NN Ep:15 - Catalysing Network Nations: Movement Building with Benjamin Life & Patricia Parkinson

Transcript

So today we're exploring how network nation can go from being merely a conceptual framework into becoming an actual political movement. In fact in this podcast series we have explored the ideas of network nation and uh um what are the communities around the world that are actually leveraging those ideas in order to experiment towards new modalities of governments. But ideas alone cannot change the world. And so how those network nations can move from a conceptual framework that is mostly interesting to researchers and to a few practitioners to an actual movement that community can join, build around and

organize. And perhaps one interesting concept here is the concept of senos which was introduced by Brienne Ino to describe the collective form of genius that emerge when the right people come together in the right container. And you can think for instance of the jazz scene in the 50s or the early days of the internet where there was no single visionary but rather an ecosystem of people that working together actually make an inevitable break breakthrough. And so this is what we're trying to do with network nations. But of course this is not something that happened by accident. And so we're joined today by two practitioners who are helping with

this transition of bringing network nations toward becoming an action movement. Patricia Barkinson and Benjamin Life are two long-term practitioners in the field of community governance currently working on the open civics project and they have both been deeply involved in creating communities and larger movements to support individual engagement and civic participation. And so together we will explore how can we grow a movement around network nations without falling into the trap of institutionalization.

How can we on board people beyond the tech world into something that actually feels like a real political project? And then of course what are the concrete steps that can turn a scattered constellation of experiment into a coordinated force. Okay. So, thank you very much for uh joining us today. Um yeah, the idea today is to explore uh how do we actually uh build uh movements around the network nations and why do we want to build a movement and uh and how do we actually achieve that? So to start with

perhaps like one uh one big question is like do we do we need to transform the network nation which right now is mostly like uh academic uh or conceptual endeavor with like a community of practice. Um why do we want to turn it into a movement? >> I think my my first instinct to say is because we want it embodied in real life. We want to not just theorize about these ideas but we want them to gradate uh inter relevancy in our lives and that means that there are real people uh engaging with these ideas related to real problems and real opportunities um and means uh getting

>> massive and um so if we were to try and characterize the movement that we want to build a movement usually comes with a theory of change. Uh so what will be that theory of change that uh we are endorsing? Yeah, there's um some terminology that we've developed inside of the context of open civics that I think is relevant here and we sometimes refer to it as a civic hyperstructure or said more plainly um the kind of network effects that happen through the interoperability of many different efforts. And I think when we're doing a kind of parallel society project like network nations

that's really reimagining the social contract from the bottom up, our theory of change has to be rooted in the kind of pluralistic and polyentric coordination among people who are oriented towards that same vision of a parallel society. And so having kind of core grounding principles around um the kind of core ethic and and design paradigm of network nations um enables that kind of agent centric self-organization where each of our individual efforts become more powerful when we are actually able to stitch them together. And a parallel society requires many different modular components that are able to work together. And so the network nations

community of practice becomes a place where people who are building those building blocks of a parallel society can find each other and and strengthen and the mutual benefit mutual reinforcing feedback cycle that's only possible when we're coordinating together. >> Yeah. to me like um I think indeed like there seems to be a lot of uh uh similar ideas and similar communities that are somehow popping up in the last few months and years and I guess they are currently lacking a common umbrella of in order to actually understand that we are actually fighting the same fight and I guess like creating and articulating

the theory of change of this movement that we're creating might also become a gravitational force for all those communities to to see each other as being part of the same uh movement, right? Um one thing perhaps uh an interesting question is like as we talk about parallel societies um there seems to be different flavors of those parallel societies and of course the one the big one um name that comes to mind is the network state movement. Uh do you consider this to be a movement? Do you consider is to be like where does it stand in that level because it is definitely having this

gravitational force that different endeavor and community are associating themsel around this this name. Uh so how do you see the network state in relationship to movement building? I think the the kind of astroturf social movements that I we've come to expect in the 21st century um like network states um where there is an authentic movement behind it but it's mostly being catalyzed and coordinated through the same forces of capital and markets um that it's responding to the the collapse of our current social contract but the the thing that is coordinating it is still the same kind of underlying

extractive ethos that has gotten us into the current systemic mess that we're in. And so I think there are aspects of it that that do present as a genuine movement. Um I think its benefit and its fatal flaw is that it's primarily organized around markets and extraction. Whereas I I see network society network nations being more oriented and coordinated through commoning and through um coordination of of commons governance and I think that puts us at a slight disadvantage. I think this is why we're kind of coming out of the gate slightly behind the network state movement in terms of its level of of mind share and development. Um but I think ultimately that's what will allow

our movement to be healthy and successful in the long term is that um we're coordinating around a very different underlying theory of change and ethic um than the network state movement is. >> And something that I'm coming to better understand is just a little bit more nuance related to the um stages that come prior to something being cohesive enough and coherent enough to be considered a movement. Um, and one of the ways that I've heard this referred to is first you start as a category. It's a descriptive lens that explains and helps give a shared language and understanding to the thing we're talking about which in this case we might say you know parallel societies or insert other word here and then that grows in maturity into a se like a scene or what

it's called sometimes a senior um which is like an emerging community. It's very loose. it's like based on resonance. Um, and then if people are going to transition into a place where they take like role-based authority or other types of mutual obligation, then it starts to form into the underpinnings of of movement. Um, and one of the things that I think uh, you know, network nations like Rene's alliance is working towards is uh, related to those commoning activities that maybe would be a little bit more prevalent than in the network state context. um growing incrementally through those stages to the point where people are really willing to as part of a larger collective effort take on that level of responsibility >> through roles.

>> And um maybe like as as we try to delineate the boundaries of that movement um of the domain of that movement is like and and you relate to the concept of seniors which I think we we should dig into as well. Um it's like to some extent like will that make sense to say that the network nation and the network state are two nodes in the same senus that is this kind of like reinventing sovereignty in the digital age and therefore that we might actually be part of a larger movement and we just have like different way of fighting that fight. uh or do we consider them to be a

different movement that is part of a different senior right and maybe there are some similarities but the overarching theory of change is too different to qualify them as part of the same senior I imagine that they're for sure part of the same category but I would question whether or not they're part of the same seniors because the senius is oriented towards shared culture and I imagine that some of the values and ethical principles underpinning the network state movement versus, you know, like the network nation movement are actually quite different. But I'm curious what you would think about that, Benjamin.

>> Yeah, it's funny. I've had personal experiences with this and it's one of the most beautiful things about creating third spaces um like the regen hub that we've created here in Boulder um with Kevin Awake and and a number of other community members. Um because I was at a happy hour on top of the regen hub roof speaking with a network statist trying to unearth or uncover where are the overlaps where are we actually in alignment or solidarity and um I came up with a a kind of general rule that I think could perhaps support these movements in relating to each other in a more healthy

way um which is really about functional sovereignty. Um, I think the one issue that I think could prevent network nations from collaborating with network statist um has still within it a kind of fascistic tendency. Although I think that's a little bit overplayed and I think there are many network state folks who actually are much more a narco libertarian um than they are fascist or status. Um but within that scene there's you know a diversity of different orientations to it. But I think if we can align on this idea of functional sovereignty that communities should be

able to self-determine the institutions and executions that they participate in and and govern. um then a plural range of different strategies and flavors and approaches to that um could all be part of the same kind of cosmolo learning loop where different local experiments feed back into a global commons of experimentation and learning and in that way we are part of the same seniors because we're responding to the failure of the west failian order in the 21st century even though we're taking on very very different approaches to what that parallel society could look like but there will definitely be insights gleaned through any real practical experimentation and other ways of organizing society. And so I don't think we should be um antagonistic to the

network state because I do know many people inside of that movement who actually are very interested in bio regionalism, very interested in regeneration, um very interested in in improving our functioning of our democracies. Um but they're also mixed in with folks who want to see the state run like a corporation. Um who have no problem with the more fascist uh orientations of that movement. So I think it's it's nuanced but I think there's room for solidarity. >> Let me try to poke at this um in the sense that there's two possible interpretation of this right which is one is the network state movement is actually quite plural in uh in the different value system different theory

of change that it uh embodies. Another interpretation is that there are people that for lack of a better movement are describing themselves as part of the one single movement that they know of uh in this in this particular latent space of preventing postwallian sovereignty and so they are selfdefining themselves as like yeah we are we are exploring the network states but do they actually belong to that movement or do they lack uh not better because it's not about moral uh judgment but a more fine-tuned movement that is actually closer to their values which if we were to perhaps

suggest the existence of an alternative movement then they might stop to recognize themselves under the network state movement and actually choose to recognize themselves under the network nation. Which one do you do you abide by? Well, I'll say that I've at least had interactions with people who are engaged in the network state movement who when learning of network nations expressed that it was much more aligned with their thinking and their values, but they were at a, you know, a lack like like a void of being able to to jump into something and just wanted to start somewhere. So, at least from that like first-person experience, I think I've come across that a couple of times.

>> Yeah. Um because also in one of the past episode we were discussing for instance like with Vitalik and like the question of like vibes. Um which is an interesting thing. Um I think the blockchain space has this a lot where you sometimes you have people that are advocating for pretty much the same theory of change. Uh but somehow at the vibe level uh it doesn't feel the same, right? And it's like somehow you have very separate communities that not necessarily like or dislike each other but don't feel kinship amongst each other. Uh even though when you hear them speaking they're actually talking about

the same thing. They're they're advocating for the same thing. So it also feel that perhaps like this is this is something that we also need to take into account when we're talking about a movement. Are we just talking about what is the narrative that we're trying to promote or are we also accounting for what are the vibes or the I don't know exactly what's the best word to use but what is the communities that are forming which do feel kinship not just at the intellectual level of what they're advocating for but also at a more personal and relational level of wanting to be part of the same movement.

>> I think that aesthetics definitely matter as a way of organizing people and I think that getting to these kind of undergurtding principles that inform the network nations movement. I think that enables the kind of pluralism that the movement requires where we can agree to disagree about certain aesthetic dimensions. And I I keep coming back to this phrase of functional sovereignty because I think it's a very loadbearing term for network nations in that it describes a certain design criteria for what constitutes a network nation. Um that's focused on the self-determination of the polity. And I think that is a kind of overarching principle which in

some ways liberal ideals of of in the original formation of of democracies in the most recent form um is the same kind of of universal ethic um but captured by bureaucracy and institutions. But I think we should be very careful about not universalizing things and looking for what are the common threads that transcend the aesthetics or maybe are a layer deeper than the the specific aesthetics and speak more to the design requirements that constitute a network nation so that we can enable that kind of pluralism.

>> Yeah. Which is what we're trying to do with the theory, right? The theory is like what are the what are the design criteria? what are the boundary condition of like what are we talking about so that people can self- select around this particular um vessel and one thing that we discuss a lot within the within the group is also that even though the theory can can create something that obviously could be adopted by very different communities with very different value system like there is nothing in the network nation structure that says that it's you know that it's only for like people that are

lefties versus right versus you know whatever up or down. Um yet in the in the design of that vessel there is this kind of like encoded values which do come with a bias that you know well if you like the commons you can be you can be a right-wing and you can like the commons but it turns out that statistically you will most likely be more pro-democracy and pro uh individual empowerment rather than dictatorship. But it's just a bias in the design. It's not something that we advocate for. And this is where we we try to distinguish between like political and

metapolitical. And like the the metapolitical agenda is clearly about building a particular vessel that will attract a particular value system. Uh but then the vessel of course is up for grab to everyone. Right. >> Yeah. In the um in our work with open civics, we have attempted to like articulate design criteria for gauging um the outputs of a system or like um a social organism related to like the health of a system. And we've come to articulate them as like vitality, resilience and choice or participation. And those are the kinds of things I would be interested to know more about in becoming more familiar with network states and finding where the synergy or you know the the by divergence lives is if um those types of qualities of values

are embedded in what is being created as like the underpinning um design criteria or like spark really meaningful conversation on where they might diverge. >> Yeah. M maybe to just map those divergences a little bit to explore the territory a bit further. I I think there's something to do with territorial sovereignty that's very important to unpack with network states. Um because I think due to their access to capital um and perhaps some of their more transhuman goals uh that are sort of implicit in the subtext. Um there is this orientation towards territorial sovereignty through capital. um the idea that you could exit a traditional

society by creating special economic zones, by purchasing islands. um there's a way in which that has a kind of neoc colonial logic embedded in it that um I I think network nations by um starting in the the I guess both attempt to start in the kind of cloud but if the network states end game is always going to constitute itself through the kind of private acquisition of territory to create a kind of enclosure of of of that alternative society that might be a fundamental difference um wherein I I think the network nations movement is more about the kind of rembing of pro-social relationships back into place

through the kind of cosmolo convening where um you know as these kind of international networks of solidarity form the way that they actually touch territory is not through claiming a kind of sovereignty over the land but sovereignty as a community um and how we relate to institutions in place. And so I think those are really important distinctions. They might be irreconcilable. Um and perhaps people who are invested in the network state movement when they hear this, they'll they'll have a moment of realization that maybe it's not as aligned as they thought it was. If the kind of endgame requires this neoc colonial move of acquiring territory, this idea of tabula that you could just buy land and start

society from scratch when in fact there's people who live everywhere. there is no starting from scratch and so we are in the middle of the systems collapse. We can't we don't have the luxury of just being able to buy our way into exit. And so I think network nation starts from this premise that sovereignty is is a is something we produce together not something that we can purchase. >> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a that's a great uh discernment line between those two movements. Perhaps we can discuss also like the who of that movement. So um every movement needs to have like a particular community around it uh which is what we are trying to build as we are building this movement. So um the

network national of course is like plural pluralistic transnational transversal etc. So when we're thinking about the who like who are the participants who are the members of this movement like who comes to mind at this stage of the movement's development. I think a lot of it it's about identifying those that are already engaged in the movement but don't have the awareness of the overlap between their efforts. So it's um those that are engaged in academic circles or on protocol design or on uh or in the network state movement but maybe feeling a little bit of dissonance um in some of what uh is encapsulated in that concept. And so

like in then the first stage of movement building I think it's about finding like the social cultivating the social gravity um and creating the shared containers for like those that are already doing the work and already impassioned around the shared pillows and then as the movement grows um it will imagine will start to expand to those that are um stewarding communities that have characteristics of network nations and providing support systems to them in their pilots and experimentations. And so um if we go back to the concept of a senior right actually can can can any of you uh provide a definition for the audience of like what what is a senior? Yeah. Um so the term was originated by um Brian Eno

and it's um a term for like a collective form of genius that comes to be when you have like a recognizable membrane. Um and in a lot of cases a senior is something that you can like vibe and like feel into and recognize but doesn't have like a formal boundary around it. just like a recognizable clustering whereas as soon as you step into the more from the seniors to the movement level and you're bringing in executions institutional responsibility then I think that that like moves uh becomes like a more formal membrane would you add any definition to that Benjamin?

Yeah, just that the the social genius that emerges emerges through the interactions between the participants. And so as ideas start to mimemetically virally spread, they start to feed back on themselves. And so what starts as a an simple curiosity then becomes a a working group, then becomes an initiative, then becomes a research paper. And but at each stage it's through the interactions between the members which is another reason why I love third spaces is because when you go there you know your thinking is going to be improved just through the interaction and the the connectivity between others who are who share a depth of shared understandings but a different enough of

an orientation where that difference of perspective adds some value to or to to feed back into um what you're already doing. And so that I think that's how the the collective genius emerges is through um the kind of sufficient alignment of worldview to bring people together and then as those pieces start bumping into each other new things sparking and emerging from them. And so do you think that we already have as seniors around network nations or do you think that part of the movement building is to actually create that senior meaning like articulated and but also encourage those interaction that perhaps are not uh prolific enough in order to actually

generate a senior that is recognized as such. Well, my experience in weaving is um I you know first first met you this year in person in an immersion related to network nations and I got to experience the culture that was present and it was very obvious to me that there's there is a senior that exists but I think my experience so far has been that it is alive when in presence and proximity but maybe not established sufficiently enough to be persistent and I think that that's what we're trying to nurture.

is um the the the feeling of that persistence of the culture uh relating to digital spaces and asynchronous um connectivity. >> I would say Patricia is one of the most masterful game masters. If you're familiar with Dungeons and Dragons, a dungeon master is someone who's they're helping to keep the story moving along. And one of the things I've learned from Patricia is in in the field of experience design creating these rhythms where we can coordinate without control once we have established these kind of rituals of connection and the practice of of connecting. And so I think the simple yet powerful starting position of

the Network Nations Alliance is can we use that frequency of rhythmic convenings to start to to help people feel more of that identification with the space and then they become the people who spread the ideas who bring other people in because there's actually a gravity that they can pull people into. And there's also a concept related to senius with um like producing emerging visible artifacts. And I think that up until now there's been a couple of key artifacts that have come from different people in different perspectives, but there hasn't been a lot of places that have been like weaving those together into a shared context. And even as simple as having a website that lists them side by side starts to have the movement like see

itself more clearly, which I think helps the culture become more coherent. Going back to the question of whom. Um so in uh uh in activist theory uh there is usually this distinction that is made between um different actors that try to change a particular system. And uh we have the insiders which are the people that don't like the way in which the system work and therefore are getting straight into the system playing by the rule in order to change the rule. And then we have the outsider which don't like at all the system and are like we're going to break it and like is the people like you know doing doing mayhem

uh in order to prevent this system from continuing to operate in a particular manner. And then we have the beyonders um where the beyonders don't like the system but they also don't want to touch it uh neither from the inside or from the outside and so their solution is let's create another system uh which ideally will will attract people and without having to touch the old system the old system will become obsolete because it's less desirable than the new system. And so when we're thinking about building a movement, I'm curious um is a movement like can we build a movement with only one typology of those actor like just the insider, just the

outsider, just the beyonders and I think there is actually quite a few of those movement that are you know like the environmental activist that are like trying to like you know manifestation demonstration or like the beyond group that are just um so is it desirable to actually have a movement that is specifically crafted around one of those categories or are we actually trying to create a movement in which those different actors can see the value that they each bring to the table and in fact crosspollinate their contribution in order to have a more coordinated action um in the context specifically of network nation which I

think initially sounds more of a beyonder uh but I'm curious um how you see the the salency of each one of those categories. >> It's funny because I have personally embodied each one of those categories over the course of my uh the last 10 years of my career and um started out in in the kind of institutional reform space working with big institutions like the United Nations and I was really quite horrified at what I observed from the inside. there's a kind of um external narrative of moral authority of these institutions that once you're on the inside you and you see how actually fractured and broken they are um that

quickly um is dispelled and then simultaneously there's a kind of institutional gridlock and inertia that seems to make I think this is why I became an outsider is because I had these experiences um and so a lot of the work that Patricia and I do with open civics is really trying to support communities in building dual power. Um because I think that notion of of functional sovereignty again is how communities have leverage in relationship to legacy systems. And I think we can't you know protest our way to change. We can't um just you know ask nicely or expect that the people in power have even the agency to create the changes that that are needed. Um, and so

I think it's actually through dual power that we can assert our leverage on traditional institutions and in some ways give them an out because I think they want uh something to change. They're just as trapped inside of the the brokenness as we are. And I think by building these parallel societies, we give we can create partnerships at a at a stage where we're mature enough in our dual power to not be overtaken by the state or by institutional bureaucracy. Um but but but first we have to develop that that leverage and then we can go to those institutions and say hey the system that you're still holding up is not functioning to preserve quality of life to ensure democratic participation.

We've gone ahead and we frontr ran all of the design challenges of building a parallel one and we've tested it and it's working and it has legitimacy derived by people participating in it which you are increasingly lacking. Um, and I think that to me is the strategy where we don't abandon institutional change, but we focus instead on on how the parallel society work can create opportunities of leverage where we can then have a negotiating position from a place of power. >> Yeah. Because you you mentioned several time parallel society which I think is a is a very beyonder concept. But I also think that parallel society implies that it's parallel, right? that they don't

have a point of intersection. uh whereas at least um in my view uh the as opposed to exactly the the network state which is like let's exit so that we don't have to intersect anymore uh with the network nation by definition because we're doing additional layers of sovereignities there is always an overlap meaning that there is always an intersection so I guess parallel maybe it's parallel on the top as opposed to on the side but uh um I guess we cannot conceive of a network nation that is fully independent of the relationship with the nation the nation state in which the members are residing. Right? And so this this the

this requirement in some way of like even if we are beyond earth because we're creating a new system with its own sovereign infrastructure uh we cannot transcend the fact that there is a territory in which everyone is living on. uh which therefore oblig us to build those bridges which in fact is often times a criticism of those beyonders movement is that they just are creating their own little utopia but there is no connectivity with the real world and therefore it doesn't it doesn't go anywhere because people cannot walk from one to the other so in some ways like it's a blessing and it's a curse um because it it's not possible to to create this fully parallel society but therefore we it's also a blessing

because it forc us to think more carefully about how do we build those bridges that then we'll be able to bring an actual change right >> I sometimes use the term fork the system uh and that implies that we can remerge we're kind of exploring a parallel branch which can never be fully separate from the the underlying territory that we're embedded in as you noted but then this kind of patchwork network that I that emerges through that parallel building. Um any cooperative, any commons, any mutual aid network um these are the kind of small individual components that happen in that space of

the fork and then as they cohhere amongst each other I I think that is what creates the possibility for that remerging. And so I do see it not as something that should happen as an exit, but rather as something that can happen off to the side that then can influence and reemerge back into the the default social contract. >> Interesting. Yeah. Another question perhaps um building upon your metaphor which is a great metaphor but it's also a very techy metaphor. Um building again on like who is part of this movement. Um how do we actually ensure that the people that are part of this movement are not only tech oriented people that uh perhaps have already the

techsavviness to engage with those forked sovereign infrastructure whether this is blockchain technology or other decentralized infrastructure and how do we actually make sure that this is a movement that is actually inclusive of people that perhaps are not techies uh and yet will deeply benefit from being part of a network nation. Oh, even maybe not just not just being part of a network nation but also being part of the larger network movement. I find it really helpful um to remind myself of the concept of like sociotechnical engineering. I think often when we are crafting digital tools that shape our way of being, we think of them only in like an engineering like technical

context, but like underneath it all, we're just humans having experiences that need to like feel good and be coherent to us. And often that's overlooked. And I think that that's part of um the comp like seeing ourselves all as designers, but like also the composition of who is um creating uh what what we're intending to interact with and the diverse perspectives that they embody that are hopefully grounded in like real communities, real needs and their own experience. So for example um if we're developing out solutions that require technical components to it which a lot of it's very relevant to what we're talking about not skipping over the steps of centering the humans at the center and thinking of what are um the

ex the feelings we want to invoke what are the touch points involved in that what are the realities and culturation membranes and different things like that. I think generally we need a different type of composition in the room and in the conversation for those that are bridging theory and practice. And then that also makes me think of um some of the defaults we've baked into our culture in developmental spaces like this and being a little bit more aware of um the biases present or like the um implicit conditions that like maybe don't feel as encouraging for those to speak to those types of considerations.

So I think it's all for me all comes back to like the the the composition and ingredients in the room and bridging past what has been a very default sense of like um technical people uh developing solutions and bringing in the social and cultural components as an acquot. If I think about like uh examples of like movements that succeed and failed depending on the perspective, I think that um for instance like the the web three movement is quite quite a successful movement.

But if we look at the population of that movement, it's pretty much techies and our speculators but mostly tech tech speculators even then. Um so it's very popular in a way but it's not inclusive beyond the tech. Um even though it has a cultural component etc. Another example which maybe is the opposite is like occupy uh which I think has succeeded extremely well in being inclusive and like including to everyone that that wants to uh be part of that movement and yet somehow failed to build the

necessary infrastructure in order for anything to actually change. Right? because it's great to have a movement but if the movement doesn't have its own uh infrastructural framework then somehow little can be done. So I feel like those two movements are both very popular in one direction but have kind of failed on the other. Um so how do we envision as we're as we're building the network nation uh movement is like how do we envision to succeed on both of those sides right like to because we have to of course build a technological infrastructure for self- sovereignty and functional sovereignty um but we also want to make sure that

it's not only the tech people that can enjoy this infrastructure. So like how how how are you envisioning uh this um this nondetomical uh issue to be embraced? I'm really curious what you share about this Benjamin, but I'll throw in first just from like first-person experience and being in the web 3 industry for a long time and like you know sideline to occupy is just I think back to early web 3 days when um I end up starting like a global movement for women encouraging them to enter into the industry and there was a trend that um actually with Erica Blair who was one of your previous guests we had a lot of conversations with people that led us to the clue that to bridge those that were previously

uncomfortable in very complicated or technical fields. If we started with the question of like why do I care about this? Like what is it that you care about in the world and then how does this relate to that and have that be a bridging point? Lots of people from disciplines that had nothing to do with web 3 found relevancy in the topic for them. And I think that sometimes again in um tech oriented fields we can like gravitate to the novelty or the mechanisms first versus like the real world use cases or the why that underpins. And I think that that's something that we can infuse more into this movement to kind of learn from those that have come before.

>> Yeah. What I what I would add to that I I wrote a piece a few months ago or last year um called what is Ethereum for? because I think the narrative around blockchains has really been captured by the speculative component of of the industry. Um, and I I really wonder what would have happened during Occupy if we had Dows, if we had um wallets where shared funds could be pulled and democratically governed. Um, and I think that what made the Occupy movement so powerful was that there was a kind of single spark that revealed something that people had maybe had a sense was true around the corruption of our

financial system and and government systems. Um, but this kind of focalized it in a way that activated people to participate. And I think um there's a general kind of nihilism in the culture now where you know we're seeing more and more each day how morally bankrupt the the current order is and and yet there isn't really a space for people who want to imagine into what a postcist future could be. Um, even the climate movement that I'm very deeply woven into is is mostly about, you know, protesting fossil fuel companies as opposed to building the real foundations of a regenerative economy. And I think um I I believe that blockchain can still be a

place where those people are convened if those of us who care about pro-democratic, pro-social futures really claim it as the the substrate for imagining a new social contract. And and if blockspace becomes the collaborative, open-ended, pluralistic design space where we're experimenting with different ways society can be organized, I think that's a big enough tent to bring in people from a lot of different backgrounds um oriented not to a single outcome, but to the process itself of collectively imagining and designing different ways of organizing society.

And something that came to mind as you were talking about Occupy in that way and like what might have been different if they had wallets is just uh like the awareness I have in my own community like there might have been a time when I was like everyone needs to have a wallet. Let jump on board and then I'm like actually maybe it makes sense for somebody in the community or a small group of people to play that interfacing role with something that's more complex or technical uh and not to assume that it's relevant for everyone to engage at that level but to hold some level of like awareness of and literacy of those considerations. in the same way like a community have a web master. So I think that's something we might see a lot more of is just starting to get a lot more

sober with ourselves on when it comes to blockchain or other technical infrastructure um who is necessary to be engaging at that level of detail or interaction and versus who benefits from the affordances it offers. Do you have um do you have interesting examples of this type of movements which have managed to successfully inter with uh the cultural and like mainstream component and the technical infrastructure. >> I think uh platform cooperivism and and cooperatives in general um have have tried. I think um Zebras Unite is a sort of another one of those movements that

um started and failed but learned learned a tremendous amount along the way and that was really trying to create a fund uh to fund cooperatives uh that were had a different kind of of organizing logic. Yeah. But I think generally yeah it's very difficult to to hold the continuity of a movement like this. Um I think how we govern it as a commons is is one of the biggest issues. Um because movements tend to be subtly or not so subtly co-opted by institutions. Starting with the commons in mind I think is an important piece here because most of the stories that I could tell you are stories of ones that have tried and failed um not very vibrant successes. I have another uh contentious question uh uh thoughts to

discuss which is uh um when we think about a movement often times uh not always but often times uh it is associated with one or a small group of movement uh uh leaders like the steward of that movement which are also potentially the one that are protecting the movement from co-option. etc. Like there is like those few individuals and sometimes it's just one that are really like holding on to embodying that movement and that are attracting and protecting and nurturing, right? And so it's also interesting because like and

this is kind of like the opposite of a senior in some way in which like the senior is actually this more distributed the centralized cultural scene that emerge. So when we're talking about a movement as opposed to as seniors, is it possible and and what are the challenges of trying to build a movement which doesn't come with the charismatic leader uh that is that is usually associated with that. What it makes me think of um is that any collective effort I think in its kind of conception and justation stages does need a smaller group of dedicated humans like parenting the thing into

self-sufficiency. Um and I don't think that movements um are any different to that. Um a phrase that's been really alive for me lately has been like legitimacy through legibility. I don't think that in a lot of cases it's a a negative thing to have a couple of humans centered in those early stages as long as the way that they are operating making decisions and to express to enact part of the collective will that they're representing as long as it is legible to those that are engaging within it I think actually there's there's a lot that can be gained from yeah that positioning and those roles >> yeah I I've noted this happening explicitly in the bio-regional movement right now in the way that I think it's

inevitable as Patricia mentioned that institutions and charismatic leaders um become kind of focalizations of of attention and resources and that is in some ways necessary some ways problematic and so I think my my suggestion in the bio regional movement that we're currently implementing with this kind of dual institutional and exital structure that we're developing here on the front range of Colorado um where we have a network commons that is totally exe and then we have a traditional nonprofit that is that provides the sort of institutional functions as a service but embedded into the bylaws of that institution is

something that I'm calling institutional self-negation and so I think it's important for the people and the institutions that receive the kind of focalization of that energy to encode into their DNA of either their bylaws or their operating procedures this continuous process of desentering those charismatic leaders or institutions and and reentering the executional modes of engagement that are available for people. Um because I think it's very easy for cults of personality to form even unintentionally. And so I think as leaders it's actually our responsibility to hold each other accountable to practice this kind of self-negation where we're continuously redirecting the energy that's directed towards us as individuals as as spokespeople and and

re enabling the community through the executional structures um to benefit from whatever we gain from that kind of um focalization of energy that is both necessary and yet a potential pitfall for for movements to fall in on themselves around the charismatic leader. This makes me think of an interesting example uh of a I don't know if we can call it a movement but like of a powerful community which doesn't come with the charismatic leader which is like the the the free messence and in fact the freeance have replaced the charismatic leader with like the protocol is like the deeply institutionalized worship of the protocol uh which is so

strong that you don't actually need the charismatic leader anymore because the protocol is the god in some way but it's also very very very institutional which is perhaps also not necessarily what we are aiming for but I think it's interesting to think of protocols as something that at least can play a complimentary role to the leaders to the charismatic leaders and and finding this right balance between exitutional dynamics which are more relational and institutional dynamics which are perhaps more codified or protocolized and trying to see within the network nation like what kind of combination between those two we can do in order to create a

movement that is that is sufficiently recognizable as a movement because there is a common protocol or common recipe or however we want to call it but yet also have like all the necessary relationality without having one single or a small group of leaders right this is very alive for Benjamin and I right now related to our work in open civics and I have to give kudos to our co-start um Spencer Kavanaaugh who originated this term but we've kind of decoupled from the term progressive decentralization and we've really anchored into the term progressive protocolization. So the way that we see ourselves in our movement right now is we're kind of articulating it as three primary phases of maturation. The first being like we're super early, most

things are centralized. Hopefully, we have a lot of transparency and accountability and phase two being like incremental protocolization of our roles as centers of this movement, but doing it in a way that like grounds the reality that like we're not going to get that right. Like we're not all of a sudden going to like push all the decision-m authority to members who aren't meaningfully engaged. We're having culturated context. and we hope to eventually graduate to the point that in phase like a phase three version of progressive protocolization we if we did not exist the thing would continue on um I I very much resonate with what you're saying on protocols that way >> that's good >> and I think that it relates to the anti-fragility of our movement like in thinking of successful movements that

I've been exposed to I think of um the design science studio which was incredibly successful in like pandemic era and then had a personal tragedy happened where their founders were not able to show up unexpectedly and the movement wanted to continue on but didn't have any protocols in place to do that and so just thinking of those like that learning case very proactively has been important to Benjamin and I >> really >> just adding another example because I'm I'm so glad you brought that up Patricia and hopefully our phase two transition is complete by the time this podcast comes out we hold ourselves accountable to that I also wanted to mention just the the Burning Man principles as as a form of protocol. Um and uh the way in which there is a kind of peer

accountability um where when you have those principles clearly defined um the the the peer enforcement of those protocols um is what makes them a viable organizing strategy is that um there are many people enacting the protocol and that creates um a kind of institutional or executional function that um yeah isn't possible without them. So um yeah, totally aligned uh with with this idea of of making protocol uh a centerpiece of of how we think about movement building.

>> Yeah. And I'll I'll I'll say most specifically with our work with the network of nations alliance right now is that we we're also embedding this and are thinking of trying to articulate at least are like best guess what is it um good enough for now safe enough to try protocols so that we're creating the surface area by those that have the initiative to engage have some sense of exposure to what at least our working protocols are that may not have been developed in the most participatory way but were so early stage that's maybe not that realistic. So for anyone that's listening to this and curious, you know, it might I think we have a draft right now, but by the time that this published is probably more circulated is um an articulation of a form of constitution for the alliance

itself that names that there are people like us in stewardship roles but very clearly delineates like what rights and responsibilities are associated with that and creates the ability for anyone at any time that is within that membrane to suggest improvements or could take on a role themselves. >> Great. Um, so this brings us perfectly to the last uh uh section of this podcast as we have a few minutes left. You two have been very deeply involved in uh this endeavor of like uh community building and movement building. So would you like to um describe to to our audience like what are the various

concrete ways that you have been working towards implementing this movement? >> Yeah, I would say the most ambitious and um long-standing aspiration that we've had for the work that we do with open civics is at the level of a pattern language for civic infrastructure. Um because I I think one of the most important pieces for the network effects of network nations is to have a kind of ontology that describes what are the different components of civic life that enable self-organization of communities. And so we've been developing for several years

a framework and methodology for the the way in which we can categorize and sort those different kind of functional building blocks that communities need to be able to pull resources, make collective decisions, coordinate at the level of their own local community. so that the people who are building these kinds of infrastructures um can start to compose more nuanced and complex systems where you know one piece of governance tooling and one piece of knowledge commoning infrastructure can actually interface with each other in a way that unlocks new capabilities and so um that's the part of of of the intersection of open civics and network nations that is one of the most concrete things I I hope we can achieve is um

creating that that knowledge commons that enables um a kind of plug and play almost like Lego blocks of social systems. Um and and that work is is always unfinished um but definitely I think part of our our aspiration with open civics and network nations >> and aside from that um more recently um you know to help uh the this movement emerge um we've been contributing to first identifying that we needed to delineate our collective efforts from the concept of network nations itself.

So that's where the name Network Nations Alliance came from. Um which is like a coordinative loose affiliation and then looking at our areas of online presence um that would convey the context and and relationship between those two things which has been like creating a little bit of a light brand identity overhauling the website making sure that it's connected to GitHub so other people can be um suggesting changes and um not gate you know very little gatekeeping in that way. We're also, as Benjamin kind of mentioned earlier, like focusing on rhythms and cycles. So, right now we're doing like a monthly member or like a monthly open call just to see like who already is in this senior like can we make them known? Can we create an attractor that's enticing enough for

them to want to identify that they are part of this movement which I think creates a cascade effect for credibility that is very important at these early stages. And aside from that, it's just the dissemination of both the underpinning theory that has been developed from a couple of core people like you, Drew Vera. Um, but also amplifying the works from others that maybe we previously were unaware of, which also means like developing a substack, having this podcast, and then creating that that space, which right now is the website, and then in synchronous form on the calls where we kind of connect and glue all those things together as we're in relationship to one another. Um I think that that's an important piece that you've been really great actually about encouraging PE is as much as you know you're

partially the one of the originators of this theory and concept and should be accredited. So uh it's not all it's not just about you it's about amplifying the voices of all the others as well and I think that that's what we've been trying to nurture over these last few months um pretty successfully. >> Yeah and we're very very grateful uh for all the work you've done. So what is the call to action for uh everyone listening to the p the podcast and that would like to somehow uh join the movement or uh hear more about this or get involved.

>> Yeah, I think that the very easy ways are to like find us on all the normal social channels and just follow along um how development goes if you want to kind of have a hands-off um but curious uh way of relating. And then if you want to go a little bit deeper, um I would say attend one of the monthly calls, listen in, feel feel free to contribute, but don't feel like you have to. It's also just a great way to network and to meet people with uh shared values and um generative pursuits. And then if you are very enticed and want to help us uh build alongside us this movement, um there's a form on the website that will um help you transition into membership.

We're just establishing membership at the moment. Um but that would be the best way to get involved is to just uh identify that you already part of uh the shared effort. >> Amazing. Great. Um thank you so much. That was great. And uh uh I guess it's just the beginning. The movement is growing as we speak. So thanks a lot. And uh yeah, we will be in touch. >> Thanks Prem. Thanks.