It's beer o'clock

Notes from the Edges of Innovation by SXQ Founder, JP

Philanthropic blockchain, a centralized internet, knowledge management's identity crisis, moral injury, and white collar workplace bullying crime

What is the digital transformation potential for blockchain in philanthropy?

It's not something we advertise right now because it attracts bad actors, but Singular XQ has been quietly developing a research agenda in quantum blockchain and we have our own fusion of gaming, blockchain, and philanthropy that we've been doing R&D on for a year. We have protracted the R&D phase simply because the global regulatory landscape is volatile and quantum computing looms. We predicted and are already seeing people moving money and interest toward quantum as this AI hype cycle burns itself out in a blaze of glory. So while conservative estimates don't show a major quantum disruption in blockchain until the 2030s, we believe hype may drive innovation faster (probably not in a good way).

However, other people have found the supreme value in leveraging blockchain for philanthropy and combining it with human-social behavior and using it to build philanthropic trust. We particularly like the three-layer architecture of this proposed Etherum based system.

With more and more internet based technologies becoming centralized, will the internet eventually be entirely centralized?

The internet was designed to be decentralized and entirely centralizing it would be difficult. However, as a complex system we can count on a particular cadence I am calling "digital transformation oscillation" as we swing around various states of centralization and decentralization. You can count on any consolidation of authority or control on the internet creating a swarm behavior where people with resources and knowledge capital will disperse and decentralize as a way of competing for resources, escaping predators, and social dynamics. Many of us have noted this is already underway. This platform that I write my newsletters on, Ghost, is a new decentralized network forming in response to the content driven platforms that have engaged in consuming resources and predation and altering social dynamics. Enter this proposal from Tommaso Baldo, Mauro Migliardi
using Etherum and Swarm for a double token social media platform. This is sure to be a feature of some platforms in the future. I'm skeptical of claims of being censorship resistant, however. But for now, this looks really interesting IF they resist the monetization of reputational tokens. That's a big if, ain't it, Ollie?

Is Knowledge Management having and identity crisis?

One might argue that Knowledge Management is having the biggest identity crisis because of the eruption of LLMs. The one piece that Project Vitruvius at Singular XQ has looked at the potential for creating institutional memory and succession pans with LLM enhanced systems that listen to employees and conversations for consolidating internal knowledge capital and then preserving it at as institutional memory. Given the myraid security, reliability, and operational infeasabilities being exposed for LLMs daily, we remain dubious, however, the coming crash gives time for us to research and develop new models for knowledge management and that's one of the primary experimental goals for Vitruvius. While some people are looking at the economics of knowledge work labor losing market share, and consulting and the production of knowledge taking a beating, what insights can we share for human work outside of the bottom line? Which is to say. What human problems are worth solving because they improve the quality of life for the most people? This paper poses some interesting ideas. We suggest some language changes. Instead of AI-Human collaboration we propose that it is AI assisted human-to-human collaboration. AI-Human collaboration is too optimistic for the current state of the tech, as "collaboration" implies shared understandings, goals, and intentional acting. The over idea that dialectical human-computer-interactions have pro-social and creative outcomes we find very promising, and similar to the manner in which Sal Khan has approached innovation through Khan Amigo.

Are technology workers sustaining moral injuries?

Our research and network show us that technology workers are sustaining moral injury more than other groups of professionals and that this area of law and healthcare formerly reserved for military and healthcare settings now applies to people in business.

This article describes the situation for gig economy platform workers. How about when people are asked to work on banking platforms, cybersecurity products, and money laundering blockchain companies? The stakes of playing around in digital spaces have risen without being accounted for and now technology workers are suffering in identical ways to military and healthcare workers that we've studied in the past.

How can we stop workplace bullying?

Workplace bullying go hand-in-hand with moral injury in the workplace. Bullying is the way groups will police ethical violations in workplaces that have a high prevalence of white collar crime and higher incidence of despotic relationship. This impressive study shows that even in such circumstances and conditions, continuous ethics training reduces perceived workplace bullying. The fact of the matter is we live in an age of exquisitely enabled white collar crime. When you work in a place where it appears that people are engaging in chronic, unintelligent decision making, yet those bad decisions appear to have no consequences, if the work that you say you do doesn't match the work that you actually do, if the A-players leave or are treated in a hostile way...you are likely in a situation controlled in some part by white collar crime.

"It's beer o'clock" is not the official newsletter for Singular XQ but my own notes about what I've been researching from week to week. It is published on our ghost website along with our official newsletter. You can subscribe to all of it at singular-xq.ghost.io

Thanks to my subscribers and followers here. Seeing what you read and what you click shapes my research agenda more than you know.