Timour Kosters
@timourkosters
Investor & builder working in blockchain and ml. Tweeting: @timourxyz
linktr.eeTimour Kosters
Web3 Is the Opportunity We Have Had All Along: Innovation Amnesia and Economic Democracy
cryptocarnival.wtfcryptocarnival.wtfCapitalism and
Polarization and gridlock have become increasingly synonymous with democracy.
This is not for lack of opportunities. Recent decades have seen social movements and technologists develop numerous experiments in more textured, responsive, and participatory forms of collective decision-making. These include participatory budgeting (Cabannes 2004), liquid democracy (Hardt and Lopes 2015), sortition (Gastil 2000; Bouricius 2013; Pek 2019; Fan and Zhang 2020), citizens’ assemblies (Niemeyer 2014; Chwalisz 2017; Giraudet et al. 2022), crowdsourcing (Hsiao et al. 2018; Bernal 2019), and various alternative voting systems (Posner and Weyl 2014; Emmett 2019). A growing field of platforms for online citizen engagement has emerged to facilitate these processes (Stempeck 2020). Yet in even the most advanced applications of technology-enabled governance, from Madrid to Taiwan (Hsiao et al. 2018; Smith and Martín 2021; Tseng 2022), the new mechanisms serve in solely advisory roles; participatory budgeting processes, while more likely to be binding, apply to only small fractions of public budgets.
Governments could be eagerly transforming themselves into the vibrant, creative, networked institutions that the networked world arguably needs them to be, but they are not.
Polarization and gridlock have become increasingly synonymous with democracy.
This is not for lack of opportunities. Recent decades have seen social movements and technologists develop numerous experiments in more textured, responsive, and participatory forms of collective decision-making. These include participatory budgeting (Cabannes 2004), liquid democracy (Hardt and Lopes 2015), sortition (Gastil 2000; Bouricius 2013; Pek 2019; Fan and Zhang 2020), citizens’ assemblies (Niemeyer 2014; Chwalisz 2017; Giraudet et al. 2022), crowdsourcing (Hsiao et al. 2018; Bernal 2019), and various alternative voting systems (Posner and Weyl 2014; Emmett 2019). A growing field of platforms for online citizen engagement has emerged to facilitate these processes (Stempeck 2020). Yet in even the most advanced applications of technology-enabled governance, from Madrid to Taiwan (Hsiao et al. 2018; Smith and Martín 2021; Tseng 2022), the new mechanisms serve in solely advisory roles; participatory budgeting processes, while more likely to be binding, apply to only small fractions of public budgets.
Governments could be eagerly transforming themselves into the vibrant, creative, networked institutions that the networked world arguably needs them to be, but they are not.
I digress but the main point is simple: the drivers of social coherence, such as culture, governance, morality, law, shared stories, and shared values might as well be considered “technologies”. These stories, at least as much as our manipulations of fire, matter, and information, sustain our relationships with one another and with the planet.... See more
Matt Prewitt • Secret Societies, Network States, Burning Man, Zuzalu, and More: Thoughts on New Political Communities
Tech and Society and
I digress but the main point is simple: the drivers of social coherence, such as culture, governance, morality, law, shared stories, and shared values might as well be considered “technologies”. These stories, at least as much as our manipulations of fire, matter, and information, sustain our relationships with one another and with the planet. Their status registers how well we are doing, at least as meaningfully as the potency of our machines.
Common mistakes or roadblocks with prog decentralization - Early team finds it hard to part with excess authority. Not necessarily for bad reasons. Taking hands off wheel generates fear - Not finding the right people for the dao. DAOs can be big, and they don’t have enough good people to do everything
Rehash: A Web Podcast • S3 E6 | DAO Decentralization Thesis & Artificial Intelligence w/nintynick
As I wrote in Good Ideas , “The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself.” Each moment in our history unlocks new doors of adjacent possibilities. The trick is to figure out what they are exactly, and whether they’re leading us... See more
About - Adjacent Possible
Multiplicity principle: we are not one, we are many
Parts can be seen as clusters of beliefs and emotions and values that get activated at different times, and that can be interfaced with by treating them as if they were actual subminds.
Minimum density is 20 units per acre: The voter initiative locks in at least 20 units/acre (~50 people/acre) as the minimum average density. This is similar to beloved neighborhoods such as Marina in SF, Centrum in Amsterdam, Kensington in London, and Historic Charleston in South Carolina. Even though people love these places, we’ve built close to... See more
Devon Zuegel • Part 3: The first walkable city in America in a century
Imagine a company that combs your camera roll and—with stunning accuracy—recommends a new wardrobe for you. Or the company simply asks you to link your Instagram account, and then it digests every like and follow you’ve ever made to deliver incredibly accurate, incredibly personalized fashion recommendations.
Rex Woodbury • The TikTokization of Everything
Ursula Le Guin: "They talked, and new worlds were born of their talking. It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on."
But over the past few years, we’ve seen a lot of clamoring for what comes next. Virtual reality? Augmented reality? Autonomous vehicles? Web3?