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How does Leibniz's "polydimensional encyclopedia" align with Ethereum's ecosystem? Lessons learned?
Broudy
New York, NYMember Posts: 3 ✭✭
Having recently re-discovered Leibniz's concept of a "polydimensional encyclopedia" in Umberto Eco's latest non-fiction, "From the Tree to the Labyrinth," I unconsciously associated it's functionality with Ethereum's nodal smart contracts. I'm curious if we can apply lessons learned from the history and development of encyclopedias to Ethereum's cryptographic smart contracts. I'm investigating this topic now and look forward to any future correspondence! Thanks!!
Best Answer
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aatkin
Member Posts: 75 ✭✭
Took a look at the polydimensional encyclopedia article. It looks like a hierarchical way to classify, relate and describe human knowledge in a tree like data structure. Some of the work on semantic web and RDF relates to this. I'm not really seeing the link with a distributed block chain "database" used by Ethereum.
However, there is a very interesting google project called freebase which creates a hierarchical registry of "facts". The realitykeys project takes live price data feeds and freebase to serve as trusted data feeds/oracles to smart contracts.
So Ethereum smart contracts can use a Polydimensional Encyclopedia using Google Freebase/RealityKeys. The last talk I saw mentioned allowing Smart contracts to return values to a calling transaction (like a function) so this would allow a bit more flexibility in representing knowledge on the block chain.
Contract storage costs will be an issue if the intent is to store a wikipedia amount of knowledge on the chain.
Answers
I'll need to look into Freebase / RealityKeys more to understand how they would interoperate with Ethereum's smart contracts, and look forward to doing so! My main question is - granted these components are interoperable, would integrating with Google products help or harm Ethereum's goal of becoming a decentralized autonomous organization?
Tangentially, this morning I started reading about what Eco calls the "Maximal Encyclopedia," which - in conjunction with Leibniz's "Polydimensional Encyclopedia" - might offer insight into how to build a new type of hierarchy that complements Ethereum's smart contracts, maybe even without integrating Google architecture.
Since this is all conjecture at the moment, I look forward to investigating any potential complementarities more in the coming weeks. Hoping to tease this one out - thanks again!
Therefore, it's still possible to imagine user-built applications, leveraging Ethereum contracts, that could be considered partially centralized (say, tied to a static storage layer, or using a traditional website to serve the front-end portion).
Others applications could be completely decentralized (using Ethereum smart contracts for logic + using TAHOE-LAFS for storage or similar with a random node lottery to serve files segments + using our bittorrent based GUI layer as part of the reference client for the front-ends).
Centralized oracles (trusted external datafeeds) are one possibility. Data from the outside world (outside the block chain) is essential for Ethereum to meet its potential.
There is current no good way to hide proprietary data on the block chain and execute. In the future the moon math around zero knowledge proofs and code obsfucation may allow it.
In the meantime, some of these off chain functions can be handled by coordination programs that reside centrally and send transactions process and receive return vales from public smart contracts. Open Transactions (off chain) smart contracts combined with Ethereum may allow a public "trustless" investment fund where Alice can provably manage Bob and Charlie's funds without running off with them (2 of 2 multisig), be held to a prospectus (OT notarized smart contract) without divulging the proprietary secret sauce of exactly which investments were made.
So clearly in the interim a combination of centralized and decentralized will be useful.
An array of distributed real world sensors/prophets enabled by technology like X10 (home automation) and other smart Lego brick technology (German company doing this escapes my memory) will enable ETH smart contracts to bidirectionally interact with the Internet of Things (IoT). In that scenario you'd have a sensor/proplet interfaced to a local program that can send transactions to ethereum and receive return values from the result of smart contract computations.
The fully decentralized dropbox using decentralized storage (Tahoe-LAFS) was discussed. Many other uses for distributed storage can be contemplated.
in addition to what exists now, an ethereum encyclopedia could do a majority rule, or 'shelling point' for each fact, and also incorporate some sort of economics.
freebase/wikipedia have been able to do neither, and have suffered without them.
cheers
Essentially the earning from authorship is about it. That is a sort-of generalist approach. Likely you can make use of the structure of the platform/data the content is in.(though i dont think they are many niches that need a technically different system?) Something like a wiki/polydimensional encyclopedia has a structure to it. Essentially you author an edit on a page, and then imply it is good in some sense. Then it is accepted or not,(or you are accepted in some fork and not in another) and you are included in some fashion to the recipients from donations and advertising income.
The stuff has to be robust and be able to attract people and such, of course!