# A Synchronous Web of State ### Tear down these walls We are creating the third phase of the web: This change will happen thr the *economically*—by making the *easiest* way to program websites be the *open* way. We will do it by extending the HTTP protocol and infrastructure into an automatic state synchronization substrate. ### HTTP ## Statebus: a Synchronous Web of State # Invisible College Plan Discussion I am starting a new college, to foment the third Scientific Revolution, with a new Internet science dialogue. Braid will play a key part. Please talk this through with me. ## Historical vision There have been two big scientific revolutions, where a higher level of thought rose into priority in human consciousness. Each happened when a group of people stepped into a new technology of communication—a new medium—and filled it with new ways of thinking towards higher ideals. **1. Oral Scientific Revolution.** Greece, 600–400 BCE: A philosophy of rational explanations of the world from natural phenomena, rather than Gods, developed in the democratic *Oral Debate* scene that arose in the Greek [Agora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agora). - Debates amidst a public democratic audience in Greek agora, on topics such as: - Philosophical arguments - Competing physicians in a market - Democracy → popularity amongst audience - Favored intuitive rational explanations of phenomena from nature, over Gods - Did not afford detailed controlled experiments, nor replication - Led to bodies of philosophy, to academies, and to records in books **2. Literate Scientific Revolution.** Europe, 1600-1700 AD. The philosophy of empirical experiment, reproducibility, peer review developed because of the new medium of *Written Dialogue* in the [Republic of Letters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Letters), and the printing press. - Writing is *precise* and *abstract*; affords *empiricism* and *experiments*. - Precise, detailed descriptions of controlled experiments. Reproduced. - Small audience with deep, dispassionate technical review. No longer needs a crowd. 3 reviewers can evaluate. - Printing press → invented Peer Review to determine which papers to print. **3.** We are now on the cusp of the **Internet Scientific Revolution.** The internet affords new communication abilities. It is our turn to flesh them out. **Discussion:** Do we know what the 3rd scientific revolution will look like? - Jay: AI is a big part. - Physical co-located groups, but enhanced with virtual communication - Cultural breakthroughs come from vortexes of misfits that get together and break rules - Mike: Networked thought. Non-linear branching forums, e.g. as trees. - Greg: Perhaps the way legacy academia is "wrong" today is more about *funding*, than *truth*. - Jonathan: Yes, Academia today is more about *status* than *truth*. - Jonathan: You need to talk about AI. - This whole thing sounds old-fashioned without talking about AI. - The new medium will be something with AI. - AI is becoming your brainchild that speaks for you. - There'll be a symbiosis between scholars and LLMs. - This might be so powerful it could push everything else aside. - Jay: - Funding is key. AI is key. - And the disadvantage of legacy institutions is they are too slow. - Need to innovate on funding, with misfits. - Christian: - Science has become a commodity. Scaling up. Lots of people. Lots of papers. Higher quality work. - Leaves holes with e.g. EU nations competing for national interests in quantum computing. - Where's the space for the individual? - Universities control what you are allowed and not allowed to say. - So my critique: Is it really the media? What about the background forces? ### The Process of Scientific Revolution Each revolution is determined by its *medium*, and brought to life by its *revolutionaries*: - The **medium defines the shape** of the new science consciousness - The **revolutionaries fill the shape** with dialogue from their higher ideals Each revolution follows four steps: We saw these steps in the first two revolutions: 1. Oral Scientific Revolution: 1. **Stoppped playing game** of survival, to philosophize 1. **Created community** in Agora & physician markets 1. **Organized** into philosophical Societies & Academies, like Aristotle's Lyceum, and created written records. 1. **Became the game** as ancient Greek written philosophy was rediscovered and merged (by Thomas Aquinas) into the Roman-Catholic Church, and the first Universities sought to explain scripture but not contradict it 2. Written Scientific Revolution: 1. **Stopped playing game** of Academia, to *question* the authoritative beliefs. 1. **Created community** via letters and extramural meets in an "Invisible College" 1. **Organized** into Royal Society of London, creating Peer Review 1. **Became the game** as Academic publishers adopted peer review Our college will follow these steps to flesh out the *Third Revolution*; on the Internet. 1. **Stop playing the game** of publication peer-review. 2. **Create community** in the invisible.         ← *We are here* 3. **Organize** into a real college.                    ← *We are going here* 4. **Become the game** **Discussion:** Feasibility of organizing this group to flesh out the 3rd revolution? - Jay: There was a group (called the anklings?) that married wealthy older women to fund their group - Jonathan: Nowadays, we have the "tech cons", rich people in silicon valley, who are "disrupting the paper belt" and building their new institutions of higher learning - Examples: - UATX - Astera - New Science - Jay: Key is to get the right crew together, to attract attention and funding. ## Mission of College Build the new Science Dialogue, on the new Decentralized Web. (See [meeting-99](/meeting-99) for details.) ## Plan to build a College **Phase 1: Single Lab.** A petri dish for Internet Science Dialogue. We create and use "Social Protocols for Science on the Decentralized Web" that improve our ability to find truth. Examples: - Subjective Peer Review via WoO - Micropubs via [Discourse Graphs](https://discoursegraphs.com) (decentralized scientific stack overflow) - Grants and Grats (in via WoO and Invisible Property We admit and train graduate students. We publish our work on our protocols, and invite others to join the growing dialogue. **Phase 2: Multiple Labs.** As our protocols grow useful, and the dialogue on them grows, we open additional labs, in additional research areas. The Internet Science Dialogue makes it easier for funders to fund the best researchers in the areas they care about, because contributions become openly visible (e.g. via Discourse Units) and easy to evaluate (via WoO) from funders' perspectives. Researchers can see which questions (via Discourse Units) the funders care about (via their WoOs), and can know what will get funded. The college facilitates legal aspects of funding, with two [Donor-Advised Funds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor-advised_fund) (DAFs): - Grant allocation: via a DAF for investments - Grat allocation: via a DAF for invisible profit shares With multiple labs and sustainable funding we achieve a *Graduate School* built on a new mechanism for recognizing talent and allocating funds. **Phase 3: University.** We repeat the process to redesign other aspects of University: - Undergraduates - Courses - Certifications - Campuses We will continue to develop each aspect of the college using the same design process, taking advantage of the unique affordances of the internet and the core social protocols we have already developed, and socially prototyping our ideas to test and refine them. Other colleges can then learn from and copy our lead, and reform themselves into a structure enabled by the internet and AI. **Discussion:** - Q. Is this a feasible plan to build a college? Any suggestions? - Q. How does this revenue model sound? - Jonathan: - I would love to get graduate students. But what's in it for them? - What value do they come out of it with? - Mike: People want to learn skills. - Getting paid to learn is appealing. - Not having to go through graduate school is appealing for some. - Jay: People want to work on something cool. - Jonathan: - This org should be associated with an "ideas festival": an annual (or biannual) attempt to get real visibility, and give out prizes - A way to give out cred to the best work. - Observe the arts world—super motivating for people - "Winner at Sundance Festival" - Austin has SXSW - Christian: - We have to stop the game of making things public - The value of keeping things secret - You make a guild. A code of honor to go into the guild. - Science is about having theories, predicting things— you can *do* stuff. *That* is your power! - Let's create a thing we can use, and keep that for us. - I start to hate medals and awards... github giving you "skills"... gameifying - At P2P Basel, we have aprons. You get badges for chopping vegetables or cleaning dishes, and for your apron. - I made a badgeless badge. - We can do things. We want to be around people doing things. - We don't want to look at badges. ## Finance ### Revenue (Gratitude Economy via Invisible Property All intellectual property will be licensed under: Invisible Property License 1. You have the right to use this IP for any purpose. 2. If you make profit, you agree to give back a fair share of the profit to the creators of this IP. 3. The creators will tell you how much they think is a fair share, if your usage matters to them, and promise not to take you to court to enforce the agreement. This basic agreement sets the social contract for a [Gratitude Economy]((https://invisiblecollege.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/invisible-college-hawaii2a.mp4). In practice, your WoO will say how much your social network thinks is fair to donate back to X for profit made on Y. ## Graduate student admissions Join us if you want to focus your research time on *changing* the Academic game, rather than *playing* it. Lab Director: Michael Projects: - Braid Room: Libraries, apps, and evangelism to grow a group of social programmers interoperating on a web of state - Braid Standardization: Building interoperability on core state sync protocols with HTTP and other state systems - Social Protocols: - WoO - Points - Friendbo Operations: - Weekly group meetings - Individual meetings with students, where I support progress on: 1. Research—towards a mission we share 2. Learning—becoming capable 3. Professional Development—becoming socially powerful 4. Service—to our lab and college; and to the world on behalf of lab and college Evaluation - Core metric: contribution in weekly group meetings towards the 4 items - Flexibility & agency in choosing approach to contributions - expands over time as student graduates Students graduate through 4 levels: - 🂻 **Jack:** Learning to work in research area `~$60k` - 🂽 **Queen:** Responsible for role in research area `~$80k` - 🂾 **King:** Responsible for leading research area `~$100k` - 🂱 **Ace:** Freedom to choose research area `~$120k`