I’ve been gifted quite a few insights from James Carse’s “Finite and Infinite Games” over the past month. Thank you Paul for recommending it to me a few years back. In yesterday’s livestream I reflect on Carse’s ideas of “winning,” “invisibility” before a perceived audience, and the power of “touch” as a language in contrast to being moved through external forces like cybernetic nudging. I also dig into Vannevar Bush’s ideas for an external brain, stigmergic thought trails, Xanadu, and how indexed information (possibly from tokenized “Athenian-inspired” governance systems on blockchain) could be an armature for the emergent super-organism.
I’ll restate my open invitation to publish letters from readers open to “looking around the labyrinth” with the understanding that the goal is to learn to look in our backyards with compassion at the structures – no hammers. Do come play and in doing so reassure me that I haven’t strayed too far off into the woods. I’m gathering sticks and bits of natural frippery to make a charming hideaway. Some day it will be the setting for a fabulous gathering of like-minded souls. There will be many stories to tell around the fire.
Until then, here are parts of the D-Cent Map that I talk about in the video above. Each image is hyperlinked to the interactive version. Enjoy the “garden of forking paths” I’ve prepared, lol.
Map Links
Hypertext
Tokenized Democracy
Stigmergic Coordination of “The Commons”
Book List
Finite and Infinite Games – James Carse
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Garden of Forking Paths and Labyrinths – Jorge Luis Borges
Gathering Moss – Robin Wall Kimmerer
Thy Will Be Done – Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett
Manhattan Project to the Santa Fe Institute – George Cowan
Signals and Boundaries – John Holland
As somewhat tangential but parallel research to your own I recommend Lynn Brunet’s books and master’s thesis (particularly chapter 6) and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel and Greg McCarron’s – ‘The Antedote’ – podcast.
A short story by Jorge Luis Borges that I read forty years ago now makes me think of permanent, immutable DLT records. The title is ‘Funes the Memorious’.