04: Network public goods
Hello!
This month, I’m finding clarity on a bunch of concepts that I’ve been trying to articulate for awhile now. So that’s kind of awesome.
A few ideas I’m validating:
The concept of “network public goods” - public goods produced by networks, which share hybrid characteristics of both public goods and CPRs
This is fundamentally different from network goods as we currently think of them (ex. Uber, AirBnB), who provide services, but don’t collectively create assets. It is also different from most public goods, which are produced by a single firm (gov’t, private actor)
The producers of these goods are not a commons (where producers = consumers at a 1:1 ratio), but a “network”
Networks that produce these goods aren’t “open”, but simply distributed, with a sort of recursive definition of membership (which map neatly to their incentives)
Attention as a resource that’s provisioned by coordinators (ex. maintainers) on behalf of the producer network. If attention is both rivalrous (there is limited attention available), and excludable (coordinators allocate attention only to specific people), that attention is also priceable.
Still in draft mode, but if any of it stirs up thoughts for you, I’m eager for feedback, discussion, and reading suggestions!
Writing
Posts I’ve written this month.
Understanding user support systems in open source: I looked at the top 100 GitHub projects by issue volume to understand how they manage support. I’m fascinated by customer support in software generally, as it’s this death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts kind of cost that people tend to forget about. But it’s an extra interesting question in a distributed context like open source, where constrained resources lead developers to converge on market-efficient solutions.
Technical conversations: A quick post about the value of engaging in technical conversations, even if you’re “not technical”
Notes
Notes from this past month have been updated. A few highlights (edited below for length, I guess I liked rambling this month):
What does a decentralized corrective justice system look like? I think we’re already experimenting with forms of this (ex. deplatforming), but we don’t talk about it in a thoughtful holistic way, which is dangerous bc we mete out punishment in these sort of wild and unpredictable ways. Should be an essential part of designing community governance (link)
Have we actually learned anything in nutrition, or do the trends just change every 20-30 years? Why is nutrition more subject to pseudoscience than other fields? Is it that we’re objectively thinking about “progress” in nutrition all wrong, or is the field set up with the wrong incentives for attracting talent and producing knowledge, etc. Are there other sciences like nutrition or exercise that don’t seem to have clear upward progress trajectories? (link)
If we do a good job flipping the layers and monetizing protocols, will protocols get locked up the way the application layer has? In other words, if crypto succeeds, will we be lamenting the walled gardens of the protocol layer, 15-20 years from now? And does that mean decentralized orgs are fundamentally at odds with monetary incentives? (link)
Would be cool to do a meta study of the evolution of tech culture critique over time, because I feel like it’s so closely tied to historical events. What were people saying about the social effects of technology right after the atom bomb, or during the Cold War, or after the 2016 presidential election, etc? Ex. the tech culture critics of the early 2000s feel distinctly dated to me now, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly why. (link)
Links
Useful articles I’ve read this past month.
“The Myth of the Infrastructure Phase” (USV): Which came first: apps, or the infrastructure to support them? USV makes an argument for building apps first.
“The Servers Are Burning” (Dale Markowitz): Fun read about how the author broke OkCupid in his first days as an engineer, and whether human error is inevitable in today’s “tangled web” of software.
“Immortal Technologies” (Kevin Kelly): Technology, unlike biological species, never go extinct. I enjoyed reading this as a reflection on the difficulties of Javascript standards and web development for the browser.
“AirBnB asks SEC to be allowed to give hosts equity” (Kia Kokalitcheva): This seemed relevant to a post I wrote last month about offering third-party developers equity. I wish the scope of the SEC proposal were expanded beyond “gig economy workers”.
“Going sponsor-free” (Grant Sanderson): Great reflection from a popular YouTube math video creator on why he’s using Patreon rather than advertising to monetize, and aligning incentives between creators and viewers. (I also recommend listening to his video outro about it.)
Books
Relevant books that I’ve read this month.
The Human Use of Human Beings (Norbert Wiener): Norbert Wiener wrote the first book on cybernetics. Then he wrote this book for laypeople like me. It’s a good read, but mostly I like reading books like these to figure out how to eventually structure a “humans, as seen through software” argument. Wiener uses an a priori approach (biology) to understand people, whereas I’m really into the idea that we can understand people through an empirical approach (software design, i.e. articulated systems that reflect our brain’s inner workings). Same same, but different. Long-term goals!
Introduction to the Theory of Programming Languages (Gilles Dowek, Jean-Jacques Levy): A former coworker got me into programming language theory, which I fully admit is only interesting to me for the selfish reason stated above.
The Real World of Technology (Ursula Franklin): I wanted to like this, but I didn’t derive much value from it. There’s a certain style of cultural critique that treats technology as a moral issue, while also hiding behind the veneer of objectivity that technology affords. Both side matter, but I feel vaguely suspicious when people mix the two. I thought of Feynman while reading this, who elegantly separates out the descriptive from the normative aspects of technology. (P.S. If you’re looking for a good treatment of technology + ethics, I like The Farmer & Farmer Review.)