there's this thing it's
aliveness what is that feeling to be
alive we see it we feel it I think
everybody has that experience I do I
don't know I don't need to make it
Universal but I just have these moments
where I can feel the aliveness in the
world around me
think about that morning in the spring
when the peepers first
start or think about the middle of
summer when you hear the Crickets going
like those are both being embedded in
the aliveness of the
world but then coming in closer to home
I have this experience
of being in groups with other people
where there's an explosive
aliveness playing music together when
the Groove is
hit I mean there are sometimes in work
environments you go into a meeting and
it's not one of those boring meetings
that people say ideas come to die it's
the meeting where you are on the the
purpose of your work together is active
and you come out of there exploding into
I'm doing this I'm doing that I'm doing
this there are moments in athletics like
when you're on a team and you just
complete the path and you can see the
hole and your other teammates and
the rules of the game are there in play
and it's just incredible joy for me it's
Ultimate Frisbee like you just run and
you catch that and you see that person
and you dodge the other it's just it's
there's such an
aliveness and so the purpose of my work
is to increase that in the world and to
work to shift the ways in which the
patterns that we've lived together have
forced us into the deadening into the
alienation into the drudgery somehow
we've gotten oursel into a place where
we're on a spiral in the other way from
aliveness there's a lot of names for it
Supremacy Consciousness dominance
hierarchies some people say capitalism
in the world they think it's that
although some people think capitalism is
the greatest thing in the world what is
it what is that feeling of oh they call
it the rat race what is that how is it
that we've come to create patterns for
how we live together that's a rat race
and we've even bought that that's like
NE necessary that's what the world looks
like rats they only do a rat race if you
put them in a
maze rats actually are pretty cool
creatures if you don't put them in a
maze and uh they live a life like all
the other creatures in the world of
exploration and sure sustenance finding
food and but they have a sociality and a
joy together they
play they wouldn't be in a race if they
weren't put in that place and I think
that's true for us too in 2000 my dad
sent me a little manuscript called money
and interest or something like that by
mcgree Kennedy and I read this
thing and I'm like holy
crap I didn't know that this is the way
it worked I didn't know that this was
the pattern of our monetary system and I
didn't understand
that that
pattern the way money is brought into
existence on the basis of debt I didn't
realize the consequences of that and so
there was this explosion
of we create Rules of Engagement rules
of the game that we play by they're like
at the bottom that you don't even see
them and they spin out and the
consequences for all of our life
together in the world are is astonishing
over time it's like the the way it
evolves out from those basic rules of
the
game that was my aha moment and I'm like
wow and because we created these rules
of the game we can create different
rules of the
game but then then the thing
was oh and what if the rules of the
game was a way of spinning out rules of
the games like you jump a level you
increase the capacity to express new
types of game together because just
coming up with some new game is not
going to do it that one is also going to
spin out one
whole way that doesn't work well so this
was an intellectual moment for me but it
came from this this realization
of how we live together is so governed
by what happens if you issue money on
the basis of
debt and I'm not a conspiracy theory
person like there are people over in the
out in the world who
are Jackal Island and whatever whatever
like that's baloney to me I mean sure
things happen people conspire but we
don't live inside of a a world of that
and we live in the world of flies
landing on
heads I know that was a big moment for
me then my dad sent me another book he
sent me Bernard's book and I read that
and Bernard was like as one of the
architects of the Euro and seeing the
collapses and all the rest as as a
natural consequence of this pattern and
thinking about what other ways we could
do this and then my dad sent me a third
book Richard dwe an Ecology of money I
think is what it was and so then that
led to a bunch of work on thinking about
alternate patterns there but then that
made me realize that oh no it's it
really is this bigger game of what is
the
language what are the templates the
patterns by which we spin these things
into
existence like people really we we all
have the experience of this in the realm
of language so we know that we can talk
about a lot of different things we can
talk about our love lives we can talk
about doing the dishes we can talk we
can create plans for the future we can
tell stories of the past we can speak
poems all of these things live on top of
what we call
language and I think we all recognize
that it's possible to say a lot of the
same things that we say in language
other ways and in fact we you see in the
animal
kingdom we see in the rest of the world
that that a lot of the same things are
spoken about love life is spoken about
warnings about things in the future
spoken about you know you have shrieks
you have cries you have all these kinds
of vocalizations or you have changing
body parts or raised feathers you have
these things but those don't live in a
generalized frame of
language or if they they they don't live
in as generalized a frame as language
they're much more oneoff signal systems
and we can see the the gradient the
range of how you can talk about things
with individual signals and then you can
also talk about things because you've
got an underlying thing we call grammar
subject
predicate object right you can
actually use that to talk about so many
things because we know what a noun is
what a verb is uh we have prepositions
that creates a composability of
expression the power of adding in a
grammar then this capacity to share
meaning together explodes because we
have that grammar and I would like to
say that that pattern of a capacity
exploding in power because there is
something
grammatic that's the big
deal and so we can give more examples of
that
right
neurons they're this this incredible
thing of being able to send a signal by
over a biological distance like a large
distance in a body neurons are used for
all kinds of purposes in bodies they're
a kind of grammatic unit you can see how
having that assemblable unit is a
grammatic unit that creates the capacity
for large bodies to coordinate well
money the issuance of money debt
mechanisms interest all these things are
grammatical units for sharing value
across space and time people really like
Alexander's pattern languages this is a
grammatics of how to create spaces that
really work for people so for me then
the question is what is a grammatics of
grammatics how do you create grammars
for lots of different purposes that's
what I would get up out of out of bed
for for that because it seems like
that's where the power for change is
every time in the history of the
universe where there's significant
change it's because there's a new thing
that is like that I call it a grammatic
capacity
that's what DNA is it's a grammar that
expresses living beings into existence
and on top of the parts of DNA the
lowlevel parts of DNA there's other
grammars that are built on top of that
genomics that's an assembly of a bunch
of this smaller grammar for assembling
proteins and creating little cells but
then there's grammars on top of that of
genes that Express traits inside that
and then there's complex interactions of
these grammars that allow certain of
that to be turned on with epigenetics
and we don't really understand all of it
but I am quite convinced that it is
grammatic in shape that's what keeps
happening so if you want it from the
point of view of a story think about
this ball that we live on floating in
space it looked One Way hard and
cold then DNA came
along now the that cold hard body is
just like covered in fuzz
it's covered in life on aliveness and
the whole planet is shifted the planet
was like it's full of oxygen this most
toxic material that like is highly
active that's because of life life is a
geological Force that's big
change then you can jump up the other
stack humans and their own language are
our ability to speak that grammar is
what creates culture and creates our
ability to coordinate with each other to
play these social games together that
have also allowed us to be the big
operators on the planet we are also a
geological Force I learned that in
sometime in the 60s this is in my
geology class in college my professor
said I I think it was the 60s I don't
remember the exact date he said there
was that point is where humans started
moving more physical material than all
of the rivers in the world we move more
matter than all of the rivers in the
world you know the Amazon the
Nile the Tigres and the Euphrates these
are huge amounts of of matter is moved
down them we move more
because we coordinate because we have
language so if you want change which I
think we need if we want to survive I
think that most of us would agree that
that's the case then maybe it's time to
have some kind of new grammatic capacity
for coordinating and behaving together
in ways that aren't self-terminating
so the universe already feels really
alive to me if you just look at it from
the point of view of supernovas and
expanding
galaxies that like it's such a beautiful
thing even without what we call life it
has this kind of be beautiful pattern
and it operates according to the grammar
of chemistry according to the grammar of
U all of that grammatics I choose to
look at it that way
life DNA and genomics creates expression
into being all of these different forms
of biological beings that get to
co-evolve together and create more and
more explosion more surface area more
places to play and invent how we fit
together that's what a thriving
ecosystem seems to look like and we know
we know that it works because it's been
here for it's been here for a billion
years and it keeps expanding into stuff
it was very simple it was an ocean full
of Aly for a while and now it's a planet
full of people doing all kinds of weird
things and all of the other things
around there that feels like aliveness
to me but we know that it's also
self-terminating
because the pattern that we've used to
expand across
space is one of dominance hierarchies
it's a kind of the actual pattern of
living together is a Supremacy
hierarchy that ends up collapsing a lot
of
the the fuel for aliveness I don't know
the power it gets Central ized into the
top of the pyramid it's just it's like
it's pretty obvious that's what it looks
like and so for
me the question is how do we create
something that is like DNA for
biological organisms but for social
bodies so that we're not just living by
this one pattern of dominance
hierarchies which is pretty much all we
know how to do when the numbers get big
the thing that I was saying at the
before when we were talking about the
aliveness of being in a jazz band or
soccer team or sitting around the
campfire singing or that kind of
belonging that togetherness that we feel
we really know how to do that well in
small groups we do not know how to do
that in large
groups so you say what does it look like
it looks
like so here's a body right this is a
trillion
unit system right my cells are not in a
Supremacy hierarchy they are in this a a
collective collaborative collective
intelligence that it doesn't put doesn't
pit the individual against the
group it's not it's not a sacrifice the
individual to the group it's not the the
individual that gets Supremacy over the
group The the ways in which we look at
the competing of our political
hierarchies tend to be around that
Dynamic it's not that it's kind of
a a place where being together and
having agency are not at
odds so to me that's what I'm looking
for is what is it that we can do what
are the
patterns that allow us to express into
being social
forms Rules of Engagement
so that that can evolve because I don't
know what that looks like it's an
evolutionary process and it will keep
expanding out but we don't have an
underlying substrate in which to express
into being social
organisms why is creating social fabric
a response to the deadness of the
world it almost feels to me like the
question the answer to that question is
self-evident
like we live inside a social fabric
we live inside a social fabric this
social fabric means that I got to earn a
living that is part of the Rules of
Engagement it's in the language I got to
earn a living really is that the social
fabric we should be living in let me try
it a different way I'm really suspicious
of people who say I know what the answer
is this is how we should be together we
should use everybody should use
sociocracy if we all had circles where
the other Circle responds to the other
thing that would make it
better or I have the answer I will make
women safe I am your strong man or
Anarchy we should all be doing whatever
we want to do right those are all
instances of examples of how to solve a
particular problem I don't trust any of
them I totally trust them in certain
contexts and for certain people that is
the right answer I get it you are afraid
of your job being taken away and you
need somebody to protect you you will
respond to a person who's strong who
will do that that's right for you I get
it you want to participate in all these
different levels and you want to have
lots of um everybody being
heard great that's right for you
sociocracy you want to be able to be
completely independent and run around
and bounce off the walls and live in an
emergency B I get it that's right for
you social fabric to me is the weaving
together of all of these different ways
of being such that things are coherent
and I don't know the answer of how to
build that therefore what must exist is
a higher level context that allows us to
experiment and evolve and play with
these different forms in a coherent way
it's got to jump up a level you have to
be able to have a language a grammar in
which which to express these different
forms of sociality so you can assemble
them into being with some kind of
constraints that they can then
interoperate and work together right
it's not going to be it can't be a
free-for-all you or it can it is right
now right you just have them and they
get tumbled against each other but if
you have a grammatics a sensible way and
you understand
the like what I like to use is the word
dimensionality if you understand the
forms of what's different about about
these systems like how much Authority is
there how much freedom is there how much
what types of connection are there what
are the forms of
membranes in which people can enter in
or out of a group if you understand
these questions that differentiate
different types of social interaction
and then you create a grammatic space
that holds those kinds of differences so
that you can experiment and play with
okay in our organization we're going to
have three kinds of teams we're going to
have a governance team that operates
according to this we're going to have an
evolutionary team that um is finding an
adapting to the environment and we're
going to have another team that you know
if you can actually build that together
and you can represent it in tooling that
is weaving together social Fabric and
that the the space of being able to hold
that together and know what the heck
we're talking about that that seems to
me like how it has to go because none of
us knows the specific answer but we can
possibly see the ways of which we could
express particular answers and have
those particular answers play
together and evolve
that that seems like it's where the
solution goes when you don't know the
answer to a specific thing you have to
have a framework within which to play
with possible
solutions that's what moves us from
Collective stupidity to collective
intelligence the answer arises out of
the experiments
yeah but the thing is yeah so if the
answer arises out of the experiments
there has to be something that can
contain experimentation that creates
enough safety to do that also so what
we're talking about here is evolutionary
capacity how can systems grow well my
story is that evolution is a consequence
of there being a grammar so when there
is a pattern a template that allow ows
for constraint and
expression whether that is expressing
biological beings into existence through
DNA or whether that is expressing
molecules into existence through
veence electron bonding or whether that
is through expressing cultures into
existence because people can
talk these are different levels of a
grammar that allows kinds of Expressions
into exist
and then there's an ecosystem that will
test those expressions against each
other and different realities will
emerge out of them that's what evolution
is it is a creating of a fit a fitting
together inside a space of
expression that comes from a particular
grammatics that can hold and constrain
those
expressions to me I don't feel like this
is a utopic vision it's not like oh
everything will be fine
um I won't have to go to work I won't
have to do things I don't like to do
it's not about
that I'm not sure quite why I want to
defend against that but I think a lot of
times when we when you say what would it
look like the thing that we get is some
kind of like dancing through the lies
and picking the fruit off the trees and
so on no I think there will always be
entropic struggles right the the world
Falls
heart and we are we are
collecting um
order from the world we are
taking but there's this cycle of like
what it feels to me
like when you're together and you know
that your contribution is
useful when you can be yourself but you
can belong
that kind of feeling is what I want at
the large Civic
scale that's what it would feel like
it's like I can be myself and I can
belong I can contribute I know where I
can be responsible
to but it's not all on me I'm part of it
all
holding and I know that we have that
experience we have the experience of
when that the case we have flashes of
that but it sure doesn't feel to me like
that's what our sociality that we live
in today is headed for it feels like
it's all designed around polarization
about us versus them and that just
doesn't feel
good I think what I want to do is I want
to just tell the story of my story of
looking at what what has happened with
the evolution of the internet and what
what shows up for me so when I look at
the internet which is a big word right a
lot of things are inside that bubble
what is the internet well for me the
core of what the internet is is What's
called the IP protocol the Internet
Protocol that protocol what was that
that led to what we have right now well
my story is that what that was is the
first time on the planet when you could
send a message from one place to another
without there being a per message
cost before
that there was always a per message cost
a telegram a phone call the cost might
be you take it yourself and walk over so
your biological cost of moving from one
place to another and even previous
digital networks they would include in
the protocol of sending a packet of data
from one place to another the
cost how many hops whatever that was
part of the protocol but the designers
of the Internet Protocol through either
conscious choice or Serendipity removed
pricing from the protocol so what
happened is that it was possible to send
a message from one place on the planet
to another place on the planet without
there being a per message cost and the
cost is just simply having the
infrastructure owning the computers and
being connected up to infrastructure so
there may be monthly costs there
certainly the cost of buying the
computer or you know whatever that was
and there ear early early days of that
it was mostly in institutional costs
that were bearing it that was world
changing but interestingly it's world
changing mostly for technical folks
because to create a specific use of that
capacity was to use the Internet
Protocol in some way and figure out what
message you're going to send over your
packet that was a technical
task so that was step one step two give
this
capacity in general to everybody
how was that accomplished well that was
accomplished by building some protocols
technical protocols on top of the IP
protocol and there's technical names for
it so for people who are technical it
was rfc822 which was the internet
message format protocol it was SMTP the
simple mail transfer protocol those are
the two critical ones the built on top
of Ip that meant that all of a sudden
everybody as long as they had a computer
and they had an email client they could
send a message to anybody else without
there being a per message
cost that is a tremendous thing take the
cost of something that's very valuable
and move it from being something that is
per message and charge and put it onto
the infrastructure
level so that's fun part of what happens
when you do that is people go oh this is
really
important what is the ecosystem that
surrounds that new capacity and so so
most of us had the experience of joining
at that time if you were around in that
time you you got on AOL or you got on
Genie or you got on a number of other
internet service
providers although they didn't even call
themselves that really or they kind of
did but they were giving you access to
email this capacity and they were adding
value around that so my favorite example
of this is AOL it added all kinds of
value around that it added on AOL
keywords and which got you to these
rooms where they could charge companies
to put their content into those rooms
and you could see things and it looked
kind of like the web looks today but it
was owned and managed by AOL and they
had chat rooms right also something that
we have on the web now but that was all
owned and it was enclosed it was value
added around this open
protocol and it's so funny to me because
the the story keeps going here that AOL
they thought they were a Content company
and they were so successful in this
model um that they were able to buy Time
Warner a content provider so here we
have this pattern we have a open
protocol which is what most people
really wanted about all these early
internet service providers and then you
had other good value that was added
around it what came next in this
Evolution what came next
was let's drop the price
the let's remove the per unit
price from
publication publication like sending
messages used to be something that
always had a perun cost you had a
publisher that you would send your your
book to and they would create a book and
print it out and so you had to buy a
book it's per unit cost or you have an
advertisement or any of anything that
you wanted to published to the world was
a per unit
cost that was dropped to zero by an
addition on top of the Internet
Protocol then this is three more
protocols HTTP which we all type in
front of our URLs the hypertext transfer
protocol HTML the hypertext markup
language and the URL the the the
universal resource locator that points
to a web page that allows them to be
accessed those three things drop the
price of publication to just the
infrastructure changed the
world this pattern we're in the middle
of a phase that's kind of like the phase
where AOL thought it was a Content
company where a bunch of companies have
added value around this set of protocols
known as the web HTML HTTP and the URL
plus a bunch of other ones but also
evolved to make that better we're in the
phase where another really critical
capacity is being provided by companies
who can charge for it who for whom they
can enclose that value just the same way
that AOL thought that it can enclose the
value of publication and make that be
its own special sauce and make tons of
money off of it but that was broken up
by the web we're in the phase right now
where there's a whole host of companies
that have done a very similar thing now
what is that thing what is that
value that is super valuable that these
companies have put in the middle because
it doesn't exist in an open
protocol that
value that pattern is this ability to
work together and to collaborate
together the capacity to publish
documents is a very interesting one
because one of the things that you can
publish inside those documents is
computer
code and so we can make our web browsers
do all kinds of really interesting
things that are really useful to us
because a company can publish computer
software that um creates all kinds of
really useful tooling so let's think
about Google and the way it's given us
Gmail and Google suite and Google Drive
and and uh Google
Docs there's all this ability to work
together in Google suite and to
collaborate together that they have
provided because you can ship that as
software to your web browser and use it
similarly think about a bunch of the
other collaboration tools that ex that
exist out there in business if you use
if you want to do uh project management
you might be using Trello or jira these
are companies that have taken this
ability ability to work together and
ship the software through the ability of
the web to publish that software to your
browser and
interact but here's the trick here's the
thing those companies are sitting in the
middle of your social group or the team
or whatever group of people are trying
to operate by the rules of engagement
that that capacity of that software
affords
so just like AOL sat in the middle of
providing
content the most valuable companies in
the world are sitting in the middle of
providing spaces for social
engagement so the next step in the
evolution is to create an open protocol
that removes that cost or that removes
that enclosure by an intermediary and
puts that back down on the
infrastructure and that's what we've
done with Hol chain Hol chain is like
the IP protocol but instead of about
sending messages to individuals at the
technical level ho chain is about
creating a space of for Rules of
Engagement that is held by the players
who are playing by those Rules of
Engagement no
intermediary out of that
capacity all right no longer a cost to
be paid for doing that and just a little
um a side note on the cost I was using
the per message cost or the per
publication cost before thinking about
you know you pay a dollar a stamp for
that there are many forms of
cost in the world that we play in right
now with websites the cost is usually
not dollars for most of us who are just
using Gmail it's not that's not where
the cost lives for companies it usually
is dollars right for a company that a
group of people at any scale usually
larger than 20 or 30 then they start
saying okay now you got to pay a per
seat cost for all of your employees
because they know where the money is but
for us who are not for those of us who
are not in a company and we're not
paying the cost of Trello or jira or
GitHub or whatever on a per seed basis
we're paying the cost because we are the
product we get either advertised
to or our information gets sold to other
people for other purposes and that
experience is it's it takes a while to
have it feel and land but it starts to
land really powerful how expensive that
is in other forms than money for us and
similarly in in the AOL case Right End
users they just paid a monthly cost to
have access to everything but they were
being advertised to through AOL it's a
similar cost there okay
but back to the story about Hol chain
when you create a technical protocol
that removes the intermediary from being
able to charge costs or take
value either by charging actual money or
by extracting value from your personal
information or allowing you to become a
target of advertising and to be
controlled extract so there what's being
extracted is your attention and your
agency attention and agency are
literally being stolen and taken from
you because it's so valuable to be able
to do things like use Google Docs and
Google spreadsheets and Gmail so we're
willing to pay that cost that's okay
right like it's okay to a certain point
like it was totally fine that we were
always using stamps and paying for
telephone calls and paying for our
packages to be delivered that was great
when we couldn't do this other thing but
as soon as you can do the other thing
when you can bring the cost down to the
infrastructure cost of these critical
capacities
wow different worlds come out of that
so there's more to go on this right
because Hol chain as a technical
protocol that does that is a lot like IP
as a technical protocol that does
messaging it's not that convenient or
it's really left there for technical
people to be able to then take okay I'm
going to build a particular unit of
Rules of Engagement and then I'm going
to build a user interface on top of that
and so there's not the assemblable
framework for putting that all together
in the same way that IP is not the same
as
email so the next layer is building that
and that's called The
Weave so what's the difference
between the capacity to send
messages and putting that onto the
infrastructure and the capacity to
publish and putting that onto the
infrastructure well messages are really
point to point that is I'm sending a
message from this computer to the other
computer an IP packet has a destination
where it goes to and I guess you know if
you want to get technical there are
other things where you can put mul it's
called multicast you can have a couple
things but it's really about there's
this one thing and it goes from one
computer to the next computer and an
email that's kind of similar you can put
a couple different people in the header
right but it's it is about getting a
message from one place to another place
publication publication is about having
an address a location at which anybody
can go and look at what's
there it's a different thing like when I
publish a
book the notion is that that book is in
the library or in bookstores when
there's an advertisement that's
published on B Billboards it's like it's
there in the world and people can go see
it and and so part of what's powerful
about the particularity of how the
publication infrastructure was built and
why the web is such a great thing is
that it unites transport getting
messages from one place to another like
me being able to request something a
standardization of what it is that I'm
requesting that is the URL HTTP
colth weave. social whatever it might be
Hol chain. org that is an address at
which there are resources that I can
retrieve from that and then HTML is a
standard format for there being all
kinds of content there there can be an
image there there can be an audio file
there can be text there there can be
software there in in the form of Javas
script and there's all kinds of other
standards that make that be something
that my web browser will be able to
interpret when it pulls the message back
IP anything could be in the IP packet
there's nothing that tells what the data
is it's specifically left out email is
like wait let's make a little bit more
constraint and say this is what it's
going to look like there's going to be a
subject and then there's going to be a
body I don't know what's in the body
it's just a pile of text so when you
jump to the next level up with the
capacity to create Rules of Engagement
to create social spaces engagement
spaces places where there is social
reality in the sense that we know what
we're doing
together well then you have to add more
constraint on top of that you have to
start with what are the rules of the
game and that's exactly what Hol chain
does every time that you join a social
space the first thing that you do is you
say these are the rules of the game that
we're all playing by and this is the
technical means by which we we can
actually do this the rules of the game
are held by everybody that all everybody
who starts to play together knows what
the rules of the game are and whole
chain creates the technical protocol
that adds in that capacity
of playing a so engaging socially or
engaging according to the some set of
rules and then social fabric comes out
of using lots of those little units of
Engagement and weaving them
together so earlier in our conversation
I said I'm not a person who really
engages in conspiracy theories um like
that seems like the wrong frame to look
look at things
through
however when you're playing by rules
when you've created social Fabric and
there are rules of the game and when
you've increased your capacity to play
together by having large numbers of
people and you have hand it over the
capacity to to to basically do
accounting to track things you know when
you've hand it over social benefit to an
intermediary that intermediary can
collude to hide information to change
the rules that make it hard for you to
get benefit can enclose that capacity
for their own benefit because they're
selfish but they can also try to just
make it better and better and better by
increasing the amount of resources that
they use to make things better
that's a thing that happens that's very
very well-meaning
it's bureaucratic bloat it's adding more
Staffing in to make sure that we're
taking care of your tax dollars we care
about that in the meantime youve spent
all of your tax dollars on taking care
that we're not using our tax dollars
well right that's it's like there are
processes that happen when you have this
in when you when you are required to
expand by having an intermediary and so
where would AOL have gone if we did
didn't get the web for publishing how
big would it have been able to grow and
say have an editorial board that says
well we're not going to have this AOL
keyword because it doesn't fit our
desires that's one of the problems of
having publishing happen with always an
intermediary is that control of the
narrative gets held by the intermediary
some level or another therefore the
rules of the game are also held by and
controlled by the intermediaries who
create spaces for us to do rules of the
game together as well-meaning as they
may be if there isn't an underlying
capacity for those people who want to
play the game to be able to play that
game directly without an
intermediary The evolutionary direction
is different decentralization is not the
answer to everything um there's always
specialization but it's curious like
what well so for me what I would want to
say is what is the grammatics of this do
we even know when do we necessarily want
inter intermediaries or not do we have
the capacity to express intermediaries
into existence when we want them and
unex express them out of existence when
they turn out to be not so good for us
and what are the patterns by which we
can even detect that that's the case and
measure that kind of impact and so I
would say that until you have a
grammatic capacity that itself is
disintermediated so that we can be
bringing those kinds of bodies into
existence and playing with them we won't
know the answer answer because frankly
we don't know the
answer curation is a critical capacity
moderation is a critical capacity we
know what happens now that we've lived
for quite a while with an internet in
which unmoderated spaces devolve
into well troll land right we know that
that's sucky and so people move to
moderated spaces where they're not just
going to get bombarded so for example
with with in Hol chain when you're
creating a suite of um these little
units of Rules of Engagement you can
create some that are hyper centralized
and you can say inside these rules of
engagement this one person has all the
control and to play the game it's to ask
this person what the next move is right
that's actually really appropriate for
example in the case of fires we have
chains of command because it's so hard
to know what to do if everybody's
running around you want to have the fire
chief saying you go there you go there
you go there and let go of that decision
because that person can see everything
it's really great to step into chains of
command in that kind of an emergency but
you don't want to let the fire chief
then become the police chief and also
the judge and also the president because
that's silly so the question is what is
our capacity to play by all kinds of
Rules of Engagement all kinds of times
with intermediation and not
intermediation for different purposes
but so far the tech always required
intermediation so you always have that
the tech being pen and paper you didn't
have the underlying affordances of um
cryptographic public key public private
key signing all these things that we are
now using to be able to make this work
well on a technical
basis okay so if you have an underlying
capacity to be able to create Rules of
Engagement and run those Rules of
Engagement so this is the abstract thing
right this is like the IP protocol but
for
social
interaction and and social interaction
let's not like social interaction is it
makes it feel like it's Twitter or
Instagram that's not what I mean by
social interaction what I'm really
talking about is this the sociality The
Wider fabric of being collectively
intelligent together and coordinating
together and so let's use this term
Rules of Engagement there's lots of
different types of Rules of Engagement
that one might have just like the IP
protocol lets us have protocols for
sending email and sending um web packets
to browsers yeah so that's there's a lot
of different classes of messages that
you want to send there's a bunch of
different classes and types of Rules of
Engagement and so if we're going to make
something that is accessible where
that's going to take this capacity to
have rules of engagement be held by the
infrastructure and not be um
encapsulated or proxied to the
intermediary of the web server the
company who owns the web server instead
all of us together who happen to have
the computer Compu we start playing by
these rules and they all operate
together and share the data that's what
the Hol chain does but how do you create
an integrated fabric that's really easy
to use well that's what we've done with
the weave in the same way that the web
is the name that we have for the whole
Cascade of protocols and processes that
allow us to go to web browsers and pull
data from everybody's web servers all
over the world and um and be able to run
all of these different cool things that
live on the web
The Weave is like that it's a set of
technical protocols for bringing this
capacity of weaving together different
types of Rules of Engagement the being
the doing and the the sourcing so let's
think about that in terms of our ability
to act together
collectively what would it look like to
have the similar
frame and
tooling that
allows us to join groups basically cross
the membrane of different types of
groups that we want to be part of create
new groups that we want to be part of
spin them up when we want to create a
new group oh youth us us who are here
together working on this interview we
need to be in a group and plan it out
let's have the three of us be in the
group and do all the planning well what
are we going to do oh well we need a
bunch of different tools there that that
do different things we need a conon
board to organize we need a chat to be
able to start talking when we're apart
from each other and we're um just doing
Interac and we need some documents where
we can draft out what we're going to
draft out and we can drop those into a
space like imagine if it was that easy
and in all of these cases there's no
website to go to there's nobody to spin
up a web server you don't need all of
that intermediary capacity to create the
social space for doing this particular
activity that is what the weave does and
provides so in the same way that the web
you can use a web browser where you
might use Firefox or Chrome to get
access to the web and all this materials
in the weave we we call it a frame like
there's a web browser and there's a
weave frame that allows you to start
playing this game together and the first
frame that we built we're calling Moss
just because Moss is a soft space to
land and it's beautiful and itat creates
surface area for interaction so Moss is
a place where you can go and you can
spin up a group and you can pick tools
so the group is a space of being who are
we who are the people who are in there
you can add people into the group and
then you can also add in tools which
each one of them is a small unit of
Rules of Engagement that's what we do
together and you can pull those tools
from libraries which is also a rule a
space of Rules of Engagement because in
those libraries
there's a way of saying I like this one
thumbs up there's a way of curating and
moderating what's in the library because
just having a bunch of crap in there
wouldn't work well so you see these are
weaving together the types of ways in
which we create social fabric we are
together we do together in teaming in
small groups and then we have spaces
where across all groups we also have
resources and things that we want to um
participate in libraries are one but
there are also sources of things like
equivalent to the Wikipedia there will
be Rules of Engagement for sharing
knowledge that again don't need to be
held by Central servers I've spun it up
in my family to be able to do planning
at the family level
and there's no web server out there that
I'm have to go set up or anything like
that I just we put it on our two
computers and boink it's working and we
can like do our little planning board or
have a little chat it's pretty
exciting one of the awesome things that
the weave
affords is actual transclusion what is
transclusion transclusion is when you
can take an element of one tool one bit
of tooling and you can include it inside
another bit of tooling so the way we
have it the way it works is that when
you're a tool Builder what you do is you
build assets so let's take the example
of a conbine board in a conbine board
you have the board with your different
columns
backlog to be prioritized doing and done
so you have the columns and then you
also have the cards all three of those
can be
assets an asset can then be taken and
transcluded into any other place where
there's an attachment point in any other
tool so that means if I have a chat
stream and I'm like how are we doing and
preparing for the interview and here's
the conon card and I can transclude it
right in there so you can check off the
check marks that are inside that card
that is something that currently cannot
be done well in the web it can be done a
little bit people have the feeling of I
can transclude and embed a YouTube
video but it is not built into the
protocol that that's how you do
everything there's people are going to
argue with me say hey that's what an
iframe is an if frame lets me put
anything anywhere I want but it's not
the same if the the whole fabric of the
Rules of Engagement are set up such that
you can create these little bits of
assets as a as a coherent unit and
attach them wherever you want in any
other um space that you're a part of so
that is a really I'm just what that's
looking like and the utility that comes
out of that the composable capacity is
astronomical it's really pretty great in
the current world when you want to
include something from one place into
another the web site developer has to
create what are called Integrations and
so an integration often is what you pay
for so you pay for the capacity to
integrate in your Trello board a slack
conversation or vice versa slack does an
integration and this requires
communication between business entities
who are saying this is how you do this
or very careful crafting of an API and
usually then also authentication
mechanisms that allow you to be able to
get access to your slack group inside
your T telegram group or inside your
Trello board that is a complex process
and is usually Again part of what you
pay for in the weave Integrations are
integrated right that is actually what
it does for you all already and so
transcluding anything and anything else
is automatic when you build a weave tool
and you create the the coherent asset
units they will be automatically
transable in anything else there is no
extra step of creating an
integration so I'm really excited
because we have built so far a early
beta early Alpha whatever you want to
call it nowadays version of moss and you
can spin up a group in inside moss and
we we use it for the development of moss
itself and our team and inside that
group you can add in all kinds of
different tools right now we have a
video chat thing that we use for our
meetings we have a text chat that's kind
of like slack or mattermost or many of
the other for being able to do
asynchronous texting together we have a
conon board we have a thing that's like
Google docs for typing out documents and
so and adding these adding new tools new
capacities to the group and adding that
into the library that all groups can
choose from is relatively simple so
that's growing very quickly we have some
of them some of these tools that are
about governance about finding out
creating alignment some that are for
planning um creating dependency trees so
all kinds of
tools and what's super cool about it is
that not only can you create those
little tools but parts of the tools you
can embed in other parts of the
tools what does that mean it means that
if you're a person who's building a
video chat tool you don't have to have
build the commenting one you can just
drop in a comment thread from your
commenting tool from your chat tool it
means that you don't have to say oh
wouldn't it be nice if our video chat
system had collaborative text editing in
it and we have to add that in it too
no there's an unnamed uh tool that has
just done that I'm not going to say its
name but you don't have to do that in
this context because it already exists
you can just drop it into your group so
the consequences of creating an
ecosystem for building software shifts
as a result of that and we're already
seeing the power of that in just using
it for our own teams it's really cool
how many times have you had this feeling
of I'm using this tool and they changed
it out from under
me or how many times have you felt if I
could only I just love this this I love
the way this tool works and I like how I
type in it if I could only type my
documents using this my favorite editor
and put it here but I can't because they
didn't do it for me it doesn't exist on
the
website well in this Frame there's no
you're not you're not sending to an
intermediary the capacity to do your
Rules of Engagement Rules of Engagement
are I like to type text editor boxes I
like to do those are a form of rules and
engagement that's not held out in the
intermediary it is assembled by the
group who wants to use that so what it
feels like is they don't have control
over how this looks and how it feels I
can put it together myself now not
everybody in your team or your group is
going to do that you're going to have
people who love to do that and assemble
that for you but it's done at your group
level
it's not done at the app level so the
way of thinking about that is The Silo
which right now is the web
app into which the people who are
building the web app have to put in
everything and so you see all of these
collaborative tools that have all the
same things in it it's the kitchen syn
ification of each one of them that
Silo can be thankfully removed into the
parts where the group gets to decide how
it want wants its collection of doing to
look like and feel
like I mean so this totally changes the
Dynamics of building software right
because what we end up thinking about is
how to make the parts excellent because
we know that the groups are going to
assemble the parts it's not me the
developer of the app who's assembling
the parts the group gets to assemble the
parts so from the perspective of the
group who's
using this collection of tools that are
assembled
they can just go look at what are the
parts that I can drop in here instantly
add that in they don't have to submit a
a request and say could you please add
into my miror board the ability to do
voting like no voting can just be its
own component and then you can attach it
where you need it people have been
trying to do this for a long long time
by the way it's not a new thing it but
the thing is it's really really hard to
do until you have an underlying capacity
to have rules of engagement be held by
the infrastructure instead of having to
have the Rules of Engagement held by an
intermediary so as soon as you flip to
that other model then it becomes
possible people have been trying to make
it cheap to send messages for a long
time it wasn't that expensive a stamp
you can do that it's awesome but it's
really different when it doesn't work
that way when all of a sudden sending
messages is just owning a computer same
thing with this capacity to collaborate
to work together to engage engage in
some form of Rules of Engagement and I I
really do want to stress that this isn't
just about teams playing together there
are all kinds of Rules of Engagement
where like tracking value together
across an
ecosystem doing economic activity
together I'm starting there I'm not
saying money because money is just one
solution for how do we do economic
activity together how do we watch how
how the things we produce are become
made available and can be transformed by
another entity in the value chain and
can we track that and can we create this
network of flows of value together with
whatever set of incentives or
reciprocity or
coordination that is also sets of Rules
of Engagement that aren't just about
creating a team here or a team there and
then using your video chat inside that
team so in the Hudson Valley there's a
group called The New York textile
collaborative I believe and they are
very interested in being able to weave
together the the supply chain of local
farmers producing wool to getting the
wool carted to getting it spun to be
getting it turned into yarn to moving
that and make that available to um
designers to do sweaters or other types
of garments to getting that to the
knitting machines to getting that out
into the into to the hands of uh
consumers that's a whole flow of value
across an ecosystem and they are wanting
to use the weave for a specific
application that's that's been built to
actually track that using what's called
Rea which is a form of accounting that
is not about Enterprise accounting which
is what we have in double um Double
Entry bookkeeping but instead using this
other form of accounting that was
invented in the quite a while ago that's
basically cross Enterprise accounting
that tool is a available to be there's
an experimental tool to be used by them
um and I'm really excited about that one
the stage we are at right now is that we
can use it ourselves and there are a few
early players who are using it in their
own offices and groups who are early
testers but this is the phase where we
don't know how it should look and how it
should be built and so we are very
excited to cocreate the tool so that it
actually works for people who want to
use it and that's our our goal our goal
is to land the initial groups of people
who are willing to take some of the pain
of using a tool like this in their early
days for the benefit that it provides
and co-build it with
them yeah I think it's fair to say
that what I'm hoping that this provides
is a different way of operating together
people like to say a different operating
system but I'm a little afraid of using
uh like taking the operating system
metaphor from computers and applying
that because it feels a little I don't
know but it's also good right so but the
thing is how we operate together where
the capacity for operating together
holds at its core our relational fabric
how we can relate with each other I have
the experience that many people are suff
suffering from the hyper
individuality of American culture and
also there are many people who are very
proud of the individual agency of my
freedom and there is a kind of dignity
and Power in that like
I'm I get to act I get to have agency
and then I watch The Suffering that
people have of disconnectedness of
families of feeling afraid to let their
children go and play in their
neighborhood and all
like it's a crazy contradiction to me it
seems like people want their autonomy
and their individuality they're
so they're holding that tightly I can
feel myself holding that tightly I want
my freedom to be an individual agent and
act in the world and I suffer from the
fact that I'm an individual agent who
has to go and choose from so many of the
same things in the super Market that
have no difference and that's pushed on
me as if it was Choice rather than a
shallow kind of agency and so it's hard
it's hard to know what how to hold that
but it feels to me like what has
happened to us
is some kind of social fabric that is
broken that doesn't take the
relational necessity of humans to be
able to be together in deep aliveness
and has instead stacked us on top of
each other in a hierarchy of
value and pitted us against each
other in ways that are just
painful just what it feels like to
me I got to be afraid of you coming
across the
border and then and then it's crazy then
you have a natural disaster and we care
for each other we just reach out and
care and we do that
anyways even though right next the next
thing we're doing is we're out in the
market
competing as if reality were're always
Cut
Throat no it's kind of I like the social
fabric is constructed for that so we
think it's that way it's a side effect
like the thing that's Landing for me as
the most challenging in getting to this
goal is is actually the technical
challenge it's incredibly difficult to
get it
right like technically for you to be
able to run a system where the Rules of
Engagement are held
collectively and the playing by the
rules is also held
collectively without resorting to a
central Authority a central place to go
put the data like think about this as a
technical challenge how do you actually
make it be the case that you get the the
actions that people take in any set of
rules of engagement the trans the
monetary transaction I want to transact
with you the I'm going to enter a piece
of text into a document that you're also
entering in at the same time right when
you don't have somebody in the in the
middle to say this is the reality this
is what it looks like that's technically
really challenging I mean there's names
for this it's called the Byzantine
generals problem in some parts of the
literature and our way of dealing with
that well we have a technical solution
for it but it's it's hard to land and
get it to really work right like we know
how it will work we know theoretically
how it will work but actually getting
the details exactly right so it does
it's been hard it's taken many
years that's one of the challenges there
there's something that needs to be said
about the Social Challenges
like so one of the challenges of getting
this to work this way is that there are
people who are
so
clearly
aligned with the with the fact that the
way the world is operating is completely
wrong it's a dead end it's
self-terminating
and they are like oh this is right this
is the way it needs to
go and then including myself and then I
prematurely try to make it work in some
way that's beyond the way it works right
now that can't actually be held
yet you know and this includes like the
usual question is well how are you
paying for it how are you funding it
right well so we figure out what
mechanisms of funding but then that
brings in all of the energy of the
supremacy hierarchies and the power
dynamics that are built into our current
system at scale that actually are kind
of coherent they work but that's the
part that makes people feel horrible
they make people feel like tools and
they feel alienated and so the context
of working together feels bad and if
part of what we're looking for is a
context of working together that just
feels better and More Alive and we're
not there yet and we know we might get
there it feels doubly bad because you're
supposed to be able to live in this
great way you like like there's the the
I could almost get there and so then you
build something and somebody does a move
like I might do a move and have done a
move that is power over somebody else
and they're like that sucks how could
you do that you're holding this ideals
yeah that's a challenge feels really
bad to get that kind of thing
wrong I I don't know may it's a
longwinded of of way of saying one of
the challenges is that you have ideals
and you can't live up to them and then
you disappoint
[Music]
people and that really
hurts so one of the big challenges in
this work is crossing thresholds of
usability it feels like the threshold of
usability is just around the corner and
then you cross it and it turns out that
there's another issue that makes the
tooling unusable and so you can have it
at some low level the thing is finally
working right but then the user
interface is like terrible or you're
missing some other piece
so and then it's very easy to make
mistakes around thinking that there are
two that you need too many things to
cross the threshold of usability so that
advice of making it as simple as
possible but no
simpler is so difficult because often
times we make it simpler than is
possible for it to be
successful because it's so challenging
to make make that one threshold and then
other times we're like no for it to work
we have to have all these things which
turn out to be baloney you only needed
to have one thing so Landing as simple
as possible but no simpler is a huge
challenge so many people
have had this Insight shared this
Insight that that the tools that we use
shape us as much as we shape the world
with the tools that we
use and of course the you know the usual
one is if you have a hammer every
problem is a nail to me I think the it's
just so clear right now how we are being
shaped by the tool that is called the
web like that tool is shaping political
discourse and it's shaping it because of
its structure right its structure is
that we go to Facebook to find out about
what our families are doing but in the
meantime we get Doom scrolled and we get
ads placed plac in there so we become a
product and it's like it's structural
there's a structural reality that
because the value of being able to
connect with our family and know what
our friends and family care about is
being held by an intermediary who gives
that to us for free in exchange for them
being able to pop a couple of things
into our mind is a way that The
Narrative of the world is being
constructed in our minds we are being
shaped by the fact that we use this tool
to learn about our friends and family
for
free because our attention gets taken by
advertisers for products advertisers for
political attention and we know all
about how foreign interests are
controlling your kids by Tik Tock we are
going to make a law against that yeah
maybe that might actually be really true
but is it really the foreign interest
it's like who's actually doing that
manipulation with those tools and it's
the structure of the tool that leads to
us being changed in that way so it
behooves us to pay a lot of attention to
the structure of the tool similarly if
you are sending messages and you have to
pay a per unit cost and somebody has
control over that cost and also can say
what you are or not allowed to send in a
package and that first class mail
letters can only be sent through the US
Postal System they may not be sent
through any other system there's a
monopoly on that why oh get into
conspiracy
no it's not that it's like there are
these consequences to what happens by
the rules of having an intermediary be
able to take advantage of a specific
capacity or is necessary for the
capacity to occur our tools shape us
yeah especially in the realm of creating
social Fabric in creating the Rules of
Engagement the people who want to play a
certain way if they must always have
that be
intermediated there will be consequences
I'm not saying what they will be there
can be all kinds of consequences maybe
it's good consequences because that will
be somebody's checking to make sure that
people aren't playing together in bad
ways by The Wider society's rules okay
but also
not all of the ways that we might be
able to play together and collaborate
and solve our problems without having to
resort to the intermediary
are disallowed as a
result there's this fascinating thing in
this realm of
sociality it's called
deviant
right what is considered socially
deviant how much
variety can the society handle and still
say coherent and healthy together the
more deviant you can hold and still stay
coherent the better if you can't remain
coherent if you start falling apart at
the seams because there's too much
deviant all right there's a problem
there but the more you can handle the
more internal complexity you can embody
the more you will be able to withstand
and adapt in times of difficulty and
change the more that's allowed the more
creativity that's possible it feels to
me like the more aliveness will be
inside that body its degree of
complexity is held and Alive because of
how how much things can be different
from each other while still Co being
coherent and playing together Freedom
accountability belonging you get to be
yourself in a context of accountability
to
others you therefore belong what a
positive spiral up
[Music]