Art by Imperial Boy
It's fun to think about the far future. Especially now, when there is a lot of new developments in the hi-tech fields.
If you are a modern investor, It's crucial to spend some time on a pure thinking to achieve some kind of macro vision. Reading the news could be very entertaining, but honestly speaking it's not useful at all. There's tons of misinformation, paid articles and hidden advertisement. Almost every piece of information nowadays is trying to sell you something - goods, services or ideology.
Even this article advertises the crypto movement as a whole... I don't think this is bad, but I warned you just in case.
When you turn on your imagination and try to visualize the future, you can see colorful pictures of new worlds. Some theories say that in such way we connect to The Grait Source Of Knowledge. What we see there can be а predetermined truth, or maybe just a version of the universe, a possible outcome.
So, once I had a dream and that dream was about Smart Communities.
Smart community is a virtual programmable organisation built in a trustless enviroment, such as blockchain, tangle or DAG. A great contemporary example is Steemit. But the possibilities of smart communities go far beyond the simple concept of a social network.
Humanity will form numerous groups of people with similar ideas, complementary desires and talents. Each of these groups will have its own set of rules, defined by smart contracts. To become part of the community you'll need to go through the process of verification. You'll have to have certain qualities to join it.
The communities will provide you everything you need in exchange to your contribution. They will replace many of today's institutions. Here is a short list of their possible features:
- Using the concept of power instead of money
- Voting or delegated voting for almost everything
- The rules can be also changed by voting
- Borderless, with embassies in each country
- AI is also equitable participant in the network
The Power
This concept is very similar to Steem Power. I assume that in future implementations there will be no transactions, only upvoting, or powering up. In fact, why do we need instant transactions that make key owners vulnerable to theft and extortion? Instead we could just let the power flow.
If the power redistribution occurs in rounds (let's say every week), this will reduce the risks dramatically.
In case of theft of a private key criminals can benefit from this only for one round. The amount of spendable power will be limited and in the next round the owner will initiate the re-identification event.
Another benefit is the simplicity of paying for coffee. Seriously, this is very important. You just go to a cafe that supports your community and all you need is a tap on your smartwatch (smartphone) display to approve your membership. If the coffee was great you upvote the cafe.
Of course, this is just an example. All services will be transaction-less.
The Voting
Obviously, this communities cannot be super smart without a smart and stable voting system. Voting is necessary to make the system flexible, because the environment is changing so fast that there is absolutely no way to use predefined policies.
This doesn't mean that every aspect of the community should be verified by everyone. People should focus on their personal contribution, so the one solution is to use deligation.
We can define different levels of responsibility and some of the tasks can be delegated even to machines. For example the problem of coffee pricing could be solved by machine learning without any human intervention. If something goes wrong with the price of coffee the only consequence will be a crowd of angry geeks.
On the other hand, changes in the core protocol should be approved only by group of high-powered people (whales).
The Rules
Recursive consensus, changing of the ways of changing things. This can be difficult to understand and even more difficult to implement, but we need a high level of flexibility.
The simplest example is the changing of the voting mechanism. Perhaps there is an error in it that allows participants to exceed their rights. It must be fixed, but this itself requires the voting process.
Borderless communities
"It doesn't matter where you are geographically, but you are at home" - this is a slogan for borderless communities. There is something magical and attractive about traveling and this shouldn't be the privilege of a few.
AI DAOs
Perhaps you asked the question: "How will the cafe cover all expenses if people voluntarily upvote for coffee?". The answer is that the cafe probably will not be a human's business. This will be an AI DAO (you can read more in this great article).
In short, AI DAO is an optimisation mechanism running autonomously. This is an AI-driven self-owning business. In this particular case the AI DAO will search for different ways to make customers happy and earn more power.
It's important to understand that artificial intelligence will more and more complement people in the near future. And also that it will have rights and responsibilities as a regular member of the community.
To implement this vision we need to develop next-generation platforms, like EOS, TEZOS or DFINITY. However, perhaps even these projects will not cope with such a load (scaling up to billions of participants). Therefore we need a gaint technological leap.
And not only technological but also a leap in the human perception. Each of us make decisions that affect the future. Some "take their money and run home", trying to forget this. Some decide to stay and develop the infrastructure.
You control this slider:
Imperial Boy Vs Deus Ex
Move it to the left, and our future is totalitarianism, the reign of corporations, diseases and poverty. Move it right and we will live in a solarpunk picture with smart communities, individual freedom and fair wealth distribution.
Post Scriptum
Following chart shows a possible picture of the future. Depending on how soon the artificial intelligence will appear the grey zone can start in 2030-2050. This is the moment of singularity. Until then, we can create favorable conditions for life using all the innovations in blockchain, solar- and bio-technologies. I'd like to call this period "Golden Age".
Links and sources:
Ornament inspiration
Wild, Wooly AI DAOs