**Bliki**
**Technosocial bootstrapping of solarpunk futures for/from the Global South**
Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas
Tags: **Holochain | Blockchain | Grafoscopio | Solarpunk | Scuttlebutt | Solidarity economy | Commons | Descentralization**
](https://imgur.com/ISo9Qap.png)
> By developing and using alternative infrastructures, we can explore alternative futures.
> I think that the Global South is particularly well suited for such explorations,
> as the deployment of digital technology has different expansion paths and rythms
> and more organic ways, mostly because the lack of big monetary investments or the
> hyper connectivity/productivity environment and values behind the capital rush that
> drives tech push into society in the Global North.
> That allows us, here in the Global South, be informed by the tech developments
> in the Global North, without following their exact same routes, avoiding a
> colonialist approach in tech and working together as equals to explore such
> alternative futures for global benefit.
>
> In my PhD studies I showcased some of this globally informed and locally
> deployed alternative approaches to tech, by developing
> [Grafoscopio][grafoscopio], an alternative "pocket infrastructure" prototype for
> reproducible research/publishing and agile data storytelling and customized
> visualizations, and by co-designing community practices around it.
>
> Now I want to explore/build/co-design an alternative to overcomplex crypto-currencies,
> which are ecologically sustainable, cognitively and technologically simpler, more diverse,
> based upfront on community values and well suited for solidarity econonomies.
> Here I draft a plan for that, connecting it with our previous alternative tech explorations.
>
My friends at our local hackerspace, [HackBo](https://hackbo.co), say
that I'm kind of a _cyberhipster_, because I use technology that is no pretty popular (you know, like
music or fashion hipsters with their particular takes on clothing or radio stations):
instead of collaborating and versioning mainly using GitHub, GitLab or plain Git, I use
[Fossil](https://fossil-scm.org/); instead of coding with Python, PHP, Javascript or Ruby, I live code in
[Pharo](https://pharo.org/); I don't have a Facebook or Gmail account and I barely use Twitter, mostly
for advocacy reasons.
Popularity in tools and other stuff is not a big concern for me.
And _cyberhipsterness_ can even be a plural attitude.
For example, with some friends, we don't use MediaWiki or Dokuwiki to hold our
community documentation and instead we use [CodiMD](http://demo.codimd.org/) for live
collaborative documentation and we transform and publish some pages using [Markdeep][markdeep]
and support comments with [Hypothesis](https://web.hypothes.is/) (like in this very post).
We are even writing a (Spanish) collective book on how to combine these tools and automate them
in "[Documentathon: agile tools and techniques to write and publish together][documentaton]"
Of course, these are not gratuitous choices: some friends and I have used the popular
technologies before and we consider them valuable for certain contexts.
But they are not universal solutions to be hold forever and because we are still learners without
too many deep investments in the popular solutions, nor a lot of things done in them nor a heavy past,
we can explore alternative paths with technology.
I would say that this is an advantage of being located in the Global South, where digital
technology doesn't have a lot of capital push that made only certain things the norm
precluding diversity in the name of popularity.
Because of the low connectivity and monetary resources, digital technology spreads uneven and
in strange ways here in the South and, in a globalized world, we can use that in our favor, as we have done
with the afore mentioned examples.
The core premise of such advantage is this:
> **By communal deployment, development and usage of alternative infrastructures, we can also explore
> alternative futures.**
>
One example of this alternative approach [Grafoscopio][grafoscopio], a
"_pocket infrastructure_"[^pocket], as we call it, for reproducible research/publishing and
agile data storytelling and customized visualizations, that I developed for my thesis in my PhD
Design and Creation.
As detailed in the [Grafoscopio Manual][grafoscopio-man], it occupies a place in the ecosystem
of more popular and/or well known tools, like Jupyter, Org Mode or [Leo Editor](http://leoeditor.com/),
and, using [Pharo](https://pharo.org/), it mixes some ideas behind those and with other ideas and
tools (like live coding and moldability).
At the same time, Grafoscopio takes [other approach on reproducibility][panama-papers], for example.
Such prototype was done to explore the PhD question about "how can we change the digital tools that
chage us?", and in such exploration we try to blur the distinction between software developer and
user, data creator, consumer and visualizer, among other naturalized hierarchical binaries,
which also dialogues with approaches like the [Data Feminism][datafem] from a particular
perspective of the practices and the people located in our hackerspace, in the Global South.
So, having particular places, practices and technologies allowed us to develop also a particular
enactive discourse that talks with live coding, moldability, reproduciblity, civic hacktivism, data feminism,
and with efforts in the North and the South about such topics and others, but our discourse/practice
occupies a particular original position, in dialogue with others but not trying to be like them.
I think that we can use our learning there for a new original exploration about solidarity economies
that is also informed and in dialogue to what happens in the Global North, but doesn't follow the paths
over there, specially with the overhyped and excluding crytocurrencies.
For example we would use cryptographic secure chains for our prototypes, but based on
[Secure ScuttleButt][ssb], instead of [Blockchain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain) or
[Ethereum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum), and with similar concerns to [Holochain]()
for currencies and emergent coherence inspired by life and ecology instead of social distrust and
extractive wasteful economies.
Like Scuttlebutt and Holochain, consensus would be emergent and button up, reflecting a
subjective perspectives instead of forcing computing intensive always connected global consensus.
We could use the bio metaphors of objects in the Pharo/Smalltalk world to power and live code
Scuttlebutt chains and dev ecosystems instead of being tied to and handful of languages like solidity,
Javascript or Lisp (more on that tech front on the next post).
Because of the connectivity issues of the Global South, Scuttlebutt would be the ideal protocol
(so far) to build our prototype, as is local first, crypto secure, runs on low hardware and cell phones
(in line with our _pocket infrastructures_).
How the currency aspect would work? It would take the form of solidarity mutual credit.
Here is how:
* A first user, Angie, creates a fungible promissory note signed by her about a product or service she is
willing to offer in the solidarity market.
* A second user, Beto, who wants to buy services or products from the first one creates a similar
signed note, for the same value, so he is willing to exchange products and services with the first one.
* If both users exchange mutual products and services until the price of the note is covered, both have
fulfilled their mutual credit obligations and the notes will show the end of _this_ mutual credit in
the network.
* If one user doesn't want to exchange products/services with the other from the same original amount
she/he can pass the remaining credit to a new user, Clara, who will need to create a similar note for the
remaining value, so and the process repeats with Clara as a new member of the solidarity network.
* If some member want to participate in the network without using mutual credit, s/he can put fiat
money to cover (remaining) expenses for products or services there.
Some part of the fiat money can be used to pay for energy, connectivity, routers, development
or other kind of resources that are outside of the solidarity economies and will be used in the
transition economy.
* To keep users from over producing promissory credit notes for products/services they don't deliver
fulfillment peer reputation systems and cap values for credit notes could be implemented with
community developed rules (i.e. the more a peer delivers, the more mutual credit he/she gets).
* The process can be repeated for the same or new participants in the mutual credit network and
rules can be tuned in future interactions (for example adding commoners/friends discounts or
full prices according to the relationship with the network).
As you can see, members in the network can create value because they can exchange products
and services as people with resources, expertise and knowledge to offer them to the network.
Every consumer is a potential producer as she/he can offer something that the market values.
A mobile app that would work as a distributed social network and wallet (with keys stored in
trusted peers via Dark Crystal) would be able to query, buy and offer products in the network,
so we would have also a distributed local first offline/online market place.
Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is an extensible protocol, in the sense that users can define new kind of
messages, so creating such market place of products, services and mutual credit should not be
difficult.
So, I'm going to make such exploration possible?
For the moment I'm exploring SSB server, clients and protocols.
I have been testing mobile and desktop clients, seeing development tutorials and browsing
documentation.
My idea is to use Pharo to develop the customized peer market place, described above, as an
specialized Pub (the place where SSB users meet and exchange messages) with tailored interfaces.
If you see the list of [web browsers][browsers], the amount of stuff that has been implemented
around the http protocol is impressive.
Pharo is not pretty visible in the web space (despite being [pretty good at it][pharo-web]), but
SBB is kind of an underdog and a really powerful protocol, and Pharo can be the one who
brings _live coding_ into it, bridging "market bots/avatars", human communities and web
interfaces, and a lot of organic metaphors that Pharo/Smalltalk could share with Holochain,
(but with the more immersive programming experience where Pharo is unbeatable), among
other things .
The tech stack mentioned at the end and the solar punk part deserve future upcoming posts.
Stay tuned and all constructive comments are welcomed.
Extra links and further readings:
* [Scuttlebutt](https://scuttlebutt.nz/):
* [Meet the Nomad Who’s Exploding the Internet Into Pieces With "Secure Scuttlebutt"][scuttle-atlantic].
* [Principles](https://scuttlebutt.nz/docs/principles/).
* [Steal This Show: with Scuttlebutt, ‘Solarpunk Social’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rczyYBFuc).
* [34C3 ChaosWest - Scuttlebutt introduction](https://youtu.be/8Xjphvcd8Sw).
* [Dark Crystal](https://darkcrystal.pw/).
* Mutual Credit and solidarity economy:
* [Open Credit Network](https://opencredit.network/)
* [How it works](https://opencredit.network/how-works/).
* [Frequently Asked Questions](https://opencredit.network/faq/)
* [Credit Commons](http://www.creditcommons.net).
* [Credit Commons Protocol (PDF)](http://www.creditcommons.net/credit-commons.pdf).
* [Low Impact](http://Lowimpact.org).
* [OPEN 2018 - Global Mutual Credit: Is it time for a Co-op coin?](https://youtu.be/y3S7L-UinN4).
[^pocket]: Grafoscopio is a pocket infrastructure because it runs fron a USB drive to a low end
computer, to a laptop or a server or anything in between and beyond and it doesn't require to
be always connected or in the cloud or all this fashionable stuff.
Grafoscopio can be used in all those connectivity and resource intensive scenarios, but is not a
starting point for it.
[browsers]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
[datafem]: https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/datafem
[documentaton]: https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/documentaton/
[grafoscopio]: https://mutabit.com/grafoscopio/en.html
[grafoscopio-man]: http://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/uv/Docs/En/Books/Manual/manual.pdf
[markdeep]: https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/
[panama-papers]: https://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/panama-papers-1
[pharo-web]: http://books.pharo.org/enterprise-pharo/
[scuttle-atlantic]: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/meet-the-counterantidisintermediationists/527553/
[ssb]: https://scuttlebutt.nz/