More on decentralization, 2022-06-07

A post in the Massive Decentralization Blog by Peter Kaminski.

Originally posted to the [Lionsberg] Requests For Guidance chat channel, which is part of The Meta Project.

I've advanced my writing on decentralizing and federating, https://decentralize.massivehumanintelligence.org/, in two ways:

1. At the Massive Decentralization level / layer, I've replaced "sovereign" with "actor". I've been using "sovereign" as a jargon word, carrying a lot of context from discussions last year in OGM and OGM+Lionsberg meetings, but of course, the word is fraught with any number of other connotations for people who weren't part of last year's discussions. It's been distracting for everybody. "Actor" is very abstract and generic -- perhaps too much so -- but since I think of Massive Decentralization as a low-level framework, the abstractness suits. It also coincidentally aligns Massive Decentralization with Actor-network theory (Wikipedia), which may be productive (if the alignment isn't perceived as too strong). I'm not sure that all the terminology is correct yet, but I think this change is for the better.

2. I've always thought of decentralizing and federating in "layers of abstraction", and I've started to explain (and diagram!) that more on the Abstraction Layers page on the Massive Decentralization website. It doesn't all feel quite right -- or, at least, done -- yet, but it's a big step forward.

Layers of abstraction are wonderful tools, used both in the natural and engineered worlds to excellent effect. I think applying them well to decentralization and federation is key to successful scaling our networks, and so I'm delighted to start to articulate it more. At the same time, I fear a paucity of good introductory materials about the concepts involved will make it hard to get more people involved quickly and easily. I expect to create more intro materials, but it'll take more than that.

Overall, it feels like I'm in the middle of articulating what I want to with "Massive Decentralization", not close to the end yet. Also, there needs to be more work -- a lot -- on layers above it as well, a little by me, much by others.

To progress on Massive Decentralization, I need more thinking and writing, and more conversations with others, but I'm not quite ready to set up a project framework for that. So my request for today is comments and questions to the extent that you feel called to contribute them, but also some patience and forbearance before a project framework takes shape.