Is it possible to have distributed networks with the convenience of centralized services? Especially when centralized services seem the most practical option? Think of Google, WhatsApp and Facebook, but also institutions like banks and governments. Despite all the data leaks, micro-targeting, surveillance, and privacy intrusions, these services are pretty damn convenient to use. And they’re...
Cattle herding and biological carbon sequestring with robots
This post is related to the post about Australian bushfires. It dives deeper into the possibilities IOTA offers regarding solutions mentioned there. Over time we’ll develop this into a usecase that can explored in a hackathon. [This post only contains some basic ideas on how to use IOTA, but does not go into the details of how to build it. It would require much more research in order to...
Talking forests: inspiration for resilient machine ecosystems
Mycelium – the underground fungal network that connects trees in a forest – is nature’s own DLT . When designing machine ecosystems, mimicking the principles of these natural networks give us a good head start in creating resilient autonomous assets. We’ve looked at aspects of natural ecosystems as an inspiration before, but this time we dive deep into the inner workings of...
Reframing abundance for a sustainable economy
Abundance is one of the promises that comes with renewable energy. “If only we had enough energy, we could get anything we want.” But is that true? And can that be true for everyone in the world? Without destroying the world as we know it? This post goes deeper into psychological and philosophical side of abundance, as opposed to the technical side. Because if we frame it right...
Biomimicry: information and the Machine Economy
The Machine Economy track on the world’s largest blockchain Hackathon challenges you to go way beyond the current paradigm. But how do you rethink a future ecosystem? Nature could be inspiration. It’s been scrumming and iterating its ecosystems for 3.8 billion years. There’s some interesting concepts to be learned from it, through Biomimicry. Biomimicry Biomimicry means learning...
Nature as inspiration for the world’s largest Hackathon
In April 2018 the largest blockchain hackathon in the world will be organized in the Netherlands by Blockchaingers. On 8 February a Deep Dive was held in Amsterdam for the track Machine to Machine economy (M2M) to prepare and excite the teams and other interests parties. I was asked to inspire the participants with a few examples from nature. Machine2Machine Deep Dive All speakers at the Deep...