What is it about crypto that tastes so good?

There is something fundamental about cryptocurrency that feels like the perfect model of development for all future software.

• free
• open source
• making a real world concept more sophisticated
• empowering new types of commerce
• eliminating unnecessary middlemen/profiteers
• anonymous
• decentralized
• rewriting antiquated borders

My current musing is if the lending of computer power for coins could be simplified into a farming out of the centralized server system required to run a major network. So for users to access the network there is a set server cost which they can purchase coins for, and coins are created by subdividing the functionality of social networks to various computers in exchange for fractions of coins. 

INPUT WELCOME

Why Does Everything Suck Right Now?

...We have the smartest thinkers in the world with unlimited budgets whose sole stated goal is to make good, useful technology. To me that must mean that there is an unstated goal of silicon valley that is an inhibiting force to making useful, elegant technology that enriches lives.

If you substitute the morality of an entity for a human you're trading in an elaborate multi-faceted miracle for a simulacrum. They've boiled the primary goal of a corporation down to the sole goal of creating more values for its shareholders. Maybe this is good for a physical item with several competitors in the marketplace (though this is only for argument's sake, I believe this system to be an abject failure) if a corporate entity is put in charge of an ongoing service - especially one who by nature of its structure is nearly impossible to create competition for, it is an abomination.

If you have a coffee shop and your product is good enough to maintain a following, you do everything you can to maintain and expand your relationship with your customers. If you don't nurture the relationship your customers may find a new coffee shop... or switch to tea. Currently there aren't sufficient market forces to create fair competition in the highest levels of tech.  When you create a product in this environment your goal is to create a product good enough to indoctrinate a fanbase and then to find every way to warp the relationship in the favor of your bottom line.

I think this is the universal reason that all good tech begins simple and transparent and evolves incessantly into a confusing array of unnecessary features and diminishing functionality. It's alarming but not surprising to find that these companies are directly responsible for genocides, political turmoil and human strife... The core principle driving the companies has no relationship to the laws of physics. Infinite growth of anything isn't sustainable in our closed ecosystems and yet those in the positions to do the most are operating as if it were possible.

Magna Carta 2.0

We believe these rights to be self-evident in all worlds digital and physical:

• A person has a naturally imbued right to have ownership over their information

• A person has a naturally imbued right to connect to others unencumbered

•  A developer has a duty to make Ethical Software (ES) that is supportive and affirming of its users 

•  A user has a duty to support their equitable share of development of the ES that they employ

• Ideal ES is open-source 

• ES's end is functionality and not the massive enrichment of the creator(s)

• ES is not be self-referential as part of its functionality (eyeball gravity)

• ES strictly enhances human connections 

• Users have the right to be notified of and opt-in to any behavior modification 

• An Ethical coder has a servant's heart

• Ethical coding should be transparent in its goals 

• Ideal ES does not adopt traditional for-profit economic structure 

• Users should take an active/constructive role in the improvement of functionality of ES

Why has intellectual software development been the model?

To develop infrastructure that can interface the entire world you need vast capital. Most of the people who are trying to get an idea off the ground are so interested in pursuing a specific idea that they hadn't had time to consider the foundational soundness of the existing investment models for software development.

Angel investing and crowd sourcing have been possible, but by and large the most impactful new companies of the last twenty years have been subjected to the ownership of a corporate entity and subsequently, fiduciary duty to its shareholders.

By the natural standards that a reasonable person would apply to the world, a piece of software has a finite value to humanity - but if you apply the need for infinitely expanding profits, and then apply the minds of the best and brightest thinkers in the country, you create an institutional poison to be inevitably and nearly imperceptibly administered to all users.

From my experience it's the birdsong of everyone that hears a great idea "you'd better patent it", "you'd better beat other people to it". Covetousness. Avarice. These are the motivations that can make someone sign a pact with the devil.

I believe the answer to this systemic failure to create software that is subservient to the human condition is to enumerate and codify the rights of users in relationship to technology, and allow developers to voluntarily adhere to this new technological bill of rights. There could also be a central authority - a tech version of the SPLC per se - that acts as the authority of which pieces of software were in compliance with these basic rights.  

An organic rating for software.

The upshot of Intelligent software not requiring human momentum is that the software should all be immediately supportive and affirmative of human life, thereby not requiring the typical critical mass that VC-backed technology requires. It all has the ability to grow at its own rate and the right to reach its natural peak of usefulness to users, meaning that it can start humbly.

I believe it will rely heavily on crowdfunding, crowd promoting, angel investment, and subscription support similar to podcasts, NPR etc...

Intelligent software vs Intellectual Software

The properties of Intelligent Software:

• Open source
• Finite cost
• Not harvesting data for its own ends
• Constantly growing the means of the users
• Strengthening/reinforcing existing relationships and ideas
• Anonymous 
• Free form
• Open ended
• Boundary free
• non-centralized

What flourishes on Intelligent Software:

• Music
• Cinema
• Food
• Humor
• Honesty
• Community
• Trust
• Understanding
• Age/Maturity 
• Commerce
• Freedom
• Panopolies

The properties of Intellectual Software:

• Proprietary
• Constant and evolving costs
• Constant surveillance/data harvest
• Constantly growing means of the owners
• Undermining existing communities and relationships
• Nostic
• Closely guarded development/functionality
• Shrinking boundaries
• Centralized

What flourishes on Intellectual Software:

• Jealousy
• Fear
• Misinformation
• Tragedy
• Anger
• Isolation
• False youth
• User disenfranchisement
• Control
• Politics
• Religion
• War
• Pornography
• Entitlement
• Monopolies/Duopolies

The Architecture of Generative Software

Since the beginning of the age of networked computers there has been a growing divergence in the nature of the software available. While adding functionality to some that affirmed life and added depth and meaning to the human experience, an entire class of software has emerged that enslaves everyone in the chain of its existence.

The owners of this software are enslaved by the need to remain number one, and that need sends a chain of decisions that indoctrinate micro-slaveries throughout the architecture of the software. The best examples of this are Google, Instagram and the also-ran Facebook.

These all consistently run off of human momentum, and in harnessing human momentum the software is highly interested in keeping people engaged and subjected as much as possible. They almost all appear to be free on the onset, but have ever-growing costs in the form of robbing you of personal information and freedom, as well as rewiring your brain to the overall detriment of you life.  Ironically these technologies share the same recruiting architecture as a cult (or religion).

They are intellectual, science based, and reductive of its subjects - attempting to concentrate the human experience into the parts most valuable to the software's respective business model.

The upside they espouse is a connection to all human knowledge as well as to every person with a connected device in the world. Since that is far too large of a proposition, it forces developers to pare you down to your core elements, a fraction of your core self, to give you access to the information and people it believes you will value the most. This makes sense for a business model but is disastrous for human community/empathy/diversity of thought/openness to new ideas.

There is already a working model for software that is affirmative of life, can work with the whole of a person, and can use inter-connectivity to act as a tempering force on the underlying structures of humanity as they have existed for thousands of years.  If the underlying tenants of these pieces of software can be understood and used as a foundation for future endeavors, I believe we can use the internet as a constructive force to the future of humanity. As a way to develop a better brighter future than has come before.

I think of these as intelligent software - different than intellectual software, because they have the ability to regard the whole of a person or an idea and to sharpen and define that idea. This is the software that is used in the creation of music, poetry, humor and cinema. Examples are Ableton Live, Final Cut Pro, Photoshop, Word Processing, Spotify and cryptocurrency.

Humanity already has a social network, and if we can build a platform that follows the rules of intelligent software, I believe we can rehabilitate the ailing fabric of connectivity that has been subjected to the relative inarticulate systems currently in place to support this vital task.