, ensure the existence of a diversity of national and transnational entities capable of matching this variety of needs and deftly match taxes and legal authorities to empower these to serve their relevant roles while interoperating. + +Luckily, while they are dramatically underfunded, often imperfectly coordinated and lack the ambitious mission we have outlined here, many of the existing transnational structures for digital and internet governance have roughly these features. In short, while specific new capabilities need to be added, funding improved, networks and connections enhanced and public engagement augmented, the internet is already, as imagined by the ARPANET founders, ⿻ in its structure and governance. More than anything, what needs to be done is build the public understanding of and engagement with this work necessary to uplift, defend and support it. + +### Organizing change + + +Of course, achieving that is an enormous undertaking. The ideas discussed in this chapter, and throughout this book, are deeply technical and even the fairly dry discussion here barely skims the surface. Very few will deeply engage even with the ideas in this book, much less the much farther ranging work that will need to be done both in the policy arena and far beyond it in the wide range of research, development and deployment work that policy world will empower. + + +It is precisely for this reason that "policy" is just one small slice of the work required to build ⿻. For every policy leader, there will have to be dozens, probably hundreds of people building the visions they help articulate. And for each one of those, there will need to be hundreds who, while not focused on the technical concerns, share a general aversion to the default Libertarian and Technocratic directions technology might otherwise go and are broadly supportive of the vision of ⿻. They will have to understand it at more of an emotive, visceral and/or ideological level, rather than a technical or intellectual one, and build networks of moral support, lived perspectives and adoption for those at the core of the policy and technical landscape. + +For them to do so, ⿻ will have to go far beyond a set of creative technologies and intellectual analyses. It will have to become a broadly understood cultural current and social movement, like environmentalism, AI and crypto, grounded in a deep, both intellectual and social, body of fundamental research, developed and practiced in a diverse and organized set of enterprises and supported by organized political interests. The path there includes, but moves far beyond, policymakers to the world of activism, culture, business, and research. Thus, we conclude by calling on each of you who touches any of these worlds to join us in the project of making this a reality. + + +[^Planning]: Benjamin Bertelsen and Ritul Gaur, "What We Can Expect for Digital Public Infrastructure in 2024", *World Economic Forum Blog* February 13, 2024 at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure. Especially in the developing world, many countries have ministries of planning that could naturally host or spin off such a function. +[^Ext]: Economists would refer to such taxes as "Pigouvian" taxes on "externalities". While a reasonable way to describe some of the below, as noted in our Markets chapter, externalities may be more the rule than the exception and thus we prefer this alternative formulation. For example, many of these taxes address issues of concentrated market power which do create externalities, but are not usually considered in the scope of Pigouvian taxation. + \ No newline at end of file From 4525eaab32a3925223f650cd0ea5ec9a7925938b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: techxorcist Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2024 14:34:18 -0600 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] addtl Barrero reference --- contents/english/6-1-workplace.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md b/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md index 56ee256a..8237c5e3 100644 --- a/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md +++ b/contents/english/6-1-workplace.md @@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ The advances we discuss, which are just a sampling of potential implications of ### Strong remote teams -The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of work, bringing changes expected for decades to fruition in a year. A leading study by Barrero et al., for example, found that work from home rose from 5% of the American workforce to a high above 60%.[^Barrero] Perhaps the most extreme manifestation has been the rise of so-called "digital nomads", who have harnessed the increasing opportunity for remote work to travel continuously and work a variety of remote jobs as encouraged by programs like Sardinia regional program for digital nomads and Estonia and Taiwan's [e-citizenship](https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/) and [gold cards](https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/en/) respectively, that one author of this book holds. While there has been a substantial return to physical work since the end of the pandemic, at least a part of the change appears here to stay; Barreto et al. find that after the pandemic, workers on average want to work about half the week from home and believe their productivity is similar or better in that setting. While some studies have found some evidence of mildly reduced productivity, these effects do not seem large enough to overcome the persistent demands for hybrid work styles.[^reduce-productivity] +The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of work, bringing changes expected for decades to fruition in a year. A leading study by Barrero et al., for example, found that work from home rose from 5% of the American workforce to a high above 60%.[^Barrero] Perhaps the most extreme manifestation has been the rise of so-called "digital nomads", who have harnessed the increasing opportunity for remote work to travel continuously and work a variety of remote jobs as encouraged by programs like Sardinia regional program for digital nomads and Estonia and Taiwan's [e-citizenship](https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/) and [gold cards](https://goldcard.nat.gov.tw/en/) respectively, that one author of this book holds. While there has been a substantial return to physical work since the end of the pandemic, at least a part of the change appears here to stay; Barrero et al. find that after the pandemic, workers on average want to work about half the week from home and believe their productivity is similar or better in that setting. While some studies have found some evidence of mildly reduced productivity, these effects do not seem large enough to overcome the persistent demands for hybrid work styles.[^reduce-productivity] Yet there is little question that remote work has real downsides. Some of these, such as ensuring work-life balance, avoiding distractions and unhealthy at-home working conditions, are not easily addressed through remote collaboration tools. But many others are: lack of organic interactions with colleagues, missing opportunities for feedback or forming deeper personal connections with colleagues, etc.[^remote-shift-impact] While ⿻ can be used to address most of these, we will focus on one in particular: the building of strong and deeply trusting teams. From b1344b51d5f3358b68a0d9a18e681bf6d73dadff Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: techxorcist Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 07:29:07 -0600 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] Combined changes from local and remote --- ReadMe.md | 2 +- contents/english/0-0-endorsements.md | 432 ++++++++--------- .../2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy.md | 7 +- ...2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" | 2 +- contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md | 2 +- .../english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md | 2 +- contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md | 2 +- contents/english/7-0-policy.md | 451 +++++++++--------- contents/english/7-1-conclusion.md | 48 +- ...15\345\256\266\346\216\250\350\226\246.md" | 68 ++- ...47\347\232\204\351\264\273\346\272\235.md" | 12 +- ...73\347\232\204\346\227\245\345\270\270.md" | 7 +- ...50\342\277\273\344\270\226\347\225\214.md" | 2 +- ...43\347\232\204\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" | 2 +- ...72\345\277\230\347\232\204\351\201\223.md" | 25 +- ...70\344\275\215\350\207\252\347\224\261.md" | 20 +- ...32\345\205\203\345\205\254\347\234\276.md" | 2 +- ...76\345\257\246\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" | 4 +- .../6-2-\345\201\245\345\272\267.md" | 2 +- 19 files changed, 558 insertions(+), 534 deletions(-) diff --git a/ReadMe.md b/ReadMe.md index 8c40f6f1..995e3b2f 100644 --- a/ReadMe.md +++ b/ReadMe.md @@ -57,7 +57,7 @@ At the same time, we expect there to be far more engagement than any small group All governance functions will harness both the qualitative and quantitative tokens discussed above. Governance will harness a range of approaches, from formal voting to informal discussions. We will aim to harness as many of the tools we describe in the book as possible, to show as well as tell the book's message. Governance will address the full range of issues in the project's development: the evolution of all repositories, decisions about the physical publication process, etc. Initially, community input will be advisory and this will remain the case in final decisions until the book is physically printed. -However, we aim to harness Gov4Git to turn the process over to full and direct community control after the printing of the first edition of the physical books. While this milestone marks a point at which we aim to make the formal transition, we hope for this process to be gradual: we hope that overtime we rely more and more on the community to guide every decision and that our oversight becomes more of a formalism. We plan to incorporate additional governance elements to aid this transition over time, such as signals from the community of the value of various contributions which we can then approve. To get a sense of the kinds of governance structures we hope to employ, please visit the RadicalxChange website (http://www.radicalxchange.org). We will include more details linked here as we have a clearer sense of precisely how we will use these elements. +However, we aim to harness Gov4Git to turn the process over to full and direct community control after the printing of the first edition of the physical books. While this milestone marks a point at which we aim to make the formal transition, we hope for this process to be gradual: we hope that over time we rely more and more on the community to guide every decision and that our oversight becomes more of a formalism. We plan to incorporate additional governance elements to aid this transition over time, such as signals from the community of the value of various contributions which we can then approve. To get a sense of the kinds of governance structures we hope to employ, please visit the RadicalxChange website (http://www.radicalxchange.org). We will include more details linked here as we have a clearer sense of precisely how we will use these elements. # Financial goals diff --git a/contents/english/0-0-endorsements.md b/contents/english/0-0-endorsements.md index 57fe5165..f0802688 100644 --- a/contents/english/0-0-endorsements.md +++ b/contents/english/0-0-endorsements.md @@ -1,215 +1,217 @@ -# Endorsements - -> - -> - -> In the vast, boundless expanse of *Plurality*, each life is a unique and precious existence...Regardless of how perilous external circumstances may be...(l)et us take positive action to allow the seeds of shared goodness to break through the earth and blossom into flowers of empathy, joy and harmony.

-— His Holiness the [Dalai Lama XIV](https://www.dalailama.com/) of Tibet - -

- -> In a technologically advanced, politically challenging, and rapidly evolving 21st century, what does a free and open future look like? Glen, Audrey and their coauthors offer a compelling view of a way forward.

-— [Vitalik Buterin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin), Founder of [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/) - -

- -> Democracy has been a confrontation between opposing values. In Taiwan, however, it has become a conversation among a diversity of values. Audrey Tang has shown us how to create a "digital democracy" that transcends the constraints of ideology — that is the major contribution of this book.

-— [Tsai Ing-wen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen), President of the ROC (Taiwan) - -

- -> They offer us a portal into a future where technology supports democracy, pluralism, and broad human flourishing. We know this future is possible because Tang has been building it in Taiwan. The conceptual foundations laid here usher in a much needed paradigm change for modern life.

-— [Danielle S. Allen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Allen#), political philosopher, James Bryan Conant University Professor at Harvard, MacArthur Fellow, and author of [*Our Declaration*](https://wwnorton.com/books/Our-Declaration/) and [*Cuz*](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494949) - -

- -> *Plurality* reads like optimistic sci-fi, already happening in real life! Can democracies around the world follow in Taiwan’s footsteps to upgrade free society for the digital age? Fingers crossed for a happy ending.

-— Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emmy-winning artist and founder of [HITRECORD](https://hitrecord.org/) - -

- -> *Plurality* is...a truly fascinating...potential global accelerator...of collaboration that is African in perspective...a must-read and a must-co-create for African thought leaders...who have embraced the challenge of making the 21st century the African century.

-— [Oby Ezekwesili](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oby_Ezekwesili), Co-Founder of [Transparency International](https://www.transparency.org/en), [#BringBackOurGirls](https://bringbackourgirls.ng/), Founder of the [School of Politics, Policy and Governance](https://thesppg.org/our-program/) and [#FixPolitics](https://www.fixpolitics.org/), and Nigerian political leader - -

- -> With wit, erudition and optimism, Audrey Tang and her collaborators argue that we can harness digital technology to confront authoritarianism, and that we can do so by leaning into, rather than shying away from, the principles of an open society.

-— [Anne Applebaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum), winner of the [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-applebaum) and author of [*The Twilight of Democracy*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621076/twilight-of-democracy-by-anne-applebaum/) and [*Red Famine*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236713/red-famine-by-anne-applebaum/) - -

- -> Glen and Audrey lead a team offering a master class in how to harness advanced computation to augment rather than replace human social and economic systems, simultaneously showing and telling us how digital technology can make the world dramatically more cooperative and productive.

-— [Michael I. Jordan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_I._Jordan), Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, inaugural winner of the [World Laureates Association Prize](https://www.thewlaprize.org/) in Computer Science or Mathematics, and [named by *Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/who-s-michael-jordan-computer-science-new-tool-ranks-researchers-influence) as the most influential computer scientist in the world in 2016. - -

- -> In financial technology and digital infrastructure, Kenya and other African countries are...ahead of outdated models in the North. With *Plurality* we (can)...take this...deeper...to accelerate our growth and be part of global models of a more inclusive, participatory and productive future.

-— [Ory Okolloh-Mwangi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ory_Okolloh), Co-Founder of [Ushahidi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi) and Partner at [Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures](https://vkav.vc/) - -

- -> Digital technologies that were supposed to support freedom and democracy have turned into weapons of misinformation, extremism and surveillance. This wonderful book outlines a technical and philosophical strategy, grounded in practical applications in Taiwan, for doing this all better.

-— [Daron Acemoglu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daron_Acemoglu), Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and co-author of [*Power and Progress*](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/daron-acemoglu/power-and-progress/9781541702530/?lens=publicaffairs) and [*Why Nations Fail*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail) - -

- -> What would the world be like if our dearest dreams in the social justice...movement had come to pass? (They) offer radical yet pragmatic solutions to...reinventing democracy...(to) truly serve the people...Some...have ...been implemented, serving as a beacon ...to make real change.

-— [Stav Shaffir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stav_Shaffir), leader of the [Israeli Social Justice protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Israeli_social_justice_protests) that inspired "Occupy" and youngest woman Member of the Knesset - - - -

- -> For too long, diversity and technology have been used as swords by the forces of secularization. Remarkably, in the skilled hands of these authors, they are here reforged into a shield for the faithful.

-— [Rev. Johnnie Moore Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Moore_Jr.), President of the [Congress of Christian Leaders](https://congressofchristianleaders.com/), former member of the [United States Commission on International Religious Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Commission_on_International_Religious_Freedom) and informal advisor to Fmr. US President Donald Trump - -

- -> Audrey Tang sets a new standard for what it means to be a pioneering leader. I hope we will all have the courage to follow in her path, as she lays out so eloquently here.

-— [Claudia López Hernández](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_L%C3%B3pez), former Mayor and first woman mayor of Bogotá, Colombia and highest ever LGBT elected official in the Global South - -

- -> It is clear...technologies will impact the future of culture and democracy. We lack a pluralistic...vision of living with them! Fortunately this book embodies the principles it advocates. Like AI, it is a monumental collective accomplishment, greater than the sum of its parts.

-— [Holly Herndon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Herndon), musician, artist, Co-Host of [*Interdependence*](https://interdependence.fm/) and Co-Founder of [Spawning](https://spawning.ai/) - -

- -> Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl's project will be effective and meaningful in helping Taiwan (and other countries) move in the direction of a new social democracy.

-— [Karatani Kōjin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojin_Karatani), Author of [*The Structure of World History*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-structure-of-world-history) and winner of the Berggruen Prize for Culture and Philosophy - -

- -> *Plurality* unveils the powerful blueprint of Taiwan's resilient digital transformation...provides valuable insight for concerned citizens everywhere and...can help preserve democracy amidst...a precarious moment in history for liberty and open societies around the world.

-— [Frank McCourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_McCourt_(executive)), Founder of [McCourt Global](https://www.mccourt.com/) and [Project Liberty](https://www.projectliberty.io/) and co-author of [*Our Biggest Fight*](https://ourbiggestfight.com/) - -

- -> I find it exhilarating to read the rules to new games and imagine the world that they build; I get that excitement here, but the game is global affairs and the way communities work together. Fantastic!

-— [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield), creator of [*Magic: The Gathering*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering) - -

- -> (They) have written a brilliant book of breathtaking possibility, offering...hope in a dark time...drawing on disciplines from mathematics to literature...readers are likely to find plenty of things to ponder and challenge...(and) are invited to join the conversation! -

-— [Anne-Marie Slaughter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne-Marie_Slaughter), CEO of the [New America Foundation](https://www.newamerica.org/), former Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State and author of [*Unfinished Business*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/225053/unfinished-business-by-anne-marie-slaughter/) and [*The Chess Board and the Web*](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234664/the-chessboard-and-the-web/) - -

- -> Rejoice! Here is a burst of creativity that gives us a peek at the humanistic high tech future we suspected was possible.

-— [Jaron Lanier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier), inventor of Virtual Reality, author of [*Who Owns the Future?*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F) and [*The Dawn of the New Everything*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250097408/dawnoftheneweverything) and Microsoft's Office of the Chief Technology Officer Prime Unifying Scientist (OCTOPUS) - -

- -> At last, we have a book that centers plurality – both in theory and in practice. This is a much-needed guide for developing new strategies to navigate the relationship between technology and democracy, and for thinking beyond the usual Western frame.

-— [Kate Crawford](https://katecrawford.net/), Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, research professor at the University of Southern California, artist, musician and author of [*Atlas of AI*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_AI) - -

- -> Read the first chapters on the ✈️ and can’t recommend it enough. I used to be an avid reader, but now I’m usually bored w books; however, this one grabbed my attention again. It’s super necessary so we don’t have this apocalyptic macho idea of the future. It’s in our hands, btw.

-— [Violeta Ayala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violeta_Ayala), first Quechua-native member of the [Oscars](https://www.oscars.org/) and award-winning XR filmmaker - -

- -> (P)opulists globally use technology to divide nations...*Plurality* invites a new journey where we can indeed use technology to reclaim that space in world of canceling to become more connected, and bring back our sense of humanity, UBUNTU as we say in Africa.

-— [Mmusi Maimane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmusi_Maimane), South African Presidential candidate, former Leader of the Opposition, Founder of [Build One South Africa](https://www.bosa.co.za/), and pastor and elder of the [Liberty Church](https://www.lty.church/) - -

- -> Here in lucid and non-technical prose is a sweeping vision for how to integrate so much of what we've learned about technology and society in the past decades to remake the future of democracy, from someone who is actually doing it on the ground.

-— [Alex "Sandy" Pentland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pentland), Inaugural Academic Head of the MIT Media Lab and founding father of Computational Social Science and Data Science - -

- -> \(A\) remarkable book which provides accessible, deep and novel insights into the way in which technology has, is, will and should shape our lives. It draws on a wealth of evidence to provide a powerful case in favour of promoting plurality...It holds important lessons for all of us.

-— [Colin Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Mayer), Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Oxford [Saïd School of Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%C3%AFd_Business_School) and author of [*Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good*](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prosperity-9780198866824?lang=en&cc=sk) - - -

- -> Once in a while a book comes along that completely reshapes the paradigm... Graeber and Wengrow...Asimov...Mary Shelly...now Audrey Tang, Glen Weyl and their collaborators have blown open the gates of...what it is to be human in the twenty-first century...Buy it...Bring it into being.

-— [Manda Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manda_Scott) , best-selling author of [*Boudica*](https://mandascott.co.uk/boudica-dreaming-the-eagle/) and [*A Treachery of Spies*](https://mandascott.co.uk/a-treachery-of-spies/) - -

- -> If internet technology has accelerated fragmentation, it should be possible to achieve a comfortable coexistence. *Plurarity* is full of hints for this purpose.

-— [Aono Yoshihisa](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yoshihisa-aono), Co-Founder and CEO of [Cybozu](https://cybozu.co.jp/en/company/) - -

- - -> *Plurality* is an important book on one of today’s central challenges—building collaboration and shared purpose across diversity. The authors approach this challenge not simply in ... politics...but also offer valuable insights on...technology, economics, and beyond.

-— [Julius Krein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein), Founder and Editor-in-Chief, [*American Affairs*](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/) - -

- -> Drawing inspiration from Taiwan, the world’s most under-appreciated democracy, *Plurality* makes a powerful case that digital technologies can be harnessed to facilitate...a more democratic future...Reading this brilliant book left...a new sense of urgency, but it also provided real reasons for hope. -

-— [Steven Levitsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitsky), David Rockerfeller Professor of Government at Harvard and co-author of [*How Democracies Die*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/) and [*Tyranny of the Minority*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706046/tyranny-of-the-minority-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/) - -

- -> In an era of anxiety and division, Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang provide a rare, grounded vision for how technology and democracy can harmonize, and propel us to a better future.

-— [Tristan Harris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris), Co-Founder of the [Center for Humane Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Humane_Technology) and star of [*The Social Dilemma*](https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/) - -

- - -> An exciting, creative and provocative set of ideas on how to make progress on some of the most fundamental problems in the world. You will never think the same way again after reading this book.

-— [Jason Furman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Furman), Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard University - -

- -> (T)his book...places Taiwan at the center of the world. Will it be the fulcrum of conflict or...apex of a...democratizing revolution of peace, humanity, and technology? This is our century’s question. Tang, Weyl, and their collaborators have written a guide to finding the answer.

-— [Michael Hartley Freedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Freedman), winner of the [Fields Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal), the [MacArthur Fellowship](https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/) and the [National Medal of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Science) and former director of Microsoft's [Station Q](https://news.microsoft.com/stories/stationq/) quantum computing research unit - -

- - -> It is a delight to finally see a vision for the future of human progress so clearly grounded in its past. With Plurality, we have a framework for building the engines that harness the abundant energy latent in human diversity to power the next hundred years of economic growth.

-— [Oded Galor](https://www.odedgalor.com/), Author of *The [Journey of Humanity](https://www.odedgalor.com/copy-of-unified-growth-theory)* and Herbert Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University - -

- -> At once optimistic and pragmatic, *Plurality* offers a roadmap to reforge democracy for the AI era...we need not limit ourselves to the libertarian or authoritarian visions...a third way...leans into openness, plurality and the human spirit. So worth reading!

-— [Mark Surman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Surman), President and Executive Director of the [Mozilla Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation) - -

- -> Can the public sector move as fast to harness emerging technologies as the rest of society? Audrey Tang has shown on the ground that it can, and here she teaches you how to do the same.

-— [Shlomit Wagman](https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/shlomit-wagman), former Director General of the [Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority](https://www.gov.il/en/departments/impa/govil-landing-page) and [Privacy Protection Authority](https://www.gov.il/en/departments/the_privacy_protection_authority/govil-landing-page) - -

- -> (S)ingularity... elicit(s) fear about how technology will overtake humans. This seminal book provides...a compelling, bold alternative. Weyl and Tang present...how technology can advance a pluralistic world...to strengthen relationships and bring people together across diversity.

-— [Mike Kubzansky](https://omidyar.com/omidyar_team/mike-kubzansky/), CEO of the [Omidyar Network](https://omidyar.com/) - - -

- -> (V)isionary in design, execution and substance.

-— [Brad Carson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Carson), President of [University of Tulsa](https://utulsa.edu/) and [Americans for Responsible Innovation](https://responsibleinnovation.org/), Fmr. US Congressman and Undersecretary of the Army - -

- -> "Regulation” remains elusive as a path to taming our technofeudal masters. It will not succeed in dispersing power. *Plurality* charts a different path for us to take - open and democratic - to bypass and dis-intermediate these powers.

-— [Cristina Caffarra](https://cristinacaffarra.com/), Honorary Professor at [University College London](https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/77797-cristina-caffarra) and Co-Founder of the [CEPR Competition Research Policy Network](https://cepr.org/about/people/cristina-caffarra) - -

- -> *Plurality* is a social philosophy of the technological era...a third way beyond Libertarianism and Technocracy. Its essence lies in the emergence of life at the edge of chaos, and whether this ideal is realized depends on whether the readers of this book become true activists who leap into that edge.

-— [Ken Suzuki](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-suzuki-03489/), Co-founder, Executive Chair at SmartNews, Inc. and inventor of [Propagational Investment Currency SYstem(PICSY)](https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/english) - - - - - - - - - - - - - +# Endorsements + +> + +> + +> In the vast, boundless expanse of *Plurality*, each life is a unique and precious existence...Regardless of how perilous external circumstances may be...(l)et us take positive action to allow the seeds of shared goodness to break through the earth and blossom into flowers of empathy, joy and harmony.

+— His Holiness the [Dalai Lama XIV](https://www.dalailama.com/) of Tibet + +

+ +> In a technologically advanced, politically challenging, and rapidly evolving 21st century, what does a free and open future look like? Glen, Audrey and their coauthors offer a compelling view of a way forward.

+— [Vitalik Buterin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalik_Buterin), Founder of [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/) + +

+ +> Democracy has been a confrontation between opposing values. In Taiwan, however, it has become a conversation among a diversity of values. Audrey Tang has shown us how to create a "digital democracy" that transcends the constraints of ideology — that is the major contribution of this book.

+— [Tsai Ing-wen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsai_Ing-wen), President of the ROC (Taiwan) + +

+ +> They offer us a portal into a future where technology supports democracy, pluralism, and broad human flourishing. We know this future is possible because Tang has been building it in Taiwan. The conceptual foundations laid here usher in a much needed paradigm change for modern life.

+— [Danielle S. Allen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Allen#), political philosopher, James Bryan Conant University Professor at Harvard, MacArthur Fellow, and author of [*Our Declaration*](https://wwnorton.com/books/Our-Declaration/) and [*Cuz*](https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494949) + +

+ +> *Plurality* reads like optimistic sci-fi, already happening in real life! Can democracies around the world follow in Taiwan’s footsteps to upgrade free society for the digital age? Fingers crossed for a happy ending.

+— [Joseph Gordon-Levitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Gordon-Levitt), E +mmy-winning artist and founder of [HITRECORD](https://hitrecord.org/) + +

+ +> *Plurality* is...a truly fascinating...potential global accelerator...of collaboration that is African in perspective...a must-read and a must-co-create for African thought leaders...who have embraced the challenge of making the 21st century the African century.

+— [Oby Ezekwesili](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oby_Ezekwesili), Co-Founder of [Transparency International](https://www.transparency.org/en), [#BringBackOurGirls](https://bringbackourgirls.ng/), Founder of the [School of Politics, Policy and Governance](https://thesppg.org/our-program/) and [#FixPolitics](https://www.fixpolitics.org/), and Nigerian political leader + +

+ +> With wit, erudition and optimism, Audrey Tang and her collaborators argue that we can harness digital technology to confront authoritarianism, and that we can do so by leaning into, rather than shying away from, the principles of an open society.

+— [Anne Applebaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum), winner of the [Pulitzer Prize](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-applebaum) and author of [*The Twilight of Democracy*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621076/twilight-of-democracy-by-anne-applebaum/) and [*Red Famine*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236713/red-famine-by-anne-applebaum/) + +

+ +> Glen and Audrey lead a team offering a master class in how to harness advanced computation to augment rather than replace human social and economic systems, simultaneously showing and telling us how digital technology can make the world dramatically more cooperative and productive.

+— [Michael I. Jordan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_I._Jordan), Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, inaugural winner of the [World Laureates Association Prize](https://www.thewlaprize.org/) in Computer Science or Mathematics, and [named by *Science*](https://www.science.org/content/article/who-s-michael-jordan-computer-science-new-tool-ranks-researchers-influence) as the most influential computer scientist in the world in 2016. + +

+ +> In financial technology and digital infrastructure, Kenya and other African countries are...ahead of outdated models in the North. With *Plurality* we (can)...take this...deeper...to accelerate our growth and be part of global models of a more inclusive, participatory and productive future.

+— [Ory Okolloh-Mwangi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ory_Okolloh), Co-Founder of [Ushahidi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi) and Partner at [Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures](https://vkav.vc/) + +

+ +> Digital technologies that were supposed to support freedom and democracy have turned into weapons of misinformation, extremism and surveillance. This wonderful book outlines a technical and philosophical strategy, grounded in practical applications in Taiwan, for doing this all better.

+— [Daron Acemoglu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daron_Acemoglu), Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and co-author of [*Power and Progress*](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/daron-acemoglu/power-and-progress/9781541702530/?lens=publicaffairs) and [*Why Nations Fail*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail) + +

+ +> What would the world be like if our dearest dreams in the social justice...movement had come to pass? (They) offer radical yet pragmatic solutions to...reinventing democracy...(to) truly serve the people...Some...have ...been implemented, serving as a beacon ...to make real change.

+— [Stav Shaffir](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stav_Shaffir), leader of the [Israeli Social Justice protests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Israeli_social_justice_protests) that inspired "Occupy" and youngest woman Member of the Knesset + + + +

+ +> For too long, diversity and technology have been used as swords by the forces of secularization. Remarkably, in the skilled hands of these authors, they are here reforged into a shield for the faithful.

+— [Rev. Johnnie Moore Jr.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Moore_Jr.), President of the [Congress of Christian Leaders](https://congressofchristianleaders.com/), former member of the [United States Commission on International Religious Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Commission_on_International_Religious_Freedom) and informal advisor to Fmr. US President Donald Trump + +

+ +> Audrey Tang sets a new standard for what it means to be a pioneering leader. I hope we will all have the courage to follow in her path, as she lays out so eloquently here.

+— [Claudia López Hernández](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_L%C3%B3pez), former Mayor and first woman mayor of Bogotá, Colombia and highest ever LGBT elected official in the Global South + +

+ +> It is clear...technologies will impact the future of culture and democracy. We lack a pluralistic...vision of living with them! Fortunately this book embodies the principles it advocates. Like AI, it is a monumental collective accomplishment, greater than the sum of its parts.

+— [Holly Herndon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Herndon), musician, artist, Co-Host of [*Interdependence*](https://interdependence.fm/) and Co-Founder of [Spawning](https://spawning.ai/) + +

+ +> Audrey Tang and Glen Weyl's project will be effective and meaningful in helping Taiwan (and other countries) move in the direction of a new social democracy.

+— [Karatani Kōjin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojin_Karatani), Author of [*The Structure of World History*](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-structure-of-world-history) and winner of the Berggruen Prize for Culture and Philosophy + +

+ +> *Plurality* unveils the powerful blueprint of Taiwan's resilient digital transformation...provides valuable insight for concerned citizens everywhere and...can help preserve democracy amidst...a precarious moment in history for liberty and open societies around the world.

+— [Frank McCourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_McCourt_(executive)), Founder of [McCourt Global](https://www.mccourt.com/) and [Project Liberty](https://www.projectliberty.io/) and co-author of [*Our Biggest Fight*](https://ourbiggestfight.com/) + +

+ +> I find it exhilarating to read the rules to new games and imagine the world that they build; I get that excitement here, but the game is global affairs and the way communities work together. Fantastic!

+— [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield), creator of [*Magic: The Gathering*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering) + +

+ +> (They) have written a brilliant book of breathtaking possibility, offering...hope in a dark time...drawing on disciplines from mathematics to literature...readers are likely to find plenty of things to ponder and challenge...(and) are invited to join the conversation! +

+— [Anne-Marie Slaughter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne-Marie_Slaughter), CEO of the [New America Foundation](https://www.newamerica.org/), former Director of Policy Planning at the US Department of State and author of [*Unfinished Business*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/225053/unfinished-business-by-anne-marie-slaughter/) and [*The Chess Board and the Web*](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234664/the-chessboard-and-the-web/) + +

+ +> Rejoice! Here is a burst of creativity that gives us a peek at the humanistic high tech future we suspected was possible.

+— [Jaron Lanier](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaron_Lanier), inventor of Virtual Reality, author of [*Who Owns the Future?*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Owns_the_Future%3F) and [*The Dawn of the New Everything*](https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250097408/dawnoftheneweverything) and Microsoft's Office of the Chief Technology Officer Prime Unifying Scientist (OCTOPUS) + +

+ +> At last, we have a book that centers plurality – both in theory and in practice. This is a much-needed guide for developing new strategies to navigate the relationship between technology and democracy, and for thinking beyond the usual Western frame.

+— [Kate Crawford](https://katecrawford.net/), Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, research professor at the University of Southern California, artist, musician and author of [*Atlas of AI*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_of_AI) + +

+ +> Read the first chapters on the ✈️ and can’t recommend it enough. I used to be an avid reader, but now I’m usually bored w books; however, this one grabbed my attention again. It’s super necessary so we don’t have this apocalyptic macho idea of the future. It’s in our hands, btw.

+— [Violeta Ayala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violeta_Ayala), first Quechua-native member of the [Oscars](https://www.oscars.org/) and award-winning XR filmmaker + +

+ +> (P)opulists globally use technology to divide nations...*Plurality* invites a new journey where we can indeed use technology to reclaim that space in world of canceling to become more connected, and bring back our sense of humanity, UBUNTU as we say in Africa.

+— [Mmusi Maimane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmusi_Maimane), South African Presidential candidate, former Leader of the Opposition, Founder of [Build One South Africa](https://www.bosa.co.za/), and pastor and elder of the [Liberty Church](https://www.lty.church/) + +

+ +> Here in lucid and non-technical prose is a sweeping vision for how to integrate so much of what we've learned about technology and society in the past decades to remake the future of democracy, from someone who is actually doing it on the ground.

+— [Alex "Sandy" Pentland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pentland), Inaugural Academic Head of the MIT Media Lab and founding father of Computational Social Science and Data Science + +

+ +> \(A\) remarkable book which provides accessible, deep and novel insights into the way in which technology has, is, will and should shape our lives. It draws on a wealth of evidence to provide a powerful case in favour of promoting plurality...It holds important lessons for all of us.

+— [Colin Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Mayer), Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Oxford [Saïd School of Management](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%C3%AFd_Business_School) and author of [*Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good*](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prosperity-9780198866824?lang=en&cc=sk) + + +

+ +> Once in a while a book comes along that completely reshapes the paradigm... Graeber and Wengrow...Asimov...Mary Shelly...now Audrey Tang, Glen Weyl and their collaborators have blown open the gates of...what it is to be human in the twenty-first century...Buy it...Bring it into being.

+— [Manda Scott](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manda_Scott) +, best-selling author of [*Boudica*](https://mandascott.co.uk/boudica-dreaming-the-eagle/) and [*A Treachery of Spies*](https://mandascott.co.uk/a-treachery-of-spies/) + +

+ +> If internet technology has accelerated fragmentation, it should be possible to achieve a comfortable coexistence. *Plurarity* is full of hints for this purpose.

+— [Aono Yoshihisa](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yoshihisa-aono), Co-Founder and CEO of [Cybozu](https://cybozu.co.jp/en/company/) + +

+ + +> *Plurality* is an important book on one of today’s central challenges—building collaboration and shared purpose across diversity. The authors approach this challenge not simply in ... politics...but also offer valuable insights on...technology, economics, and beyond.

+— [Julius Krein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Krein), Founder and Editor-in-Chief, [*American Affairs*](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/) + +

+ +> Drawing inspiration from Taiwan, the world’s most under-appreciated democracy, *Plurality* makes a powerful case that digital technologies can be harnessed to facilitate...a more democratic future...Reading this brilliant book left...a new sense of urgency, but it also provided real reasons for hope. +

+— [Steven Levitsky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitsky), David Rockerfeller Professor of Government at Harvard and co-author of [*How Democracies Die*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/) and [*Tyranny of the Minority*](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/706046/tyranny-of-the-minority-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/) + +

+ +> In an era of anxiety and division, Glen Weyl and Audrey Tang provide a rare, grounded vision for how technology and democracy can harmonize, and propel us to a better future.

+— [Tristan Harris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris), Co-Founder of the [Center for Humane Technology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Humane_Technology) and star of [*The Social Dilemma*](https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/) + +

+ + +> An exciting, creative and provocative set of ideas on how to make progress on some of the most fundamental problems in the world. You will never think the same way again after reading this book.

+— [Jason Furman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Furman), Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors and Aetna Professor of the Practice of Economic Policy, Harvard University + +

+ +> (T)his book...places Taiwan at the center of the world. Will it be the fulcrum of conflict or...apex of a...democratizing revolution of peace, humanity, and technology? This is our century’s question. Tang, Weyl, and their collaborators have written a guide to finding the answer.

+— [Michael Hartley Freedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Freedman), winner of the [Fields Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal), the [MacArthur Fellowship](https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/) and the [National Medal of Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Science) and former director of Microsoft's [Station Q](https://news.microsoft.com/stories/stationq/) quantum computing research unit + +

+ + +> It is a delight to finally see a vision for the future of human progress so clearly grounded in its past. With Plurality, we have a framework for building the engines that harness the abundant energy latent in human diversity to power the next hundred years of economic growth.

+— [Oded Galor](https://www.odedgalor.com/), Author of *The [Journey of Humanity](https://www.odedgalor.com/copy-of-unified-growth-theory)* and Herbert Goldberger Professor of Economics at Brown University + +

+ +> At once optimistic and pragmatic, *Plurality* offers a roadmap to reforge democracy for the AI era...we need not limit ourselves to the libertarian or authoritarian visions...a third way...leans into openness, plurality and the human spirit. So worth reading!

+— [Mark Surman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Surman), President and Executive Director of the [Mozilla Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation) + +

+ +> Can the public sector move as fast to harness emerging technologies as the rest of society? Audrey Tang has shown on the ground that it can, and here she teaches you how to do the same.

+— [Shlomit Wagman](https://cyber.harvard.edu/people/shlomit-wagman), former Director General of the [Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority](https://www.gov.il/en/departments/impa/govil-landing-page) and [Privacy Protection Authority](https://www.gov.il/en/departments/the_privacy_protection_authority/govil-landing-page) + +

+ +> (S)ingularity... elicit(s) fear about how technology will overtake humans. This seminal book provides...a compelling, bold alternative. Weyl and Tang present...how technology can advance a pluralistic world...to strengthen relationships and bring people together across diversity.

+— [Mike Kubzansky](https://omidyar.com/omidyar_team/mike-kubzansky/), CEO of the [Omidyar Network](https://omidyar.com/) + + +

+ +> (V)isionary in design, execution and substance.

+— [Brad Carson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Carson), President of [University of Tulsa](https://utulsa.edu/) and [Americans for Responsible Innovation](https://responsibleinnovation.org/), Fmr. US Congressman and Undersecretary of the Army + +

+ +> "Regulation” remains elusive as a path to taming our technofeudal masters. It will not succeed in dispersing power. *Plurality* charts a different path for us to take - open and democratic - to bypass and dis-intermediate these powers.

+— [Cristina Caffarra](https://cristinacaffarra.com/), Honorary Professor at [University College London](https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/77797-cristina-caffarra) and Co-Founder of the [CEPR Competition Research Policy Network](https://cepr.org/about/people/cristina-caffarra) + +

+ +> *Plurality* is a social philosophy of the technological era...a third way beyond Libertarianism and Technocracy. Its essence lies in the emergence of life at the edge of chaos, and whether this ideal is realized depends on whether the readers of this book become true activists who leap into that edge.

+— [Ken Suzuki](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-suzuki-03489/), Co-founder, Executive Chair at SmartNews, Inc. and inventor of [Propagational Investment Currency SYstem(PICSY)](https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/english) + + + + + + + + + + + + + diff --git a/contents/english/2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy.md b/contents/english/2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy.md index a03e896a..764bbc44 100644 --- a/contents/english/2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy.md +++ b/contents/english/2-2-the-life-of-a-digital-democracy.md @@ -74,7 +74,7 @@ These diverse approaches to empowering government to more agilely leverage civil The best documented example and the one most consistent with the previous examples was the "Mask App". Given previous experience with SARS, masks in Taiwan were beginning to run into shortages by late January, when little of the world had even heard of Covid-19. Frustrated, civic hackers led by Howard Wu developed an app that harnessed data that the government, following open and transparent data practices harnessed and reinforced by the g0v movement, to map mask availability. This allowed Taiwan to achieve widespread mask adoption by mid-February, even as mask supplies remained extremely tight given the lack of a global production response at this early stage. -Another critical aspect of the Taiwanese response was the rigorous use of testing, tracing and supported isolation to avoid community spread of the disease. While most tracing occurred by more traditional means, Taiwan was among the only place that was able to reach the prevalence of adoption of phone-based social distancing and tracing systems necessary to make these an important and effective part of their response. This was, in turn, largely because of the close cooperation facilitated by PDIS between government health officials and members of the g0v community deeply concerned about privacy, especially given the lack in Taiwan of an independent privacy protection regime, a point we return to below. This led to the design of systems with strong anonymization and decentralization features that received broad acceptance. +Another critical aspect of the Taiwanese response was the rigorous use of testing, tracing and supported isolation to avoid community spread of the disease. While most tracing occurred by more traditional means, Taiwan was among the only places that was able to reach the prevalence of adoption of phone-based social distancing and tracing systems necessary to make these an important and effective part of their response. This was, in turn, largely because of the close cooperation facilitated by PDIS between government health officials and members of the g0v community deeply concerned about privacy, especially given the lack in Taiwan of an independent privacy protection regime, a point we return to below. This led to the design of systems with strong anonymization and decentralization features that received broad acceptance. @@ -140,7 +140,7 @@ Taiwan is also marked by a unique experience with religion among rich countries, Taiwan is widely recognized both for the quality of its democracy and its resilience against technology-driven information manipulation. Several indices, published by organizations such as Freedom House[^Freedom], the Economist Intelligence Unit[^EIU], the Bertelsmann Foundation and V-Dem, consistently rank Taiwan as among the freest and most effective democracies on earth.[^demrank] While Taiwan's precise ranking differs across these indices (ranging from first to merely in the top 15%), it nearly always stands out as the strongest democracy in Asia and the strongest democracy younger than 30 years old; even if one includes the wave of post-Soviet democracies immediately before this, almost all are less than half Taiwan's size, typically an order of magnitude smaller. Thus Taiwan is at least regarded as Asia's strongest democracy and the strongest young democracy of reasonable size and by many as the world's absolute strongest. Furthermore, while democracy has generally declined in every region of the world in the last decade according to these indices, Taiwan's democratic scores have substantially increased. -In addition to this overall strength, Taiwan is noted for its resistance to polarization and threats to information integrity. A variety of studies using a range of methodologies have found that Taiwan is one of the least politically, socially and religiously polarized developed countries in the world, though some have found a slight upward trend in political polarization since the Sunflower movement.[^polarization] This is especially true in *affective polarization*, the holding of negative or hostile personal attitudes towards political opponents, with Taiwan consistently among the 5 least affectively polarized countries. +In addition to this overall strength, Taiwan is noted for its resistance to polarization and threats to information integrity. A variety of studies using a range of methodologies have found that Taiwan is one of the least socially, ethnically and religiously polarized developed countries in the world, though some have found a slight upward trend in political polarization since the Sunflower movement.[^polarization] This is especially true in *affective polarization*, the holding of negative or hostile personal attitudes towards political opponents, with Taiwan consistently among the 5 least affectively polarized countries.[^LeaderAffectivePolarization] This is despite analyses consistently finding Taiwan to be the jurisdiction targeted for the largest volume of disinformation on earth.[^disinfovolume] One reason for this paradoxical result may be the finding by political scientists Bauer and Wilson that unlike in many other contexts, foreign manipulation fails to exacerbate partisan divides in Taiwan. Instead, it tends to galvanize a unified stance among Taiwanese against external interference.[^Disinfo] @@ -182,7 +182,7 @@ It will doubtless take decades of study to understand the precise causal connect [^EconFreedom]: “Index of Economic Freedom.” The Heritage Foundation, 2023. https://www.heritage.org/index/. [^Inequalitycritique]: Gerald Auten, and David Splinter, “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” _Journal of Political Economy_, November 14, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1086/728741. -[^CapitalShare]: The most interesting statistic we woudl like to report on is labor's share of income and its trends in Taiwan. However, to our knowledge no persuasive and internationally comparable study of this exists. We hope to see more research on this soon. +[^CapitalShare]: The most interesting statistic we would like to report on is labor's share of income and its trends in Taiwan. However, to our knowledge no persuasive and internationally comparable study of this exists. We hope to see more research on this soon. [^Loneliness]: S. Schroyen, N. Janssen, L. A. Duffner, M. Veenstra, E. Pyrovolaki, E. Salmon, and S. Adam, “Prevalence of Loneliness in Older Adults: A Scoping Review.” _Health & Social Care in the Community 2023_ (September 14, 2023): e7726692. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/7726692. [^Addiction]: “More than Half of Teens Admit Phone Addiction .” Taipei Times, February 4, 2020. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2020/02/04/2003730302; “Study Finds Nearly 57% of Americans Admit to Being Addicted to Their Phones - CBS Pittsburgh.” CBS News, August 30, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-finds-nearly-57-of-americans-admit-to-being-addicted-to-their-phones/. [^drugs]: “NCDAS: Substance Abuse and Addiction Statistics [2020],” National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2020, https://drugabusestatistics.org/; Ling-Yi Feng, and Jih-Heng Li, “New Psychoactive Substances in Taiwan,” _Current Opinion in Psychiatry_ 33, no. 4 (March 2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.1097/yco.0000000000000604. @@ -191,6 +191,7 @@ It will doubtless take decades of study to understand the precise causal connect [^wikireligion]: “Religion in Taiwan,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, January 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Taiwan. [^demrank]: “Democracy Indices,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, March 5, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_indices#:~:text=Democracy%20indices%20are%20quantitative%20and.. [^polarization]: Laura Silver, Janell Fetterolf, and Aidan Connaughton, “Diversity and Division in Advanced Economies,” Pew Research Center, October 13, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/10/13/diversity-and-division-in-advanced-economies/.; +[^LeaderAffectivePolarization]: Andres Reiljan, Diego Garzia, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, and Alexander H. Trechsel. “Patterns of Affective Polarization toward Parties and Leaders across the Democratic World.” American Political Science Review 118, no. 2 (2024): 654–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055423000485. [^disinfovolume]: Adrian Rauchfleisch, Tzu-Hsuan Tseng, Jo-Ju Kao, and Yi-Ting Liu, “Taiwan’s Public Discourse about Disinformation: The Role of Journalism, Academia, and Politics,” _Journalism Practice_ 17, no. 10 (August 18, 2022): 1–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2022.2110928. [^Disinfo]: Fin Bauer, and Kimberly Wilson, “Reactions to China-Linked Fake News: Experimental Evidence from Taiwan,” The China Quarterly 249 (March 2022): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574102100134X. [^crime]: “Crime Index by Country,” Numbeo, 2023, https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp. diff --git "a/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" "b/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" index f81b13ba..88b17dee 100644 --- "a/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" +++ "b/contents/english/4-2-association-and-\342\277\273-publics.md" @@ -41,7 +41,7 @@ Therefore, in this chapter, we will outline a theory of the informational requir ### Associations -How do people people form "an organization of persons sharing a common interest"? Clearly, a group of people who simply happen to share an interest is insufficient. People can share an interest but have no awareness of each other, or might know each other and have no idea about their shared interest. As social scientists and game theorists have recently emphasized, the collective action implied by "organization" requires a stronger notion of what it is to have an "interest", "belief" or "goal" in common. In the technical terms of these fields, the required state is what they call (approximate) "[common knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic))". +How do people form "an organization of persons sharing a common interest"? Clearly, a group of people who simply happen to share an interest is insufficient. People can share an interest but have no awareness of each other, or might know each other and have no idea about their shared interest. As social scientists and game theorists have recently emphasized, the collective action implied by "organization" requires a stronger notion of what it is to have an "interest", "belief" or "goal" in common. In the technical terms of these fields, the required state is what they call (approximate) "[common knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic))". To motivate what this means to a game theorist, it may be helpful to consider why simply sharing a belief is insufficient to allow effective common action. Consider a group of people who all happen to speak a common second language, but none are aware that the others do. Given they all speak different first languages, they won't initially be able to communicate easily. Just knowing the language will not do them much good. Instead, what they must learn is that the *others* also know the language. That is, they must have not just basic knowledge but the "higher-order" knowledge that others know something.[^Contextcomm] diff --git a/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md b/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md index 718407ca..466eff32 100644 --- a/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md +++ b/contents/english/4-3-commerce-and-trust.md @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@ Beneath a sky speckled with stars, against a backdrop laden with memories, Zvi w --- -It's a testament to the commercial nature of the contemporary world that none of the protocols we discuss in this section have received nearly the attention in media and policy as new approaches to facilitating payment and commerce. Cryptocurrencies have been one of the focal technologies of the last decade. But only slightly less heralded and far more broadly adopted have been a range of government and other public payments innovations including instant payment technologies using government identities in places like [India] (https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-overview), [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and regulated inter-operable digital payment systems like those used in the People's Republic of China (PRC). While they are far from universally adopted or interoperable, a new generation of payment systems is increasingly prevalent in the lives of many people around the globe, making payment in digital spaces increasingly as easy or easier than what cash facilitated in the past. +It's a testament to the commercial nature of the contemporary world that none of the protocols we discuss in this section have received nearly the attention in media and policy as new approaches to facilitating payment and commerce. Cryptocurrencies have been one of the focal technologies of the last decade. But only slightly less heralded and far more broadly adopted have been a range of government and other public payments innovations including instant payment technologies using government identities in places like [India](https://www.npci.org.in/what-we-do/upi/product-overview), [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and regulated inter-operable digital payment systems like those used in the People's Republic of China (PRC). While they are far from universally adopted or interoperable, a new generation of payment systems is increasingly prevalent in the lives of many people around the globe, making payment in digital spaces increasingly as easy or easier than what cash facilitated in the past. Yet, in many ways, the relatively rapid success of these efforts is a symptom of what is so disappointing about their progress so far. Cash is perhaps one of the "dumbest" technologies of the pre-digital era: it is a single, homogeneous substance transmitted between roughly anonymous, abstracted accounts. While it has proven far harder to replicate this basic function, and thus recent advances are important, this is not a revolutionary technique enabled by digital technology as, for example, hypertext improved on what had been possible in previous writing. In this chapter, we will summarize progress thus far, discuss the limitations of traditional money compared to higher aspirations for commerce online, and discuss ways to build on recent advances to allow a more ⿻ vision of digital commerce. diff --git a/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md index 2408ee5a..4930ac24 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/5-4-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -73,7 +73,7 @@ Polis is a prominent example of what leading ⿻ technologists [Aviv Ovadya](htt [^deminputs]: Tyna Eloundou and Teddy Lee, "Democratic Inputs to AI Grant Program: Lessons Learned and Implementation Plans", *OpenAI Blog*, January 16, 2024 at https://openai.com/blog/democratic-inputs-to-ai-grant-program-update -An approach with similar goals but a bit of an opposite starting point centers in-person conversations but aims to improve the way their insights can be networked and shared. A leading example in this category is the approach developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's [Center for Constructive Communication](https://www.ccc.mit.edu/) in collaboration with their civil society collaborators; called [Cortico](https://cortico.ai/). This approach and technology platform, dubbed [Fora](https://cortico.ai/platform/), uses a mixture of the identity and association protocols we discussed in the Freedom part of the book and natural language processing to allow recorded conversations on challenging topics to remain protected and private while surfacing insights that can travel across these conversations and spark further discussion. Community members, with permission from the speakers, lift consequential highlights up to stakeholders, such as government, policy makers or leadership within an organization. Cortico has used this technology to help inform civic processes such as the 2021 election of Michelle Wu as Boston's the first Taiwanese American mayor of a major US city.[^RealTalk] The act of soliciting perspectives via deep conversational data in collaboration with under-served communities imbues the effort with a legitimacy absent from faster modes of communication. Related tools, of differing degrees of sophistication, are used by organizations like [StoryCorps](https://storycorps.org/) and [Braver Angels](https://braverangels.org/) and have reached millions of people. +An approach with similar goals but a bit of an opposite starting point centers in-person conversations but aims to improve the way their insights can be networked and shared. A leading example in this category is the approach developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's [Center for Constructive Communication](https://www.ccc.mit.edu/) in collaboration with their civil society collaborators; called [Cortico](https://cortico.ai/). This approach and technology platform, dubbed [Fora](https://cortico.ai/platform/), uses a mixture of the identity and association protocols we discussed in the Freedom part of the book and natural language processing to allow recorded conversations on challenging topics to remain protected and private while surfacing insights that can travel across these conversations and spark further discussion. Community members, with permission from the speakers, lift consequential highlights up to stakeholders, such as government, policy makers or leadership within an organization. Cortico has used this technology to help inform civic processes such as the 2021 election of Michelle Wu as Boston's first Taiwanese American mayor of a major US city.[^RealTalk] The act of soliciting perspectives via deep conversational data in collaboration with under-served communities imbues the effort with a legitimacy absent from faster modes of communication. Related tools, of differing degrees of sophistication, are used by organizations like [StoryCorps](https://storycorps.org/) and [Braver Angels](https://braverangels.org/) and have reached millions of people. A third approach attempts to leverage and organize existing media content and exchanges, rather than induce participants to produce new content. This approach is closely allied to academic work on "digital humanities", which harnesses computation to understand and organize human cultural output at scale. Organizations like the [Society Library](https://www.societylibrary.org/) collect available material from government documentation, social media, books, television etc. and organize it for citizens to highlight the contours of debate, including surfacing available facts. This practice is becoming increasingly scalable with some of the tools we describe below by harnessing digital technology to extend the tradition described above by extending the scale of deliberation by networking conversations across different venues together. diff --git a/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md b/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md index 12644b87..6efdccb2 100644 --- a/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md +++ b/contents/english/5-7-social-markets.md @@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ As we highlighted in the [Connected Society](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapter [^Marketdesign]:Atila Abdulkadiroğlu, Parag A. Pathak and Alvin E. Roth, "The New York City High School Match", *American Economic Review* 95, no. 2 (2005): 365-367. Nicole Immorlica, Brendan Lucier, Glen Weyl and Joshua Mollner, "Approximate Efficiency in Matching Markets" *International Conference on Web and Internet Economics* (2017): 252-265. Roth et al., op. cit. [^Esteem]: Nicole Immorlica, Greg Stoddard and Vasilis Syrgkanis, "Social Status and Badge Design", *WWW '15: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on World Wide Web* (2015: 473-483. -While this blossoming of alternatives to simplistic markets is a powerful proof of concept for moving beyond the traditional limits of the market. But they represent the beginning, not the end, of the possibilities for the technologically enabled social markets of the future. +While this blossoming of alternatives to simplistic markets is a powerful proof of concept for moving beyond the traditional limits of the market, they represent the beginning, not the end, of the possibilities for the technologically enabled social markets of the future. ### Frontiers of social markets diff --git a/contents/english/7-0-policy.md b/contents/english/7-0-policy.md index 87c04709..b98dbf69 100644 --- a/contents/english/7-0-policy.md +++ b/contents/english/7-0-policy.md @@ -1,227 +1,226 @@ -# Policy - -If ⿻ succeeds, in a decade we imagine a transformed relationship among and across governments, private technology development and open source/civil society. In this future, public funding (both from governments and charitable initiatives) is the primary source of financial support for fundamental digital protocols, while the provision of such protocols in turn becomes a central item on the agenda of governments and charitable actors. This infrastructure is developed trans-nationally, by civil society collaborations and standard setting organizations supported by an international network of government leaders focused on these goals. The fabric created by these networks and the open protocols they develop, standardize, safeguard and become the foundation for a new "international rules-based order", an operating system for a transnational ⿻ society. - - -Making these a bit more precise opens our eyes to how different such a future could be. Today, most research and development and the overwhelming majority of software development occurs in for-profit private corporations. What little (half a percent of GDP in an average OECD country) funding is spent on research and development by governments is primarily non-digital and overwhelmingly funds "basic research." This is in contrast to open source code and protocols that can be directly be used by most citizens, civil groups and businesses. Spending on public software R&D pales by comparison to the several percent of GDP most countries spend on physical infrastructure. - - -In the future we imagine that governments and charities will ensure we devote roughly 1% of GDP to digital public research, development, protocols, and infrastructure, amounting to nearly a trillion US dollars a year globally or roughly half of currently global investment in information technology. This would increase public investment by at least two orders of magnitude and, given how much volunteer investment even limited financial investment in open-source software and other public investment has been able to stimulate, completely change the character of digital industries: the "digital economy" would become a ⿻ society. Furthermore, public sector investment has primarily taken place on a national or regional (e.g. European Union) level and is largely obscured from broader publics. The investment we imagine would, like research collaborations, private investment, and open-source development, be undertaken by transnational networks aiming to create internationally inter-operable applications and standards similar to today's internet protocols. It would be at least as much a focus for the public as recently hyped technologies such as AI and crypto. - ---- - - -As we emphasized in the previous section, ⿻ innovation does not take policy by a single government as a primary starting point: it proceeds from a variety of institutions of diverse and usually middling sizes outward. Yet governments are central institutions around the world, directing a large share of economic resources directly and shaping the allocation of much more. We cannot imagine a path to ⿻ without the participation of governments as both users of ⿻ technology and supporters of the development of ⿻. - -Of course, a full such embrace would be a process, just as ⿻ is, and would eventually transform the very nature of governments. Because much of the book so far has gestured at what this would mean, in this chapter we instead focus on a vision of what might take place in the next decade to achieve the future we imagined above. While the policy directive we sketch is grounded in a variety of precedents (such as ARPA, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent India) that we have highlighted above, it does not directly follow any of the standard models employed by "great powers" today, instead drawing, combining, and extending elements from each to form a more ambitious agenda than any of these are today pursuing. To provide context, we therefore begin with a stylized description of these "models" before drawing lessons from historical models. We describe how these can be adapted to the global scope of today's transnational networks, how such investments can be financially supported and sustained, and finally the path to building the social and political support these policies will need, on which the next chapter focuses. - - -### Digital empires - -The most widely understood models of technology policy today are captured by legal scholar Anu Bradford in her *Digital Empires*.[^Bradford] In the US and the large fraction of the world that consumes its technology exports, technology development is dominated by a simplistic, private sector-driven, neoliberal free market model. In People's Republic of China (PRC) and consumers of its exports, technology development is steered heavily by the state towards national goals revolving around sovereignty, development, and national security. In Europe, the primary focus has been on regulation of technology imports from abroad to ensure they protect European standards of fundamental human rights, forcing others to comply with this "Brussels effect". While this trichotomy is a bit stereotyped and each jurisdiction incorporates elements of each of these strategies, the outlines are a useful foil for considering the alternative model we want to describe. - -[^Bradford]: Anu Bradford, *Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023). - -The US model has been driven by a broad trend widely documented since the 1970s for government and the civil sector to disengage from the economy and technology development, focusing instead on "welfare" and national defense functions.[^Yergin] Despite pioneering the ARPANET, the US privatized almost all further development of personal computing, operating systems, physical and social networking and cloud infrastructure.[^Tarnoff] As the private monopolies predicted by J.C.R. Licklider (Lick) came to fill these spaces, US regulators primarily responded with antitrust actions that, while influencing market dynamics in a few cases (such as the Microsoft actions) were generally understood as too little too late.[^Lick] In particular, they are understood as having allowed monopolistic dominance or tight oligopoly to emerge in the search, smartphone application, cloud services and several operating systems markets. More recently, American antitrust regulators under the leadership of the "New Brandeis" movement have doubled down on the primary use of antitrust instruments with limited success in court and have seen the challenges of emerging monopolies only expand in the market for chips and generative foundation models.[^NewBrandeis] - -[^Yergin]: Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, *The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy* (New York: Touchstone, 2002). -[^Tarnoff]: Tarnoff, op. cit. -[^Lick]: Licklider, "Comptuers and Government", op. cit. Thomas Philippon, *The Great Reversal* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). -[^NewBrandeis]:Lina Khan, "The New Brandeis Movement: America’s Antimonopoly Debate", *Journal of European Competition Law and Practice* 9, no. 3 (2018): 131-132. Akush Khandori, "Lina Khan's Rough Year," *New York Magazine Intelligencer* December 12, 2023 at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/lina-khans-rough-year-running-the-federal-trade-commission.html. - -The primary rival model to the US has been the PRC, where the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has drafted a series of Five-Year plans that have [increasingly in recent years](https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/) directed a variety of levers of state power to invest in and shape the direction of technology development.[^Plan] These coordinated regulatory actions, party-driven directives to domestic technology companies and primarily government-driven investments in research and development have dramatically steered the direction of Chinese technology development in recent years away from commercial and consumer applications towards hard and physical technology, national security, chip development and surveillance technologies. Investment that has paralleled the US, such as into large foundation models, has been tightly and directly steered by government, ensuring consistency with priorities on censorship and monitoring of dissent. A consistent crackdown on business activity not forming part of this vision has led to a dramatic fall in activity in much of the Chinese technology sector in recent years, especially around financial technology including web3. - -[^Plan]: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, *14th Five-Year Plan*, March 2021; translation available at https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/. - -In contrast to the US and the PRC, the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) have (despite a few notable exceptions) primarily acted as importers of technical frameworks produced by these two geopolitical powers. The EU has tried to harness its bargaining power in that role, however, to act as a "regulatory powerhouse", intervening to protect the interests of human rights that it fears the other two powers often ignore in their race for technological supremacy. This has included setting the global standard for privacy regulation with their [General Data Protection Regulation](https://gdpr-info.eu/), taking the lead on regulation of generative foundation models (GFMs) with their [AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/the-act/), and helping shape the standards for competitive marketplaces with a series of recent ex-ante competition regulations including the [Digital Services Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package), the [Digital Markets Act](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en) and the [Data Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-act). While these have not defined an alternative positive technological model, they have constrained and shaped the behavior of both US and Chinese firms who seek to sell into the European market. The EU also aspires to tight interoperability across the markets they serve, often leading to copycat legislation in other jurisdictions. - -### A road less traveled - -Just as Taiwan's Yushan (Jade) Mountain rises from the intersection of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, the policy approach we surveyed in our [Life of a Digital Democracy](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/?mode=dark) chapter from its peak arises from the intersection of the philosophies behind these three digital empires as illustrated in Figure A. From the US model, Taiwan has drawn the emphasis on a dynamic, decentralized, free, entrepreneurial ecosystem open to the world that generates scalable and exportable technologies, especially within the open source ecosystem. From the European model, it has drawn a focus on human rights and democracy as the fundamental aspirations both for the development of basic digital public infrastructure and on which the rest of the digital ecosystem depends. From the PRC model, it has drawn the importance of public investment to proactively advance technology, steering it toward societal interests. - -
-Figure shows reshaped flags of the People's Republic of China, the United States of America and the European Union as if they were continental shelves, intersecting at a central island of Taiwan, topped by Yushan. The PRC is symbolized by a puppeteer, the US by a child running wild and Europe by a traffic cop. Taiwan, in the center, is symbolized by people collaborating. - -**
Figure 7-0-A. An illustration of how the Taiwan policy model emerges from the intersection of PRC, US, and EU competing alternatives. Source: generated by authors, harnessing logos from the Noun Project by Gan Khoon Lay, Alexis Lilly, Adrien Coquet and Rusma Trari Handini under CC BY 3.0 at https://thenounproject.com/.
** -
-

- -Together these add up to a model where the public sector's primary role is *active investment and support* to empower and protect *privately complemented but civil society-led, technology development* whose goal is *proactively* building a digital stack that *embodies in protocols principles of human rights and democracy*. - -The Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan is a prime example of this unique model, blending public sector support with civil society innovation. Since its inception in 2018, this annual event has drawn thousands of social innovators and public servants, as well as teams from numerous countries, all collaborating to enhance Taiwan's ⿻ infrastructure. Each year, five outstanding teams are honored with a presidential commitment to support their initiatives in the upcoming fiscal year — elevating successful local-scale experiments to the level of national infrastructure projects. - -A key feature of the Presidential Hackathon is its use of quadratic voting for public participation in selecting the top 20 teams. This elevates the event beyond mere competition, transforming it into a powerful coalition-building platform for civil society leadership. For instance, environmental groups focused on monitoring water and air pollution saw their contributions gain national prominence through the Civil IoT project — backed by a significant investment of USD $160 million — showcasing how the Taiwan model effectively amplifies the impact and reach of grassroots initiatives. - -### Lessons from the past - -Of course, the "Taiwan model" did not emerge *de novo* over the last decade. Instead, as we have highlighted above, it built on the synthesis of the Taiwanese tradition of public support for cooperative enterprise and civil society (see our [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter) with the model that built the internet at the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which we highlighted in [The Lost Dao](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/). At a moment when the US and many other advanced economies are turning away from "neoliberalism" and towards "industrial policy", the ARPA story holds crucial lessons and cautions. - -On the one hand, ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) led by Lick is perhaps the most successful example of industrial policy in American and perhaps world history. IPTO provided seed funding for the development of a network of university-based computer interaction projects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Carnegie Technical Schools (now Carnegie Mellon University or CMU) and University of California Los Angeles. Among the remarkable outcomes of these investments were: - -1. The development of this research network into the seeds of what became the modern internet. -2. The development of the groups making up this network into many of the first, and still the among the most prominent, computer science and computer engineering departments in the world. -3. The development around these universities of the leading regional digital innovation hubs in the world, including Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 corridor. - -Yet while these technology hubs have become the envy and aspiration of (typically unsuccessful) regional development and industrial policy around the world, it is critical to remember how fundamentally different the aspirations underpinning Lick's vision were from those of his imitators. - - Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was not Lick's intention. He was instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking and the computer as a communication device. ⿻ builds closely on Lick's very much unfinished vision. Lick selected participating universities not based on an interest in regional economic development, but rather to maximize the chances of achieving vision of the future of computing. - - Industrial policy often aims at creating large-scale, industrial "nation champions" and is often viewed in contrast to antitrust and competition policies, which typically aim to constrain excessively concentrated industrial power. As Lick described in his 1980 "Computers and Government" and in contrast to both of these traditions, the IPTO effort took the rough goals of antitrust (ensuring the possibility of an open and decentralized marketplace) but applied the tools of industrial policy (active public investment) to achieve them. Rather than constraining the winners of predigital market competition, IPTO aimed to create a network infrastructure on which the digital world would play out in such a way as to avoid undue concentrations of power. It was the failure to sustain this investment through the 1970s and beyond that Lick predicted would lead to the monopolization of the critical functions of digital life by what he at the time described as "IBM" but turned out to be the dominant technology platforms of today: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. Complementing this approach, rather than directly fostering the development of private, for-profit industry as most industrial policy does, Lick supported the civil society-based (primarily university-driven) development of basic infrastructure that would support the defense, government, and private sectors.[^Lick2] - - [^Lick2]: Licklider, "Computers and Government", op. cit. - - While Lick's approach mostly played out at universities, given they were the central locus of the development of advanced computing at the time, it contrasted sharply with the traditional support of fundamental, curiosity-driven research of funders like the US National Science Foundation. He did not offer support for general academic investigation and research, but rather to advance a clear mission and vision: building a network of easily accessible computing machines that enabled communication and association over physical and social distance, interconnecting and sharing resources with other networks to enable scalable cooperation. - -Yet while dictating this mission, Lick did not prejudge the right components to achieve it, instead establishing a network of "coopetitive" research labs, each experimenting and racing to develop prototypes of different components of these systems that could then be standardized in interaction with each other and spread across the network. Private sector collaborators played important roles in contributing to this development, including Bolt Beranek and Newman (where Lick served as Vice President just before his role at IPTO and which went on to build a number of prototype systems for the internet) and Xerox PARC (where many of the researchers Lick supported later assembled and continued their work, especially after federal funding diminished). Yet, as is standard in the development and procurement of infrastructure and public works in a city, these roles were components of an overall vision and plan developed by the networked, multi-sectoral alliance that constituted ARPANET. Contrast this with a model primarily developed and driven in the interest of private corporations, the basis for most personal computing and mobile operating systems, social networks, and cloud infrastructures. - - -As we have noted repeatedly above, we need not only look back to the "good old days" for ARPANET or Taiwan for inspiration. India's development of the "[India Stack](https://indiastack.org/)" has many similar characteristics.[^Indiastack] More recently, the EU has been developing initiatives including [European Digital Identity](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en)and [Gaia-X](https://gaia-x.eu/). Jurisdictions as diverse as [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast) have experimented successfully with similar approaches. While each of these initiatives has strengths and weaknesses, the idea that a public mission aimed at creating infrastructure that empowers decentralized innovation in collaboration with civil society and participation but not dominance from the private sector is increasingly a pattern, often labeled "digital public infrastructure" (DPI). To a large extent, we are primarily advocating for this approach to be scaled up and become the central approach to the development of global ⿻ society. Yet for this to occur, the ARPA and Taiwan models need to be updated and adjusted for this potentially dramatically increased scale and ambition. - -[^Indiastack]: Vivek Raghavan, Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, "India Stack—Digital Infrastructure as Public Good", *Communications of the ACM* 62, no. 11: 76-81. - -### A new ⿻ order - -The key reason for an updated model is that there are basic elements of the ARPA model that are a poor fit for the shape of contemporary digital life, as Lick began realizing as early as 1980. While it was a multisectoral effort, ARPA was centered around the American military-industrial complex and its collaborators in the American academy. This made sense in the context of the 1960s, when the US was one of two major world powers, scientific funding and mission was deeply tied to its stand-off with the Soviet Union and most digital technology was being developed in the academy. As Lick observed, however, even by the late 1970s this was already becoming a poor fit. Today's world is (as discussed above) much more multi-polar even in its development of leading DPI. The primary civil technology developers are in the open source community, private companies dominate much of the digital world and military applications are only one aspect of the public's vision for digital technology, which increasingly shapes every aspect of contemporary life. To adapt, a vision of ⿻ infrastructure for today must engage the public in setting the mission of technology through institutions like digital ministries, network transnationally and harness open source technology, as well as redirecting the private sector, more effectively. - - -Lick and the ARPANET collaborators shaped an extraordinary vision that laid the groundwork for the internet and ⿻. Yet Lick saw that this could not ground the legitimacy of his project for long; as we highlighted central to his aspirations was that "decisions about the development and exploitation of computer technology must be made not only 'in the public interest' but in the interest of giving the public itself the means to enter into the decision-making processes that will shape their future." Military technocracy cannot be the primary locus for setting the agenda if ⿻ is to achieve the legitimacy and public support necessary to make the requisite investments to center ⿻ infrastructure. Instead, we will need to harness the full suite of ⿻ technologies we have discussed above to engage transnational publics in reaching an overlapping consensus on a mission that can motivate a similarly concerted effort to IPTO's. These tools include ⿻ competence education to make every citizen feel empowered to shape the ⿻ future, cultural institutions like Japan's [Miraikan](https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/) that actively invite citizens into long-term technology planning, ideathons where citizens collaborate on future envisioning and are supported by governments and charities to build these visions into media that can be more broadly consumed, [alignment assemblies](https://cip.org/alignmentassemblies) and other augmented deliberations on the direction of technology and more. - - -Digital (hopefully soon, ⿻) ministries, emerging worldwide, are proving to be a more natural forum for setting visionary goals in a participatory way, surpassing traditional military hosts. A well-known example is Ukraine's [Mykhailo Fedorov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Fedorov), the [Minister of Digital Transformation](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/yevropejska-integraciya/coordination/cifrova-transformaciya) since 2019. Taiwan was a forerunner in this domain as well, appointing a digital minister in 2016 and establishing a formal [Ministry of Digital Affairs](https://moda.gov.tw/en/) in 2022. Japan, recognizing the urgency of digitalization during the pandemic, founded its [Digital Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Agency) at the cabinet level in 2021, inspired by discussions with Taiwan. The EU has increasingly formalized its digital portfolio under the leadership of [Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Vice_President_of_the_European_Commission_for_A_Europe_Fit_for_the_Digital_Age) [Margrethe Vestager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager), who helped inspire both the popular television series [Borgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgen_(TV_series)) and the middle name of the daughter of one of this book's authors.[^Vestager] - -[^Vestager]: Danny Hakim, "The Danish Politician Who Accused Google of Antitrust Violations", *New York Times* April 15, 2015. - -These ministries, inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the [G20 digital ministers identified DPI](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure/) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals.[^Planning] In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involve the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, more nations are likely to appoint digital ministers, fostering an open, connected digital community. - -Yet national homes for ⿻ infrastructure constitute only a few of the poles holding up its tent. There is no country today that can or should alone be the primary locus for such efforts. They must be built as at least international and probably transnational networks, just as the internet is. Digital ministers, as their positions are created, must themselves form a network that can provide international support to this work and connect nation-based nodes just as ARPANET did for university-based nodes. Many of the open source projects participating will not themselves have a single primary national presence, spanning many jurisdictions and participating as a transnational community, to be respected on terms that will in some cases be roughly equal to those of national digital ministries. Consider, for example, the relationship of rough equality between the Ethereum community and the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs. - -Exclusively high-level government-to-government relationships are severely limited by the broader state of current international relations. Many of the countries where the internet has flourished have at-times had troubled relationships with other countries where it has flourished. Many civil actors have stronger transnational relationships than their governments would agree to supporting at an intergovernmental level, mirroring consistent historical patterns where civil connections through, for example, religion and advocacy of human rights have created a stronger foundation for cooperation than international relations alone. Technology, for better or worse, often crosses borders and boundaries of ideology more easily than treaties can be negotiated. For example, web3 communities and civic technology organizations like g0v and RadicalxChange have significant presences even in countries that are not widely understood as "democratic" in their national politics. Similar patterns at larger scales have been central to the transnational environmental, human rights, religious and other movements.[^Wendt] - -While there is no necessary path from such interactions to broader democratization, it would also be an important mistake to miss the opportunity to expand the scope of interoperation in areas where it is possible while waiting for full government-to-government alignment. In her book *A New World Order*, leading international relations scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter sketched how such transnational policy and civil networks will increasingly complement and collaborate with governments around the world and form a fabric of transnational collaboration.[^Slaughter] This fabric or network could be more effective than current international bodies like the United Nations. As such we should expect (implicit) support for these kinds of initiatives to be as important to the role of digital ministries as are their direct relationships with one another. - -[^Wendt]: Alexander Wendt, *Social Theory of International Politics* (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a recent case study of the role of religion in Middle East cooperation, see Johnnie Moore, "Evangelical Track II Diplomacy in Arab and Israeli Peacemaking", Liberty University dissertation (2024). -[^Slaughter]: Anne-Marie Slaughter, *A New World Order* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). This book has a special place in one of our hearts, as obtaining a prerelease signed copy was the first birthday present one author gave to the woman who became his wife. - - - -Some of the transnational networks that will form the key complements to digital ministries may be academic collaborations. Yet the element of the digital ecosystem most neglected by governments today is not academia, which still receives billions of dollars of research support. Instead, it is the largely ignored world of open source and other non-profit, mission-driven technology developers. As we have extensively discussed, these already provide the backbone of much of the global technology stack. Yet they receive virtually no measurable financial support from governments and very little from charities, despite their work belonging (mostly) fully to the public domain and their being developed mostly in the public interest. - -Furthermore, this sector is in many ways better suited to the development of infrastructure than academic research, much as public infrastructure in the physical world is generally not built by academia. Academic research is heavily constrained by disciplinary foci and boundaries that civil infrastructure that is broadly usable is unlikely to respect. Academic careers depend on citation, credit and novelty in a way that is unlikely to align with the best aspirations for infrastructure, which often can and should be invisible, "boring" and as easily interoperable with (rather than "novel" in contrast to) other infrastructure as possible. Academic research often focuses on a degree and disciplinary style of rigor and persuasiveness that differs in kind from the ideal user experience. While public support for academic research is crucial and, in some areas, academic projects can contribute to ⿻ infrastructure, governments and charities should not primarily look to the academic research sector. And while academic research receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding globally annually, open source communities have likely received less than two billion dollars in their entire history, accounting for known sources as we illustrate in Figure B. Many of these concerns have been studied and highlighted by the "[decentralized science](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9)" movement.[^DeSci] - -
-Figure compares cumulative historical funding of OSS projects v. venture capital, illustrating that the latter is roughly 3 orders of magnitude larger. - -** Figure 7-0-B. Comparing known funding of open source software and venture capital investment. Source: Chart by authors, sources various see footnote.[^Sources] ** -
-

- -[^Sources]: Jessica Lord, "What's New with GitHub Sponsors", *GitHub Blog*, April 4, 2023 at https://github.blog/2023-04-04-whats-new-with-github-sponsors/. GitCoin impact report at https://impact.gitcoin.co/. Kevin Owocki, "Ethereum 2023 Funding Flows: Visualizing Public Goods Funding from Source to Destination" at https://practicalpluralism.github.io/. Open Collective, "Fiscal Sponsors. We need you!" *Open Collective Blog* March 1, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/fiscal-sponsors-we-need-you/. Optimism Collective, "RetroPGF Round 3", *Optimism Docs* January 2024 at https://community.optimism.io/docs/governance/retropgf-3/#. ProPublica, "The Linux Foundation" at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801. - - -[^DeSci]: Sarah Hamburg, "Call to Join the Decentralized Science Movement", *Nature* 600, no. 221 (2021): Correspondence at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9. - -Furthermore, open source communities are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what may be possible for public-interested, civil society-driven technology development. Organizations like the [Mozilla](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/) and [Wikimedia](https://wikimediafoundation.org/) Foundations, while primarily interacting with and driving open source projects, have significant development activities beyond pure open source code development that have made their offerings much more accessible to the world. Furthermore, there is no necessary reason why public interest technology need inherit all the features of open source code. - - - -Some organizations developing generative foundation models, such as [OpenAI](https://openai.com/charter) and [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust), have legitimate concerns about simply making these models freely available but are explicitly dedicated to developing and licensing them in the public interest and are structured to not exclusively maximize profit to ensure they stay true to these missions.[^OAI] Whether they have, given the demands of funding and the limits of their own vision, managed to be ideally true to this aspiration or not, one can certainly imagine both shaping organizations like this to ensure they can achieve these goals using ⿻ technologies and structuring public policy to ensure more organizations like this are central to the development of core ⿻ infrastructure. Other organizations may develop non-profit ⿻ infrastructure but wish to charge for elements of it (just as some highways have tolls to address congestion and maintenance) while others may have no proprietary claim but wish to ensure sensitive and private data are not just made publicly available. Fostering a ⿻ ecosystem of organizations that serve ⿻ publics including but not limited to open source models will be critical to moving beyond the limits of the academic ARPA model. Luckily a variety of ⿻ technologies are available to policymakers to foster such an ecosystem. - -[^OAI]: OpenAI, "OpenAI Charter", *OpenAI Blog* April 9, 2018 at https://openai.com/charter. Anthropic, "The Long-Term Benefit Trust", *Anthropic Blog* September 19, 2023 at https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust. - - -Furthermore, whatever the ideal structures, it is unlikely that such public interest institutions will simply substitute for the large, private digital infrastructure built up over the last decades. Many social networks, cloud infrastructures, single-sign-on architectures, and so forth would be wasteful to simply scrap. Instead it likely makes sense to harness these investments towards the public interest by pairing public investment with agreements to shift governance to respect public input in much the way we discussed in our chapters on Voting, Media and Workplace. This closely resembles the way that a previous wave of economic democracy reform (with which Dewey was closely associated) did not simply out-compete privately created power generation, but instead sought to bring it under a network of partially local democratic control through utility boards. Many leaders in the tech world refer to their platforms as "utilities", "infrastructure" or "public squares"; it stands to reason that part of a program of ⿻ digital infrastructure will be reforming them so they truly act as such. - - -### ⿻ regulation - -To allow the flourishing of such an ecosystem will depend on reorienting legal, regulatory, and financial systems to empower these types of organizations. Tax revenue will need to be raised, ideally in ways that are not only consistent with but actually promote ⿻ directly, to make them socially and financially sustainable. - -The most important role for governments and intergovernmental networks will arguably be one of coordination and standardization. Governments, being the largest actor in most national economies, can shape the behavior of the entire digital ecosystem based on what standards they adopt, what entities they purchase from and the way they structure citizens' interactions with public services. This is the core, for example, of how the India Stack became so central to the private sector, which followed the lead of the public sector and thus the civil projects they supported. - -Yet laws are also at the center of defining what types of structures can exist, what privileges they have and how rights are divided between different entities. Open source organizations now struggle as they aim to maintain simultaneously their non-profit orientation and an international presence. Organizations like the [Open Collective Foundation](https://opencollective.com/foundation) were created almost exclusively for the purpose of allowing them to do so and helped support this project, but despite taking a substantial cut of project revenues [was unable to sustain itself](https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/) and thus is in the process of dissolving as of this writing. The competitive disadvantage of Third-Sector technology providers could hardly be starker.[^OCFdiss] Many other forms of innovative, democratic, transnational organization, like Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) constantly run into legal barriers that only a few jurisdictions like the [State of Wyoming](https://www.wyoleg.gov/2024/Introduced/SF0050.pdf) have just begun to address. While some of the reasons for these are legitimate (to avoid financial scams, etc.), much more work is needed to establish legal frameworks that support and defend transnational democratic non-profit organizational forms. - -[^OCFdiss]: Open Collective Team, "Open Collective Official Statement - OCF Dissolution" February 28, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/. - -Other organizational forms likely need even further support. Data coalitions that aim to collectively protect the data rights of creators or those with relevantly collective data interests, as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter, will need protection similar to unions and other collective bargaining organizations that they not only do not have at present but which many jurisdictions (like the EU) may effectively prevent them from having, given their extreme emphasis on individual rights in data. Just as labor law evolved to empower collective bargaining for workers, law will have to evolve to allow data workers to collectively exercise their rights in order to avoid either their being disadvantaged relative to concentrated model builders or so disparate as to offer insuperable barriers to ambitious data collaboration. - -Beyond organizational forms, legal and regulatory changes will be critical to empowering a fair and productive use of data for shared goals. Traditional intellectual property regimes are highly rigid, focused on the degree of "transformativeness" of a use that risk either subjecting all model development to severe and unworkable limitations or depriving creators of the moral and financial rights they need to sustain their work that is so critical to the function of these models. New standards need to be developed by judges, legislators and regulators in close collaboration with technologists and publics that account for the complex and partial way in which a variety of data informs the output of models and ensures that the associated value is "back-propagated" to the data creators just as it is to the intermediate data created within the models in the process of training them.[^Holland] New rules like these will build on the reforms to property rights that empowered the re-purposing of radio spectrum and should be developed for a variety of other digital assets as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. - -[^Holland]: An interesting line of research suggesting possibility here is that of neural network and genetic algorithm pioneer John H. Holland, who tried to draw direct analogies between networks of firms in an economy linked by markets and neural networks. John H. Holland and John M. Miller, "Artificial Adaptive Agents in Economic Theory", *American Economic Review* 81, no. 2 (1991): 365-370. - -Furthermore, if properly concerted with such a vision, antitrust laws, competition rules, interoperability mandates and financial regulations have an important role to play in encouraging the emergence of new organizational forms and the adaptation of existing ones. Antitrust and competition law is intended to ensure concentrated commercial interests cannot abuse the power they accumulate over customers, suppliers and workers. Giving direct control over a firm to these counterparties is a natural way to achieve this objective without the usual downsides in competition policy of inhibiting scaled collaboration. ⿻ technologies offer natural means to instantiate meaningful voice for these stakeholders as we discussed in the [Workplace](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/6-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. It would be natural for antitrust authorities to increasingly consider mandating such governance reforms as alternative remedies to anticompetitive conduct or mergers and to consider governance representation as a mitigating factor in evaluating the necessity of punitive action.[^econdem] - -[^econdem]: Hitzig et al., op. cit. - -Mandating interoperability, in cooperation with standard setting processes that develop the meaning and shape of these standards, is a critical lever to make such standards workable and avoid dominance by an illegitimate private monopoly. Financial regulations help define what kinds of governance are acceptable in various jurisdictions and have unfortunately, especially in the US and UK, weighed heavily towards damaging and monopolistic one-share-one-vote rules. Financial regulatory reform should encourage experimentation with more inclusive governance systems such as Quadratic and other ⿻ voting forms that account for and address concentrations of power continuously, rather than offsetting the tendencies of one-share-one-vote to raiding with bespoke provisions like "poison pills".[^QVcorp] They should also accommodate and support worker, supplier, environmental counterparty and customer voice and steer concentrated asset holders who might otherwise have systemic monopolistic effects towards employing similar tools. - -[^QVcorp]: Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, "Quadratic Voting as Efficient Corporate Governance", *University of Chicago Law Review* 81, no. 1 (2014): 241-272. - - -### ⿻ taxes - -However, rules, laws and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation and development. Without those to complement, they will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation. Thus, public and multisectoral investment is the core they must complement and making such investments obviously requires revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how it can be raised to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining. While directly charging for services largely reverts to the traps of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate. Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻. It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention. - -The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax, because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible. For example, data and networks of collaboration and know-how among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if they mostly occur in jurisdictions with higher rates. Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit. While [recent reforms](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/oecd-minimum-tax-rate/) to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge. - -Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than, in a fairly arbitrary way, to wherever the corporation may choose to domicile. Ideally such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria: - -1. Directly ⿻ (D⿻): Digital taxes should ideally not merely raise revenue, but directly encourage or enact ⿻ aims themselves.[^Ext] This ensures that the taxes are not a drag on the system, but part of the solution. -2. Jurisdictional alignment (JA): The jurisdictional network in which taxes are and can naturally be raised should correspond to the jurisdiction that disposes of these taxes. This ensures that the coalition required to enact the taxes is similar to that required to establish the cooperation that disposes of the revenue. -3. Revenue alignment (RA): The sources of revenue should correspond to the value generated by the shared value created using the revenue, ensuring that those disposing of the revenue have a natural interest in the success of their mission. It also ensures that those who pay for the tax generally benefit from the goods created with it, lessening political opposition to the tax. -4. Financial adequacy (FA): The tax should be sufficient to fund the required investment. - - -The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter suggests that eventually they can all be generally jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values sources. Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used. - -Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying practicable taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy part of the book. Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further: - -1. Concentrated computational asset tax: Application of a progressive (either in rate or by giving a generous exemption) common ownership tax to digital assets such as computation, storage, and some kinds of data.[^Siegmann] -2. Digital land tax: Taxing the commercialization or holding of scarce digital space, including taxes on online advertising, holding of spectrum licenses and web address space in a more competitive way and, eventually, taxing exclusive spaces in virtual worlds.[^Romer] -3. Implicit data/attention exchange tax: Taxes on implicit data or attention exchanges involved in "free" services online, which would otherwise typically accrue labor and value added taxes. -4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens and non-fungible token. -5. Commons-derived data tax: Profits earned from models trained on unlicensed, commons-derived data could be taxed. -6. Flexible/gig work taxes: Profits of companies that primarily employ "gig workers" and thus avoid many of the burdens of traditional labor law could be taxed.[^Gray] - -[^Siegmann]: See the ongoing work developing this idea of Charlotte Siegmann, "AI Use-Case Specific Compute Subsidies and Quotas" (2024) at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11nNPbBctIUoURfZ5FCwyLYRtpBL6xevFi8YGFbr3BBA/edit#heading=h.mr8ansm7nxr8. -[^Romer]: Paul Romer, "A Tax That Could Fix Big Tech", *New York Times* May 6, 2019 advocated related ideas. -[^Gray]: Gray and Suri, op. cit. - - -While a much more detailed policy analysis would be needed to comprehensively "score" these taxes according to our criteria above, a few illustrations will hopefully illustrate the design thinking pattern behind these suggestions. A concentrated computational asset tax aims simultaneously to encourage more complete use of digital assets (as any common ownership tax will), deter concentrated cloud ownership (thus increasing competition while decreasing potential security threats) and to drag on the incentives for accumulating the kind of computational resources that may allow training of potentially dangerous-scale models outside public oversight, all instantiating D⿻. Most forms of digital land tax would naturally accrue not to any nation state, but to the transnational entities that support internet infrastructure, access and content achieving JA. An implicit data exchange tax would provide a clearer signal of the true value being created in digital economies and encourage infrastructure facilitating this to maximize that value, achieving RA. - -Of course, these are just the first suggestions and much more analysis and imagination will help expand the space of possibilities. However, given that these examples line up fairly closely with the primary business models in today's digital world (viz. cloud, advertising, digital asset sales, etc.) it seems plausible that, with a bit of elaboration, they could be used to raise a significant fraction of value flowing through that world and thus achieve the FA necessary to support a scale of investment that would fundamentally transform the digital economy. - - - - -While this may seem a political non-starter, an illuminating precedent is the gas tax in the US, which while initially opposed by the trucking industry was eventually embraced by that industry when policymakers agreed to set aside the funds to support the building of road infrastructure.[^Gas] Though the tax obviously put a direct drain on the industry, its indirect support for the building of roads was seen to more than offset this by providing the substrate truckers needed for their work. Some would, rightly, object that there may have been even better targeted taxes for this purpose (such as road congestion charges), but gas taxes also carried ancillary benefits in discouraging pollution and were generally well-targeted at the primary users of roads at a time when charging for congestion might have been costly. - -[^Gas]: John Chynoweth Burnham, "The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution" *Mississippi Valley Historical Review* 48, no. 3 (1961): 435-459. - -It is just possible to imagine assembling today an appropriate coalition of businesses and governments to support such an ambitious set of digital infrastructure supporting taxes. Doing so would require correct set asides of raised funds, more clever tax instruments harnessing the abundant data online, sophisticated, and low friction means of collecting taxes, careful harnessing of appropriate but not universal jurisdictions to impose and collect the taxes in a way that cajoles others to follow along and, of course, a good deal of public support and pressure as we discuss below. Effective policy leadership and public mobilization should, hopefully, be able to achieve these and create the conditions for supporting ⿻ infrastructure. - - - -### Sustaining our future - - -To embody ⿻, the network of organizations that are supported by such resources cannot be a *de novo* monolithic global government. Instead, it must be ⿻ itself both in its structure and in its connection to existing fora to realize the commitments of ⿻ to uplift diversity and collective cooperation. While we aspire to basically transform the character of digital society, we cannot achieve ⿻ if we seek to tear down or undermine existing institutions. Our aim should be, quite the reverse, to see the building of fundamental ⿻ infrastructure as a platform that can allow the digital pie to dramatically expand and diversify, lifting as many boats as possible while also expanding the space for experimentation and growth. - -Different elements of our vision require very different degrees of government engagement. Many of the most intimate technologies, for example, such as [immersive shared reality](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/?mode=dark) intend to operate at relatively intimate scales and thus should be naturally developed in a relatively "private" way (both in funding models and in data structures), with some degree of public support and regulation steering them away from potential pitfalls. The most ambitious reforms to the structure of markets, on the other hand, will require reshaping basic governmental and legal structures, in many cases cutting across national boundaries. Development of the fundamental protocols on which all of this work rests will require perhaps the greatest degree of coordination but also a great deal of experimentation, fully harnessing the ARPA coopetitive structure as nodes in the network (such as India and Taiwan) compete to export their frameworks into global standards. An effective fabric of ⿻ law, regulation, investment, and control rights will, as much as possible, ensure the existence of a diversity of national and transnational entities capable of matching this variety of needs and deftly match taxes and legal authorities to empower these to serve their relevant roles while interoperating. - -Luckily, while they are dramatically underfunded, often imperfectly coordinated and lack the ambitious mission we have outlined here, many of the existing transnational structures for digital and internet governance have roughly these features. In short, while specific new capabilities need to be added, funding improved, networks and connections enhanced and public engagement augmented, the internet is already, as imagined by the ARPANET founders, ⿻ in its structure and governance. More than anything, what needs to be done is build the public understanding of and engagement with this work necessary to uplift, defend and support it. - -### Organizing change - - -Of course, achieving that is an enormous undertaking. The ideas discussed in this chapter, and throughout this book, are deeply technical and even the fairly dry discussion here barely skims the surface. Very few will deeply engage even with the ideas in this book, much less the much farther ranging work that will need to be done both in the policy arena and far beyond it in the wide range of research, development and deployment work that policy world will empower. - - -It is precisely for this reason that "policy" is just one small slice of the work required to build ⿻. For every policy leader, there will have to be dozens, probably hundreds of people building the visions they help articulate. And for each one of those, there will need to be hundreds who, while not focused on the technical concerns, share a general aversion to the default Libertarian and Technocratic directions technology might otherwise go and are broadly supportive of the vision of ⿻. They will have to understand it at more of an emotive, visceral and/or ideological level, rather than a technical or intellectual one, and build networks of moral support, lived perspectives and adoption for those at the core of the policy and technical landscape. - -For them to do so, ⿻ will have to go far beyond a set of creative technologies and intellectual analyses. It will have to become a broadly understood cultural current and social movement, like environmentalism, AI and crypto, grounded in a deep, both intellectual and social, body of fundamental research, developed and practiced in a diverse and organized set of enterprises and supported by organized political interests. The path there includes, but moves far beyond, policymakers to the world of activism, culture, business, and research. Thus, we conclude by calling on each of you who touches any of these worlds to join us in the project of making this a reality. - - -[^Planning]: Benjamin Bertelsen and Ritul Gaur, "What We Can Expect for Digital Public Infrastructure in 2024", *World Economic Forum Blog* February 13, 2024 at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure. Especially in the developing world, many countries have ministries of planning that could naturally host or spin off such a function. -[^Ext]: Economists would refer to such taxes as "Pigouvian" taxes on "externalities". While a reasonable way to describe some of the below, as noted in our Markets chapter, externalities may be more the rule than the exception and thus we prefer this alternative formulation. For example, many of these taxes address issues of concentrated market power which do create externalities, but are not usually considered in the scope of Pigouvian taxation. +# Policy + +If ⿻ succeeds, in a decade we imagine a transformed relationship among and across governments, private technology development and open-source/civil society. In this future, public funding (both from governments and charitable initiatives) is the primary source of financial support for fundamental digital protocols, while the provision of such protocols in turn becomes a central item on the agenda of governments and charitable actors. This infrastructure is developed trans-nationally, by civil society collaborations and standard-setting organizations supported by an international network of government leaders focused on these goals. The fabric created by these networks and the open protocols they develop, standardize, and safeguard become the foundation for a new "international rules-based order", an operating system for a transnational ⿻ society. + + +Making these a bit more precise opens our eyes to how different such a future could be. Today, most research and development and the overwhelming majority of software development occurs in for-profit private corporations. What little (half a percent of GDP in an average OECD country) funding is spent on research and development by governments is primarily non-digital and overwhelmingly funds "basic research." This is in contrast to open-source code and protocols that can be directly used by most citizens, civil groups, and businesses. Spending on public software R&D pales by comparison to the several percent of GDP most countries spend on physical infrastructure. + + +In the future, we imagine that governments and charities will ensure we devote roughly 1% of GDP to digital public research, development, protocols, and infrastructure, amounting to nearly a trillion US dollars a year globally or roughly half of current global investment in information technology. This would increase public investment by at least two orders of magnitude and, given how much volunteer investment even limited financial investment in open-source software and other public investment has been able to stimulate, completely change the character of digital industries: the "digital economy" would become a ⿻ society. Furthermore, public sector investment has primarily taken place on a national or regional (e.g. European Union) level and is largely obscured from broader publics. The investment we imagine would, like research collaborations, private investment, and open-source development, be undertaken by transnational networks aiming to create internationally interoperable applications and standards similar to today's internet protocols. It would be at least as much a focus for the public as recently hyped technologies such as AI and crypto. + +--- + +As we emphasized in the previous section, ⿻ innovation does not take policy by a single government as a primary starting point: it proceeds from a variety of institutions of diverse and usually middling sizes outward. Yet governments are central institutions around the world, directing a large share of economic resources directly and shaping the allocation of much more. We cannot imagine a path to ⿻ without the participation of governments as both users of ⿻ technology and supporters of the development of ⿻. + +Of course, a full such embrace would be a process, just as ⿻ is, and would eventually transform the very nature of governments. Because much of the book so far has gestured at what this would mean, in this chapter we instead focus on a vision of what might take place in the next decade to achieve the future we imagined above. While the policy directive we sketch is grounded in a variety of precedents (such as ARPA, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent India) that we have highlighted above, it does not directly follow any of the standard models employed by "great powers" today, instead drawing, combining, and extending elements from each to form a more ambitious agenda than any of these are today pursuing. To provide context, we therefore begin with a stylized description of these "models" before drawing lessons from historical models. We describe how these can be adapted to the global scope of today's transnational networks, how such investments can be financially supported and sustained, and finally the path to building the social and political support these policies will need, on which the next chapter focuses. + + +### Digital empires + +The most widely understood models of technology policy today are captured by legal scholar Anu Bradford in her *Digital Empires*.[^Bradford] In the US and the large fraction of the world that consumes its technology exports, technology development is dominated by a simplistic, private sector-driven, neoliberal free market model. In the People's Republic of China (PRC) and consumers of its exports, technology development is steered heavily by the state towards national goals revolving around sovereignty, development, and national security. In Europe, the primary focus has been on regulating technology imports from abroad to ensure they protect European standards of fundamental human rights, forcing others to comply with this "Brussels effect". While this trichotomy is a bit stereotyped and each jurisdiction incorporates elements of each of these strategies, the outlines are a useful foil for considering the alternative model we want to describe. + + +[^Bradford]: Anu Bradford, *Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology* (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2023). + +The US model has been driven by a broad trend widely documented since the 1970s for government and the civil sector to disengage from the economy and technology development, focusing instead on "welfare" and national defense functions.[^Yergin] Despite pioneering the ARPANET, the US privatized almost all further development of personal computing, operating systems, physical and social networking, and cloud infrastructure.[^Tarnoff] As the private monopolies predicted by J.C.R. Licklider (Lick) came to fill these spaces, US regulators primarily responded with antitrust actions that, while influencing market dynamics in a few cases (such as the Microsoft actions) were generally understood as too little too late.[^Lick] In particular, they are understood as having allowed monopolistic dominance or tight oligopoly to emerge in the search, smartphone application, cloud services, and several operating systems markets. More recently, American antitrust regulators under the leadership of the "New Brandeis" movement have doubled down on the primary use of antitrust instruments with limited success in court and have seen the challenges of emerging monopolies only expand in the market for chips and generative foundation models.[^NewBrandeis] + +[^Yergin]: Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, *The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy* (New York: Touchstone, 2002). +[^Tarnoff]: Tarnoff, op. cit. +[^Lick]: Licklider, "Comptuers and Government", op. cit. Thomas Philippon, *The Great Reversal* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019). +[^NewBrandeis]:Lina Khan, "The New Brandeis Movement: America’s Antimonopoly Debate", *Journal of European Competition Law and Practice* 9, no. 3 (2018): 131-132. Akush Khandori, "Lina Khan's Rough Year," *New York Magazine Intelligencer* December 12, 2023 at https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/12/lina-khans-rough-year-running-the-federal-trade-commission.html. + +The primary rival model to the US has been the PRC, where the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has drafted a series of Five-Year plans that have [increasingly in recent years](https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/) directed a variety of levers of state power to invest in and shape the direction of technology development.[^Plan] These coordinated regulatory actions, party-driven directives to domestic technology companies, and primarily government-driven investments in research and development have dramatically steered the direction of Chinese technology development in recent years away from commercial and consumer applications towards hard and physical technology, national security, chip development, and surveillance technologies. Investment that has paralleled the US, such as into large foundation models, has been tightly and directly steered by government, ensuring consistency with priorities on censorship and monitoring of dissent. A consistent crackdown on business activity not forming part of this vision has led to a dramatic fall in activity in much of the Chinese technology sector in recent years, especially around financial technology including web3. + +[^Plan]: Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, *14th Five-Year Plan*, March 2021; translation available at https://cset.georgetown.edu/publication/china-14th-five-year-plan/. + +In contrast to the US and the PRC, the European Union (EU) and the United Kingdom (UK) have (despite a few notable exceptions) primarily acted as importers of technical frameworks produced by these two geopolitical powers. The EU has tried to harness its bargaining power in that role, however, to act as a "regulatory powerhouse", intervening to protect the interests of human rights that it fears the other two powers often ignore in their race for technological supremacy. This has included setting the global standard for privacy regulation with their [General Data Protection Regulation](https://gdpr-info.eu/), taking the lead on the regulation of generative foundation models (GFMs) with their [AI Act](https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/the-act/), and helping shape the standards for competitive marketplaces with a series of recent ex-ante competition regulations including the [Digital Services Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/digital-services-act-package), the [Digital Markets Act](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en) and the [Data Act](https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/data-act). While these have not defined an alternative positive technological model, they have constrained and shaped the behavior of both US and Chinese firms who seek to sell into the European market. The EU also aspires to tight interoperability across the markets they serve, often leading to copycat legislation in other jurisdictions. + +### A road less traveled + +Just as Taiwan's Yushan (Jade) Mountain rises from the intersection of the Eurasian and Pacific tectonic plates, the policy approach we surveyed in our [Life of a Digital Democracy](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-2/eng/?mode=dark) chapter from its peak arises from the intersection of the philosophies behind these three digital empires as illustrated in Figure A. From the US model, Taiwan has drawn the emphasis on a dynamic, decentralized, free, entrepreneurial ecosystem open to the world that generates scalable and exportable technologies, especially within the open-source ecosystem. From the European model, it has drawn a focus on human rights and democracy as the fundamental aspirations both for the development of basic digital public infrastructure and on which the rest of the digital ecosystem depends. From the PRC model, it has drawn the importance of public investment to proactively advance technology, steering it toward societal interests. + +
+Figure shows reshaped flags of the People's Republic of China, the United States of America and the European Union as if they were continental shelves, intersecting at a central island of Taiwan, topped by Yushan. The PRC is symbolized by a puppeteer, the US by a child running wild, and Europe by a traffic cop. Taiwan, in the center, is symbolized by people collaborating. + +**
Figure 7-0-A. An illustration of how the Taiwan policy model emerges from the intersection of PRC, US, and EU competing alternatives. Source: generated by authors, harnessing logos from the Noun Project by Gan Khoon Lay, Alexis Lilly, Adrien Coquet, and Rusma Trari Handini under CC BY 3.0 at https://thenounproject.com/.
** + +
+

+ +Together these add up to a model where the public sector's primary role is *active investment and support* to empower and protect *privately complemented but civil society-led, technology development* whose goal is *proactively* building a digital stack that *embodies in protocols principles of human rights and democracy*. + +The Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan is a prime example of this unique model, blending public sector support with civil society innovation. Since its inception in 2018, this annual event has drawn thousands of social innovators and public servants, as well as teams from numerous countries, all collaborating to enhance Taiwan's ⿻ infrastructure. Each year, five outstanding teams are honored with a presidential commitment to support their initiatives in the upcoming fiscal year — elevating successful local-scale experiments to the level of national infrastructure projects. + +A key feature of the Presidential Hackathon is its use of quadratic voting for public participation in selecting the top 20 teams. This elevates the event beyond mere competition, transforming it into a powerful coalition-building platform for civil society leadership. For instance, environmental groups focused on monitoring water and air pollution saw their contributions gain national prominence through the Civil IoT project — backed by a significant investment of USD $160 million — showcasing how the Taiwan model effectively amplifies the impact and reach of grassroots initiatives. + +### Lessons from the past + +Of course, the "Taiwan model" did not emerge *de novo* over the last decade. Instead, as we have highlighted above, it built on the synthesis of the Taiwanese tradition of public support for cooperative enterprise and civil society (see our [A View from Yushan](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/2-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter) with the model that built the internet at the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which we highlighted in [The Lost Dao](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/3-3/eng/). At a moment when the US and many other advanced economies are turning away from "neoliberalism" and towards "industrial policy", the ARPA story holds crucial lessons and cautions. + +On the one hand, ARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) led by Lick is perhaps the most successful example of industrial policy in American and perhaps world history. IPTO provided seed funding for the development of a network of university-based computer interaction projects at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford, University of California Berkeley, Carnegie Technical Schools (now Carnegie Mellon University or CMU), and University of California Los Angeles. Among the remarkable outcomes of these investments were: + +1. The development of this research network into the seeds of what became the modern internet. +2. The development of the groups making up this network into many of the first, and still the among the most prominent, computer science and computer engineering departments in the world. +3. The development around these universities of the leading regional digital innovation hubs in the world, including Silicon Valley and the Boston Route 128 corridor. + +Yet while these technology hubs have become the envy and aspiration of (typically unsuccessful) regional development and industrial policy around the world, it is critical to remember how fundamentally different the aspirations underpinning Lick's vision were from those of his imitators. + +Where the standard goal of industrial policy is directly to achieve outcomes like the development of a Silicon Valley, this was not Lick's intention. He was instead focused on developing a vision of the future of computing grounded in human-computer symbiosis, attack-resilient networking, and the computer as a communication device. ⿻ builds closely on Lick's very much unfinished vision. Lick selected participating universities not based on an interest in regional economic development, but rather to maximize the chances of achieving his vision of the future of computing. + + +Industrial policy often aims at creating large-scale, industrial "nation champions" and is often viewed in contrast to antitrust and competition policies, which typically aim to constrain excessively concentrated industrial power. As Lick described in his 1980 "Computers and Government" and in contrast to both of these traditions, the IPTO effort took the rough goals of antitrust (ensuring the possibility of an open and decentralized marketplace) but applied the tools of industrial policy (active public investment) to achieve them. Rather than constraining the winners of predigital market competition, IPTO aimed to create a network infrastructure on which the digital world would play out in such a way as to avoid undue concentrations of power. It was the failure to sustain this investment through the 1970s and beyond that Lick predicted would lead to the monopolization of the critical functions of digital life by what he at the time described as "IBM" but turned out to be the dominant technology platforms of today: Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. Complementing this approach, rather than directly fostering the development of private, for-profit industry as most industrial policy does, Lick supported the civil society-based (primarily university-driven) development of basic infrastructure that would support the defense, government, and private sectors.[^Lick2] + +[^Lick2]: Licklider, "Computers and Government", op. cit. + +While Lick's approach mostly played out at universities, given they were the central locus of the development of advanced computing at the time, it contrasted sharply with the traditional support of fundamental, curiosity-driven research of funders like the US National Science Foundation. He did not offer support for general academic investigation and research, but rather to advance a clear mission and vision: building a network of easily accessible computing machines that enabled communication and association over physical and social distance, interconnecting and sharing resources with other networks to enable scalable cooperation. + +Yet while dictating this mission, Lick did not prejudge the right components to achieve it, instead establishing a network of "coopetitive" research labs, each experimenting and racing to develop prototypes of different components of these systems that could then be standardized in interaction with each other and spread across the network. Private sector collaborators played important roles in contributing to this development, including Bolt Beranek and Newman (where Lick served as Vice President just before his role at IPTO and which went on to build a number of prototype systems for the internet) and Xerox PARC (where many of the researchers Lick supported later assembled and continued their work, especially after federal funding diminished). Yet, as is standard in the development and procurement of infrastructure and public works in a city, these roles were components of an overall vision and plan developed by the networked, multi-sectoral alliance that constituted ARPANET. Contrast this with a model primarily developed and driven in the interest of private corporations, the basis for most personal computing and mobile operating systems, social networks, and cloud infrastructures. + + +As we have noted repeatedly above, we need not only look back to the "good old days" for ARPANET or Taiwan for inspiration. India's development of the "[India Stack](https://indiastack.org/)" has many similar characteristics.[^Indiastack] More recently, the EU has been developing initiatives including [European Digital Identity](https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en)and [Gaia-X](https://gaia-x.eu/). Jurisdictions as diverse as [Brazil](https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/financialstability/pix_en) and [Singapore](https://www.abs.org.sg/consumer-banking/fast) have experimented successfully with similar approaches. While each of these initiatives has strengths and weaknesses, the idea that a public mission aimed at creating infrastructure that empowers decentralized innovation in collaboration with civil society and participation but not dominance from the private sector is increasingly a pattern, often labeled "digital public infrastructure" (DPI). To a large extent, we are primarily advocating for this approach to be scaled up and become the central approach to the development of global ⿻ society. Yet for this to occur, the ARPA and Taiwan models need to be updated and adjusted for this potentially dramatically increased scale and ambition. + +[^Indiastack]: Vivek Raghavan, Sanjay Jain and Pramod Varma, "India Stack—Digital Infrastructure as Public Good", *Communications of the ACM* 62, no. 11: 76-81. + +### A new ⿻ order + +The key reason for an updated model is that there are basic elements of the ARPA model that are a poor fit for the shape of contemporary digital life, as Lick began realizing as early as 1980. While it was a multisectoral effort, ARPA was centered around the American military-industrial complex and its collaborators in the American academy. This made sense in the context of the 1960s, when the US was one of two major world powers, scientific funding and mission was deeply tied to its stand-off with the Soviet Union, and most digital technology was being developed in the academy. As Lick observed, however, even by the late 1970s this was already becoming a poor fit. Today's world is (as discussed above) much more multi-polar even in its development of leading DPI. The primary civil technology developers are in the open-source community, private companies dominate much of the digital world, and military applications are only one aspect of the public's vision for digital technology, which increasingly shapes every aspect of contemporary life. To adapt, a vision of ⿻ infrastructure for today must engage the public in setting the mission of technology through institutions like digital ministries, network transnationally and harness open-source technology, as well as redirect the private sector, more effectively. + +Lick and the ARPANET collaborators shaped an extraordinary vision that laid the groundwork for the internet and ⿻. Yet Lick saw that this could not ground the legitimacy of his project for long; as we highlighted central to his aspirations was that "decisions about the development and exploitation of computer technology must be made not only 'in the public interest' but in the interest of giving the public itself the means to enter into the decision-making processes that will shape their future." Military technocracy cannot be the primary locus for setting the agenda if ⿻ is to achieve the legitimacy and public support necessary to make the requisite investments to center ⿻ infrastructure. Instead, we will need to harness the full suite of ⿻ technologies we have discussed above to engage transnational publics in reaching an overlapping consensus on a mission that can motivate a similarly concerted effort to IPTO's. These tools include ⿻ competence education to make every citizen feel empowered to shape the ⿻ future, cultural institutions like Japan's [Miraikan](https://www.miraikan.jst.go.jp/en/) that actively invite citizens into long-term technology planning, ideathons where citizens collaborate on future envisioning and are supported by governments and charities to build these visions into media that can be more broadly consumed, [alignment assemblies](https://cip.org/alignmentassemblies) and other augmented deliberations on the direction of technology and more. + + +Digital (hopefully soon, ⿻) ministries, emerging worldwide, are proving to be a more natural forum for setting visionary goals in a participatory way, surpassing traditional military hosts. A well-known example is Ukraine's [Mykhailo Fedorov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykhailo_Fedorov), the [Minister of Digital Transformation](https://www.kmu.gov.ua/en/yevropejska-integraciya/coordination/cifrova-transformaciya) since 2019. Taiwan was a forerunner in this domain as well, appointing a digital minister in 2016 and establishing a formal [Ministry of Digital Affairs](https://moda.gov.tw/en/) in 2022. Japan, recognizing the urgency of digitalization during the pandemic, founded its [Digital Agency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Agency) at the cabinet level in 2021, inspired by discussions with Taiwan. The EU has increasingly formalized its digital portfolio under the leadership of [Executive Vice President of the European Commission for a Europe Fit for the Digital Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Vice_President_of_the_European_Commission_for_A_Europe_Fit_for_the_Digital_Age) [Margrethe Vestager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager), who helped inspire both the popular television series [Borgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borgen_(TV_series)) and the middle name of the daughter of one of this book's authors.[^Vestager] + +[^Vestager]: Danny Hakim, "The Danish Politician Who Accused Google of Antitrust Violations", *New York Times* April 15, 2015. + +These ministries, inherently collaborative, work closely with other government sectors and international bodies. In 2023, the [G20 digital ministers identified DPI](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure/) as a key focus for worldwide cooperation, aligning with the UN global goals.[^Planning] In contrast to institutions like ARPA, digital ministries offer a more fitting platform for initiating international missions that involve the public and civil society. As digital challenges become central to global security, more nations are likely to appoint digital ministers, fostering an open, connected digital community. + +Yet national homes for ⿻ infrastructure constitute only a few of the poles holding up its tent. There is no country today that can or should alone be the primary locus for such efforts. They must be built as at least international and probably transnational networks, just as the internet is. Digital ministers, as their positions are created, must themselves form a network that can provide international support to this work and connect nation-based nodes just as ARPANET did for university-based nodes. Many of the open-source projects participating will not themselves have a single primary national presence, spanning many jurisdictions and participating as a transnational community, to be respected on terms that will in some cases be roughly equal to those of national digital ministries. Consider, for example, the relationship of rough equality between the Ethereum community and the Taiwanese Ministry of Digital Affairs. + +Exclusively high-level government-to-government relationships are severely limited by the broader state of current international relations. Many of the countries where the internet has flourished have at times had troubled relationships with other countries where it has flourished. Many civil actors have stronger transnational relationships than their governments would agree to support at an intergovernmental level, mirroring consistent historical patterns where civil connections through, for example, religion and advocacy of human rights have created a stronger foundation for cooperation than international relations alone. Technology, for better or worse, often crosses borders and boundaries of ideology more easily than treaties can be negotiated. For example, web3 communities and civic technology organizations like g0v and RadicalxChange have significant presences even in countries that are not widely understood as "democratic" in their national politics. Similar patterns at larger scales have been central to the transnational environmental, human rights, religious and other movements.[^Wendt] + +While there is no necessary path from such interactions to broader democratization, it would also be an important mistake to miss the opportunity to expand the scope of interoperation in areas where it is possible while waiting for full government-to-government alignment. In her book *A New World Order*, leading international relations scholar Anne-Marie Slaughter sketched how such transnational policy and civil networks will increasingly complement and collaborate with governments around the world and form a fabric of transnational collaboration.[^Slaughter] This fabric or network could be more effective than current international bodies like the United Nations. As such we should expect (implicit) support for these kinds of initiatives to be as important to the role of digital ministries as are their direct relationships with one another. + +[^Wendt]: Alexander Wendt, *Social Theory of International Politics* (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999). For a recent case study of the role of religion in Middle East cooperation, see Johnnie Moore, "Evangelical Track II Diplomacy in Arab and Israeli Peacemaking", Liberty University dissertation (2024). +[^Slaughter]: Anne-Marie Slaughter, *A New World Order* (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). This book has a special place in one of our hearts, as obtaining a prerelease signed copy was the first birthday present one author gave to the woman who became his wife. + + +Some of the transnational networks that will form the key complements to digital ministries may be academic collaborations. Yet the element of the digital ecosystem most neglected by governments today is not academia, which still receives billions of dollars of research support. Instead, it is the largely ignored world of open-source and other non-profit, mission-driven technology developers. As we have extensively discussed, these already provide the backbone of much of the global technology stack. Yet they receive virtually no measurable financial support from governments and very little from charities, despite their work belonging (mostly) fully to the public domain and their being developed mostly in the public interest. + +Furthermore, this sector is in many ways better suited to the development of infrastructure than academic research, much as public infrastructure in the physical world is generally not built by academia. Academic research is heavily constrained by disciplinary foci and boundaries that civil infrastructure that is broadly usable is unlikely to respect. Academic careers depend on citation, credit, and novelty in a way that is unlikely to align with the best aspirations for infrastructure, which often can and should be invisible, "boring" and as easily interoperable with (rather than "novel" in contrast to) other infrastructure as possible. Academic research often focuses on a degree and disciplinary style of rigor and persuasiveness that differs in kind from the ideal user experience. While public support for academic research is crucial and, in some areas, academic projects can contribute to ⿻ infrastructure, governments and charities should not primarily look to the academic research sector. And while academic research receives hundreds of billions of dollars in funding globally annually, open-source communities have likely received less than two billion dollars in their entire history, accounting for known sources as we illustrate in Figure B. Many of these concerns have been studied and highlighted by the "[decentralized science](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9)" movement.[^DeSci] + +
+Figure compares cumulative historical funding of OSS projects v. venture capital, illustrating that the latter is roughly 3 orders of magnitude larger. + +** Figure 7-0-B. Comparing known funding of open-source software and venture capital investment. Source: Chart by authors, sources various see footnote.[^Sources] ** + +
+

+ +[^Sources]: Jessica Lord, "What's New with GitHub Sponsors", *GitHub Blog*, April 4, 2023 at https://github.blog/2023-04-04-whats-new-with-github-sponsors/. GitCoin impact report at https://impact.gitcoin.co/. Kevin Owocki, "Ethereum 2023 Funding Flows: Visualizing Public Goods Funding from Source to Destination" at https://practicalpluralism.github.io/. Open Collective, "Fiscal Sponsors. We need you!" *Open Collective Blog* March 1, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/fiscal-sponsors-we-need-you/. Optimism Collective, "RetroPGF Round 3", *Optimism Docs* January 2024 at https://community.optimism.io/docs/governance/retropgf-3/#. ProPublica, "The Linux Foundation" at https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/460503801. + + +[^DeSci]: Sarah Hamburg, "Call to Join the Decentralized Science Movement", *Nature* 600, no. 221 (2021): Correspondence at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03642-9. + +Furthermore, open-source communities are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what may be possible for public-interested, civil society-driven technology development. Organizations like the [Mozilla](https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/) and [Wikimedia](https://wikimediafoundation.org/) Foundations, while primarily interacting with and driving open-source projects, have significant development activities beyond pure open-source code development that have made their offerings much more accessible to the world. Furthermore, there is no necessary reason why public interest technology need inherit all the features of open-source code. + + + +Some organizations developing generative foundation models, such as [OpenAI](https://openai.com/charter) and [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust), have legitimate concerns about simply making these models freely available but are explicitly dedicated to developing and licensing them in the public interest and are structured to not exclusively maximize profit to ensure they stay true to these missions.[^OAI] Whether they have, given the demands of funding and the limits of their own vision, managed to be ideally true to this aspiration or not, one can certainly imagine both shaping organizations like this to ensure they can achieve these goals using ⿻ technologies and structuring public policy to ensure more organizations like this are central to the development of core ⿻ infrastructure. Other organizations may develop non-profit ⿻ infrastructure but wish to charge for elements of it (just as some highways have tolls to address congestion and maintenance) while others may have no proprietary claim but wish to ensure sensitive and private data are not just made publicly available. Fostering a ⿻ ecosystem of organizations that serve ⿻ publics including but not limited to open source models will be critical to moving beyond the limits of the academic ARPA model. Luckily a variety of ⿻ technologies are available to policymakers to foster such an ecosystem. + +[^OAI]: OpenAI, "OpenAI Charter", *OpenAI Blog* April 9, 2018 at https://openai.com/charter. Anthropic, "The Long-Term Benefit Trust", *Anthropic Blog* September 19, 2023 at https://www.anthropic.com/news/the-long-term-benefit-trust. + + +Furthermore, whatever the ideal structures, it is unlikely that such public interest institutions will simply substitute for the large, private digital infrastructure built up over the last decades. Many social networks, cloud infrastructures, single-sign-on architectures, and so forth would be wasteful to simply scrap. Instead it likely makes sense to harness these investments towards the public interest by pairing public investment with agreements to shift governance to respect public input in much the way we discussed in our chapters on Voting, Media and Workplace. This closely resembles the way that a previous wave of economic democracy reform (with which Dewey was closely associated) did not simply out-compete privately created power generation, but instead sought to bring it under a network of partially local democratic control through utility boards. Many leaders in the tech world refer to their platforms as "utilities", "infrastructure" or "public squares"; it stands to reason that part of a program of ⿻ digital infrastructure will be reforming them so they truly act as such. + + +### ⿻ regulation + +To allow the flourishing of such an ecosystem will depend on reorienting legal, regulatory, and financial systems to empower these types of organizations. Tax revenue will need to be raised, ideally in ways that are not only consistent with but actually promote ⿻ directly, to make them socially and financially sustainable. + +The most important role for governments and intergovernmental networks will arguably be one of coordination and standardization. Governments, being the largest actor in most national economies, can shape the behavior of the entire digital ecosystem based on what standards they adopt, what entities they purchase from and the way they structure citizens' interactions with public services. This is the core, for example, of how the India Stack became so central to the private sector, which followed the lead of the public sector and thus the civil projects they supported. + +Yet laws are also at the center of defining what types of structures can exist, what privileges they have and how rights are divided between different entities. Open-source organizations now struggle as they aim to maintain simultaneously their non-profit orientation and an international presence. Organizations like the [Open Collective Foundation](https://opencollective.com/foundation) were created almost exclusively for the purpose of allowing them to do so and helped support this project, but despite taking a substantial cut of project revenues [was unable to sustain itself](https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/) and thus is in the process of dissolving as of this writing. The competitive disadvantage of Third-Sector technology providers could hardly be starker.[^OCFdiss] Many other forms of innovative, democratic, transnational organization, like Distributed Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) constantly run into legal barriers that only a few jurisdictions like the [State of Wyoming](https://www.wyoleg.gov/2024/Introduced/SF0050.pdf) have just begun to address. While some of the reasons for these are legitimate (to avoid financial scams, etc.), much more work is needed to establish legal frameworks that support and defend transnational democratic non-profit organizational forms. + +[^OCFdiss]: Open Collective Team, "Open Collective Official Statement - OCF Dissolution" February 28, 2024 at https://blog.opencollective.com/open-collective-official-statement-ocf-dissolution/. + +Other organizational forms likely need even further support. Data coalitions that aim to collectively protect the data rights of creators or those with relevantly collective data interests, as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter, will need protection similar to unions and other collective bargaining organizations that they not only do not have at present but which many jurisdictions (like the EU) may effectively prevent them from having, given their extreme emphasis on individual rights in data. Just as labor law evolved to empower collective bargaining for workers, the law will have to evolve to allow data workers to collectively exercise their rights in order to avoid either their being disadvantaged relative to concentrated model builders or so disparate as to offer insuperable barriers to ambitious data collaboration. + +Beyond organizational forms, legal and regulatory changes will be critical to empowering a fair and productive use of data for shared goals. Traditional intellectual property regimes are highly rigid, focused on the degree of "transformativeness" of a use that risk either subjecting all model development to severe and unworkable limitations or depriving creators of the moral and financial rights they need to sustain their work that is so critical to the function of these models. New standards need to be developed by judges, legislators, and regulators in close collaboration with technologists and publics that account for the complex and partial way in which a variety of data informs the output of models and ensures that the associated value is "back-propagated" to the data creators just as it is to the intermediate data created within the models in the process of training them.[^Holland] New rules like these will build on the reforms to property rights that empowered the re-purposing of radio spectrum and should be developed for a variety of other digital assets as we discussed in our [Property and Contract](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/4-4/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. + +[^Holland]: An interesting line of research suggesting possibility here is that of neural network and genetic algorithm pioneer John H. Holland, who tried to draw direct analogies between networks of firms in an economy linked by markets and neural networks. John H. Holland and John M. Miller, "Artificial Adaptive Agents in Economic Theory", *American Economic Review* 81, no. 2 (1991): 365-370. + +Furthermore, if properly concerted with such a vision, antitrust laws, competition rules, interoperability mandates, and financial regulations have an important role to play in encouraging the emergence of new organizational forms and the adaptation of existing ones. Antitrust and competition law is intended to ensure concentrated commercial interests cannot abuse the power they accumulate over customers, suppliers, and workers. Giving direct control over a firm to these counterparties is a natural way to achieve this objective without the usual downsides in competition policy of inhibiting scaled collaboration. ⿻ technologies offer natural means to instantiate meaningful voice for these stakeholders as we discussed in the [Workplace](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/6-1/eng/?mode=dark) chapter. It would be natural for antitrust authorities to increasingly consider mandating such governance reforms as alternative remedies to anticompetitive conduct or mergers and to consider governance representation as a mitigating factor in evaluating the necessity of punitive action.[^econdem] + +[^econdem]: Hitzig et al., op. cit. + +Mandating interoperability, in cooperation with standard-setting processes that develop the meaning and shape of these standards, is a critical lever to make such standards workable and avoid dominance by an illegitimate private monopoly. Financial regulations help define what kinds of governance are acceptable in various jurisdictions and have unfortunately, especially in the US and UK, weighed heavily towards damaging and monopolistic one-share-one-vote rules. Financial regulatory reform should encourage experimentation with more inclusive governance systems such as Quadratic and other ⿻ voting forms that account for and address concentrations of power continuously, rather than offsetting the tendencies of one-share-one-vote to raiding with bespoke provisions like "poison pills".[^QVcorp] They should also accommodate and support worker, supplier, environmental counterparty, and customer voice and steer concentrated asset holders who might otherwise have systemic monopolistic effects towards employing similar tools. + +[^QVcorp]: Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl, "Quadratic Voting as Efficient Corporate Governance", *University of Chicago Law Review* 81, no. 1 (2014): 241-272. + + +### ⿻ taxes + +However, rules, laws, and regulations can only offer support to positive frameworks that arise from investment, innovation, and development. Without those to complement, they will always be on the defense, playing catch up to a world defined by private innovation. Thus, public and multisectoral investment is the core they must complement and making such investments obviously requires revenue, thus naturally raising the question of how it can be raised to make ⿻ infrastructure self-sustaining. While directly charging for services largely reverts to the traps of the private sector, relying primarily on "general revenue" is unlikely to be sustainable or legitimate. Furthermore, there are many cases where taxes can themselves help encourage ⿻. It is to taxes of this sort that we now turn our attention. + +The digital sector has proven one of the most challenging to tax because many of the relevant sources of value are created in a geographically ambiguous way or are otherwise intangible. For example, data and networks of collaboration and know-how among employees at companies, often spanning national borders, can often be booked in countries with low corporate tax rates even if they mostly occur in jurisdictions with higher rates. Many free services come with an implicit bargain of surveillance, leading neither the service nor the implicit labor to be taxed as it would be if this price were explicit. While [recent reforms](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/oecd-minimum-tax-rate/) to create a minimum corporate tax rate agreed by the G20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are likely to help, they are not tightly adaptive to the digital environment and thus will likely only partly address the challenge. + +Yet while from one side these present a challenge, on the other hand they offer an opportunity for taxes to be raised in an explicitly transnational way that can accrue to supporting ⿻ infrastructure rather than, in a fairly arbitrary way, to wherever the corporation may choose to domicile. Ideally, such taxes should aim to satisfy as fully as possible several criteria: + +1. Directly ⿻ (D⿻): Digital taxes should ideally not merely raise revenue, but directly encourage or enact ⿻ aims themselves.[^Ext] This ensures that the taxes are not a drag on the system, but part of the solution. +2. Jurisdictional alignment (JA): The jurisdictional network in which taxes are and can naturally be raised should correspond to the jurisdiction that disposes of these taxes. This ensures that the coalition required to enact the taxes is similar to that required to establish the cooperation that disposes of the revenue. +3. Revenue alignment (RA): The sources of revenue should correspond to the value generated by the shared value created by using the revenue, ensuring that those disposing of the revenue have a natural interest in the success of their mission. It also ensures that those who pay for the tax generally benefit from the goods created with it, lessening political opposition to the tax. +4. Financial adequacy (FA): The tax should be sufficient to fund the required investment. + +The principle of "circular investment" that we described in our [Social Markets](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-7/eng/?mode=dark) chapter suggests that eventually they can all be generally jointly satisfied. The value created by supermodular shared goods eventually must accrue somewhere with submodular returns, which can and should be recycled back to support those values' sources. Extracting this value can generally be done in a way that reduces market power and thus actually encourages assets to be more fully used. + +Despite this theoretical ideal, in practice identifying practicable taxes to achieve it is likely to be as much a process of technological trial and error as any of the technological challenges we discuss in the Democracy part of the book. Yet there are a number of promising recent proposals that seem plausibly close to fulfilling many of these objectives as we iterate further: + +1. Concentrated computational asset tax: Application of a progressive (either in rate or by giving a generous exemption) common ownership tax to digital assets such as computation, storage, and some kinds of data.[^Siegmann] +2. Digital land tax: Taxing the commercialization or holding of scarce digital space, including taxes on online advertising, holding of spectrum licenses and web address space in a more competitive way and, eventually, taxing exclusive spaces in virtual worlds.[^Romer] +3. Implicit data/attention exchange tax: Taxes on implicit data or attention exchanges involved in "free" services online, which would otherwise typically accrue labor and value-added taxes. +4. Digital asset taxes: Common ownership taxes on pure-digital assets, such as digital currencies, utility tokens, and non-fungible tokens. +5. Commons-derived data tax: Profits earned from models trained on unlicensed, commons-derived data could be taxed. +6. Flexible/gig work taxes: Profits of companies that primarily employ "gig workers" and thus avoid many of the burdens of traditional labor law could be taxed.[^Gray] + +[^Siegmann]: See the ongoing work developing this idea of Charlotte Siegmann, "AI Use-Case Specific Compute Subsidies and Quotas" (2024) at https://docs.google.com/document/d/11nNPbBctIUoURfZ5FCwyLYRtpBL6xevFi8YGFbr3BBA/edit#heading=h.mr8ansm7nxr8. +[^Romer]: Paul Romer, "A Tax That Could Fix Big Tech", *New York Times* May 6, 2019 advocated related ideas. +[^Gray]: Gray and Suri, op. cit. + + +While a much more detailed policy analysis would be needed to comprehensively "score" these taxes according to our criteria above, a few illustrations will hopefully illustrate the design thinking pattern behind these suggestions. A concentrated computational asset tax aims simultaneously to encourage more complete use of digital assets (as any common ownership tax will), deter concentrated cloud ownership (thus increasing competition while decreasing potential security threats), and to drag on the incentives for accumulating the kind of computational resources that may allow training of potentially dangerous-scale models outside public oversight, all instantiating D⿻. Most forms of digital land tax would naturally accrue not to any nation-state, but to the transnational entities that support internet infrastructure, access and content achieving JA. An implicit data exchange tax would provide a clearer signal of the true value being created in digital economies and encourage infrastructure facilitating this to maximize that value, achieving RA. + +Of course, these are just the first suggestions and much more analysis and imagination will help expand the space of possibilities. However, given that these examples line up fairly closely with the primary business models in today's digital world (viz. cloud, advertising, digital asset sales, etc.) it seems plausible that, with a bit of elaboration, they could be used to raise a significant fraction of value flowing through that world and thus achieve the FA necessary to support a scale of investment that would fundamentally transform the digital economy. + +While this may seem a political non-starter, an illuminating precedent is the gas tax in the US, which while initially opposed by the trucking industry was eventually embraced by that industry when policymakers agreed to set aside the funds to support the building of road infrastructure.[^Gas] Though the tax obviously put a direct drain on the industry, its indirect support for the building of roads was seen to more than offset this by providing the substrate truckers needed for their work. Some would, rightly, object that there may have been even better-targeted taxes for this purpose (such as road congestion charges), but gas taxes also carried ancillary benefits in discouraging pollution and were generally well-targeted at the primary users of roads at a time when charging for congestion might have been costly. + +[^Gas]: John Chynoweth Burnham, "The Gasoline Tax and the Automobile Revolution" *Mississippi Valley Historical Review* 48, no. 3 (1961): 435-459. + + +It is just possible to imagine assembling today an appropriate coalition of businesses and governments to support such an ambitious set of digital infrastructure supporting taxes. Doing so would require correct set-asides of raised funds, more clever tax instruments harnessing the abundant data online, sophisticated, and low friction means of collecting taxes, careful harnessing of appropriate but not universal jurisdictions to impose and collect the taxes in a way that cajoles others to follow along and, of course, a good deal of public support and pressure as we discuss below. Effective policy leadership and public mobilization should, hopefully, be able to achieve these and create the conditions for supporting ⿻ infrastructure. + + +### Sustaining our future + + +To embody ⿻, the network of organizations that are supported by such resources cannot be a *de novo* monolithic global government. Instead, it must be ⿻ itself both in its structure and in its connection to existing fora to realize the commitments of ⿻ to uplift diversity and collective cooperation. While we aspire to basically transform the character of digital society, we cannot achieve ⿻ if we seek to tear down or undermine existing institutions. Our aim should be, quite the reverse, to see the building of fundamental ⿻ infrastructure as a platform that can allow the digital pie to dramatically expand and diversify, lifting as many boats as possible while also expanding the space for experimentation and growth. + +Different elements of our vision require very different degrees of government engagement. Many of the most intimate technologies, for example, such as [immersive shared reality](https://www.plurality.net/v/chapters/5-2/eng/?mode=dark) intend to operate at relatively intimate scales and thus should be naturally developed in a relatively "private" way (both in funding models and in data structures), with some degree of public support and regulation steering them away from potential pitfalls. The most ambitious reforms to the structure of markets, on the other hand, will require reshaping basic governmental and legal structures, in many cases cutting across national boundaries. Development of the fundamental protocols on which all of this work rests will require perhaps the greatest degree of coordination but also a great deal of experimentation, fully harnessing the ARPA coopetitive structure as nodes in the network (such as India and Taiwan) compete to export their frameworks into global standards. An effective fabric of ⿻ law, regulation, investment, and control rights will, as much as possible, ensure the existence of a diversity of national and transnational entities capable of matching this variety of needs and deftly match taxes and legal authorities to empower these to serve their relevant roles while interoperating. + +Luckily, while they are dramatically underfunded, often imperfectly coordinated, and lack the ambitious mission we have outlined here, many of the existing transnational structures for digital and internet governance have roughly these features. In short, while specific new capabilities need to be added, funding improved, networks and connections enhanced, and public engagement augmented, the internet is already, as imagined by the ARPANET founders, ⿻ in its structure and governance. More than anything, what needs to be done is build the public understanding of and engagement with this work necessary to uplift, defend, and support it. + +### Organizing change + + +Of course, achieving that is an enormous undertaking. The ideas discussed in this chapter, and throughout this book, are deeply technical and even the fairly dry discussion here barely skims the surface. Very few will deeply engage even with the ideas in this book, much less the much farther-ranging work that will need to be done both in the policy arena and far beyond it in the wide range of research, development, and deployment work that policy world will empower. + + +It is precisely for this reason that "policy" is just one small slice of the work required to build ⿻. For every policy leader, there will have to be dozens, probably hundreds of people building the visions they help articulate. And for each one of those, there will need to be hundreds who, while not focused on the technical concerns, share a general aversion to the default Libertarian and Technocratic directions technology might otherwise go and are broadly supportive of the vision of ⿻. They will have to understand it at more of an emotive, visceral, and/or ideological level, rather than a technical or intellectual one, and build networks of moral support, lived perspectives, and adoption for those at the core of the policy and technical landscape. + + +For them to do so, ⿻ will have to go far beyond a set of creative technologies and intellectual analyses. It will have to become a broadly understood cultural current and social movement, like environmentalism, AI, and crypto, grounded in a deep, both intellectual and social, body of fundamental research, developed and practiced in a diverse and organized set of enterprises and supported by organized political interests. The path there includes, but moves far beyond, policymakers to the world of activism, culture, business, and research. Thus, we conclude by calling on each of you who touches any of these worlds to join us in the project of making this a reality. + + + +[^Planning]: Benjamin Bertelsen and Ritul Gaur, "What We Can Expect for Digital Public Infrastructure in 2024", *World Economic Forum Blog* February 13, 2024 at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2024/02/dpi-digital-public-infrastructure. Especially in the developing world, many countries have ministries of planning that could naturally host or spin off such a function. +[^Ext]: Economists would refer to such taxes as "Pigouvian" taxes on "externalities". While a reasonable way to describe some of the below, as noted in our Markets chapter, externalities may be more the rule than the exception and thus we prefer this alternative formulation. For example, many of these taxes address issues of concentrated market power which do create externalities, but are not usually considered in the scope of Pigouvian taxation. \ No newline at end of file diff --git a/contents/english/7-1-conclusion.md b/contents/english/7-1-conclusion.md index 67e0f683..7e208e22 100644 --- a/contents/english/7-1-conclusion.md +++ b/contents/english/7-1-conclusion.md @@ -12,29 +12,29 @@ Our concrete aspirations match our ambitious vision. By 2030, ⿻ will be as rec Technology is the most powerful force transforming our world. Whether or not we understand its inner workings, deploy it tentatively or voraciously, or agree with the companies and policymakers that have shaped its development to date, it remains our single greatest lever to shape our collective future. -That collective is not simply a group of individuals but a fabric of relationships. Whether you look at it from a scientific, historical, sociological, religious or political point of view, it is increasingly clear that reality is defined not just by who we are, but how we connect. +That collective is not simply a group of individuals but a fabric of relationships. Whether you look at it from a scientific, historical, sociological, religious, or political point of view, it is increasingly clear that reality is defined not just by who we are, but how we connect. Technology drives and defines those connections. From the railroad to the telegraph to the telephone to social media connecting us to old kindergarten friends and new like-minded allies to teleconferencing holding businesses and families together during Covid, we have benefited enormously from technology’s capacity to forge and strengthen human connection while honoring our differences. -Yet, technology has also clearly driven us apart and suppressed our differences. Business models based on a fight for attention have prioritized outrage over curiosity, echo chambers over shared understanding, and proliferated mis- and disinformation. The rapid spread of information online, out of context and against our privacy expectations, has too often eroded our communities, driven out our cultural heritage and created a global monoculture. As a new generation of technologies including GFMs, Web3 and augmented reality spreads through our lives, it promises to radically increase technology’s effects, good and bad. +Yet, technology has also clearly driven us apart and suppressed our differences. Business models based on a fight for attention have prioritized outrage over curiosity, echo chambers over shared understanding, and proliferated mis- and disinformation. The rapid spread of information online, out of context and against our privacy expectations, has too often eroded our communities, driven out our cultural heritage, and created a global monoculture. As a new generation of technologies including GFMs, Web3, and augmented reality spreads through our lives, it promises to radically increase technology’s effects, good and bad. -Thus we stand at a crossroads. Technology could drive us apart, sowing chaos and conflict that bring down social order. It could suppress the human diversity that is its lifeblood, homogenizing us in a singular technical vision. Or it could dramatically enrich our diversity while strengthening the ties across it, harnessing and sustaining the potential energy of ⿻. +Thus we stand at a crossroads. Technology could drive us apart, sowing chaos and conflict that bring down the social order. It could suppress the human diversity that is its lifeblood, homogenizing us in a singular technical vision. Or it could dramatically enrich our diversity while strengthening the ties across it, harnessing and sustaining the potential energy of ⿻. -Some would seek to avoid this choice by slamming on the breaks, decelerating technological progress. Yet, while of course some directions are unwise and there are limits to how rapidly we should proceed into the unknown, the dynamics of competition and geopolitics makes simply slowing progress unlikely to be sustainable. Instead, we face a choice of directions more than velocity. +Some would seek to avoid this choice by slamming on the breaks, decelerating technological progress. Yet, while of course some directions are unwise and there are limits to how rapidly we should proceed into the unknown, the dynamics of competition and geopolitics make simply slowing progress unlikely to be sustainable. Instead, we face a choice of directions more than velocity. -Should we, as Libertarians like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen and Balaji Srinavasan would have us do, liberate individuals to be atomistic agents, free of constraints or responsibilities? Should we, as Technocrats like Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman would have us do, allow technologists to solve our problems, plan our future and distribute to us the material comfort it creates? +Should we, as Libertarians like Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen, and Balaji Srinivasan would have us do, liberate individuals to be atomistic agents, free of constraints or responsibilities? Should we, as Technocrats like Sam Altman and Reid Hoffman would have us do, allow technologists to solve our problems, plan our future, and distribute to us the material comfort it creates? -We say, loudly and clearly, neither! Both chaos and top-down order are the antitheses not just of democracy and freedom, but of all life, complexity and beauty in human society and nature. Life and ⿻ thrive in the narrow corridor on the "edge of chaos". For life on this planet to survive and thrive, it must be the central mission of technology and politics to widen this corridor, to steer us constantly back towards that edge of chaos where growth and ⿻ are possible. That is the aspiration and the imperative of ⿻. +We say, loudly and clearly, neither! Both chaos and top-down order are the antitheses not just of democracy and freedom, but of all life, complexity, and beauty in human society and nature. Life and ⿻ thrive in the narrow corridor on the "edge of chaos". For life on this planet to survive and thrive, it must be the central mission of technology and politics to widen this corridor, to steer us constantly back towards that edge of chaos where growth and ⿻ are possible. That is the aspiration and the imperative of ⿻. -⿻ is thus the third way beyond Libertarianism and Technocracy, just as the life is the third way beyond rigid order and chaos. It is a movement we have perhaps three to five years to set in motion. Within that time frame, a critical mass of the technology that people and companies use every day will have become deeply dependent on "AI" and "the metaverse". At that point, we won’t be able to reverse the *fait accompli* that Technocracy and Libertarianism have generated for us. But between now and then, we can mobilize to re-chart the course: toward a relationship-centered, empowering digital democracy in which diverse groups of people, precisely because they do not agree, are able to cooperate and collaborate to constantly push our imaginations and aspirations forward. +⿻ is thus the third way beyond Libertarianism and Technocracy, just as life is the third way beyond rigid order and chaos. It is a movement we have perhaps three to five years to set in motion. Within that time frame, a critical mass of the technology that people and companies use every day will have become deeply dependent on "AI" and "the metaverse". At that point, we won’t be able to reverse the *fait accompli* that Technocracy and Libertarianism have generated for us. But between now and then, we can mobilize to re-chart the course: toward a relationship-centered, empowering digital democracy in which diverse groups of people, precisely because they do not agree, are able to cooperate and collaborate to constantly push our imaginations and aspirations forward. -Such a pivot will take a whole-of-society mobilization. Businesses, governments, universities, and civil society organizations must demand that our technology deepen and broaden our connections across the many forms of diversity, show us that this is possible, build the tools we need to achieve it and make it a reality. That is the key, and the only path, to strengthening human stability, prosperity, and flourishing into the future. For all that it offers, the internet’s potential for truly transformative progress has never materialized. If we want to realize that potential, we have a brief window of opportunity to act. +Such a pivot will take a whole-of-society mobilization. Businesses, governments, universities, and civil society organizations must demand that our technology deepen and broaden our connections across the many forms of diversity, show us that this is possible, build the tools we need to achieve it, and make it a reality. That is the key, and the only path, to strengthening human stability, prosperity, and flourishing into the future. For all that it offers, the internet’s potential for truly transformative progress has never materialized. If we want to realize that potential, we have a brief window of opportunity to act. ### Promise of ⿻ -Over the last half century, most Western liberal democracies have learned to be helpless in the face of technology. They are intrigued by it and alternately delighted and frustrated by it, but tend to assume that it emerges inexorably, like modernity itself, instead of as the sum of the choices of small groups of engineers. Most citizens in these polities do not believe “we the people” have any ability, much less any right, to influence the direction of the platforms that are the operating system of our lives. +Over the last half-century, most Western liberal democracies have learned to be helpless in the face of technology. They are intrigued by it and alternately delighted and frustrated by it, but tend to assume that it emerges inexorably, like modernity itself, instead of as the sum of the choices of small groups of engineers. Most citizens in these polities do not believe “we the people” have any ability, much less any right, to influence the direction of the platforms that are the operating system of our lives. But we do have the right, and even the duty, to demand better. Some technology pulls us apart and flattens our differences; other technology brings us together and celebrates them. Some fuels our resentment and obedience, some helps us find interdependence. If we mobilize to demand the latter, _⿻ technologies_ that are designed to help us collaborate across difference, we can re-engineer that operating system. @@ -43,41 +43,41 @@ We see our opportunity to act across three horizons: the immediate, the intermed #### Immediate horizon -Some of this change is ripe for action today. Anyone reading this book can explain, recommend and tell its stories to friends and help spread various surrounding media content. Anyone can adopt a range of tools already widely available from meetings in immersive shared reality to open source tools for making collective decisions with their communities. +Some of this change is ripe for action today. Anyone reading this book can explain, recommend, and tell its stories to friends and help spread various surrounding media content. Anyone can adopt a range of tools already widely available from meetings in immersive shared reality to open-source tools for making collective decisions with their communities. -Anyone can support political leaders and organize in political movements around the policy agenda we developed in the previous chapter, and especially political and policy leaders can work together to implement these ideas, as well as near-term political reforms in a ⿻ direction such as ranked-choice or approval voting. Anyone can choose to lean the diet of technology they use towards open source tools and those of companies that adopt and incorporate ⿻ in their work. Business leaders, engineers, product managers at these companies can both build ⿻ technologies into their products in modest ways, employ these tools in their productivity workflows, receive more effective feedback from customers and support public policies that embody them. +Anyone can support political leaders and organize in political movements around the policy agenda we developed in the previous chapter, and especially political and policy leaders can work together to implement these ideas, as well as near-term political reforms in a ⿻ direction such as ranked-choice or approval voting. Anyone can choose to lean the diet of technology they use towards open-source tools and those of companies that adopt and incorporate ⿻ in their work. Business leaders, engineers, and product managers at these companies can both build ⿻ technologies into their products in modest ways, employ these tools in their productivity workflows, receive more effective feedback from customers and support public policies that embody them. Academics can study ⿻ technologies and their impact on the ground today. They can devise rigorous measures to help us know what truly works. They can address key open questions in a range of fields that will allow the design of the next generation of ⿻ technologies and form relationships and collaborations across academic institutions through networks like the Plurality Institute. They can adopt ⿻ in the dissemination of research and peer review. -Cultural leaders, artists, journalists and other communicators can tell the stories of the ⿻ movement, like Oscar-winner Director [Cynthia Wade](https://www.cynthiawade.com/) and Emmy-winning Producer [Teri Whitcraft](https://resolutionproject.org/team/teri-whitcraft/) are doing in a forthcoming documentary. They can incorporate ⿻ in their creative practice, as this book did and as we saw Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon doing. They can immerse citizens in constructive imagining of a more ⿻ future, like Miraikan in Tokyo does. +Cultural leaders, artists, journalists, and other communicators can tell the stories of the ⿻ movement, like Oscar-winner Director [Cynthia Wade](https://www.cynthiawade.com/) and Emmy-winning Producer [Teri Whitcraft](https://resolutionproject.org/team/teri-whitcraft/) are doing in a forthcoming documentary. They can incorporate ⿻ in their creative practice, as this book did and as we saw Mat Dryhurst and Holly Herndon doing. They can immerse citizens in constructive imagining of a more ⿻ future, like Miraikan in Tokyo does. #### Intermediate horizon -With more systemic imagination and ambition, there are opportunities to pursue ⿻ across a more intermediate horizon, reinventing institutions to include more diverse voices, build deeper connections and foster the regeneration of more diversity. Anyone can become part of local ⿻ communities around the world, telling in a wide variety of idioms, languages and forms the potential for a more ⿻ future and inviting friends to participate in co-creating it. Anyone can join what will be increasingly organized political movements explicitly dedicated to ⿻, contribute to a growing range of ⿻ civil and charitable causes, attend a growing number of hackathons and ideathons that help address the local concerns of diverse communities using ⿻. +With more systemic imagination and ambition, there are opportunities to pursue ⿻ across a more intermediate horizon, reinventing institutions to include more diverse voices, build deeper connections, and foster the regeneration of more diversity. Anyone can become part of local ⿻ communities around the world, telling in a wide variety of idioms, languages, and forms the potential for a more ⿻ future and inviting friends to participate in co-creating it. Anyone can join what will be increasingly organized political movements explicitly dedicated to ⿻, contribute to a growing range of ⿻ civil and charitable causes, attend a growing number of hackathons and ideathons that help address the local concerns of diverse communities using ⿻. Policy leaders can form political platforms and perhaps even political parties around comprehensive ⿻ agendas. Regulators and civil servants can deeply embed ⿻ into their practices, improving public engagement and speeding the loop of input. Employees of international and transnational organizations can begin to reform their structure and practices to harness ⿻ and to substantively embody ⿻, moving away from "international trade" to substantive, supermodular international cooperation and standards setting. -Business and more broadly organizational leaders can harness ⿻ to transform their internal operations, customer relations, hiring practice and corporate governance. They can promote more dynamic intrapreneurship by gradually shifting resources and power from siloed hierarchical divisions to emergent dynamic collaborations. They can harness augmented deliberation to facilitate better meetings and better customer research. They can apply generative foundation models (GFMs) to look for more diverse talent and to reorganize their corporate form to make to make it more directly accountable to a wider range of regulators, diffusing social and regulatory tension in the process. +Business and more broadly organizational leaders can harness ⿻ to transform their internal operations, customer relations, hiring practices, and corporate governance. They can promote more dynamic intrapreneurship by gradually shifting resources and power from siloed hierarchical divisions to emergent dynamic collaborations. They can harness augmented deliberation to facilitate better meetings and better customer research. They can apply generative foundation models (GFMs) to look for more diverse talent and to reorganize their corporate form to make it more directly accountable to a wider range of regulators, diffusing social and regulatory tension in the process. -Academics and researchers can form new fields of inquiry around ⿻ and harnessing ⿻ to empower these new collaborations bridging fields like sociology, economics and computer science. They can invent disciplines that regularly train experts in ⿻, teach a new generation of students to employ ⿻ in their work and forge closer relationships with a variety of communities of practice to shorten the loop from research ideation to practical experimentation. +Academics and researchers can form new fields of inquiry around ⿻ and harness ⿻ to empower these new collaborations bridging fields like sociology, economics, and computer science. They can invent disciplines that regularly train experts in ⿻, teach a new generation of students to employ ⿻ in their work, and forge closer relationships with a variety of communities of practice to shorten the loop from research ideation to practical experimentation. -Cultural leaders can reimagine cultural practices harnessing ⿻, creating powerfully empathetic emergent experiences that bridge cultural divides. They can sell this to media organizations that have adopted new business models serving public, civic and business organizations rather than advertisers and end consumers. They can build participatory experiences that extend our ability to jointly design and imagine future, from the concrete design of physical spaces to the detailed interactive back-casting of potential science fiction scenarios. +Cultural leaders can reimagine cultural practices harnessing ⿻, creating powerfully empathetic emergent experiences that bridge cultural divides. They can sell this to media organizations that have adopted new business models serving public, civic, and business organizations rather than advertisers and end consumers. They can build participatory experiences that extend our ability to jointly design and imagine the future, from the concrete design of physical spaces to the detailed interactive back-casting of potential science fiction scenarios. #### Transformative horizon -For those of you with even more expansive vision, we have spent a good deal of this book articulating the kinds of truly transformative ⿻ that could ultimately rewire the way humans communicate and collaborate. This ambition goes to the root of the ⿻ movement’s insight—that personhood, the core unit of democracy, is not merely atomistic or “monistic,” but is also defined by social relationships – and it therefore gives rise to a broader conception of rights, going beyond individual rights to recognize _⿻_ concepts of affiliation, commerce, property, and other building blocks of our society. All these will require fundamental rewriting of a range of technical infrastructures, social relationships and organizing institutions. +For those of you with even more expansive vision, we have spent a good deal of this book articulating the kinds of truly transformative ⿻ that could ultimately rewire the way humans communicate and collaborate. This ambition goes to the root of the ⿻ movement’s insight—that personhood, the core unit of democracy, is not merely atomistic or “monistic,” but is also defined by social relationships – and it therefore gives rise to a broader conception of rights, going beyond individual rights to recognize _⿻_ concepts of affiliation, commerce, property, and other building blocks of our society. All these will require the fundamental rewriting of a range of technical infrastructures, social relationships, and organizing institutions. -Such change cannot come directly, but instead must follow a gradual process of transformation, occurring in a range of social sectors that build on one another. To be truly ⿻, these will need to engage and empower people across many lines of difference, which will in turn require that they understand and can articulate what they want from their future. Cultural creation, like those we have discussed above, will have to increasingly manifest ⿻ in its form and substance to make this possible. This can create broad public understanding and expectation of public steering of the direction of technology and diverse social participation its design. +Such change cannot come directly, but instead must follow a gradual process of transformation, occurring in a range of social sectors that build on one another. To be truly ⿻, these will need to engage and empower people across many lines of difference, which will in turn require that they understand and can articulate what they want from their future. Cultural creation, like those we have discussed above, will have to increasingly manifest ⿻ in its form and substance to make this possible. This can create broad public understanding and expectation of public steering of the direction of technology and diverse social participation in its design. -This foundation of ⿻ imagination across lines of difference can empower social and political organization around such goals. This in turn can allow political leaders to feature such visions as core to their agendas and to make the implementation in the functioning of governments, in their relationship to each other and private entities and in their policy agenda the creation of ⿻. +This foundation of ⿻ imagination across lines of difference can empower social and political organization around such goals. This in turn can allow political leaders to feature such visions as core to their agendas and to make the implementation in the functioning of governments, in their relationship to each other and private entities, and in their policy agenda the creation of ⿻. -Such policies and practices can in turn allow the development of novel technologies basically different, dramatically expanding the scope of the Third Sector and allowing the constant emergence of new social and democratic enterprise transnationally. These emergent enterprises can then take on an increasing range of responsibilities legitimately, given their democratic accountability, and blur the lines of responsibility usually assumed for nation states, building a new ⿻ order. +Such policies and practices can in turn allow the development of novel technologies to be fundamentally different, dramatically expanding the scope of the Third Sector and allowing the constant emergence of new social and democratic enterprise transnationally. These emergent enterprises can then take on an increasing range of responsibilities legitimately, given their democratic accountability, and blur the lines of responsibility usually assumed for nation-states, building a new ⿻ order. Such enterprise can thus rely on new institutions of research and teaching that will cross disciplinary boundaries and the boundaries between knowledge creation and deployment, engaging deeply with such emerging social enterprises. That educational sector will continually produce new technologies that push the boundaries of ⿻, helping build the basis of new social enterprises and forming a base of ideas which will in turn support the progress of cultural imagination on which this all rests. @@ -86,14 +86,16 @@ Thus together culture, politics and activism, business and technology and resear ### Mobilization -This is why, of course, there can be no top-down, one-size-fits-all path to ⿻. What there can be, however – and soon, if this book has its intended effect – are intersecting circles of people, linked together in groups and individuals loosely federated across the globe, who are committed to ⿻ over its foils: Libertarianism and Technocracy. In charting a third course, pluralists are committed to technology strengthening and diversifying relationships, rather than tearing them down, and regenerating diversity, not fostering conformity. Relationships and the love, loss, adversity and achievement are what makes life, not the violence of the jungle manifested in books like *The Lord of the Flies* or the optimization of undifferentiated data points.[^Lord] + +This is why, of course, there can be no top-down, one-size-fits-all path to ⿻. What there can be, however – and soon, if this book has its intended effect -- are intersecting circles of people, linked together in groups and individuals loosely federated across the globe, who are committed to ⿻ over its foils: Libertarianism and Technocracy. In charting a third course, pluralists are committed to technology strengthening and diversifying relationships, rather than tearing them down, and regenerating diversity, not fostering conformity. Relationships and love, loss, adversity, and achievement are what makes life, not the violence of the jungle manifested in books like *The Lord of the Flies* or the optimization of undifferentiated data points.[^Lord] + [^Lord]: William Golding, *The Lord of the Flies* (London: Faber and Faber, 1954). If you believe that the central condition of a thriving, progressing, and righteous society is social diversity, and collaboration across such rich diversity – then come on board. If you believe that technology, the most powerful tool in today’s society, can yet be made to help us flourish, both as individuals and across our multiple, meaningful affiliations – then come on board. If you want to contribute to ⿻’s immediate horizon, intermediate horizon, or truly transformative horizon —or across all of them—you have multiple points of entry. If you work in tech, business, government, academia, civil society, cultural institutions, education, and/or on the home-front, you have limitless ways to make a difference. -This book is just one part of a great tapestry. One author of this book, for example, is also Executive Producer of a forthcoming documentary (mentioned above) about the life of another, which we suppose will reach a far broader audience than this book can; together we have founded another institution to [network academics](https://plurality.institute) working on ⿻, obviously a much narrower audience. While these are just a couple of examples, they illustrate a crucial broader point: for 1000 people to be deeply involved (say in writing the book), they will need each 100 that will read it and they in turn will need each 100 who know about it and are supportive of the general idea. Thus to succeed we need people at wide levels of engagement in mutually supportive relationships. +This book is just one part of a great tapestry. One author of this book, for example, is also the Executive Producer of a forthcoming documentary (mentioned above) about the life of another, which we suppose will reach a far broader audience than this book can; together we have founded another institution to [network academics](https://plurality.institute) working on ⿻, obviously a much narrower audience. While these are just a couple of examples, they illustrate a crucial broader point: for 1000 people to be deeply involved (say in writing the book), they will need each 100 that will read it and they in turn will need each 100 who know about it and are supportive of the general idea. Thus to succeed we need people at wide levels of engagement in mutually supportive relationships. If 1000 people are deeply enough involved with this book to speak about it publicly, 10,000 are part of the community and actively contribute, 100,000 deeply digest the material, 1 million buy or download it, 10 million consume an hour of media content around it, 100 million see a film or other entertaining treatment of a related theme and 1 billion know about and are sympathetic to the aims, we will reach our 2030 goals. -Pluralists are in every country in the world, every sector of the economy. Connect, affiliate, rally, mobilize … and join us, in the deliberate and committed movement to build a more dynamic and harmonious world and let us free the future, together. +Pluralists are in every country in the world, and every sector of the economy. Connect, affiliate, rally, mobilize … and join us, in the deliberate and committed movement to build a more dynamic and harmonious world and let us free the future, together. diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/0-0-\345\220\215\345\256\266\346\216\250\350\226\246.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/0-0-\345\220\215\345\256\266\346\216\250\350\226\246.md" index 75356646..a36d9141 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/0-0-\345\220\215\345\256\266\346\216\250\350\226\246.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/0-0-\345\220\215\345\256\266\346\216\250\350\226\246.md" @@ -24,8 +24,8 @@

-> 唐鳳和她的合作者機智、博學且樂觀地論證，我們可以利用數位技術對抗威權主義，而且可以透過擁抱、而非迴避開放社會的原則來實現。

-— [Anne Applebaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum)，[普立茲獎](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-applebaum)得主，《[民主的黃昏](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621076/twilight-of-democracy-by-anne-applebaum/)》和《[紅色饑荒](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236713/red-famine-by-anne-applebaum/)》作者 +> 《多元宇宙》讀起來像樂觀的科幻小說，卻已經在現實生活中發生！世界各地的民主國家能否跟隨臺灣的腳步，將自由社會升級到數位時代？希望能有個美好的結局。

+— [Joseph Gordon-Levitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Gordon-Levitt)，艾美獎得主，[HITRECORD](https://hitrecord.org/) 創辦人

@@ -34,8 +34,8 @@

-> 長久以來，「多元」與「科技」都被世俗化勢力作為利劍使用。值得注意的是，在這些作者的巧手下，它們在此被重新鍛造成信仰者的盾牌。

-— [Johnnie Moore Jr. 牧師](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Moore_Jr.)，[基督教領袖大會](https://congressofchristianleaders.com/)主席，[美國國際宗教自由委員會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Commission_on_International_Religious_Freedom)前任委員，第 45 任美國總統唐納・川普的非正式顧問 +> 唐鳳和她的合作者機智、博學且樂觀地論證，我們可以利用數位技術對抗威權主義，而且可以透過擁抱、而非迴避開放社會的原則來實現。

+— [Anne Applebaum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Applebaum)，[普立茲獎](https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-applebaum)得主，《[民主的黃昏](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/621076/twilight-of-democracy-by-anne-applebaum/)》和《[紅色饑荒](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236713/red-famine-by-anne-applebaum/)》作者

@@ -44,11 +44,6 @@

-> 《多元宇宙》揭示了臺灣數位轉型的強大藍圖……為所有關心的公民提供寶貴的洞見，並在如今自由開放社會面臨動盪關頭的歷史時刻，協助捍衛民主。

-— [Frank McCourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_McCourt_(executive))，[McCourt Global](https://www.mccourt.com/) 與 [Project Liberty](https://www.projectliberty.io/) 創辦人，《[我們最大的戰鬥](https://ourbiggestfight.com/)》共同作者 - -

- > 在金融科技和數位基礎建設方面，肯亞和其他非洲國家…走在北方國家過時模式的前面。透過《多元宇宙》一書，我們能更深入探討這個議題、加速我們的成長，並且成為更具包容性、更注重參與、更高生產力的全球模式的一部分，共創美好未來。

— [Ory Okolloh-Mwangi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ory_Okolloh)，[Ushahidi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushahidi) 共同創辦人，[Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures](https://vkav.vc/) 合夥人 @@ -64,8 +59,8 @@

-> 顯而易見，科技將影響文化與民主的未來。我們缺乏多元的願景，去思考如何與科技共存！幸運的是，這本書體現了它所提倡的原則。就像 AI 一樣，它是一項集體的重大成就，其整體大於各部分的總和。

-— [Holly Herndon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Herndon)，音樂家、藝術家、[Interdependence](https://interdependence.fm/) 節目共同主持人、[Spawning](https://spawning.ai/) 共同創辦人 +> 長久以來，「多元」與「科技」都被世俗化勢力作為利劍使用。值得注意的是，在這些作者的巧手下，它們在此被重新鍛造成信仰者的盾牌。

+— [Johnnie Moore Jr. 牧師](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnnie_Moore_Jr.)，[基督教領袖大會](https://congressofchristianleaders.com/)主席，[美國國際宗教自由委員會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Commission_on_International_Religious_Freedom)前任委員，第 45 任美國總統唐納・川普的非正式顧問

@@ -74,18 +69,23 @@

+> 顯而易見，科技將影響文化與民主的未來。我們缺乏多元的願景，去思考如何與科技共存！幸運的是，這本書體現了它所提倡的原則。就像 AI 一樣，它是一項集體的重大成就，其整體大於各部分的總和。

+— [Holly Herndon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly_Herndon)，音樂家、藝術家、[Interdependence](https://interdependence.fm/) 節目共同主持人、[Spawning](https://spawning.ai/) 共同創辦人 + +

+ > 唐鳳和衛谷倫的專案，對臺灣（以及其他國家）朝向新的社會民主方向發展，不但有效且意義重大。

— [柄谷行人](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kojin_Karatani)，《[世界史的結構](https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-structure-of-world-history)》作者，博古睿哲學與文化獎得主

-> 閱讀新遊戲的規則，想像它們構建的世界，令我興奮；在這本書裡我也能獲得這種興奮，但遊戲的主題是全球事務和社群合作的方式。實在太棒了！

-— [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield)，《[魔法風雲會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering)》創造者 +> 《多元宇宙》揭示了臺灣數位轉型的強大藍圖……為所有關心的公民提供寶貴的洞見，並在如今自由開放社會面臨動盪關頭的歷史時刻，協助捍衛民主。

+— [Frank McCourt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_McCourt_(executive))，[McCourt Global](https://www.mccourt.com/) 與 [Project Liberty](https://www.projectliberty.io/) 創辦人，《[我們最大的戰鬥](https://ourbiggestfight.com/)》共同作者

-> 這是一本非凡的著作，以淺顯易懂卻深入獨到的見解，闡述科技如何塑造我們的生活，以及未來應如何發展。作者旁徵博引，提出有力的論點，來推進多元宇宙…本書對我們所有人都是重要的啟示。

-— [Colin Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Mayer)，牛津大學[賽德商學院](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%C3%AFd_Business_School)管理學彼得・莫爾斯講座教授，《[繁榮：更好的商業創造更大的利益](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prosperity-9780198866824?lang=en&cc=sk)》作者 +> 閱讀新遊戲的規則，想像它們構建的世界，令我興奮；在這本書裡我也能獲得這種興奮，但遊戲的主題是全球事務和社群合作的方式。實在太棒了！

+— [Richard Garfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Garfield)，《[魔法風雲會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering)》創造者

@@ -104,23 +104,28 @@

+> 在飛機上讀了開頭幾章，強烈推薦！我曾經熱愛閱讀，但現在通常對書提不起勁；然而，這本書卻重新抓住我的注意。這真的非常必要，以免我們陷入末日般的 macho 未來想像。何況，未來就掌握在我們的手中。

+— [Violeta Ayala](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violeta_Ayala)，[奧斯卡獎](https://www.oscars.org/)第一位 Quechua 原住民成員暨獲獎 XR 電影製片人 + +

+ > 全球的民粹主義者濫用科技來分裂國家……《多元宇宙》邀請我們踏上一段嶄新的旅程。在這個充斥著取消文化的世界，我們的確可以運用技術，重新開拓空間，讓彼此更加緊密相連，喚回人性——如我們在非洲所說的「UBUNTU」。

— [Mmusi Maimane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmusi_Maimane)，南非總統候選人，前反對黨領袖，[打造一個南非](https://www.bosa.co.za/)創辦人，[自由教會](https://www.lty.church/)牧師及長老

> 這本書以清晰、非技術性的文字，闡述了如何整合科技與社會、重塑民主的未來遠景，來自正在第一線的實踐者。

-— [Alex Paul "Sandy" Pentland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pentland)，[麻省理工學院媒體實驗室](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Media_Lab)首任學術主管，[運算社會科學](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_social_science)和[資料科學](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science)的奠基人物 +— [Alex "Sandy" Pentland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Pentland)，[麻省理工學院媒體實驗室](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Media_Lab)首任學術主管，[運算社會科學](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_social_science)和[資料科學](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science)的奠基人物

-> 網路技術如果加速了社會分裂，應該也有可能實現各方的舒適共存。《多元宇宙》充滿了為此目的提供的線索。

-— [青野慶久](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yoshihisa-aono)，[Cybozu](https://cybozu.co.jp/en/company/) 共同創辦人暨執行長 +> 這是一本非凡的著作，以淺顯易懂卻深入獨到的見解，闡述科技如何塑造我們的生活，以及未來應如何發展。作者旁徵博引，提出有力的論點，來推進多元宇宙…本書對我們所有人都是重要的啟示。

+— [Colin Mayer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Mayer)，牛津大學[賽德商學院](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%C3%AFd_Business_School)管理學彼得・莫爾斯講座教授，《[繁榮：更好的商業創造更大的利益](https://global.oup.com/academic/product/prosperity-9780198866824?lang=en&cc=sk)》作者

-> 在充滿焦慮和分歧的時代，衛谷倫與唐鳳為我們提供了難得的、具體的願景，展現了技術與民主如何和諧相處，並推動我們邁向更好的未來。

-— [Tristan Harris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris)，[人性科技中心](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Humane_Technology)共同創辦人，《[智能社會：進退兩難](https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/)》主角 +> 網路技術如果加速了社會分裂，應該也有可能實現各方的舒適共存。《多元宇宙》充滿了為此目的提供的線索。

+— [青野慶久](https://www.crunchbase.com/person/yoshihisa-aono)，[Cybozu](https://cybozu.co.jp/en/company/) 共同創辦人暨執行長

@@ -134,8 +139,8 @@

-> 《多元宇宙》既樂觀又務實，它為 AI 時代重塑民主提供了路線圖……我們不必將自己局限於自由主義或威權主義的願景……走向第三條路……擁抱開放性、多元性和人文精神。非常值得一讀！

-— [Mark Surman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Surman)，[Mozilla 基金會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)總裁與執行董事 +> 在充滿焦慮和分歧的時代，衛谷倫與唐鳳為我們提供了難得的、具體的願景，展現了技術與民主如何和諧相處，並推動我們邁向更好的未來。

+— [Tristan Harris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris)，[人性科技中心](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Humane_Technology)共同創辦人，《[智能社會：進退兩難](https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/)》主角

@@ -144,13 +149,18 @@

+> 這本書……將臺灣置於世界的中心。它是否會成為衝突的支點，或是……和平、人性、技術民主化革命的巔峰？這是本世紀最重大的問題。唐鳳、衛谷倫和他們的合作者們寫下了尋找答案的指南。 +— [Michael Hartley Freedman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Freedman)，[菲爾茲獎](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal)得主，[麥克阿瑟學人](https://www.macfound.org/programs/awards/fellows/)，[國家科學獎章](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Medal_of_Science)得主，微軟 [Station Q](https://news.microsoft.com/stories/stationq/) 量子計算研究單位前主任 + +

+ > 很高興終於看到對人類進步的未來願景，如此清晰地扎根於人類的過去。《多元宇宙》為我們勾勒了框幅，運用人類多樣性中蘊藏的豐沛能量，構建出驅動未來百年經濟成長的引擎。

— [Oded Galor](https://www.odedgalor.com/)，《[人類的旅程](https://www.odedgalor.com/copy-of-unified-growth-theory)》作者，布朗大學 Herbert Goldberger 經濟學教授

-> 奇點…引發了人們對科技將凌駕人類的恐懼。這本劃時代的著作提供了令人信服而大膽的另一種可能。衛谷倫和唐鳳展示了技術如何能推進多元的世界…以強化人際關係，並在多樣性中將人們凝聚在一起。

-— [Mike Kubzansky](https://omidyar.com/omidyar_team/mike-kubzansky/)，[Omidyar Network](https://omidyar.com/)執行長 +> 《多元宇宙》既樂觀又務實，它為 AI 時代重塑民主提供了路線圖……我們不必將自己局限於自由主義或威權主義的願景……走向第三條路……擁抱開放性、多元性和人文精神。非常值得一讀！

+— [Mark Surman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Surman)，[Mozilla 基金會](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation)總裁與執行董事

@@ -159,6 +169,11 @@

+> 奇點…引發了人們對科技將凌駕人類的恐懼。這本劃時代的著作提供了令人信服而大膽的另一種可能。衛谷倫和唐鳳展示了技術如何能推進多元的世界…以強化人際關係，並在多樣性中將人們凝聚在一起。

+— [Mike Kubzansky](https://omidyar.com/omidyar_team/mike-kubzansky/)，[Omidyar Network](https://omidyar.com/)執行長 + +

+ > 在設計、執行和內容上都極具遠見。

— [Brad Carson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Carson)，[塔爾薩大學](https://utulsa.edu/)校長，[美國負責任創新組織](https://responsibleinnovation.org/)主席，前美國國會議員和陸軍副部長 @@ -167,3 +182,8 @@ > 「法規」仍然難以成為我們馴服這些技術封建領主的途徑。它永遠無法成功地分散權力。《多元宇宙》為我們勾勒出不同的路徑——開放而民主——繞過這些權力並去中介化。

— [Cristina Caffarra](https://cristinacaffarra.com/)，[倫敦大學學院](https://profiles.ucl.ac.uk/77797-cristina-caffarra)榮譽教授，[CEPR 競爭研究政策網絡](https://cepr.org/about/people/cristina-caffarra)共同創辦人 +

+ +> 「多元宇宙」是科技時代的社會哲學……超越放任主義和專家統治的第三條路。其本質在於混沌邊緣湧現的生命，而這個理想是否實現，取決於這本書的讀者能否成為真正的行動者，放膽跳入邊緣。

+— [Ken Suzuki](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ken-suzuki-03489/)，SmartNews, Inc. 聯合創辦人、執行董事長暨 [Propagational Investment Currency SYstem(PICSY)](https://nameteki.kensuzuki.org/english) 發明人 + diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-0-\350\263\207\350\250\212\346\212\200\350\241\223\350\210\207\346\260\221\344\270\273\357\274\232\346\227\245\347\233\212\346\223\264\345\244\247\347\232\204\351\264\273\346\272\235.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-0-\350\263\207\350\250\212\346\212\200\350\241\223\350\210\207\346\260\221\344\270\273\357\274\232\346\227\245\347\233\212\346\223\264\345\244\247\347\232\204\351\264\273\346\272\235.md" index d2770751..a6a95864 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-0-\350\263\207\350\250\212\346\212\200\350\241\223\350\210\207\346\260\221\344\270\273\357\274\232\346\227\245\347\233\212\346\223\264\345\244\247\347\232\204\351\264\273\346\272\235.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-0-\350\263\207\350\250\212\346\212\200\350\241\223\350\210\207\346\260\221\344\270\273\357\274\232\346\227\245\347\233\212\346\223\264\345\244\247\347\232\204\351\264\273\346\272\235.md" @@ -188,7 +188,7 @@ 第二點，「新自由主義」（Neoliberalism）政策在這個時期對於停滯和不平等方面的影響引起了廣大爭議，因此我們懷疑大多數的讀者對這個現象已經有了自己的見解。本書的作者之一也是《激進市場》的合著者，這本書包含了對約莫十年前證據的回顧 [^29]。因此，我們在這裡並不會再詳細介紹，而是建議讀者可參考該著作或相關資訊[^30]。然而，顯然這個時期的主流意識型態和政策方向擁抱了資本主義市場經濟，而這與一種主張密切相關，即「技術全球化的浪潮」導致社會對於集體治理、集體行動可能性的否定，而這樣的否定正是放任主義意識形態的核心。因此，技術和政策發展在過去半世紀基本上是失效的，因為專家統治**主導了技術領域**，而放任主義**主導了政策領域**。 -當然，過去半個世紀不乏技術的突破，這些突破確實帶來了積極的變革，儘管這種變革並不均衡，有時後甚至令人擔憂。1980 年代，個人電腦賦予了人類前所未有的創造力；1990 年代，網際網路連結了通訊和社群，跨越了往昔難以想像的距離；2000 年代，智慧型手機將這兩種革新融合在一起，並且變得無所不在。但是令人驚訝的是，這些現代最為典範的創新，卻都與專家統治或放任主義的敘事格格不入。這些典範顯然都是增強人類創造力的技術，通常被稱為「擴增智慧」或 IA（intelligence augmentation），而不是 AI。它們也不是主要被設計為逃避現有社會制度的工具；它們促進的是豐富的社交溝通和聯絡，而不僅止於市場交易、私有財產和祕密通訊。正如我們將看到的，這些技術源自於與專家統治或放任主義截然不同的的傳統。因此，即使是這個時代少數且重大的技術躍升，在很大程度上也獨立於上述兩種願景之外，甚至與這二者分庭抗禮。 +當然，過去半個世紀不乏技術的突破，這些突破確實帶來了積極的變革，儘管這種變革並不均衡，有時候甚至令人擔憂。1980 年代，個人電腦賦予了人類前所未有的創造力；1990 年代，網際網路連結了通訊和社群，跨越了往昔難以想像的距離；2000 年代，智慧型手機將這兩種革新融合在一起，並且變得無所不在。但是令人驚訝的是，這些現代最為典範的創新，卻都與專家統治或放任主義的敘事格格不入。這些典範顯然都是增強人類創造力的技術，通常被稱為「擴增智慧」或 IA（intelligence augmentation），而不是 AI。它們也不是主要被設計為逃避現有社會制度的工具；它們促進的是豐富的社交溝通和聯絡，而不僅止於市場交易、私有財產和祕密通訊。正如我們將看到的，這些技術源自於與專家統治或放任主義截然不同的的傳統。因此，即使是這個時代少數且重大的技術躍升，在很大程度上也獨立於上述兩種願景之外，甚至與這二者分庭抗禮。 ### 我們磨損的社會契約 @@ -237,15 +237,15 @@ [^26]: 根據研究與諮詢公司 Gartner 的報告指出，全球政府對 AI 的支出預計在 2021 年達到 370 億美元，比上一年增長 22.4%。中国在 AI 投資方面領先全球：2017 年中国企業在 AI 方面的投資為 250 億美元，而美國僅為 97 億美元。2021 年，美國參議院通過了一項 2500 億美元的法案，其中包括 520 億美元用於半導體研究和開發，這有望提升美國的 AI 能力。此外，歐盟同年宣布將投資 83 億歐元用於 AI、資安和超級電腦，作為在數位十年計畫（Digital Decade plan）的一部分。2021 年，日本央行開始進行中央銀行數位貨幣（CBDC）的實驗，中国央行則在幾個城市開始了數位人民幣的試用計畫。 [^27]: “Computers and Government” by J. C. R. Licklider. [^28]: Acemoglu and Restrepo, 2019, Journal of Economic Perspectives. 請注意，這些研究中的「黃金時代」至「數位化停滯期」的準確分界點可能不盡相同，但它始終是在 1970 或 1980 年代的某個時間段。 -[^29]: 格倫．韋爾、艾瑞克．波斯納（E. Glen Weyl，Eric A. Posner），《激進市場：戰勝不平等、經濟停滯與政治動盪的全新市場設計》（Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society），八旗文化，2020。 +[^29]: 衛谷倫、艾瑞克．波斯納（E. Glen Weyl，Eric A. Posner），《激進市場：戰勝不平等、經濟停滯與政治動盪的全新市場設計》（Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society），八旗文化，2020。 [^30]: "The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets" by Thomas Philippon (2019)；強納森．坦伯、丹妮絲．赫恩（Jonathan Tepper, Denise Hearn），《競爭之死：高度壟斷的資本主義，是延誤創新、壓低工資、拉大貧富差距的元凶》（The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the death of Competition），商周出版，2020。 [^31]: 資料來源：Cambridge Center for the Future of Democracy。 -[^32]: 據 2021 年愛德曼全球信任度調查，全球只有 57% 的受訪者相信科技是可靠的資訊來源。這相較前一年的調查下降了 4 個百分點。PEW 研究中心 2020 年的調查發現，72% 的美國人認為社交平台對人們看到的新聞擁有過多的權力和影響力。此外，51% 的受訪者表示，它們非常或稍微擔憂科技在政治兩極化中的角色。牛津大學 AI 治理中心（The Center for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford）於 2019 年的調查發現，只有 33% 的美國人認為科技公司值得信賴。市調公司益普索莫里（Ipsos MORI）於 2020 年對九個國家的 9000 人進行了一項調查，只有 30% 的受訪者表示相信社交平台會負責任地處理他們的資料數據。這些數據表明，人們對於科技在社會中的角色以及對民主的影響抱持日益增加的懷疑和關切態度。 -（1）PEW 研究中心於 2022 年 12 月 6 日進行的調查涉及 19 個國家。許多國家認為社交平台對民主大多有益，但美國是個明顯的例外。 -PEW 研究中心的調查顯示，普通公民認為社群媒體在政治生活中既有建設性，也有破壞性的部分，整體而言，大多數人認為它實際上對民主產生了積極的影響。在接受調查的國家中，有 57% 的人認為社群媒體對他們的民主制度更有益，有 35% 的人認為它對民主有害。然而，不同國家在這個問題上存在顯著的跨國差異，而美國則是個明顯的例外：只有 34% 的美國成年人認為社交平台對民主有益，有 64% 的人認為它對民主產生了不好的影響。實際上，美國在許多方面都是例外，有更多的美國人認為社交平台造成了分裂。 +[^32]: 據 2021 年愛德曼全球信任度調查，全球只有 57% 的受訪者相信科技是可靠的資訊來源。這相較前一年的調查下降了 4 個百分點。Pew 研究中心 2020 年的調查發現，72% 的美國人認為社交平台對人們看到的新聞擁有過多的權力和影響力。此外，51% 的受訪者表示，它們非常或稍微擔憂科技在政治兩極化中的角色。牛津大學 AI 治理中心（The Center for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford）於 2019 年的調查發現，只有 33% 的美國人認為科技公司值得信賴。市調公司益普索莫里（Ipsos MORI）於 2020 年對九個國家的 9000 人進行了一項調查，只有 30% 的受訪者表示相信社交平台會負責任地處理他們的資料數據。這些數據表明，人們對於科技在社會中的角色以及對民主的影響抱持日益增加的懷疑和關切態度。 +（1）Pew 研究中心於 2022 年 12 月 6 日進行的調查涉及 19 個國家。許多國家認為社交平台對民主大多有益，但美國是個明顯的例外。 +Pew 研究中心的調查顯示，普通公民認為社群媒體在政治生活中既有建設性，也有破壞性的部分，整體而言，大多數人認為它實際上對民主產生了積極的影響。在接受調查的國家中，有 57% 的人認為社群媒體對他們的民主制度更有益，有 35% 的人認為它對民主有害。然而，不同國家在這個問題上存在顯著的跨國差異，而美國則是個明顯的例外：只有 34% 的美國成年人認為社交平台對民主有益，有 64% 的人認為它對民主產生了不好的影響。實際上，美國在許多方面都是例外，有更多的美國人認為社交平台造成了分裂。 （2）澳洲私隱專員公署（Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, OAIC）於 2020 年在澳洲的調查顯示，許多受訪的消費者（58%）承認，他們不了解企業如何處理他們收集的資料，49% 的人因為缺乏知識或時間以及涉及的過程的複雜性而無法保護自己的資料。（OAIC, 2020） （3）世界衛生組織（WTO）於 2022 年 9 月 1 日的一項系統性回顧解釋說：「Twitter、Facebook、YouTube 和 Instagram 在迅速和廣泛傳播資訊有著至關重要的作用。」社交平台上錯誤訊息的影響包括「對科學知識的錯誤解讀增加、意見極化、恐慌或對醫療保健的減少」。 -（4）根據 PEW 研究中心的研究，這是數位時代的民主擔憂。 +（4）根據 Pew 研究中心的研究，這是數位時代的民主擔憂。 [^33]: 參考資料：https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx [^34]: 參考資料：https://www.un.org/development/desa/dspd/2021/07/trust-public-institutions / and Kolczynska, Bürkner, Kennedy and Vehtari [^RussianDigitalControl]: 路透社（Reuters）：〈臉部辨識控制：俄羅斯警察對抗議者採取數位化手段〉（Face control: Russian police go digital against protesters），請參閱：https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rus-politics-navalny-tech-idUSKBN2AB1U2。另請參閱：https://www.rferl.org/a/Russia-dissent-cctv-detentions-days-later-strategy/31227889.html diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-2-\346\225\270\344\275\215\346\260\221\344\270\273\347\232\204\346\227\245\345\270\270.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-2-\346\225\270\344\275\215\346\260\221\344\270\273\347\232\204\346\227\245\345\270\270.md" index 623fb42d..bd7df250 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-2-\346\225\270\344\275\215\346\260\221\344\270\273\347\232\204\346\227\245\345\270\270.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/2-2-\346\225\270\344\275\215\346\260\221\344\270\273\347\232\204\346\227\245\345\270\270.md" @@ -134,7 +134,7 @@ vTaiwan 的目的是為積極的參與者，提供實驗性、高接觸、緊密 臺灣的民主品質，以及其抵禦技術驅動的境外訊息操弄的能力，得到了廣泛認可。自由之家[^Freedom]、經濟學人資訊部[^EIU]、貝塔斯曼基金會（Bertelsmann Foundation）和 V-Dem 等機構釋出的多項指數均將臺灣列為全球最自由、最有效的民主國家之一。[^demrank]雖然臺灣在這些指數中的準確排名各不相同（從第一到僅在前 15%），然而，整體看來對臺灣的評價幾乎可說是亞洲最優秀的多元民主政體，也是成立不到 30 年引人注目的年輕民主國家。因此，臺灣至少被認為是亞洲最強大的民主政體，也是規模合理的最強大的年輕民主政體，許多人甚至認為它是世界上最強大的民主政體。此外，根據這些指數，在過去十年中，世界各個地區的民主程度普遍下降，而臺灣的民主得分卻大幅上升。 -除了整體實力之外，臺灣還以抵禦極化現象、資訊戰和網路攻擊而著稱。根據各種資料進行的研究後發現，臺灣是世界上政治、社會和宗教兩極分化程度最低的發達國家之一，儘管有些研究發現自太陽花運動以來，政治兩極分化略有上升趨勢，但現已趨於和緩[^polarization]。在**情感兩極分化**（對政治對手持有負面或敵意的個人態度）方面尤其如此，儘管民族認同的問題在許多臺灣選舉中依然是關鍵議題，但臺灣在情感極化程度上一直保持在全球最低的五個國家之列。政治菁英戲劇化且尖銳的表現，並沒有完全反映在社會中。 +除了整體實力之外，臺灣還以抵禦極化現象、資訊戰和網路攻擊而著稱。根據各種資料進行的研究後發現，臺灣是世界上社會、種族和宗教兩極分化程度最低的發達國家之一，儘管有些研究發現自太陽花運動以來，政治兩極分化略有上升趨勢，但現已趨於和緩[^polarization]。在**情感兩極分化**（對政治對手持有負面或敵意的個人態度）方面尤其如此，儘管民族認同的問題在許多臺灣選舉中依然是關鍵議題，但臺灣在情感極化程度上一直保持在全球最低的五個國家之列。政治菁英戲劇化且尖銳的表現，並沒有完全反映在社會中。[^LeaderAffectivePolarization] 儘管如此，分析報告一致普遍認為，臺灣是全球承受訊息攻勢量最大的地方。[^disinfovolume] 造成此矛盾結果的主要原因之一，可能是政治學家鮑爾和威爾遜發現的：與許多其他情況不同，境外資訊操弄未能加劇臺灣內部的黨派分歧。相反，它往往會激發出臺灣人反對境外勢力干涉的一致立場。[^Disinfo] @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ vTaiwan 的目的是為積極的參與者，提供實驗性、高接觸、緊密 ### 應變 -危機很少發生，而且機率很低。因此，很難知道臺灣在避免或緩解危機方面的表現如何。不過，也許最接近的是確實已知的全且緊急情況：大流行新型冠狀病毒（COVID-19）Covid19。如上所述，在這一事件中，臺灣被全球公認為是世界上表現最好的國家之一，在此我們將從數量上討論這一評價的原因。 +危機很少發生，而且機率很低。因此，很難知道臺灣在避免或緩解危機方面的表現如何。不過，也許最接近的是確實已知的全球緊急情況：大流行新型冠狀病毒（COVID-19）Covid19。如上所述，在這一事件中，臺灣被全球公認為是世界上表現最好的國家之一，在此我們將從數量上討論這一評價的原因。 在大流行早期階段，臺灣就贏得了國際讚譽的出色表現，在疫苗上市之前，世界上大部分地區都處於滾動封鎖狀態。我們可以將這一階段稱為大流行的「危機」階段，持續到 2021 年 4 月，疫苗在美國廣泛供應時為止。從疫情開始到 2021 年 4 月，臺灣僅有 12 人死於疫情，是當時全球具有準確統計的區域裡最低的。此外，臺灣在沒有封城的情況下實現了這一目標，並在 2020 年實現了僅次於愛爾蘭，所有富裕國家中最快的經濟增長。更廣泛來說，臺灣的醫療系統在過去十年裡，持續被 Numbeo 評為全球效率第一，雖然臺灣的預期壽命僅僅是世界上最高之一[^Numbeohealth]。 @@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ vTaiwan 的目的是為積極的參與者，提供實驗性、高接觸、緊密 [^EconFreedom]: “Index of Economic Freedom.” The Heritage Foundation, 2023. https://www.heritage.org/index/. [^Inequalitycritique]: Gerald Auten, and David Splinter, “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” _Journal of Political Economy_, November 14, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1086/728741. -[^CapitalShare]: The most interesting statistic we woudl like to report on is labor's share of income and its trends in Taiwan. However, to our knowledge no persuasive and internationally comparable study of this exists. We hope to see more research on this soon. +[^CapitalShare]: The most interesting statistic we would like to report on is labor's share of income and its trends in Taiwan. However, to our knowledge no persuasive and internationally comparable study of this exists. We hope to see more research on this soon. [^Loneliness]: S. Schroyen, N. Janssen, L. A. Duffner, M. Veenstra, E. Pyrovolaki, E. Salmon, and S. Adam, “Prevalence of Loneliness in Older Adults: A Scoping Review.” _Health & Social Care in the Community 2023_ (September 14, 2023): e7726692. https://doi.org/10.1155/2023/7726692. [^Addiction]: “More than Half of Teens Admit Phone Addiction .” Taipei Times, February 4, 2020. https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2020/02/04/2003730302; “Study Finds Nearly 57% of Americans Admit to Being Addicted to Their Phones - CBS Pittsburgh.” CBS News, August 30, 2023. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-finds-nearly-57-of-americans-admit-to-being-addicted-to-their-phones/. [^drugs]: “NCDAS: Substance Abuse and Addiction Statistics [2020],” National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics, 2020, https://drugabusestatistics.org/; Ling-Yi Feng, and Jih-Heng Li, “New Psychoactive Substances in Taiwan,” _Current Opinion in Psychiatry_ 33, no. 4 (March 2020): 1, https://doi.org/10.1097/yco.0000000000000604. @@ -186,6 +186,7 @@ vTaiwan 的目的是為積極的參與者，提供實驗性、高接觸、緊密 [^wikireligion]: “Religion in Taiwan,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, January 12, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Taiwan. [^demrank]: “Democracy Indices,” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, March 5, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_indices#:~:text=Democracy%20indices%20are%20quantitative%20and.. [^polarization]: Laura Silver, Janell Fetterolf, and Aidan Connaughton, “Diversity and Division in Advanced Economies,” Pew Research Center, October 13, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/10/13/diversity-and-division-in-advanced-economies/.; +[^LeaderAffectivePolarization]: Andres Reiljan, Diego Garzia, Frederico Ferreira da Silva, and Alexander H. Trechsel. “Patterns of Affective Polarization toward Parties and Leaders across the Democratic World.” American Political Science Review 118, no. 2 (2024): 654–70. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055423000485. [^disinfovolume]: Adrian Rauchfleisch, Tzu-Hsuan Tseng, Jo-Ju Kao, and Yi-Ting Liu, “Taiwan’s Public Discourse about Disinformation: The Role of Journalism, Academia, and Politics,” _Journalism Practice_ 17, no. 10 (August 18, 2022): 1–21, https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2022.2110928. [^Disinfo]: Fin Bauer, and Kimberly Wilson, “Reactions to China-Linked Fake News: Experimental Evidence from Taiwan,” The China Quarterly 249 (March 2022): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1017/S030574102100134X. [^crime]: “Crime Index by Country,” Numbeo, 2023, https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp. diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-1-\346\264\273\345\234\250\342\277\273\344\270\226\347\225\214.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-1-\346\264\273\345\234\250\342\277\273\344\270\226\347\225\214.md" index e0c908f1..69feff9b 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-1-\346\264\273\345\234\250\342\277\273\344\270\226\347\225\214.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-1-\346\264\273\345\234\250\342\277\273\344\270\226\347\225\214.md" @@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ 從流體流動到生態系統的發展，再到大腦的運作，幾乎每一個複雜的系統，都可以表現出「混沌」狀態（活動基本上是隨機的）和「有序」狀態（模式是靜態和僵化的）。很大程度地說，總有一些參數（如熱量或突變率）決定了哪些狀態的出現，當參數值高時出現混沌、參數值低時則出現秩序、當參數值十分接近時這些狀態之間過渡的「臨界值」，也就是複雜性理論家所謂的「混沌邊緣」時，複雜行為將會湧現，形成不可預測、不斷發展、如生命般的結構，這種結構既不是混沌的，也不是有序的，而是複雜的。這與我們上面強調的在集權威脅和反社會威脅、專家統治官僚主義和放任主義威脅之間存在「狹窄走廊」的觀點密切相關。 -因此，⿻可以自科學中汲取養分，對轉向和拓寬這條狹長走廊至關重要，複雜性科學家稱此一過程為「自組織臨界性」 (Self-organized criticality)」。在這樣做的過程中，我們可以藉鏡許多科學的智慧，確保我們不會過度被任何一組類比所束縛。 +因此，⿻可以自科學中汲取養分，對轉向和拓寬這條狹長走廊至關重要，複雜性科學家稱此一過程為「自組織臨界性」 (Self-organized criticality)」。在這樣做的過程中，我們可以借鑑許多科學的智慧，確保我們不會過度被任何一組類比所束縛。 ### 數學 diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-2-\347\233\270\351\200\243\347\232\204\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-2-\347\233\270\351\200\243\347\232\204\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" index 219affe3..57fd0517 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-2-\347\233\270\351\200\243\347\232\204\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-2-\347\233\270\351\200\243\347\232\204\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" @@ -87,7 +87,7 @@ - 那麼是美國嗎？不過當然，軟體產業和網際網路是全球現象。 - 那是屬於全世界嗎？除了根本不存在可以有意義的接受和分配這些土地價值的世界政府之外，將所有土地的價值抽象到這樣的高度，也是一種等於放棄討論的方式：顯然，對於軟體產業的價值來說，上述許多實體都比簡單的「整個世界」更為相關；如果我們持續抽象下去，結果總是全球政府管理一切。 -而讓問題更加複雜的則是，財產上獲得的收益只是其所有權的一部分。法律學者通常將財產描述為一組權利的綑綁：「使用權」（進入／訪問土地的權利）、「擁有權」（建置或處理土地的權利）、「收益權」（從中獲利的權利）。誰在什麼情況下可被允許進入灣區的土地？ 誰應該被允許在灣區土地上建設、或是向他人出售可如此行動的獨家權利？在喬治的著作中並沒有考慮到這些問題，更不用說解決了。從這一點來思考，他的作品更像是一份邀請，幫助我們得以超越私有財產制度它提供的簡單答案，這也或許是為什麼他極具影響力的思想，只在愛沙尼亞和臺灣等少數國家（誠然非常成功）得到部分實施的原因。 +而讓問題更加複雜的則是，財產上獲得的收益只是其所有權的一部分。法律學者通常將財產描述為一組權利的綑綁：「使用權」（進入／存取土地的權利）、「擁有權」（建置或處理土地的權利）、「收益權」（從中獲利的權利）。誰在什麼情況下可被允許進入灣區的土地？ 誰應該被允許在灣區土地上建設、或是向他人出售可如此行動的獨家權利？在喬治的著作中並沒有考慮到這些問題，更不用說解決了。從這一點來思考，他的作品更像是一份邀請，幫助我們得以超越私有財產制度它提供的簡單答案，這也或許是為什麼他極具影響力的思想，只在愛沙尼亞和臺灣等少數國家（誠然非常成功）得到部分實施的原因。 - 喬治邀請我們思考和想像設計的世界，是一個「網絡化價值」的世界，在這個世界裡，不同規模的實體（大學、城市、民族國家等）都在不同層次上為創造價值做出了貢獻，就像電波和神經元網絡在不同程度上為粒子在不同位置被發現的概率或思想在頭腦中發生的概率做出了貢獻一樣，就正義和生產力而言，資產和價值應該在不同程度上屬於這些網絡。就這個意義上，喬治是多元社會科學的創始者。 diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-3-\346\210\221\345\200\221\351\201\272\345\277\230\347\232\204\351\201\223.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-3-\346\210\221\345\200\221\351\201\272\345\277\230\347\232\204\351\201\223.md" index b53938fa..d9cbacdf 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-3-\346\210\221\345\200\221\351\201\272\345\277\230\347\232\204\351\201\223.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/3-3-\346\210\221\345\200\221\351\201\272\345\277\230\347\232\204\351\201\223.md" @@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ 這種文化體現在史蒂芬·克羅克（Steve Crocker）開發的 "意見徵詢"（Request for Comments, RFC）過程中，這可以說是第一個類似於「共筆」（wiki）的非正式協作過程，而且，大多是分散在不同的地區和部門（政府、企業、大學）的協作者之間的疊加協作。這反過來又促成了共同的網路控制協定，並最終促成了傳輸控制和網際網路協定（TCP/IP）。 -在文頓·瑟夫（Vint Cerf）和羅伯特·卡恩（常稱為 Bob Kahn）著名的任務驅動下，從 1974 年 TCP 首次作為 RFC 675 分發到 1983 年它們成為 ARPANET 的官方協定。該方法的核心是設想「由網路組成的網路」，「網際網路 」因此而得名：許多不同的本地網路（在大學、公司和政府機構）可以充分地互相協作，實現了幾乎無差異的遠距通訊，而這也與政府自上而下的集中式網路（如法國同時存在的 Minitel）形成鮮明對比。三個面向（技術通訊協定、通訊內容和標準管理）融匯為一，創造了今日我們所熟知的網際網路。 +在文頓·瑟夫（Vint Cerf）和羅伯特·卡恩（常稱為 Bob Kahn）著名的任務驅動下，從 1974 年 TCP 首次作為 RFC 675 分發到 1983 年它們成為 ARPANET 的官方協定。該方法的核心是設想「由網路組成的網路」，「網際網路」因此而得名：許多不同的本地網路（在大學、公司和政府機構）可以充分地互相協作，實現了幾乎無差異的遠距通訊，而這也與政府自上而下的集中式網路（如法國同時存在的 Minitel）形成鮮明對比。三個面向（技術通訊協定、通訊內容和標準管理）融匯為一，創造了今日我們所熟知的網際網路。 ### 勝利和悲歌 @@ -86,15 +86,15 @@ #### 網際網路及其不滿 -雖然個人電腦和網際網路初期平行發展，但網際網路的發展正是為了連接這些個人電腦。在二十世紀 60 年代末和 70 年代初，各種網路並行於最大的 ARPANET 共同發展，包括了在大學、美國以外的政府、國際標準機構以及 BBN 和Xerox等公司內部。在 Kahn 和 Cerf 的領導下，在 ARPA（現改名為 DARPA 以強調其 "國防" 重點）的支援下，這些網路開始利用 TCP/IP 協定進行相互作業。隨著這個網路規模的擴大，鑒於其先進技術任務的限制，DARPA 尋找另一個機構來維護它。雖然許多美國政府機構牽手，但國家科學基金會擁有最廣泛的科學參與者，他們的 NSFNET 迅速發展成為最大的網路，導致 ARPANET 在 1990 年退役。同時，NSFNET 開始與其他富裕國家的網路相互連接。 +雖然個人電腦和網際網路初期平行發展，但網際網路的發展正是為了連接這些個人電腦。在二十世紀 60 年代末和 70 年代初，各種網路並行於最大的 ARPANET 共同發展，包括了在大學、美國以外的政府、國際標準機構以及 BBN 和 Xerox 等公司內部。在 Kahn 和 Cerf 的領導下，在 ARPA（現改名為 DARPA 以強調其 "國防" 重點）的支援下，這些網路開始利用 TCP/IP 協定進行相互作業。隨著這個網路規模的擴大，鑒於其先進技術任務的限制，DARPA 尋找另一個機構來維護它。雖然許多美國政府機構牽手，但國家科學基金會擁有最廣泛的科學參與者，他們的 NSFNET 迅速發展成為最大的網路，導致 ARPANET 在 1990 年退役。同時，NSFNET 開始與其他富裕國家的網路相互連接。 -其中之一是英國，研究人員提姆·柏內茲-李（Tim Berners-Lee）在 1989 年提出了「網頁瀏覽器」、「網站伺服器」和「超文本標記語言（HTML）」，將超文本與封包交換完全連接起來，使網際網路內容更容易被廣大終端使用者使用。從 1991 年柏內茲-李的全球資訊網（WWW）的推出，網際網路的使用從大約 400 萬人（主要在北美）增長到千禧年末的 4 億多人（主要在世界各地）。隨著網際網路創業公司在矽谷的蓬勃發展，許多人的生活開始通過許多人現在家裡的電腦移動至網上，網路化的個人計算（“作為通訊設備的電腦”）的時代已經到來。 +其中之一是英國，研究人員提姆·柏內茲-李（Tim Berners-Lee）在 1989 年提出了「網頁瀏覽器」、「網站伺服器」和「超文本標記語言（HTML）」，將超文本與封包交換完全連接起來，使網際網路內容更容易被廣大終端使用者使用。從 1991 年柏內茲-李的全球資訊網（WWW）的推出，網際網路的使用從大約 400 萬人（主要在北美）增長到千禧年末的 4 億多人（主要在世界各地）。隨著網際網路創業公司在矽谷的蓬勃發展，許多人的生活開始通過許多人現在家裡的電腦移動至網上，網路化的個人運算（「作為通訊設備的電腦」）時代已經到來。 #### 預知混亂紀事 在千禧年大起大落的狂喜中，科技界很少有人注意到縈繞在這個行業中的幽靈 -- 早已被遺忘的泰德·尼爾森。尼爾森堅持他幾十年來對理想的網路和通訊系統的追求，不斷地警告新興的 WWW 設計的不安全、剝削性結構和不人道的特點。如果沒有安全的身分系統（Xanadu 原則 1 和 3），民族國家和企業行為者的無政府狀態與巧取豪奪，將不可避免地發生。如果沒有嵌入式的商業協定（Xanadu 原則 9 和 15），線上工作要嘛失去價值，要嘛是金融系統被壟斷者控制。如果沒有更好的安全資訊共用和控制結構（Xanadu 原則 8 和 16），監控和數據孤島將無處不在。無論它表面上多麼成功，WWW-網際網路都註定會有糟糕的結局。 -雖然尼爾森特立獨行，但他的擔憂甚至在主流網際網路先驅中也得到了廣泛的認同，他們似乎有理由慶祝他們的成功。早在 1979 年，當 TCP/IP 正在凝聚的時候，利克就為運算的未來寫下了 "兩種情況"（一種是好的，另一種是壞的）的預言：它可能被壟斷的公司控制、潛力被扼殺，或者可能出現全面的社會動員，使運算服務於民主並支援民主。在前一種情況下，利克預測了各種社會弊病，可能讓資訊時代的到來，反而成為民主社會繁榮的阻礙。這些問題包括： +雖然尼爾森特立獨行，但他的擔憂甚至在主流網際網路先驅中也得到了廣泛的認同，他們似乎有理由慶祝他們的成功。早在 1979 年，當 TCP/IP 正在凝聚的時候，利克就為運算的未來寫下了「兩種情況」（一種是好的，另一種是壞的）的預言：它可能被壟斷的公司控制、潛力被扼殺，或者可能出現全面的社會動員，使運算服務於民主並支援民主。在前一種情況下，利克預測了各種社會弊病，可能讓資訊時代的到來，反而成為民主社會繁榮的阻礙。這些問題包括： 1. 普遍性的監控，以及公眾對政府失去信任。 2. 政府落後於公民使用的主流技術，導致制訂規範或執法能力癱瘓。 @@ -111,7 +111,7 @@ 我們是如何掉進超文本和網際網路創始人所明確描述的陷阱的？在領導了網際網路的發展之後，為什麼政府和大學沒有在二十世紀 70 年代之後迎接資訊時代的挑戰？ -1979 年，當 ARPA（現為 DARPA）的工作重心從支援網路協定轉向更直接的武器導向研究時，正是這些警告訊號促使利克提筆寫下了這篇論文。利克認為，這是政治光譜兩端的兩股力量造成的。一方面，隨著後來被稱為 "新自由主義" 的 "小政府保守主義" 的興起，政府正在從主動資助和塑造工業與技術中撤退。另一方面，越戰使許多左翼人士反對國防機構在影響研究方面的作用，從而導致 1973 年《曼斯菲爾德修正案》的出臺，該修正案禁止 ARPA 資助任何與 "國防職能" 無直接關係的研究。這些措施共同將 DARPA 的重點轉向密碼學和人工智慧等被視為直接支援軍事目標的技術。 +1979 年，當 ARPA（現為 DARPA）的工作重心從支援網路協定轉向更直接的武器導向研究時，正是這些警告訊號促使利克提筆寫下了這篇論文。利克認為，這是政治光譜兩端的兩股力量造成的。一方面，隨著後來被稱為「新自由主義」的「小政府保守主義」興起，政府正在從主動資助和塑造工業與技術中撤退。另一方面，越戰使許多左翼人士反對國防機構在影響研究方面的作用，從而導致 1973 年《曼斯菲爾德修正案》的出臺，該修正案禁止 ARPA 資助任何與「國防職能」無直接關係的研究。這些措施共同將 DARPA 的重點轉向密碼學和人工智慧等被視為直接支援軍事目標的技術。 然而，即使美國政府的注意力沒有轉移，網際網路也很快脫離了其許可權和控制。隨著網際網路日益成為一個全球性網路，（正如杜威所預言的）沒有明確的公共權力機構來進行必要的投資，以應對網路社會取得更大成功所需的社會技術挑戰。引用利克的話： @@ -119,14 +119,13 @@ 公部門和社會部門投資的作用不斷下降，使得利克和尼爾森等領導人所看到的網際網路的核心功能／層次（如身分、隱私／安全、資產共享、商業）逐漸缺失了。雖然在網際網路上執行的應用程式和 WWW 都取得了巨大進步，但在利克撰寫本文時，對協定的基本投資已接近尾聲。公部門和社會部門在定義和創新網路方面的作用很快就黯然失色。 -隨著個人電腦的成功，以及雷根和柴契爾激動人心的慶祝活動的推動，私營企業步入了這個巨大的空洞。雖然利克擔心 IBM 會主宰和阻礙網際網路的發展，但事實證明，IBM 無法跟上技術變革的步伐，它找到了許多有意願和能力的繼任者。一小群電信公司接管了國家科學基金會隨意放棄的網際網路骨幹網。美國線上和 Prodigy 等入口網站主導了大多數美國人與網路的互動，而網景公司和微軟公司則爭奪網路瀏覽的主導權。被忽視的身分識別功能由 Google 和 Facebook 的崛起填補。PayPal 和 Stripe 填補了數位支付的空白。由於缺乏最初推動星際電腦網路工作的資料、計算能力和儲存共享協定，支援這種共享的私有基礎設施（通常稱為 "雲端服務供應商"，如 Amazon 網路服務和微軟 Azure ）成為構建應用程式的平臺。 +隨著個人電腦的成功，以及雷根和柴契爾激動人心的慶祝活動的推動，私營企業步入了這個巨大的空洞。雖然利克擔心 IBM 會主宰和阻礙網際網路的發展，但事實證明，IBM 無法跟上技術變革的步伐，它找到了許多有意願和能力的繼任者。一小群電信公司接管了國家科學基金會隨意放棄的網際網路骨幹網。美國線上和 Prodigy 等入口網站主導了大多數美國人與網路的互動，而網景公司和微軟公司則爭奪網路瀏覽的主導權。被忽視的身分識別功能由 Google 和 Facebook 的崛起填補。PayPal 和 Stripe 填補了數位支付的空白。由於缺乏最初推動星際電腦網路工作的資料、計算能力和儲存共享協定，支援這種共享的私有基礎設施（通常稱為「雲端服務供應商」，如 Amazon 網路服務和微軟 Azure）成為構建應用程式的平臺。 雖然網際網路的骨幹，在有限的範圍內不斷改進，增加了安全層和一些加密功能，但利克和尼爾森認為必不可少的基本功能卻從未整合。對網路協定的公共財政支援基本枯竭，剩下的開源開發主要由志願者工作或私營企業支援的工作組成。隨著網際網路時代的到來，創始人的夢想逐漸破滅。 ### 往事重現 -然而，褪色的夢想會頑固地堅持下去，念念不忘必有迴響。雖然利克已於 1990 離開我們，但許多早期的網際網路先驅者走到了現在，親眼見證了屬於自己的勝利和悲歌。尼爾森（Ted Nelson）和其他許多 "Xanadu 計畫" 的先驅者們，至今仍在持續促進 "提高集體智商"（boosting Collective IQ） -的願景、演說、組織活動和撰寫文章。這些活動包括了與特里·維諾格拉德（Terrence Winograd, 谷歌創辦人的博士指導教授）一起，在史丹佛大學組織了致力於線上審議的社群。儘管這些努力都沒有取得早期的直接性成功，卻發揮著至關重要的激勵作用，他們可說是孵化了新一代的多元創新者，幫助復興、闡述了多元夢想。 +然而，褪色的夢想會頑固地堅持下去，念念不忘必有迴響。雖然利克已於 1990 離開我們，但許多早期的網際網路先驅者走到了現在，親眼見證了屬於自己的勝利和悲歌。尼爾森（Ted Nelson）和其他許多「Xanadu 計畫」的先驅者們，至今仍在持續促進「提高集體智商」（boosting Collective IQ）的願景、演說、組織活動和撰寫文章。這些活動包括了與特里·維諾格拉德（Terrence Winograd, 谷歌創辦人的博士指導教授）一起，在史丹佛大學組織了致力於線上審議的社群。儘管這些努力都沒有取得早期的直接性成功，卻發揮著至關重要的激勵作用，他們可說是孵化了新一代的多元創新者，幫助復興、闡述了多元夢想。 #### 光明的節點 @@ -138,19 +137,19 @@ [^CIB]:Connor McMahon, Isaac Johnson和Brent Hecht,"維基百科和Google之間的實質性相互依存關係:關於相連生產社群和資訊技術之間關係的案例研究",《 Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media》11,no. 1(2017年5月3日):142–51,https://doi.org/10.1609/icwsm.v11i1.14883。 [^NVB]:Nicholas Vincent和Brent Hecht,"深入研究維基百科連結對搜尋引擎結果的重要性",《Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction》5,no. CSCW1(2021年4月13日):1–15,https://doi.org/10.1145/3449078。 -「Wiki」不僅代表維基百科名稱的由來，這個概念也代表了協作知識創造和共享的一個關鍵創新。「Wiki」一詞是一個夏威夷語單詞,意為「快速」，由沃德·坎寧安（Ward Cunningham）在1995年創造了第一個 wiki 軟體 WikiWikiWeb 時提出。坎寧安的理想是促進網頁的簡單快速創建和編輯，形塑出一個協作的環境。Wiki概念的本質，正如沃德·坎寧安和博·勒夫（Bo Leuf）在2001年的著作《Wiki之道——網上快捷合作》中詳述的那樣，強調了包容性和不間斷協作。Wiki邀請所有使用者，而不僅僅是專家，使用標準網頁瀏覽器編輯或創建新頁面。鼓勵他們通過直觀連結創建在頁面之間且建立聯繫，傳統的訪問者參與則發展為持續的創作和協作過程，促進一個動態和不斷演變的「網絡」景觀。這種內容創作的民主化體現了⿻和積極參與的概念，共同貢獻為維基百科等平台所現的多樣化知識存儲和社群參與。 +「Wiki」不僅代表維基百科名稱的由來，這個概念也代表了協作知識創造和共享的一個關鍵創新。「Wiki」一詞是一個夏威夷語單詞,意為「快速」，由沃德·坎寧安（Ward Cunningham）在 1995 年創造了第一個 wiki 軟體 WikiWikiWeb 時提出。坎寧安的理想是促進網頁的簡單快速創建和編輯，形塑出一個協作的環境。Wiki 概念的本質，正如沃德·坎寧安和博·勒夫（Bo Leuf）在 2001 年的著作《Wiki 之道——網上快捷合作》中詳述的那樣，強調了包容性和不間斷協作。Wiki邀請所有使用者，而不僅僅是專家，使用標準網頁瀏覽器編輯或創建新頁面。鼓勵他們通過直觀連結創建在頁面之間且建立聯繫，傳統的訪問者參與則發展為持續的創作和協作過程，促進一個動態和不斷演變的「網絡」景觀。這種內容創作的民主化體現了⿻和積極參與的概念，共同貢獻為維基百科等平台所現的多樣化知識存儲和社群參與。 -除了維基百科之外，知識共享和群體工作也已被協作軟體（collaborative software）或群組軟體（groupware）徹底改變了。群組軟體包括各種旨在幫助人們協作的應用程式，無論他們身在天涯何處。協作軟體的概念則可以追溯到1951年道格拉斯·恩格爾巴特（Douglas Engelbart）的早期願景，其旨在通過計算來增強集體工作。第一個可操作的協作計算原型，出現在 1960 年代中期恩格爾巴特的研究團隊中，引發了1968年具有里程碑意義的公開演示，即著名的「所有演示之母」。「群組軟體」一詞由彼得和特魯迪·約翰遜-倫茲（Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz）於 1978 年提出，早期的商業產品如 Lotus Notes 出現在 1990 年代，實現了遠距群組協作。這些軟體皆在透過支援各種組織環境中發生的各式各樣協作任務，幫助群體達成共同目標。 +除了維基百科之外，知識共享和群體工作也已被協作軟體（collaborative software）或群組軟體（groupware）徹底改變了。群組軟體包括各種旨在幫助人們協作的應用程式，無論他們身在天涯何處。協作軟體的概念則可以追溯到 1951 年道格拉斯·恩格爾巴特（Douglas Engelbart）的早期願景，其旨在通過計算來增強集體工作。第一個可操作的協作計算原型，出現在 1960 年代中期恩格爾巴特的研究團隊中，引發了 1968 年具有里程碑意義的公開演示，即著名的「所有演示之母」。「群組軟體」一詞由彼得和特魯迪·約翰遜-倫茲（Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz）於 1978 年提出，早期的商業產品如 Lotus Notes 出現在 1990 年代，實現了遠距群組協作。這些軟體皆在透過支援各種組織環境中發生的各式各樣協作任務，幫助群體達成共同目標。 隨著 WebSocket 協議在2011年的標準化，道格拉斯·恩格爾巴特演示的協作式即時編輯器的概念現在可以在網頁系統上使用。協作式即時編輯器允許多個使用者同時編輯一個文件。它代表了我們線上交換文件和彼此知識交叉的一大飛躍。源自 2005 年推出的 Writely 的 Google 文件，已經廣泛普及了協作式即時編輯的概念。HackMD 是一個協作式即時Markdown編輯器，在臺灣的公民社會中被廣泛使用（如 g0v 大量應用於文件的協作編輯和公開性的分享會議記錄）。Scrapbox 是即時編輯器與 wiki 系統的結合，被⿻書的日本論壇用來建立共享的理解基礎。造訪論壇的用戶可以一邊閱讀文稿，添加問題、解釋或相關主題的連結來增加資訊理解的豐富度。上述的種種互動方式，也都可支持像是讀書會此類知識交流的活動，參與者可以實時紀錄、分享討論條目、線上線下討論，在通過不斷增強協作的互動親密感與滿足不同社群的使用風格下創造更多元的知識網絡發展。 -儘管維基百科作為此一精神的最常態的表現，這種精神它正是網絡世界的基礎。開源軟體（open source software）是維基百科的精神源泉，顯示了參與式、網絡化、跨國自治的重要影響。最著名的開源軟體是 Linux 作業系統，它是多數公共雲基礎設施的基底，通過 GitHub 等平台與許多人們的數位生活層面產生交集，GitHub 的貢獻者超過 1 億人，為超過 70% 的智慧型手機提供動能的 Android 系統也是開源專案，儘管其主要是由 Google 掌控營運。學術界關注「peer production」和自由軟體的成功 / 影響早已經有一段時間了——例如，Yochai Benkler 在 2002 年關於該主題的研究，引起人們對此「謎團」的關注方面有重大影響力，即為什麼程式設計師「參與自由軟體項目而不遵循由市場驅動、公司驅動或混合模式產生的正常信號」。[^YB] +儘管維基百科作為此一精神的最常態的表現，這種精神它正是網絡世界的基礎。開源軟體（open source software）是維基百科的精神源泉，顯示了參與式、網絡化、跨國自治的重要影響。最著名的開源軟體是 Linux 作業系統，它是多數公共雲基礎設施的基底，通過 GitHub 等平台與許多人們的數位生活層面產生交集，GitHub 的貢獻者超過 1 億人，為超過 70% 的智慧型手機提供動能的 Android 系統也是開源專案，儘管其主要是由 Google 掌控營運。學術界關注「peer production」和自由軟體的成功 / 影響早已經有一段時間了——例如，Yochai Benkler 在 2002 年關於該主題的研究，引起人們對此「謎團」的關注方面有重大影響力，即為什麼程式設計師「參與自由軟體專案而不遵循由市場驅動、公司驅動或混合模式產生的正常信號」。[^YB] [^YB]: Yochai Benkler,"Coase’s Penguin, Or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm",n.d. http://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF。 -開源軟體的出現，是對於二十世紀 70 年代軟體產業商業化、營業秘密化的一種反擊。ARPANET 早期的自由、開放的開發方式，在公共資金撤出後仍得以維持，這必須要歸功於全球的志願者隊伍。理查·史托曼（Richard Stallman）反對 Unix 作業系統的封閉性，領導了 "自由軟體運動"，推廣 GNU 通用公共許可證（GNU General Public License, GNU GPL），允許使用者運行、研究、共享和修改源碼。這一運動最終被重新命名為開源軟體，其目標是在林納斯·托瓦茲（Linus Torvalds）的領導下，用開源的 Linux 取代 Unix。 +開源軟體的出現，是對於二十世紀 70 年代軟體產業商業化、營業秘密化的一種反擊。ARPANET 早期的自由、開放的開發方式，在公共資金撤出後仍得以維持，這必須要歸功於全球的志願者隊伍。理查·史托曼（Richard Stallman）反對 Unix 作業系統的封閉性，領導了「自由軟體運動」，推廣 GNU 通用公共許可證（GNU General Public License, GNU GPL），允許使用者運行、研究、共享和修改源碼。這一運動最終被重新包裝為開源軟體運動，其目標是在林納斯·托瓦茲（Linus Torvalds）的領導下，用開源的 Linux 取代 Unix。 -開源軟體，已經開展到各個網際網路和電腦資訊領域，甚至贏得了微軟（現為 GitHub 的所有者）等曾經敵對公司的支持。這代表大規模的多元化實踐；共享全球資源的新興集體共創。這些社群是圍繞著共同的興趣而形成，在彼此的工作基礎上自由構建，通過無償維護者審核貢獻，並在出現不可調和的分歧時，將專案 "分叉" 為平行版本。GitHub 和 GitLab 等平台為數百萬開發人員的參與提供了便利。這本書就是這種協作模式下的產物。 +開源軟體，已經開展到各個網際網路和電腦資訊領域，甚至贏得了微軟（現為 GitHub 的所有者）等曾經敵對公司的支持。這代表大規模的多元化實踐；共享全球資源的新興集體共創。這些社群是圍繞著共同的興趣而形成，在彼此的工作基礎上自由構建，通過無償維護者審核貢獻，並在出現不可調和的分歧時，將專案「分叉」為平行版本。GitHub 和 GitLab 等平台為數百萬開發人員的參與提供了便利。這本書就是這種協作模式下的產物。 不過，開源軟體也面臨了一些挑戰，比如公共資金的撤離導致長期的資金支持短缺，娜蒂亞·埃格巴爾（Nadia Eghbal）在《Working in Public》一書中對此做出了探究。維護者往往得不到回報，而社群的發展又加重了他們的負擔。儘管如此，這些挑戰都是可以應對的，開源軟體儘管在商業模式上有侷限性，但也真實展示出了開放合作精神（即「我們遺忘的道」），而這正是「多元宇宙」致力支持的。因此，開源軟體將成為本書的核心實例。 diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-0-\346\254\212\345\210\251\343\200\201\344\275\234\346\245\255\347\263\273\347\265\261\350\210\207\346\225\270\344\275\215\350\207\252\347\224\261.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-0-\346\254\212\345\210\251\343\200\201\344\275\234\346\245\255\347\263\273\347\265\261\350\210\207\346\225\270\344\275\215\350\207\252\347\224\261.md" index 16ad1b20..ca8f29ba 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-0-\346\254\212\345\210\251\343\200\201\344\275\234\346\245\255\347\263\273\347\265\261\350\210\207\346\225\270\344\275\215\350\207\252\347\224\261.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-0-\346\254\212\345\210\251\343\200\201\344\275\234\346\245\255\347\263\273\347\265\261\350\210\207\346\225\270\344\275\215\350\207\252\347\224\261.md" @@ -13,15 +13,15 @@ ### 權利作為民主的基礎 -民主（“人民做主”）最簡單的想像，是一種政府制度，來達成集體決議，而非指政府對公民採取的某些特定行動。然而在實踐上，所謂「民主」政府的最基本特徵，就是公民享有的一系列基本自由。雖然這些 "權利" 在不同民主政體中因時因地而異，但總體來說其運作模式一望即知，已成為如聯合國《世界人權宣言》（UDHR）等宣言的基礎，包括平等、生命、自由、人身安全、言論、思想、良心、財產、結社權等。雖然有充分的理由相信，這些權利是人類根本而普世的價值，但我們在此需要關注的是，為什麼人權對民主這種政府制度的完整性如此重要，以致於許多人與組織都主張：如果無法保障人權，則民主無法存在。 +民主（「人民做主」）最簡單的想像，是一種政府制度，來達成集體決議，而非指政府對公民採取的某些特定行動。然而在實踐上，所謂「民主」政府的最基本特徵，就是公民享有的一系列基本自由。雖然這些「權利」在不同民主政體中因時因地而異，但總體來說其運作模式一望即知，已成為如聯合國《世界人權宣言》（UDHR）等宣言的基礎，包括平等、生命、自由、人身安全、言論、思想、良心、財產、結社權等。雖然有充分的理由相信，這些權利是人類根本而普世的價值，但我們在此需要關注的是，為什麼人權對民主這種政府制度的完整性如此重要，以致於許多人與組織都主張：如果無法保障人權，則民主無法存在。 當代最偉大的民主哲學家之一，丹妮爾·艾倫（Danielle Allen）在她最近出版的《Justice by Means of Democracy（通過民主實現正義）》一書中，可謂最清楚的表明了民主於這些權利的依屬。她的基本論點是，若「人民意志」不能安全、自由的傾訴，就無法獲得政府的回應。如果投票是出於脅迫，或者坦率參與公民行動時會對個人帶來危險，那結果反映的不過是脅迫者的意向而已；這些都是騙局。假若公民無法結社為社會和政治團體，他們就無法協商、對當權者的決定提出異議。如果人們不能透過多樣化的經濟互動來謀求生計（例如，因為他們受到國家或私僱者的奴役），我們就不該期待他們表達的政治信念能反應內心的聲音、而非只是順服主人的政治服從。 -擔憂社會的不自由，會破壞民主運作，這不是抽象或推測而已。在實踐中，許多著名的民主國家，都曾因廢除他們所仰賴的自由而 "自取滅亡"。也許最著名的例子是威瑪共和國（the Weimar Republic），它在兩次世界大戰之間的 30 年的大部分時間中統治著德國，並因國家社會主義德國工人黨（納粹黨）在國會中取得多數席位而結束。這導致阿道夫·希特勒（Adolf Hitler）被任命為總理，從而建立了人類歷史上最臭名昭著的獨裁政權之一。然而，即使不對各國當代政治採取太強烈的立場，也很容易地辨別出許多民主社會選出的領導者和政府，卻以削減自由的方式，將它們從民主國家轉化為政治學家史蒂芬·列維茨基（Steven Levitsky）所稱的"競爭式威權"（competitive authoritarian）政體。 +擔憂社會的不自由，會破壞民主運作，這不是抽象或推測而已。在實踐中，許多著名的民主國家，都曾因廢除他們所仰賴的自由而「自取滅亡」。也許最著名的例子是威瑪共和國（the Weimar Republic），它在兩次世界大戰之間的 30 年的大部分時間中統治著德國，並因國家社會主義德國工人黨（納粹黨）在國會中取得多數席位而結束。這導致阿道夫·希特勒（Adolf Hitler）被任命為總理，從而建立了人類歷史上最臭名昭著的獨裁政權之一。然而，即使不對各國當代政治採取太強烈的立場，也很容易地辨別出許多民主社會選出的領導者和政府，卻以削減自由的方式，將它們從民主國家轉化為政治學家史蒂芬·列維茨基（Steven Levitsky）所稱的「競爭式威權」（competitive authoritarian）政體。 -為何先有人權才有民主制度？有一種觀點是，某些權利是組成民主政府的基本要素，包括：公民是有能力可作為能夠形塑、渴望塑造所參與的民主社區的集體生活的主體。他們有能力組織起來，促進共通利益，進而讓這些利益在政治層面上被聽見。這些依存關係並不是絕對的，且往往是辯論的主題。舉例，在一些被廣泛視作民主國家的社會（如北歐）強調了所謂 "積極言論自由" 的重要性，即每個公民不管為何，都能發表意見且被傾聽的可行途徑；其他社會（如美國）則偏向 "消極言論自由"，即任何人不得透過政府干預，來妨礙觀點的表達。有些（如歐洲）則傾向於強調隱私權，作為公民社會獨立於國家而存在的基本權利、也是政治行動的必要條件；而另一些社會（如亞洲）則傾向於 "集會與結社權"，認為這些權利對民主來說更加重要。但幾乎所有民主國家都同樣期盼的是：這一系列大幅重疊的權利，作為民主運作的基本前提，應該由全球民主國家共同維護。 +為何先有人權才有民主制度？有一種觀點是，某些權利是組成民主政府的基本要素，包括：公民是有能力可作為能夠形塑、渴望塑造所參與的民主社區的集體生活的主體。他們有能力組織起來，促進共通利益，進而讓這些利益在政治層面上被聽見。這些依存關係並不是絕對的，且往往是辯論的主題。舉例，在一些被廣泛視作民主國家的社會（如北歐）強調了所謂「積極言論自由」的重要性，即每個公民不管為何，都能發表意見且被傾聽的可行途徑；其他社會（如美國）則偏向「消極言論自由」，即任何人不得透過政府干預，來妨礙觀點的表達。有些（如歐洲）則傾向於強調隱私權，作為公民社會獨立於國家而存在的基本權利、也是政治行動的必要條件；而另一些社會（如亞洲）則傾向於「集會與結社權」，認為這些權利對民主來說更加重要。但幾乎所有民主國家都同樣期盼的是：這一系列大幅重疊的權利，作為民主運作的基本前提，應該由全球民主國家共同維護。 -國家（和地方）政府，特別是司法系統，往往在確保權利可得到尊重的面向，發揮關鍵作用；對這些權利進行裁決，往往是國家高等法院的核心職能，這也是我們在上面提到 "社會"（與民族國家相關）的部分原因。然而，僅僅從國家法律體制的角度來思考權利問題，是有誤導性的。權利是一種信仰體系，根深蒂固於各種文化（民族、次民族、跨境等等），且通過了對共同價值觀和合法性的盼望，來影響生活。例如保障言論自由，通常並非對工作場所或網路平台的法律要求。然而，在對言論自由的期望下，大幅限縮了員工和顧客對言論管制政策的接受程度。這樣的期盼，還激發了對非營利組織的支持，促成組織的型式在國內外支持人權。像《世界人權宣言》這樣難以用國際執法貫徹的宣言文件，依然對各國法律制度產生了影響、發揮了重大作用。例如，南非的最高上訴法院，就對其他國家的裁決產生了巨大影響。各種機構（法院、企業、民間社團等）在確保這些共同文化期望得到維護方面，顯得至關重要，而這些機構中沒有一個可單獨作為權利的 "執法者"或 "源頭"。在這個意義上，人權的存在可說超越了國家，即使國家是這些權利的關鍵捍衛者。 +國家（和地方）政府，特別是司法系統，往往在確保權利可得到尊重的面向，發揮關鍵作用；對這些權利進行裁決，往往是國家高等法院的核心職能，這也是我們在上面提到「社會」（與民族國家相關）的部分原因。然而，僅僅從國家法律體制的角度來思考權利問題，是有誤導性的。權利是一種信仰體系，根深蒂固於各種文化（民族、次民族、跨境等等），且通過了對共同價值觀和合法性的盼望，來影響生活。例如保障言論自由，通常並非對工作場所或網路平台的法律要求。然而，在對言論自由的期望下，大幅限縮了員工和顧客對言論管制政策的接受程度。這樣的期盼，還激發了對非營利組織的支持，促成組織的型式在國內外支持人權。像《世界人權宣言》這樣難以用國際執法貫徹的宣言文件，依然對各國法律制度產生了影響、發揮了重大作用。例如，南非的最高上訴法院，就對其他國家的裁決產生了巨大影響。各種機構（法院、企業、民間社團等）在確保這些共同文化期望得到維護方面，顯得至關重要，而這些機構中沒有一個可單獨作為權利的「執法者」或「源頭」。在這個意義上，人權的存在可說超越了國家，即使國家是這些權利的關鍵捍衛者。 權利往往也是一種志向和目標，而不是固定可行的現實。美國大部分的歷史敘事，都演述著從建國開始，就長期受剝奪的平等願望。許多社會權（如優質教育）和經濟權（如合適居所）往往超出了政府能力範圍，無法立即實現，特別在開發中國家，但卻見證了人民最深切的期望。 @@ -31,13 +31,13 @@ 作業系統大致上定義了運行在其上的應用程式的可行範疇。在性能、外觀、速度、機器記憶體使用等方面，在特定作業系統上運行的應用程式，必須共享且遵循某些基本特性。舉個簡單的例子，iOS 和 Android 允許觸控界面，而早期的智慧型手機（如 BlackBerry 或 Palm）則依賴觸控筆或鍵盤輸入。即使在今天，iOS 和 Android 兩者的應用程式，在外觀設計、操作感受和性能特色上仍有差異。應用程式是為這些平台中的一個（或多個）進行程式編寫，藉由作業系統中內建的運作程序，來確認他們的應用程式可以做什麼、不能做什麼；哪些需要從頭建構，哪些可以依賴底層的程序。 -這些界限往往並非黑白分明。雖然麥金塔是第一台採用圖形使用者界面（Graphical User Interface , GUI）作業系統的大眾市場電腦，但早期採用命令列界面的電腦，有時會有包含類似 GUI 等元素的程式。今天，雖然虛擬實境（VR）和擴增實境（AR）頭戴顯示器的效果更好，但有些 VR 和 AR 體驗也可以在手機上運行，只要把手機戴到眼前即可。此外，雖然作業系統設計師試圖加入安全協定，來抵禦違背或威脅底層作業系統完整性的應用程式行為，但這些問題總是難以完全杜絕。許多，也許是大多數，電腦 "病毒" 正是這種違反行為的例子。因此，作業系統定義了其上應用程式的正常行為、提供應用程式可以運用的工具，以及對其他應用程式的合理期待，決定了哪些功能比較容易實現。 +這些界限往往並非黑白分明。雖然麥金塔是第一台採用圖形使用者界面（Graphical User Interface , GUI）作業系統的大眾市場電腦，但早期採用命令列界面的電腦，有時會有包含類似 GUI 等元素的程式。今天，雖然虛擬實境（VR）和擴增實境（AR）頭戴顯示器的效果更好，但有些 VR 和 AR 體驗也可以在手機上運行，只要把手機戴到眼前即可。此外，雖然作業系統設計師試圖加入安全協定，來抵禦違背或威脅底層作業系統完整性的應用程式行為，但這些問題總是難以完全杜絕。許多，也許是大多數，電腦「病毒」正是這種違反行為的例子。因此，作業系統定義了其上應用程式的正常行為、提供應用程式可以運用的工具，以及對其他應用程式的合理期待，決定了哪些功能比較容易實現。 對於應用程式出乎意料的行為，作業系統必須不斷適應。有些行為值得鼓勵（支援新的應用情境）、有些行為則必須防堵（例如病毒入侵）。這樣的適應可能是微小、表層的：舉例，我們經常收到智慧手機的系統更新通知，抵禦安全威脅，或是與時俱進地將「表情符號」、「顏文字」等輸入法，納入作業系統（OS）的基礎。也有更戲劇性的變化：例如 Google 推出與汽車和電視相容的 Android 版本。 OS 以各種方式捍衛其完整性，其中安全修補程式是最敏捷、最具攻防性質的，但也包括開發者教育、創建廣泛的開發者支持生態、逐步開展顧客的使用和期待等。一般來說，建立在 OS 上的應用程式，既支持 OS 本身的開發，也支援更新和開發新的 OS，來協助 OS 不斷適應，甚至與原本的版本競爭。 儘管在不同的 OS 之間，存在差異和競爭關係，但它們都擁有許多共同的直觀功能，至少部分試圖允許跨平台開發、新舊版本相容（也就是說，為先前版本設計的應用程式仍然可以繼續使用，並且應用程式可以對新一代 OS「向未來相容」），以確保使用者能存取各式各樣的應用程式。 -OS 的發展日新月異，目的是為了支援尚未完全實現的功能。通常來說，從這些嘗試中學到的經驗，使它們在未來的某一天，可以更全面的支援這些功能。例如，最早發佈的著名語音 "智慧助理" （如蘋果的 Siri 和亞馬遜的 Alexa）品質有點可笑；隨著時間的推移、結合系統本身的使用者參與，品質得到了改善，使得它們具備了更廣泛的口語互動功能。 +OS 的發展日新月異，目的是為了支援尚未完全實現的功能。通常來說，從這些嘗試中學到的經驗，使它們在未來的某一天，可以更全面的支援這些功能。例如，最早發佈的著名語音「智慧助理」（如蘋果的 Siri 和亞馬遜的 Alexa）品質有點可笑；隨著時間的推移、結合系統本身的使用者參與，品質得到了改善，使得它們具備了更廣泛的口語互動功能。 ### ⿻基礎 @@ -59,17 +59,17 @@ OS 的發展日新月異，目的是為了支援尚未完全實現的功能。 #### 權利和關係 -對權利的多元理解來說，另一個核心要素是，雖然權利系統的某些元素可能屬於個人，但權利並非必然出於個人主義。OS 向個人化應用和使用者提供某些保證和能力，而權利系統顯然也向個人提供重要的保護，並使用這些來捍衛自己最重要的價值觀和利益。然而，權利不僅僅影響個人，也涉及系統與群體。結社和宗教信仰自由，既保護社團組織和宗教本身，同時也保護了它們的組成者。像美國憲法這樣的聯邦制度，承認各州和地方的權利，不僅僅是個人的權利。OS 保護了涵蓋整體的系統功能、應用程式與使用者之間的互動，同時也保護了應用程式和使用者。無論在 OS 還是 "公共空間" 的交流，總是涉及至少兩個參與者，而且 "公共空間" 或社交網絡的存在，取決於集體行動的參與和安全性。商業自由，雖然經常地被認為是個人選擇和雙邊交換，但一般來說，至少也以同樣的力度，保護企業的實體權利，以及企業簽訂的特定形式契約。 +對權利的多元理解來說，另一個核心要素是，雖然權利系統的某些元素可能屬於個人，但權利並非必然出於個人主義。OS 向個人化應用和使用者提供某些保證和能力，而權利系統顯然也向個人提供重要的保護，並使用這些來捍衛自己最重要的價值觀和利益。然而，權利不僅僅影響個人，也涉及系統與群體。結社和宗教信仰自由，既保護社團組織和宗教本身，同時也保護了它們的組成者。像美國憲法這樣的聯邦制度，承認各州和地方的權利，不僅僅是個人的權利。OS 保護了涵蓋整體的系統功能、應用程式與使用者之間的互動，同時也保護了應用程式和使用者。無論在 OS 還是「公共空間」的交流，總是涉及至少兩個參與者，而且「公共空間」或社交網絡的存在，取決於集體行動的參與和安全性。商業自由，雖然經常地被認為是個人選擇和雙邊交換，但一般來說，至少也以同樣的力度，保護企業的實體權利，以及企業簽訂的特定形式契約。 此外，保護和捍衛這些自由的實體，遠遠不只於民族國家及其相關機構。商事法是典型的例子。正如安·瑪麗·斯勞特（Anne-Marie Slaughter）和卡塔琳娜·皮斯特（Katharina Pistor）等學者所強調的，法律規則、貿易協議以及對先例相互尊重的國際網絡，是定義智慧財產權、反壟斷和金融機構資本要求等主題的核心。此處的每一項議題，都由各式各樣的專業網絡、具影響力的群體，以及國際機構所管轄。因此，權利不僅僅由構築互動網絡的群體所擁有；它們也是由類似文化、機構和代理人形成的互動網絡來界定。因此，權利是一組相互交織的社會圈，捍衛保護著人們和社會群體的互動網絡。 #### 與放任主義、專家統治的對比 -⿻權利和 OS，作為動態、網絡式和具適應性的基礎，支持著民主的集體自我探索與應用環境進化。這個觀點與放任主義、專家統治所體現的政治、技術願景，形成了鮮明對比。放任主義的基礎，是一套僵化、"永恆不變"、明確定義於歷史中的權利（側重於個人私有財產，以及防止任何與這些私產衝突的 "暴力" 活動），並主張應盡可能徹底、完全地將這些權利，從其他權利及各種社會文化脈絡、執法方式與意義抽離，透過技術系統使其不受更動，並防止社會力量干預。專家統治的基礎是設計符合 "客觀"、"效用" 或 "社會福利" 功能理想的技術系統，用來 "對齊" 和優化這些價值。放任主義的願景下看到的權利，是絕對式、易定義、靜態和普世的；專家統治的觀點則認為它們是實現可定義的社會利益過程中，無關緊要的障礙。 +⿻權利和 OS，作為動態、網絡式和具適應性的基礎，支持著民主的集體自我探索與應用環境進化。這個觀點與放任主義、專家統治所體現的政治、技術願景，形成了鮮明對比。放任主義的基礎，是一套僵化、「永恆不變」、明確定義於歷史中的權利（側重於個人私有財產，以及防止任何與這些私產衝突的「暴力」活動），並主張應盡可能徹底、完全地將這些權利，從其他權利及各種社會文化脈絡、執法方式與意義抽離，透過技術系統使其不受更動，並防止社會力量干預。專家統治的基礎是設計符合「客觀」、「效用」或「社會福利」功能理想的技術系統，用來「對齊」和優化這些價值。放任主義的願景下看到的權利，是絕對式、易定義、靜態和普世的；專家統治的觀點則認為它們是實現可定義的社會利益過程中，無關緊要的障礙。 ### ⿻自由 -無論人們如何看待未來在模擬世界（“元宇宙”）裡度日的構想，很少有人會否認現在多數人生活中，大部分的時間都在線上度過。在這種情況下，我們能做什麼、說什麼和成為什麼，都取決於技術所能提供的可能性，特別是那些將我們聯繫在一起、從而形成社會結構的技術。從這個意義上來說，在這些網絡中將我們相互連接的協定，定義了數位時代的權利，從而構成了社會運行所依賴的作業系統。 +無論人們如何看待未來在模擬世界（「元宇宙」）裡度日的構想，很少有人會否認現在多數人生活中，大部分的時間都在線上度過。在這種情況下，我們能做什麼、說什麼和成為什麼，都取決於技術所能提供的可能性，特別是那些將我們聯繫在一起、從而形成社會結構的技術。從這個意義上來說，在這些網絡中將我們相互連接的協定，定義了數位時代的權利，從而構成了社會運行所依賴的作業系統。 從智識和哲學上來說，我們在〈3-2 相連的社會〉中描述的⿻傳統，著重於需要超越自由民主主義建立的，基於財產、身份和民主的簡單框架，轉向更細緻的替代方案，以符合社會生活的豐富性。從技術上來說，提供電腦之間通訊治理框架的早期網路協定，試圖精確地實現這一點。它將權利體系和作業系統，這兩個平行卻又截然不同的概念，完全融合在一起，將創建人際網絡的作業系統，視為參與並支持⿻權利概念所需要的基本能力。 @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ OS 的發展日新月異，目的是為了支援尚未完全實現的功能。 然而，正如〈3-3 我們遺忘的道〉強調的，這項計畫可說才剛剛開始。即使是富裕國家，也無法將上述自然的網路功能，視為線上體驗的基本成份，提供給大多數人。我們缺乏廣泛採用的、非專有的身分識別協定，來守護線上的生命權和人格權[^IDprotocols]；缺乏廣泛採用的、非專有的通訊協定，來允許自由結社、線上溝通與組織團體[^MIMI] [^MLS] [^DIDComm]；缺乏廣泛採用的、非專有的支付協定，來支持真實世界資產的商業行為；也沒有用於安全共享運算、記憶體[^FFC]和資料[^holoChain]等數位資產的協議，來允許數位世界中的財產權和契約權。大多數解決這些挑戰的方法，背後的基本網路概念也過於有限，忽略了相互交織社群的核心作用。如果我們想要權利在數位世界中具有任何意義，就必須改變這種狀況。 -幸運的是，這樣的情形已經逐漸改變。過去十年的發展，已經適時的承擔起網際網路「缺失層」的重任。這些工作包括「web3」和「decentralized web」生態、歐洲的 Gaia-X 資料共享框架、各式數位原生貨幣和支付系統的開發，以及最突出的，是對「數位公共建設」不斷增長的投資 -- 印度在過去十年中開發的 "India stack" 就是一個例子。這些努力往往資金不足、在不同國家和意識形態間顯得支離破碎、往往野心不足，或是受到放任主義和專家統治意識型態的誤導。但它們已經從概念上證明了，更系統地追求⿻是可行的。接下來，我們將展示如何在這些專案的基礎上建設、為它們的未來投資，加速我們邁向⿻的腳步。 +幸運的是，這樣的情形已經逐漸改變。過去十年的發展，已經適時的承擔起網際網路「缺失層」的重任。這些工作包括「web3」和「decentralized web」生態、歐洲的 Gaia-X 資料共享框架、各式數位原生貨幣和支付系統的開發，以及最突出的，是對「數位公共建設」不斷增長的投資 -- 印度在過去十年中開發的「India stack」就是一個例子。這些努力往往資金不足、在不同國家和意識形態間顯得支離破碎、往往野心不足，或是受到放任主義和專家統治意識型態的誤導。但它們已經從概念上證明了，更系統地追求⿻是可行的。接下來，我們將展示如何在這些專案的基礎上建設、為它們的未來投資，加速我們邁向⿻的腳步。 [^IDprotocols]: Closed proprietary namespaces and globally managed registries (see “Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) V1.0.” W3C, July 19, 2022, https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/) as well as verifiable credentials that support collection of credentials from a variety of sources (see “Verifiable Credentials Data Model 1.0.” W3C, March 3, 2022. https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/.) [^MIMI]: “More Instant Messaging Interoperability (Mimi),” Datatracker, n.d. https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/mimi/about/. diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-2-\347\265\220\347\244\276\350\210\207\345\244\232\345\205\203\345\205\254\347\234\276.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-2-\347\265\220\347\244\276\350\210\207\345\244\232\345\205\203\345\205\254\347\234\276.md" index 67fa5570..572cf719 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-2-\347\265\220\347\244\276\350\210\207\345\244\232\345\205\203\345\205\254\347\234\276.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/4-2-\347\265\220\347\244\276\350\210\207\345\244\232\345\205\203\345\205\254\347\234\276.md" @@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ 在這樣的基礎上，近年來又擴展出了一些功能強大的隱私強化技術（privacy-enhancing technologies）。這些技術包括： -* 零知識證明（zero-knowledge proof）：它允許在不洩露完整資料下，向沒有訪問許可權的人安全證明源自於某些資料的事實。例如：人們可以證明自己超過了某個特定年齡，而無需出示作為證明依據的完整駕照資訊。 +* 零知識證明（zero-knowledge proof）：它允許在不洩露完整資料下，安全地證明源自這些資料的事實。例如：人們可以證明自己超過了某個特定年齡，而無需出示作為證明依據的完整駕照資訊。 * 安全多方計算（secure multi-party computation）和同態加密：它們允許一組人執行涉及資料的演算，其中每個人都擁有部分資料，也不會向其他人揭示這些部分，且允許自己和其他人對計算過程進行驗證。例如：在保持秘密投票的同時，允許對選舉結果進行安全驗證。 diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-0-\345\276\236\342\277\273\345\210\260\347\217\276\345\257\246\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-0-\345\276\236\342\277\273\345\210\260\347\217\276\345\257\246\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" index ac77c026..8a27770a 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-0-\345\276\236\342\277\273\345\210\260\347\217\276\345\257\246\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-0-\345\276\236\342\277\273\345\210\260\347\217\276\345\257\246\347\244\276\346\234\203.md" @@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ 這種方法與「以社群為基礎」的方法形成對比，後者也提供了許多簡略、不精確的早期（多元）數位技術（如時間共享、個人電腦和許多應用程式）。正如我們在《我們遺忘的道》一章中簡短討論的，這些技術始於早期採用者社群，其中通常包括許多以數位工具「進行實驗」的系統設計師。雖然這些社群通常對其系統有何用途有一些初步的想法，但他們鮮少能將期望的成果精簡為預先指定的指標，事實上，其系統有許多組件是其他早期採用者創建的。這些系統透過許多回社群從學習時遇到的未預期情況，並將這樣的學習歷程回饋到產品設計，同時提供社群創建的應用程序，將之傳播到相鄰的社群，最終傳播給大眾。 -「對......進行實驗」和「與......一起實驗」各有明確的優勢與劣勢。但後者的模式與當今由創投資本推動的數位技術產業所追求的採行方式漸行漸遠，甚至更加危險。像LinkedIn創始人里德．霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）這樣的創業投資家們讚揚那些支持「閃電式擴張」（blitzscaling）冠軍的「規模大師」。新創公司在這個情況下，早期獲得大量創投資金，使它們能夠投資於迅速擴大使用者人數，接著利用這種超模性（supermodularity）的好處（例如，網路效應、從使用者數據中學習等）來達到市場主導地位。也許最戲劇性的例子是霍夫曼背書的 OpenAI，在推出 ChatGPT 後的幾個月內就達到了一億名用戶。這種迅速採用以及由此產生，對於這類系統可能會對社會造成傷害的廣泛顧慮，導致了一波公眾的擔憂，與著眼於避免「快速行動並打破事件」的循環，及伴隨較早期、成長相對較慢的技術（如叫車服務和社群媒體）的社會反彈。 +「對......進行實驗」和「與......一起實驗」各有明確的優勢與劣勢。但後者的模式與當今由創投資本推動的數位技術產業所追求的採行方式漸行漸遠，甚至更加危險。像LinkedIn創始人里德．霍夫曼（Reid Hoffman）這樣的創業投資家們讚揚那些支持「閃電式擴張」（blitzscaling）冠軍的「規模大師」。新創公司在這個情況下，早期獲得大量創投資金，使它們能夠投資於迅速擴大使用者人數，接著利用這種超模性（supermodularity）的好處（例如，網路效應、從使用者數據中學習等）來達到市場主導地位。也許最戲劇性的例子是霍夫曼背書的 OpenAI，在推出 ChatGPT 後的幾個月內就達到了一億名用戶。這種迅速採用以及由此產生，對於這類系統可能會對社會造成傷害的廣泛顧慮，導致了一波公眾的擔憂，與著眼於避免「快刀斬亂麻」的循環，及伴隨較早期、成長相對較慢的技術（如叫車服務和社群媒體）的社會反彈。 根本的挑戰在於，將「與......一起實驗」與完全以資本主義市場驅動的新技術管理模式配對時，就成了危險之事。因為它尋求在系統浮現損害、挑戰和相互依存性時進行管理，而不是事前測試，所以它要求開發過程本身，由對「技術如何影響社群」更完整的理念驅動，而不僅僅關注銷售額或使用者人數。這正是〈3-3 我們遺忘的道〉中討論的早期⿻實驗意欲提供的，在嚴格限制商業參與的前提下，交由社會部門和標準化過程驅動。然而，即使是這種更平衡的「與......一起實驗」版本，仍未達到我們對於安全共融的技術發展，可能擁有的最高期望，它最終力求成為全球性的變革，但也可能帶來顯著風險。 @@ -75,7 +75,7 @@ 雖然統計數據並不完全可靠，但根據與網際網路整體類似的模式，web3 使用者在全球分佈相當廣泛。不過，使用者往往精通此技術、性別上偏向男性，非常年輕，根據我們在這個領域的經驗，他們傾向於無神論，政治上中間偏右，種族上主要是歐洲、閃族和亞洲血統。臺灣數位生態系統的參與者顯然大多來自臺灣，因此主要是臺灣所代表的種族。但在年齡、技術背景、政治觀點和宗教背景方面，他們更加多樣化。 -這兩個生態系統也專注於我們在本書前面討論過的多元宇宙議題的不同光譜。臺灣主要專注於多元宇宙更深層與較狹窄的應用，以及最為強力支持這些應用的基本協議（身份和訪問）。全球 web3 社群主要專注於更淺顯和更具包容性的應用，以及最支持這些應用的基本協議（締合、商務和合約）。 +這兩個生態系統也專注於我們在本書前面討論過的多元宇宙議題的不同光譜。臺灣主要專注於多元宇宙更深層與較狹窄的應用，以及最為強力支持這些應用的基本協議（身份和存取）。全球 web3 社群主要專注於更淺顯和更具包容性的應用，以及最支持這些應用的基本協議（締合、商務和合約）。 這兩者都是多元宇宙的關鍵早期測試場所，然而根據我們的標準來衡量它們，也顯示了其局限性。臺灣的生態系統對於其中許多應用程序來說比所需的要大，這可能是為什麼它託管了一系列子社群（他們通常稱之為「資料聯盟」），進行更先進的實驗，得到了更廣泛生態系統的支持。臺灣的生態系統，在亞洲和許多通常被稱為民主國家中具有強大的聲望潛力，但其周圍的地緣政治衝突，在使其成為全球公平傳播的種子方面存在一些挑戰。另一方面，web3 社群實際上可能有點小且同質，無法充分測試新的市場機構是否能與資本主義的影響力競爭。此外，困擾 web3 領域的許多醜聞，危及了其作為一個能夠公平傳播的創新指引能力。 diff --git "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-2-\345\201\245\345\272\267.md" "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-2-\345\201\245\345\272\267.md" index 1a974cfe..4069e544 100644 --- "a/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-2-\345\201\245\345\272\267.md" +++ "b/contents/traditional-mandarin/6-2-\345\201\245\345\272\267.md" @@ -146,7 +146,7 @@ Q2. 社會是否能接受社交距離等必要措施？ #### 利用 XR 技術建設健康社群 -延展現實（XR）技術或沉浸式技術包含一整套工具，透過準完整的感官、運動、認知和關係╱人際工具箱，提供生物識別服務。迄今為止，在醫療領域的應用都是非人際的，用於為醫療工作者提供降低風險的醫療培訓，就像飛行員使用飛行模擬器一樣。然而，我們可以很自然地想像將基於健康的 XR 遊戲化，以誘因和獎勵學習複雜的認知、關係和行為技能（如自我保健、自我洞察和自我管理），以及一套類比人際應用（參見〈05-02 沉浸式共享實境〉）。與上述例子類似，透過模擬和真實的社交互動，可以為身心障礙者打開新的視野，而沉浸感較弱、輸送量較低的傳統輔助技術，則無法解決這些問題。 +延展現實（XR）技術或沉浸式技術包含一整套工具，透過準完整的感官、運動、認知和關係／人際工具箱，提供生物識別服務。迄今為止，在醫療領域的應用都是非人際的，用於為醫療工作者提供降低風險的醫療培訓，就像飛行員使用飛行模擬器一樣。然而，我們可以很自然地想像將基於健康的 XR 遊戲化，以誘因和獎勵學習複雜的認知、關係和行為技能（如自我保健、自我洞察和自我管理），以及一套類比人際應用（參見〈05-02 沉浸式共享實境〉）。與上述例子類似，透過模擬和真實的社交互動，可以為身心障礙者打開新的視野，而沉浸感較弱、輸送量較低的傳統輔助技術，則無法解決這些問題。 #### 利用巨量資料和神經網路輔助診斷和治療