P2P/ Distributed Network Protocols

We're looking at Holo as one potential technical infrastructure for an agent-centric OAE. They agree on the agent-centric part, and they want to support economic networks, so they are attractive from a valueflows perspective.

We're not deep enough into the details to know if we'll go with holo or one of the other possibilities. But we're talking to people there.

[Edit] but we don't to create something like holo ourselves. Just ride on something that already has a good team and some momentum.

Is an agent defined specifically in terms of an individual, Bob?

No, an agent can be a person or an organization that has agency: that can make decisions and agreements as-a-group.
See also https://valueflo.ws/introduction/agents.html

That's sounds really great Bob. I had actually been reading the ValueFlows docs, but had yet to reach that section. I have been discussing the possibility of developing coordination and exchange infrastructure with an international group of developers, that is more compatible with the indigenous world view of my people (Maori of Aotearoa/New Zealand) as I understand it. I think that the ValueFlox framework is abstracted enough to support this goal.

We have a Slack workspace dedicated to this project. Would you be prepared to join in the discussion or consider the possibility of collaborating with us?

I came across this thinkpiece written by Joichi Ito, formerly the director of the MIT Media Lab on a drastic reform of modern accounting. Maybe it would resonate with you?

The economics notion of consumers making financial decisions to maximize "utility" as a kind of proxy for happiness is another example of how the notion of a universal system of "value" oversimplifies its complexity-so much so that the models that assume that humans are "economically rational" actors in a marketplace simply don't work. The simplest version of this model would mean that the more money you had, the happier you would be, which Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton argue is true up to about $75,000 a year in annual income.[1]

"Today, we have the technology and the computational power to create a system of accounts that could retain and deal with a lot of the complexity that the current system was designed to avoid. There is, for example, no reason that every entry in our books needs to be a number. Each cell could be an algorithmic representation of the obligations and dependencies that it represents. In fact, using machine learning, accounts could become sophisticated probabilistic models for what might happen depending on how things around them change. This would mean that the "value" of any system would change depending on who was asking, their location, and the time parameters."
https://joi.ito.com/weblog/2016/04/26/reinventing-boo.html

@hemiedwards

We have a Slack workspace dedicated to this project. Would you be prepared to join in the discussion or consider the possibility of collaborating with us?

Sure. Are you in NZ now? I'll send a PM and we can discuss details.

What are the other possibilities (if the list is public/available) ?

My short list includes Solid from the semantic web gang, SSB, DAT, and IPFS. I know other people are thinking of the newer types of blockchains.

These are all technical protocols (if we can accept a blockchain as a protocol, which is a stretch) using the idea of vocabularies + protocols to get an open app ecosystem to be an ecosystem instead of a random collection apps with maybe single-signon.

Could also use the Web as-is with HTTP as the technical protocol and Solid as the app framework.

Other people may have other ideas.

I think all these discussions about future backend technical protocols are great. And I agree with @bobhaugen about riding on something already in development.

Just fyi, all the experiments I am working on right now (with the exception of one ssb experiment that hasn't really gotten off the ground) are still web as-is with various standard databases sitting underneath the backends. So moving from platforms to smaller open apps that can message each other and talk to different backends, but without more radical changes. For now.

Thank you for your list ! Unfortunately, I have some troubles to find information about the initiatives that you talk about :/ Would it be possible to put links too to have more information about them ? :)