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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><b>From:</b> extropy-chat [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>spike<br>> Some here might recall Julian Assange occasionally posting on ExI twenty or more years ago. A few of us formed an off-list chat group where he posted more frequently but he was always very one-<br>> dimensional. He was all about government transparency being the best path to accountability. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Wikileaks is necessary because governments are <b>necessarily </b>unaccountable. Unfortunately, Wikileaks is (still?) a centralized organization (I hope someone there is working on that). So opponents do what they do: attack the head. Julian is paying an unfair price for our sunlight.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Transparency is necessary, but it is clearly not sufficient. We need what Nick Szabo calls: social scalability. With the right technology, we could improve our ability to engage with one another more easily, across broader networks, and for a growing number of applications, *<b>while minimizing the need for trust</b>*. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>We need to decentralize the Wikileaks vision of transparency, hopefully before Julian dies of old age in illegal detention by secretive governments that have too much to lose, and too much to hide.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This decentralization is happening now, using secure, transparent, and open source systems. Bitcoin was just a test. Electronic money works. The case is made. Now we can decentralize everything. Including funding for defense and the roads! We can decentralize financial markets, supply chains, entertainment, virus defense and electronic surveillance. We can decentralize health and medicine. And maybe, if we do it before an idiot (male OR female, any skin color, including orange, I don’t discriminate) in Washington DC hits the wrong button, just maybe, we’ll be able to decentralize the singularity before the secretive “amazon-alibaba-facebook nation state” version of it enslaves or kills us all.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Maybe I’m being a little melodramatic for a Tuesday afternoon, but this is happening now. PaX Americana (sic!) is falling apart. The Pharaohs that rule our world are playing chess again. That’s not good for any of us. We need smart people to help build, adopt, and promote transparent alternative solutions to our broken opaque centralized systems. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Peace!<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>C.<o:p></o:p></p></div></body></html>