[{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/","section":"","summary":"","title":""},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Categories"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/cc/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Cc"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/codingsoftware/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Codingsoftware"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/collective-intelligence/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Collective-Intelligence"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/geeky/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Geeky"},{"content":"Lots of things have been in flow since I\u0026rsquo;ve posted here, but here are few tidbits to explore:\nA conversation about what happens when valuable things become free. The Weave! World of Wisdom Podcast episode\u0026hellip; ","date":"July 24, 2024","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2024/07/24/movement/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eLots of things have been in flow since I\u0026rsquo;ve posted here, but here are few tidbits to explore:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4Isk8JBec\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eA conversation about what happens when valuable things become free.\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://theweave.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Weave!\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://worldofwisdom.substack.com/p/230-eric-zippy-harris-braun-holochain?r=12mrmg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eWorld of Wisdom Podcast episode\u0026hellip;\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ul\u003e","title":"Movement!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/posts/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Posts"},{"content":"Say that we agree to define collaboration as a group’s ability to coordinate effort to produce some work output. I believe that the effectiveness of collaboration improves in direct proportion to:\nhow easy it is to create social spaces in which to do that coordination, the degree of composability of those social spaces (especially nesting) the variety and utility of the affordances provided in those spaces. Together let’s call these the claims of Collaborative Power.\nLet’s look at some examples:\nVersion control #Git enables easily creating a social space for coordinating work on a code base. It does this by providing affordances such as; committing, diffing, branching and merging, to assist in that coordination. The affordance of branching is itself an example of Collaborative Power. Within the social space of a code repository, a branch also creates a secondary, simple and secure, social space for further collaboration, or a sub-space. It’s a semantically separate and differentiated place for a sub-group (perhaps of one) to work on the code. This was Git’s “Killer Feature”, branching made trivially cheap.\nChannel based messaging #Tools like Discord, Slack and Mattermost make it trivially easy to create the high-level social space of a “Team” or “Server”, and within that, semantically tagged sub-spaces of chat channels. This is analogous to the Repo and Branch levels of VCS systems but for messaging. The ease and low cost of creating social spaces at both of these levels, and the affordances in those spaces (video/audio chat, screen-sharing, bots, etc) make these tools easy to adopt and continue to use. Generalized Collaborative Power #Is it possible to generalize tooling for Collaborative Power? In other words, what technical affordances would be necessary for creating generalized sub-spaces within a high-level social context? Imagine being able to create a social space for collaborative work-groups, where what is made trivially easy to instantiate and assemble inside the space, is not one single secondary type of sub-space (i.e. a branch as in a VCS, or a channel in a messaging system) but the mini-apps of your choice, within a simple composible frame.\nEnter We #We is a new Holochain app we’re building over at Lightningrod Labs that provides this heightened Collaborative Power. We makes it trivially easy for users to create high-level social spaces and add “applets” to them. These applets provide the functionality for the exact types of collaboration intended by the group.\nThe UI looks a little like Slack or Discord. There’s a left-hand bar showing your “we-groups”, but instead of the right hand being the channel text stream, there is a secondary bar of “Applets” that have been instantiated into that social space, with the main right-hand window space displaying the UI of one or more of those applets. Here’s a screenshot showing a social space with the Notebooks applet active, which provides a real-time collaborative markdown-editing:\nThe power of We comes from how easy it is from both a user\u0026rsquo;s and a developer’s perspective to add new collaboration affordances. End users simply pick them directly in the Applet Library:\nFor Holochain hApp developers, this addition makes it very simple to compile, build, and publish to the DevHub their existing hApps as “we-applets”. Then any such hApps become instantly available for composing into We social spaces.\nDistributed Groupware #In a way, We might “just” look like another attempt at a groupware tool, but there are few things things that set it apart:\nGenerality and Openness: We makes no assumption about the content of collaboration. The affordances of the social spaces are entirely customizable by each group according to the group’s purpose. If a group needs a new social tooling, it can just be added in. Decentralization: Although, as mentioned, cheap branching is a key feature of Git, its primary design goal was to make possible a fully distributed version control for the linux operating system, such that no central authority could possibly take ownership of its development. This design is arguably Git’s true super-power; and likewise, because We is built on Holochain, it also provides generalized group-forming capability in the fully distributed context. No central servers or infrastructure is necessary. Simply install the Holochain Launcher and then pick “We” from the App Library. Agent-centricity: As a consequence of being built on Holochain, We’s core intent of group collaboration happens from an architecture of empowered agency. Individuals can start groups on-the-fly without request from any authority. Within groups individuals must opt-in to any applet that other agents propose for the group. Where “We” is going… #The initial release of We demonstrates the key Collaborative Power functionality of adding new applets into social spaces on-the-fly. The next steps come from adding compositional grammatics to applets. These grammatics exist at a few levels: Visual: the ability to visually compose applet UIs into complex dashboards/layouts instead of just toggling between monolithic UIs. Templating: the ability to create a preset menu of applets that work well together and are easily installable as a group, including their layouts. Functional (the 4 “F”s); the ability to evolve social spaces over time: Forge: meaning the visual and templating for new group formation. Federate: inter-group protocols and connections that allow groups membraned interactions Fork: easy spinning up of new groups from existing groups, including data transferability. Fuse: easy merging of groups together. Subsequent releases of We will focus on adding in all these grammatical elements, listed above.\nSo, back to the claims of Collaborative Power:\nCollaboration effectiveness improves in direct proportion to both how easy it is to create nested social spaces in which to do that coordination, and the power of the affordances in those spaces to be recomposed overtime\nWe provides a significant upgrade to the ease of assembling affordances in social spaces. And it does so while upholding the significant properties of Generality, Decentralization, Agent-Centricity along with providing explicit grammatics for visual assembly, templating and evolution of social spaces. We hope to see you in We! P.S: For the technically inclined, hop on over to our github repo and check out the instructions on how to convert your regular hApp to be We ready!\nHistorical Comments Terry \u0026mdash; July 26, 2022 at 09:33 PM You need a 5th F which is for Filter. One of main issues with apps and apps talking to other apps is transactions that fall outside boundaries and would need to be blocked/edited\nas per your membranes tech. I suggest a rules based engine that can oversee all tx and monitor them whereupon if they fall outside the defined parameters (within the engine) they are frozen and moving into a Workspace(s). Feedback can be given to the user/app that the tx is being held with reason/error. The management of these Workspace(s) can be then be coordinated with some manual intervention if required with full edit history.\nMoritz \u0026mdash; July 28, 2022 at 01:27 PM That\u0026#x27;s pretty much what Holochain already affords: validation.\n","date":"July 26, 2022","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2022/07/26/we-social-spaces-for-collaboration/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSay that we agree to define collaboration as a group’s ability to coordinate effort to produce some work output.  I believe that the effectiveness of collaboration improves in direct proportion to:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"We: Social Spaces for Collaboration"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/grammatics/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Grammatics"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags"},{"content":"Consider playing soccer or football blindfolded. Unless you have gotten really good with echolocation, playing the game becomes impossible for the simple reason that you stop being able to answer the questions “where is the ball?” and “where are my teammates?”.\nMore subtly, consider the difficulties of having hard or delicate conversations using just a pen and slips of paper. The textual medium blindfolds our built-in ability to read facial and tonal emotional cues, thus making it harder to answer the question “where are you emotionally?”. Without them it is less likely that such conversations will come out well.\nCollaborative endeavors, like playing soccer or having a conversation, require knowing the locations of the relevant parties in their spaces. As we examine the vast realms of collaboration we see that the ubiquitous need to know “where” both in familiar physical locations, but also in such non-cartesian spaces as education, familiarity, health, happiness, class, wealth, skill, reputation(s), responsibility, intention, completion, etc\u0026hellip;\nThis seems like a fairly straightforward insight. It’s kind of obvious that maps are important to help guide us in achieving our goals in the territory that the map maps. What doesn\u0026rsquo;t seem obvious to me are the generalized patterns for groups to understand all the different types of spaces that they might want to locate themselves in, and find the grammar of those patterns so as to build new maps on the fly as the new spaces to navigate are recognized and as existing spaces change.\nTo begin some exploration of this meta-space we present Where, a simple-as-possible Holochain hApp that equips teams with a tool to create maps and lets team members self-locate on those maps. The underlying Holochain DNA assumes that a Space consists of a coordinate system (more on this below) and various bits of meta-data. Locations in the space are then simply recordings by agents using the coordinate system of the space, along with optional additional data values to add contextual information about any given recording of a location.\nAs a starting place we begin with spaces that are just limited to cartesian X,Y coordinates and that all include as meta-data a URL of an image for rendering the \u0026ldquo;surface\u0026rdquo; of the space. The initial UI for Where is thus very simple. You can create new maps, move between different maps, zoom them if they are large, and add yourself into the map along with textual tag information to be displayed at that location. That\u0026rsquo;s a pretty simple place to start, but I think it\u0026rsquo;s a powerful grammar for initial exploration. Using somewhat symbolic images like a mountain-scape, or a forest, small groups can attach group-specific meaning to different parts of the image. This is an initial hack for various non-cartesian coordinate systems of dimensionality less than two, like tree structures, or various linear structures (e.g. time-zones), simply by ignoring parts of the 2D space.\nNext steps can include:\nTemplates that describe the basic structure of a space but allow custom annotations/additions to it UIs that can render surfaces of spaces using other coordinate systems: 3D with OpenGL, low dimension tree and graph spaces, Lat.-Long. for geo-spacial maps, 4D spaces (for example 3D + time), and so on. Adding the ability to change the surface of spaces over time, not just add locations on them. More specific grammars for the meta-data of location entries as they emerge. Adding composability of spaces, i.e. locations on surfaces that lead to or render other spaces. Here is an abstract grammar for Where:\nNouns: Space Surface Coordinate System Meta-data Location Space Coordinate Instance Meta-data Verbs: Add Space Add Location Update Location Update Space Surface Like all grammars, the component parts themselves have sub-grammars. For example Coordinate Systems are likely constructed out of a grammar that includes dimensionality, units, and some other rules of valid values. And note that this grammar also includes parts-of-speech, what I\u0026rsquo;ve labeled \u0026ldquo;Nouns\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Verbs\u0026rdquo;. This is really kind of cheating, because what I\u0026rsquo;ve called \u0026ldquo;Nouns\u0026rdquo; are really Noun-Types, as I haven\u0026rsquo;t shown any actual Nouns, which would be an actual example of a Space or Location. The \u0026ldquo;Verbs\u0026rdquo; really are the only \u0026ldquo;action-words\u0026rdquo; of this system, and they are fixed and pretty uninteresting. Kind of like how \u0026ldquo;conjunctions\u0026rdquo; are limited to a small set in English.\nThough this kind of analysis may be interesting for the computer-scientist/coder/linguists among us, most of us are more interested in the various words, the \u0026ldquo;vocabulary\u0026rdquo; of the grammar, and then the conversations that might ensue from using them.\nThe early development of the ideas for Where came from conversations with Jean Russell about increasing group awareness of typically hidden social landscapes. Here\u0026rsquo;s one example she offers for a surprisingly simple but really useful space: Case Study: The \u0026ldquo;Iron Triangle\u0026rdquo; #I have struggled, as many of us do, in teams where different people hold the values of the project or organization with different weights. To make this generic and familiar, let’s use the cost, quality, and time triangle. Note that the center is blacked out, since we can\u0026rsquo;t have some perfect combination of the three. If the team is dominated by time and cost focused people, then they start resenting the person holding for quality. Or, if focus is on quality, then the resistance shows up to the person focused on delivering on time. Somehow this ends up getting personal rather than the person being regarded as a steward of that value. And the group struggles to come into alignment about priorities and actions. Note that I have also added, outside the hypotenuse of each angle, the list of consequences people may be trying to avoid by holding that value (at the point of the angle). I believe this too will help others be aware of the risks inherent in not holding to that value.\nI am really looking forward to Where as an application I can use with teams to make visible to the group where we each feel the group or project is in the triangle. You could have one where each wants the project to be and another where they think it is now and notice the difference. I feel like this conversation about the map and placement will move the conversation from individual tension into shared awareness space. It will help us be more compassionate with the person (aka the value) being resisted. It may help people to be heard, better, in their concern and sense the group\u0026rsquo;s alignment, particularly of the more quiet members. That\u0026rsquo;s better collective intelligence!\nPutting maps like the one in Jean\u0026rsquo;s example above into Where softens the \u0026ldquo;Iron\u0026rdquo; feeling of \u0026ldquo;pick-two\u0026rdquo; into a sense-making process where we can better understand how we use the intelligence of the team to collectively come to good answers, simply because we have an opportunity to see what we all see. I feel quite excited to see what other similar maps emerge as really useful to groups, but frankly I\u0026rsquo;m even more excited to see the secondary grammars that will also emerge. Just like the hashtag was grammatical element introduced to Twitter by one of it\u0026rsquo;s users, I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that there are some other similar very simple additions to Where that will carry as much importance and value.\nIf you are the daring technical type, you can play with Where now by following instructions on the github repo\nMaybe next will be Who, What, How and Why!\n#grammatics\nHistorical Comments Emaline \u0026mdash; September 20, 2021 at 03:18 PM Eric, this was a great read. I\u0026#x27;ve been really into the semi-forgotten term \u0026quot;groupware\u0026quot; lately, wanting it to come to the fore to describe priorities in the Holochain ecosystem. What you\u0026#x27;ve got here, though, is \u0026quot;group...where\u0026quot; Ha! I could also imagine maps like the one above (or other open source ones related to behavior in group settings) with stats computed over time to give rise to more qualitative reputation scores a la Neighbourhoods. More on this soon, hopefully...\n","date":"September 16, 2021","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2021/09/16/where-and-the-grammatics-of-location/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eConsider playing soccer or football blindfolded. Unless you have gotten really good with echolocation, playing the game becomes impossible for the simple reason that you stop being able to answer the questions “where is the ball?” and “where are my teammates?”.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Where and the Grammatics of Location"},{"content":"Usually I am more energized by building tech than by talking about it, but I am so excited about what my son and I did over winter break, that I just have to share about it here. In an odd kind of busman\u0026rsquo;s holiday, I spent a good chunk of my time off writing a Holochain application. Coding with my kid is just pure pleasure for me, but I have to describe the additional incredible experience of having spent 4 years building a tool, and now suddenly being able to use that tool to build what it was meant for: creating collaboration applications.\nMy passion for Holochain has always been sourced in upgrading our collective intelligence, which means making it easier and more joyful to collaborate together. In early December, Art and I sketched out, in an afternoon, a generalized pattern on Holochain for real-time collaborative apps like Google docs where you can type in the same document as others simultaneously, and see their cursor moving around.\nOver the holiday break, it took qubist and me just one week to prove out SynText, a peer-to-peer collaborative text editing application\nNot only will it be incredibly easy to add other such applications on top of the UI pattern and Holochain DNA that we built, but this pattern will allow git-like branching, forking, and merging, in a user-friendly way for any type of collaborative work, not just code. My deep excitement in this achievement is two-fold: it’s both practical and also deeply philosophical: Syn demonstrates the technical threshold that we’ve crossed in landing Holochain. It was just easy and fast to build it, and things are working like a charm. The patterns in the app bring a level of awareness and embodiment of the deep principles of Holochain\u0026rsquo;s architecture to the forefront. These patterns are all about creating thrivable social-coherence. And by that I mean the kind of social-coherence that arises not from structural coercive centralization, but from peers collaborating by consent. This matters to me. So, here\u0026rsquo;s the story about Syn, and bear with me through some back-story because it\u0026rsquo;s important.\nBack-story: Agent-Centric Data Enables Collaboration #If you\u0026rsquo;ve been following the Holochain/Holo story at all, you\u0026rsquo;ve probably heard that Holochain is \u0026ldquo;agent centric.\u0026rdquo; Strictly speaking this is true, but unfortunately it has hidden a deeper truth about Holochain. Let me explain: we used the term *agent-centric* to distinguish Holochain from other software architectures (especially in the blockchain world) that are philosophically *data-centric*. The prime concern of blockchain ledgers is to create a single \u0026ldquo;consensus\u0026rdquo; view on a data reality in the distributed peer-to-peer world, where that\u0026rsquo;s a known hard problem. In the case of Bitcoin, the idea is to create a data reality of the location of digital coins: who spent them and with whom. In the case of Ethereum, the idea is to create a data reality of not just coin locations, but also the state of a global computer that you can write and run programs on, i.e. \u0026ldquo;smart-contracts\u0026rdquo;. The reason creating these data realities is a hard problem in the decentralized network world is that it\u0026rsquo;s impossible to determine the absolute ordering of events. This is a simple fact of physics. In the client–server paradigm this isn’t even a problem, because we start from a centralized server where there is a canonical notion of what the data is and a canonical time. The central server stores the data reality. The brilliance of blockchain is that it provides a protocol for distributed peers to hold data reality together, be it the order of transaction of Bitcoins, or the ordering of computation steps on Ethereum. But it does this by enforcing a single ordering of events. The stupidity of blockchain is that the protocol it uses to enforce this single ordering of events is incredibly expensive, extremely wasteful of computation power, and generates obscene amounts of greenhouse gases. On top of all that, for almost all distributed collaborative applications it\u0026rsquo;s not even necessary to keep one single global ordering of events. It’s easy to make this mistake of thinking so if your purpose is a trust-less system that’s trying to track the location of digital coins, but it turns out that you can still solve that same problem a different way.\nWhere is true data? Ordering of…. Merge of Perspectives? Data-Centric, Centralized client-server Central server, canonical version \u0026hellip;content is absolute as performed by the central server. Forced (There is only one central perspective.) Data-Centric, Bitcoin All peers hold copies of data processed via a validation protocol \u0026hellip;transactions is based on randomized selection of one miner’s sequencing for each block to construct Consensus of token reality. Forced (One perspective is kept for each block, all others discarded) Data-Centric, Ethereum All peers hold copies of data processed via validation protocols \u0026hellip;content is based on randomized selection of one miner’s or staker’s sequencing for each block to construct Consensus of a global computer and smart contracts. Forced (One perspective is kept for each block, all others discarded) Agent-centric, Holochain Peers hold data they’ve authored, as well as data they’ve validated from other peers. Agents can see or create different realities/times \u0026hellip;content is based on its actual local order, since data is only truly sequential in the experience of an agent. Relative ordering across many people’s local state orderings can be established by explicit protocols and agreements to create shared reality in a case-appropriate way. Merges only when needed, functions like git. All perspectives are preserved. Enter Holochain. The **agent-centric** view point starts from the understanding that data is derived from agency. It does not have “primary” ontological status.\nData is essentially and fundamentally a record of a particular agent’s experience, be that a human, a sensor, or a device. In reality, agents see/sense/detect different things and receive feedback in different orders representing different realities. If any record’s provenance is separated from it, then the “data” represented by that record is fundamentally broken. We can only make sense of data if we know who sensed the data. This is why absolute ordering of massively simultaneous computation is impossible.\nBut herein lies the \u0026ldquo;unfortunate\u0026rdquo; part that I mentioned before. I have seen people jumping on Holochain\u0026rsquo;s agent-centricity as if it were an ideological stance about the supremacy of individual rights. It is true that the agent-centric approach will help achieve some crucial goals in individual rights, especially around privacy, and preventing inappropriately centralized entities (corporate or governmental) from abusing data privilege. But this is only the first part of the story. A Holochain application\u0026rsquo;s architecture is better described as **collaboration-centric**. Start with the reality of agency. Don\u0026rsquo;t dis-empower these agents. Instead fully empower them to enter into non-coercive play together with agreed upon rule-sets. Then what you get is thrivable social-coherence. This is what Holochain is designed to embody. And it\u0026rsquo;s working!\nSo, enough back-story on the philosophy and infrastructure, now for the “front-story.”\nFront-Story: Combining the two mother apps of collaboration #So here’s the big deal for me about Syn: It creates the possibility of merging the two most powerful aspects of collaboration software and doing so in the fully decentralized world. This merge, will, I believe have some really interesting consequences, but first the aspects are:\nReal-time multi-user “document” editing Alignment of multiple realities: i.e. branching and merging I’m assuming that point #1 above isn’t controversial, as I will bet that upwards of 75% of everyone reading this has switched from a local word-processor to Google Docs or HackMD for almost all of their text editing.\nPoint #2 probably ought not be controversial as indicated by the prevalence of git in software development, but it might need a little explanation for those readers that don’t do team coding and therefore aren’t making code commits and branching, forking, and merging many times a day. Even for those of you who are, if you grew up doing so always with your git repos centralized on GitHub, you may be missing a key part of the decentralization story.\nFor me, the first time I understood what distributed software and peer-to-peer really meant as an architectural reality was when I switched from Subversion to Git for version control. Subversion was based on the mental model of a centralized repository (a database of changes to the code’s text files) from which coders would 1) make local check-outs of that source code 2) edit the files, 3) and then make a commit (which is storing back into the database a set of such changes), but 4) you might have to merge your changes before you could make the commit if someone else had committed first, which entailed resolving any conflicting changes. Coders could also make a branch (which was a copy of the repository) and create a bunch of commits on that branch and merge those in too, but the mental model was still of some central place with a single “canonical” reality that the group of coders was updating.\nGit was different. Git assumes no center point. It assumes that each coder has their own copy of the code repository and can pull and push changes to any other distributed copy of the repo they have permission to access. It assumes that all changes are made to local branches and that branches will be created and merged all the time. It embraces locally divergent realities and eventual group consistency. If you think that your git repository on GitHub is somehow special, well from git’s perspective it isn’t. It’s just a repo that a bunch of agents have agreed to use in a hub-and-spoke synchronization pattern. Your “git push” could be directly to your friends repos if they gave you access and you added them as a remote. In that case you would just be agreeing to a more mesh-like collaboration pattern. Of course github has loaded lots of collaboration value-add on top of just being a place to embody the hub-and-spoke pattern, with issues, pull requests, kan-ban boards, integrated CI, etc. This is an important part of the story which is part of a pattern that repeats: decentralized public-domain protocols spawn centralized proprietary value-add silos built on top of those protocols. The detailed story of another example of this—about how AOL, GEnie, and Prodigy created chat-rooms, news services and all kinds of proprietary value-add on top of the primary feature of the internet’s SMTP protocol that provided the core service, email—is one I will tell some other time. But the key there is that proprietary value-add was erased by the arrival of another set of open protocols: http and HTML. And I think that Holochain/Syn may be yet another example of this story of the orders-of-magnitude value level-up that happens in this evolutionary process.\nI’ll show how in a bit, but first it’s important to understand what it takes to build Syn apps.\nTo make a Syn app you have to do just a few things:\nDefine a state model that represents your application. In the case of a text document this state model might be just two strings, the title and the document body. Create patch grammar that defines all the transformations that you can do to the state. In our text doc example that might be just three things: insert a character at a position, remove a character from a position, and set the value of the title. Create a delta function which, given a state and a transformation, produces a new state. This is pretty easy to do with simple patch grammars. Create a UI that: renders the state when it gets notified that the state has changed, and creates Syn transformations when the user would like to make a change. Once you’ve done that, Syn takes care of the heavy lifting of coordinating between all the agents making and _syn_chronizing changes, all without a central server.\nThat’s aspect 1 from the consequences of collaboration software above:real-time multi-user collaboration. With one additional app-design task, Syn’s architecture also handles aspect 2, Alignment of multiple realities, in a general way:\n5. Define a merge strategy for resolving differences between states and transformation sets.\nThis last task is where things get tricky to do well, and in general can’t always be done in a fully automated way. However, the idea is that when necessary, a merge strategy would include human intervention: manually (i.e. using human judgement) resolving the differences between conflicting change sets. This is nothing new to git users who handle merge conflicts all the time! Note that it’s important that merge strategy is not generalized and specified per-app. This is part of the power of the Syn approach. Once this fifth task is done, Syn becomes a general framework for adding branching and merging to any collaborative app. At any given time, Syn has the notion of a session, which is just like a branch in git. It’s a commit to treat as a starting point for a series of changes. Unlike Google Docs which just has a single revision history, Syn provides, at the low level, a space for multiple version histories based simply on which session users join and start making changes. With merging, the realities these branches represent can become aligned. Because Syn supports generalized UI for creating/viewing/switching sessions and can insert the merging strategy defined by the particular app, this is a powerful pattern that used to be available only to coders using git. Now, suddenly, it can be applied to arbitrary collaboration apps. In a way, it’s two-level collaboration, synchronously on the “same” state, and asynchronously on divergent/convergent state.\nTo me this is a big deal. If collaboration is about empowered agents entering into non-coercive playing together by agreed upon rule-sets, then this pattern in Syn is a massive level up meta-rule-set for doing so.\nImagine Wikipedia articles with multiple branches that reflect the true differences we have rather than just being fights in the talk pages, frozen around the assumption that there is a single, neutral point-of-view. And because of their many branches, they can actually merge when people find a way to represent those divergences in ways that can be understood by those who were arguing. That’s next-level collaboration.\nImagine creating branched spreadsheets where each branch models entirely different scenarios off of a core set of assumptions that can then get merged together as reality shows us what happens. That’s next level collaboration.\nImagine the concrete vocabulary of conflict resolution that emerges as we develop new and interesting merge strategies for conflicting change sets in different application contexts. What does it mean to resolve two different color choices applied to the same object by different people in a drawing program? I can imagine an ad-hoc Syn app spinning up that lets people on the fly make proposals and vote, or do rock-paper-scissors, or whatever… all as part of resolving a merge conflict in another Syn app! That’s next level collaboration.\nDo you see the implications? I’m excited.\nP.S. The holo-hosting team has been using an online-stickies tool to manage choosing topics for our virtual retros. On seeing Syn one of our team members dove right in and got this working in no time:\n2021-03-03-bundles\nP.P.S. teaser for the hyper-nerdy reader:\nP.P.P.S A number of folks helped with this article: Thanks first of all to Will for being a co-conspirator-in-syn-itself and for detailed edits and clarifications here. Thanks Jean Russell for supporting and pushing me to get this out, and especially for the initial draft of the comparison table. Thanks to Pospi, Guillem Cordoba, Siddharth Sthalekar, Hedayt Abedijoo, Emaline Friedman for comments edits and suggestions that made this article much better. And finally thanks to Art Brock for the usual co-creative sketching of things out that we can then turn into reality.\n","date":"March 10, 2021","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2021/03/10/decentralized-next-level-collaboration-apps-with-syn/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eUsually I am more energized by building tech than by talking about it, but I am so excited about what my son and I \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/holochain/syn\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003edid over winter break\u003c/a\u003e, that I just have to share about it here.  In an odd kind of busman\u0026rsquo;s holiday, I spent a good chunk of my time off writing a Holochain application.  Coding with my kid is just pure pleasure for me, but I have to describe the additional incredible experience of having spent 4 years building a tool, and now suddenly being able to use that tool to build what it was meant for: creating collaboration applications.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Decentralized Next-level Collaboration Apps with Syn"},{"content":"As is pretty obvious I don\u0026rsquo;t write much here. My focus for the last 4 years has been pretty singular on getting Holochain and Holo built. And writing takes me a long time. I also have a hard time writing to the void of the Internet, I need to be in a direct conversation to share well. Recently a friend made an open invitation to respond \u0026ldquo;about what you\u0026rsquo;re seeing and thinking in the world right now.\u0026rdquo; and he provided these prompts:\nWhat are you seeing more clearly now? What seems less clear or certain to you now than it did previously? What are the biggest/most interesting/most urgent open questions on your mind at the moment? What issues do you think the world isn\u0026rsquo;t paying enough attention to? What could we be doing that we aren\u0026rsquo;t doing right now to move towards more positive outcomes for the world? What do you think is standing in the way of us doing that? Given that we\u0026rsquo;ve recently crossed some major development thresh-holds in Holochain land, and I\u0026rsquo;m feeling really positive about where things are going, I felt that I had the spaciousness over my end-of-year break to actually sit down a respond. Here\u0026rsquo;s what I wrote (along with some images to spice it up):\nI see the \u0026ldquo;the world\u0026rdquo; (as you called it) as mostly people living inside a certain form of consciousness (or what\u0026rsquo;s sometimes called a \u0026ldquo;dominant meta narrative\u0026rdquo;) coupled with a slew of embodied forms that work together in a self-perpetuating feedback loop that creates a reasonably stable and coherent set of social organisms that all together we call \u0026ldquo;society\u0026rdquo;. I also think the dominant meta-narrative is fairly uniform across the broadest range of cultures on the planet, i.e. it holds true for most of us. I would call this meta-narrative, Supremacy Consciousness, in which humans experience a hierarchy of supremacy, usually putting themselves near the top. This overarching narrative leads to all kinds of the sub-supremacies, human, national, white, male, etc. It creates a reality in which it feels reasonable, even \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo; to create nation-states that colonize the \u0026ldquo;undiscovered\u0026rdquo; world. It creates a reality in which it feels reasonable to run an economy on businesses that permanently enclose value while externalizing costs as much as possible. It creates a reality in which it makes sense that our main embodied token on value: Money, has the properties it does: tracking only tradable wealth, issued as debt such that the interest helps catalyze and perpetuate the supremacy hierarchy. It creates a reality in which it makes sense to separate classes, races and genders and order their valuation, and inside this meta-narrative, it makes sense that those orderings are even internalized and held by the people who suffer under them. And by \u0026ldquo;sense\u0026rdquo; I don\u0026rsquo;t mean anything good, I just mean it creates a coherent set of stories and embodied forms that self-perpetuate.\nThe good news is that this meta-narrative, which has mostly been successfully hidden from view, is becoming more and more apparent. The bad news is that at scale the consequences of the Supremacy Consciousness is self-destruction. This comes largely because the coherence it creates, one of dominance and extraction, has met the real planetary boundaries of both natural and social ecosystem health. The worse news is that the system dynamics in play are, I think, very similar to those of addiction, where all the solutions available to the current embodied forms only make things worse. For example, a core problem of the world is using money to measure value. But almost nobody can envision a world without money, only a world in which money is somehow differently distributed. Even thinking about a \u0026ldquo;world without money\u0026rdquo; is mostly considered idealistic political utopic speculation rather than a serious systems theory problem about how to measure and build different classes of value.\nAnother, perhaps even more simple way to put the above is this: I\u0026rsquo;m interested in a world where greater collective intelligence is possible. The current underlying patterns of collective intelligence, although pretty darn incredible in some respects, are leading us to collective suicide at scale, which I\u0026rsquo;d like to avoid.\nSo then, what\u0026rsquo;s to be done? What creates greater collective intelligence? What, in the words of your prompts \u0026ldquo;could we be doing that we aren\u0026rsquo;t doing right now to move towards more positive outcomes for the world? What do you think is standing in the way of us doing that?\u0026rdquo;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the story of _what_ I\u0026rsquo;m doing to that end, _why_ it makes sense to me, _how_ I\u0026rsquo;m going about it, including the _blockers_ I see in getting there and what might be done about them:\nWhat: I believe the world needs a new grammatic capacity. We need a _grammar_ that can express social organisms with as much complexity and composibility as that provided by the grammar we call DNA for expressing biological life. We need the embodied _capacity_ to bring them into being with as much ease as the cell has in cranking out assembling the protein complexes and expressed in genes.\nWhy: It seems to me that all large-scale fundamental systemic change comes about because of the arrival of new grammatic capacities. Some examples at the small scale: DNA is the grammatic capacity that allows for life, hormone-complex-signaling is the grammatic capacity that allows for multi-celular organisms, neuronal signaling is the grammatic capacity that allows for animalia. Some examples at the familiar human scale: human language (subject/object/predicate utterances) is the grammatic capacity that allows for culture. Writing (phonetic and ideographic) is the grammatic capacity that allows for coordination that leads to human planetary scaling. And I hope I don\u0026rsquo;t need to mention the grammatic capacity we call networked computers and the changes they lead to. If large-scale systemic change is the goal, a new gramatic capacity is, at the very least, part of the game, if not _the_ game.\nHow: So, if we need a new grammatic capacity that works for representing, and expressing social organisms into being, how do we go about that? Well, let\u0026rsquo;s look at grammatic capacities in general. What are they like?\nFirst, the powerful fundamental ones all look like a stack built out of, guess what, other grammatic capacities. Stories, the high level expressions the grammatic capacity we call Language, are built out of paragraphs, which our built out of sentences, which are built out of sentence fragments, which are built out of words, which are built out word-parts, which are build out phonemes, which are built out phones. Each of these levels have their own distinct grammatic integrity which are related to the capacity in play for expressing and receiving the grammatical units at that level.\nBiological organisms are built out of protein complexes, so it makes sense that the lowest level code in DNA is for single amino-acids such that virtually any kind of protein complexes can be built. This demonstrates another key aspect of grammatic capacities: they provide a template for composibility of fundamental parts. What are Social organisms built out of? We can certainly argue about this, but, at least roughly speaking, they appear to me to be built out of agreement complexes. Sometimes people call these \u0026ldquo;social contracts.\u0026rdquo; Thus, it seems likely that the lowest level of our grammatic capacity should code for \u0026ldquo;micro-agreements\u0026rdquo; in a way that allows them to be composed.\nAnother way of looking at such \u0026ldquo;micro-agreements\u0026rdquo; in the social space is that they are patterns for interaction between agents that allows the agents to come into alignment on a shared reality, what we can call a Protocol. Protocols are exactly these patterns for interactions between agents. They are templates that create shared contexts so that we can understand each other better and more efficiently. We are all very familiar with both formal and informal protocols, from the pattern of a Pilots repeating back what Air-traffic-controllers say, to the patterns of thank-you-you-are-welcome of politeness, to Diplomatic protocols of behavior at state dinners, these are all little micro-agreements that allow us to act within a pre-defined shared context instead of having to hash everything out in each interaction.\nSo, our new grammatic capacity then would provide a grammar for creating and composing such Protocols, such that it\u0026rsquo;s easy for groups of people to build larger agreement complexes out of them. Here\u0026rsquo;s where things get fun. A Protocol as just defined is just another way of talking about a grammatic capacity: DNA provides the protocol stack for cell agents to align on a shared genetic reality and build organisms together. Language provides the protocol stack for human agents to align on a shared expressivity reality and build meaning together. If so the grammatic capacity we need is one in which we can create grammatic capacities. A Protocol for Protocols.\nSo that\u0026rsquo;s the focus of all my endeavors. How to do that in big and small ways. Gameshifting as used in Agile Learning Centers is an example. It\u0026rsquo;s a protocol for knowing and shifting which social protocol is in play. The MetaCurrency Project, Ceptr and Holochain are all about bringing this into the world for use at scale.\nA final note about \u0026ldquo;How\u0026rdquo; and this has to do with \u0026ldquo;blockers\u0026rdquo;. The how of landing such a protocol for protocols matters. There are different global scale social dynamics that will arise depending on whether this grammatic capacity is owned or enclosed, vs if it\u0026rsquo;s held as a commons. If the carriers on which the signals in the grammar are sent are owned, then then that creates a huge power-imbalance. Thus, the unenclosability of the fundamental carriers of the grammatic capacity makes a huge difference in what will evolve there. The deep pattern of enclosure that\u0026rsquo;s built into the capitalist approach is a huge blocker to making this all land in the world. There\u0026rsquo;s a lot more to say about this, but I think this is long enough for now.\nTo end this screed, I\u0026rsquo;d like to come back to the beginning and connect grammatic capacities to Supremacy Consciousness. Achieving supremacy always relies on coercion of one sort or another. Violence is the word we use for coercion on the physical level. We also recognize other forms of non-physical coercion as violent, or at least we call it abusive. We recognize coercive manipulation of media and information, \u0026ldquo;Fake News\u0026rdquo; etc. These are all practices inside Supremacy Consciousness.\nSo the other way seems fairly clear. If I base all my actions in the spirit of non-coercive conversation, I will be living outside of Supremacy Consciousness. So many things I do require coercion of others. Extracting myself from the coercive life is non-trivial. But I believe that in the end, this will feel, interestingly, like play. As James P. Carse says in Finite and Infinite Games: \u0026ldquo;he who must play, cannot play\u0026rdquo;. Play cannot happen inside the context of coercion. But play is also all about temporarily creating finite boundaries, and rules by which to enter into consentfull play. And this is the role of the Protocol for Protocols. It could be, by consent, a temporary game for creating more temporary games, knowing that we will always want to expand the horizons of our game playing together.\nHistorical Comments Bevan Jones \u0026mdash; May 16, 2021 at 12:25 PM Great insights Eric. I\u0026#x27;m trying to figure out the language of Nature and her disciples, the elements of sound, light, earth, fire, air and water. I don\u0026#x27;t think I\u0026#x27;m coding low enough to her machine code though. But it\u0026#x27;s clear she thrives on diversity and chaos, leading to evolutionary abundance. Will we ever get to understand her, given our strict upbringing in the \u0026quot;Ordo ab Chao\u0026quot; of Western Civilisation?\nThis is partly what brought me to HOLO this weekend. I already like the grid database approach and edge processing of nodes. Kinda makes me think of how our active brains work, and then synchromesh every night to update / file the whole chain. I know a little bit of coding (PHP, SQL, Python) and am probably not going to get too stuck into Rust etc. at 48 now. But I do bring 20 years of old-school engineering, commodity trading and investment banking to the table. Now I run a soil business and sustainability learning centre at www.thrivecentre.co.za I have several major use-cases for the long:short \u0026quot;mutual credit\u0026quot; model you\u0026#x27;re using, but is seems that Art is not keen on using Holofuel as an over-arching currency. Pity, because I think my various use-cases all reinforce each other, to create greater system resilience. I\u0026#x27;m trying to register on the HOLO forum to offer my various ideas to the community.\nAnyway, back to the grammar. I\u0026#x27;ve been involved with Freemasonry, which describes itself as a \u0026quot;peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory, and illustrated by symbols\u0026quot;. I think the symbol part is the key part. Symbols are not protocols, but gateways to individual understanding. As such, you and I can come to different-yet-similar-enough interpretations about a symbol, to enjoy the benefit from their insights. African proverbs are similar.\nI hope we get to chat and perhaps collaborate at some point. Meanwhile, here\u0026#x27;s wishing you and your family all the best.\n","date":"January 9, 2021","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2021/01/09/supremacy-consciousness-grammatic-capacity-play/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs is pretty obvious I don\u0026rsquo;t write much here.  My focus for the last 4 years has been pretty singular on getting \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/holochain/holochain\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHolochain\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://holo.host\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHolo\u003c/a\u003e built.  And writing takes me a long time.  I also have a hard time writing to the void of the Internet, I need to be in a direct conversation to share well.  Recently a friend made an open invitation to respond  \u0026ldquo;about what you\u0026rsquo;re seeing and thinking in the world right now.\u0026rdquo;  and he provided these prompts:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Supremacy Consciousness, Grammatic Capacity, \u0026 Play"},{"content":"The Wikipedia defines \u0026ldquo;Killer App\u0026rdquo; as a marketing term for \u0026ldquo;any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology.\u0026rdquo; Not surprising that the term comes from marketing, that branch of business devoted to competing for customers and trying to kill off the competition. But if we remove ourselves from the context of dog-eat-dog, and then start from that definition and work backwards to come up with a single word that it defines, well, \u0026ldquo;killer\u0026rdquo; hardly seems right. \u0026ldquo;Mother\u0026rdquo; fits much better. Those applications that seed the growth of whole new realms, we ought to call Mother Apps.\nVisiCalc, the first spreadsheet app, often gets used as the prime example of a Killer App. Lots of folks bought Apple II computers just so they use VisiCalc. More broadly e-mail (as a category of App) frequently gets nominated as the Killer App for the Internet. Pretty obviously nothing was killed in either of these examples but lots got birthed. More recently the term Killer App has become diluted in common usage to mean any indispensable computer program. Just try typing into google \u0026ldquo;X is the killer app\u0026rdquo;, and substitute for x with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, and you\u0026rsquo;ll see what I mean.\nBut I find it really useful to maintain that distinction of source or spring-board. So I offer this definition of \u0026ldquo;Mother App\u0026rdquo;: a computer program (or class of program) that uses a technology in a new way to both reveal and unleash its power.\u0026quot; I hope it catches on!\nHistorical Comments Anders \u0026mdash; August 17, 2016 at 03:23 PM Did the \u0026quot;killer\u0026quot; in \u0026quot;killer app\u0026quot; originally mean an app which killed off the competition? I always read it as \u0026quot;that\u0026#x27;s a killer app, man!\u0026quot;, a positive slang word.\nIn my understanding, a mother app would \u0026quot;host\u0026quot; her children in her space, with her resources—she feeds and clothes and house the kids until they are ready to go off and be separate. But a \u0026quot;killer app\u0026quot; doesn\u0026#x27;t necessarily do this—rather it is one app among many, but the attractiveness of it is so strong that it brings many people to the platform upon which it is housed. I.e., the killer app has a mother which is the platform, but as a child of that platform, it is contained in that mother (or linked to it at least, if we have clear boundaries and a server-client model) and receives its existence from that connection (can\u0026#x27;t have the app without the platform).\nSo I see a \u0026quot;killer app\u0026quot; less as a mother relationship (which would be the platform), but more like a messenger relationship. Bringing this into a symbolic concept, this would be more like Hermes the connector than Gaia the Great Mother. Email is a good example of this—the draw of distributed connection was so intense that it became the killer \u0026#x27;messenger app\u0026#x27;. So maybe it should be called a \u0026#x27;gospel app\u0026#x27;, spreading the good news of the platform by repeated duplication of spreading its own good-news (good-spiel) information? And that message is the replication pattern :D\nIn the Oedipal family structure, there is the mother archetype that, if we don\u0026#x27;t create separation from it, can become the Devouring Mother archetype. So maybe iTunes would be a gospel app whic became a devouring mother app—sucked everyone into the App Store and Apple\u0026#x27;s closed-in business model—and now they can\u0026#x27;t get out without abandoning the entire platform (mother). (And where is the father in this whole situation? I guess it would Apple or the platform developer.)\nMeanwhile I feel like the killer app would be more like a cool sister—making all kinds of trips and connections for you that make the platform exciting, drawing in more activity from everywhere, making it a party.\n","date":"March 16, 2016","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2016/03/16/the-app-from-killer-to-mother/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ca href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_application\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eWikipedia defines \u0026ldquo;Killer App\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e as a marketing term for \u0026ldquo;any computer program that is so necessary or desirable that it proves the core value of some larger technology.\u0026rdquo; Not surprising that the term comes from marketing, that branch of business devoted to competing for customers and trying to kill off the competition. But if we remove ourselves from the context of dog-eat-dog, and then start from that definition and work backwards to come up with a single word that it defines, well, \u0026ldquo;killer\u0026rdquo; hardly seems right. \u0026ldquo;Mother\u0026rdquo; fits much better. Those applications that seed the growth of whole new realms, we ought to call Mother Apps.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The App: from Killer to Mother"},{"content":"I haven’t written much lately, I guess I\u0026rsquo;ve been busy… mostly with two things: Cancer \u0026amp; Ceptr.\nCurrently, my time is about living with a spouse with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and all that it takes to support her as well I can. My work is about building tools for a post-monetary society; creating a new meta-language to allow a vast expansion in social forms that is currently limited primarily by the world\u0026rsquo;s current statement of value: money. These two worlds have recently come together in ways worth writing about.\nWh en describing my work-in-the-world, people are always asking me for more examples. Because abstract descriptions like the one in the paragraph above don\u0026rsquo;t really do it for folks. I get it. But it\u0026rsquo;s hard for me! When what you are designing is like grammar for a kind of language that doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist, it\u0026rsquo;s pretty hard to give examples of sentences in that language, because it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist yet! But there are openings into what that language looks like and what it might feel like to \u0026ldquo;speak\u0026rdquo; it. Here\u0026rsquo;s the one that comes from the intersection of my two lives. It\u0026rsquo;s called DST (Death Straight Talk).\nFirst, go and read my post about DST on Ellen\u0026rsquo;s cancer blog. There I share the concrete personal story, when you get back here I\u0026rsquo;ll tell the current-see story that connects it to my work:\nIn the post-monetary world, value coordination isn\u0026rsquo;t reduced to a unidimensional bottom-line of money. We actually already live with one foot in that world. We are swimming in non-monetary current-sees like grades, credits, degrees, e-bay/Amazon/Uber ratings, food certifications of all sorts (USDA Organic, Fair-Trade, Non-GMO, etc)\u0026ndash;the list goes on. We just normally don\u0026rsquo;t recognize them as \u0026ldquo;parts-of-speech\u0026rdquo; in a single \u0026ldquo;language.\u0026rdquo; When we do, new things become possible. This is what happened to me around DST. Pretty much everywhere I go now I look at the world through the lens of seeing all the information token systems we use to coordinate our actions. Movie and train tickets are current-sees, so are postage stamps, and buy-10-get-1-free coffee cards, intake-forms, passports, and licenses, the list goes on and on. I look for the current-see life-cycle, the issuer, the redeemer, other co-functioning current-sees, and I look for the level of wealth the current-see corresponds to in our living systems model of wealth.\nIn December, Ellen got diagnosed with malignant pleural and pericardial effusions, which required hospitalization to get drains inserted to relieve fluid buildup in the sacs around her lung and heart (cancer cells muck up the usual flow paths). While in the hospital a protocol around a slightly lowered blood sodium level involved giving her \u0026ldquo;some fluids.\u0026rdquo; Seemed innocent enough. Well, in Ellen\u0026rsquo;s case, those IV fluids ended up causing pretty extreme swelling in her feet (she renamed her feet manatees). The swelling was bad enough on its own, but due to neuropathy from previous chemotherapy, meant that thereafter walking was almost impossible due to the pain in her feet. It took three weeks for the swelling to go down, and for Ellen to do more than hobble. This had a cascade effect on loss of muscle which still hasn\u0026rsquo;t returned.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty clear to me that the protocol that triggered the IV fluids didn\u0026rsquo;t take into account increased swelling risk, that, it turns out, comes from protein loss from pleural fluid drainage. I really doubt it took into account added pain due to neuropathy. And I know for certain that it didn\u0026rsquo;t take into account quality-of-life assessment around the questions of balancing risk of loss of mobility for a person possibly in the last months of their life, because no-one asked.\nAt the end of January, I went to California to help co-facilitate a workshop on Deep Wealth Design principles. On the last day of my trip, I got word that Ellen was back in the hospital again. After the previous hospitalization we had talked lots, and felt pretty good, about how to communicate with the medical world about her specific risk around IV fluids to prevent immobilization by swelling. But this time around there was much more going on. The short version: I could tell that lots of hospital protocols weren\u0026rsquo;t going to take into account Ellen\u0026rsquo;s situation, and what she wanted given her prognosis of limited life span. Then it hit me, probably because I was primed by the workshop: Medical staff have a current-see that they know how to pay attention to, the Do-Not-Resuscitate order (DNR). And it\u0026rsquo;s issued by the patient! I knew we need something like that, and that I had to have an acronym to refer to it. That\u0026rsquo;s how DST came to be. The rest of the story you know from my post on Ellen\u0026rsquo;s blog, but from a current-see perspective here\u0026rsquo;s the take-home: Adding a token issued by the patient allows re-evaluation of risks built into other protocols based on that patient\u0026rsquo;s stated understanding of what will create well-being for them.\nNote that DST so far isn\u0026rsquo;t a real current-see, because, unlike a DNR, there\u0026rsquo;s no social agreement on its issuance, use and life-cycle. But just my words to nurses \u0026ldquo;pretend like she has a DST sticker in her chart\u0026rdquo; made it work as if it were. It connected the main current-see hospital staff has to work with, the chart, with Ellen\u0026rsquo;s particular place in the flow. It\u0026rsquo;s a pretty powerful example of the effect of current-sees on social systems, and my own beloved\u0026rsquo;s well-being in the midst of them.\nI want this story to give you a visceral sense of how the social body gets built out of the formal information tokens we create Yes, underneath it\u0026rsquo;s the humans and their compassion and love and all that great gushy stuff that really matters. But the social body is built out of communication tokens and the agreements around their use \u0026ndash;things like DST. We will lose what really matters if we don\u0026rsquo;t understand this. When we understand it, really and deeply, then we will also develop a kind of \u0026ldquo;language\u0026rdquo;, that can all \u0026ldquo;speak\u0026rdquo; to allow us to spin up various DST-like current-sees, and to evolve them on the fly.\nWhen we have that new \u0026ldquo;language,\u0026rdquo; then we will have stepped fully into the post-monetary world. That\u0026rsquo;s why I work on Ceptr and the MetaCurrency project.\nHistorical Comments Arthur Brock \u0026mdash; February 16, 2016 at 12:51 PM Thanks Eric. It\u0026#x27;s good to see you blogging again!\nheathervescent \u0026mdash; February 16, 2016 at 06:00 PM Love this story. I can somewhat relate, based on dealing w/ hospice and the death of my mom, and also interested in new monetary flows. And straight talk about death. Thanks Eric!\nclrwater \u0026mdash; February 16, 2016 at 08:42 PM Thanks Eric - great to have the very real heartfelt visceral reality of current see and how it affects us every day. So much seems to be about giving each other permission to return to natural currents already there - or to give us a way to be conscious of them so that our unconscious current blocking patterns can be released. Thanks again for all you do and how you show up. Honored and delighted to get to know more of you.\nferanandaibarra \u0026mdash; February 25, 2016 at 11:51 PM Aplausos! Me encantó esta pieza. Creo que si debemos publicarla. De entrada en tu medium porque pocos siguen to blog. Si quieres repetir blogs todo bien pero esta pieza es tan genuina y encarnada.\n","date":"February 16, 2016","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2016/02/16/current-see-and-death-straight-talk/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI haven’t written much lately, I guess I\u0026rsquo;ve been busy… mostly with two things: \u003ca href=\"http://ellen.harris-braun.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCancer\u003c/a\u003e \u0026amp; \u003ca href=\"http://ceptr.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCeptr\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCurrently, my time is about living with a spouse with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer and all that it takes to support her as well I can. My work is about building tools for a post-monetary society; creating a new meta-language to allow a vast expansion in social forms that is currently limited primarily by the world\u0026rsquo;s current statement of value: money.  These two worlds have recently come together in ways worth writing about.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Current-see and Death Straight Talk"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/arduino/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Arduino"},{"content":"And, YAAP (Yet Another Arduino Project), the Micro Arduino Gaming Platform Interface. Finally I\u0026rsquo;ve done the \u0026ldquo;shareable value\u0026rdquo; part of putting together an instructables for how to make the retro-game controller I built for (and with) Will for Christmas. I love this video of Will demoing it:\nHistorical Comments Davina Belmont \u0026mdash; July 27, 2015 at 05:35 PM That looks great - well done! I\u0026#x27;m trying to encourage my 12 year old son to develop things like this, so I made sure he watched all of the video! Thanks for sharing the video.\n","date":"March 25, 2014","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2014/03/25/the-magpi-is-here/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnd, YAAP (Yet Another Arduino Project), the Micro Arduino Gaming Platform Interface. Finally I\u0026rsquo;ve done the \u0026ldquo;shareable value\u0026rdquo; part of putting together an \u003ca href=\"http://www.instructables.com/id/Magpi-The-Micro-Arduino-Gaming-Platform-Interface/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003einstructables\u003c/a\u003e for how to make the retro-game controller I built for (and with) Will for Christmas. I love this video of Will demoing it:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Behold, the magpi..."},{"content":"Seems like end of the year is DYI electronics projects time for me as the Sound Alarm happened round this time last year too. Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve been having a ball making Arduino stuff, this time as Christmas presents. This time I got my documentation act together even more and made a construction tutorial on instructables too! The code for Das Blinken Bonken is on github, and here\u0026rsquo;s a video of Jesse showing off the game:\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPtVqJkY8N8\n","date":"January 7, 2014","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2014/01/07/das-blinken-bonken/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSeems like end of the year is DYI electronics projects time for me as the Sound Alarm happened round this time last year too.  Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve been having a ball making Arduino stuff, this time as Christmas presents.  This time I got my documentation act together even more and made \u003ca href=\"http://www.instructables.com/id/Das-Blinken-Bonken-An-arduino-ball-throwing-game-p/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ea construction tutorial on instructables\u003c/a\u003e too!   The code for Das Blinken Bonken is on \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/zippy/blinken-bonken\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003egithub\u003c/a\u003e, and here\u0026rsquo;s a video of Jesse showing off the game:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Das Blinken Bonken!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/alarm/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Alarm"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just completed my second Arduino project, a sound level detector which sets off an \u0026ldquo;alarm\u0026rdquo; when there\u0026rsquo;s the sound level is to high for too long. I built it for use in a school that wants to provide visual feedback to students when they are being too loud. The \u0026ldquo;alarm\u0026rdquo; is a string of flashing LEDs that\u0026rsquo;s controlled by an IR-remote, which I reverse engineered using the the arduino itself and the excellent IRremote library to figure out which codes activate the LED string. The IRremote library includes an example that dumps the codes and code types that remotes typically use. So I just ran that example with my arduino hooked up to an IR detector from adafruit. It was really quite easy to do.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s been a fun project because it\u0026rsquo;s quite flexible and configurable. Here\u0026rsquo;s a short video of the finished product:\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZH9_8INj4\nFor anyone who wants to build one of these here\u0026rsquo;s a bread-board diagram that I made using the very cool Fritzing package:\nSound Alarm Breadboard The Adruino sketch that powers this is available on github.\nHere are some details on the circuitry. The sound detector is based on the ZX-Sound board. Here\u0026rsquo;s a nice post on the arduino.cc site that I used as my starting place for building the sound part of this board. The video helpfully includes a parts list which I sourced from Allied electronics, all except for the mic. The LCD is the $10 16x2 from Adafruit (their tutorial on wiring it up was great), and I also used their electret microphone. One note about the microphone is that it\u0026rsquo;s polarity matters. If you get it in backwards, it\u0026rsquo;s much less sensitive. I found this out purely by accident! I also used their IR LED.\nHere are some photos of assembling the project.\nFirst the prototyping phase:\nprototyping Then building the connector for the LCD:\nlcd_header_1 lcd_header_2 lcd_header_3 Then drilling holes and installing the configuration controls (push-button and pot)\nsetup_controls_1 setup_controls_2 Then assembling and soldering the board with the sound circuit and the trim pot for the LCD as well as the resistor for the IR LED.\nsound_board sound_board_plus_lcd Finally, just before enclosing..\njust_before_enclosing The completed project. Note that I left the mic and IR LED lose because I\u0026rsquo;m not sure exactly where the alarm is going to be installed and the way they face could matter.\nCompleted Arduino Sound Alarm Some lessons learned:\nWhen soldering a header for an LCD remember to take into account that if you copy the wiring order as you have plugged it into the bread-board, you will actually be doing it backwards because the connecter will be attached upside-down! You will need to drill a little extra hole in your case to accept the tab on the pot that keeps it from rotating when you spin the shaft. Electret microphones have a polarity. Hot-glue is great for attaching push-buttons. Ask you children for UI advice! Will had the excellent idea of using the setup-pot to spin between the different settings. In the original code I had it so you had to press the button to toggle between the setup parameters and then do a long-press to actually set one. The way it ended up is much better. Parts List:\nArduino Uno: https://www.adafruit.com/products/50 ($29.95)\nMakershed Arduino Enclosure: http://www.makershed.com/Clear_Enclosure_for_Arduino_p/mkad40.htm ($15.00)\n9V powersupply: https://www.adafruit.com/products/63 ($6.95)\n100K Potentiometer: Radioshack ($1.69)\npushbutton switch: Radioshack ($.99)\nBreadboard PCB: https://www.adafruit.com/products/589 ($3.00)\nElectret Mic: https://www.adafruit.com/products/1064 ($1.50)\nIR LED: https://www.adafruit.com/products/387 ($.75)\nLCD 2x16: https://www.adafruit.com/products/181 ($9.95)\nComponents: (~$5)\nresistors: 1k ohm x 2; 100k ohm x 2; 12 ohm; 39k ohm; 22k ohm; 230 ohm (for IR led) capacitors: 470uf 16v; 0.1uf 50v; 22uf 25v Dual op amp IC: TLC272 Total Price: ~$70\n","date":"December 6, 2012","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2012/12/06/arduino-sound-alarm/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just completed my second Arduino project, a sound level detector which sets off an \u0026ldquo;alarm\u0026rdquo; when there\u0026rsquo;s the sound level is to high for too long.  I built it for use in a school that wants to provide visual feedback to students when they are being too loud.  The \u0026ldquo;alarm\u0026rdquo; is a string of flashing LEDs that\u0026rsquo;s controlled by an IR-remote, which I reverse engineered using the the arduino itself and the excellent \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/shirriff/Arduino-IRremote\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eIRremote\u003c/a\u003e library to figure out which codes activate the LED string. The IRremote library includes an example that \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/shirriff/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/examples/IRrecvDump/IRrecvDump.ino\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003edumps the codes and code types\u003c/a\u003e that remotes typically use.  So I just ran that example with my arduino hooked up to an \u003ca href=\"http://adafruit.com/products/157\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eIR detector from adafruit\u003c/a\u003e.  It was really quite easy to do.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Arduino Sound Alarm"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/arduino-2/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Arduino-2"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/sound/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Sound"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m not much of a guy for protesting. But SOPA \u0026amp; PIPA are absolutely nuts. They are terrible implementations of worse ideas. So I\u0026rsquo;m joining the strike. This blog will be down tomorrow. I know I don\u0026rsquo;t get much traffic, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the point. I must publicly stand against the moves of entrenched power to enclose the information commons. The rhetoric around these laws pretends to be all about protecting the little guy, the artists and the economy. But that\u0026rsquo;s totally bogus. These laws are all about protecting the ability of large corporations to enclose ownership of more and more data, and use the government to a pawn to rend the very fabric of the Internet when that enclosure is threatened.\n","date":"January 18, 2012","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2012/01/18/blackout-strike/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m not much of a guy for protesting.  But SOPA \u0026amp; PIPA are absolutely nuts.  They are terrible implementations of worse ideas.  So I\u0026rsquo;m joining the \u003ca href=\"http://sopastrike.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003estrike\u003c/a\u003e.  This blog will be down tomorrow.  I know I don\u0026rsquo;t get much traffic, but that\u0026rsquo;s not the point.  I must publicly stand against the moves of entrenched power to enclose the information commons.  The rhetoric around these laws pretends to be all about protecting the little guy, the artists and the economy.  But that\u0026rsquo;s totally bogus.  These laws are all about protecting the ability of large corporations to enclose ownership of more and more data, and use the government to a pawn to rend the very fabric of the Internet when that enclosure is threatened.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Blackout Strike"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/open-source/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Open-Source"},{"content":"I just signed up for Edgeryders and completed my first mission, which is to \u0026ldquo;share your ryde.\u0026rdquo; This provided me with an end-of-year opportunity to think about and document where I\u0026rsquo;ve been over the past years, so I\u0026rsquo;m reposting that \u0026ldquo;mission\u0026rdquo; here:\nI\u0026rsquo;ll start the story of my Ryde by quoting my first blog post ever (back in 2005):\nA few days ago I stopped at a gas station. As I was pumping, I noticed a vole scurrying across the parking lot. The lot was covered with a thin layer of that dry compacted, dirty snow that you get when it\u0026rsquo;s been cold enough that the snow never melted or turned ice. The vole would zip along for about six feet, and then try to burrow under a clump of snow, only to hit pavement so it would zip another few feet and try again. It had come from behind the gas station where there is a field, and it was headed in the direction of a very busy road. This vole was in for trouble and I\u0026rsquo;d better do something about it. I was half way through pumping so I finished filling my tank and then turned to see what I could do for the creature.\nBy the time I\u0026rsquo;d spotted it again, it was about twenty feet from the road. I headed not towards the vole, but at an angle that would cut it off from the road so I could shoo it back to the field. But it must have know that I was trying to prevent it from moving towards its intended direction because it immediately headed for the road at a modified angle calculated precisely to avoid me.\nWithin seconds the vole was in the middle of the road. The first semi missed it by five feet. The next one flattened it.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know if the vole would have gone on to the road had I not tried to save it, probably it would have. But I do know that if I had stopped pumping gas right when I realized that this vole was in for trouble, that I would have had a much better chance of saving it.\nI hate pumping gas. Every time I do it, I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m that vole flinging myself and my fellow humans as fast as possible right toward those tractor-trailer truck wheels. The vole\u0026rsquo;s consciousness doesn\u0026rsquo;t even include roads and trucks, but unlike the vole, I know about peak-oil, and global warming. I can see the truck coming. But why didn\u0026rsquo;t I stop pumping for that vole? Why don\u0026rsquo;t I stop pumping for all us? How conscious can I become?\nI decided to register for Edgeryders after reading this post of Vinay\u0026rsquo;s. Clearly there\u0026rsquo;s an affinity of sentiment between Vinay\u0026rsquo;s post, and mine from that blog post, but that\u0026rsquo;s not why I signed up. Instead it\u0026rsquo;s because I\u0026rsquo;ve been struggling with that sentiment for many years, and decided to take the \u0026ldquo;Share your Ryde\u0026rdquo; mission as an opportunity to continue with that struggle.\nThere\u0026rsquo;s something that feels righteous about \u0026ldquo;being willing to face the facts,\u0026rdquo; about not being in denial about how bad the situation is. It feels responsible, and grown-up. It feels like honesty, like trying not to be self-delusional, as well as being willing to take a stand. All these are attributes I strive for. But my struggle, is around being responsible not only to what is now, but also to what can be, to what is possible. In his post, Vinya writes: \u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re not aware of this situation, I guarantee you it\u0026rsquo;s because you\u0026rsquo;re not paying attention, alas.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s a great rhetorical flourish: \u0026ldquo;If you\u0026rsquo;re not X, it\u0026rsquo;s because you\u0026rsquo;re not paying attention.\u0026rdquo; Makes me really want to be X because the last thing I want to be blamed of is \u0026ldquo;not paying attention.\u0026rdquo; But in attention lies the rub. There are different qualities of attention that yield awareness of facts (how things are), and of possibility (how things might be).\nThere\u0026rsquo;s that saying \u0026ldquo;A falling tree makes more noise than a growing forest.\u0026rdquo; What I\u0026rsquo;m most keen on doing, is focusing my attention on the space of actual new possibilities, on listening for the quiet growing forests of our time. For me the key experience in this regard over the last years has been what feels like \u0026ldquo;openings.\u0026rdquo; Though I cannot deny the importance of \u0026ldquo;facing the facts,\u0026rdquo; what seems of far greater import is to listen for the possibilities, the search for, and openness to, openings. When openings come, they have consequences. An open door is an invitation to at least look into the room behind it. So, to share my ryde is to share openings and their consequences. The direction of my life has changed drastically since 2003, because of a number of openings and the consequences of them. Here are the key ones, not strictly in chronological order, but close:\nOpening #1: In 2003 my father gave me two books to read: Interest \u0026amp; Inflation Free Money, by Margrit Kennedy, and The Future of Money by Bernard Leitaer. For me these books were one-way doors. Once I\u0026rsquo;d stepped through, there was no going back, because suddenly I understood three things: 1) money was a human invention 2) this particular invention is foundational to all human social patterns 3) we can change it, and there-by change our social patterns. Thus, I became open to a huge new possibility.\nThe consequence of this opening was two-fold: first, that I became involved in a local currency project (one that never got off the ground), and second that I was invited on the board of the E. F. Schumacher Society, a small non-profit that for decades had quietly been working on many decentralist economic efforts, including local-currency efforts, which has now grown and become the New Economics Institute .\nIn 2004, the Schumacher Society held what I consider to be a pivotal conference called Local Currencies in the 21st Century. Plenary speakers at this conference included both Kennedy and Leitaer (authors of those two books), and also Tom Greco, but most importantly for me, it\u0026rsquo;s where I met Michael Linton, Jean-François Noubel, and Arthur Brock.\nOpening #2: Michael Linton. I knew of Michael before the conference from my reading, as he is a pioneer in the community currency world, well know for his design of LETS, one of the most widely deployed community currency patterns. But at the conference Michael was talking about his ideas for open money. I daresay few people at the conference then, or since then, have understood the import of what Michael was sharing. He was explaining, as a unified vision, the necessary aspects of how the structure of money could to change. Namely that 1) money is information, 2) the pattern of flow of that information in relation to communities should be circular, i.e. issued within the community so it would flow around it, not through it as happens with moneys issued outside of communities. 3) That there must be a rich ecology of currencies appropriate to each communities circumstances. 4) That these currencies must exist in the context of a network that emerges out of an interplay between communities of function (what people do together) and communities of identity (how people see and name themselves). Michael was the first person I met who was thinking coherently on this level and actually trying to build a system that addressed these issues and was designed to scale. Over the next few years I came to work closely with Michael on the open money project.\nOpening #3: Michael introduced me to Ashby\u0026rsquo;s Law of Requisite Variety, and to Reed\u0026rsquo;s Law of Group forming Networks. These two \u0026ldquo;Laws\u0026rdquo; are both fascinating and deep, and they clearly apply to money and currency systems. Single national currencies fail to provide the systemic regulatory variety necessary for a healthy economy. Also, a multi-currency network would be an incredible group-forming network. But the real opening for me was not so much in the laws themselves, but in that they both point to the fact that in networked and cybernetic systems, new ways of thinking are necessary, and the results are surprising and non-intuitive.\nOpening #4: Jean-François Noubel. At the Local Currencies conference Jean-François was sharing his work on Collective Intelligence. This work identifies and describes the evolution of the forms of collective intelligence from \u0026ldquo;original collective intelligence\u0026rdquo; through where we are now, which he calls \u0026ldquo;pyramidal collective intelligence,\u0026rdquo; on to the possibility of \u0026ldquo;global collective intelligence.\u0026rdquo; In his work, Jean-François also focuses on \u0026ldquo;invisible architectures,\u0026rdquo; those patterns that, mostly unconsciously, regulate our lives. One of the most crucial that he identifies, of course, is the monetary system. Looking at the world through the this opening, the lens of collective intelligence and invisible architectures, gave me, and continues to give me, not only a powerful explanatory rubric for how things are now, but also where they might go.\nConsequences, phase I: I\u0026rsquo;m trained as coder (I have a B.S in computer science), but just before my father gave me the books that constitute opening #1, I had decided to give up coding. Over the years I had written a bunch of a good code that had made a bunch customers happy, but I didn\u0026rsquo;t feel like it was right. I wanted to be focusing on something that had a deeper impact. So I gave it up, and told my partner that I wanted out of our small dev shop. Well, after openings 1-4, I found myself right back in coding land. I knew that now I had the opportunity to try and implement software systems that could realize the promise of a new monetary system. This felt like impact. So this led to working closely with Michael to build a web-app that was pretty much to his open money specifications, and was meant to be a single server fully functional prototype to demonstrate what a networked multi-currency system would look like. That system is still operational and used in a couple of places. You can check the dev site.\nOpening #5: The levels of Wealth and their relation to systems. This opening was sparked by Jean-François Noubel, who described to me a taxonomy of wealth. He had realized that money is a tool that focuses on building tradable wealth, but that tradable wealth is just a small subset of measurable wealth, which itself is a subset of acknowledgeable wealth. What I realized, is that those levels exist because of systemic truths, i.e. that each level of wealth corresponds to levels of systemic integrity. That tradable wealth corresponds with parts and products of systems, and measurable wealth corresponds with properties of systems as a whole, and acknowledgeable wealth corresponds with relationships between systems. Here is where I first wrote about all this: http://openmoney.info/sophia/.\nOpening #6: Arthur Brock, flow and current-see. The opening about the levels of wealth came pretty much at the same time as I was also deepening my association with Arthur Brock who I had first met at the Local Currency conference. When I met him at the conference he was championing what he called \u0026ldquo;targeted currencies,\u0026rdquo; special purpose currencies for solving particular community problems, rather than general purpose exchange currencies. Arthur had been using the metaphor of the electromagnetic spectrum, comparing monetary currencies to visible light, when there was actually much larger range of currency \u0026ldquo;frequencies\u0026rdquo; that were available to solve other problems. But it wasn\u0026rsquo;t until I came to understand Art\u0026rsquo;s deeper definition of currency, as \u0026ldquo;current-see\u0026rdquo; or formal information systems that allows us to see and interact with currents, flows, that the things really came together. These different levels of wealth, corresponding to the levels of systemic integrity, also needed corresponding currency types, to manage the different types of flow that are taking place at those different systemic levels.\nConsequences, phase II: Openings #5 \u0026amp; 6 showed that my first open money system wasn\u0026rsquo;t enough, that as well as being able to create new currencies in the network environment, that it would be necessary create multiple types of currency that operated very differently depending on which level of wealth they were targeting. I wanted to build a generalized \u0026ldquo;wealth acknowledgement\u0026rdquo; system. And I also wanted to try my hand at building a system that would be client-server based that would allow multiple servers to play and thus be decentralized. At the time I met Geoff Chesshire who had also been working with Michael Linton and was building a currency system called Regenerosity, which used the idea of laying down what amounted to a social network graph to record the changing relationships in a community, which is essentially what monetary transaction are. Using these ideas I built a whole new system. Here\u0026rsquo;s an overview of the technical architecture (what I called the Mesh \u0026amp; Churn): http://openmoney.info/techne/overview.html, and the code I wrote to implement it is here: https://github.com/openmoney. A demo site is still up at: http://omclient.heroku.com/\nThe new system was working, and it was pretty easy to create mutual credit currencies, as well as reputation currencies, and if you were a geek you could configure other types of currencies too. But there was a big problem. Though I had made allowance for these different types of currencies, technically most of my focus was on laying down that social graph, the mesh. I hadn\u0026rsquo;t yet paid lots of attention to what the range structure of different possible currencies could be, and how I was going to integrate that.\nOpening #7: David Abram\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Spell of the Sensuous.\u0026rdquo; Abram\u0026rsquo;s book provides an amazing account of how we\u0026rsquo;ve shifted the locus of meaning from the natural sensual world to human constructed one in the form of our abstract alphabet. The opening came while reading his account of the evolution of writing. That description opened my eyes not only to how currency is very much like writing, but that it\u0026rsquo;s also on a similar evolutionary track, going from a very concrete representation form, \u0026ldquo;pictograms\u0026rdquo;, to a much more abstract one, an \u0026ldquo;alphabet.\u0026rdquo; We think of modern money as very abstract, most often just bits in a computer. But what I realized, is that money is still very concrete, and just like pictographic writing. It\u0026rsquo;s not abstract at all because all moneys so far use the same encoding mechanism they always have for value: relative scarcity (just like all pictograms use the same encoding mechanism for meaning: shape) And that encoding mechanism is only really appropriate for tradable wealth where scarcity is true for parts and products of systems. It\u0026rsquo;s not appropriate for the wider levels of wealth. What I saw is that we have no \u0026ldquo;alphabet\u0026rdquo; for encoding all the levels of value, and that\u0026rsquo;s what the open money system I\u0026rsquo;d been working on could evolve into. I\u0026rsquo;ve written a couple blog posts about this if you want to read about it in more depth: here and here.\nConsequences, phase III: The rise of the MetaCurrency project, XGFL \u0026amp; the Flowplace. By this time, it was clear that I was interested in more than \u0026ldquo;money\u0026rdquo; because monetary currencies are those that apply to the smallest circle of wealth, tradable wealth. I was committed to working on what I was calling a \u0026ldquo;meta-currency\u0026rdquo; system that had a currency specification language that would be capable of representing wealth at all levels. So Art \u0026amp; I co-founded the MetaCurrency project to be a home for the tech protocols and know-how that would make this happen. Focusing on this problem from the currency-specification language point of view resulted in a design document that included the Simple Game Format Language (SGFL) which later became XGFL (X for eXtensible). This language was to be for currencies, as HTML was for web resources.\nAt the same time I started working with Jean-François and Fernanda Ibarra who together wanted to a usable platform for groups of early adopters they were working with in the transitioner network who wanted to start living these ideas of multi-level-wealth currencies. So together we built the Flowplace. Here\u0026rsquo;s the demo site. The Flowplace implements the XGFL language, and at the same time includes a bunch of other important ideas necessary for actually organizing communities (what we called circles) around them and making them useful, the equivalent of a marketplace in the multi-level-currency context. Jean-François and Fernanda have used the Flowplace in a number of contexts and people have had transformative experiences as it can give a taste of a what a multi-level-currency world might look like. But from my perspective, as a system designer, this experiment, like my previous one, was a dead end. Where the Mesh \u0026amp; Churn didn\u0026rsquo;t have a native way to include currency specification, the Flowplace with XGFL, didn\u0026rsquo;t have a native way to relate currencies to each-other. We did do some important work on what we called membrane currencies to address this difficiency, but it just didn\u0026rsquo;t feel right, and I knew it didn\u0026rsquo;t have legs.\nOpening #8: The evolution of expressive capacity. Unlike all the other openings I\u0026rsquo;ve listed, for this one I can\u0026rsquo;t pinpoint its source. Of course it builds on all the other openings, but there\u0026rsquo;s not a particular person, conversation or writing or even moment that I can remember where it arrived. I think its the product of all of us working together around the MetaCurrency project. I now see that all the previous openings were partial views of this bigger pattern. So, yes, money is information, and yes, its evolution is like that of writing, but here\u0026rsquo;s the deeper pattern: It appears that the greatest leaps in \u0026ldquo;novelty,\u0026rdquo; i.e. increased possibility that we know of, all arise because of the emergence of new embodied information encoding systems, what I like to call \u0026ldquo;expressive capacities\u0026rdquo;. DNA, neurons, language, writing, the printing press, computers, these are all examples, at various levels of complexity, of such expressive capacities that allow for a explosion of possibility that is unimaginable before their arrival. Notice that though they are all \u0026ldquo;revolutionary\u0026rdquo; some of these new expressive capacities are more revolutionary than others. The invention of writing and the printing press are extensions of the basic expressive capacity of language. But the arrival of language and DNA are much more, shall we say, foundational.\nSo here\u0026rsquo;s the crux of the opening: I see that we are at nexus point where new expressive capacity is ready to emerge that\u0026rsquo;s on the same \u0026ldquo;foundational\u0026rdquo; level as language and DNA. Our current day money is to that new expressive capacity as the coordinating hunting grunts of some proto-hominids is to language. Just as those grunts were somehow synthesized into a small collection of phonemes out of which an infinite number of words could be built, and which themselves are connected and organized into the subject-predicate grammar of human language, so is there the possibility for us to evolve away from that form of grunting we call money. What we can it evolve toward, is, for the lack of a better term, a language of flow. What this language expresses as an embodied information encoding system, is the equivalent of DNA, but for social, rather than biological organism.\nConsequences, phase IV: After this opening became clear, it was pretty obvious what the problem was with XGFL. It\u0026rsquo;s at the wrong expressive level. Expressive capacities are all built out of fairly simple nested composable units. Narratives are built from paragraphs, which are built from sentences, which are built from phrases, which are built from words, which are built from word parts, which are built from phonemes, which are built from phones. The rules for composability at each level are fairly simple, yet the variety of that which is expressible is infinite because of the combinatorial explosion. This same property works for all other expressive capacities, think of DNA and neurons, a small vocabulary of composable parts, mixable with definite meaningful grammatics. You see the pattern. Starting with XGFL to define currencies was like starting with a whole paragraph as the basic unit for a language. It was an expressive capacity without the necessary simple levels of composability. Here\u0026rsquo;s a blog post where I wrote about this. That post includes a diagram of a new architecture that we worked on for quite a while, but again, it didn\u0026rsquo;t quite feel right, until\u0026hellip;\nOpening #9: The Receptive Stance. In November of 2010, I flew to Denver for a working retreat with Art. The opening came early on in our working sessions. I have photo of the flip chart with the exact quote we wrote down when it came: \u0026ldquo;Composition requires creation of a negative space, i.e. receptors for an as of yet unknown interaction.\u0026rdquo; For so long we had been searching for some currency ontology, i.e. we were trying to figure out what the basic currency components were out of which we could build our flow language. This opening had us flip our attention, i.e. not to look for the parts, but to look at the negative space, the structure of containment that could allow for the rise of as of yet unknown parts.\nConsequences, phase V: From this opening a whole slew of other things have emerged (and are still emerging). These consequences haven\u0026rsquo;t played out yet, so I\u0026rsquo;ll just say that it\u0026rsquo;s led to what we are calling the ceptr platform, as well as a strategic plan for rolling it out, which includes a very cool app call Streamscapes. Prototyping for both of these is at: https://github.com/zippy/anansi\nTo close, as short story: I live in an intentional community. One of the things we\u0026rsquo;ve been doing here is lots of planting. For me, this meant that besides starting a terracing system to create a kitchen garden this year, I also planted four fruit trees: a cherry, two peaches and an apple. I decided to buy fairly large trees (not the less expensive bare root trees you can get) but ones that were already a good six foot tall with a root-ball, to get a head start. It felt like a good investment. Well, not more than a month after planting, the apple tree started leaning over in the wind. So I added some stakes and support to help stabilize it. A month later I found the tree almost lying flat. Examining it, closely I found that it was no longer a tree with roots, but rather more like a stake with branches jammed into the ground. Some critters had totally separated the growing trunk from all the roots. Turns out it was voles. Nearby the trees I had dumped a large pile of manure which was planning to spread in the spring. The warmth of pile is now host to a prolific family of voles, that apparently also took advantage of the soft earth that resulted from my digging a nice hole to plant the apple tree, and enjoyed the roots and bark of the tree in the mean time.\nSo here are the voles again, intersecting with my life. But this time, oddly, something I did was giving them life, and to my expense! There is the economic farmer in me who\u0026rsquo;s frustrated and angry. Frustrated at the loss of a $50 tree, and wanting to just go get rid of those @\u0026amp;!#@* voles. But there\u0026rsquo;s someone else in me who\u0026rsquo;s laughing. I can\u0026rsquo;t quite name that person, but I feel like he/she\u0026rsquo;s laughing at a joke that\u0026rsquo;s on me, and it\u0026rsquo;s actually a good-humored joke. It feels like maybe that vole-chewed tree is part of a bigger pattern that I can\u0026rsquo;t quite see, but that person inside me can see it, and is chuckling at my farmer response to the vole. What is that pattern? I don\u0026rsquo;t know for sure. But what I am sure of, is that though I have to be responsible to facts of the current reality, at this stage, it\u0026rsquo;s essential that pay very close attention for openings through which I may be able to become responsible to emergent possibilities.\n","date":"January 3, 2012","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2012/01/03/225/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just signed up for \u003ca href=\"http://edgeryders.ppa.coe.int/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eEdgeryders\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"https://edgeryders.eu/share-your-ryde/mission_case/voles-and-openings\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ecompleted my first mission\u003c/a\u003e, which is to \u0026ldquo;share your ryde.\u0026rdquo;  This provided me with an end-of-year opportunity to think about and document where I\u0026rsquo;ve been over the past years, so I\u0026rsquo;m reposting that \u0026ldquo;mission\u0026rdquo; here:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"On Voles and Openings"},{"content":"I just read this interesting \u0026ldquo;plan\u0026rdquo; put forward by the Occupy \u0026ldquo;Working Group on the 99% Declaration.\u0026rdquo;\nNotice that ten out of twenty-two of the suggested grievances are either directly or indirectly about money. Hmmm. Interesting indicator of where the problem is. It\u0026rsquo;s fascinating to me how stuck we are with the idea that such grievances about money will be resolved politically.\nFor example: grievance 1 \u0026amp; 2 call for reversing the supreme court decision that spending money is an act of free speech, because this allows corporations and rich people to control government through the \u0026ldquo;protected speech\u0026rdquo; of campaign contributions. That seems to make sense on the face of it. But the problem is, I believe that money actually is an expressive capacity, a speech act. So free speech does apply. But not quite the way it might at first seems. It\u0026rsquo;s not spending money that\u0026rsquo;s the speech act, it\u0026rsquo;s issuing it in the first place. You see, issuing money is making a promise. It\u0026rsquo;s make a declaration about value. Spending money just is passing along that promise or declaration that some other party made, because it\u0026rsquo;s a token of the value you wish to transact.\nIf free speech really applies to issuance this has consequence for Occupy. A far better strategy, I believe, is to build on that Supreme Court decision, to take it further and make sure that we trumpet this truth. That real monetary speech comes from issuance, not spending. But we don\u0026rsquo;t have to wait for the courts to recognize this truth before we start acting on it. Communities and individuals everywhere can start issuing thousands of new types of currencies as acts of free speech. Currency issuance is already free because it is speech!\nThere may be one political fight that comes from this view. Currently, legal tender laws force us to recognize Federal dollars for settling \u0026ldquo;all debts public and private\u0026rdquo;. This amounts to something akin to the opposite of free speech, the forcing of speech. I believe that you are free to speak as you please, to make any promises that you want. But this freedom of also entails, I believe, that I not be required to believe your promises. But this is what the legal tender laws amount to, citizens being required to believe the promises of government and the financial industry which together issue Federal currency.\nSo perhaps one political battle worth fighting for is the repeal of the legal tender laws (which can be done on the grounds of freedom of speech), but I think better strategy is just to make it obsolete.\n","date":"December 8, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/12/08/an-occupy-plan-money-and-free-speech/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just read \u003ca href=\"http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/occupy_movement_offers_up_the_99_declaration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ethis interesting \u0026ldquo;plan\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rdquo; put forward by the Occupy \u0026ldquo;Working Group on the 99% Declaration.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNotice that ten out of twenty-two of the suggested grievances are either directly or indirectly about money.  Hmmm.  Interesting indicator of where the problem is.  It\u0026rsquo;s fascinating to me how stuck we are with the idea that such grievances about money will be resolved politically.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"An Occupy plan, money and free speech."},{"content":"One of my heros is Paul Krafel, author of the book Seeing Nature, and short video, The Upward Spiral. In his recent newsletter he has this to say about economic equality:\nOne of the main issues of the Occupy movement is economic inequality. Whenever I think about it, I keep coming back to my watershed work. For me, economic inequality is a vital but secondary issue. The more fundamental issue is how should money ideally flow within an economy? I believe it should be recycled often to fall again and again as rain upon the slopes. What we are seeing is a concentration of wealth low in the watershed and how unproductive it is down there. Trillions of dollars in credit default swaps. What kind of truly human aspiration is that serving? Trillions of dollars being leveraged for what? One can argue that more of that money should be shared more widely in the name of economic justice. But I think there is a more politically powerful perspective of economic effectiveness. How pathetically little is being truly created by all the money that has flowed too far downslope. A failure of imagination is draining our culture of economic vitality. It’s not an issue of rich vs. poor but an issue of how possibilities drain away when wealth accumulates downslope. All of us, rich and poor alike, would be uplifted by a flow that recycled and held the wealth of our species higher in the watershed. I believe it is spiritually important to see this as a long-term issue, not of taxing the rich and giving to the poor, but of adjusting thousands of the ongoing flows within an economy so that the money keeps getting recycled back up to flow over and over again.\n-- Paul Krafel\nIn case you don\u0026rsquo;t know, his \u0026ldquo;watershed work\u0026rdquo; is literally work on watersheds. During rain storms he walks high up into the watershed with a trowel, and makes lots of small changes to redirect water flows from concentrating in gullies. Paul has some fascinating photos of how this small work makes huge difference over time.\n","date":"December 5, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/12/05/paul-krafel-on-occupy-and-economic-equality/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of my heros is Paul Krafel, author of the book \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Nature-Deliberate-Encounters-Visible/dp/189013242X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8\u0026amp;qid=1323107993\u0026amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSeeing Nature\u003c/a\u003e, and short video, \u003ca href=\"http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7159959880810159488\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Upward Spiral\u003c/a\u003e.  In his recent newsletter he has this to say about economic equality:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cblockquote\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the main issues of the Occupy movement is economic inequality. Whenever I think about it, I keep coming back to my watershed work. For me, economic inequality is a vital but secondary issue. The more fundamental issue is how should money ideally flow within an economy? I believe it should be recycled often to fall again and again as rain upon the slopes. What we are seeing is a concentration of wealth low in the watershed and how unproductive it is down there. Trillions of dollars in credit default swaps. What kind of truly human aspiration is that serving? Trillions of dollars being leveraged for what? One can argue that more of that money should be shared more widely in the name of economic justice. But I think there is a more politically powerful perspective of economic effectiveness. How pathetically little is being truly created by all the money that has flowed too far downslope. A failure of imagination is draining our culture of economic vitality. It’s not an issue of rich vs. poor but an issue of how possibilities drain away when wealth accumulates downslope. All of us, rich and poor alike, would be uplifted by a flow that recycled and held the wealth of our species higher in the watershed. I believe it is spiritually important to see this as a long-term issue, not of taxing the rich and giving to the poor, but of adjusting thousands of the ongoing flows within an economy so that the money keeps getting recycled back up to flow over and over again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Paul Krafel on Occupy and economic equality"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/clojure/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Clojure"},{"content":"To get emacs to syntax color clojurescript files (cljs) add this to your .emacs (or other emacs config file):\n( s e t q a u t o - m o d e - a l i s t ( c o n s ( \" \\ . c l j s \" . c l o j u r e - m o d e ) a u t o - m o d e - a l i s t ) ) ","date":"September 16, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/09/16/clojurescript-syntax-hilighting-in-emacs/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo get emacs to syntax color clojurescript files (cljs) add this to your .emacs (or other emacs config file):\u003c/p\u003e\n\n\n\n\u003cdiv class=\"goat svg-container \"\u003e\n  \n    \u003csvg\n      xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2000/svg\"\n      font-family=\"Menlo,Lucida Console,monospace\"\n      \n        viewBox=\"0 0 592 25\"\n      \u003e\n      \u003cg transform='translate(8,16)'\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='8' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e(\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='16' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003es\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='24' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ee\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='32' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003et\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='40' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eq\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='56' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ea\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='64' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eu\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='72' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003et\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='80' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eo\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='88' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e-\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='96' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003em\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='104' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eo\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='112' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ed\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='120' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ee\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='128' y='4' fill='currentColor' 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fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eu\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='464' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003et\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='472' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eo\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='480' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e-\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='488' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003em\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='496' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003eo\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='504' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ed\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='512' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ee\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='520' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e-\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='528' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ea\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='536' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003el\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='544' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003ei\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='552' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003es\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='560' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003et\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='568' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e)\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003ctext text-anchor='middle' x='576' y='4' fill='currentColor' style='font-size:1em'\u003e)\u003c/text\u003e\n\u003c/g\u003e\n\n    \u003c/svg\u003e\n  \n\u003c/div\u003e","title":"clojurescript syntax hilighting in emacs"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/solutions/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Solutions"},{"content":"Autodoc is a great tool for automatic documentation generation for your clojure code (the clojure api itself uses it).\nIf you are using github-pages to publish the docs, here\u0026rsquo;s a simple little gendocs sh script to dump into your bin folder to do all the work in one go:\n# i t e l e c g g g c e e f ! f h c e c d i i i d l c i / e h i h t t t s h b [ n o n o a e o i u a c p n - \" a \" t d o u \" / d g u p o d m s N s e t u d m h o h \" n o s o - i a e d h c A t o a u r o i r u t a c n - i t o t g m g o d i i d o n t \" n o c g o D c \" o g d g c h d ] o i u - i c t m p r s h e a ! . u n g . b t e . . a s R \" . t u . i n \" o n t h u i p s d a f t r e o \" m y o u r p r o j e c t \" ","date":"September 15, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/09/15/gendocs/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://tomfaulhaber.github.com/autodoc/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eAutodoc\u003c/a\u003e is a great tool for automatic documentation generation for your clojure code (the clojure api itself uses it).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you are using github-pages to publish the docs, here\u0026rsquo;s a simple little gendocs sh script to dump into your bin folder to do all the work in one go:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"gendocs"},{"content":" threshing Last fall I planted rye in the disturbed ground around my house to act as a erosion control. Just this week my father helped my harvest the rye. We took it into the basement and, with the kids, danced around on it to thresh the kernels out of the heads. From about 3 or 4 hours of harvesting and about 2 hours of threshing and then winnowing, all this manual labor produced about half of a 5 gallon bucket\u0026rsquo;s worth of rye. That same 20lb of rye purchased from my local Agway would cost around $15. So clearly, economically there\u0026rsquo;s an indicator that I should be doing something else with my 6 hours that harvesting and threshing rye, because even if I flip burgers for minimum wage, I\u0026rsquo;d make more money in that time period that I\u0026rsquo;d spend on the rye.\nThat\u0026rsquo;s economics for you.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s so experientially clear to me from this threshing that I did with my dad, that the low price per pound I pay for rye at Agway includes massive unaccounted for externalities, and it\u0026rsquo;s also clear that the benefits I receive from engaging with the land directly are much higher than can be encoding using only one dollar measuring unit. But this is in no way saying that I think everyone, or even me, should go \u0026ldquo;back to the land\u0026rdquo; and eschew specialization. I just want to really be able able express all those forms of value, and see those externalities, and stop pretending that they can all be reduced to one price.\nI\u0026rsquo;ll post later about the German \u0026ldquo;vollkorbrot\u0026rdquo; I plan to bake with the Rye\u0026hellip;\n","date":"August 15, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/08/15/threshing-rye/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://eehb.harris-braun.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/threshing1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  \n  \n\u003cfigure\u003e\u003cimg src=\"/blog/images/threshing1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"mx-auto my-0 rounded-md\" /\u003e\u003cfigcaption class=\"text-center\"\u003ethreshing\u003c/figcaption\u003e\n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\u003c/a\u003eLast fall I planted rye in the disturbed ground around my house to act as a erosion control.  Just this week my father helped my harvest the rye.  We took it into the basement and, with the kids, danced around on it to thresh the kernels out of the heads.  From about 3 or 4 hours of harvesting and about 2 hours of threshing and then winnowing, all this manual labor produced about half of a 5 gallon bucket\u0026rsquo;s worth of rye.  That same 20lb of rye purchased from my local Agway would cost around $15.  So clearly, economically there\u0026rsquo;s an indicator that I should be doing something else with my 6  hours that harvesting and threshing rye, because even if I flip burgers for minimum wage, I\u0026rsquo;d make more money in that time period that I\u0026rsquo;d spend on the rye.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Threshing Rye"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/books/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Books"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m re-reading Jim Corbett\u0026rsquo;s Sanctuary for All Life. I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to express how powerfully deep this book is. For me it both opens doors and provides a foundation for a post-civilized world for humanity.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s are some extended quotes, because I think the book speaks for itself:\nI think the integration of humanity into life on earth requires that capitalism’s drive for ecosystem dominance be succeeded by a way of life beyond capitalism, and I see this from the viewpoint of the wildland pastoralist whose way of life has really never been integrated into civilization’s orienting viewpoint (that we must live by a command economy that reconstructs life on earth to fit us). Here’s how a latter-day Whig Manifesto might put it:\n1. The richest, most efficient, dynamically stable, “no-waste” economies evolve naturally, as spontaneous orders unmanaged by human beings (for example, the Amazonian rainforest).\n2. A highly developed economy of this kind grows through the emergence of new symbioses that strengthen its ability to support life and harmonize diversity.\n3. Founded on the premise that the earth belongs to humankind, civilized economies are degenerative, growing primarily from the impoverishment of the more inclusive natural economy that the city-centered economy invades, plunders, and relentlessly tries to subjugate.\n4. “Sustainability” concerns the stabilization of the human economy’s degenerative relation to the natural economy at a level that the natural economy can support without further degradation.\n5. “Symbiotic naturalization” concerns the integration of a human economy into the natural economy in ways that strengthen the natural economy’s ability to support life and harmonize diversity.\n6. Unlike sustainability, symbiotic naturalization requires the transformation of civilization, to establish the institutional base for human beings to become good citizens of the land’s whole, untamed community, enabled to live by supporting rather than degrading the life of the land.\n7. In our deliberations about right livelihood, the need to transform civilization means that we seek to be superseded, but not by a new humanity of ecosaintly Uebermenschen; rather, by an unviolated land community that includes us, freed to evolve into richer harmonies.\n8. The integration of humanity into the natural economy necessarily evolves as a spontaneous order in which our stewardship role is just to clear the way, not to impose a plan.\n9. The invisible hand that guides the natural economy’s evolution reveals that our best choices are transitional, our best intentions are disoriented, our personal moralities are peripheral, and the covenant community’s guidelines are inconclusive; but universal liberty is fundamental: The land’s liberation remains focal.\nand:\n\u0026hellip;the problem with civilized humanity’s exploitation of nature goes beyond our treating it as a commons that is just there for the taking. The problem is rooted in the managerial delusion that the land belongs to us either inclusively, as a commons, or exclusively, as property, to use, degrade, or destroy however we like. The land is actually a living community to which we belong. \u0026hellip; The tragedies of the commons and of appropriation will end only when the land community’s enslavement ends\u0026ndash;when the land is given back to the land.\nand:\nProponents of state control see the solution to the tragedy of the commons as a relinquishment of individual freedom to the state, which must take command in order to save us from ourselves. Yet, the local, daily, on-the-land, community practice that weaves earth rights into the social fabric is beneath the reach of the state, while the commons really at issue is the earth ecosystem, which is beyond the reach of any state but within the reach of a border-bridging community movement. A basic society of friends can join to establish earth rights where the cumulative efforts of individuals are fruitless and action by the state is counterproductive. Even if the state didn’t give its primary allegiance to Money, it couldn’t do what’s needed to give the land back to the land because what’s needed is the societal cohesion that grows from communion rather than coercion, and the state is firmly founded on organized violence. Locally as well as globally, land redemption is a task for those who gather as “church” (a voluntary society based on communion) rather than “state” (an involuntary society or organization based on coercion).\nAt the core of his work, Corbett is trying to open a way-of-life in which we can realize that we belong to the land, rather than pretend that it belongs to us. He is trying to open doors to world in which rather than the command \u0026amp; control relationship we currently have as the land\u0026rsquo;s enslavers, that we might move to a co-creative one as a people symbiotically re-naturalized.\nThis means that Land Emancipation must happen. That possibility is thrilling.\n","date":"August 9, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/08/09/sanctuary-for-all-life-land-emancipation/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m re-reading Jim Corbett\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eSanctuary for All Life\u003c/em\u003e.  I don\u0026rsquo;t know how to express how powerfully deep this book is.  For me it both opens doors and provides a foundation for a post-civilized world for humanity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sanctuary for All Life \u0026 land emancipation"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/spirituality/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Spirituality"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/random/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Random"},{"content":"Just browsing Bruce Sterling\u0026rsquo;s studies in atemporality flicker stream. It makes me think of Calvin Luther Martin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time\u0026rdquo; in which he claims that paleolithic peoples well understood the technologies of agriculture and building ascribed to the move to the neolithic, but didn\u0026rsquo;t use them because of their world-view. I think we too are well ready to step back out of time, and lose our enslavement to a historical outlook. Sterling\u0026rsquo;s images are teasers for us.\n","date":"July 20, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/07/20/studies-in-atemporality/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eJust browsing \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/sets/72157619722832388/with/5888956556/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBruce Sterling\u0026rsquo;s studies in atemporality flicker stream\u003c/a\u003e. It makes me think of \u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Earth-Rethinking-History-Time/dp/0801847095\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCalvin Luther Martin\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;In the Spirit of the Earth: Rethinking History and Time\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e in which he claims that paleolithic peoples well understood the technologies of agriculture and building ascribed to the move to the neolithic, but didn\u0026rsquo;t use them because of their world-view. I think we too are well ready to step back out of time, and lose our enslavement to a historical outlook. Sterling\u0026rsquo;s images are teasers for us.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Studies in atemporality"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s an important article over on the Radical Philosophy website about Assange and WikiLeaks. Besides having interesting things to say about cryptography, slowness, conspiracy, and graph theory, it\u0026rsquo;s got this really nice summation of what WikiLeaks is really about:\nWikiLeaks, in the long run, is meant as a way of filtering good/‘open’ organizations from bad/‘secret’ ones, creating an inhospitable environment in which to be secret, and thereby improving governance. Assange is not the nihilistic wrecker-of-civilization fantasized by the American right (who seem to have at last found the Bond villain their impoverished understanding of the world has led them to look for). His work reflects an attitude of intensely moral empiricism, empowered by a programmer’s toolkit for abstraction and breaking big problems into smaller ones. The politics of WikiLeaks is a cybernetic politics, with built-in, auto-correcting feedback loops that tend a society towards transparent institutions and accurate information, because the cost of conspiratorial secrecy is pushed disproportionately high.\nThis paper also quotes Assange:\nSociety has grown beyond our ability to perceive it accurately. Our brains are not adapted to the environment in which we find outselves [sic]. We can’t predict important aspects of our societal environment. It’s not designed to run on our brains. We’re maladapted. In our evolutionary history we spent a lot of time tracking the behavior and reputations of small number of people we saw frequently. If we want some of the social benefits that a small society brings then we need computational crutches so when A fucks over B any C considering dealing with A will know. A society that can ‘think’ in this way is able to route goodness to people who do good and away from those people who generate hurt. The decision as to what is good is too complicated to be formulated in regulation and elections are a very coarse expression of what people think is good. Any paper formulation will put power in the hands of a political and technocratic elite. Robust routing decisions must be made by individuals and individuals need tools to manage complexity enough so they can make them effectively in a modern society. \u0026ndash; Julian Assange ‘Transparency in the cold light of Finland’, post on iq.org, 30 July 2006.\nWhich is a really nice recognition for the need for holopticism.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s a long paper, but worth the read.\n","date":"April 21, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/04/21/wikileaks-and-open-societies/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s an \u003ca href=\"http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/default.asp?channel_id=2187\u0026amp;editorial_id=29463\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eimportant article\u003c/a\u003e over on the \u003ca href=\"http://www.radicalphilosophy.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eRadical Philosophy\u003c/a\u003e website about Assange and WikiLeaks. Besides having interesting things to say about cryptography, slowness, conspiracy, and graph theory, it\u0026rsquo;s got this really nice summation of what WikiLeaks is really about:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"WikiLeaks and open societies"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve always been interested in fundamentalism and the pattern that lies beneath it. Here\u0026rsquo;s a great article on copyright as a fundamentalist religion, that adds a bit to that pattern.\n","date":"February 8, 2011","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2011/02/08/fundamentalism/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve always been interested in fundamentalism and the pattern that lies beneath it. Here\u0026rsquo;s a \u003ca href=\"http://falkvinge.net/2011/02/07/copyright-as-a-fundamentalist-religion/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003egreat article on copyright as a fundamentalist religion,\u003c/a\u003e that adds a bit to that pattern.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fundamentalism"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/non-geeky/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Non-Geeky"},{"content":"On a community currency related Skype chat that I\u0026rsquo;m a part of, there\u0026rsquo;s been a conversation that cycles around now and again about how the various national jurisdictions respond to community currencies, how they are likely to try and shut them down (as they did in the 30\u0026rsquo;s), and what to do about. Arthur Brock responded saying: \u0026ldquo;I think the most effective way to avoid being shut down (or even taxed for that matter) by the powers that be is to operate using non-monetary currencies that don\u0026rsquo;t look like money or compete in the same space as money. We use dozens of these a day and they\u0026rsquo;ll never be able to even attempt to shut all of these types of things down.\u0026rdquo;\nSynchronisticly I had just seen an article on the \u0026ldquo;The game-based economy\u0026rdquo; which I think neatly illustrates Arthur\u0026rsquo;s point. Look closely at what \u0026ldquo;gamification\u0026rdquo; actually means in the case studies. It\u0026rsquo;s the introduction of wealth acknowledgment token systems that account for the wealth being generated by a \u0026ldquo;game.\u0026rdquo; Each one of them is actually a different form of a \u0026ldquo;current-see,\u0026rdquo; a formal information system that lets the players see the particular current(s), or flow(s) that they can then interact with in particular ways to generate the overall intended outcome of the game. Who is limited in the creation of such current-sees? Nobody. You just do it. (ie. the true meaning of LETS!) But doing it will be much easier if there is an widespread expressive capacity, i.e. a \u0026ldquo;meta-language\u0026rdquo; in which to specify and describe the current-sees. The creation of that meta-language, to my mind, is the task of our movement.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s a little story to explain what I mean about the new expressive capacity (meta-language) that is embodied in current-see:\nImagine it\u0026rsquo;s 3000 years ago and you hear all this griping about the unfairness of those temple scribes who have control of the pictograms. It\u0026rsquo;s just not fair! The scribes totally abuse their power, they tax us more and more for each letter we want to send, etc.. But we\u0026rsquo;ve finally understood that their pictograms really aren\u0026rsquo;t sacred, they\u0026rsquo;re just arbitrary symbols, any of us could make up our own set and send letters to our families! We should have the right to to do this without the temple thugs coming to get us!\nAnd then when you dig deeper you do see that, even though they\u0026rsquo;re an elite class, they do serve an important function (maintaining the consistency of meaning) by keeping tabs on each pictogram and making sure they\u0026rsquo;re drawn correctly etc. And yeah you see that maybe not everybody should be allowed to create pictograms and write with them. Just imagine all the chaos that would ensue if just everybody created their own different drawings for each word. Because then we have to deal with competing meaning systems and maybe we\u0026rsquo;d better just have one symbol set to learn because that\u0026rsquo;s more efficient for the scribes because after all, we can\u0026rsquo;t all spend the time it takes to learn all 100,000 pictograms for all of our words! That\u0026rsquo;s why there are scribes in the first place!\nSo maybe we can just start a complementary pictogram (cp) system for the couple thousand words we use here locally! Yah! Let\u0026rsquo;s do it! And in some places the local temples are cool with that, and in others it\u0026rsquo;s O.K. as long as you use them only to talk about non-temple business, an in other places they see any different pictograms as a threat and ban them. So then the talk of the cp movement is all about what the laws are in different temple jurisdictions and how to get people to start signing on to new pictogram systems instead of going down to the temple for all their writing needs.. etc.. etc..\nAnd then someone invents the alphabet, a new expressive capacity that completely by-passes the functional reason for centralizing that power to the scribes in the first place. The alphabet makes it truly practical for everyone to learn to read and write because they only need to learn a handful of symbols. Any kid can (and will) do it.\nI hope you see how the story above is almost isomorphic to the current financial situation with its elite. And how many of the questions and concerns that people have about community currency relate: Worries about the nation state thugs shutting things down. Questions about what happens if any individual can issue currency. Anger at the banks for monopoly issue, etc. These are all structurally the same as those worries about the scribes. And for structurally the same reason with the same structural solution. An information system was centralized that no longer needs to be when a new expressive capacity at a higher meta-level makes universal \u0026ldquo;literacy\u0026rdquo; possible.\nEverybody issuing their own current-sees isn\u0026rsquo;t like everybody creating their own 100,000 picture pictogram system just because they can. It\u0026rsquo;s like everybody learning a new \u0026ldquo;wealth alphabet\u0026rdquo; in which they can begin to speak wealth-acknowledgments to each other in new useful systemic patterns that reveal the flows in communities that actually build wealth.\nLiteracy is a necessary precursor to democracy in large scale societies. We live in the age before any wealth-acknowledgment-alphabet exists. Thus the political freedom made possible by democracy is not possible in the economic realm. When the wealth-acknowledgment-alphabet comes into existence, then, and only then, will a new form of true economic democracy become possible.\nHistorical Comments Jean-Francois \u0026mdash; November 30, 2010 at 05:47 AM Eric, that\u0026#x27;s exactly it! Thanks for this wonderful story, yes, this is 100% isomorphism.\nAnother story you may want to link to this one: the 100% isomorphism between feudal power on the land and feudal power on money. The feudalism based on land has moved to feudalism on money. The idea I want to stress here is not much political or sociological, but ontological.\nIf we place ourselves in the shoes (if they had some) of a serf or peasant of the 9th-15th centuries, land was inseparable from a lord (more precisely the lords-vassals-fiefs order). In the inner subjective reality, land+lord were a unit that the mind was not able to separate. Land had the nature of the lord, the lord had the nature of the land. Dissociating them required a complete leap of mind that challenged the cosmic and social order. And even if the land and the lord were mentally separated, so what? What\u0026#x27;s after? The ontological separation is the first step, but then the mind is asked to imagine and build a whole new functional universe that works, that\u0026#x27;s the second step -- the big one. Only a few visionaries have such capacities, then they have to deal with everyone\u0026#x27;s incredulity and inertia.\nI guess we face the same challenge today with money. Wealth is undifferentiated from money, the same way land was undifferentiated from a lord. Both pairs wealth-money, land-lord share the same ontological bond. When we say \u0026quot;someone is wealthy\u0026quot;, it means this person has lot\u0026#x27;s of money, which indirectly ties this person with the current monetary feudal system. My feeling is most (r)evolutions begin when consciousness starts to decouple some of these pairs.\n\u0026quot;Complementary currencies\u0026quot; are the first step people make when they decouple money and wealth. The current monetary order is so pervasive that it doesn\u0026#x27;t leave space for the mind to rebuild a whole new order. Consciousness needs a long, long journey before it can create a whole new world that is not \u0026quot;alternative\u0026quot; or \u0026quot;complementary\u0026quot; to the existing one, but a pure creation. Right now we are still in the first step of unbinding wealth and money. Even if we do it in the mental level, the practical aspect is still very very challenging.\nEven \u0026quot;free currencies\u0026quot; still keep us attached to the old paradigm of seeing human societies as market places, whereas we now need to seem them as conscious living systems in which subjective reality is as important as objective flows.\nThat\u0026#x27;s why I love the verb \u0026quot;to weal\u0026quot;. \u0026quot;Let me weal you\u0026quot;, or \u0026quot;let\u0026#x27;s weal\u0026quot; will mean let\u0026#x27;s build, measure, acknowledge, exchange, trade, experience, shine wealth together, without ontological strings tied to a centralized proprietary monopolistic technology.\nSooo, thanks Eric, your post wealed me!\n","date":"September 8, 2010","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2010/09/08/a-story-about-expressive-capacity/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn a community currency related Skype chat that I\u0026rsquo;m a part of, there\u0026rsquo;s been a conversation that cycles around now and again about how the various national jurisdictions respond to community currencies, how they are likely to try and shut them down (as they did in the 30\u0026rsquo;s), and what to do about. Arthur Brock responded saying: \u0026ldquo;I think the most effective way to avoid being shut down (or even taxed for that matter) by the powers that be is to operate using non-monetary currencies that don\u0026rsquo;t look like money or compete in the same space as money. We use dozens of these a day and they\u0026rsquo;ll never be able to even attempt to shut all of these types of things down.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A story about expressive capacity"},{"content":"There’s a Zulu saying \u0026ldquo;Amathanga ahlanzela abangenamabhodo,\u0026rdquo; which means “Pumpkins also multiply for those without pots.” It means that abundance is the natural state of all human beings, but we have to have belief that it can happen and do everything we can all the time to make it happen. You can achieve the impossible, but to do it, you need to see the invisible. We know how many seeds there are in a pumpkin, but we don\u0026rsquo;t know how many pumpkins there are in a seed.\nHistorical Comments daddy shabalala \u0026mdash; November 13, 2018 at 06:22 AM Imagine trying to cook pumpkin without a pot Imagine having pots without pumpkins The saying translates to, \u0026quot;that those with an abundance of resources don\u0026#x27;t have the tools to utilize those resources. meaning fortune favours the unskilled or unqualified.\u0026quot;\nNokukhanya Dhlamini \u0026mdash; December 12, 2019 at 08:38 AM No it means wealth or good things falling into wrong hands. Someone receiving something good that they may not deserve and not taking good care of it or making good of the great opportunity presented.\nDan \u0026mdash; June 10, 2020 at 05:28 PM No...this interpretation is not entirely correct.The meaning is that good things happen to those who di not have the capacity to handle or appreciate them.\n","date":"December 1, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/12/01/amathanga-ahlanzela-abangenamabhodo/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere’s a Zulu saying \u0026ldquo;Amathanga ahlanzela abangenamabhodo,\u0026rdquo; which means “Pumpkins also multiply for those without pots.” It means that abundance is the natural state of all human beings, but we have to have belief that it can happen and do everything we can all the time to make it happen. You can achieve the impossible, but to do it, you need to see the invisible. We know how many seeds there are in a pumpkin, but we don\u0026rsquo;t know how many pumpkins there are in a seed.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Amathanga ahlanzela abangenamabhodo"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/invisible/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Invisible"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/upward-spiral/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Upward-Spiral"},{"content":"So it\u0026rsquo;s been a while in coming, but Apple is no longer a company for me. This crazy patent they took out is just another example of why.\nHistorical Comments katin5 \u0026mdash; January 27, 2010 at 07:32 PM Hey Eric -\nRemember that the world of patent warfare is much bigger and more complex than seems right. What I really hate are the wasted resources and assaults on what would be commons property that go to ridiculous extremes. It is clear that our patent and copyright system is quite broken.\nHowever, don\u0026#x27;t jump down Apple\u0026#x27;s throat until you see the offense in an Apple product... they well could have patented that in order to gain footholds and assets in all the patent wars in which they are constantly embroiled. It is a common tactic to deny others use (and revenue) of a feature by patenting it. It might also serve as a pawn in the game of pleasing partnership companies - perhaps a cell carrier is requiring an Apple device to support this feature, and Apple decided to level the playing field by taking the feature out of the competitor\u0026#x27;s reach. A ways down the road with partners look different, and it may turn out the partner realizes it wasn\u0026#x27;t such a great idea after all, etc.\n","date":"November 16, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/11/16/why-i-dont-like-apple-anymore/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo it\u0026rsquo;s been a while in coming, but Apple is no longer a company for me. This \u003ca href=\"http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/15/apple-patents-anti-u.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ecrazy patent they took out\u003c/a\u003e is just another example of why.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"historical-comments mt-8 pt-8 border-t border-neutral-200 dark:border-neutral-700\"\u003e\n\u003ch2 class=\"text-xl font-bold mb-4\"\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment mb-6 p-4 bg-neutral-100 dark:bg-neutral-700 rounded-lg\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment-meta text-sm text-neutral-600 dark:text-neutral-400 mb-2\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"font-semibold\"\u003ekatin5\u003c/span\u003e\n \u0026mdash; January 27, 2010 at 07:32 PM\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment-content prose dark:prose-invert\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHey Eric -\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Why I don't like Apple anymore"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/10-6/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"10-6"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/gem/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Gem"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/mac-os-x/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Mac-Os-X"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/postgres/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Postgres"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/postgresql/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Postgresql"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/rails/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rails"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/snow-leopard/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Snow-Leopard"},{"content":"Well, I too have gone down the rabbit hole of having to upgrade compiled-from-source apps to 64bit architecture after moving to Snow Leopard. The hardest by far was postgres. The sad thing is that 32bit version works just fine, but the adapter gems for rails don\u0026rsquo;t, hence the need for the recompile.\nMostly I followed this blog post, but it assumes that you had previously installed postgres using his instructions for Leopard which I hadn\u0026rsquo;t.\nMy previous installation was at /usr/local/postgres and these instructions end up installing it at /usr/local/pgsql, so my task also includes getting the data from my previous installation to the new on.\nI also took some some hints from this post.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s the blow by blow:\nMake a backup of all my data from the 32bit version:\np g _ d u m p a l l \u0026gt; / t m p / 3 2 - b i t - d u m p . s q l Switch to super user, make a directory for the source (if you haven\u0026rsquo;t already), download and extract it:\ns m c c t r u k d u a m d d r r o i / l p r u - o s s - z s u / r O v t u / x g s l h f r r t e c t p s l a p o q o l : s l c / / t - a s / g 8 l r f r . / c t e 3 s p s . r 9 q 8 c . l . u - t s 8 a . . r p 3 . o . g s 8 z t . g t r a e r s . q g l z . o r g / p u b / m i r r o r s / p o s t g r e s q l / s o u r c e / v 8 . 3 . 8 / p o s t g r e s q l - 8 . 3 . 8 . t a r . g z Now configure, make and install it:\nc m m d / a a c k k p o e e o n s f i t i n g g s r u t e r a s e l q l l - - 8 e . n 3 a . b 8 l e - t h r e a d - s a f e t y - w i t h - b o n j o u r Then I followed the instructions from the above mentioned blog on how to make a postgres user, but I did them in a different terminal window because remember the other one we were logged in as root:\n\u0026ldquo;First, you\u0026rsquo;ll need to find an unused user and group ID. Use the following commands to list the IDs for the users and groups on your system.\u0026rdquo;\nd d s s c c l l . . - - l l i i s s t t / / G U r s o e u r p s s U P n r i i q m u a e r I y D G r | o u a p w I k D ' { p a r w i k n t ' { $ p 2 r } i ' n t | $ s 2 o } r ' t | - n s o r t - n \u0026ldquo;For the purposes of this tutorial, let\u0026rsquo;s assume an ID of 113 for both the user and the group. Since the convention is to prefix system accounts with an underscore, use the following commands to create a user called _postgres:\u0026rdquo;\ns s s s s s u u u u u u d d d d d d o o o o o o d d d d d d s s s s s s c c c c c c l l l l l l . . . . . . c c c c c a r r r r r p e e e e e p a a a a a e t t t t t n e e e e e d / / / / / / U U U U U U s s s s s s e e e e e e r r r r r r s s s s s s / / / / / / _ _ _ _ _ _ p p p p p p o o o o o o s s s s s s t t t t t t g g g g g g r r r r r r e e e e e e s s s s s s U P N R P R n r F e a e i i S a s c q m H l s o u a o N w r e r m a o d I y e m r N D G D e d a r i m 1 o r \" \" e 1 u e P * 3 p c o \" p I t s o D o t s r g t 1 y r g 1 e r 3 / S e u Q s s L r / S l e o r c v a e l r / \" p g s q l / \u0026ldquo;Then, create the _postgres group:\u0026rdquo;\ns s s s u u u u d d d d o o o o d d d d s s s s c c c c l l l l . . . . c c a c r r p r e e p e a a e a t t n t e e d e / / / / G G G G r r r r o o o o u u u u p p p p s s s s / / / / _ _ _ _ p p p p o o o o s s s s t t t t g g g g r r r r e e e e s s s s P R R r e e i c a m o l a r N r d a y N m G a e r m o e \" u P p p o I o s D s t t g 1 g r 1 r e 3 e S s Q L U s e r s \" So at this point the binaries are installed and there\u0026rsquo;s a user to run it under, but I needed to initialize a new database and copy back in my saved data. First create the data and log directories and set perms:\ns s s s u u u u d d d d o o o o m c m c k h k h d o d o i w i w r n r n / p p u u o s s s s r t r t / g / g l r l r o e o e c s c s a : a : l p l p / o / o p s p s g t g t s g s g q r q r l e l e / s / s d l a / o / t u g u a s s r r / / l l o o c c a a l l / / p p g g s s q q l l / / d l a o t g a Then I logged in as the _postgres user:\ns s u u d o - s _ u p o s t g r e s And initialize database files and start up the database:\n/ / u u s s r r / / l l o o c c a a l l / / p p g g s s q q l l / / b b i i n n / / i p n g i _ t c d t b l - - E D U / T u F s 8 r / - l D o c / a u l s / r p / g l s o q c l a / l d / a p t g a s / q l - / l d a / t u a s / r / l o c a l / p g s q l / l o g / p o s t g r e s q l . l o g s t a r t Finally I restored the data from my initial pg_dumpall\n/ u s r / l o c a l / p g s q l / b i n / p s q l - U p o s t g r e s - f / t m p / 3 2 - b i t - d u m p . s q l I\u0026rsquo;ve also added these lines into my .profile to add the commands to my path and to simplify starting and stopping the database:\ne e a a x x l l p p i i o o a a r r s s t t p p P M g g A A _ _ T N s s H P t t = A o a $ T p r P H = t A = ' = T $ s ' H M u s : A d u / N o d u P o s A - r T u - / H u l : p o / o p c u s o a s t s l r g t / / r g p l e r g o s e s c s q a p l l g p / / _ g b p c _ i g t c n s l t q l l - / D - m D a / n u / s u r s / r l l c o a c l a / l p / g p s g q s l q / l d / a d t a a t a s t - o l p ' / u s r / l o c a l / p g s q l / l o g / p o s g t r e s . l o g s t a r t ' And then finally I could install the postgres rails gem (which was the whole point of this silly excercise):\ns u d o e n v A R C H F L A G S = \" - a r c h x 8 6 _ 6 4 \" g e m i n s t a l l p g ","date":"November 10, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/11/10/upgrading-postgres-to-snow-leopard/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I too have gone down the rabbit hole of having to upgrade compiled-from-source apps to 64bit architecture after moving to Snow Leopard.  The hardest by far was postgres.  The sad thing is that 32bit version works just fine, but the adapter gems for rails don\u0026rsquo;t, hence the need for the recompile.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Upgrading postgres on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6)"},{"content":"My friend Jean-François Noubel has taken the vow of wealth. I believe this has huge implications for all of us. It opens a path by inspiration and example. Read the FAQ too.\n","date":"September 28, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/09/28/the-vow-of-wealth/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMy friend Jean-François Noubel has taken \u003ca href=\"http://noubel.com/vow/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ethe vow of wealth\u003c/a\u003e.  I believe this has huge implications for all of us.  It opens a path by inspiration and example.  Read the \u003ca href=\"http://wiki.noubel.com/wagn/Questions_about_the_Vow_of_Wealth\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eFAQ\u003c/a\u003e too.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Vow of Wealth"},{"content":"I was looking at how perl6 is coming along and found this: http://perlgeek.de/blog-en/perl-5-to-6/ which is really cool. Besides being a really nice presentation of the material (including the \u0026ldquo;Motivation\u0026rdquo; section) there\u0026rsquo;s just lotsa nice stuff. Some of the new way outa here cool perl6 features:\nmeta operators gather/take construct for lazy lists grammars Enums twigils custom operators And that\u0026rsquo;s just a few\u0026hellip;\n","date":"September 23, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/09/23/perl6/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI was looking at how perl6 is coming along and found this: \u003ca href=\"http://perlgeek.de/blog-en/perl-5-to-6/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ehttp://perlgeek.de/blog-en/perl-5-to-6/\u003c/a\u003e which is really cool.  Besides being a really nice presentation of the material (including the \u0026ldquo;Motivation\u0026rdquo; section) there\u0026rsquo;s just lotsa nice stuff.  Some of the new way outa here cool perl6 features:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"perl6"},{"content":"So today a bunch of our websites went down, and the scripts I had in place to monitor for this type of occasion hadn\u0026rsquo;t been updated for some time so the new websites weren\u0026rsquo;t even in the scripts. Upshot: I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice for too long.\nThen I went looking for web-site status monitoring tools, and well, as usual, I didn\u0026rsquo;t find anything I liked, so it\u0026rsquo;s once again it was roll-your-own time! So I created a little sinatra based web app to make it easy to add in new sites and see their current status, if they go down have a per-site list of e-mail addresses be notified, etc.\nThe resulting goodness is called zuptime and is open sourced and available for all to play with!\n","date":"September 16, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/09/16/zuptime/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo today a bunch of our websites went down, and the scripts I had in place to monitor for this type of occasion hadn\u0026rsquo;t been updated for some time so the new websites weren\u0026rsquo;t even in the scripts. Upshot: I didn\u0026rsquo;t notice for too long.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"zuptime!"},{"content":"The meme of coming multi-currency world is beginning to be visible to the main stream. To see how, watch this Wall Street Journal tech video by Andy Jordan. Not only is yours truly and the MetaCurrency project shown (I\u0026rsquo;m not really an economist BTW), but also some other nice efforts that show the growth in understanding of what currency can be.\n","date":"September 9, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/09/09/sall-st-journal-covers-the-currency-revolution/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe meme of coming multi-currency world is beginning to be visible to the main stream. To see how, watch this \u003ca href=\"http://online.wsj.com/video/the-coming-currency-revolution/25225F5A-B979-4609-A55D-1BAE9A1BA158.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eWall Street Journal tech video\u003c/a\u003e by Andy Jordan. Not only is yours truly and the \u003ca href=\"http://metacurrency.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eMetaCurrency project\u003c/a\u003e shown (I\u0026rsquo;m not really an economist BTW), but also some other nice efforts that show the growth in understanding of what currency can be.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Wall St Journal covers the currency revolution?"},{"content":"We are building out the new currency frontiers web-site, using the Wagn, which is pretty darn cool. It\u0026rsquo;s a wiki + database + cms. It\u0026rsquo;s kinda geeky, but not so much that you have to be a programer to use it (so don\u0026rsquo;t freak if your aren\u0026rsquo;t), but if you are a programming inclined, there\u0026rsquo;s lots of nice stuff you can. Ethan and Lewis are are the excellent chaps wheeling the Wagn. Kudos dudes.\n","date":"August 27, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/08/27/enjoying-being-on-the-wagn/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWe are building out the \u003ca href=\"http://newcurrencyfrontiers.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003enew currency frontiers\u003c/a\u003e web-site, using the \u003ca href=\"http://www.wagn.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eWagn\u003c/a\u003e, which is pretty darn cool. It\u0026rsquo;s a wiki + database + cms. It\u0026rsquo;s kinda geeky, but not so much that you have to be a programer to use it (so don\u0026rsquo;t freak if your aren\u0026rsquo;t), but if you are a programming inclined, there\u0026rsquo;s lots of nice stuff you can. Ethan and Lewis are are the excellent chaps wheeling the Wagn. Kudos dudes.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Enjoying being on the Wagn"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/kudos/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Kudos"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/wagn/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wagn"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/wiki/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wiki"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/syntax-coloring/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Syntax-Coloring"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/wordpress/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Wordpress"},{"content":"So I\u0026rsquo;ve just spent a couple hours updating wordpress to 2.8.4 (it\u0026rsquo;s been a long time since I\u0026rsquo;ve done an upgrade) and I\u0026rsquo;m trying to pick from the myriad syntax coloring plugins. I tried using SyntaxHighlighter Plus which has nicer configuration options. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look as good as wp-syntax\nNote that to get the SyntaxHighlighter Plus configuration options to work on my php4 box (I was seeing this error: Call to undefined function: scandir()) I had to replace this call:\n$ t h e m e s = s c a n d i r ( A B S P A T H . P L U G I N D I R . / s y n t a x h i g h l i g h t e r - p l u s / s y n t a x h i g h l i g h t e r / s t y l e s / ' ) ; with this:\n$ $ $ } d d w t i h h h r i e = l m = e e o s A p ( [ B e f ] S n a P d l = A i s T r e $ H ( f $ ! i . d = l i = e P r n L ) ( a U ; $ m G f e I i ; N l D e I n R a m . e = / s r y e n a t d a d x i h r i ( g $ h d l h i ) g ) h ) t e { r - p l u s / s y n t a x h i g h l i g h t e r / s t y l e s / ' ; I actually like the way SyntaxHighlighter Plus works better than wp-syntax in that it uses a custom tag [sourcecode] rather than using which means that it handles embedded angle braces better. But I just think that it looks much worse than wp-syntax!\n","date":"August 20, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/08/20/wordpress-update-time/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo I\u0026rsquo;ve just spent a couple hours updating wordpress to 2.8.4 (it\u0026rsquo;s been a long time since I\u0026rsquo;ve done an upgrade) and I\u0026rsquo;m trying to pick from the myriad syntax coloring plugins.  I tried using \u003ca href=\"http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/syntaxhighlighter-plus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSyntaxHighlighter Plus\u003c/a\u003e which has nicer configuration options. But it doesn\u0026rsquo;t look as good as \u003ca href=\"http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-syntax/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ewp-syntax\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"wordpress update time \u0026 syntax coloring"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/caterpillar/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Caterpillar"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/collapse/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Collapse"},{"content":"A friend of mine recently asked me to read Carolyn Baker\u0026rsquo;s article When facing reality is not \u0026rsquo;negative thinking\u0026rsquo;. This article has finally helped me nail down some thoughts I\u0026rsquo;ve been having about the way I\u0026rsquo;ve been often asked to look at the \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; of civilization and the idea that we need to \u0026ldquo;face reality.\u0026rdquo;\nTo begin with, I\u0026rsquo;d like to affirm my agreement with Dr. Baker and others that the ways our world is currently structured, from how we use people and energy, to how we feed our selves, to our political and financial forms, are completely unsustainable and are destined to be radically changed. That much is certain to me.\nBut I\u0026rsquo;d like to suggest that the very act of framing this process of change in terms of \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;facing reality\u0026rdquo; is in itself part of remaining within those same sets of unsustainable structures.\nSome people have described the current era as on par with what happens in a caterpillar before it turns into a butterfly. This process is not a simple transformation in which the caterpillar\u0026rsquo;s body shrinks and then sprouts wings and legs. Instead the body of the caterpillar completely \u0026ldquo;collapses\u0026rdquo; into a a blob of ooze, and then re-grows itself into its new form starting from what are called imaginal cells, which are a kind of new butterfly stem cells that are even attacked by the body of the caterpillar before it has completely dissolved because they are at first not even recognized as \u0026ldquo;self.\u0026rdquo; This process has been written about elsewhere, so I won\u0026rsquo;t belabor it, but if you haven\u0026rsquo;t read about it before, it\u0026rsquo;s worth Googling.\nHowever, I actually don\u0026rsquo;t think that this caterpillar-butterfly process really is on par with what\u0026rsquo;s happening now, for one main reason: the outcome of the metamorphosis of the caterpillar is pretty darn certain, but the outcome of our future is not at all certain. But this makes it more clear to me that to describe the change we are facing now as \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; is even more of a mistake than it is for me to use the word \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; in describing what happens to the body of the caterpillar.\nThe word collapse comes from the roots \u0026ldquo;fall\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;together\u0026rdquo; and evokes the idea of the falling down of a building, and its breaking apart, shattering to pieces. The reason why that\u0026rsquo;s not an appropriate description in the case of the caterpillar is that its body\u0026rsquo;s dissolution is part of an active living process that\u0026rsquo;s going somewhere, that though it is a destruction or death of sorts, is fully energized, with nodes of self-organization that are part of the living process that will take it to the next step. Collapse is a word for the falling apart of a mechanical system, not for the transformation of a living one. And there\u0026rsquo;s the rub: at the heart of our world\u0026rsquo;s current structures (the very ones that led to our current forms of government, finance, and politics that are unsustainable) is the underlying assumption that the universe is a mechanical system that we are separate from rather than a living system of which we are intimately a part. So to call what\u0026rsquo;s happening now a \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; I think keeps us from stepping into the very \u0026ldquo;myriad opportunities it presents,\u0026rdquo; because it keeps us thinking in the old way. If instead we conceive ourselves as part of a living system, then how we conceive of what\u0026rsquo;s happening right now might be vastly different.\nHere is what I see: for the last 5,000 years (since the advent of the three big inventions: agriculture, writing, and money) we have been on a massive journey of increasing consciousness and liberating potential that those three inventions are the foundation of. I\u0026rsquo;m making no claim as to the universality, value, goodness, or evil of this journey\u0026ndash;I just know that it has happened. At the end of this 5,000-year journey our consciousness of how the natural world (including ourselves) works, and the pure liberation of potential (both social, physical, and technological) is simply awesome. But we are at a nexus. On one hand there are millions if not billions of fully empowered humans on the planet; there is a vast quantity of energy that is available to be put to use; there is an even greater quantity of information and knowledge to organize that use; and there is an astounding set of information-processing tools coordinate that use. On the other, there are millions, if not billions of disempowered and enslaved humans on the planet; there is vast energy need as well as waste; and there is great disinformation and lies spread and all kinds of machinations in place to prevent the free spread and coordination of information. I see these two \u0026ldquo;hands\u0026rdquo; (the one hand and the other hand) as fully living and dynamic tensions in a vast living earth of which humanity, with its budding consciousness, is now a significant part.\nThis gets us to the next phrase: \u0026ldquo;facing reality.\u0026rdquo; Both of these \u0026ldquo;hands\u0026rdquo; are real. The power and awesomeness of where we are now, the pure raw potential, is massive and unprecedented, and is proven by the enormous amount of waste, of all kinds, that we are generating. This power and potential is real. The limits of peak oil, and the limited capacity of our biosphere to accept fossil carbon dioxide without massive climate change, are real. Which hand should I face? And I\u0026rsquo;m sure there is also a third, and fourth hand that are also just as real. The problem with this phrasing of \u0026ldquo;facing reality\u0026rdquo; is that it is also built on the same dualistic, mechanical world-view that underlies the phrasing of collapse. The idea of a single reality out there, that I as an individual have to \u0026ldquo;face,\u0026rdquo; works because of how separated we have allowed ourselves to become from that very reality that we are supposed to face. It works because we have swallowed the idea of ourselves as isolated point subjects in some way outside of, and viewing, a mechanically objective and \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; world.\nBut we are not passive observers of a single reality. The very place we have gotten to is because of a particular constructed view of what reality is. If we had constructed a different understanding of reality, one based not on the idea that we are separate from nature and have dominion over it, then we would not be in the same place we are now. We have built the reality of our political and social structures for ourselves. For sure we are embedded in a deeper reality, one not only of our construction, but the lion\u0026rsquo;s share of the reality we experience is the one we are willing to experience, the one we have constructed for ourselves.\nSo, I refuse to \u0026ldquo;face\u0026rdquo; the \u0026ldquo;reality\u0026rdquo; of \u0026ldquo;collapse.\u0026rdquo; Instead I promise to explore the reality I have built for myself so far, and try to see how it is inaccurate and does not match my actual experience, so that I can change it. I can build new realities that are more accurate to my experience, in which I and my fellow journeyers are more empowered, more alive, and that creates greater possibility. For you see, we usually think about language as a tool that we use to describe reality, but language also creates the reality we experience. What makes makes our situation different from caterpillar\u0026ndash;\u0026gt;butterfly is that for us a butterfly is not a certain outcome. Our outcome is completely unknown. To me this means that our deepest responsibility is to envision a reality we want and then do our best to build it. We can\u0026rsquo;t do this based on projections of how the current order is destined to fall apart. Instead, I want to take what life has miraculously made available to us now (our caterpillar body\u0026rsquo;s goo, if you will) and figure out what even more miraculous and precious reality we can build out of it.\nHistorical Comments Perceptric \u0026mdash; July 13, 2009 at 01:49 AM Very interesting ideas on this article and the one prior to this. I and my business partner blog about P2P and while our focus is primarily in the blog on the impact of P2P on content, I am very interested in the economic potential for P2P as the basis for how information is transacted during the next chapter in planetary (and human) life. We blog is at www.perceptric.com - Look forward to reading more of your thoughts. Since you read some interesting stuff you may also be interested in a book that I am reading right now by Joshua Cooper Ramo, called \u0026quot;The Age Of The Unthinkable - why the new world disorder constantly surprises us and what to do about it\u0026quot;.\nkellyevans \u0026mdash; August 05, 2009 at 12:02 PM It might be certain what will come out of the goo of civilization, and the imaginal cells of technology. The component parts of the caterpillar/butterfly might think their fate is just as uncertain. But I take your meaning.\nI agree that we are at a nexus, a point of transformation, and that with a slight tilt of the head, we can shift between views of reality.\n","date":"May 11, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/05/11/facing-the-reality-of-collapse/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA friend of mine recently asked me to read Carolyn Baker\u0026rsquo;s article \u003ca href=\"http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/1085/1/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eWhen facing reality is not \u0026rsquo;negative thinking\u0026rsquo;\u003c/a\u003e. This article has finally helped me nail down some thoughts I\u0026rsquo;ve been having about the way I\u0026rsquo;ve been often asked to look at the \u0026ldquo;collapse\u0026rdquo; of civilization and the idea that we need to \u0026ldquo;face reality.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"facing the reality of collapse"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/reality/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Reality"},{"content":"I have just 10 minutes ago finished Jane Jacobs, The Nature of Economies, and I just have to write about it.\nI am totally stunned, and deeply sad that I never was able to meet her. In this book she speaks directly to me from beyond the grave completely confirming the approach I have been following in rethinking what currency is and what it means to humanity.\nShe ends the book with two answers to one question \u0026ldquo;what are economies for?\u0026rdquo; :\n\u0026ldquo;\u0026hellip; To enable us to partake, in our own fashion, in a great universal flow.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;economies have a lot in common with language\u0026hellip; like language, economic life permits us to develop cultures and multitudes for purposes\u0026hellip; that\u0026rsquo;s its function which is most meaningful for us.\u0026rdquo;\nFor a while now I have take Art Brock\u0026rsquo;s lead in defining currencies as:\nInformation systems that allow communities to interact with flows\nI\u0026rsquo;ve also written about how money is just the first word or sentence in a much bigger \u0026ldquo;language\u0026rdquo; or as I\u0026rsquo;ve been calling it, \u0026ldquo;expressive capacity,\u0026rdquo; that allows the social being to shape the flows that constitute it. But more importantly how such a new expressive capacity will allow us to integrate the flows at all levels of wealth. So to hear both of these ideas as the final punch in a whole book which is all about the shifting our understanding of economics is towards seeing it in the broader integrated context of the flow processes of the natural world, has me completely floored and overjoyed.\nPart way through the book it also occurred to me that what we currently call economics is to some unnamed future science is as alchemy is to chemistry. So I thought I would try to name that science:\nSince economy is oikos/nomy = home/management\nI thought this might work:rheonomy from rheo/nomy = flow/management\nI also like how rheo sounds like the Spanish: rio or river, and it\u0026rsquo;s also a good pun because its: realnomics\u0026hellip; :-)\n","date":"March 29, 2009","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2009/03/29/jane-jacobs-the-nature-of-economies-2/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have just 10 minutes ago finished Jane Jacobs, The Nature of Economies, and I just have to write about it.\u003cbr\u003e\nI am totally stunned, and deeply sad that I never was able to meet her. In this book she speaks directly to me from beyond the grave completely confirming the approach I have been following in rethinking what currency is and what it means to humanity.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Jane Jacobs: The Nature of Economies"},{"content":"Ellen got these two summaries of news items from the ny-times:\nDetroit Bailout Is to Bring On U.S. Oversight By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and JACKIE CALMES Congressional Democrats were drafting legislation for government control of the auto industry, including the possible creation of an oversight board.\nIn Hard Times, Russia Moves In to Reclaim Private Industries By CLIFFORD J. LEVY\nThe Kremlin seems to be exploiting the economic crisis to establish more control over financially weakened industries that it has long coveted.\nPretty funny no?\n","date":"December 8, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/12/08/framing-is-everything/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eEllen got these two summaries of news items from the ny-times:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/washington/08autos.html?th\u0026amp;emc=th\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eDetroit Bailout Is to Bring On U.S. Oversight\u003c/a\u003e By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN and JACKIE CALMES Congressional Democrats were drafting legislation for government control of the auto industry, including the possible creation of an oversight board.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Framing is everything"},{"content":"Yesterday I gave a presentation on rethinking money at UMass Amherst for a course Julie Graham is teaching called Rethinking Economy. Julie does some very interesting work on community economies.\nHistorical Comments Riley \u0026mdash; December 30, 2008 at 12:32 AM Hi, Eric.\nOK, I think I\u0026#x27;m starting to get this more than I did when you described it at the reunion. (I do better with visual aids!) Other posts on this blog helped, too. I\u0026#x27;m still not clear on (a) how the unlimited aspect of a currency would play out and (b) how a currency applies to the acknowledgeable but unmeasurable types of wealth.\nLet me write out my thoughts as I try out the ideas, and then if you get a chance, I would love to get your reaction, particularly about where I may be missing big pieces of the concepts.\nI use the site okcupid, which gives points based on the number and type of activities I carry out on the site (creating a profile, posting a photo, creating a quiz, etc.). My activities are measurable, but not tradeable. These activity points entitle me to certain benefits (avoiding advertisements, etc.), so I get a pay back for my activities. The fact that I have gained 20 points by performing an activity does not mean that anyone else loses 20 points, so the activity-point aspect of okcupid is an open system. Everyone in the okcupid user community benefits from the incentive provided by activity points, because the usefulness or value of a social-interaction site is dependent on the amount of activity by users. Because the number of users is another key element of the value of a social-interaction site, it would behoove okcupid to award activity points for referrals of new users.\nHowever, if too many users gain enough activity points to avoid ads, then the business model of the site will collapse, unless some other way is developed to pay back those who provide the services and technology that keep the site going.\nThis could be addressed through a currency that acknowledges social connectedness, an unmeasurable, non-tradeable form of wealth. Since okcupid\u0026#x27;s continued existence presumably increases society\u0026#x27;s overall connectedness, society could choose to acknowledge those who run okcupid with some sort of currency. Perhaps if okcupid staffer Stephanie wants to create an antisocial blog with a bigoted theme, she can spend some of her social-connectedness credits for the right to do so. Same for okcupid staffer Boris, who wants to disseminate an addictive, isolating, single-player video game.\nWho would decide how many social-connectedness credits would be issued for running a site like okcupid, or how many social-connectedness credits would be demanded for running an antisocial site? And who would issue and demand these credits? All I can think is that it would be the community as a whole, through some sort of deliberative process. If people produce social connectedness more than they create isolation or alienation, then this social-connectedness economy will grow.\nReactions? Thanks!\nRiley\n","date":"November 4, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/11/04/rethinking-economy/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYesterday I gave a \u003ca href=\"http://eric.harris-braun.com/files/rethinking_money.ppt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003epresentation on rethinking money\u003c/a\u003e at UMass Amherst for a course \u003ca href=\"http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/graham/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eJulie Graham\u003c/a\u003e is teaching called Rethinking Economy. Julie does some very interesting work on \u003ca href=\"http://www.communityeconomies.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ecommunity economies\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"historical-comments mt-8 pt-8 border-t border-neutral-200 dark:border-neutral-700\"\u003e\n\u003ch2 class=\"text-xl font-bold mb-4\"\u003eHistorical Comments\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment mb-6 p-4 bg-neutral-100 dark:bg-neutral-700 rounded-lg\"\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment-meta text-sm text-neutral-600 dark:text-neutral-400 mb-2\"\u003e\n\u003cspan class=\"font-semibold\"\u003eRiley\u003c/span\u003e\n \u0026mdash; December 30, 2008 at 12:32 AM\n\u003c/div\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"comment-content prose dark:prose-invert\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eHi, Eric.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Rethinking Economy"},{"content":"So when I got my new MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition) with the fancy new trackpad that is an integrated mouse button, it had an incredibly annoying problem: every 4th or 5th click, didn\u0026rsquo;t click! So I\u0026rsquo;d be clicking on a window behind the current one, or clicking on an icon in the dock, and it would sometimes take two or three clicks to switch to the window or app. After checking in with Apple (and unfortunately 2 hours on the phone walking through all sorts of different options), they ended up sending me out a new MacBook Pro. The new one arrived yesterday and after a fairly straightforward migration (only the printer driver for my Canon MX850 didn\u0026rsquo;t automatically migrate), I now have laptop with a properly clicking trackpad.So, if you have this problem, you at least have my experience telling that it\u0026rsquo;s a hardware not a software problem.\n","date":"October 30, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/10/30/macbook-pro-trackpad-clicking-intermittently-broken/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo when I got my new MacBook Pro (late 2008 edition) with the fancy new trackpad that is an integrated mouse button, it had an incredibly annoying problem:  every 4th or 5th click, didn\u0026rsquo;t click!  So I\u0026rsquo;d be clicking on a window behind the current one, or clicking on an icon in the dock, and it would sometimes take two or three clicks to switch to the window or app.  After checking in with Apple (and unfortunately 2 hours on the phone walking through all sorts of different options), they ended up sending me out a new MacBook Pro.  The new one arrived yesterday and after a fairly straightforward migration (only the printer driver for my Canon MX850 didn\u0026rsquo;t automatically migrate), I now have laptop with a properly clicking trackpad.So, if you have this problem, you at least have my experience telling that it\u0026rsquo;s a hardware not a software problem.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"MacBook Pro trackpad clicking intermittently broken"},{"content":"Have just read an excellent blog post on \u0026ldquo;dumb databases\u0026rdquo; and the issue of read vs. write consistency. My own mesh \u0026amp; churn for open money comes out of the same realizations that in a distributed environment the way to handle many many issues is to put the responsibility on the reader to verify the validity of the data.\n","date":"October 29, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/10/29/databases-and-read-vs-write-consistency/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHave just read an excellent blog post on \u003ca href=\"http://blog.labnotes.org/2007/09/20/read-consistency-dumb-databases-smart-services/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003e\u0026ldquo;dumb databases\u0026rdquo;\u003c/a\u003e and the issue of read vs. write consistency. My own \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info/techne/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003emesh \u0026amp; churn\u003c/a\u003e for open money comes out of the same realizations that in a distributed environment the way to handle many many issues is to put the responsibility on the reader to verify the validity of the data.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"databases and read vs. write consistency"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/community-currency/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Community-Currency"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/econophysics/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Econophysics"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve recently been introduced to the field of econophysics and I\u0026rsquo;ve read an interesting the review paper on the field. My thoughts on this paper is that it\u0026rsquo;s very good news for the community currency movement, if understood properly. For a long time when talking about cc, I\u0026rsquo;ve been using the little thought experiment of asking people to imaging the Buddha, Jesus and Mother Theresa sitting down to play monopoly and to see if the game will have a different outcome. The answer is obviously no, not if they play by the rules. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter how good or evil you are, the rules of monopoly simply require that all the cash end up in one player\u0026rsquo;s hands, i.e 100% inequity. The econophysics work on the Statistical Mechanics modeling of money takes this intuitive analogy and \u0026ldquo;proves\u0026rdquo; quite definitively the fundamental inequity of our current system if you assume that the rules of the game are that money behaves like energy. The good news for community currency arises out of the basic flaw of the paper which is it seems to imply that money is natural system, rather than a created one. If money were an inevitable natural system, then the paper could be seen as an justification of that structural inequity. But since it is a created one, rather it\u0026rsquo;s an explanation of the the inequity, and thus can point us very clearly in directions of how the monetary system should instead be re-designed. What are those directions? Well, we see in the paper the very careful arguments to show how money is conserved. This is crucial to the model because in the model money is energy, and statistical mechanics is built on the law of the conservation of energy. But more importantly their model is about statistical equilibrium of energy states in closed systems. So this gives us a clear indication of where to go: change the monetary paradigm to one where the fundamental model is based on non-equilibrium state energy systemics. Well, we know what non-equilibrium state energy systems are, they are living systems. In living systems what matters fundamentally is not how much energy is accumulated but rather, whether energy can be made to flow in particular complex patterns that themselves are self-sustaining. Even more crucially, life is not about what happens if energy is allowed to dissipate to equilibrium. The name for that process is death! So I think we could even argue that that the modeling they have done is of the death of an economy! Life is not about accumulation of the energy itself, but instead it is about the accumulation of the complex patterns of energy flows. The word for a such patterns is \u0026ldquo;ecosystem\u0026rdquo;. In their model money is seen as energy, or the capacity to do work. This actually makes sense for an early stage in the evolution of money. When the main issue is the scarcity of the capacity to get work done, then finding ways to accumulate it is key, and building an economic structure to generate that accumulation makes sense. We now live in a world where our capacity to do work is not at all scarce, it\u0026rsquo;s over abundant. The big problem is the waste human capacity (think of the structural unemployment) and also the squandering of all that massive capacity in ways that are blatantly destructive (military expenditures) or systemically destructive (climate change). So our task is now to re-gear the fundamental system to not simply accumulate of the capacity to do work, but mostly to accumulate particular patterns of that capacity that are what we call \u0026ldquo;healthy\u0026rdquo;. So, how do we do that!? I use a completely different model for money that I think fits the bill, namely that money is a form of language, or more precisely a writing system that encodes information about wealth events. This model transcends and includes the model of money as energy, because in its simplest form, the rules of the writing system can be made to follow the rules of conservation of energy. What I have been calling for and working on with open money (as well as collaborting with Art Brock on his OS-Earth platform) is a meta-currency system that is precisely about making it easy to create these many different writing system (currencies) and their rule-sets, or another way to put that, that precisely enables a the creation of pattern sets for economic flows.\nHistorical Comments Will \u0026mdash; September 05, 2008 at 01:34 PM Income inequality without money.\nIn a barter-only no-loans world, income inequality is caused by capital inequality, which can be divided into physical, human, and mental capital.\nHuman capital inequality: cannot be solved unless spending is completely divorced from earning, i.e., money\u0026#x27;s function as incentive is lost. But human capital differences are not that big, so it\u0026#x27;s OK.\nMental capital inequality: Arguably effective systems which can be seen as monetary would work to effectively spread around IP/mental capital. I was actually working on a hybrid reputation/transaction system that might work out mathematically.\nAlso, more free public education.\nPhysical capital inequality: the only way to solve this seems to be the equal/collective ownership of physical capital. Monetary systems could be used to regulate collective ownership of physical capital, but they don\u0026#x27;t seem to be able to cause it.\nThoughts?\n","date":"September 3, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/09/03/econophysics-and-community-currency/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve recently been introduced to the field of \u003ca href=\"http://www2.physics.umd.edu/~yakovenk/econophysics/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eeconophysics\u003c/a\u003e and I\u0026rsquo;ve read an interesting the \u003ca href=\"http://arxiv.org/pdf/0709.3662\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ereview paper\u003c/a\u003e on the field. My thoughts on this paper is that it\u0026rsquo;s very good news for the community currency movement, if understood properly. For a long time when talking about cc, I\u0026rsquo;ve been using the little thought experiment of asking people to imaging the Buddha, Jesus and Mother Theresa sitting down to play monopoly and to see if the game will have a different outcome. The answer is obviously no, not if they play by the rules. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter how good or evil you are, the rules of monopoly simply require that all the cash end up in one player\u0026rsquo;s hands, i.e 100% inequity. The econophysics work on the Statistical Mechanics modeling of money takes this intuitive analogy and \u0026ldquo;proves\u0026rdquo; quite definitively the fundamental inequity of our current system if you assume that the rules of the game are that money behaves like energy. The good news for community currency arises out of the basic flaw of the paper which is it seems to imply that money is natural system, rather than a created one. If money were an inevitable natural system, then the paper could be seen as an justification of that structural inequity. But since it is a created one, rather it\u0026rsquo;s an explanation of the the inequity, and thus can point us very clearly in directions of how the monetary system should instead be re-designed. What are those directions? Well, we see in the paper the very careful arguments to show how money is conserved. This is crucial to the model because in the model money is energy, and statistical mechanics is built on the law of the conservation of energy. But more importantly their model is about statistical equilibrium of energy states in closed systems. So this gives us a clear indication of where to go: change the monetary paradigm to one where the fundamental model is based on non-equilibrium state energy systemics. Well, we know what non-equilibrium state energy systems are, they are living systems. In living systems what matters fundamentally is not how much energy is accumulated but rather, whether energy can be made to flow in particular complex patterns that themselves are self-sustaining. Even more crucially, life is not about what happens if energy is allowed to dissipate to equilibrium. The name for that process is death! So I think we could even argue that that the modeling they have done is of the death of an economy! Life is not about accumulation of the energy itself, but instead it is about the accumulation of the complex patterns of energy flows. The word for a such patterns is \u0026ldquo;ecosystem\u0026rdquo;. In their model money is seen as energy, or the capacity to do work. This actually makes sense for an early stage in the evolution of money. When the main issue is the scarcity of the capacity to get work done, then finding ways to accumulate it is key, and building an economic structure to generate that accumulation makes sense. We now live in a world where our capacity to do work is not at all scarce, it\u0026rsquo;s over abundant. The big problem is the waste human capacity (think of the structural unemployment) and also the squandering of all that massive capacity in ways that are blatantly destructive (military expenditures) or systemically destructive (climate change). So our task is now to re-gear the fundamental system to not simply accumulate of the capacity to do work, but mostly to accumulate particular patterns of that capacity that are what we call \u0026ldquo;healthy\u0026rdquo;. So, how do we do that!? I \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1180168%3ATopic%3A2692\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003euse a completely different model for money\u003c/a\u003e that I think fits the bill, namely that money is a form of language, or more precisely a writing system that encodes information about wealth events. This model transcends and includes the model of money as energy, because in its simplest form, the rules of the writing system can be made to follow the rules of conservation of energy. What I have been calling for and working on with \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen money\u003c/a\u003e (as well as collaborting with Art Brock on his OS-Earth platform) is a meta-currency system that is precisely about making it easy to create these many different writing system (currencies) and their rule-sets, or another way to put that, that precisely enables a the creation of pattern sets for economic flows.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"econophysics and community currency"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/open-money/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Open-Money"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/os-earth/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Os-Earth"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/physics/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Physics"},{"content":"I just realized that Behavior Driven Development is very similar to double entry book-keeping in accounting!Â\n","date":"July 9, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/07/09/bdd-accounting/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI just realized that \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior_driven_development\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBehavior Driven Development\u003c/a\u003e is very similar to double entry book-keeping in accounting!Â\u003c/p\u003e","title":"bdd \u0026 accounting"},{"content":"Well, git definitely takes some gitting used to.\nMy situation is using git with three team members and a private shared repository that we all pull from and push too. Additionally our project has a submodule that lives on a public git-hub repository (metaform).\nSo here are some things I\u0026rsquo;ve learned:\nUse rebase. Here\u0026rsquo;s how: Rebase doesn\u0026rsquo;t work on \u0026ldquo;dirty\u0026rdquo; working tree. So you must, either: Add and commit all you changes.git commit -a -m 'all my changes' (assuming that your ok committing them in a single batch). or Stash your changes awaygit stash (But don\u0026rsquo;t use stash if you have made changes in your submodule ! It\u0026rsquo;ll stash the changes away, but it gets very grumpy when unstashing later.) Fetch the changes:git fetch this should copy the changes from the remote branch (I assume your tracking the defaults here from the clone origin) Now to rebase: git rebase origin/master If you do a git log you should now see your checked in changes at the top of the tree, not somewhere near the bottom where they would be if you had just done a pull. If you stashed above, then you need to unstash with git stash apply Submodules that are in active development can be a pain. Here\u0026rsquo;s a gotcha that gotme: When you have made a change to a submodule, checked it in and pushed it, you still need to add this change into your containing repository and commit that, and then do a git submodule update This is all well documented, but lets take a concrete example. My submodule is a rails plugin. So just after committing the change in my submodlue git status shows that vendor/plugins/myplugin is modified. So I use my shell\u0026rsquo;s file completion to add that folder. This gets me: git add vendor/plugins/myplugin/ notice the trailing slash. This is the gotcha. That causes git add to add all of the contents of the directory as if you wanted to track them directly instead of through the submodule. Erase that trailing slash! ","date":"April 17, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/04/17/git-me-some-solutions/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, git definitely takes some gitting used to.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMy situation is using git with three team members and a private shared repository that we all pull from and push too.  Additionally our project has a submodule that lives on a public git-hub repository (metaform).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"git me some solutions"},{"content":"Well, I\u0026rsquo;ve officially joined the git bandwagon.  I\u0026rsquo;ve put metaform up on github (the open money projects will come soon, but I think probably on gitorious); I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading tons of articles about git; I installed it on Tiger (use MacPorts) and Leopard (install from source with these instructions but use 1.5.5); and now I\u0026rsquo;m blogging about it.  The most interesting article so far on git, has made me realize how closely related it is to the mesh and churn\u0026hellip;  Quite interesting!\n","date":"April 13, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/04/13/git-bandwagon/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, I\u0026rsquo;ve officially joined the git bandwagon.  I\u0026rsquo;ve put \u003ca href=\"http://github.com/zippy/metaform/tree/master\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003emetaform up on github\u003c/a\u003e (the \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen money\u003c/a\u003e projects will come soon, but I think probably on \u003ca href=\"http://gitorious.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003egitorious\u003c/a\u003e); I\u0026rsquo;ve been reading tons of \u003ca href=\"http://del.icio.us/zippy/git\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003earticles about gi\u003c/a\u003et; I installed it on Tiger (use MacPorts) and Leopard (install from source with \u003ca href=\"http://subtlegradient.com/articles/2008/02/21/install_git_leopard\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ethese instructions\u003c/a\u003e but use 1.5.5); and now I\u0026rsquo;m blogging about it.  The \u003ca href=\"http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003emost interesting article\u003c/a\u003e so far on git, has made me realize how closely related it is to the \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info/techne/overview.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003emesh and churn\u003c/a\u003e\u0026hellip;  Quite interesting!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"git bandwagon"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m in mexico, and it\u0026rsquo;s the start of the third day of the open money intensive.  This is an incredible experience of the expansion of the open money vision that\u0026rsquo;s been in gestation for so long and is now being  birthed.  More soon!\n","date":"March 5, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/03/05/mexico/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m in mexico, and it\u0026rsquo;s the start of the third day of the \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.ning.com/mexico\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen money intensive\u003c/a\u003e.  This is an incredible experience of the expansion of the open money vision that\u0026rsquo;s been in gestation for so long and is now being  birthed.  More soon!\u003c/p\u003e","title":"mexico"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m very grumpy because some spammers have been hacking this blog! I\u0026rsquo;ve updated to the latest version of Wordpress, and it still seems to be occuring, so if you see nasty stuff here, please notify me. Thanks.\n","date":"February 22, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/02/22/spam-hacking-this-blog/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m very grumpy because some spammers have been hacking this blog!  I\u0026rsquo;ve updated to the latest version of Wordpress, and it still seems to be occuring, so if you see nasty stuff here, please notify me.  Thanks.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"spam hacking this blog"},{"content":" ","date":"February 16, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/02/16/wealth-literacy/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\n\n  \n  \n\u003cfigure\u003e\u003cimg src=\"/blog/images/literacy.png\" alt=\"wealth literacy\" class=\"mx-auto my-0 rounded-md\" /\u003e\n\u003c/figure\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e","title":"wealth literacy"},{"content":"Hey googlers looking for tech-support:\nI was trying to install various packages (emacs, etc) from universe on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10), and I kept getting weird segmentation faults (Setting up emacsen-common (1.4.17) Segmentation fault). Turns out that the problem was that my server was being hosted on a VPS running XEN for virtualization, and you have to first install libc6-xen: apt-get install libc6-xen\nHope this saves someone the half day that it cost me\u0026hellip;\n","date":"February 4, 2008","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2008/02/04/ubuntu-gutsy-on-a-xen-virtual-host/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHey googlers looking for tech-support:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI was trying to install various packages (emacs, etc) from universe on Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10), and I kept getting weird segmentation faults (\u003ccode\u003eSetting up emacsen-common (1.4.17) Segmentation fault\u003c/code\u003e). Turns out that the problem was that my server was being hosted on a VPS running XEN for virtualization, and you have to first install libc6-xen: \u003ccode\u003eapt-get install libc6-xen\u003c/code\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"ubuntu gutsy on a xen virtual host"},{"content":"Recently I\u0026rsquo;ve had opportunity to reflect on why I\u0026rsquo;m particularly dedicated to the open money path out of all the many different community currency paths.\nI offer it here not in the spirit of saying open money is better than other approaches, but rather just to share my understanding and what motivates me to work where I know I am best suited to contribute.\nThe short version: the open money approach focuses on providing a globally scalable meta-currency platform that can hold a plurality of interoperable wealth-acknowledgment systems for all types of wealth, especially for those forms of wealth that are non-tradable. Furthermore the systemics of the software and the human processes behind the open money approach are designed to yield both a platform that is held in the commons, just like writing (the alphabet) is held in the commons and is likely to spread virally.\nThe long version: As a geek, I am deeply influenced by two concepts:\nDavid Reed\u0026rsquo;s concept of the value of Group Forming Networks which is a formalization of what is often quoted as \u0026ldquo;pushing the intelligence to the edges\u0026rdquo; and is the deep value proposition for p2p and a fundamental motivation behind the \u0026ldquo;smart edges-dumb center\u0026rdquo; design of the Internet that Reed was a part of as a co-creator of TCP/IP. Ross Ashby\u0026rsquo;s law of requisite variety, which implies, among other things, that the controller has to encode as much variety as exists in the system it wants to control. To me it is crystal clear that a single form of currency, debt-issue federal currency, cannot represent the varieties of wealth that we must be able to acknowledge to thereby guide our activities as a global civilization. These concepts, along with a programmers propensity to refactor and go meta in designing any system, had me convinced early on that a multi-currency platform was absolutely essential, also this platform not only had to be multi-currency, but that the forms of the multi-currencies themselves had to be able to widely tunable so that they could be acknowledgments of non-tradable forms of wealth. So far so good for requisite variety, but to achieve the pattern implied by Reed\u0026rsquo;s GFNs, the platform had to be a network platform, a platform that fundamentally provides a surface area on which currencies themselves, and the accounts that trade those currencies, can grow and form groups.\nIn essence I felt that what was necessary was to create the TCP/IP of money. That we had to strip away as much as possible from the ideas of what money is down to some bare primitives analogous to \u0026ldquo;packet transfer\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;routing\u0026rdquo; and from that build up all of \u0026ldquo;money\u0026rdquo; again.\nThis is the systemics of the open money approach, both explicitly multi-currency and network oriented. The systemics of this approach feel to me to be most likely to spread virally (i.e. without the need for huge launch effort) of all the approaches I\u0026rsquo;ve seen. And I think the open money mesh \u0026amp; churn and the currency specification language, actually live up to these systemic considerations, at least in principle.\nNext\u0026hellip; for me personally, the open source nature of this kind of fundamental social platform is absolutely essential. It is essential for a number of reasons:\nTransparency. Wealth acknowledgment is so fundamental to society that if it is hidden, it can\u0026rsquo;t be trusted. I\u0026rsquo;m not talking about at all about making the content of all individuals acknowledgments public, nor making any claim that all clients and all servers that run the open money protocols have to be open source. That\u0026rsquo;s silly. I\u0026rsquo;m simply saying that the base protocol, the alphabet itself of wealth-literacy, the capacity to create currencies (not the currencies themselves) must be fully in the commons. Security/Integrity. Everything I\u0026rsquo;ve ever read or experienced of software security is that open source is the way to go. It\u0026rsquo;s not that OSS is a guarantee of security, its just that its better than closed source. In my experience open source software is way less buggy that closed source software. \u0026ldquo;Virality\u0026rdquo;. It seems to me that open source efforts have a much higher likely-hood of spreading virally than closed source efforts. Fun/Community. I personally have experienced that writing code in the open source mode to be drastically more pleasurable. It\u0026rsquo;s where I want to spend my time. The kinds of relationships that arise, the speed with which things can happen, and just the spirit of it. It\u0026rsquo;s where I want to be. Above are the positive statements of what I\u0026rsquo;m called to work on and why they led me to open money. There are also some considerations in the negative space that have pushed me away from some approaches. In particular there are two:\nMarkets: Most community currency software platforms include some kind of market making function. I think this is a substantial mistake from a systemic point of view. I learned from Art that markets are the result of currencies, not the other way around. Grades lead to a market for tutors and Kaplan services. Tickets lead to scalpers. More precisely, wealth-acknowledgment processes naturally evolve group settings that amplify their usability. Thus, systemically it is a big mistake to pre-specify what form those group settings should take. Don\u0026rsquo;t get me wrong here. I think that markets and market making are HUGELY important. But I\u0026rsquo;m convinced that they belong in a separate domain. The currency creator intrinsically doesn\u0026rsquo;t have the requisite variety to know what the market should look like. That is yet another function that is best served by pushing it to the edges, and not controlling it from the center. When you give currency creators control of the marketplace abuses also become tempting. I believe that market making needs it\u0026rsquo;s own equivalent p2p platform that will make cranking out a new e-bay just as easy as open money makes easy cranking out a new currency, and the way the web makes easy cranking out a new \u0026ldquo;publication\u0026rdquo;. We are in touch with some folks who are working on this kind of platform.\nSecurity/Integrity: Though I mentioned security in the open source stuff above, I actually find that it is way over-emphasized. I am not drawn to work in contexts that focus on security in wealth-acknowledgment because I\u0026rsquo;m convinced that that is a hold-over in understanding currency as a thing of value in and of itself, and is thus a distraction. When currency is understood as information about a wealth related event, rather than a direct representation of wealth itself, the whole question of the necessary security is vastly different. I know that the problems of security have mostly been sufficiently handled elsewhere, and they will be able to be grabbed out-of-the-box as libraries for use with those particular currencies that need that high security. Most currencies won\u0026rsquo;t need security, they just need integrity, which is achieved by redundancy, transparency, and audit-ability. Those are things that I\u0026rsquo;m very concerned about and must be built into the very fabric of the system itself, which is why the Mesh looks like it does, and another reason why a distributed p2p platform is so systemically important.\nSo, to sum this all up, I have chosen to work where I think the systemics, the invisible architectures, will yield the most powerful results. The systemics of multi-currency \u0026amp; a general currency specification language yields requisite variety. The systemics of the network approach (the mesh) yields the value proposition of GFNs. The systemics of open source yield integrity, community, and a new commons. The integrated systemics of all of these yields viral spreading.\nIt is definitely true that all of the other software platforms (GETS, CES, Cyclos, etc.) are much more useable and attractive at this point than what we\u0026rsquo;ve got implemented. But I think that systemically that\u0026rsquo;s like comparing the Internet in 1990 (the pine e-mail reader, gopher sites, ftp sites, and mailing lists) to rich graphical content and interfaces provided by AOL, Prodigy, GEnie \u0026amp; CompuServe at that time. And this is not to put those things down. Note that AOL is still around, and it did an incredible and valuable job of introducing people to the Internet by providing a usability soft landing.\nWhat I see is the potential for open money to provide the same viral tipping point for community currency that HTTP/HTML/Mosaic provided for the Internet. So that\u0026rsquo;s where I\u0026rsquo;m focusing my work.\nHistorical Comments samcooley \u0026mdash; December 09, 2007 at 03:55 PM Money on!\n","date":"December 7, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/12/07/why-i-am-working-on-open-money/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently I\u0026rsquo;ve had opportunity to reflect on why I\u0026rsquo;m particularly dedicated to the \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen money\u003c/a\u003e path out of all the many different community currency paths.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI offer it here not in the spirit of saying open money is better than other approaches, but rather just to share my understanding and what motivates me to work where I know I am best suited to contribute.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"why i am working on open money"},{"content":"In a discussion today with Jean-François about the content of my previous post, he described another very important way of thinking about the evolution of writing from pictographs to alphabets and ideograms. Namely that the step taken was from a system in which representations could be created, to a system in which information can be created. Likewise our current wealth acknowledgment systems actually represent wealth directly. A direct consequence of this is that money can be stolen. Writing, however creates information. Information intrinsically can\u0026rsquo;t be stolen (you have to set up complicated legal systems to shoe-horn information into being steal-able). Open money embodies the shift to a wealth acknowledgment system that allows us to move beyond representing wealth, into building information about wealth.\nHistorical Comments Sheri Herndon \u0026mdash; February 04, 2008 at 04:05 PM I really appreciate the distinction here Eric from representing wealth to building information about wealth. I want to take it one step further. In a recent conversation I was having with Paul (Taylor), what emerged was around generating wealth..so not just an exchange about wealth via information, but the creation of wealth. I know this is implicit in what you are writing but I wanted to speak up for what feels alive in me at this moment. It\u0026#x27;s the languaging I\u0026#x27;m reaching for...\nWill \u0026mdash; September 05, 2008 at 01:46 PM wait... you can steal ideograms?\n","date":"December 5, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/12/05/more-on-language-and-wealth-acknowledgment/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a discussion today with Jean-François about the content of my previous post, he described another very important way of thinking about the evolution of writing from pictographs to alphabets and ideograms. Namely that the step taken was from a system in which representations could be created, to a system in which information can be created. Likewise our current wealth acknowledgment systems actually represent wealth directly. A direct consequence of this is that money can be stolen. Writing, however creates information. Information intrinsically can\u0026rsquo;t be stolen (you have to set up complicated legal systems to shoe-horn information into being steal-able). Open money embodies the shift to a wealth acknowledgment system that allows us to move beyond representing wealth, into building information about wealth.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"More on language and wealth acknowledgment"},{"content":"Today it occurs to me that one way of describing inflation is that it is a tax on falsehood. Most of the taxes we pay are explicitly levied in some way or another. Inflation is the implicit tax that we pay through the structure of the monetary system itself, because of the way money is issued. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to dwell on that too much as others have; see: wikipedia, Ron Paul on the right, and Tom Greco on the left.\nWhat is interesting to me is that this \u0026ldquo;tax\u0026rdquo; is another case of the importance of truth telling. We think most often of the moral questions of individual truth telling, but this is a question of corporate truth telling. A fundamental lie is built into the structure of money itself, and that lie hurts us. It\u0026rsquo;s a tricky lie, the one that\u0026rsquo;s built into money, because it feels like a small one. In fact it\u0026rsquo;s measurably small. It\u0026rsquo;s in the single digits. It\u0026rsquo;s the 3-5% percent annual inflation rate!\nUnfortunately as our society is structured it is virtually impossible for us to reverse that lie. But we can start bubbles of truth telling, bubbles that can then grow and expand\u0026hellip; Those bubbles are all the places were we start issuing money honestly. Where we recognize that money is actually information, and as such each monetary transaction is a speech act, a telling. If it is a truthful telling, it is an acknowledgment of a wealth exchange. If that telling over or understates the wealth exchanged, then that falsehood will come back to haunt us.\n","date":"November 30, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/30/the-cost-of-lies/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday it occurs to me that one way of describing inflation is that it is a tax on falsehood. Most of the taxes we pay are explicitly levied in some way or another. Inflation is the implicit tax that we pay through the structure of the monetary system itself, because of the way money is issued. I don\u0026rsquo;t want to dwell on that too much as others have; see: \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_tax\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ewikipedia\u003c/a\u003e, \u003ca href=\"http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul334.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eRon Paul\u003c/a\u003e on the right, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.chelseagreen.com/images/moneyebook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTom Greco\u003c/a\u003e on the left.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the cost of lies"},{"content":"David Abram, in his book The Spell of the Sensuous, describes the history of written language and its evolution from pictographic directly representational symbolic system to an abstract phonemic system. He describes the incredible intellectual leap taken by some scribe who realized that the symbol doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually need to have ANY visual resemblance to the thing it represents. Apparently this evolutionary step came as a joke, as a pun. To describe this, the example Abram imagines is putting the image of a bee together with that of a leaf, making the word bee-leaf = belief. There is simply no pictorial representation of the abstract notion of a belief, but the pun simultaneously allows this representation and brings us to the first step of writing words phonemically. There are historical example of this in pictographic writing systems, and even in the first truly phonemic script of the semitic scribes, letters are often visually reminiscent of the word that contains that letter. For example our letter \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; comes from the aleph, which is drawn like our letter \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; turned upside-down and which looks like the head of an ox. The semitic word for ox began with the sound that the letter represented.\nWhat strikes me is the deep resemblance of this process to the evolution of money, both in terms of the \u0026ldquo;technology\u0026rdquo;? itself and in terms of the socio-political context surrounding it. This shouldn\u0026rsquo;t be surprising because at its core, a monetary exchange is really a linguistic utterance (more on that later). Money doesn\u0026rsquo;t look like language to us though, because we live in a stage where our money is still a very literal representation of things of value. Our instinctive direct perception of monetary exchange, is that we are exchanging things of equal value. Five dollars worth of carrots, is exactly that, an equal exchange of five valuable notes for a certain weight of valuable carrots. But this situation is very close to the idea that to write down carrot, I have to draw something that looks like a carrot. Of course I CAN draw a carrot to write it down (and it may be some-how \u0026ldquo;safer\u0026rdquo; to do so, in that the drawing is a much more universal representation of a carrot, than abstract symbols). But I don\u0026rsquo;t have to, as long as I get community buy-in to the symbol I use. The same thing is true of money. The gold coins and warehouse receipts of of a century ago clearly are like that drawing of a carrot, they are very close to things of value. Our modern debt-issued legal tender money is not quite as close, but there is a huge legal and governmental system behind it to enforce and essentially secure that relationship of money = value. I can hear the complaint, even in my own mind, that says, \u0026ldquo;but isn\u0026rsquo;t that what money is? Value?\u0026rdquo; It must have been just as terribly hard to see that the word for carrot need not look like a carrot.\nThe evolution of the symbols of writing is from the obvious to the abstract through four steps: first, a drawing of a carrot, second to some stylized strokes that vaguely look like a carrot, third to a one-off visual pun that sounds like the word for carrot, and then fourth, and this is the discontinuity, the huge leap, to a systematized set of symbols that map to the sound bits in the spoken word for carrot. In the evolution of money, we haven\u0026rsquo;t yet reached that 4th step. Paper notes backed by the debt which are secured by the \u0026ldquo;full faith and credit of the US government\u0026rdquo; (fancy words for its power to tax its citizens against their will) are like those stylized strokes that look like a carrot. This fourth step will only be taken when we recognize monetary exchange as a particular form of speech namely: statements of wealth acknowledgment. Money, at it\u0026rsquo;s core, is a symbolic way of acknowledging a wealth flow. It\u0026rsquo;s a way of making a statement to the community one lives in about an event. The five dollars is not really of equal value to the carrots, it\u0026rsquo;s a public statement of receipt of wealth. The statement has a consequence because of a community compact of what the statement means and when we are allowed to make such statements. The most basic form of the compact being that you can\u0026rsquo;t make a wealth acknowledgment statement (i.e. hand someone a bill) until someone has first made such a statement to you. In another form of the compact we allow ourselves to make such statements in advance of other having made them to us. That is what we call \u0026ldquo;credit.\u0026rdquo; The encoding of the statement into something physical, the coin or the note, is just part of how we as a community \u0026ldquo;buy-in\u0026rdquo; to the symbol system. (Note that the obvious monetary equivalent of a verbal lie, is counterfeiting. It\u0026rsquo;s a statement that breaks the chain of true wealth acknowledgments.)\ncialis discount viagra buy celexa wellbutrin online buy viagra soft tabs discount levitra levitra online clomid generic cialis accutane\nWriting at all levels of its evolution is a social compact of symbols and rules of placement that imbue them with meaning to the community that together adopts that compact. Through that social compact a fantastic and powerful feat is accomplished: the transmission of meaning across distance and time. The beauty of the fourth step in the evolution of writing is that it is the step that allows universal literacy. By simplifying the system down to a handful of symbols readily learnable by anybody that match sounds the already know (as opposed to a massive dictionary of pictographs only memorizable after long training), we enter the age of literacy. Observe the similarity with money. The social compact of the wealth acknowledgment statements likewise gives us the power to transmit across time and distance, but it\u0026rsquo;s not meaning, rather it\u0026rsquo;s value that we transmit. This we already experience with modern money, but what is the equivalent of the fourth step for money? It\u0026rsquo;s the simplification, and democratization of the forms of our wealth acknowledgment statements. To see what this means we can look back at the evolution of written language, but this time, not at the technology itself, but rather the socio-polical context surrounding it.\nThe scribes who initially held the knowledge of writing held it essentially as a trade secret, almost by necessity. When each word is represented by a different pictograph, written language becomes extremely complicated are requires lengthy training. (Apparently a 1716 Chinese dictionary had 40,000 characters in it compared to the 8000 in use today). At such a stage, Abram says \u0026ldquo;Literacy \u0026hellip; was in fact the literacy of a caste, or cult, whose sacred knowledge was often held in great esteem by the rest of society. It is unlikely that the scribes would willingly develop innovations that could simplify the new technology and so render literacy more accessible to the rest of the society.\u0026rdquo; Even after the event of phonemic writing systems, the legal and cultural enclosure of expression by the elite was (and still is) common place. Witness the keeping of Latin as the church language and the prohibition of translating the Bible into other languages. Such limiting naturally sets up power structures and economies.\nWhen I was growing up in Ecuador, I remember in the market place there would always be a couple men sitting by tiny tables with pen and paper and a line of people waiting for them to write letters, for which they would pay a small fee. This is a common sight wherever literacy isn\u0026rsquo;t universal. This situation is almost exactly the same we are in today with respect to money. We, and by we I mean our communities (not ourselves as individuals) are monetarily illiterate, and therefore we need others to make our wealth acknowledgment statements on our behalf (and we pay a pretty penny for it) when in fact, we could simply learn to write.\nLearning to write in the monetary context, is simply issuing a currency. Or, more precisely, creating the symbols and rules that a community will use to make wealth acknowledgment statements. But the problem is that we don\u0026rsquo;t have an alphabet, a grammar that we can follow with which to make such statements. Our monetary system and the financial world behind it is essentially that 40,000 character dictionary and the scribes who can interpret it. It does work. It creates a system in which we can make wealth acknowledgment statements at a global scale. But it does so at a direct cost like paying the scribe in the marketplace, and also a systemic cost, that of allowing an elite who control that system to grow and take advantage of those who do not.\nFortunately like the evolution of writing to phonetic scripts, money will also inevitably evolve. The next step is the development of the equivalent of letters to represent monetary phonemes. Where we are now, we can barely even hear such phonemes for what they are. Imagine the incredible leap of consciousness when those scribes realized that words actually were broken up into regular phonemes. That self-awareness was not always in place. Words were just entire units. The awareness of how they are composed of parts only comes to consciousness with writing. Think of how hard it is for children to detect when and where particular sounds of words start and stop. If you have learned another language as an adult you too will have had that direct experience yourself.\nThe discovery, and creation of the new \u0026ldquo;monetary script\u0026rdquo;, is exactly what the open money project is all about.\nHistorical Comments jakau \u0026mdash; June 04, 2019 at 06:08 PM Blew my mind\n","date":"November 5, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/11/05/language-money-wealth-acknowledgment/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDavid Abram, in his book \u003ca href=\"http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?qwork=6263181\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Spell of the Sensuous\u003c/a\u003e, describes the history of written language and its evolution from pictographic directly representational symbolic system to an abstract phonemic system. He describes the incredible intellectual leap taken by some scribe who realized that the symbol doesn\u0026rsquo;t actually need to have ANY visual resemblance to the thing it represents. Apparently this evolutionary step came as a joke, as a pun. To describe this, the example Abram imagines is putting the image of a bee together with that of a leaf, making the word bee-leaf = belief. There is simply no pictorial representation of the abstract notion of a belief, but the pun simultaneously allows this representation and brings us to the first step of writing words phonemically. There are historical example of this in pictographic writing systems, and even in the first truly phonemic script of the semitic scribes, letters are often visually reminiscent of the word that contains that letter. For example our letter \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; comes from the aleph, which is drawn like our letter \u0026ldquo;A\u0026rdquo; turned upside-down and which looks like the head of an ox. The semitic word for ox began with the sound that the letter represented.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Language, Money and Wealth Acknowledgment"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/categories/funny/","section":"Categories","summary":"","title":"Funny"},{"content":"So, there are two new skype related words that I\u0026rsquo;ve started using, one which I coined myself, and the other which was amazingly self-referentially coined while in a chat.\nThe first word \u0026ldquo;skypo\u0026rdquo; is what you do when you mistakenly (and potentially very embarrassingly) type something into the wrong chat. My skype window usually has 10 or so ongoing chats, often happening simultaneously, and sometimes I just start typing and hit return thinking I\u0026rsquo;m in one when I\u0026rsquo;m actually in another. That\u0026rsquo;s a skypo.\n[NOTE: Turns out (not surprisingly) that someone else though of this a few months before me\u0026hellip;]\nThe second word is for what happens when you are typing something and the other person in the chat was typing the exact same thing. The word is skypultaneous, and it was itself a skypultaneity, as I was chatting about this with Lisa trying to come up for a word for it and we skypultaneously typed \u0026ldquo;skypultaneous\u0026rdquo;!\n","date":"October 24, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/10/24/new-skype-language/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo, there are two new skype related words that I\u0026rsquo;ve started using, one which I coined myself, and the other which was amazingly self-referentially coined while in a chat.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first word \u0026ldquo;skypo\u0026rdquo; is what you do when you mistakenly (and potentially very embarrassingly) type something into the wrong chat. My skype window usually has 10 or so ongoing chats, often happening simultaneously, and sometimes I just start typing and hit return thinking I\u0026rsquo;m in one when I\u0026rsquo;m actually in another. That\u0026rsquo;s a skypo.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"new skype language"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/cc/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cc"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/money/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Money"},{"content":"There\u0026rsquo;s a skype chat I\u0026rsquo;m on that discusses community currencies, that recently was trying to find \u0026ldquo;the ultimate elevator pitch\u0026rdquo; for community currencies. This is a very reasonable request as all of us working in this area are frequently asked to describe what we are up to succinctly. Here\u0026rsquo;s my post to that chat in response to this request:\nThe results on this chat of the request for \u0026ldquo;the\u0026rdquo; cc elevator pitch is very interesting, and I think very telling. It led to one of the longest back and forth we\u0026rsquo;ve seen on all kinds of things about different approaches to what is the key or central issue and reason for community currencies. The arguments and points of view presented were pretty familiar and very similar in flavor (though much more civil :-) to what happens over on IJCCR and elsewhere in cc circles. But, as I\u0026rsquo;ve seen before, they don\u0026rsquo;t seem to take us very far. In theory I agree that an elevator pitch helps us focus on the \u0026ldquo;essence\u0026rdquo; of a thing, but my experience has been that there really is no single elevator pitch for cc. I now see this experience itself as a clue to the essence of community currency.\nWhen I\u0026rsquo;m talking with free-market business people my elevator pitch is about allowing the power of competition and the marketplace to work on the currency system itself. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with environmentalists, my elevator pitch is about cc as a tool for solving the problem of the economic externalities of pollution and environmental degradation. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with social and political activists my elevator pitch is about how the structure of money is fundamentally causal of the problems unequal distribution of wealth. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with mathematicians my pitch is about how money is an axiom and current economics is the theorems that results from that axiom, but a different axiom (i.e. community currency) is possible that leads to whole new theorems, just like non-Euclidean geometry resulted from changing the parallel postulate. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with engineers and information-theory folks my elevator pitch is about Ashby\u0026rsquo;s Law of Requisite Variety and questions of the insufficient information carrying capacity of the monetary system to handle the control problems posed by the modern economy. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with computer geeks my elevator pitch is about cc as a peer-to-peer distributed information system and about \u0026ldquo;pushing the intelligence to the edges\u0026rdquo; as in Reed\u0026rsquo;s Law. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with peace activists my elevator pitch is about how the structure of money is what allows governments to finance wars (it\u0026rsquo;s not the taxes which just pay for them after the fact). When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with people focused on spirituality, my elevator pitch is about how cc can be a tool for changing the economy itself into a means for increasing mindfulness, self-consciousness and community interrelatedness. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with the plain old \u0026ldquo;concerned-citizen,\u0026rdquo; my elevator pitch is about their experience of degraded community and how money that leaves the community is central to the problem and how money that \u0026ldquo;goes-round\u0026rdquo; is the solution to that problem. When I\u0026rsquo;m talking with people who are interested in questions of trust my elevator pitch is about the value of moving from an economy of external trust to internal trust, and I used the analogy of the bicycle: Bicycles are more maneuverable and useful than tricycles because we move from trusting the tricycle not to fall over because of the stability of its three wheels, to trusting ourselves to not let the bike fall over because of the stability of our steering. Similarly this process of moving the locus of control from outside of communities to inside them can be applied to money. (This pitch works well with spiritual people too, and oddly, a variant of this pitch works great with engineers who understand how adding \u0026ldquo;instability\u0026rdquo; into a system is the paradoxically key ingredient to it\u0026rsquo;s greater stability when the system is coupled with humans. It\u0026rsquo;s one of the key things the Wright brothers figured out in designing airplanes.)\nThe experience of developing all these very different pitches has led me to a new pitch (it\u0026rsquo;s not an \u0026ldquo;ultimate elevator pitch\u0026rdquo;, it\u0026rsquo;s just the one I use with people who already know something about cc) namely, that essence of community currencies is meta-currency. That modern money was one step in the evolution of the more general human process of wealth-acknowledgment, and that the next step in wealth-acknowledgment is the building of a meta-currency platform that allows us to create currencies at will, which will activate all forms of wealth, not just tradable wealth. Whereas money provided liquidity to value, a meta-currency platform will provide liquidity to currency itself. Within this framework, all the other pitches are embraced. Within this framework, the pitches given so far on this chat (and they are all pretty good) are for particular instances or types of community currencies, namely ones where the community is geographically local and the wealth acknowledged is tradable wealth.\nFor more than an elevator pitch (it\u0026rsquo;s about 2 pages) on wealth-acknowledgment, the non-tradable forms of wealth, and a meta-currency platform in development, see http://openmoney.info/sophia\n","date":"May 14, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/05/14/the-elevator-pitch-for-community-currencies/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThere\u0026rsquo;s a skype chat I\u0026rsquo;m on that discusses community currencies, that recently was trying to find \u0026ldquo;the ultimate elevator pitch\u0026rdquo; for community currencies. This is a very reasonable request as all of us working in this area are frequently asked to describe what we are up to succinctly. Here\u0026rsquo;s my post to that chat in response to this request:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the \"elevator-pitch\" for community currencies"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/capistrano/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Capistrano"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/deploy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Deploy"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/os-x/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Os-X"},{"content":"Ok, so in a previous post I described the rabit-hole which is switching to rails. Below\u0026rsquo;s my capistrano deploy script which solves a number of problems:\nThe production server needs a mongrel cluster configuration file added. Deployment requires restarting the mongrel cluster. On Ubuntu the database.yaml spec has to be modified to because you need to specify a mysql socket path differently from OS X. So here\u0026rsquo;s what I added to make it work:\nd t e d c D t e d c D t e d a i D t e e a n e o E a n e o E a n e f t E a n s s s r s d s n S s r d d s n S s d r d s t S s c c d c k u u u c f C k u e c f C k b u c e w C k o o d n d i n v - i _ n r i n n \" : o o g : e c g : c l : f f R r \" u c \" l u c o \" u l a i i e e \" c \" - r o c o # - r o n c - p f g g s s e d / D e n d p { D e n f p D d b t u u t t c u E f m c E f i E a e e r r a a h # s S t i # e u S t i g # S t r e e r r o { r C h g { n r C h g { C i a _ _ _ t t c / e u c t r e u = d n p u m d , ' u l r u e r b g p p o a t f r o m e r - n m e \" _ r d n t h : i r c o _ r p t o _ # c w o a g a e r s e a n m e _ n d { o e p t r b o h n l g o n 9 p g a s n r e e a w l ' t / r n t 0 a r t h f n i , l s e e \" _ a e g _ 0 t e a a i e a e b s p p l r p 0 h l b r g e t : # a a e a } a e } d l r s = b t c c l t - c s d y o e \u0026gt; o h h l h a - l e _ # t l r g } e u d } N u p { o l e v : u / s o 1 s d a c a s e a s \u0026amp; b t \u0026amp; 2 2 t o t u a u r p \u0026amp; i e \u0026amp; 7 e h r d n = p c n r . r } r d c \u0026gt; a o s / m 0 - / e h n d m u a o . u c n b e : d o m d p n 0 s o t a d a a o a g . e n _ c . p m n c r 1 r f p k p o d m h e i a n o e l - o g t i W d g t n c _ P m / h n e o r o g t r d } e r l a # a / t a l m e i { - t c h l a l g l s g a o e s c k _ r s h r b n o l e r a a o a f m u a c c r u s i o n s s i e l e p e g n e t u l f u d . / g e e d s u s _ o y d r d r o l t p m m a e \" c \" e a \" l t l t w l r t \" a o o u : h b c r s : } a o u k t c s n p e p e f d i r n i . i a n : f d y g t : i s m u e t r g / l r h e u m \" a t e s r o t h t e n i e r a g o u r - r n d n t e e a \" l f t c . i a o p l b m i e a m d s a s e n o d c t o h n a f t i g w h f e i n l e r e s t a r t i s c a l l e d ","date":"April 19, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/04/19/rails-capistrano-deploy-script-os-x-to-ubuntu/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOk, so in a previous post I described the rabit-hole which is switching to rails. Below\u0026rsquo;s my capistrano deploy script which solves a number of problems:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eThe production server needs a mongrel cluster configuration file added.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eDeployment requires restarting the mongrel cluster.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn Ubuntu the database.yaml spec has to be modified to because you need to specify a mysql socket path differently from OS X.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSo here\u0026rsquo;s what I added to make it work:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"rails capistrano deploy script OS X to Ubuntu"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/ubuntu/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ubuntu"},{"content":"The last few days working on the openmoney.info website, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a major hassle dealing with what appears to be a bug in the html renderer in Firefox.\nThe issue is that in Firefox, text in a list item won\u0026rsquo;t wrap around a right floated image; like this:\n2. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, 3. sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.\nCode:\no l \u0026lt; \u0026lt; \u0026lt; U u o i l l t t l s m i i \u0026gt; t g \u0026gt; \u0026gt; e a y L s n l l s o e i i e r r d m q = c e u \" = m d a i b \" o d p o / i r b p e m e d l s i i x e o u u n r g m s i e : / m m a i d o 1 m o d v c p a l e o x g o t n m e r e i m s s m a o o / s p m d l p i o , o i h t r d o q c t a i u o # o m n i n c . e c s s c p t i e c n , d n q c g i o u c \" c d s a c o u t t ; s n n r . t s t u \u0026lt; w y e d / i l c u l d e t t e i t = e x \u0026gt; h \" t l e : f u a r l r b c 3 o o i 0 a a r t 0 t d e a p : i t x p e i \" r i t o \u0026gt; i s n g i d h c o u t i l l \" n o l g r a e m e c l m o i a t g l , n a \u0026lt; a b / o l a r i l i \u0026gt; i s q u n a i . s i In Safari \u0026amp; Opera the text in the second list item wraps just fine. After an hour of searching the web and trying various things with clear, and in-line, I discovered that the solution was to set the list item width to 100%. In other words, list items take on the width that they start at by default! Crazy. The solution:\no l \u0026lt; \u0026lt; \u0026lt; d u o i l l o l l s m i i l l \u0026gt; t g \u0026gt; o a y L s r m l s o t e c e r r y o = c e l m \" = m e a l b \" = g a o / i \" n b r b p w a o d l s i r e o u d a i r g m t l s : / h i i d : q n 1 m o 1 u i p a l 0 a s x g o 0 . i e r % s s \" u o / s \u0026gt; U t l p i s t i h t e a d o d e l t a n i # o m d i q c . e o m u c p t i c n , e a p c g i d c \" c u e c o s m x ; s n m i t s o n e w y e d i a i l c m d e t t c t = e e v o h \" t m e m : f u p n m l r o i o 3 o r a d 0 a a m o 0 t d i , p : i n c x p c q o \" r i i u n \u0026gt; i s d i s g i i s e h c d q t i u n u \" n n o a g t s t t . e u r \u0026lt; l t u / i d l t l i , a e \u0026gt; \u0026lt; b x / o e l r r i e c \u0026gt; i e t t a t i o n yields nice wrapping text for the second list item:\n2. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, 3. sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.\nIf you aren\u0026rsquo;t viewing this on Firefox, the above two may look identical. That\u0026rsquo;s the whole point!\n[tags]css,firefox,list item,wrap[/tags]\n","date":"April 15, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/04/15/a-list-items-wont-wrap-firefox-css-fix/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe last few days working on the \u003ca href=\"http://openmoney.info\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopenmoney.info\u003c/a\u003e website, I\u0026rsquo;ve had a major hassle dealing with what appears to be a bug in the html renderer in Firefox.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe issue is that in Firefox, text in a list item won\u0026rsquo;t wrap around a right floated image; like this:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A \"list items won't wrap\" Firefox css fix!"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/galbraith/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Galbraith"},{"content":"You can read this short book in an hour, but you\u0026rsquo;ll be thinking about it for much longer. Galbraith, a man of impeccable credentials, points out some of the unspoken (by mainstream culture) truths of our times:\n\u0026ldquo;The free-market system\u0026rdquo; is the meaningless replacement term for what capitalism has become, and what should truthfully be called the \u0026ldquo;corporate system.\u0026rdquo; We hide a deep social injustice by referring to two entirely separate things with same word: \u0026ldquo;work.\u0026rdquo; Work is used for both the painful life-sapping labor for bare necessities, as well as for the meaningful effort of pursuing ones calling. It is not the shareholders nor the directors of corporations that control them, it is their management. The consequences of this fact is far-reaching, a small example of which is simply that management gets to set it\u0026rsquo;s own rate of compensation which amounts to massive legalized theft. There is no longer such thing as the public and private sectors. What was the public sector is almost entirely controlled by private interests for private benefit. The idea that the Federal Reserve prevents inflation and helps the economy out of recession by raising or lowering interest rates is and has always been, entirely a fiction. Foreign policy is dictated by the pecuniary desires of the military industrial complex. Whether you agree his analysis or not, I\u0026rsquo;d recommend reading the book. The sad thing is that he says absolutely nothing about how to fix this mess, except by hinting at regulation of some sort, some how, but this after having just explained how the regulators themselves are in on the game.\nIn Galbraith\u0026rsquo;s 1975 book Money, whence it came, where it went, he describes perfectly our modern monetary system. Unlike most people, he fully understood money as a human invention. So it would seem surprising that he wouldn\u0026rsquo;t understand the underlying pattern of all thetruths that he so clearly does see. It\u0026rsquo;s simply money. None of these patterns will be fixed until we evolve the money itself that is the driving force behind each of those six truths. Check out openmoney.info for more on how and why.\n","date":"April 15, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/04/15/the-economics-of-innocent-fraud-john-kenneth-galbraith-2004/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eYou can read this short book in an hour, but you\u0026rsquo;ll be thinking about it for much longer. Galbraith, a man of impeccable credentials, points out some of the unspoken (by mainstream culture) truths of our times:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Economics of Innocent Fraud, John Kenneth Galbraith, 2004"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/truth/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Truth"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/bdd/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Bdd"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/devalot/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Devalot"},{"content":"The last month has been quite a trip down the rabbit hole into the new reality of ruby on rails! The promise of a powerful and well designed web application framework was just too much for me to resist, so I decided to leave my own yawaf framework behind (though it has certainly served me well).\nSo I\u0026rsquo;m posting this entry for those just starting down this path so you can see what might be on the path ahead of you and what I did to make my way over the learning curve.\nI purchased both the Programming Ruby and Agile Web Development with Rails books, and read them cover to cover. Both books are good. Dave Thomas really can write a good programming book. I dove into finally wrapping my head around the REST approach, which I also knew I wanted to switch to and was part of the reason I choose rails in the first place. To this end I found this great tutorial: RESTful Rails Development which expands on and gives clarity to the REST chapters in Dave Thomas\u0026rsquo;s book. Then it was time to install the creature on my PowerBook. The instructions in Dave\u0026rsquo;s book are pretty good, but the real place to go is hivelogic Once I had rails up I got my feet wet by implementing the bare essentials of the two projects that are the reason for switching to rails: the MANA stats project and, of course, open money. Since another reason for switching to rails was to be using an open source framework that others are well familiar with, and because open money is an open source project, and I want to get it out sooner rather than later, it was time to figure out where it should live. I find source-forge unbearably ugly, and though there are some other nice FLOSS platforms (launchpad, freshmeat), I settled on rubyforge for obvious reasons. So I spent a number hours learning my way around rubyforge (an instance of gForge) and setting up the open money project there. I realized pretty quickly that rubyforge is the right place to put up the releases of the projects and I may even use their svn repositories for a while, but gForge doesn\u0026rsquo;t cut it as a project development environment. So there I was off into another tunnel of the rabbit hole, which project development tool. So many of them\u0026hellip; I see that lots of people, including the rubyonrails folks themselves, use Trac. However, I read many accounts of how difficult it was to install and get running, plus, I really felt that I wanted my project management tool to be in rails, to thereby leverage all my learning curve. I knew also that I was going to be modifying it out the wazoo, so it didn\u0026rsquo;t make any sense to learn yet another whole system. Dittio for various php bug-trackers, etc. After more hours of research, my options were then down to three: collaboa, retrospectiva (which is a fork of collaboa), and devalot. The first two are much more feature rich. But I ended up choosing Devalot, after talking with it\u0026rsquo;s author, Peter Jones (who seems like a real great guy) mostly because it just feels better than the others, but also because I like where it\u0026rsquo;s headed. Then I started to scratch my head about how in the heck I was going to deploy these apps. Yawaf is Perl base and deployable as plain CGI and works quite well for small sites. I\u0026rsquo;ve always known that I could switch to mod_perl if traffic increased enough to warrant it. Rails is another matter. You need to start out understanding deployment. So I read all that I could find, and tagged the good stuff for your reading pleasure on delicious. Upshot for me is apache 2.2.4 + mongrel + mod_prox_balancer + monit (not mongrel_cluster). [Update, after many hassles with monit, I ended up going back to mongrel_cluster (though I may add monit in later to monitor the cluster). See this e-mail exchange on the mongrel-users mailing list for details.] Then I realized that getting this to happen on my current VPS was going to be a nightmare, because it\u0026rsquo;s a DirectAdmin box, and getting apache upgraded to 2.2.4 was hard enough, but adding mod_proxy, etc was just not going to be doable while at the same time keeping it stable with my current apps live. So, then it was deeper down the rabbit hole into investigating Rails Hosting companies! Finding a hosting company in general is a huge pain and it is so variable according to your needs. Mine are complete control, hence VPS. Upshot: the company I wanted to go with, slicehost, is only taking reservations, and can\u0026rsquo;t fulfill orders for a month. Yow. (By the way, here\u0026rsquo;s a great writeup on rails hosting, and more delicious tagging of rails hosting in general.) So, now I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to do all this installation and testing of my future deployment environment on my basement Ubuntu server until slicehost comes through, or I find something better. For Ubuntu installation I\u0026rsquo;m taking some hints from these instructions which were missing one dependency for apache to compile for me (sudo apt-get install openssl libssl-dev). You may also want to check out this peepcode screen cast for another take on how to install the rails stack onto Ubuntu using deprec. It turned Once all the components are installed, the next challenge is configuring them to work right for your particular rails app. Enter bowtie, also by Peter Jones. Though still in development, this little utility produces configuration files for apache to use mod_proxy_balancer, and also for monit to launch and keep your mongrel instances up and running. Ok, so server is up and running, and I have a basic app on my development box, now I how do I deploy to the production server. Enter capistrano. Yet another learning curve. The trick is getting your deploy.rb script right to handle all the various problems\u0026hellip; That will wait for a future post. Then, back into coding, I\u0026rsquo;ve realized that I just have to bite the bullet and start to use all the goodies built into ruby and rails for doing test driven development. So I started doing some background reading on good TDD practices which led me to behavior driven development which of course is why I\u0026rsquo;ve been putting of using TDD for so long because it\u0026rsquo;s BDD that actually makes sense. Here\u0026rsquo;s a great article by Dave Astels on BDD in the Ruby context. And fortunately there is rspec, a great implementation of BDD that integrates well into rails. The tutorial in the rspec documentation is very good for understanding it, and here\u0026rsquo;s the tutorial I used to get started using rspec in the rails context. Which led me to another helpful post by Dave Astels. ","date":"April 13, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/04/13/down-the-rails-rabbit-hole/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe last month has been quite a trip down the rabbit hole into the new reality of \u003ca href=\"http://www.rubyonrails.org/\" title=\"rabbit hole!\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eruby on rails\u003c/a\u003e! The promise of a powerful and well designed web application framework was just too much for me to resist, so I decided to leave my own \u003ca href=\"http://yawaf.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eyawaf\u003c/a\u003e framework behind (though it has certainly served me well).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"down the rails rabbit hole"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/installation/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Installation"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/rspec/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rspec"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/ruby/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ruby"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/trac/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Trac"},{"content":"So marketing blogger Seth Godin has a mention of SnapMail in the same breath as File Maker Pro on his blog. It\u0026rsquo;s nice that my humble little program is in such august company, though the context is a bit sad. What\u0026rsquo;s so odd is how SnapMail was created before the Internet was at all a house-hold word, back in 93, and it still has such a faithful following. I guess there is something valuable about having a little communication tool that\u0026rsquo;s not on the Internet! Who\u0026rsquo;da a thunk?\n[tags]SnapMail[/tags]\n","date":"March 26, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/03/26/snapmail-on-seth-godins-blog/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSo marketing blogger Seth Godin has a \u003ca href=\"http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/03/wish_i_had_it.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003emention\u003c/a\u003e of \u003ca href=\"http://glassbead.com/snapmail\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSnapMail\u003c/a\u003e in the same breath as File Maker Pro on his blog. It\u0026rsquo;s nice that my humble little program is in such august company, though the context is a bit sad. What\u0026rsquo;s so odd is how SnapMail was created before the Internet was at all a house-hold word, back in 93, and it still has such a faithful following. I guess there is something valuable about having a little communication tool that\u0026rsquo;s \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003enot\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e on the Internet! Who\u0026rsquo;da a thunk?\u003c/p\u003e","title":"SnapMail on Seth Godin's Blog"},{"content":"A while back I thought I would take on the discipline of posting a short essay on each book I read. I haven\u0026rsquo;t done that, but here is a list of my recent reading, with one or two sentences for each.\nGoatwalking, Jim Corbett: Astounding analysis of the relationship of people to society and how to go free. Plus much about the sanctuary movement.\nSeeing Nature, Paul Krafel: Hugely powerful; tools for seeing and thinking about the universe in new ways, simply told, but profound. I read twice.\nPassionate Marriage, David Schnarch: Life changing book. Triggered many understandings for how to actually grow up.\nAgile Web Development with Rails \u0026amp; Programming Ruby, Dave Thomas: Two very well written coding books to feed my latest programming need.\nDiscipline \u0026amp; Punish, Michel Foucault: Deep insight into why and how society is structured around and needs prisons and criminals.\nWhen Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön: Essays on Buddhism in the tradition of Trungpa.\nShambhala; The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chögyam Trungpa: A Tibetan Buddhist\u0026rsquo;s approach cast for western appeal. Insightful and inspiring, but often it feels like he uses many words and phrases that would have more power if I knew Tibetan culture.\nThe Barn at the End of the World, Mary Rose O\u0026rsquo;Reilley: A Quaker Buddhists spiritual path which includes much about sheep. Funny and delightful to read.\nThe Diamond Cutter, Micheal Roach: An approach to Buddhist practice aimed at business men. Some powerful methodologies and explanations of Buddhism especially about the concept of karma, though he mentions the word only once. Roach is also a trained Buddhist monk.\nMind and Nature, Gregory Bateson: I read this book and then read it again immediately it was so good. It\u0026rsquo;s a deeply synthetic presentation of what mind is and where it comes from, with lots of other goodies thrown in, like fantastic definitions of addiction, explanation, and more.\nTowards and Epistemology of the Sacred, Gregory Bateson and Mary Catherine Bateson: posthumous completion of Bateson\u0026rsquo;s last work by his brilliant daughter.\nThe Laws of Form, G. Spencer Brown: Almost impossible to understand presentation of a fundamental mathematics starting from the fundament of making a distinction. I will be reading this one again too.\nOnly Two Can Play This Game, James Keyes (G. Spencer Brown): Supposedly exactly the same as The Laws of Form but in prose. Some dated phrasings making it odd to read, but fun to read. Basically it\u0026rsquo;s a love story and the initial distinction is maleness and femaleness.\n","date":"March 16, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/03/16/recent-reading-list/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA while back I thought I would take on the discipline of posting a short essay on each book I read. I haven\u0026rsquo;t done that, but here is a list of my recent reading, with one or two sentences for each.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Recent Reading List"},{"content":"In a previous post, I talked about how there are two different kinds of trust, and how important that is to understanding what needs to happen in the currency world. Here is a fantastic essay on confucianism technical standards and culture, which gets to the same essential pattern but in a different arena. The essay includes the following quote from Confucious\u0026rsquo; Analects:\nLead the people with administrative injunctions and keep them orderly with penal law, and they will avoid punishments but will be without a sense of shame. Lead them with excellence and keep them orderly through observing [禮] and they will develop a sense of shame, and moreover, will order themselves.\nThis is exactly related the trust question. Do we organize ourselves through internal or external processes? Shame and punishment are both processes that can lead to social conformance. The first is internal the second external.\n","date":"February 14, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/02/14/confucianism-standards-and-culture/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a \u003ca href=\"/blog/2006/12/12/id-40\"\u003eprevious post\u003c/a\u003e, I talked about how there are two different kinds of trust, and how important that is to understanding what needs to happen in the currency world. Here is a \u003ca href=\"http://deadhobosociety.com/index.php/Essays/ESSAY12\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003efantastic essay\u003c/a\u003e on confucianism technical standards and culture, which gets to the same essential pattern but in a different arena. The essay includes the following quote from Confucious\u0026rsquo; Analects:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"confucianism, standards, and culture"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/fork/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Fork"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/open-source/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Open-Source"},{"content":"The power behind the open source/creative commons movement lies in the value of letting go of ownership of your productive work and trusting that the value you could have charged for directly by not doing so, will instead be returned to you indirectly.\nSo, I did this for my paper on the process revolutuion and I have thereby experience this fact directly. Zack Clarck has \u0026ldquo;forked\u0026rdquo; my paper, changing various terms I used to describe concepts, changing the flavor of the paper by making it less neutral and more strongly worded, and adding new ideas as well. The power of this occurrence is tremendous. The old model would have been to find a journal to publish the idea in, and collect money on the sale, and sue for copyright infringement because of lost sales, blah, blah, blah.\nIt all points to the difference between money and wealth.\n","date":"January 14, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/01/14/proof-is-in-the-pudding/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe power behind the open source/creative commons movement lies in the value of letting go of ownership of your productive work and trusting that the value you could have charged for directly by not doing so, will instead be returned to you indirectly.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"proof is in the pudding"},{"content":"Today I listened with awe to Keith Olbermann \u0026ldquo;Sacrifice\u0026rdquo; speech. I can only hope that this, appearing in a mainstream media outlet, will have the effect of ending our modern day McCarthyism: \u0026ldquo;the War on Terror.\u0026rdquo;\n[tags]War on Terror,McCarthyism,Sacrifice, Iraq,war,Iraq war,George Bush[/tags]\n","date":"January 9, 2007","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2007/01/09/the-end-of-bush-mccarthyism/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eToday I listened with awe to \u003ca href=\"http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16442767/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eKeith Olbermann \u0026ldquo;Sacrifice\u0026rdquo; speech\u003c/a\u003e. I can only hope that this, appearing in a mainstream media outlet, will have the effect of ending our modern day McCarthyism: \u0026ldquo;the War on Terror.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The end of Bush McCarthyism?"},{"content":"When ever I introduce people to the idea of community currencies, I have experienced that the question of trust comes up again and again. This is reasonable, but I\u0026rsquo;m quite convinced that the breadth and depth of what trust is, is very poorly understood. Trust seems to be a word that, in the case of money, is hiding at least two forms of something that are actually quite disparate. I think this is because experientially, these forms of trust feel the same, but they arise from entirely separate circumstances. Some examples to get at this:\nWhat kind of trust does it take to ride a bicycle? It\u0026rsquo;s not trust that the bicycle will stay upright. If you are afraid of falling over, and you want to entrust that functionality to the bike itself, that would be misplaced trust. Instead of trusting the bike to not fall over, what we do appropriately trust is that that it won\u0026rsquo;t fall apart. The former kind of trust you can give to a trike. What kind of trust is necessary to write a post on the Wikipedia? This might sound like a funny question, but why spend your time writing something that anybody in the world could just erase? Your efforts are certainly not \u0026ldquo;safe\u0026rdquo; from being changed, deleted, or even edited beyond recognition perhaps into meanings opposite of the ones your intended. Just like the bike, the Wikipedia is not engineered for certain kinds of stability, in fact, like the bike, its value arises from an intentional decrease in stability, a letting go of a \u0026ldquo;security,\u0026rdquo; in this case, that my words won\u0026rsquo;t be deleted. The value comes from the fact, that by allowing some \u0026ldquo;insecurity\u0026rdquo; the whole endeavor will proceed more rapidly and be more adaptable (incidentally that\u0026rsquo;s exactly the advantage a bike has over a trike). What I hope that these two examples reveal is that we can gain a sense of safety and security by a stability imposed externally, or by understanding and control achieved internally. The experience of safety and security is identical. The process by which this experience is achieved is radically different, both in terms of external mechanisms or infrastructure and internal education and knowledge.\nIn the currency world, the same truth is in play. What we want is safety and security. What we need to achieve financial independence is to get off our trikes and learn to use a new machine that is less stable, but infinitely more maneuverable and, fun to ride.\n","date":"December 12, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/12/12/community-currency-and-trust/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen ever I introduce people to the idea of community currencies, I have experienced that the question of trust comes up again and again. This is reasonable, but I\u0026rsquo;m quite convinced that the breadth and depth of what trust is, is very poorly understood. Trust seems to be a word that, in the case of money, is hiding at least two forms of something that are actually quite disparate. I think this is because experientially, these forms of trust feel the same, but they arise from entirely separate circumstances. Some examples to get at this:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"community currency and trust"},{"content":"If you\u0026rsquo;ve been involved in the creative commons, open source, free software, or any of the many strands of thinking that are developing along these lines, then Copyright, Copy-Left, and the Creative Anti-Commons by Anna Nimus is a must read. She provides a very provocative understanding of the fundamental idea of copy-right, from it\u0026rsquo;s historical genesis, to how it relates to the Lawrence Lessig\u0026rsquo;s Creative Commons work. The paper is long, but it\u0026rsquo;s very well worth the read.\n[tags]creative commons,cc,copyright,copyleft,gnu,FLOSS,open source,free software,Lawrence Lessig,commons[/tags]\n","date":"December 12, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/12/12/is-the-creative-commons-movement-reall-about-the-commons/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIf you\u0026rsquo;ve been involved in the creative commons, open source, free software, or any of the many strands of thinking that are developing along these lines, then \u003ca href=\"http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors0/nimustext.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCopyright, Copy-Left, and the Creative Anti-Commons\u003c/a\u003e by Anna Nimus is a must read. She provides a very provocative understanding of the fundamental idea of copy-right, from it\u0026rsquo;s historical genesis, to how it relates to the Lawrence Lessig\u0026rsquo;s Creative Commons work. The paper is long, but it\u0026rsquo;s very well worth the read.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Is the Creative Commons movement reall about the commons?"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/stability/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Stability"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/trust/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Trust"},{"content":"Don\u0026rsquo;t you hate it in the computer field where something that was working fine for ages suddenly stops working? So this is what happened to me this time:\nAll of a sudden, when I plugged in my nice new Sennheiser USB headphones (PC165 USB) I couldn\u0026rsquo;t hear the sound. To get the sound to play, I\u0026rsquo;d have to go to the Audio MIDI Setup utility and toggle the mute button in the audio output settings. It had been working fine for a month, just plug it in and any audio output would just switch over from the speaker to th headphones. So I called AppleCare tech support who said this was a Sennheiser problem, and I sent e-mail to Sennheiser who of course pointed back at Apple.\nWell it turns out that to fix the problem, all I had to do was check the \u0026ldquo;Thru\u0026rdquo; checkbox on the audio input settings (in the Audio MIDI Setup Application). With that box checked, it works!\nGo figure.\n[tags]Mac OS X, USB, audio, headphones, mute, plug, Sennheiser, PC165 USB, Audio MIDI Setup[/tags]\n","date":"December 6, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/12/06/solved-usb-audio-headphones-muted-when-pugged-in/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDon\u0026rsquo;t you hate it in the computer field where something that was working fine for ages suddenly stops working? So this is what happened to me this time:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAll of a sudden, when I plugged in my nice new Sennheiser USB headphones (PC165 USB) I couldn\u0026rsquo;t hear the sound. To get the sound to play, I\u0026rsquo;d have to go to the Audio MIDI Setup utility and toggle the mute button in the audio output settings. It had been working fine for a month, just plug it in and any audio output would just switch over from the speaker to th headphones. So I called AppleCare tech support who said this was a Sennheiser problem, and I sent e-mail to Sennheiser who of course pointed back at Apple.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Solved: usb audio headphones muted when pugged in"},{"content":"One of the many very nice concepts that I learned about first in Jean François Noubel\u0026rsquo;s work on collective intelligence is sousveillance which is the inverse of surveillance. It was first coined by Steve Mann and then later picked up by Howard Rheingold.\nBesides the concept itself and it\u0026rsquo;s obviously deep ramifications on political and social structure, there are two things that keep coming to mind:\n\u0026ldquo;sousveillance\u0026rdquo; is a sucky English word. It\u0026rsquo;s a problematic concept vehicle for the concept because aurally (for English speakers) it\u0026rsquo;s almost indistinguishable from surveillance, and it\u0026rsquo;s hard to spell :-). So I\u0026rsquo;d thought of the term: subvision as the inverse of supervision, which then also could have the verb form \u0026ldquo;to subvise\u0026rdquo; (instead of \u0026ldquo;to supervise\u0026rdquo;). Sousveillance almost necessarily will have a deeply negative effect on privacy, something that I\u0026rsquo;ve hold to be very important. But then I found this little parable (also by Steve Mann), which clearly shows how many of the ways we protect privacy is through pseudoprivacy measures that actually decrease the possibility of true privacy in the long run. [tags]sousveillance, surveillance, language, privacy, pseudoprivacy[/tags]\n","date":"November 4, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/11/04/sousveillance-and-subvision/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOne of the many very nice concepts that I learned about first in Jean François Noubel\u0026rsquo;s work on collective intelligence is \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=sousveillance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003esousveillance\u003c/a\u003e which is the inverse of surveillance. It was first coined by \u003ca href=\"http://wearcam.org/sousveillance.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSteve Mann\u003c/a\u003e and then later picked up by \u003ca href=\"http://www.smartmobs.com/archive/2002/11/30/sousveillance_w....html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHoward Rheingold\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"sousveillance and subvision"},{"content":"Well, Bruce Sterling, as usual, has an idea. It seems to me that we are walking a knife edge, nay, a ceramic blade edge of incredible sharpness, on one side of which is evolved conciousness, and the other, dismal slavery. That blade hurts my feet.\nHistorical Comments francois \u0026mdash; November 04, 2006 at 01:41 PM This is what Larry Lessig (\u0026lt;a href=\u0026quot;http://lessig.org/\u0026quot; rel=\u0026quot;nofollow\u0026quot;\u0026gt;http://lessig.org/\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt;) has been yelling about for a few years now. In his 1999 book \u0026#x27;Code Is Law\u0026#x27; (\u0026lt;a href=\u0026quot;http://www.code-is-law.org/\u0026quot; rel=\u0026quot;nofollow\u0026quot;\u0026gt;http://www.code-is-law.org/\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt;, ) he literally argued that the architecture we devise for our information systems are like laws that are directly enforceable. In the real world leniency is built in because full enforceability would be too difficult, expensive, unpractical, or unrealistic. This allows a certain degree of flexibility within which exceptions can have their space, thus avoiding suffocation by complete control over everything. However in the architecture of information systems we can ensure rules are followed whatever the situation. Such level of enforceability are not necessarily desirable, and an obvious example is in the domain of copyright and how computer systems can enforce them, leaving little or no space for fair use.\nThis is why the model of the commons is so crucial, especially where technology inserts itself in-between people\u0026#x27;s relationships. A social network software which cannot be changed by its users is simply a new form of totalitarism (cybertotalitarism?). How about online marketplaces where participants can\u0026#x27;t have a say in how the market should be operated, or where they can be excluded arbitrarily?\nLet\u0026#x27;s avoid bleeding our feet by holding the vision high for the new systems we are creating. Let\u0026#x27;s give ourselves the tools we need in order to become responsible in our choices. But first, let\u0026#x27;s give ourselves systems where choice is possible, otherwise how can we practice our responsibility?\neric \u0026mdash; November 04, 2006 at 07:59 PM François, this is a great comment. I\u0026#x27;ve often noticed in projects that I\u0026#x27;ve worked on how the way we design the code ends up forcing human behavior and not always in the happiest ways. I think. One of the simplest most obvious indicators of how important an issue this is, is just to look at \u0026quot;skins\u0026quot; and how much people like the choice that they embody. The really issue is to make that choice not just be \u0026quot;skin\u0026quot; deep, but go as far down into the code as possible.\n","date":"October 16, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/10/16/what-is-it-all-coming-to/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWell, Bruce Sterling, as usual, has \u003ca href=\"http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125691.800-ii-saw-the-best-minds-of-my-generation-destroyed-by-googlei.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ean idea\u003c/a\u003e. It seems to me that we are walking a knife edge, nay, a ceramic blade edge of incredible sharpness, on one side of which is evolved conciousness, and the other, dismal slavery. That blade hurts my feet.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What is it all coming to?"},{"content":"It looks like yahoo is getting into the community currency game with Yootles. A quick read of the their FAQ indicates a highly \u0026ldquo;economics\u0026rdquo; based approach. Also I don\u0026rsquo;t see an indication of the meta understanding that what\u0026rsquo;s necessary is to provide a playing field for people to create currencies, rather than just Yet Another Currency (YAC).\nBut, there is a very interesting quote buried near the end:\n\u0026ldquo;My long-term goal at Yahoo is to change the way society thinks about group decision making. Step 1 is changing the way we think about money. I want people to think about money more the way computer scientists and AI resarchers and theoretical economists think about it \u0026ndash; as a measure of people\u0026rsquo;s utility functions, which is where the name yootles comes from.\u0026rdquo;\nAn here\u0026rsquo;s another in answer to the question: Why not just use money?\nviagra sale\npurchase viagra online\nbuy acomplia\nzithromax\nprednisone online\nIsotretinoin\npropecia\ntopamax\nsoma\ncheap viagra\n\u0026ldquo;But you\u0026rsquo;re quite right, it\u0026rsquo;s just another currency. Everything you know about money should carry over to yootles and if you spot any meaningful differences, we\u0026rsquo;re probably doing something wrong.\u0026rdquo;\nHmmm\u0026hellip;.\n[tags]currency, yootles, community currency, money[/tags]\nHistorical Comments Daniel Reeves \u0026mdash; September 20, 2006 at 01:19 AM Thanks for the Yootles post! This is still a highly experimental research project at Yahoo and we\u0026#x27;re eager for feedback. You bring up the question of whether Yootles would be just another currency vs a way to let people create their own currencies. By the latter do you mean something like what ripplepay.com has in mind?\n-- Daniel Reeves, Research Scientist at Yahoo and creator of Yootles\neric \u0026mdash; September 20, 2006 at 07:31 AM Yes Daniel, something like ripplepay, but not quite because ripplepay doesn\u0026#x27;t generalize out the notion of what a currency is assuming that it\u0026#x27;s only about economic transferrs. But better examples are my own work in the \u0026lt;a rel=\u0026quot;\\\u0026quot;nofollow\\\u0026quot;\u0026quot; href=\u0026quot;http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://openmoney.org%5C%22%5C%22\u0026quot; rel=\u0026quot;nofollow\u0026quot;\u0026gt;open money project\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt; and Arthur Brock\u0026#x27;s work with \u0026lt;a rel=\u0026quot;\\\u0026quot;nofollow\\\u0026quot;\u0026quot; href=\u0026quot;http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://www.targetedcurrencies.net%5C%22%5C%22\u0026quot; rel=\u0026quot;nofollow\u0026quot;\u0026gt;targetted currencies\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt; and \u0026lt;a rel=\u0026quot;\\\u0026quot;nofollow\\\u0026quot;\u0026quot; href=\u0026quot;http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/%5C%22http://www.omidyar.net/group/currencies/ws/os_earth%5C%22%5C%22\u0026quot; rel=\u0026quot;nofollow\u0026quot;\u0026gt;OS Earth\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt;.\nDaniel Reeves \u0026mdash; September 20, 2006 at 02:20 PM Thanks for the links (note they aren\u0026#x27;t clickable). Trying to get up to speed on open money and targetted currencies now.\nBtw, we\u0026#x27;re looking to hire talented hackers with a track record in open-source development who are excited about helping implement the Yootles system at Yahoo!\n","date":"September 14, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/09/14/yahoo-gets-into-the-community-currency-game/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIt looks like yahoo is getting into the community currency game with \u003ca href=\"http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves/yootles/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eYootles\u003c/a\u003e. A quick read of the their FAQ indicates a highly \u0026ldquo;economics\u0026rdquo; based approach. Also I don\u0026rsquo;t see an indication of the meta understanding that what\u0026rsquo;s necessary is to provide a playing field for people to create currencies, rather than just Yet Another Currency (YAC).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Yahoo gets into the community currency game"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, it\u0026rsquo;s a rental.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s what we say when we drive that Hertz car smack through a pot hole. The difference between how people keep up rented appartments and owned homes is a standard trope in our culture. We understand that people feel and behave differently about things that they own. The same must be true for currency. If we create our own currency, instead of rent it from a unknown source, we will treat it differently. In fact, we will probably do a lot of things differently, just because it\u0026rsquo;s ours and we own it. Probably most importantly, we can begin to thing about the \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of the currency in a different way. We clearly understand that the value of a home is not encoded simply in the number of dollars we\u0026rsquo;ll get from it when we sell it. It\u0026rsquo;s true value is in the home\u0026rsquo;s utility to us, here and now. Oddly, the same is true of a currency. Selling a currency on an exchange market is like selling a house. It shows one kind of value that it has; it\u0026rsquo;s value to people who are comparing the overal value of two separate currencies (just like someone about to by a house may be comparing the overall \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of two houses). But a currency, like a house, has the utility value of those who use it, which is of substantially different form than its exchange value. There are other things that might be different if we own our currency instead of rent it. Our relationship with debt might be different. For one thing, we would come to a deeper understanding of the connection between debt and money, and thereby be more healthy about it. The monetary experience is by its fundamental nature is the combination of debt and credit. The money I hold in my pocket is positive side of the ledger that elsewhere is written down as a negative number: a.k.a debt. It is not possible to have money without debt. If we owned our own money, the question of what kind and what amount of debt we want to have would become much more crucial to answer well and wisely.\nOf course, there would also be risks. It\u0026rsquo;s risky to own a house. If it burns down, you lost it, not the land-lord.\nWhat other kinds of difference will there be when we become equity stakeholders in our currency system?\n[tags]currency, equity, debt, ownership, community currency, money, metaphor[/tags]\n","date":"August 30, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/08/30/currency-equity-yet-another-community-currency-metaphor/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t worry, it\u0026rsquo;s a rental.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s what we say when we drive that Hertz car smack through a pot hole. The difference between how people keep up rented appartments and owned homes is a standard trope in our culture. We understand that people feel and behave differently about things that they own. The same must be true for currency. If we create our own currency, instead of rent it from a unknown source, we will treat it differently. In fact, we will probably do a lot of things differently, just because it\u0026rsquo;s ours and we own it. Probably most importantly, we can begin to thing about the \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of the currency in a different way. We clearly understand that the value of a home is not encoded simply in the number of dollars we\u0026rsquo;ll get from it when we sell it. It\u0026rsquo;s true value is in the home\u0026rsquo;s utility to us, here and now. Oddly, the same is true of a currency. Selling a currency on an exchange market is like selling a house. It shows one kind of value that it has; it\u0026rsquo;s value to people who are comparing the overal value of two separate currencies (just like someone about to by a house may be comparing the overall \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of two houses). But a currency, like a house, has the utility value of those who use it, which is of substantially different form than its exchange value. There are other things that might be different if we own our currency instead of rent it. Our relationship with debt might be different. For one thing, we would come to a deeper understanding of the connection between debt and money, and thereby be more healthy about it. The monetary experience is by its fundamental nature is the combination of debt and credit. The money I hold in my pocket is positive side of the ledger that elsewhere is written down as a negative number: a.k.a debt. It is not possible to have money without debt. If we owned our own money, the question of what kind and what amount of debt we want to have would become much more crucial to answer well and wisely.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Currency \"Equity\" (Yet another community currency metaphor)"},{"content":"In my on-going quest for good metaphors and ways of thinking about the community/multi-currency world, an excellent metaphor came to me that is useful when talking about all this with programmers:\nfederal currency = global variables community currency = local variables\nWriting software with only global variables is not impossible, but their \u0026ldquo;liquidity\u0026rdquo; (i.e. the fact that they have \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; everywhere) is not an asset, but a liability. Of course an individual variable \u0026ldquo;loses power\u0026rdquo; by not being \u0026ldquo;valuable\u0026rdquo; everywhere, but its utitlity increases by being only have value in a given context.\nThe whole programming concept of \u0026ldquo;scoping\u0026rdquo; applies to currency!\n[tags]currency, programming, scope, community currency, local variable, global variable, money, metaphor[/tags]\n","date":"August 23, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/08/23/another-currency-metaphor/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn my on-going quest for good metaphors and ways of thinking about the community/multi-currency world, an excellent metaphor came to me that is useful when talking about all this with programmers:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"another currency metaphor"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/aristotle/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Aristotle"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/blogs/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Blogs"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/capital/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Capital"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/capitalism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Capitalism"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/collective-intelligence/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Collective-Intelligence"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/commonism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Commonism"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/commons/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Commons"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/communism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Communism"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/economcis/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Economcis"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/episteme/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Episteme"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/eric-harris-braun/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Eric-Harris-Braun"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/industrial-revolution/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Industrial-Revolution"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/internet/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Internet"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/kathryn-montgomery/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Kathryn-Montgomery"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/knowledge/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Knowledge"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/ownerism/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ownerism"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/phronesis/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Phronesis"},{"content":"I learned about the Aristotelean intellectual virtue of phronesis along with the related term episteme a few years back from Kathryn Montgomery in discussions about her book How Doctors Think. Episteme is the scientific rationality we are all quite familiar with. Phronesis is usually translated \u0026ldquo;practical wisdom\u0026rdquo; and is the kind of rational skill doctors and entrepreneurs have that is based on experiential knowledge and provides the ability to take the best action in particular circumstances. We are much less likely to have thought of this as a separate kind of rational capacity. These terms came up again recently for me in the context of a collective intelligence discussion, which really set my mind going and has led me to some propositions and a conjecture:\nProposition: Whereas the printing press was an episteme engine, the Internet is a phronesis engine. Alternative long phrasing: The printing press and the Internet are cognitive technologies that provide people and cultures with \u0026ldquo;mechanical advantage\u0026rdquo; or leverage for the development of the Aristotelean intellectual virtues of epistome and phronesis respectively.\nIt\u0026rsquo;s pretty easy to see how the printing press is responsible for the massive scaling of epistome into the general culture. It\u0026rsquo;s a bit harder to see how what the Internet is doing is the same for phronesis because our first viewing of the Internet (the web at least) has been that it\u0026rsquo;s just one giant sales brochure/advertising billboard/encyclopedia/etc, i.e. that it is a global source of knowledge. My proposition is that the key thing going on with the Internet is not access to knowledge, but rather access participation in knowledge processes. Three examples:\nWikipedia. What really matters about it is not that we have access to a massive knowledge font, but rather that each of us can become encyclopedists and have to face the questions of ontological classification, neutral voice, objective/subjective reality, etc, that that entails. Blogs. A word perhaps for at least three information processes moved out mass culture: journalism, publishing, political analysis. Again the key shift is not that there is all this reporting/publishing/political analysis available for our consumption, but that that each of us can become journalists/publishers/political analysts. My own online-writing workshop. People come to the site thinking that they will get reviews of their writing which will improve it. They invariably discover that reviewing the work of others is how they end up learning to improve their own writing. In each of these cases the key thing is the shift from access to static information, to active participation in an information process. The Internet is providing a \u0026ldquo;mechanical advantage\u0026rdquo; for putting people together in a place where they can jointly engage in the kind of information processes and processing that I think leads to the developing of phronesis.\nProposition: Economic revolutions occur when aspects of production are sufficiently amplified by cognitive technologies that new economic patterns of production come into being. Example: the printing press provided the intellectual infrastructure (a culture of epistome) for the expansion of the simple tools of production during the industrial revolution into what is called Capital in the classical economic sense.\nProposition: There is a new economic revolution under way, the Process Revolution, that is the result of the amplification of information and information processing by the cognitive technology of the Internet, and which is similarly bringing new economic patterns of production into being. These patterns are a new economic factor that can be called Information (capital I), which is defined (analogously to Capital) as the data plus the patterns and processes that use that data to organize production.\nProposition: New economic factors produce competing political systems that are answers to the question: who should own the new economic factor. Example: In the industrial revolution the question was: who should own Capital and the products produced by Capital. Communism proposes common ownership in the form of the State, and Capitalism proposes ownership by individuals.\nProposition: The new economic factor of Information is likewise producing competing approaches to answer who should own it. \u0026ldquo;Ownerism\u0026rdquo; which proposes the same answer as Capitalism (ownership by individuals, natural or corporate), and \u0026ldquo;Commonism\u0026rdquo; which proposes that its ownership be held in the commons (not by the State).\nProposition: Capitalism won out against Communism for three fundamental philosophical and systemic reasons:\nCapitalism was better at recognizing and building on individual dignity and potential. Capitalism is essentially decentralist because it pushes the intelligence out to the edges (see David Reed \u0026amp; Andrew Lippman\u0026rsquo;s paper on Viral Communication for details on this idea) where local information can be used to maximum advantage in decision making. Capitalism works with, not against people\u0026rsquo;s natural self-interest. Conjecture: Commonism will win out over Ownersim because it shares with Capitalism the same first two properties as well as another property which is analogous to the third, namely that Commonism works with Information\u0026rsquo;s natural abundance and it\u0026rsquo;s tendency to flow everywhere, whereas Ownerism has to fight tooth and nail to keep it scarce and from getting out.\nI\u0026rsquo;ve put together a more detailed presentation of these ideas (including their relation to money) in the form of a paper.\n","date":"July 12, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/07/12/phronesis-and-the-internet-the-process-revolution/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI learned about the Aristotelean intellectual virtue of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phronesis\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ephronesis\u003c/a\u003e along with the related term \u003cem\u003eepisteme\u003c/em\u003e a few years back from Kathryn Montgomery in discussions about her book \u003cem\u003e\u003ca href=\"http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195187121\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHow Doctors Think\u003c/a\u003e\u003c/em\u003e. \u003cem\u003eEpisteme\u003c/em\u003e is the scientific rationality we are all quite familiar with. Phronesis is usually translated \u0026ldquo;practical wisdom\u0026rdquo; and is the kind of rational skill doctors and entrepreneurs have that is based on experiential knowledge and provides the ability to take the best action in particular circumstances. We are much less likely to have thought of this as a separate kind of rational capacity. These terms came up again recently for me in the context of a \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ecollective intelligence\u003c/a\u003e discussion, which really set my mind going and has led me to some propositions and a conjecture:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Phronesis and the Internet: the Process Revolution"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/process-revolution/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Process-Revolution"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve just read Andrew Lippman and David Reed\u0026rsquo;s paper on Viral Communications. It\u0026rsquo;s quite insightful. Two things:\nI\u0026rsquo;ve said it before, but \u0026ldquo;Intelligence at the Leaves\u0026rdquo; for currency is what the open money project is all about. Currency is the centralized communication tool that needs to undergo the same process that Lippman and Reed describe in the paper, for all the same reasons. \u0026ldquo;In the end, viral communications transforms communication from something you buy to something you do. Independence of operation allows communications services to be separated from traditional service providers.\u0026rdquo; Substitute currency for communication. On a more speculative note: maybe the reason why SETI has not been successful so far, is that intelligent species move very quickly to low power Tim Shepard style scalable radio! So our current high power RF output is very naturally a short lived (i.e. 200 year) stage in technological development, that lasts only long enough for us to realize that we are better served with a very different pattern of radio usage, which is not detectable at interstellar distances. Assuming this is true, I\u0026rsquo;d gues that the probablity of catching another intelligence in the same 200 year window is not very high. [tags]viral communication,viral,SETI,open money,currency,money,scalable radio,David Reed,Andrew Lippman,Eric Harris-Braun,p2p[/tags]\n","date":"July 8, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/07/08/viral-communications/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve just read Andrew Lippman and \u003ca href=\"http://www.satn.org/satn_rss.xml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eDavid Reed\u003c/a\u003e\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://dl.media.mit.edu/viral/viral.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003epaper on Viral Communications\u003c/a\u003e. It\u0026rsquo;s quite insightful. Two things:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve said it before, but \u0026ldquo;Intelligence at the Leaves\u0026rdquo; for currency is what the \u003ca href=\"http://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/openmoney.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen money\u003c/a\u003e project is all about. Currency is \u003cstrong\u003ethe\u003c/strong\u003e centralized communication tool that needs to undergo the same process that Lippman and Reed describe in the paper, for all the same reasons. \u0026ldquo;In the end, viral communications transforms communication from something you buy to something you do. Independence of operation allows communications services to be separated from traditional service providers.\u0026rdquo; Substitute currency for communication.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eOn a more speculative note: maybe the reason why SETI has not been successful so far, is that intelligent species move very quickly to low power \u003ca href=\"http://www.lcs.mit.edu/publications/pubs/pdf/MIT-LCS-TR-670.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTim Shepard\u003c/a\u003e style scalable radio! So our current high power RF output is very naturally a short lived (i.e. 200 year) stage in technological development, that lasts only long enough for us to realize that we are better served with a very different pattern of radio usage, which is not detectable at interstellar distances. Assuming this is true, I\u0026rsquo;d gues that the probablity of catching another intelligence in the same 200 year window is not very high.\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[tags]viral communication,viral,SETI,open money,currency,money,scalable radio,David Reed,Andrew Lippman,Eric Harris-Braun,p2p[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Viral Communications"},{"content":"On this July 4th, I\u0026rsquo;m thinking that God has already blessed America, many times over, with great natural resources, with a powerfully and deep intellectual, spiritual, and political heritage that is the product of the coming together of many strains of human history. We are a blessed melting of many metals that make an alloy of unusual qualities.\nOur task is to share these blessings, not to greedily ask for more.\n[tags]God,bless,America[/tags]\n","date":"July 4, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/07/04/god-bless-america/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn this July 4th, I\u0026rsquo;m thinking that God has already blessed America, many times over, with great natural resources, with a powerfully and deep intellectual, spiritual, and political heritage that is the product of the coming together of many strains of human history. We are a blessed melting of many metals that make an alloy of unusual qualities.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"God Bless America"},{"content":"Here\u0026rsquo;s the power-point version of the presentation on open money I gave at the local currency preconference to the BALLE gathering in Burlington last month. The presentation came after a full day of folks like Bernard Lietaer and Tom Greco excellently setting stage by explaining how our current monetary system is both unstable and the structural underlying cause of many of our economic woes. They explained clearly how changing the monetary system is a necessary step for fixing our economic system.\nSo this presentation was aimed at showing how a decentralized community currency network platform in which individuals and communities are given the power to create an ecology of currencies, is the necessary second order mechanism so that we can change our monetary system. I argued that not only do you have to change the monetary system, but that you have to change how we change. This is a second order change. Which in this case, I propose, means setting up a system that allows for decentralized broad-based creation of many types (most yet unknown) of currencies in a unified network platform. Without that second order change in place I don\u0026rsquo;t think the system can be changed.\nBy the way, the red fish in the presentation is a herring. Get it, get it? :-)\n[tags]open money,local currency,money,community currency,BALLE,Eric Harris-Braun[/tags]\nHistorical Comments Joe Edelman \u0026mdash; July 04, 2006 at 11:09 AM Hi Eric,\nGreat presentation. Do you know about Ripple and Ripplepay.com? Can we work together?\nsee ripple.sf.net, and especially http://ripple.sourceforge.net/paymentrouting.pdf\nAlso, it looks like we might set up a version of your paper-based mutual credit system here in Northampton, MA. At the very least, we are going to throw a big party, print some reds and blacks, and offer each other services at the party, so as to give a large group of people a feel for how it might work. That will be in the fall, and I will invite you.\nI\u0026#x27;m going to be living only about 30 miles away from you-- in Plainfield MA-- between July 12 and July 26th. Maybe I could drive over one day and we could chat.\n--Joe\n","date":"June 27, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/06/27/balle-presentation/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHere\u0026rsquo;s the \u003ca href=\"http://eric.harris-braun.com/files/BALLE_openmoney.ppt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003epower-point version\u003c/a\u003e of the presentation on open money I gave at the local currency preconference to the \u003ca href=\"http://livingeconomies.org/events/conference06\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eBALLE gathering in Burlington\u003c/a\u003e last month. The presentation came after a full day of folks like Bernard Lietaer and Tom Greco excellently setting stage by explaining how our current monetary system is both unstable and the structural underlying cause of many of our economic woes. They explained clearly how changing the monetary system is a necessary step for fixing our economic system.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"BALLE presentation on open money"},{"content":"Below is part of a talk I gave at the E. F. Schumacher Society seminar Tools for Change.\nI\u0026rsquo;m assuming that at least one of the reasons why you are all here because you understand that the current economic order isn\u0026rsquo;t leading us down a healthy path. This is pretty easy to explain and to see as manufacturing jobs are outsourced, as land goes fallow and is developed into unsustainable strip malls, and as workers are more and more disempowered. These are very visible things that we hear about all the time in the independent media, and even in the main-stream media. But it\u0026rsquo;s much more difficult to see, let alone, explain, the role of our monetary system in all this. So my goal here is to give you the basic tools to explain why we need local currencies. That is the \u0026ldquo;The case for local currencies.\u0026rdquo;\nI\u0026rsquo;m going to spill the beans on the case for local currencies as I see it in just one sentence: I can\u0026rsquo;t live out my values without local currencies. It\u0026rsquo;s as simple as that. I can\u0026rsquo;t live out my values with out them. This is because money is actually a technology. Like all technologies, it has effects on two levels, one is the functional level in which it\u0026rsquo;s effects on society are related to our choices of how we use the technology, and the other is the structural level, where the effects are not ours to choose, because they are the result the nature of the technology itself.\nThe first level of connection between values and money is fairly broadly understood. At this level the connection between money and values is functional, that is, it\u0026rsquo;s about how we use it.. We know that if we are to live by our values, we must align how we spend and invest our money with those values. The breadth of understanding of this connection between money in values this is reflected in the growth of excellent things such as Erbin\u0026rsquo;s fair-trade movement and the socially responsible investing.\nThe second level of connection between money and values, the level of structural connection, is less broadly understood A this level we see that our values are not just expressed in how we use money, but are encoded into the structure of money itself. As we come to understand that money is just another one of our technologies, it becomes much easier to understand this second level in the case of money.\nAs a culture, we\u0026rsquo;ve come to understand the effects of our technologies both levels. We see that technologies are not value neutral, that the use of this or that technology in and of itself has effects because of the nature of the technology that is independent of how we choose to use it. For example, internal combustion engines emit CO2 whether they are in a tank or in a tractor. Even though the internal combustion engine is wonderful at one level (let\u0026rsquo;s face, it makes the good parts of modern lives possible), at a wider systemic level, it has a the devastating effect on the biosphere that we call global warming.\nWhat we need to understand is that money is another one of our technologies, and just like the internal combustion engine, at one level, conventional money is great, but at that wider systemic level, it is devastating the entire econosphere.\nRaise your hand\u0026rsquo;s if you are thinking: \u0026ldquo;wait, wait, you\u0026rsquo;ve got his analogy all mixed up. It\u0026rsquo;s not the internal combustion engine\u0026rsquo;s production of C02 that\u0026rsquo;s the cause of global warming, it’s the fact that petroleum is used as fuel.\u0026rdquo; (This is because the carbon in the oil is taken out of the ground where it\u0026rsquo;s been sitting safely for millions of years, and pumped into the atmosphere. We could run the same internal combustion engines with bio-fuels and add absolutely no net C02 to the atmosphere because the C02 it puts out, was just extracted from the atmosphere that year by the crops grown to produce the biofuels. Global warming solved.) Well, you get the gold star, and that\u0026rsquo;s a key thing, because that points to a structural solution to the problem. If you change the fuel, you have suddenly aligned structurally aligned the technology with your values of not destroying the biosphere. By noticing this, you\u0026rsquo;ve focused on the structural, not functional aspect of the technology. Local currencies are about doing that with money.\nSo what\u0026rsquo;s the CO2 (or petroleum) of money? Well just like CO2 isn\u0026rsquo;t the only thing that\u0026rsquo;s going on in the global warming equation, the situation with money also has many variables. However, not surprisingly, here at the Schumacher Society, we\u0026rsquo;d say that the C02 of money is its centralization. Or more specifically, the CO2 of money (the part of the technology that has deep side-effects on the econosphere) is that its issuance is strictly controlled by centralized monetary institutions. The case for local currencies is built on examining what happens if we take away that centralized aspect of money, and we let communities, businesses, and even people issue money.\n[tags]money,local currency,community currency,peak oil,global warming,technology,value neutral,economy[/tags]\n","date":"May 29, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/05/29/the-case-for-local-currencies-money-as-technology/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBelow is part of a talk I gave at the \u003ca href=\"http://smallisbeautiful.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eE. F. Schumacher Society\u003c/a\u003e seminar \u003ca href=\"http://smallisbeautiful.org/seminars.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eTools for Change\u003c/a\u003e.\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;m assuming that at least one of the reasons why you are all here because you understand that the current economic order isn\u0026rsquo;t leading us down a healthy path. This is pretty easy to explain and to see as manufacturing jobs are outsourced, as land goes fallow and is developed into unsustainable strip malls, and as workers are more and more disempowered. These are very visible things that we hear about all the time in the independent media, and even in the main-stream media. But it\u0026rsquo;s much more difficult to see, let alone, explain, the role of our monetary system in all this. So my goal here is to give you the basic tools to explain why we need local currencies. That is the \u0026ldquo;The case for local currencies.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the case for local currencies: money as technology"},{"content":"This week I was given a copy of Paul Krafel\u0026rsquo;s mini-film The Upward Sprial. Which, despite, nay in part because of, some hoakyness, provides deep and powerful language and images for how to look at the world. He talks about flow, feedback spirals, and a \u0026ldquo;second solution\u0026rdquo; to the problem posed by the second law of thermodynamics. It is both philosphical and practical for those looking to change our broken world.\nJust for fun I took this an opportunity to learn kml so that we could map the flow of the spread of Krafel\u0026rsquo;s ideas using google earth. If you want to play, go to a little site I created where you can add your location and then add to a network link into your google earth and see the location of all of those who have entered their locations to the map.\nEnjoy!\n[tags]Krafel, flow, google earth,kml,feedback[/tags]\nHistorical Comments Thomas Kriese \u0026mdash; June 19, 2006 at 11:11 AM I just got the DVD, too, and agree that the hoakiness of the production added to the believability/buy-in on my part. If it were any more slickly produced, it likely wouldn\u0026#x27;t have captured my imagination as much as it did.\nMy favorite quote from the DVD was \u0026quot;You can count the seeds in an apple, but you can\u0026#x27;t count the apples in the seed.\u0026quot;\nWatched it while flying in for the Identity Mashup conference. I\u0026#x27;ll be adding my location in Google Earth later when I figure out what part of the country I covered in the hour it took to watch en route to BOS from SFO.\n","date":"May 21, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/05/21/flow-krafel-google-earth/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis week I was given a copy of \u003ca href=\"http://www.krafel.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ePaul Krafel\u0026rsquo;s\u003c/a\u003e mini-film \u003ca href=\"http://www.chrysalischarterschool.com/Paul/Paul/HOPE.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Upward Sprial\u003c/a\u003e. Which, despite, nay in part because of, some hoakyness, provides deep and powerful language and images for how to look at the world. He talks about flow, feedback spirals, and a \u0026ldquo;second solution\u0026rdquo; to the problem posed by the second law of thermodynamics. It is both philosphical and practical for those looking to change our broken world.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"flow, Krafel, \u0026 google earth"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/commands/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Commands"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/executable/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Executable"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/tags/tcsh/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tcsh"},{"content":"Have you ever gotten the tcsh: Command not found. error after installing some code? Well it happened to me today, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out what the problem was. I had already added the commands directory into my PATH, and set it to executable with chmod 755, but still the error kept coming up. The answer turned out to be that the command file (a shell script) that I had download had DOS line endings. Which, I quicly fixed using my trusty bbedit and bingo it worked fine.\n","date":"May 2, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/05/02/tcsh-command-not-found/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHave you ever gotten the \u003ccode\u003etcsh: Command not found.\u003c/code\u003e error after installing some code? Well it happened to me today, and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t figure out what the problem was. I had already added the commands directory into my PATH, and set it to executable with \u003ccode\u003echmod 755\u003c/code\u003e, but still the error kept coming up. The answer turned out to be that the command file (a shell script) that I had download had DOS line endings. Which, I quicly fixed using my trusty \u003ca href=\"http://barebones.com/products/bbedit/index.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ebbedit\u003c/a\u003e and bingo it worked fine.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"tcsh: command not found"},{"content":"In March I participated in a retreat that is somewhat hard for me to describe. It\u0026rsquo;s hard because I fear being judged. So, to my more materialist friends I want to describe it as an experiment in developing the practices of collective intelligence and collective wisdom and stick to the intellectual content. To my more spiritually oriented friends I want to describe it as a re-inventing of the practices of Quaker corporate worship in the context of the post-post-modern, quantum/relativist, networked, Wilberized, self-conscious and what-else-have-you, world. But this splitting into the mental and the spritual to appease my imagined world view of this or that friend, is a mistake. A huge mistake. So now I declare: go ahead and judge me! Here\u0026rsquo;s a better description: I participated in a retreat where a small group of people together worked on integrating all levels of their awareness: physical, emotional, mental, and \u0026ldquo;soul,\u0026rdquo; into a single group awareness. I put soul in quotes because there is common agreement that parts of our conciousness are separately devoted to physical, emotional, mental awareness, and we have decent language to talk about those three types of perception, but we don\u0026rsquo;t have good language or terms to talk about \u0026ldquo;soul\u0026rdquo; perception, or even agreement that such a form of perception is even \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; (what ever that means!) and has a similar status as the other three. [And now I\u0026rsquo;m noticing that that last sentence is yet another caveat to try and prevent judgement.] For those of you with a scientific/materialist bent I recommend reading Jean-François Noubel\u0026rsquo;s paper on collective intelligence. This paper mentions only in passing at the very end the need for personal transformation. But it was that part that is what the retreat was all about. The practicing of that transformation to begin to make possible the potential for real collective intelligence. If you aren\u0026rsquo;t turned off by spiritual language, try the sacred circle web site. Some things I learned: I am generally very unaware of my body, and what it has to offer me. If I change the way I sit, I change the way I perceive. I can tell when people are speaking from a place of fear. If I take my glasses off, I can\u0026rsquo;t see detial, but detail is not all there is to see. The things that I am naturally good at, that come easily to me, are my gifts to the world. If I toss them out as if they don\u0026rsquo;t matter, I disempower myself and those gifts at the same time. One of the key structural benefits of the open source world is that it requires the formation of human relationships. Because it\u0026rsquo;s free, i.e. the value it generates has not been monitized, you can\u0026rsquo;t rely on money to get you what you want, instead you have to either rely on yourself, or, prefereably, rely on relationships with others. I am afraid of esoteric, new-agey, airy-fairy, \u0026ldquo;stuff\u0026rdquo; and I have a hard time just being with it when it shows up. Taking on and accepting as true things that people say is very different from being with them and actually listening to what they have to say. There are many levels of listening, at least four of which are: from the past (where we try and understand what we hear based on what we already know); with an open mind (where we try and learn new things that we don\u0026rsquo;t know); with an open heart (where we try and put ourselves empathically in the position of the speaker and really listen to where they are coming from); and with an open will (which is harder to describe, but it is deeper than the other three, and is similar to the experience of listening for the sense-of-the-meeting when clerking a Quaker meeting for worship with a concern for business, where not only are you listening from all the three other levels, but you\u0026rsquo;re basic will, i.e. your desires, are left open and subject to modification). Quakers already know a ton about collective intelligence and the practial stuff about what is needed to move foward in this realm, but they suck at integrating body and emotion into mental and \u0026ldquo;soul\u0026rdquo; practice. If you get into this work, it will have ramifications on your \u0026ldquo;personal\u0026rdquo; relationships. [tags]quakerism,collective intelligence,open source,FLOSS,Ken Wilber[/tags]\n","date":"April 10, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/04/10/thoughts-on-a-retreat/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn March I participated in a retreat that is somewhat hard for me to describe. It\u0026rsquo;s hard because I fear being judged. So, to my more materialist friends I want to describe it as an experiment in developing the practices of \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003ecollective intelligence\u003c/a\u003e and collective wisdom and stick to the intellectual content. To my more spiritually oriented friends I want to describe it as a re-inventing of the practices of Quaker corporate worship in the context of the post-post-modern, quantum/relativist, networked, Wilberized, self-conscious and what-else-have-you, world. But this splitting into the mental and the spritual to appease my imagined world view of this or that friend, is a mistake. A huge mistake. So now I declare: go ahead and judge me! Here\u0026rsquo;s a better description: I participated in a retreat where a small group of people together worked on integrating all levels of their awareness: physical, emotional, mental, and \u0026ldquo;soul,\u0026rdquo; into a single group awareness. I put soul in quotes because there is common agreement that parts of our conciousness are separately devoted to physical, emotional, mental awareness, and we have decent language to talk about those three types of perception, but we don\u0026rsquo;t have good language or terms to talk about \u0026ldquo;soul\u0026rdquo; perception, or even agreement that such a form of perception is even \u0026ldquo;real\u0026rdquo; (what ever that means!) and has a similar status as the other three. [And now I\u0026rsquo;m noticing that that last sentence is yet another caveat to try and prevent judgement.] For those of you with a scientific/materialist bent I recommend reading Jean-François Noubel\u0026rsquo;s \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-download_file.php?fileId=13\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003epaper on collective intelligence\u003c/a\u003e. This paper mentions only in passing at the very end the need for personal transformation. But it was that part that is what the retreat was all about. The practicing of that transformation to begin to make possible the potential for real collective intelligence. If you aren\u0026rsquo;t turned off by spiritual language, try the \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org/circle\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003esacred circle web site.\u003c/a\u003e Some things I learned: I am generally very unaware of my body, and what it has to offer me. If I change the way I sit, I change the way I perceive. I can tell when people are speaking from a place of fear. If I take my glasses off, I can\u0026rsquo;t see detial, but detail is not all there is to see. The things that I am naturally good at, that come easily to me, are my gifts to the world. If I toss them out as if they don\u0026rsquo;t matter, I disempower myself and those gifts at the same time. One of the key structural benefits of the open source world is that it requires the formation of human relationships. Because it\u0026rsquo;s free, i.e. the value it generates has not been monitized, you can\u0026rsquo;t rely on money to get you what you want, instead you have to either rely on yourself, or, prefereably, rely on relationships with others. I am afraid of esoteric, new-agey, airy-fairy, \u0026ldquo;stuff\u0026rdquo; and I have a hard time just being with it when it shows up. Taking on and accepting as true things that people say is very different from being with them and actually listening to what they have to say. There are many levels of listening, at least four of which are: from the past (where we try and understand what we hear based on what we already know); with an open mind (where we try and learn new things that we don\u0026rsquo;t know); with an open heart (where we try and put ourselves empathically in the position of the speaker and really listen to where they are coming from); and with an open will (which is harder to describe, but it is deeper than the other three, and is similar to the experience of listening for the sense-of-the-meeting when clerking a Quaker meeting for worship with a concern for business, where not only are you listening from all the three other levels, but you\u0026rsquo;re basic will, i.e. your desires, are left open and subject to modification). Quakers already know a ton about collective intelligence and the practial stuff about what is needed to move foward in this realm, but they suck at integrating body and emotion into mental and \u0026ldquo;soul\u0026rdquo; practice. If you get into this work, it will have ramifications on your \u0026ldquo;personal\u0026rdquo; relationships. [tags]quakerism,collective intelligence,open source,FLOSS,Ken Wilber[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"thoughts on a retreat"},{"content":"“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites-polar opposites-so that love is identifiedwith the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. We’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.â€? –MartinLuther King Jr. [tags]love,power,MLK,quotes[/tags]\nHistorical Comments sheri \u0026mdash; May 30, 2006 at 03:05 PM i love this quote eric. we often misunderstand power (power over, power with, power among, power within) and mlk really clarifies this piece for me. it also makes me think of a book i just discovered while participating in the latest evolutionary salon (http://www.thegreatstory.org/ev-salon3.html). the author of the book, anodea judith, writes about the movement from the love of power to the power of love as a historical shift. also, another reference on this theme: paul and layne cutwright on their website enlightened partnership talk about the evolutionary edge of humanity being sharing power (http://www.enlightenedpartners.com/articles/sharingpower.html). all of this feels in such deep alignment. :)\n","date":"April 5, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/04/05/power-and-love/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003e“Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites-polar opposites-so that love is identifiedwith the resignation of power, and power with the denial of love. We’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.â€? –MartinLuther King Jr. [tags]love,power,MLK,quotes[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"power and love"},{"content":"Recently it hit me that I knew of no generalized protocol for sharing the state of an abstract space among a group of computers. I did a quick google search to see if I could find anything, and after coming up dry (which doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist) I decided to slap one together to test out the many uses for this that were readily apparent to me (i.e. any application where multiple users must be able to collaboratively make changes, and become aware of changes made to that space in real time: chat, bulletin boards, network games, etc.) Of course there is similar stuff like Croquet that certainly does an even more complicated generalized version of this, and lots of single purpose applications, like Subethaedit which must also do thisbut I haven\u0026rsquo;t found other efforts that are quite as simplistic and generalized. So, I slapped together the beginings of a protocol as well as a ruby based server, and a RealBasic based clients for OS X and Win to test out the ideas, all of which are released under the GPL license. [tags]collaboration,FLOSS,sharing[/tags]\n","date":"April 2, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/04/02/simple-shared-state-protocl/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently it hit me that I knew of no generalized protocol for sharing the state of an abstract space among a group of computers. I did a quick google search to see if I could find anything, and after coming up dry (which doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean it doesn\u0026rsquo;t exist) I decided to slap one together to test out the many uses for this that were readily apparent to me (i.e. any application where multiple users must be able to collaboratively make changes, and become aware of changes made to that space in real time: chat, bulletin boards, network games, etc.) Of course there is similar stuff like \u003ca href=\"http://opencroquet.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCroquet\u003c/a\u003e that certainly does an even more complicated generalized version of this, and lots of single purpose applications, like \u003ca href=\"http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSubethaedit\u003c/a\u003e which must also do thisbut I haven\u0026rsquo;t found other efforts that are quite as simplistic and generalized. So, I slapped together the beginings of a \u003ca href=\"/sssp\"\u003eprotocol\u003c/a\u003e as well as a ruby based \u003ca href=\"/sssp/sssp.rb\"\u003eserver\u003c/a\u003e, and a RealBasic \u003ca href=\"/sssp/sssp_client.rbp\"\u003ebased clients\u003c/a\u003e for \u003ca href=\"/sssp/sssp-client.dmg\"\u003eOS X\u003c/a\u003e and \u003ca href=\"/sssp/sssp-client.exe\"\u003eWin\u003c/a\u003e to test out the ideas, all of which are released under the \u003ca href=\"http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eGPL\u003c/a\u003e license. [tags]collaboration,FLOSS,sharing[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"simple shared state protocol"},{"content":"The open source movement is, I think, the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental sea change in human thought that is swirling all around us. I had been emailing with a friend about how Quakerism seemed to me to embody in a religion,the principles of open source software because (I wrote) \u0026ldquo;it handles the balance of the community and the individual in a precise way: 1) the individual is highly autonomous and assumed to have unique and direct access to the devine. I.e. everybody can write code. 2) because this is true of everyone, individual revelation must be checked with the group for further descernment, i.e. your code has to be checked in to the repository and actually work with the whole system! Thus there is no preacher/parishoner or consumer/producer relationship, we all minister to eachother (we are all prosumers).\u0026rdquo; My friend pointed me to various links on open source spirituality that are worth looking at. I was especially intruiged by yoism which at first seems like yet-another-newagey spirituality thingy, but on closer inspection is quite a bit more than that. [tags]spirit,FLOSS,yoism[/tags]\n","date":"March 25, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/03/25/open-source-spirituality/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe open source movement is, I think, the tip of the iceberg of a fundamental sea change in human thought that is swirling all around us. I had been emailing with a friend about how Quakerism seemed to me to embody in a religion,the principles of open source software because (I wrote) \u0026ldquo;it handles the balance of the community and the individual in a precise way: 1) the individual is highly autonomous and assumed to have unique and direct access to the devine. I.e. everybody can write code. 2) because this is true of everyone, individual revelation must be checked with the group for further descernment, i.e. your code has to be checked in to the repository and actually work with the whole system! Thus there is no preacher/parishoner or consumer/producer relationship, we all minister to eachother (we are all prosumers).\u0026rdquo; My friend pointed me to various links on \u003ca href=\"http://www.communitywiki.org/odd/EvolutionaryNexus/LinksBin\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eopen source spirituality\u003c/a\u003e that are worth looking at. I was especially intruiged by \u003ca href=\"http://www.yoism.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eyoism\u003c/a\u003e which at first seems like yet-another-newagey spirituality thingy, but on closer inspection is quite a bit more than that. [tags]spirit,FLOSS,yoism[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"open source spirituality"},{"content":"Another installment in the collective tech-support arena: Gnucash wasn\u0026rsquo;t working under OS X Tiger (10.4.5); whenever I tried to run a report I kept getting the following cryptic error message in my terminal: dyld: Symbol not found: _program_invocation_short_name Referenced from: /sw/lib/libgnome.32.dylib Expected in: flat namespace A google search didn\u0026rsquo;t reveal anything with those error messages as keywords, so it was up to me to find the answer. Fourtunately my first stab in the dark worked! I did a fink selfupdate and then fink update-all (I\u0026rsquo;m using FinkCommander so I did those fink commands from the Source menu). I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that when I reinstalled gnucash after updating to Tiger, there were still some bugs in several of the libraries that were fixed by the fink update. Be forewarned that this take a loooong time to complete (overnight for me on my G4 powerbook). [tags]gnucash,fink,FinkCommander[/tags]\n","date":"March 23, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/03/23/gnucash-tiger/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnother installment in the collective tech-support arena: \u003ca href=\"http://www.gnucash.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eGnucash\u003c/a\u003e wasn\u0026rsquo;t working under OS X Tiger (10.4.5); whenever I tried to run a report I kept getting the following cryptic error message in my terminal: \u003ccode\u003edyld: Symbol not found: _program_invocation_short_name Referenced from: /sw/lib/libgnome.32.dylib Expected in: flat namespace\u003c/code\u003e A google search didn\u0026rsquo;t reveal anything with those error messages as keywords, so it was up to me to find the answer. Fourtunately my first stab in the dark worked! I did a \u003ccode\u003efink selfupdate\u003c/code\u003e and then \u003ccode\u003efink update-all\u003c/code\u003e (I\u0026rsquo;m using \u003ca href=\"http://finkcommander.sourceforge.net/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eFinkCommander\u003c/a\u003e so I did those fink commands from the \u003cstrong\u003eSource\u003c/strong\u003e menu). I\u0026rsquo;m guessing that when I reinstalled gnucash after updating to Tiger, there were still some bugs in several of the libraries that were fixed by the fink update. Be forewarned that this take a loooong time to complete (overnight for me on my G4 powerbook). [tags]gnucash,fink,FinkCommander[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gnucash \u0026 Tiger"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;ve found that numerous times when I type into google a technical question, be it an error message that I\u0026rsquo;m seeing when installing some software package or some feature about a programming language, that where I often end up is in some person\u0026rsquo;s blog where they describe how they coped with exactly the same problem. This phenomenon seems to me a generalized solution to tech support, and also a wonderfully comunal and gift economy approach to problem solving. So I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to play the game too by creating a category for this blog called solutions, and, as often as I can, post my minor little breakthroughs in hopes that they will be helpful to someone else. And here\u0026rsquo;s my first:\nI\u0026rsquo;ve been learning Smalltalk using squeak and I assumed that, like other object-oriented languages, there would be a constructor method that could take many parameters which would be used by the constructor to load up the values of instance variables. For example in perl a simplified constructure would look like:\nsub new { my $class = shift; my $self = {}; bless $self, $class; $self-\u0026gt;{'FOO'} = shift; # save the constructor parameters into our data structure $self-\u0026gt;{'BAR'} = shift; return $self; }\nwhich would be instantiated like this: theObjectClassName-\u0026gt;new('fish','dog');\nIn Smalltalk, it appears, you don\u0026rsquo;t do that. Instead you just create settors for your parameters and chain them to the new call. So you would have two methods:\nsetFoo: fooVal foo := fooVal setBar: barVal bar := barVal\nand your call to instantiate an object is then just: theObjectClassName new setFoo:'fish' setBar:'dog'\nbecause the first two words create the object and the the second two are just messages that get to the object after it is created, one at a time.\nI love the beautiful parsimony of notions in Smalltalk.\n","date":"January 24, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/01/24/blogging-and-tech-support/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI\u0026rsquo;ve found that numerous times when I type into google a technical question, be it an error message that I\u0026rsquo;m seeing when installing some software package or some feature about a programming language, that where I often end up is in some person\u0026rsquo;s blog where they describe how they coped with exactly the same problem. This phenomenon seems to me a generalized solution to tech support, and also a wonderfully comunal and \u003ca href=\"http://www.thetransitioner.org/wiki/tiki-index.php?page=Gift\u0026#43;Economy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003egift economy\u003c/a\u003e approach to problem solving. So I\u0026rsquo;ve decided to play the game too by creating a category for this blog called solutions, and, as often as I can, post my minor little breakthroughs in hopes that they will be helpful to someone else. And here\u0026rsquo;s my first:\u003c/p\u003e","title":"blogging and tech support"},{"content":"The City of Ember is a young adult novel that is a fantastic allegory for spiritual awakening, though I have no idea if it was intended as such. The story is of a girl who lives in an underground and completely self-contained city created by the \u0026ldquo;Builders.\u0026rdquo; The population of the city knows of nothing outside the city, in fact, though they speak English many of the words in it like \u0026ldquo;sky\u0026rdquo; are not understood in any terms but metaphorically. The problem is that the city is falling apart, the lights are going out, the vast stores of supplies of light bulbs, canned food, and vitamins are running out. The reader is in on a worse calamity, namely, that a secret message in a timed lock box that was left by the Builders, which was meant to be handed down from mayor to mayor and that would open just in time to explain to the city dwellers how to get out of the city, was lost many generations back. Well, being a young adult novel it\u0026rsquo;s pretty predictable in that the box is in our hero\u0026rsquo;s closet, but a nice turn of events it is found by our hero\u0026rsquo;s baby sister who chews on it for a while before our hero gets her hands on it leaving the message is only partially legible. So the bulk of the story is the deciphering of the message, followed by the experience of trying to communicate its contents to the adults, who of course don\u0026rsquo;t accept the message (where else is there but here?) which is the equivalent of all prophets experiences of rejection by the status-quo. And finally, there is the adventure of eventual escape. This book reworks the universal theme of Plato\u0026rsquo;s cave, and of all mysticism. What we think of as the whole universe is but shadow, and further, that to enter that \u0026ldquo;kingdom of heaven\u0026rdquo; you must be like a child. The insight that this version of that universal story led me to is part of the answer to why childishness is a necessary component of the transformation. Children haven\u0026rsquo;t yet become someone. Which means who they are is not yet at stake. For some reason our culture has this question \u0026ldquo;what are you going to be when you grow up?\u0026rdquo; Think about the hidden structures and assumptions in that question. Who are you? Have you figured it out yet? Is what you do, who you are? Is what you believe who you are? Is who you associate with who you are? I write these questions myself in shadow not in the condition of childishness, and with all of this, as Quaker\u0026rsquo;s say, \u0026ldquo;a notion,\u0026rdquo; i.e. not something that I have experienced, but rather something I think. But this thing that is mostly a notion for me, that the distinction between notional and experiential living is key to awakening, I am begining in small ways to actually experience. [tags]awakening,experience,cave,Plato,mystics[/tags]\n","date":"January 23, 2006","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2006/01/23/the-city-of-ember/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe City of Ember is a young adult novel that is a fantastic allegory for spiritual awakening, though I have no idea if it was intended as such. The story is of a girl who lives in an underground and completely self-contained city created by the \u0026ldquo;Builders.\u0026rdquo; The population of the city knows of nothing outside the city, in fact, though they speak English many of the words in it like \u0026ldquo;sky\u0026rdquo; are not understood in any terms but metaphorically. The problem is that the city is falling apart, the lights are going out, the vast stores of supplies of light bulbs, canned food, and vitamins are running out. The reader is in on a worse calamity, namely, that a secret message in a timed lock box that was left by the Builders, which was meant to be handed down from mayor to mayor and that would open just in time to explain to the city dwellers how to get out of the city, was lost many generations back. Well, being a young adult novel it\u0026rsquo;s pretty predictable in that the box is in our hero\u0026rsquo;s closet, but a nice turn of events it is found by our hero\u0026rsquo;s baby sister who chews on it for a while before our hero gets her hands on it leaving the message is only partially legible. So the bulk of the story is the deciphering of the message, followed by the experience of trying to communicate its contents to the adults, who of course don\u0026rsquo;t accept the message (where else is there but here?) which is the equivalent of all prophets experiences of rejection by the status-quo. And finally, there is the adventure of eventual escape. This book reworks the universal theme of Plato\u0026rsquo;s cave, and of all mysticism. What we think of as the whole universe is but shadow, and further, that to enter that \u0026ldquo;kingdom of heaven\u0026rdquo; you must be like a child. The insight that this version of that universal story led me to is part of the answer to why childishness is a necessary component of the transformation. Children haven\u0026rsquo;t yet become someone. Which means who they are is not yet at stake. For some reason our culture has this question \u0026ldquo;what are you going to be when you grow up?\u0026rdquo; Think about the hidden structures and assumptions in that question. Who are you? Have you figured it out yet? Is what you do, who you are? Is what you believe who you are? Is who you associate with who you are? I write these questions myself in shadow not in the condition of childishness, and with all of this, as Quaker\u0026rsquo;s say, \u0026ldquo;a notion,\u0026rdquo; i.e. not something that I have experienced, but rather something I think. But this thing that is mostly a notion for me, that the distinction between notional and experiential living is key to awakening, I am begining in small ways to actually experience. [tags]awakening,experience,cave,Plato,mystics[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The City of Ember, by Jeanne Duprau (2003)"},{"content":"Some places I play:\nThe Weave (founder) Lightningrod Labs (founder) Holochain (founder, geek) Holo (founder, geek) Ceptr (founder, geek) The Metacurrency Project (founder, geek) The Flowplace (founder, geek) Glass Bead Software (founder,geek) MANA stats project (geek) Online Writing Workshop (founder, geek) Schumacher Center for a New Economics (advisory board) Quaker Intentional Village Project (living) Quakerism (spritiuality)\n","date":"November 26, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/pages/projects/","section":"Pages","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSome places I play:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://theweave.social\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Weave\u003c/a\u003e (founder) \u003ca href=\"https://lightningrodlabs.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eLightningrod Labs\u003c/a\u003e (founder) \u003ca href=\"https://holochain.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHolochain\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"https://holo.host\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eHolo\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"http://ceptr.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eCeptr\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"http://metacurrency.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Metacurrency Project\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"http://flowplace.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eThe Flowplace\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"http://www.glassbead.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eGlass Bead Software\u003c/a\u003e (founder,geek) \u003ca href=\"https://www.manastats.org/help_public_about\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eMANA stats project\u003c/a\u003e (geek) \u003ca href=\"http://onlinewritingworkshop.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eOnline Writing Workshop\u003c/a\u003e (founder, geek) \u003ca href=\"http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eSchumacher Center for a New Economics\u003c/a\u003e (advisory board) \u003ca href=\"http://www.qivc.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eQuaker Intentional Village Project\u003c/a\u003e (living) \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakerism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eQuakerism\u003c/a\u003e (spritiuality)\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About"},{"content":"","date":null,"permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/pages/","section":"Pages","summary":"","title":"Pages"},{"content":"For that last 2 years I\u0026rsquo;ve begun a process of examining perhaps one of the most fundamental ways that I \u0026ldquo;participate in the consumer economy\u0026rdquo; and that is simply my use of money, specifically US dollars. Before this period money seemed primarily mundane. Money was just a practical thing about living life. It\u0026rsquo;s there, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t question it very much. In my mind, the connection between money and spiritual matters was mostly from biblical quotes, for example \u0026ldquo;the love of money is the root of all evil,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;render to Caesar what is Caesar\u0026rsquo;s,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;seek ye first the kingdom of the lord and his righteousness,\u0026rdquo; the kicking out of the money-changers from the temple, and perhaps the most influential for me is where Jesus says \u0026ldquo;look at how beautifully God as clothed the lilies of the field, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed such as they, how much more will he care for you?\u0026rdquo; All of these quotes set up the primacy of ones spiritual life and faith in the divine provider over what ever promise of security we might find in money. In a sense, these are all more about the disconnection between money and those higher spiritual aims.\nThese last two years, however is bringing me to a new place. I\u0026rsquo;m now seeing that at least some of the power of money to distract us from the divine, is not inherent in money itself, but rather in the form of our current monetary system, and further that news types of money can be re-invented such that much of that power is removed from it, even more so, such that money itself will become yet another part of living a God centered life. If so, that would be a real step toward achieving that third QIVP purpose. An economy more aligned with our Quaker testimonies.\nAt the most fundamental level, money is the information that encodes who has how much of a claim on things of value in a community. Historically this information was encoded very simply in the the ownership of scarce metals. Later we used paper that was legally equated to that same scarce metal. Our current monetary system no longer equates the medium of exchange with gold, but it it still relies on treating that information, be it paper or numbers in a bank account, as valuable in and of itself by maintaining its scarcity. How is it possible to make information scarce? It\u0026rsquo;s difficult, but that\u0026rsquo;s exactly what our monetary system is, a large body of regulations that use the coercive force of law to create a very precise scarcity of the medium of exchange (information) so that it will \u0026ldquo;maintain its value.\u0026rdquo; That\u0026rsquo;s exactly what\u0026rsquo;s going on when the Fed changes interest rates.\nThe assumption behind this is that people won\u0026rsquo;t use a medium of exchange to trade if the medium itself is not valuable. In other words, the medium of exchange will only work if you can trust it, and the way to make it trustworthy is to make it valuable. Well, there\u0026rsquo;s one case where this equation doesn\u0026rsquo;t apply. Namely when you are trading with people whom you trust. If you trust the people with whom you trade, then you don\u0026rsquo;t need to trust in the medium of exchange itself. The medium of exchange can just devolve into its purest form, i.e. simply the record of who has a claim on the economy.\nHere\u0026rsquo;s how it works: when you trade with another individual, money (information) is created on the spot. How? With a ledger book. If I buy something, I subtract from the balance in my ledger the price of the item, and seller adds the price to balance in her ledger book. Remember that money is just the information on who has a claim on the economy. So now, the seller has a positive value in her ledger book. That positive value represents the claim she has on the community. The negative value in my ledger represents the obligation I have to give to the economy. In this system money is created on the spot by the purchaser and given to the seller who then has a claim on the economy (as represented by the positive value in the ledger book), a claim which will be redeemed when seller in turn goes to purchase something from someone else, just as the obligation of the purchaser will be fulfilled later when he or she sells something.\nSo if the medium of exchange isn\u0026rsquo;t valuable in and of itself a whole world of things change: the task becomes how to enlarge the circle of people I trust so I can trade in using this incredibly available money; I don\u0026rsquo;t have to earn it, I can create it on the spot, as long as it\u0026rsquo;s being used in a circle of trust people will know that I won\u0026rsquo;t create more than I can redeem; relationships become primary.\nTo me this is the fundamental spiritual issue of money: Do I trust my neighbor? Do I trust that of God in my neighbor enough to transact with him or her and not have the coercive force of law in place to back up the claim I might have in my ledger book? Our US dollars say \u0026ldquo;in God we trust\u0026rdquo; but we don\u0026rsquo;t, we trust in the coercive force of law that backs the dollar.\n[tags]money,spirit,trust[/tags]\n","date":"November 18, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/11/18/money-spirit/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor that last 2 years I\u0026rsquo;ve begun a process of examining perhaps one of the most fundamental ways that I \u0026ldquo;participate in the consumer economy\u0026rdquo; and that is simply my use of money, specifically US dollars. Before this period money seemed primarily mundane. Money was just a practical thing about living life. It\u0026rsquo;s there, and I didn\u0026rsquo;t question it very much. In my mind, the connection between money and spiritual matters was mostly from biblical quotes, for example \u0026ldquo;the love of money is the root of all evil,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;render to Caesar what is Caesar\u0026rsquo;s,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;seek ye first the kingdom of the lord and his righteousness,\u0026rdquo; the kicking out of the money-changers from the temple, and perhaps the most influential for me is where Jesus says \u0026ldquo;look at how beautifully God as clothed the lilies of the field, not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed such as they, how much more will he care for you?\u0026rdquo; All of these quotes set up the primacy of ones spiritual life and faith in the divine provider over what ever promise of security we might find in money. In a sense, these are all more about the disconnection between money and those higher spiritual aims.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"money \u0026 spirit"},{"content":"Since mutual credit money is truly valueless, it cannot BE a unit of measure. It must USE a unit of measure. This means that there must be something with which to set the price of things. You could use chickens or bales of tobbacco or kilowats, or hours as your unit of measure in which the mutual credit money is denomitated, but you can\u0026rsquo;t really do this because the \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of any of those things varys across and within communities. Instead, the proper unit of measure is a conventional money, which is determined by an arbitrage market. So in fact, I think what I\u0026rsquo;m claiming is that the true role of conventional money is to determine aggregate value of things, skills and time, to be a unit of measure. Once we have that (which we allready do), then we can do the bulk of our exchanging using mutual credit money. [tags]money,mutual credit,LETS,price,value[/tags]\nHistorical Comments francois \u0026mdash; November 09, 2006 at 05:53 AM Conventional money, or money as we know it today, is an aggregation of so many functions that it is difficult to have a useful and precise discussion using the word money. There have been various functions attributed to money: means of exchange, unit of measure, store of value, deferred means of payment, etc. However since the very beginning of my investigation on money, I felt something was missing. I always felt money was playing an important role at a higher level.\nAll the functions commonly attributed to money do not really reflect its role as a tool to manage our collective activity and creativity. If I put 15 millions on the table, the social housing gets built. Why? Because money is a tool we also use not only to exchange goods and services, but also to collectively manage our activity and direct it. Money can magnetize our energy towards certain goals, simply because we put money behind these goals. The process of choosing these goals has several names: typically investment, capital, or loan. However I would prefer using other terms to describe this role of money, simply because without being an investment tool money can direct our activity towards certain purposes. For example local money directs our activity towards the local economy. So instead of using the term investment or loan (as Steiner does) I would prefer the role of a means to direct our collective energy.\nNot many people in the money world gives much important to this role of money. Many can recognize this function intuitively or indirectly, but not many can name it for what it is. I would argue that all functions that we attribute to money are derived from or related to the following 2 major functions of money:\n1) a medium of exchange,\n2) a means to direct our collective energy.\nThe functions of unit of account and of unit of measure relate to the major function of being a medium of exchange because we need to know the price of things and keep track of how much we exchange. However the function of store of value is related to the ability of money to be stored and released just like we can store energy and release it towards a certain goal. Money as a deferred means of payment is kind of both 1 and 2, since payments refers to an exchange, but also to the ability to pay later a debt that is a form of investment.\nI would also argue, as a consequence of my previous proposition, that any form of money can be described as a composite of these two major functions. The example I gave earlier was a local currency which is only used for exchanges but also as a means to direct our energy towards the local economy. LETS and mutual credit are more geared towards the exchange function, but it does not mean they do not direct or encourage our activity towards certain goals. Loan and other forms of investments are more geared towards the need to direct our collective energy towards specific activities and endeavors. But in the end money invested in a particular activity ends up being exchange money through the payment of supplies, wage, and the latter becoming exchange money for plain goods and services. Separating both functions is sometimes difficult, and it is rare to find them completely separated from each other. Such distinction is more an abstraction useful to understand the dynamics of our economic activity.\nFinally, I would compare such distinction to what Bernard Lietaer calls the Yin and Yang type of currencies, or to what some people have described as micro-economics and macro-economics functions of money (see http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/origins.html).\nI have not fully explored the validity and solidity of my propositions, which is why I call them so. But my observations in the last couple years only confirm their validity.\nA year ago Christopher Houghton Budd gave me even more substance to chew upon when he presented his view on the monetary phenomenon. In a video that Tim Murphy shared with me CHB distinguishes two types of money, one which is used for exchanges, and the other for investment, except he does not call it so, he calls it \u0026quot;ingenuity/creativity\u0026quot; money. More importantly, he also describes how the dynamic between these two types of money is now crucial because we have reached a point where we have a global economy. No longer can we hope to offset imbalances by trading with other partners or extending our reach. Since everything is integrated into a single global economy, understanding and mastering the dynamic between exchange money and ingenuity/creativity money is becoming crucial. Also he explains how we started from tribal economies in the past and end up now with a single global economy. CHB explains we now have to go through the other side of the curve and find ways to integrate local economies together into a greater whole visible to all.\nTo come back to the original topic, with the development of complementary currencies (CC), I can imagine how conventional money can now take a role more geared towards the second function of directing our collective energy on a more national and global scale, while CC take the lead in terms of exchange money.\nThis is turning out to be a bit more than just a post...\nWill \u0026mdash; September 05, 2008 at 02:18 PM \u0026gt;1) a medium of exchange,\nThrough:\nHaving a well-defined value\nBeing able to be transferred according to how transactions work (1:1 for scare goods, 0:1 for free goods)\n\u0026gt;2) a means to direct our collective energy.\nThrough:\nHaving the ability to restrict actions\nThrough: having the ability to prevent transactions\nIt seems to me that what transactions are prevented is a key defining factor in a transactional currency, as this logical analysis of your system thingy shows.\nTransaction-prevention can be encoded at various levels.\n-The basic rules of the currency [you cannot spend money if you don\u0026#x27;t have it]\n-Societal/trust factors [community currencies only]\n-Laws [you cannot spend money on cocaine]\nThis opens the question of whether two currencies are linked. If currencies are linked, transactions which are prevented in one are prevented in the other.\n","date":"November 18, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/11/18/hello-world-2/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince mutual credit money is truly valueless, it cannot BE a unit of measure. It must USE a unit of measure. This means that there must be something with which to set the price of things. You could use chickens or bales of tobbacco or kilowats, or hours as your unit of measure in which the mutual credit money is denomitated, but you can\u0026rsquo;t really do this because the \u0026ldquo;value\u0026rdquo; of any of those things varys across and within communities. Instead, the proper unit of measure is a conventional money, which is determined by an arbitrage market. So in fact, I think what I\u0026rsquo;m claiming is that the true role of conventional money is to determine aggregate value of things, skills and time, to be a unit of measure. Once we have that (which we allready do), then we can do the bulk of our exchanging using mutual credit money. [tags]money,mutual credit,LETS,price,value[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the role of conventional money"},{"content":"Michael \u0026amp; Eric are walking down the road talking about what people will do for money. Michael sees a steaming pile of dog poop and says: \u0026ldquo;Eric, I\u0026rsquo;ll give you 20 grand if you eat some of that.\u0026rdquo; Eric thinks, wow good deal, and does. Michael says \u0026ldquo;ok, I owe you 20k.\u0026rdquo; A little while further down, there\u0026rsquo;s another dog pile, and Eric says to Michael, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll give you 20,000 big smacker if you eat some of that.\u0026rdquo; And Michael thinks, that\u0026rsquo;s an easy way to cancel my debt, so he does. They walk for a few more minutes and Eric says: \u0026ldquo;whoa, we both just ate dog shit and none of us is a penny richer!\u0026rdquo; Michael says, \u0026ldquo;yeah, but the Gross National Product just went up by 40K!\u0026rdquo; [tags]joke,money,GNP[/tags]\n","date":"November 5, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/11/05/what-money-is-worth/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMichael \u0026amp; Eric are walking down the road talking about what people will do for money. Michael sees a steaming pile of dog poop and says: \u0026ldquo;Eric, I\u0026rsquo;ll give you 20 grand if you eat some of that.\u0026rdquo; Eric thinks, wow good deal, and does. Michael says \u0026ldquo;ok, I owe you 20k.\u0026rdquo; A little while further down, there\u0026rsquo;s another dog pile, and Eric says to Michael, \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;ll give you 20,000 big smacker if you eat some of that.\u0026rdquo; And Michael thinks, that\u0026rsquo;s an easy way to cancel my debt, so he does. They walk for a few more minutes and Eric says: \u0026ldquo;whoa, we both just ate dog shit and none of us is a penny richer!\u0026rdquo; Michael says, \u0026ldquo;yeah, but the Gross National Product just went up by 40K!\u0026rdquo; [tags]joke,money,GNP[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"what money is worth"},{"content":"The FLOSS movement has questioned (or at least provided an alternative to) private ownership of software. One can, on very similar grounds, question private ownership of land (and historically the followers of Henry George have). Recently the E. F. Schumacher Society has published its work on forming community land trusts including actual legal documents that have been used to set up these organizations. Private ownership of land is burned much deeper into our psyche\u0026rsquo;s than private ownership of software. Thus even though many of the exact same issues are at stake, we are much less likely to see these two realms of ownership in the same light. The Schumacher Societie\u0026rsquo;s approach, however, bears close study because it steers so far clear of communistic and centralized approaches that we might rightly fear. [tags]community,land,FLOSS,CLT[/tags]\n","date":"April 23, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/04/23/the-free-software-of-land-ownership/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe FLOSS movement has questioned (or at least provided an alternative to) private ownership of software. One can, on very similar grounds, question private ownership of land (and historically the followers of Henry George have). Recently the \u003ca href=\"http://smallisbeautiful.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eE. F. Schumacher Society\u003c/a\u003e has published its work on \u003ca href=\"http://smallisbeautiful.org/clts.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer\"\u003eforming community land trusts\u003c/a\u003e including actual legal documents that have been used to set up these organizations. Private ownership of land is burned much deeper into our psyche\u0026rsquo;s than private ownership of software. Thus even though many of the exact same issues are at stake, we are much less likely to see these two realms of ownership in the same light. The Schumacher Societie\u0026rsquo;s approach, however, bears close study because it steers so far clear of communistic and centralized approaches that we might rightly fear. [tags]community,land,FLOSS,CLT[/tags]\u003c/p\u003e","title":"the \"free software\" of land ownership"},{"content":"This little book is very interesting in that it is a sandwich of extremely cogent and clear understanding of the relationship of money and economics to spirituality and human values, with a filling of a very problematic practical solution. He gets right the fact that our current money system is one design out of many possible, and that it\u0026rsquo;s based on scarcity, and what that means for our world. And he has some very surprising and insightfull things to say about surplus, i.e. more than just the usual \u0026ldquo;our whole economy is based our ability to produce surpluses and then redistribute them\u0026rdquo;, but onto what surplus is spiritually, and who should own surplus. He questions if surplus comes from human effort, or is bestowed on us by nature. He examines when surpluses have, historically, been at all time highs, and claims that it is when individual conciousness is expanding most quickly (i.e. the renesaince, and right now).\nBut in between all this good stuff, is a practical suggestion that we establish a basket commodity currency backed simultaneously by both wheat and gold (because they both represent two different aspects of money, the wheat=agriculture=credit =spiritual and gold=land=value=matter. And that the currency be governed by a centralized non-governmental world body. Well, I don\u0026rsquo;t buy this. It\u0026rsquo;s not a solution comensurate problems it purports to solve. For one, how can a backed currency ever be sufficient? Also, one of the clear goals that he points out of a currency, that of matching the economic activity in the economy, is just not possible in any centrally managed currency where the matching is being doing by people trying to observe the economy. Currencies should do this by internal design, not by an external process. It also means that the locus of control of the currency has simply been moved from one central agency to another, which does not solve the fundamental requirement of making money truly democratic. The high level transnational economic organizations that exist at the behest of national governments (IMF, World Bank, WTO, etc) don\u0026rsquo;t appear to be very democratic to me, nor do they seem to serve the interests of the people to me.\nWhat\u0026rsquo;s a better solution? Open money of course.\n[tags]money,Christopher Houghton-Budd,wheat,gold,currency,community currency[/tags]\n","date":"March 6, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/03/06/of-wheat-gold-by-christopher-houghton-budd-1988/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis little book is very interesting in that it is a sandwich of extremely cogent and clear understanding of the relationship of money and economics to spirituality and human values, with a filling of a very problematic practical solution. He gets right the fact that our current money system is one design out of many possible, and that it\u0026rsquo;s based on scarcity, and what that means for our world. And he has some very surprising and insightfull things to say about surplus, i.e. more than just the usual \u0026ldquo;our whole economy is based our ability to produce surpluses and then redistribute them\u0026rdquo;, but onto what surplus is spiritually, and who should own surplus. He questions if surplus comes from human effort, or is bestowed on us by nature. He examines when surpluses have, historically, been at all time highs, and claims that it is when individual conciousness is expanding most quickly (i.e. the renesaince, and right now).\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Of Wheat \u0026 Gold, by Christopher Houghton Budd (1988)"},{"content":"In hell you are sitting at a sumptuous banquet but your arms are broken and in a cast and though with your fork you can pick up food but you can\u0026rsquo;t bend your arms, so you can\u0026rsquo;t put it in your mouth! In heaven, everything is exactly the same, but you just feed the person next to you.\n[tags]heaven,hell,joke[/tags]\nHistorical Comments Riley \u0026mdash; December 30, 2008 at 12:35 AM Aaaahhhh\n","date":"February 28, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/02/28/heaven-hell/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn hell you are sitting at a sumptuous banquet but your arms are broken and in a cast and though with your fork you can pick up food but you can\u0026rsquo;t bend your arms, so you can\u0026rsquo;t put it in your mouth! In heaven, everything is exactly the same, but you just feed the person next to you.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"heaven \u0026 hell"},{"content":"I have a real soft spot for a good graphic novel now and again, and this one really hit the spot. The story is interesting, the characters are amazingly engaging, and the art is just fantastic. What\u0026rsquo;s most amazing about Bone, is that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t takes an unusual position of litterary self-awarenes. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t take itself completely seriously, like so many of them do, but it\u0026rsquo;s also not all silly. So while the monsters are at some points just clearly silly and out of character, i.e. discussing whether to eat their next victims raw or in the form of a quiche, or calling eachother fat, they are also downright monster scary. It\u0026rsquo;s tough to pull this off, but I, for one, was willing to suspend disbelief and really get into the story, not despite the silliness, but because of it.\n","date":"February 1, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/02/01/bone-complete-one-volume-edition-by-jeff-smith-1991-2004/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI have a real soft spot for a good graphic novel now and again, and this one really hit the spot. The story is interesting, the characters are amazingly engaging, and the art is just fantastic. What\u0026rsquo;s most amazing about Bone, is that it doesn\u0026rsquo;t takes an unusual position of litterary self-awarenes. It doesn\u0026rsquo;t take itself completely seriously, like so many of them do, but it\u0026rsquo;s also not all silly. So while the monsters are at some points just clearly silly and out of character, i.e. discussing whether to eat their next victims raw or in the form of a quiche, or calling eachother fat, they are also downright monster scary. It\u0026rsquo;s tough to pull this off, but I, for one, was willing to suspend disbelief and really get into the story, not despite the silliness, but because of it.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Bone, Complete one volume edition, by Jeff Smith (1991-2004)"},{"content":"This sprawling work requiresmuch more than a small description here, which I will do some time (probably as so many others have), but I\u0026rsquo;ve gotta gripe about it. I wish Mr. Wilber were a better writer, or he would let an editor fix his incredibly repetitious prose. Many people have told me that Wilber is dense and hard to get through, but it\u0026rsquo;s not really that dense. The book is indeed a brilliant synthesis of a whole bucket load of ideas, but the each section is so over belabored that it gets tiresome. Well that\u0026rsquo;s the gripe, the things I like best about it are: holons, a synthetic world view which includes a social and individual component of the interior as well as exterior (the four quadrants), ascenders vs. descenders, Plotinus, and the necessary interrelatedness of macrocosmic and microcosmic evolution.\nThe big problem with this book, is that he states, but does not satisfactorily demonstrate, the claim that the interior/subjective and the exterior/objective are on the same footing. I believe this, but I\u0026rsquo;m still looking for someone who can really demonstrate it.\n","date":"February 1, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/02/01/13/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis sprawling work requiresmuch more than a small description here, which I will do some time (probably as so many others have), but I\u0026rsquo;ve gotta gripe about it. I wish Mr. Wilber were a better writer, or he would let an editor fix his incredibly repetitious prose. Many people have told me that Wilber is dense and hard to get through, but it\u0026rsquo;s not really that dense. The book is indeed a brilliant synthesis of a whole bucket load of ideas, but the each section is so over belabored that it gets tiresome. Well that\u0026rsquo;s the gripe, the things I like best about it are: holons, a synthetic world view which includes a social and individual component of the interior as well as exterior (the four quadrants), ascenders vs. descenders, Plotinus, and the necessary interrelatedness of macrocosmic and microcosmic evolution.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, the Spirit of Evolution, Second Edtion, by Ken Wilber (2000)"},{"content":"Back in 1995, when I was madly collecting web resources for the second edition of my book, The Internet Directory (by the way, don\u0026rsquo;t buy it unless you are an Internet historian), I kept coming across people\u0026rsquo;s personal jounals. I read all kinds of stuff that to me seemed incredibly inappropriate to be made public for the whole world to see. I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t imagine why people would want to divulge their private lives in such a fashion, and I assumed it was just a modern form of hubris. So I decided that these Web sites wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be included in the book, it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t interesting enough for my readers (I thought), and besides there were so many of them, they would just be taking up space.\nAs of today, technorati is \u0026ldquo;watching\u0026rdquo; 6,481,744 weblogs. It appears that I was wrong. Public journaling turns out to be one of the webs killer-apps.\nWhen I told a friend that I had started a blog, she rolled her eyes and said, \u0026ldquo;Oh, no! your not going to be another blogger!\u0026rdquo; This is a fascinating sentiment. Since the very begining of the web, people have put their jounals on-line, but blogging as it has now developed is something altogether different. It\u0026rsquo;s more accurate to view it as a collective journal of humanity. Most of our individual journal entries are mundane and quite boring, even for ourselves to go back and look at (like this one!) but some entries, get at a bigger truth of our lives and reflect the greater experience of what it is to be human, and so it is with blogs. Taken as a whole, they provide something quite similar.\n[tags]blog[/tags]\n","date":"January 27, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/01/27/blogging/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBack in 1995, when I was madly collecting web resources for the second edition of my book, The Internet Directory (by the way, don\u0026rsquo;t buy it unless you are an Internet historian), I kept coming across people\u0026rsquo;s personal jounals. I read all kinds of stuff that to me seemed incredibly inappropriate to be made public for the whole world to see. I just couldn\u0026rsquo;t imagine why people would want to divulge their private lives in such a fashion, and I assumed it was just a modern form of hubris. So I decided that these Web sites wouldn\u0026rsquo;t be included in the book, it just wasn\u0026rsquo;t interesting enough for my readers (I thought), and besides there were so many of them, they would just be taking up space.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"blogging"},{"content":"A few days ago I stopped at a gas station. As I was pumping, I noticed a vole scurrying across the parking lot. The lot was covered with a thin layer of that dry compacted, dirty snow that you get when it\u0026rsquo;s been cold enough that the snow never melted or turned ice. The vole would zip along for about six feet, and then try to burrow under a clump of snow, only to hit pavement so it would zip another few feet and try again. It had come from behind the gas station where there is a field, and it was headed in the direction of a very busy road. This vole was in for trouble and I\u0026rsquo;d better do something about it. I was half way through pumping so I finished filling my tank and then turned to see what I could do for the creature.\nBy the time I\u0026rsquo;d spotted it again, it was about twenty feet from the road. I headed not towards the vole, but at an angle that would cut it off from the road so I could shoo it back to the field. But it must have know that I was trying to prevent it from moving towards its intended direction because it immediately headed for the road at a modified angle calculated precisely to avoid me.\nWithin seconds the vole was in the middle of the road. The first semi missed it by five feet. The next one flattened it.\nI don\u0026rsquo;t know if the vole would have gone on to the road had I not tried to save it, probably it would have. But I do know that if I had stopped pumping gas right when I realized that this vole was in for trouble, that I would have had a much better chance of saving it.\nI hate pumping gas. Every time I do it, I feel like I\u0026rsquo;m that vole flinging myself and my fellow humans as fast as possible right toward those tractor-trailer truck wheels. The vole\u0026rsquo;s consciousness doesn\u0026rsquo;t even include roads and trucks, but unlike the vole, I know about peak-oil, and global warming. I can see the truck coming. But why didn\u0026rsquo;t I stop pumping for that vole? Why don\u0026rsquo;t I stop pumping for all us? How conscious can I become?\n[tags]vole,peak oil,consciousness,oil[/tags]\n","date":"January 23, 2005","permalink":"https://eric.harris-braun.com/blog/2005/01/23/on-voles-and-conciousness/","section":"Posts","summary":"\u003cp\u003eA few days ago I stopped at a gas station. As I was pumping, I noticed a vole scurrying across the parking lot. The lot was covered with a thin layer of that dry compacted, dirty snow that you get when it\u0026rsquo;s been cold enough that the snow never melted or turned ice. The vole would zip along for about six feet, and then try to burrow under a clump of snow, only to hit pavement so it would zip another few feet and try again. It had come from behind the gas station where there is a field, and it was headed in the direction of a very busy road. This vole was in for trouble and I\u0026rsquo;d better do something about it. I was half way through pumping so I finished filling my tank and then turned to see what I could do for the creature.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"on voles and consciousness"}]