#dis2017

I attended a workshop at DIS2017 on New Value Transactions: Understanding and Designing for Distributed Autonomous Organisations. It was a design oriented workshop on how value is (or might be) exchanged via blockchains and smart contracts.  

The day started with a discussion of several existing blockchain projects, including BitBarista (a coffee machine that shows the provenance of the coffee it uses), Decentraland (which uses blockchain to record ownership in VR), Terra0 (an ‘autonomous forest’), and Faircoin (a cryptocurrency supported by a ‘cooperative grassroots movement’). 

Ten position papers were presented. Mine was on Trustless Education? A Blockchain System for University Grades.  

The afternoon was spent working on clustering what we saw as problems and opportunities in this area. Topics included Trust, Participation, Literacies, New Organisations, and Governance. We then worked in small groups looking at value transactions in particular contexts and what the role of smart contracts and distributed autonomous organisations might be. I was in a group looking at food. We considered school meals and how blockchain technology might be used in the supply chain or within schools themselves to produce healthier and more sustainable meals or to minimise and redistribute waste. 

The workshop was interesting and helpful. My thoughts following the workshop are:

There are interesting opportunities for value exchange with blockchain beyond payments. Many academics seem interested in using blockchain to support/enable autonomy of ‘things’ and animals. Many also see potential in the exchange of social value and technology for public good. 

We should not just think about automation with smart contracts but also support for forms of human interaction. One interesting area is consent by voting- what happens if one needs peer consent to turn on the air conditioning or to maintain a ‘vegetarian identity’? 

We should consider the temporalities of blockchain. We should consider the “waitings” that happen during execution; what kinds of interaction can happen across slow technology and what happens while you wait? There’s also a tension (or confusion) between the permanency of smart contracts and a presumption of technical/contractual change. 

New forms of power in this domain will arise from governance and technical literacy rather than ownership. Academics are optimistic and idealistic when it comes to the potential of this technology, which may serve to bring positive potentials in this area, but might also mean we’re blind to negatives. 

Its difficult to consider where blockchains may fit within existing organisations. Innovation will probably happen outside of these contexts. The technology is also difficult to understand (as Chris Speed put it, its difficult to hold more than 5 of the 7 apples at the same time). This difficulty is problematic for designers and academics, and even more so for broader publics- these systems can’t be transparent and ‘trustless’ if we don’t understand them.