The Commons Engine: Collective intelligence, non-monetary currencies, and Holochain
For this interview I spoke to Ferananda Ibarra (@fer_ananda), the Director of the Commons Engine, a Holochain Ecosystem service agency aiming to create a community of Regenerative Economy practitioners capable of designing ethical tokens and currencies to enable healthy flow, incentives, and feedback loops in order to evolve the economy and culture of their own communities and organizations. During the interview we spoke about what constitutes a commons both in the physical and digital world...
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Alright. Well, hello, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialists podcast. And for today's interview, I am with Fernanda Ibarra. She is a social innovator, with a heart centered intellect and a global reach. She has a passion for augmenting collective intelligence, innovating on social and economic systems, and she's also the director of the commons engine, which is a Holochain ecosystem service agency aiming to create a community of regenerative economy practitioners capable of designing ethical tokens and currencies to enable a healthy flow, incentives, and feedback loops in order to evolve the economy and culture of their own communities and organizations. After a very long session of technical difficulties hi, Fernanda. How are you? Hello.
Yes. That was fun. A lot of technical difficulties, but here we are. We persevere.
Yes. So, yeah, I, I'm excited to have you on because I've spoken briefly about the comments engine before with the previous guests. But I think in this episode, we'll have a lot more time to go into the the specifics of the type of things that, the project is trying to accomplish and as well learn the really interesting, I think, context and background story that sort of comes with a lot of the, projects that you've been working on, which includes the Holochain ecosystem and even before that, the Medicurrency initiative, which I also found really, really interesting. I'd spoken previously, not on the podcast, but just sort of on my own with, the founders, the other founders, Arthur Brock and Eric Harris Braun. And we had really interesting conversations. But so maybe before we get into all that, I think it would be really interesting since you have a very long history of doing this type of work. Could you give us maybe some of the well, yeah, about yourself, but also about the experience of working on community currencies and coming up with metacurrency project and now Holochain and now the commons engine.
Wow. Yeah. That's a lot. You know, back in Regaless
with the saga.
Yes. Exactly. So one my first foot in all of this was through collective intelligence. So I used to have a, company called the Collective Intelligence Research Institute with John Francois Nubel. And one of the things that struck me while I was in that path of collective intelligence, you know, like helping humans cooperate and doing process arts and facilitation and learning about how collective intelligence really is a whole discipline, a whole science that involves so much, like biomimicry and sociology and so called psychology and also economics. And it was through Jean Francois, you're like just sharing and saying, you know, we really can't reach the collective intelligence or global collective intelligence that we all aspire for if we don't change money. And that was like an epiphany. And from that on, you know, like, things started to unravel for us in terms of relationships with, first with Eric Harris Brown and then, through Eric with Arthur Brock as well. And in that time, Eric, Harris Brown, John Francois, and I were working with Michael Lincoln, from, Open Money. And we were helping, you know, Michael because we really believe in mutual credit currencies up to the date. And, in that time, that was pre Bitcoin, France. Pre Bitcoin, there was this thing called currencies that had already existed for, you know, a long time, and we were figuring out how to help. And we were developing a software called the FlowSpace to enable education for individuals that they could see that it was not that difficult to create your own currencies. And, after a a big, retreat that we had for Open Money where it kind of the project kind of the group not the project, the group kind of collapsed, and then metacurrency came as a distinction of you know, we were always, like, laughing about going meta before the soccer board ruined out for all of us, but, you know, going meta was a beautiful thing. Still a beautiful thing. And so we created the we coined meta currency. And then Arthur and Eric began cooperating and collaborating for a while, and then I joined meta currency. And, we were more like a think tank, you know, like, getting together, doing different projects. We did, emerging leader labs. Arthur Brock started with agile learning centers. We helped with that. And then one day, when we were watching the wave of the blockchains and the ICOs going, we were like, oh, you know, friends, we're currency designers. I think we should do our own currency to launch our project, which was Scepter. And we all we all agreed and just say we said, yes. Let's go. And us being asked, we like things community in a communitarian way. I mean, Eric, is a Quaker, and he lives in a Quaker community that he cocreated. And Arthur has been living in community his whole life, and I was working in the time at VillageLab as well where we did whole systems design for communities of intent. So we all being communitarians, we just said, like, okay. Let's bring some seed investment, and let's bring everybody into one house. Let's call in the pioneers that want to work in something for the good of the whole, and we just will see what that comes, how that comes through. As I said, that was Scepter, but Scepter is like a big elephant that we couldn't really, express all these it's it's dimension to anyone. So we decided to to go through a little piece of the stack, which was Holochain, and then Holo emerged as the financial mechanism that could sustain the creation of Holochain. And that's the rest is history. Metacurrency became silent for a while because everything became Holochain holo focused. But once that the ICO happened, Eric and Arthur and I were like, you know, I think that you should go and do the common sending because we had had in our heart, Holochain is a great technology. But if you don't use it for the good of the whole, you can use it for, you know, chess. But if you don't use it, it's just a it's a mean. It's a it's a mean to a larger goal, not the goal in itself. While the commons engine is wanting to resolve and to create, like, a way to solve real world problems by, you know, enabling individuals and organizations and communities to be able to create, to preserve, to transform their commons, you know, and to facilitate flourishing for all. So that's the path, and then Holochain was taking its own time. So commons engine kind of shifted into serving, the ground of work of community, I mean, of of currency design that has been part of the lineage of meta currency, part of the lineage of Arthur Brock and Eric and also Jean Francois and myself, and bringing in into the world through different, education systems and platforms and and consulting. And now we're creating something bigger than I'm excited about.
And nice. That was a that was a good, quick synopsis behind the whole story. I know it's, it's very long and it's very interesting. I've I've spoken to Arthur about it, a little bit and to Eric a little bit and how everything kind of is falling under what I understand, like, the the the bigger meta project, I think, is Scepter and then you have beneath that sort of different different things that fall under that that include Holo and Holochain as being a sort of alternative way for thinking about computation, with especially in particular with digital technologies. And, you know, for the audience, in case they don't know, Holochain is kind of this, let's say, alternative to, Blockchain. It it has chain in the name, but it's not a Blockchain. It's a a different type of distributed ledger technology. It uses, it's also peer to peer, but it uses, I think, distributed hash tables to sort of, do its thing rather than blockchains, which is a whole technical, discussion that you can have somewhere else. Probably, it would be best to look it up and read on the Internet, then we'll have it here. But I think what is really interesting about the whole thing that you're telling me is that, you know, like, it is true, like, a lot of technologies, like, generally when I mean, especially a lot of blockchain technologies, like, when you have these ICOs or, like, we're building this, like, ultimate toolset for building whatever you want, and you can, you know, whoever grabs it can do what they want with it, which is maybe, like, nice and fine from, like, a very, like, uncritical standing back point of view. But, eventually these technologies get used for a particular purpose, for something, for achieving some type of goal. And the I I admire the explicitness in which, you guys sort of took on meaning that you wanted something specific to happen with your technology, something more positive, something more commons oriented, which I guess is a a big reason for why you started the commons engine.
That's so correct. That's our, spirit is to be able to participate and contribute meaningfully to this point of the world where we really need to change all our systems. And that comes with our financial systems or political systems. And you see the world trying. You know? We are trying. All the DAO movement is kind of an attempt to be able to do things differently in a way that's more self organized where we have, like, the possibility of societies to co govern themselves. The issue is that when we do it through the block chain, then they're in through either proof of work or proof of stake. There's always a possibility to enclose, you know, to closure, to capture, that, the infrastructure and then don't accomplish the means of being open and, not captured. You know? So because then, within the layer itself, you can capture and you can concentrate power. While with the Holochain, we're trying to do differently in what we called on an on capturable carriers or on enclosable carriers, which is no. You can't do that actually. So I just said this is a technical conversation that people can find in the Internet. There's a lot of of, beautiful articles about it. But right now, what is important in regards to the conversation about the commons is that we're in a very crucial moment. You can see, like, a lot of very wealthy individuals buying a lot of land, for example, buying the water, for example. You know? It's like, well, thankfully, they can't buy the air, but, you know, if they get the water, they get the hydrological cycle, and that pretty much sets the game in a different way because it's all one planet as I observe. And and so the the, possibility of creating crypto commons, you know, we started to talk about crypto commons as distributed encrypted distributed layers to be able to create a different pattern that is not a pattern of extraction, but it's a pattern of custodianship, you know, a pattern of stewardship of the commons, in this case, land. So a lot of our our people, I would say I I mean, a lot of people are buying land and and one and starting communities of intent. And one of the key issues that I'm observing is that of land, and that of how do we ensure that the land is not going to be captured in the future. You know, I know talking ten years, twenty years, fifty years because the current vehicles that exist can be captured. But if we do it encrypted, you know, we think into the the, legal schemas that can secure the commons, then we start thinking of a true different path from that of few people owning the commons to a true governance where we can unleash a different future for humanity.
Right. It's interesting you said that just because it's just bringing up to mind right now, you know, this episode will probably be released sometime in the middle of this series that I'm doing focused on I don't know if you heard of, the network states by Balaji Srinivasan, this kind of Silicon Valley venture capitalist who's come up with this crazy idea for making, new types of states based on networks, to to put it in a nice way. But part of that sort of movements that he, or the concept that he is trying to to share and trying to make a reality, I think, is basically telling people what constitutes a network state is that people have to come together and buy land in order to create sort of like a jurisdiction in which their network states sort of exists. And, you know, he has this whole idea about forking society or, like, basically trying to exit society by buying land. So it's a very, like, from what I kind of fear a bit and what I see really, really commonly in crypto world and when I'm in these conversations with people, you know, not on the podcast, about crypto stuff, I meet a lot of people who are really interested in, like, regeneration of the land and, like, wanting to live more integrally or, like, you know, this this type of stuff. But then they'll also, like, be really attracted to the idea of a network state, which is very, very centered around the idea of private property, very, very centered around the idea of, like, let's pool capital to create our perfect society, which is separate from the rest of the world, which is all going to shit, and, you know, screw them. We'll we'll take our money and leave. But I I guess but from what I'm getting from you is that the sort of vision that you guys have is very different than than that from that comes from a lot of, to be honest, a lot of very rich crypto people.
Yes. I know. I I I I I see it. I see it as a risk as well because, first, it's a lie. You know, there's no safety and security without community. And whether you can put yourself in a little bubble, but it flows from the outside, you know, what is that? What kind of membrane do you need to build to be able to, like, have absolute security from the rest of the world and just go, oh, we'll just have our own because at the top of the mountain, the water flows. Are you gonna own the whole top of the you know, there's so many things. And then land, it isn't that easy. The zoning laws are very pervasive, and they're coming to be more. Like, for example, in Oregon in Oregon, Oregon, I said it like, you can't capture water from the rain. It's illegal. So there's gonna be a lot of things that are gonna be pretty weird that are gonna be shifting because the the people don't consider that water is a is a cycle. So it's not like, oh, we'll just buy water with a river that crossing the behind. Yeah. Somebody can can definitely close that river from flowing. You know? Somebody can really and so we really need to think as a whole in holism in in in terms of whole centered systems, in terms of living systems, in terms of synergies, in terms of flows. And flows are about interdependency. So if you think that you can build a body, a superorganism that has its life of its own and can just go fuck it to the rest of the world, I felt it's an illusion that would prove to be not only very selfish, but because also what who are you gonna leave out? Your mama because you didn't have the enough money to let her in? Or are you gonna leave your your your friendship your friend from the from school out? Who are you gonna leave out? You know? It's just excruciating pain even to think about those terms, isn't it? Like, when I think about communities getting together with semi permeable membranes, when I think about, okay, let's say that I'm in Maui, you know, and the island closes today, and there's no more boats, I tell you, we can leave a beautiful story of the ones that are here. We can organize. We can plan. We can do a lot of things that we're already doing that will become visible, and people will cooperate. And that is, for me, what gives me hope. Not the idea that we can in somehow create our fortress, and then anybody that is not part and then we have our slaves, and and now we have a, you know, robots and AI that can do things that we needed slaves before. And it just doesn't doesn't match my idea of heart centered life.
Yeah. For sure. It comes off as just very, only attractive for people who, their brain has been, I don't know, completely molded by Silicon Valley type of logic that is just completely alien to me. I don't know.
Yes. Yeah. There's something really beautiful happening in the indigenous, sovereignty movements Mhmm. That I'm seeing because there's more and more nations, you know, like the three nations of Vancouver, the Silway Tooth, one of being one of them that have their own jurisdiction, or the Shoar in the Amazonian in Ecuador, or the the, these ones, they're part of the nation. They have their own constitution, hideaway. And then they, that are the Kinolt nation as well has an incredible precedent. Fawn Sharp is just so inspiring. You know? She's she's a climate activist, and then she became the president of the Quinnold nation and also the president of the National American Indigenous Association. I don't know if that's the exact name, but she's like incredible figure. And what these nations are seeing is how to create sovereignty within their own lands, which many of them can. They can become their own jurisdictions. Some of them are their own jurisdiction. The sale we could, for example, have been data sovereign for thirty years. And I don't know exactly what that means in terms if they have their own servers or how they're doing, but, you know, Volleychain is wanting to can help them, and we're working with them to be able to see how we build the data commons that that encompasses, the the philosophies and the world view of the indigenous. So if you think about the indigenous being about living systems, being about interdependence, being about not extraction, being about relationship, being about communion, being about you know, then you design systems that have those values embedded. While the capitalist system, we don't have to you preach the choir. We know it's exactly opposite. Just figure it out.
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's interesting. Yeah. The the sort of land back movement for indigenous peoples, I think, has a lot more credit credibility, I guess, than the the network state does as far as whether they have the rights to a particular piece of land than a bunch of rich crypto people sort of buying some land.
And they're trying to trick them. I mean, I just recently heard a story of somebody trying to, get the land of the shore. You know? They have a million acres and just in in Hawaii, I see it all the time. Danger. Yeah. That, these two,
yeah, they kind of my fear is that yeah. I love that these there's kind of, like, because there are some, like, relative similarities, there's going to be some mixing to where, yeah, there are basically crypto people accidentally do some neocolonialism. You know?
Yes. I mean, if you think Hawaii, they didn't have, like, a a way of saying that the legal papers that said the line is mine, but they did have the concept of kuleana, which is a concept of responsibility. The concept of responsibility is tied to the land that you inhabit. And the ways that they divide land is what is called, which is they have, like, they divided land from all the way to the from the mountain top all the way to the ocean. So it's slices, which makes sense because then there will be whole families that take care of the whole mountain shed and the watershed of that particular Ahupua'a. And so when colonials came, they started to trick them into signing the ownership of the land because suddenly, you know, you didn't have you didn't have the paper. Right. Right. Come on. Then their land is not yours. Look. We have the paper. And they treat them horribly into it, and they stole the land. And so I think that what you're naming is now a bunch of crypto people trying to do exactly the same things, and you put lawyers behind it, and they'll find the loophole. So we need the crypto commons. You know? We need, to find the new ways, the unencloseable, cryptographically secure custodial entities that hold legally those assets. In what in common sense, Jean, we like calling it nondominium. This comes from research from Ishan Shapiro and other people for many years, Chris Cook, that instead of calling, like, condominium, you know, it's like nondominiium. Basically, there's not under the the domination of no one. And we want to enable decentralized value creation, decentralized management, decentralized governance. And that's what the indigenous had. Surprise. It's not a big new thing. It's like, in some ways, bringing the the the many of the design patterns of the past, but in the in the in the new containers.
We've talked a lot about it kind of already tangentially, with this, conversation we're having right now, but maybe it'd be good if you want to give just a quick for, you know, some of the listeners who may not know, a quick definition of what are the commons to you, and then how do digital technologies fit into into that definition or into that picture? Because I think a lot of times when people think of the commons, usually people just generally think about land or they think about, like, I don't know, people sharing, like, a, like, a, like, grazing land or something like that, but maybe you have a a better definition for us.
Yes. For sure. This is like, this is super important to understand because there's a lot about, the commons that is also interpreted just as land or water or the things that of nature that we can possess because they belong to all of us. Right? We have right, of having fresh water or food or any of this. And, also, we can think about, you know, public goods, I think, because that's one of the the the words that the DAOs like One of the buzzers. To be able to describe, the commons. However, not all the commons are public. Some commons are private, and that doesn't make them bad. It's just that they have a membrane in which they have to be managed by a particular group of people. Right? Like a food commons, like, you know, like, that could be a very vibrant dynamic, piece of land that then dances within a whole bioregion, but there's a certain group of people that are responsible for that particular commons and then how they bridge back into a whole bioregion. And so, you know, there's a lot of buzzwords as you say. Regenerative is one of those. Right? Regenerative now yeah. I I could go into that rabbit hole. But how we design our social agreements for me is essential part of the commons. Like, because of the state of where we're at right now, nature needs our help. Nature cannot do it without us, without us helping manage, like, the elephant population or the dolphin population. And so in some ways, we can say that, comments, described by David Bollier, there's no comments without common sing. You know, there's no comments without the social agreements, without the governance, without the architecture that will create specific outcomes. So if you are going to design social systems to not create extracted patterns, then you'll be able you need to design the decentralized designs or maybe even a a a a flow, you know, where centralization can make sense in particular instances of the design, but not as an authority, but as a as a serving entity for the rest of the whole. You know, so in terms of what is the commons, I would say all that can help a humanity thrive, all that is a right of people, like land, yes, but energy as well and education as well and education as well and well-being, health, you know, so we can data, you know, data commons is so important in these days. How we're gonna govern our data? It's part of the conversation. We just don't have the systems that have us in enacted, but we need to be able to describe and to honor that the commons is way larger and that they could be some private commons and public commons and that public goods is in the mix, but it's not only.
The impression that there are the commons in terms of things that are very difficult to enclose just kind of naturally, like air, water, land. Although people are always trying to go through that process, I think capitalism itself is always trying to find new things to, enclose and bring a part of the its its its markets. But, you know, in terms of, like, the whole of what is possible to be a commons, essentially, almost anything is possible to be a commons. It's just whether or not you have the social intent and the social structures to kind of allow that to happen for the for it to be
in common use rather than for solely private use, for example. Yes. If we would were to to create the agreements of what a commons would be, I think that is so what your name is important about the common use, and I would also say common accountability and responsibility. Like, there could not be any account, commons without the absolute accountability for it. You know? Like, the, back to the indigenous. That's why for them, it was a commons. It was not about ownership. It was about custodianship. It was about cultivating their relationship among all those species, you know, like, the interdependence of it and really being protective of it, being a good steward of it. So we we don't own a commons. You know? We steward a commons. I think that's also part of the shift in between our perspective of ownership of mine versus the perspective of ours. And so in metacurrency, we have one principle that is called get mine, grow ours. And so we say it's perfectly good to think about getting yours, you know, get your your need met, your needs met in all levels, not only safety security level, you know, like basic needs, but also in terms of self actualization, education, health, love, and then get mine, grow ours. So it's perfectly good to get mine as long as you're conscious that it has to grow ours. If you're not growing ours, then you're being extractive. Mhmm. So you're being extractive, you're being colonizing and, you know, so forth so forth.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when it comes to, I guess, the the digital aspects of it, again, it's something that I think what's interesting about things that are digital is that, there's a high there's maybe there can be a higher amount of legibility as far as, you know, what we do with data, where does it go, who owns it. I think because those things are encoded through, you know, in in the hard drives of the computers and servers that hold that data and have, you know, different, permissions within it as well. Data in certain ways can be treated as a comment. I think it may be a little bit I don't know if it's, I don't know if you have different opinions on this, but I think kind of the, you know, the the data that's stored on a blockchain is kind of a data commons in a lot of senses in the sense that it's always public, it's always available, Everybody can always grab it and and use it for their own smart contracts. I know that in Holochain, there's a there's a similar system, with slightly more permissions that you have to, put into your, into your I think it's called DNA. It's kind of like the way you call it smart contracts.
Mhmm.
But so yeah. So with when it comes to digital stuff, it's still the same issue. There's still, like, some notion of property or enclosure that needs to be, either fought back or, you know, done preferably done something else with, I guess, than, than how we usually think about it. But maybe coming from there, it would be nice, if we could start talking about the commons engine, maybe. Can you explain to us Mhmm. What the commons engine is?
Absolutely. I am happy to do that. So, Emmaline and I began describing the commons engine as a Holochain service agency or an ecosystem service agency. So we know that, Holochain is an ecosystem, and ecosystems are also a buzzword. You know? For me, an ecosystem is when flows are or energy, if you will. Like, an efficient ecosystem is where energy is used or one source of energy is used among many actors within a single ecosystem. And, so Holochain is wanting to create an ecosystem. It's been creating an ecosystem of partners and actors that create that share DNA. Right? They share some things together. For us in the common sense, you know, the word engine that feels to me very masculine, we take it into the very feminine side. Like, if you actually look at the definition, it's comes from comes from ingenue, which means to create, to give birth, to generate. It's a genesis. It's a source of ingenuity, actually. It's a source of curiosity and imagination. So, us naming it the commons engine is an invitation to be able to place that ingenuity, that curiosity, that creativity into the work of the commons. And it could take many, many, many forms. It could take a form of a hollow chain application or in the other aspect big aspect of our work, in the world of economics, in our regenerative economics or culture. So we're very focused on on bringing to birth and giving people the tools or the vehicle, if you want, to to, become a commons. Like, how you start in the it could be like, oh, I want to have a community of intent, but right now, I'm the sole one proprietor and or I own everything. But I want to be really a commons. So what do I need to do? Okay. Let's go into that land together and see how how will you become that. The the the work that you guys do don't necessarily
just extend to, I guess, like, Holochain advisory or consultancy or something like that, but towards also, like, on the land type of projects that want to, yeah, turn something what they have into something that is more commons oriented. So it's it's a more, I guess, not a, I guess, in my in my poisoned mind, like, you know, technology consultation type of thing, but, something more holistic
That's correct. We actually don't you know, we love Holochain, of course, but, you know, we don't oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna say it this way. I think that we're in a moment where we live need all kinds of experiments, and we need a lot of innovation. So I'm not here to say Holochain is the ultimate innovation for all. I'm here to say more like, oh, please expand. Let's do, all kinds of tests with multiple kinds of chains and see how what works and what doesn't work because we need to be fast in this moment. We need to prototype. And then let's compose what doesn't work, and let's bring more of what does work. Now in the last years, because we became very currency oriented and currency design oriented, we've been birthing what is called the ethical currency revolution. And and so we are wanting to, we are helping projects that are creating different types of economies, different types of culture. So it's not only about, oh, you're a land little land community, intentional community, and we're gonna help you be more culture friendly or more commons oriented. It could be, you know, helping the shore with a million acres of land. It could be developing by original vitality metrics on how a land is, has a starting point and then how it looks when it's fully regenerated or when it's well, regeneration can be more of an aspiration than, than but it's definitely a goal. Or it could be about, creating currencies for basic human needs like energy and food. We're a very interested in developing all those kinds of currencies. Or for example, right now, we're helping a company build, AI enhanced character that will run-in different multiverses, helping people to develop, education from web two to web three. And we're developing a whole loyalty program for how that would work. And so it's it's very expansive, actually. We're working with indigenous groups to be able to see how they could create, whole data servers that would be a non enclosable and then baskets of currencies that would help them to meet different types of needs while also developing economies across the different indigenous tribes, you know, things like that that are, leading systems inspired, commoning inspired. Definitely, web three as a new, like, for economic emancipation. Eliminate intermediaries where intermediaries are not providing value, but mostly extracting in another layer and just getting beyond the traditional models of ownership and, governance as authority from two into co governance and collective participation and sense making.
So it's, anything that is towards giving birth to a new commons, hence a commons engine.
Exactly. Exactly. That's beautifully
said. Hi, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the episode or find the content and make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out. As a patron, you get a shout out on an episode and access to bonus content like q and a episodes where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. In the last bonus episode, I analyzed applying an anti CAPTCHA framework made for DAOs but towards left wing organizing. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this episode to help spread the message that crypto doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you consider helping out. So that includes, it sounds like to me, and based on, of course, like, your work, that includes a lot of the creation of new types of currencies. I know that, you know, Arthur, I talked a lot about it with him. He has his own, like, kind of philosophy or meta currency, I guess, in general, has his own philosophy of around the idea of currency and how people kind of don't really, have a very limited view of what currency is. But maybe in order to help for listeners maybe to kind of break away from, this association of currency with being money in the ways in which that we think about money or know about money or use money in maybe, our normal day to day lives. Could you explain the difference on what are the different on explain what are the differences between monetary and non monetary currencies and maybe, like, why why would a nonmonetary currency be something that is useful for for a commons?
Mhmm. That's a beauty one of my favorite things to talk about. I'm an evolutionary biologist at heart. So you think about nature, if you think about living systems, it has a very beautiful wealth wealth building pattern at its core. Like, think about, like, the mycorrhizal fungi that forage decay matter and water. And then with that, they create the nutrients for plants, and then they exchange those nutrients, and they create photosynthetic sugars, and then they put them from one plant to another, and they transmit signals in between them. And they create ways of signaling even things like attacks or viruses coming or anything like that. And the way why I'm talking about this is because for us, currencies are about creating living systems. They're about creating social organisms. Organisms coming like you could say organization comes from organisms. So we're looking in humanity to be able to create innovations for coordination at scale for collective intelligence. We're looking in humanity to create economies that are not extractive, that are comprehensive, that are that respect nature. So one of the things that we have to look into is the inspiration of living systems that is circular, where one species one waste the waste of one species serves the other species, and there's nothing that really goes to waste. You know? It's just, like, so beautiful and elegant. So how can we decide with that same elegance? Well, for us, this is the the part where our distinction is very, very different, for in the word currency. So for us, currency is a current sea. So it's a way to make visible a flow. So and I'm gonna expand into different definitions that that will that will help the audience understand more of this. But I'm gonna start with making visible flows visible. So if we want collective intelligence, we need to see those flows. You know, what if if you are going to go shopping, you can, like, scan, and this is gonna be very has there has been applications that already attempt to do this. Like, you scanned a product, and you're able to see different metrics about the company, how they treat their employees, what is the source of the materials that they buy, are little children in India working for this, or are they really being honoring the people and paying the right price for them? Where does the waste go? How how really recyclable is their packaging? You know, what is the whole supply chain? If you could see that kind of information, then you'll be able to make better choices. And I think that, generations like generation z are very interested in in this kind of information because we are seeing that we have so much options like, this ridiculous. But what if we could have the right information, you know, so we could have dashboards? What if in a company, you could be able to see different things like the emotional well-being of people in any given day? What if you could see, you know, like, the kind of corporation that people are having or how how how healthy is a project in in a given month? You know? So we need that kind of intelligence. So that we need to see and make those flows visible so that matches into one of those current c's. You know, seeing flows of information, flows of communication, flows of participation, flows of performance. You know? So there's so many flows that can can help with the intelligence, the collective intelligence, the what we call in collective intelligence, holopticism, which means that every part can see the whole. You know? So what what makes what helps collective intelligence is that every part can sense make where the whole is in any given moment so they can participate in the best way possible. So that comes into the function of current sees within our definition of enabling or making flows visible. Yeah. But then we go into yeah. You wanna say something? Well, I was just gonna say what I really
like about this almost like very punny kind of trick you guys made with with current c's. So, like, in case the the listener hasn't gotten it because they can't they don't see, like, the the hand signals either. But if you separate the word currency into current and sees, currents you can think of as a flow of, of movements of, I guess of really anything really value of resources and sees I think in I think Arthur uses, like, at the eye as you can see the current, but also I was thinking about it in seas as in, like, you know, bodies of water as in that you can like a sea of currents that are all kind of, like, overlapping one another and moving through each other. So it's like a sea of currents that you can see, and having that type of information available to you. I mean, for me, it's getting at the problems of capitalism that at least Marx defines as being the issue with alienation or that the fact that we sort of we purchase things or we buy commodities of things in which we have no idea where it came from, who created it, what happened to them when they created it. We we don't identify with the person who created the commodity that maybe that we consume. And this this is very alienating. So, like, I don't know that me as a working class person, I am, you know, in one way or another screwing another working class person over because I am purchasing the commodity that is sort of exploiting my fellow working class person. So it's there's there's this alienation between people who should be sort of, on the same team, but they end up hurting each other in the process of being a subject under capitalism. I know that maybe, Arthur may not, see it in that particular way specifically, but that's kind of the thing that that that I get from it that that I think is interesting.
Yeah. Thank you for describing that better. And it's a way of saying the current sees like flows of energy as well. And so those flows of energy can be all kinds of things.
Flows of information, I guess, I I should say. Flows of information, especially.
Especially in our in our world. You know? And so we want to be able to see, you know, if you if you take into, what an economy is, then you can think about, you know, Jane Jacobs saying, an economies. What are economies for? And she says to partake in your own fashion in a great universal flow. So if you think about economy as larger than human economy, but nature's economy, and then you're able to see yourself within the context of a great universal flow, then you know you have influence, then you know that there's always something you can do to be more part of that flow instead of cutting it through. And that's within the our own behavior. And so the other one of the other functions of current c's are to be able to incent create incentives, you know, to be able to shape behavior in a particular way. So that might sound like, woah, Black Mirror kind of thing, you know, but if you think about it, like, in terms of of of for I'm gonna give an example of a non nonmonetary currency that can do that. Arthur gives example about one time that Eric and him went into the, this movement that was in New York. Okay. I forget it now. In the middle of Wall Street and they occupy Wall Street Occupy Wall Street. And they went there and then they were like people were like, please help us do a currency. We want a time currency or a currency because we have so many volunteers, and they come and they participate, and we want to give them currency. And Arthur said, well, that's a flow that is working, isn't it? And he's they said, yes. It's working. So why do you want a current? If it's already working, you could make it nonfunctional if you just put a you know, formalize a symbol in something that's already working. Tell me about something that doesn't work. And so they said, well, we don't really sleep at night because some people just come here and they party, and then the next day they eat for free, and they're just so happy. You know? Like, they're just, like, somehow, they're just occupying, but not for the right reasons. And so many of us don't sleep. And as the Arthur said, well, are you sure that they don't many don't sleep? No. Actually, I'm not. Okay. So the first thing would be to see if that is true, you know, if that people really don't sleep or just sleep. So that we're gonna do something. And I think it was Eric that proposed that in the morning when people would made a line for coffee, they would have, like, coffee jars, and they would have, yes, I sleep fine. No. I don't sleep fine. And you will have a coffee bean, and you'll put it in the right container if you slept or not let fine. And at the end, you would have like, oh, yeah. We did we do not sleep. So that basically is just a nonmonetary form of is a way of using the beans as a nonmonetary form of currency to create a signal. That's it. Just a signal. And then once you have the signal, you can do anything you want with it, you know, in the same way that the the mycorrhizal fungi is gonna release a signal saying, attention. There are insects attacking sector 12. And then sector 12 is going to do something about it, and they're gonna arm themselves. You know? So there's, like, the signal. We have to think about information systems, and systems in general and living systems have a lot of that signaling going on. That's why that's why scepter comes for came from receptor, which comes from receptivity, which comes about from receiving and sending signals. So the way in which living systems happen to be so intelligent is because they figured out a very sophisticated way of sending signals. And some so when mycorrhizal fungi send that signal, it's gonna shape the behavior of sector 12. They are then gonna do something to protect themselves from the virus that is coming through. Trees do that.
Yeah. To me, it's it's viewing rather than viewing everything through the lens of of an economy, seeing things as a giant physical system, which uses many different types of signals, in order to elicit particular cycles and flows to happen, which is very common in the human body. I mean, you send different hormones, you send different, like, yeah, neurotransmitters or whatever else, and it leads to, like, this, this action potential, of course, that that, like, leads to a whole series of different actions that, has some sort of purpose to it or usually has a purpose to it.
Absolutely. Like, what happens in one flow of your body is is is you know, goes ill or sick or or contracted or you'll get sick. And if it gets really bad, you'll die. You know, what happens if you stop producing serotonin? You know, your your your brain is not gonna get the signal that it's time to sleep. I mean, that is heavy things happening in your body, you know. So the same way that that cells have been magnificent in and sophisticated in the signal systems. That's the same way that we think about currencies. Being able to help with that signaling system because for us, then you you kind of, you know another example that I give is, like, or think about an organization. You come in the morning and you have your little app, and you have the rainbow colors. And we all agree that red means I'm not ready for this. I wanna go home. I'm not feeling fine. My dog died. I mean, it could happen any kind of things on why I'm in a red mode. But purple is I'm on. Give it to me. I'm focused. I'm gonna hit the day. You know? And then all that happens is that I can be signals of the colors during the day, and there's gonna be a monitor that sees, like, the things as rainbow shaped. Okay. That's fine. You know? It could even be anonymous. I mean, whatever. Doesn't really matter. But what if one day we turn to the monitor and we go, oh my. It's all red. You know, think about the early days of COVID, you know, going to work. You know, nobody can take their thing out of their minds. Everybody's probably in red. And then you get together. You have the agreement that you're gonna get together if that happens to be able to have a conversation. So all you need is a signal. And so in this example, the currency would be the rainbow.
And if we apply, I think, the you know, if we think about monetary currencies or, like, the maybe the particular paradigm of monetary currency that we live under today, to make an analogy, kind of a biological analogy, maybe we can think of it as, as almost being cancerous or like having produced cancers in particular ways and in, you know, within the context of the physical system in one way in the sense it's very extractive. It's causing a lot of environmental damage. In other ways, in the sense that it's, created a lot of inequality. So, you know, a lot of a lot of the currency has been sort of, I say hoarded in particular parts just like a cancerous cell hoards a bunch of I don't I don't even know. Just like cells together, clumps together to become bigger and bigger, which is bad for the system as a whole. So we we we can extend that metaphor forever.
Heal cells, build senescent cells that become like zombie cells that then kill other cells because they are zombie cells. They're called senescent cells. You know, it's just like happens that same way. And now the crypto world isn't that different. And, like, when you study our models and frameworks, it's not just like, oh, living systems and we'll study nature. No. It's really, really profound. You know, we have what we call the currency life cycle. So every currency has its life cycle, whether it fits the colors of the rainbow or has like or it's like a cryptocurrency or a mutual credit. They all have a certain way in which you can think about the tokens, and then you have to have a system to formalize it. So we call it then the token life cycle and system life cycle. And most people that design crypto these worlds, they're not currency designers. The same way that I might be able to know how to build a bridge, but, if I'm not the engineer, it's very likely my bridge is gonna fall because there's a very particular physics to it. And so and we lack the imagination, so we kind of constantly think money when we're designing cryptocurrencies. And most of the crypto world takes issuance of a currency and redemption of a currency, and then they believe that's what makes it decentralized. Well, no. And then they take the rules and they encode it in smart contracts, and then it's hard to redesign them. Then it's hard they're hard to rebuild because, you know, life doesn't work that way. Life doesn't work by a predetermined smart contract that will tell you what will happen tomorrow or the next day or the next week. Life adapts. You know? They don't know if there's gonna be heavy rain or full sun for a whole month, and they'll have to adapt to what is the current context and what is happening in a whole system level. And it's not machines. It's living systems. Living systems can't be encoded in smart contracts. We need to be able to see where the accountability is. We need to be able to see what has worked, what has not worked. We should be able to see the different knobs and dials that we can turn on and off to be able to create the results we want. And so that's something that, you know, we we educate people in because, mostly, they just go like, oh, all these currencies that failed but have no idea how they failed. That's because you haven't really studied currency design. It's a science. It is a discipline of study. And and that's part of the memercurrency mission is to be able to create a core currency designer guild of people that are actually able to create, true regenerative economies, not re not refi.
I think it would be interesting to know what is an example maybe of how you guys have connected the the physical with the digital? Because I think, you know, the kinda like the examples that you gave, I think I think it would actually be really, really interesting, really funny if everybody had, like, a little light on their head, of different colors that sort of specify kind of their mood or what they were open for. They wanted nobody to talk to them or, like, they're okay if you talk to them or something like that, you know. Like, I don't know if you've seen those, like, traffic light parties or something like that. We have, like, a red, yellow, green or something. Like, I think something like that, but in real life would be really funny, but it would be it would require also a particular, you know, digital or technological infrastructure probably to facilitate that or, like, there probably multiple different ways you can think about that. And, so I'm curious what for you guys, how how do you, combine those things?
Yes. So as you said it, like, you know, this is a currency and then to formalize it, you'll you really need to have the system for it. Right? So you touched that the token cycle in that regard would be, oh, the little red, you know, yellow or green light to to signal if I'm open for connection or not. But then you need the system to be able to formalize it, the media, which that's gonna be seen. So you do need the technical to be able to provide for that. But, you know, in the case of the of the grain of the bean, the coffee bean, you don't. You know? You can have a nonmonetary low tech type of signal systems as well. Now when you wanted to scale, then that's when you want to have, like, a certain technological infrastructure. But there's ways in which we you know, we've done some things that provide examples for this. So there's one called game shifting that so think when you go into a group context and then you're in the group, and then we everybody agrees that we're going to be breathing before we speak because we want collective wisdom to come in and we wanna slow down. And and we know or we we believe that by slowing down, better wisdom will come in. Let's say that we have that agreement. And suddenly, everybody's, like, so excited. They start, like, talking on top of each other. They're interrupting, and then we we don't know. We just keep going that way because nobody's really saying anything. Well, with a game shifting board, you can put several rules and agreements that a group wants to have and just make them visible in the room. So think about just like a piece of a whiteboard or something when you can write, okay, breathing if you are with speak, popcorn, brainstorming, I don't know, like, talking stick, you know, different forms of facilitation.
I remember, Arthur and Eric had had done a session on this, when I was with them last year. And they're they're they're like funny hand signals as well. They're like, you know, you can wiggle your fingers in one way meant one thing, and then you could do something else with your hands and then something else. Do you want to change the topic or whatever? I forgot. But I remember they were like I I thought that was interesting to kind of, you know I mean, anyways, body language, they say, is, you know, like, 70% of communication or something like that. So why not lean into that a little bit more than solely, it's not just what you say, but maybe how you say it. And the position in which you're saying it in probably gives more context than maybe maybe what you're saying depending on the situation.
Yes. The audience can see it, but you have seen how I keep wiggling my fingers. That's because I'm Right. I've been I've been programmed. But, you know, it always, like, amazes me when we are in a group context and we don't give each other those signals even through through through Zoom. I mean, think about when I am, you know, in a group context, and if people would just signal that they're resonating with me, that would give me an important signal as a communicator to what to to go next or what to do or who to ask or who to ask for better understanding or pause to be able to give the floor to someone that I would want them to express what's in their mind or their puzzled face or whatever. You know? So there's so many ways. Like, even Zoom, like, has a little emoticons. Why do we would train ourselves to keep hearts? Like, you know and we will be seeing more of those, systems as AI comes through as well because now we're gonna have ways of tracking the sentiment. And, of course, every technology will create a certain behavior, so we have to be careful about that. But as I as I said, said, I think we're all experimenting, and, we need those feedback loops are really important because then we can go into a way into a path that we don't want with behaviors that we don't want because we are embedded in them in the technology. So designing currencies that have the possibility of checking in, you know, in our currency life cycle, we put very purposefully the part of measuring the result and then rebuilding and redesign and even relaunching certain currencies once you start to adapt for what is working and what is not working.
So you've reached about, a little bit past an hour, so I don't wanna take up too much of your time. But thank you so much, Fernanda, for for speaking to me. It was really, really interesting, and I loved hearing more about the commons engine. Maybe before, I let you go, if you want to share with people where they can keep up with the commons engine and where they can keep up with you and and all of your work that you're doing.
Thank you. That's wonderful. So Commons Engine, has a Twitter account called Commons Engine. We have a website, but we are changing so much, like, into the with the creation of the ethical currency revolution program that we're doing. And we are, launching a program called the value accelerators, that's going to be cohorts that are thematic topic based. Where we're gonna go very deep into the design of different currencies. And it's gonna be kind of sponsored because we are using a curated list of people in our network that we know that have, like, a world changing project that they're already working on. It's gonna have a certain way to filter in people that we don't know, but mostly, we wanna focus on acceleration and incubation, and we want to be able to see, like, templates of design. So commonsending.org as a site is gonna change a bunch. You can go there and read some information, but we're definitely in in, creating a branding as well, a rebranding, because both I mean, the whole Holochain ecosystem needs a certain brand and coherence and consistency. And so you're gonna see more of Coventina Foundation coming out, and the metacurrency is already rebranded. You can track the metacurrency project in Instagram or metacurrency in Twitter, and that also informs of, you know, what we're launching together. We have a social we have a first currency design workshop that you can take in Udemy. That is in the website learningmetacurrency.org. And that is very comprehensive. We kind of put a currency design for social change agents, but, really, we need a better title because current social change agents don't understand why they would need something like that. It's really about the basics of living systems, the basics of currency, the basics of flows, and it goes all the way to the currency life cycle that I've spoken about, with, Arthur as the main instructor. And we're constantly releasing tool kits that we will be giving up for free. There's a tool kit that you can download in learningmetacurrency.org for the token life cycle. So we're becoming with a lot of content and a lot of materials. Some of our, we also in commons engine, we do things like pod I mean, not podcast, panels and group discussions. Like, we have one about the revolution won't be futurized about how we can create decentralized Twitter, and we're gonna have a part two. And we did one around governance and DAOs, and we'll keep going to the and those ones are for free. And mainly, you can track them through instagram through Twitter on common's engine account.
Nice. When is the, the session that you mentioned in the beginning, when is that going to start? Do you know? That's gonna start around
April. Oh, okay. April, May. Probably May. Probably May. We're building the whole, content, It's a core media framework, really, for the content that we have. We have a lot of content, and so we're kind of, going to be packaging and producing different types of materials and some assessments so people can, like, see where they're at, kind of where are you in the matrix, and then being able to receive content according to where you're at and where you wanna go. But so we're building a whole things right now. I have a super good team that I'm very excited about. And we're gonna be sandboxing not only with Holochain, but we're also gonna be sandboxing with, you know, Tableland for NFTs and creating things with Polygon and, you know, just because we we need all this. I'm I'm happy about the creativity and experimentation that is opening the field right now. And, yes, we are very hollow chain oriented, and not only. We really want us all to succeed, and there's a place for each of us to be able to find that unique contribution that will help us all to, create a world that can thrive for all future generations, and that's my big hope.
Nice. So I will I will try my best to include, a lot of what you said into the show notes. I also will tell people, like, once you start looking into what's behind the commons engine, meta currency, and Holochain, you can be stuck into a rabbit hole of a lot of different things. I highly recommend taking the time to dig into the stuff that they're doing because it is very interesting. And, yeah, thanks so much for coming on again, Fernanda. Let's continue the conversation for sure. I would love that. Up.