VR Chains and DAC Brains: Upload your mind as a VR AI DAC

Blockchain thinkers or DAC Brains are the notion of having DAO/DAC entities running with smart contracts on blockchains for the purpose of conducting thinking operations. The genesis of blockchain thinkers could be organic or inorganic: human mindfile lifelogs and uploads, and any variety of brain emulations and AI ML/DL algorithms (artificial intelligence machine-learning deep-learning algorithms). One idea is to instantiate your mindfile on the blockchain as a lifelogging tracker and standalone ideation tool: your own mind as an AI DAC. Some key enablers are coming together to make personal AI DACs possible. Idea chains (lifelogging your ideas onto a blockchain) could auto-record your ideas through 1) QS (quantified self)-attached gamma wave spike tracking (recording when you are having an idea), together with 2) cortical image recognition and thought identification (what the idea is about), logged into in a 3) personalized blockchain-based VR consensus reality (coordinating ideas into your own ongoing reality view).

Immersive Virtual Reality is Digitized Experience
Immersive VR (virtual reality), like with the Oculus Rift, is not just video games, virtual worlds, or 3-D CAVE environments, it is digitized experience. Qualitatively different, immersive virtual reality is a means of making physical world experiences real in an alternative medium. VR metaverses then, are parallel realities, as distinct from multiple digital worlds. If you and I go into WoW (World of Warcraft) or SL (Second Life) separately, we see the same world. Even if different levels of views are enabled or locked (like Karl Schroeder’s tech locks in Lady of Mazes [1]), they are just different lenses on the same world. However, if you and I construct our own digital worlds, we see and create different worlds, possibly on the same basic platform, but the realities can be fundamentally different, with different participants, events, and historical records.

Reality Unity in the Physical World
Consider the physical world - there is one platform, and we each have varying reality maps or views of the physical reality platform in our heads. There is one consensus reality and historical event record, and conflicts arise out of different views of the consensus reality trying to hew to one (e.g.; “What happened? X punched Y first. No, Y shoved X first.” – we seek a unique consensus reality of events (Probability Moon further explores the notion of societal shared reality)). Centralized virtual worlds have been the same; there is one reality platform, and centralized event engines record the consensus in one shared events ledger, the game history, even in OpenGL self-hosted models. Now, however, with decentralized models powered by blockchains and dapps, DAOs, and DACs, reality multiplicity is possible. There can be simultaneously existing parallel realities. The multiverse exists, and one place it can be created is in cyberspace.

Blockchains enable Simultaneous Multiple Realities
Just as blockchains are the critical enabling technology for digital cryptocurrencies, so too are they a key facilitator of VR multiverses. Blockchains could serve as the backbone infrastructure for multiple parallel realities (VR multiverses) by coordinating the chain of event histories in these multiple realities. The transaction history is not just for transactions, but more broadly comprises the historical event record. Blockchains consensus-generate the historical record, and allow any number of separate and parallel historical records to be created simultaneously. Blockchains are the mechanism for creating and coordinating simultaneous multiple realities. The altcoin space is already an example of simultaneous separate realities.

The Selectability of all Reality Features Blockchains consensus-generate the historical record, and further, make it clear that all parameters of reality can be malleable and selectable: time, participation, reputation, memory, history (historicity), economic models (hierarchical or peer-based), and political operations (governance and decision-making). These are all selectable parameters of a reality environment. One recent revolution in economic liberation sensibility is that blockchains allow individuals and communities to self-determine economic systems. Now seen in the VR multiverse context, blockchains are revealed to be much more: they could enable all parameters of a reality environment to be selected.

Blocktime Time Malleability
One example of reality feature selectability is blocktime. The timeclock in blockchains is blocktime, the time it takes for blocks of transactions to confirm. The easiest way to specify future time moments (t+n) is via the internal time system of the blockchain, blocktime. For example, the term of a certain decentralized dapp loan might be 7000 block confirmations. Blocktime is the clocktime of blockchains. Certainly blocktime converts to physical world time, but differentials could arise and give way to arbitrage opportunities or other divergence-as-a-feature possibilities. The key point is that all reality parameters, including time and space, could become malleable in blockchains and especially in blockchain-coordinated VR metaverses. Further, if blockchains become the mechanism for keeping time and event histories, de facto they become memory, where memory is a critical functionality that feeds back directly into lifelogging and Brain-as-a-DAC idea chains.

A World of Multiple Realities
All of reality can be made malleable, personalized, self-determined, personally-constructed, emergent, and a thing of multiplicity not monolithicity. There can be an end to the tyranny of a sole reality. “End reality tyranny, create your own VR multiverse!” Deleuze's multiple inner views can bloom as described in Proust and Signs. In the new sensibility of VR multiverse reality multiplicity, an imaginable query to alien intelligence could be a Kardashev scale parameter: “To what extent do you have multiple realities in your world?”

Right to Self-Determine One’s Own Realities
The earlier positions in human liberation have been the right to self-determination in certain contexts, in different parts of life and the experience of reality. These include the right to self-determination in governance, legal systems, IP protection/sharing regimes, software business models, neural data privacy rights, cognitive enhancement, and most recently, the emerging sensibility of the right to self-determine one’s own economic systems. These are all important steps in the liberty of the individual, but they are all in some sense intermediary positions on the way to the now-visible bigger position which is the right to self-determine one’s own overall reality, and really, realities (plural). A new sensibility could be seeing the right of each individual, entity (human and machine/technology entities), or group to self-define its own personal consensus reality (realities). The central component of the self-determination of organisms could be the operation of its own consensus reality(ies).

Blockchains as a Historicity Mechanism and Collaboration Space 
Blockchains are a means for consensus-generating the historical record (a historicity mechanism) to facilitate reality multiplicity, and they are the means of enabling value flow. In network economic theory, this is beyond the transactional sense of the value flow of currency from me to you, where unleashing the creation and transmission of many kinds of non-monetary value flows is the bigger picture of what is at stake and possible in creating multiple realities. Non-monetary currencies (like universal human needs for connection, contribution, mattering, and understanding) can be registered and tracked as blockchain-based smart assets. One reason for VR realities, what we are really wanting in creating new realities (via VR multiverses) is creating spaces that are free of the limiting constraints of physical realities. These constraints pertain to both the physical world and human limitations, including matter, gravity, time, illness, disability, impairment, sleep, recovery, distraction, cognitive bias, etc.) such that more freedom, exploration, collaboration, expression, creativity, fun, serendipity, progress, and contribution can be enabled. We want to cognitively enhance proximately for a better memory, sure, but ultimately to be 'bigger' in the sense of being more able to grow and participate beyond our initial position of self. We want more of the creative yes-and collaboration space of new energy and idea generation. The ‘economy’ of the future might be measured based on non-monetary value flows like ideation, which could be orchestrated by public and private reality blockchains.

Convergent Integration of Multiple Simultaneous Realities
Now possibly having a situation of multiple simultaneous realities, what is there to do with them? There are several implications for the future of privacy, sharing, and collaboration. For example, there is a question about when and how to cohere and merge VR DAC brain realities. Therefore, within realities, there might be sub-threads or other means of parsing and segmenting sub-realities.

Colored coin threads in your brain DAC could be the way to permission subreddit mind ledgers to cloudmind collaborations

Mindchains could be a means for how to safely mindshare or collaborate in a cloudmind, for example by permissioning your subreddit ledger for ideation related to certain areas as opposed to your full mindfile or meat-brain….“here, let me share everything with you I’ve thought about crowdsourced genomic studies,” or "here, join the mindslack channel for this community."

Blockchain apps could auto-merge shared realities in the way that topical queries are ambiently processed in the background now. There could be situations analogous to Hayek’s competitive currencies where reality views compete. There could be reality ecologies where repetitive threads across individual realities converge into shared group realities (the unobtrusively representative politics of the future). Right now this happens manually with the blunt tools of the physical world; we search for other individuals, groups, and institutions with our own shared values and reality view, and blockchain DACs might facilitate the automatic canvassing and convergence of all of this.

We might know that VR metaverses and the human-machine collaboration are really working when VR NPC DACs self-create in our realities per sensing our human needs (actualization, contribution, growth and learning, exploration, creation). Blockchain-based VR AI DACs could auto-sense and create whatever 'Tuscany houses' are needed to grow an entity (like a human or machine mind) in its progression. For example, in an ideas 'economy,' the most important inputs are anything which facilitates the development of ideas, and attending to this could be one purpose of a an NPC VR AI DAC in your personal VR metaverse, operating via smart contracts on your mindchain. Ideas are the demurrage-redistributable basic income of a blockchain thinker Brain DAC. Blockchain thinker Brain DACs then become another Ubiquitous Grid Resource, an important one, for idea generation, in the overall picture of the future Network Economies of Abundance.

Acknowledgement: This post was inspired by ideas from Maciej Olpinski regarding consensus in virtual reality worlds.

[1] POV HUDs are a mechanism to accommodate multiple levels of technology adoption within a society; e.g.; through my HUD, I see unimproved nature and birds tweeting; through your HUD, you see propositional nanotech 3-D printed finery self-mutating in utility fogs.

Virtual worlds update - 1.7 b ww accounts

Virtual worlds – there’re not dead yet!! In fact the opposite is true. Virtual worlds have passed out of the spotlight in some regards but growth persists, with a heavily youth-oriented userbase. According to UK-based virtual world market research firm KZERO, there were 1.7 billion worldwide registered users of virtual worlds as of the end of 2011. This was more than double the under 800 million users at the end of 2009. As Figure 1 indicates, 97% of these accounts are currently held by users 25 years old and under.

Figure 1: Virtual world account holders by age tier as of December 2011.

Source: KZERO, Virtual world registered accounts reach 1.7bn in Q4 2011.

On average, users have four avatars and are active in multiple virtual worlds. Habbo Hotel and Second Life are still well-known virtual worlds, the latter with 20 million regular users. Further, over 100 open sim grids are running using Second Life’s platform software, one of the larest of which is the education-focused Reaction Grid. Entertainment, socializing, and education continue to be application areas of focus in virtual worlds. Premium subscriptions, and in-world advertising and product placement, as well as virtual product and service sales remain the business model.

So discontinuous a discontinuity

A key aspect of thinking systemically about the future is being able to see how rapidly advancing technologies across many fields interrelate. Whatever next Internet-like discontinuity or singularity occurs will influence whatever comes thereafter. It is likely that some high percentage of what are now thought to be expected future advances will recede or be reshaped at minimum, for example:

• If all chronic disease and aging becomes controllable and there is effective immortality, does uploading matter as much?
• If artificial general intelligence is achieved, how does that change the exigency and requirements of molecular nanotechnology?
• If affordable space launch and space-based solar power is achieved, what happens to ethanol, electrical and other terrestrial alternative vehicle and transportation infrastructure solutions?
• If immersive virtual reality and post-material scarcity are achieved, does molecular nanotechnology matter and what happens to global political systems?
• If whole human genome testing is available, do single SNP tests go away? If there are home health monitors and nanodiagnostics, do primary care physicians go away?

Mindfile deletion

How do you know that your mindfile will not be deleted, either on purpose or by accident? What would you do if your mindfile is stored in memory and not allowed to run? How would you know that you are not being run? Is not running the equivalent of being dead? How will you know that you are getting the processing power and bandwidth in your contract when reality is simulated and hardware test results could be simulated too?

There are at least two levels of challenges to address, akin to current physical world needs, first, survival needs and second, needs and rights when interacting with others.

Establishing rights for mindfiles
There will need to be ways to assure basic ‘human’ rights in a potential era of uploading brains to digital software files. There could be many misuses of massive databanks of mindfiles: they could be deleted at will (digital genocide) or by mistake by careless ISPs/data center managers, sold, kidnapped, copied, bred, hiveminded or discriminated against via less bandwidth and processing power. If the reality experienced by mindfiles is simulated, how would anyone know that the virtual reality they experience is the one they want to experience? A code or key could be created so that individual mindfiles could not be copied without the owners permission, agreement or knowing; perhaps like the telomere-shortening system used by biological cells. Pervasive externally run audit software could maintain lists of mindfile citizens (a future role for the nation-state) and periodically query each mindfile to determine its status and whether it is running. As usual, the white hats would need to stay ahead of the black hats.

Reducing naked Darwinism
With less transparency and social pressure, it is possible that the behavioral smoothing that has arisen in contemporary society would dissolve. Codes of conduct for mindfiles could be developed, probably with a much heightened awareness and refinement of the respectful treatment of consciousnesses. If virtuality is 100% sousveilled, this should not be a problem. In addition, mechanisms such as barriers, permissioning tiers and firewalled gardens could arise to prevent stronger minds from terrorizing and controlling weaker minds or different minds. The real goal would be to rearchitect social pressure in ways that are continually empowering to all individuals. Some mindfiles may prefer heavily controlled virtual environments, others may wish to venture onto the interstitial wildnets.

Sims Sponsor Technological Advancement

Running simulations of the past, present and future will be valuable tools in exploring, understanding and testing any and every situation.

What if Rome did not fall, what if Germany won WWII, what if humans were not corrupt, what if it were socially unacceptable for educated women not to work in the paid labor force, what if hormone management programs had become possible and de rigueur centuries ago, what if the Pangaea split had been different, what if the Chicxulub asteroid had not rendered the dinosaurs extinct, what if sustainable life had started earlier?

Technological Advancement
The most useful sims would be those either arising naturally or "managed" such that advancement optima were achieved and the sim world evolved at a faster rate than the world that initiated the sim (how many sims and iterations will that take?) Sims could be run at sped-up time to iterate and generate results more quickly. Ideas and technologies could then be harvested for use in the initiating world. (Would that be ethical? Would that be cheating?)

It might be easier and more desirable to join the sim world, at least with a self-copy rather than extract and apply the technology. Lequel est plus réelle? Some interesting questions could be studied regarding technology relevance in the absence of the ideology, politics, economics, culture [and world] of its founding.

The current human population is gated by physical-world resource constraints, sims could make it possible for billions, trillions, etc. of 'people,' self-aware autonomous intelligent agents, to exist. Would this be desirable? Would this extend human knowledge, productivity, creativity and happiness? What kind of restrictions, fears, threats and opportunities would this impose?

Second Life reaches 5 million residents

Second Life reaches 5 million residents and a $1.65 million per day economy but its growth rate has slowed from a doubling every two months in both residents and economic activity. The chart below shows the population and economic trends since January 2006.


What is so exciting about Second Life that has attracted 5 million residents? Other statistics not reflected here would probably show more interesting patterns about the medium's usage such as an increase in time spent in-world, a growth in community-specific groups and an increase in corporate presence as more entities set up virtual offices including Coldwell Banker.

Web 3.D is about Community, Community, Community.
The richness of a virtual world platform like Second Life suggests why it is so successful. The Internet was a tremendous step forward as people with shared interests were able to find each other via usenet and email lists, mainly having 1:many relationships. Web 3.D virtual worlds allow special interest interactions to be much deeper and more intimate in a robust audio-visual and 1:1 way instead of a 2D text-based 1:many way.

In addition to more intimate interaction, virtual worlds offer more agency. One example is that people can fully govern how their appearance is presented. Interestingly, so far, instead of exploring more aspects of identity and representation, the vast majority of avatars appear in a great homogeneity of youth and beauty, making explicit the strong force of perceived appearance ideals in the physical world culture and recreating this in virtual reality. Then as art imitates life imitates art, the avatorial aesthetic cycled back out of a Second Life gallery into the physical world in a “13 Most Beautiful Avatars” exhibit at New York’s Rhizome gallery.

The interesting focus for Second Life now is not how many residents are there but the large variety of inventive things that they may be doing.

Our avatars ourselves

As companies and other organizations take to immersive worlds, it may be that new employees are assigned an avatar and virtual office space along with their security card and computer. Blogging is now part of some job descriptions and soon employees may be encouraged to spend time in-world for both corporate socialization and professional collaboration purposes within and across corporate lines.

There is a lot of energy around synthetic environments including a full track of virtual world programming at this week's SXSW Interactive in Austin TX and at the upcoming Virtual Worlds 2007 conference in NY March 28-29. Second Life is sneaking up on 5m users and a $2m/day economy and There engine Forterra has its hands full with enterprise and government clients for custom enterprise applications as well as government and medical simulation and training exercises. If you are not in-world somewhere for your company, you can work as an extra in someone else's world. Sim exercises are populated by "external role players," a new and expanding job category which simultaneously underlines the marketability and necessity of tech-savviness and another step in the Yochai Benkler shift to an economy of distributed individual participants vs. industrialized entities.

Professional avatars will likely be influenced by corporate guidelines and norms regarding appearance and behavior, analogous to the physical world; at least virtual suits are more comfortable! One result of this could be an even more diffuse exploration of virtual identity as humans have a closet full of avatars for all of their different professional and personal virtual activities. Other new job categories are probably already proliferating: avatar imaging, avatar reputation management and consolidation...

Avatar and other content portability across the different emerging public and private virtual world environments is also a non-trivial matter. IEEE avatar translation protocols and standards as well as intra-world authentication services could help facilitate avatar portability. Poor portability could mean poor rendering which could result in miscommunication, prejudice and other dynamics which can be theoretically avoided with virtual worlds. An avatar discrimination lawsuit re: virtual world employment practices would not really be a hoped for milestone.

Second Life exponentiates to 2 million residents

Today the virtual world Second Life welcomed its 2 millionth resident, exponentiating in growth from the 1 million resident mark on October 18, 2006 in less than two months and after barely having 100,000 residents at the beginning of 2006.

It is not Second Life’s 2 million residents, 10,000-20,000 of whom are in-world at any given time, nor its $650,000 per day economy ($237 million per year; $119 per capita, exceeding that of the Congo, Ethiopia and Burundi) that signals that the immersive world medium has arrived, but rather the existence of its opposition. The Register often highlights critical and problematic aspects of Second Life which it refers to as Sadville, for example citing "saddenfreude" and an analysis that time spend in Second Life contributes to global warming, as an avatar and a Brazilian consume roughly the same amount of electricity. (TV and media center electrical consumption was not mentioned.)

The brewing anti-SL movement has even moved in-world in hopes of better capturing SLer attention. The World Development Movement's anti-poverty campaign reminds passersby that there are still problems in what they refer to as "the Real World" such as a preventable child death every 3 seconds.

The ongoing presuppositions of the anti-SL movement are strange. They seem to think that SLers are 1) responsible for and 2) capable of contributing to world-problem solving in some unique way that TV watchers for example are not; and that 3) SLers are in fact not working on physical world problem solving in the physical world or via Second Life although there is much evidence to the contrary (such as the awareness raising Darfur sim where SLers can experience the refugee camp experience more closely).

When was the last time TV watchers or online Bix contest participants were blasphemed for watching TV or surfing the web instead of working on the world’s problems in their relaxation time?