Sam Liebeskind

It’s possible to provide these services and argue – as the Panthers did – that these services are an alternative to unfair government services. It’s also possible to argue, as Occupy has sometimes done, that these services are an example of what we want governments to provide and a way of pressuring government to do the right thing. This second arg... See more

When Colorado Springs turned off the streetlights in 2010, they launched a secure website that allowed residents to log on and pay to turn their lights back on. It’s not hard to imagine a cash-strapped municipality taking a list of parks they can’t build or maintain posting projects to Kickstarter or Neighbor.ly, seeking crowdfunding for their supp... See more

Most app-making is just being extremely disciplined in deciding what you’re going to reinvent. There are proven ways to get 85% push notification approval, how to sort of a list of suggested people, and how to share content to iMessage vs. Instagram Stories vs. X It happens…

I should note that blitzscaling is not the only approach we’re seeing right now. The other (and I would argue wiser) approach to managing dense network formation is through invitation-based mechanisms. Heighten the desire, the FOMO, make participating feel special. Actively nurture the network. When done well, this can get people to go deeper in th... See more

This might suggest that decentralization itself is not actually of immediate practical or pressing importance to the majority of people downstream, that the only amount of decentralization people want is the minimum amount required for something to exist, and that if not very consciously accounted for, these forces will push us further from rather ... See more

Adoption-First Approach . There is no need to reinvent everything. For most sectors of digital infrastructure, solutions exist. In many cases, they will be imperfect and insufficient. They might have technology but no clear governance and a weak funding model. Federating existing successful systems and targeting demand and usage rather than innovat... See more

As a simplistic starting point, the model in which public actors fund infrastructure (or the bootstrapping of infrastructure through private-sector coordination and patient capital) and private actors fund innovation in products and services on top of that infrastructure is a good one.