Meet the Worldbuilders

[FrankD]

My name is Frank. I am a public administration professional with a broad experience in the field of strategic policy as well as public management. Besides that I am a transitionist with a degree in leisure sciences. As kid and young adult I was brought up on a steady diet of writers like Shakespeare, Kafka, George Orwell, Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert Harris, Terry Brook and Frank Herbert.

Upon arriving in Witness, I was classified as an incanter with a strong augur drive although I can thoroughly enjoy a theors discussion, especially in the field of community-empowerment, sociology and state.

I would be willing to help people with insights from sociology, transition- and leisure sciences. Simply put, predicting what pushes people into action and how to gear energy towards sustainable change. Besides that I am wandering around in Witness’ history and present to look and describe hidden disruptive elements in each Distrikt as I believe that each new balance and order will – in the end – bring forth its own disruption.

Looking forward to work with you all.

[yudhanjaya]

Welcome to Witness, Frank! There’s a lot of sociology (and narratives around transition) that we’ll need your help with. In fact, we’re just sorting out a fork right now.

[FrankD]

You’re referring to Hygge?

[alberto]

He is, Frank. Early days Hygge split in a social-democratic distrikt (market economy; aggressive redistribution, with economic inequalities a top problem; and a Modern Monetary Theory approach to running public expenditure and the currency) and a full planned-economy distrikt à la Red Plenty. Problem there is: can we imagine a social and economic asset whereby people would accept top-down economic allocation, even when that allocation is not the one they desire?

This is a static-vs-dynamic problem, by the way: it is easier to imagine a planned economy that works reasonably well, and most people accept it on those grounds, than to imagine it being introduced, and being accepted before it has a chance to work reasonably well for most people most of the times.

[eireann_leverett]

Merhaba esteemed knowledge tourists,

I’m Eireann, a risk by way of cyber crime researcher.

It’s hard to fit in these boxes, but I see all the rest of you trying to explain your past, and it gives me courage to try.

I was a early entrant poison ivy school dropout in Psychology and Philosophy in the 90s. I tried my best, but ran out of money for education in Bush’s America. So I drifted in the ‘You can’t win’ tradition across the USA as a dishwasher and landscaper, through the rust belt and my twenties.

I got a grip and a rucksack and tried my British (European at the time) passport on for size with a move to Scotland (maybe again?) at the turn of the millenium. There I retrained in Engineering and AI, with a focus on security for energy systems. I have a deep love of distributed and highly resilient infrastructure that tempts me to be an incanter, but I am probably on the border of augur and theorist.

I am an armchair economist because studying hacking and cyber crime have forced me to be. I have not yet turned my hand to writing fiction, but I do write essays and academic papers, and once a book on cyber risk.

I will be keen to think about alternative models of infrastructure provision and economics. How can citizens run and fix and innovate their own infrastructures? Electricity, water, sanitation, telecommunications, transport…all so centralised, and often non-participatory, fragile, opaque, invisible. How could it be different, and funded differently?

In my spare time I worry about the environment, forage, work an allotment, and practice natural navigation and hiking. I’m a parent of a SEN child, and a bilingual toddler, so let’s be honest: I don’t have spare time.

I am still learning.

[alberto]

Welcome, @eireann_leverett! I had no idea you were interested in economics. But yes, understanding alt-econ has become a more pressing need, lately. Are you free tomorrow, Feb 23? You might enjoy the brief-and-discussion on Mazzucato’s Mission Economy that @yudhanjaya, @petussing and I have set up.

First steps into the Edgeryders learning program: understanding Mazzucato's "Mission Economy"

Heads up: I want to try out that learning program we have been talking about in the RezNet’s meeting earlier in the year. The problem is how to do that without being crushed by overhead and organizing. So: One hour of conversation on a topic. No slides. Only commitment is preparing a few talking points, maybe 10 minutes. No hosting. Community managers invited, like anyone else, but with no obligation to care about anyone else. No promotion/comms. Put in on the platform with a week lead time, m…

[yudhanjaya]

Welcome, Eireann!

How can citizens run and fix and innovate their own infrastructures? Electricity, water, sanitation, telecommunications, transport…all so centralised, and often non-participatory, fragile, opaque, invisible. How could it be different, and funded differently?

This is a problem that both the Assembly and Avantgrid grapple with - both in different ways: one focuses on communities, and the other is more libertarian in nature. If you’re interested in highly resilient, decentralized infrastructure, that people can set up and maintain, your thoughts would be more than welcome there!

[eireann_leverett]

A great place to start my flanuering then. Thanks for pointing out a good first walk.

[hugi]

One thread ripe for picking in Avantgrid are the leads left by @zaunders

@zaunders

There is what Brian Von Herzen is calling Marine Permaculture that uses, wave or solar to drive very simple pumps in order to circulate colder (more nutrient dense) water into warmer areas and growing macroalgie in that flow. these enable kelp forests in otherwise unscaffolded ocean space. Those forests become ocean ecosystems for trophic levels up to large predatory fish.

There is also what Bren Smith is doing with Green Wave which is more intentionally integrating shellfish and often works closer to shore. Some of the benefits apart from biomass production (generally I’ve seen reported that photosynthesis from macroalgie is 4x higher in kelp than in grasslands on land) is that these 3D farms are helping reduce stormsurges, protecting and cleaning water for costal ecosystems.

[Tim_Reutemann]

My dears, is there any chance to get a paper-copy of this? Even a generic, print-on-demand Amazon KDP would be far easier for me to read from start to finish than a pdf…?

[ivan]

Hi OmaMorkie,

I have sent you the first paper we published on this with the link to the webinar. We won’t be putting it on paper yet, though.
For the rest, it changes so quickly that it would be old before you received it. But at one point we may publish the summary.
If you have a proposal on how to make the material easier to read on the site or the platform, please share and we will see if we can improve it somehow.

[ivan]

In the meantime - here you can download the current Wintesspedia

[rohanjay]

Hello. My name is Rohan Jayasekera and I am an incanter by trade and an augur by aspiration. I have little patience with theors, but have been known to enjoy their company. My main interest is in the function of what is conventionally regarded as media across Witness, its role in the formulation of contractural solutions to the media’s disputed contribution to wider society, its financing, and a study of emerging critical aethnography across the media sector.

[alberto]

Nice to meet you both, @andersS and @rohanjay, welcome! So, where do we start?

[rohanjay]

I’m imagining a bid by Scanlonites to bypass the problems of Medium and the State Machine by creating a social media network as a direct Virtual alternative to the Actual Medium. If it was in direct competition, should a virtual version of Medium earn recognition as a minor districkt? Interested in how technological innovation’s ideas are sometimes expressed in the language of architecture, town planning and geography, and how a virtual state/nation might come into existence and then thrive (or not).

I’m writing a Wikipedia style account of it now, possibly for posting to Witnesspedia.

How free are we allowed to be with the ‘history’ of Witness. What’s ‘Canon’ and what not?

My portfolio site: www.rohanjay.com

[alberto]

@rohanjay

How free are we allowed to be with the ‘history’ of Witness. What’s ‘Canon’ and what not?

This is a great question. What do you think, @yudhanjaya and @Joriam?

[yudhanjaya]

Hi, Rohan. Good question. We haven’t done a lot of thinking around the media in Witness right now, and I’d welcome thinking around it across all distrikts!

Regarding canon: every Distrikt have, at a macro level, an economy that is generally pretty canon. The rest is usually a matter of argument. So within the bounds of each different economy, what could happen? What might social media look like? I’d say that’s all wide-open space. What have you got?

[rohanjay]

Aha. More grist for my Manyworlders’ malignant mills.

[rohanjay]

This is for everyone thinking about ergodicity, which I had never heard of before pitching up here.

Kindly take my non-ergodic perspective that you will all ergodicially like this blog on the subject and laugh out loud at one of its key lines of evidence (“Five out of six russian roulette players recommend it as a fun & profitable game”). I did at least, but I am not speaking for the rest of you, which is the lesson, I guess.

[alberto]

@rohanjay

“ Five out of six russian roulette players recommend it as a fun & profitable game ”

I am enough of a nerd that I was slightly annoyed at the imprecision. It contains a confusion between Russian roulette players and Russian roulette games. Five out of six games are indeed won, but the proportion of players that can recommend it is 5/6 if, and only if, each player plays exactly one game in the course of her life. If that were not the case, and the funny statement would be correct, Russian roulette would be ergodic.

(sorry)