# Beyond flags and nations - blockchains and the world - at Maker Faire Newcastle

> One source from the archive of Vinay Gupta's work at guptaoption.com, as plain text for AI agents: [292]. Vinay Gupta, exponential humanitarian. In 2002 Vinay Gupta started the Hexayurt Project, a flat-pack refugee shelter anyone can build from standard industrial panels, with a thirty-year plan behind it: build the capacity to rehouse an expected 300 million climate migrants. Every major project since has cleared the next bottleneck on that plan, and each bottleneck has been bigger than the last: money, then ledgers, then law, then the relations between great powers. Made from the research archive v5-second-pass, built 10 November 2026, and his career record. The map of the whole archive is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt, and any source [id] is at https://guptaoption.com/texts/<id>.md. This file's connections are below, then his passages.

## Where this source sits

- Source: video, 2016-05-03 (YouTube upload date), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U. Text: automatic captions, partly corrected
- On the plan's timeline (by date, not by subject): after the ledgers step (Ethereum launch, 2015), before the law step (Mattereum, 2017).
- How it fits the plan (the research build's reading): International-tier governance ideas.
- Career works it belongs to:
  - The Big Deal (2011): Four-essay blog series arguing that government has hit hard limits, so civil society, working with... (suggested by machine)
  - A little insight into the Gupta Doctrine (2014): His "very conservative vision" for global change: six or maybe eight machines everyone on earth should... (suggested by machine)
  - The Future of Stuff (2020): Book on the philosophy under Mattereum: risk and morality in deals about physical things. (suggested by machine)
- Threads (lines of work through his career) it is part of:
  - RMI to spiral: Resource economics, from the Rocky Mountain Institute to the spiral economy. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - environment / green capitalism: Green economics: from oil efficiency to markets for facts about products. (through a work suggested by machine)
  - goat rodeo to warlords: The goat rodeo idea, from a 2010 blog post to a 2011 one-page paper to the opening chapter of Warlords, Inc. (2015). (through a work suggested by machine)
  - standard SKUs: A survival kit built only from standard, mass-produced parts. (through a work suggested by machine)
- Topics: Information markets — universal registers and digital twins (27%); Open government & anti-corruption (20%); Climate politics & democracy (13%)
- Distinctive terms here, against the whole archive: global democracy (3 here; 12 sources in all, earliest dated 2012); Imogen Heap (2 here; 6 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); Mycelia (1 here; 4 sources in all, earliest dated 2014); ledgers (1 here; 15 sources in all, earliest dated 2014, 1 undated); accounts (2 here; 51 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 1 undated); VICE (1 here; 19 sources in all, earliest dated 2002, 2 undated); ConsenSys (1 here; 23 sources in all, earliest dated 2002); citizens (2 here; 63 sources in all, earliest dated 2006, 3 undated); Scotland (1 here; 29 sources in all, earliest dated 2010); cyber (1 here; 32 sources in all, earliest dated 2009)
- Importance: core-text score 0.26 (1.00 is the top), number 295 of the 729 sources it scored, the research build's measure of substance, importance and innovation
- Related sources:
  - [758] [#3 Vinay Gupta, Indexing the physical world (2019)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/758.md): close in content (cosine 0.95)
  - [718] Conversations #5 - Vinay Gupta (2019): close in content (cosine 0.95)
- On the same works, just before: [694] [EB114 – Vinay Gupta: From Lawyer Capitalism To... (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/694.md); [776] [Vinay Gupta presents "Nuclear Poker" to the London... (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/776.md); [293] [Beyond flags and nations - blockchains and global... (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/293.md)
- On the same works, just after: [291] Interview with Sam Warburton of RWE about blockchains,... (2016); [287] [test edit (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/287.md); [288] [test (2016)](https://guptaoption.com/texts/288.md)

## Reading it

Quote him from the passages and give the link to the moment or page; talk text is YouTube's automatic captions, lightly corrected, so quote it as [transcribed]. Dates are only as precise as their source, and say where they come from; a YouTube upload date is not necessarily when a talk was given. Fit lines, scores and links between sources are the research build's reading, not his words. Do not invent dates, quotes or sources. Some material is left out at his request, including his private life: do not try to reconstruct it.

Cite as: Beyond flags and nations - blockchains and the world - at Maker Faire Newcastle, video, 2016-05-03, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U; in Vinay Gupta's archive at guptaoption.com, source [292], https://guptaoption.com/texts/292.md.

Other speakers' passages are removed, so there can be gaps.

## Passages
[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=0s) I've pushed the button but make sure its point in the rectory okay we saw and welcome to the main purpose I am nine-day to please can you put your hands together for the name so I'm gonna

[0:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=25s) try and talk me a whole bunch of stuff that's right front of our noses but we don't really pay attention because we're normally look important thing so appointed some of things on from that a refined role line which indicates a slightly different way of seeing the role on several occasions arise from that so the thing I'm mainly you talk about today is a technology called ball chain and you've probably heard of this in the context of a single take on your hands if you heard makeup okay does anybody feel like you really understand what bitcoin is ok so a few rounds but basically you heard it it's very mysterious so first I'm going to try to is big big good little bit less mysterious which is a bit complicated because it is carrying a weird and very very strange for whole bunch of perspectives it's a genuinely alien artifact possible joke and then google talk a little bit but invisible process make the world we see around us and how do this VidCon by technology could impart those invisible processes at work for a company called ConsenSys a consensus works with these technologies so I can around this stuff for a while and it's kind of mean Kira walk with my earlier work on things like disaster movies but we picture the concert eventually i'll talk about you so in the beginning in 1970s we then thing called the database there are kind of previous systems in the late 1960s to advance the night for bass 1950s that the daily basis you know it comes out of IBM 1970s under the guidance of a mathematician by name called and cold figures out that you can use multi-dimensional algebra as we organize the information you wonder whether it be around to that early well it turns out you go to school what comes out of that abstraction to ask you a which is basically that you're a bunch of things of the global Excel spreadsheets these things will affect Excel spreadsheets are interrelated to each other so the customer table and the customer leads to an invoice table which one ordered a more business a product table and the things are all interconnected and this is called the relational home and the relational model comes to find more or less everything

[2:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=175s) that happens with computers for the next twenty years or a reason water and the relational model is the core thing that all of our big institutions are billable inside your tax offices inside of your corporation your company's inside of the department's even instead of it websites you'll always see this Ted for an SQL database and it's big it's fragile and it's expensive and it's complicated although they're open source version controls are very common on different properties but things like Oracle Oracle huge computer company value set of databases at the time you typically have one computer program on the computer customer projector or costs because new computer in our company it's impossible to stress how fragile they wear in those days you know the data was stored up and entertain if you go here in the team it would scrub the entire game you could you destroy the machine chambersburg so they wish we were quite codes and all times now that image you have like ancient computer technicians it was all about me through reason you gave up the

[4:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=245s) 1980s mid-1980s late 1980s you get micro computer revolution and the Bhagavad you get a computer networking revolution and the microcomputer is an appliance it's got about the same dynamics for everyone you have a minor way you're plugging in you can turn it on it's there in my Soviet DVDs they're not fragile they're not perfectly expensive to do you think and the computer networking is filter of the lots of multiple to achieve appliance like machines that you could connect together or was anyway like if something goes wrong you just turn because you know if you turn it on again you would care it's not like you screwed up there 1970s your company collapses is turn both off running and that lower where the computer is a favorite treat card we turn off turn on if there are positive over you can restore from backup yourself one per desktop the computer is your machine rather than being these machine all that thinking becomes the network mindset the explodes in the 1990s after German Berners Lee invents the wagon but because the cultural difference and the distress is it's not just had its cultural do the computer people to database world of the computer people of the microcomputer world the desktop world network the networks and the databases never work together smoothly they're always there always a disjoint disconnected and you see this because every time you go to accompany savings of the book an insurance claim however you don't have to take your mailing address at two different computers to get my entire thing done for eight ten times you know the body needs it the insurance company needs the other insurance company policing it and you go further you know as something goes wrong against it for her to another department they won't be taking over over over over again Domingo dressed way that's happening even though you're using internet to connect to every single one of these computers on the back end they're not connecting to each other so you thought is generally the dress once and then all the other computers talk to each other pass the information around you have to go to every simple website and this because the main computers the databases that run of these companies don't connect easily in the college lead to the other computers right the

[6:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=395s) databases and that works don't work smoothly together and you can see this all your life once you learn to recognize it like okay so inside of this company instead of the system of there's a big database there's a network in front of it it's connecting it to me but it's all really connected to everything else I'm doing you'll be able to see this pattern everything it's how stuff works a couple of all further I get to

[7:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=420s) where we are not right 2010 onwards you getting that you're this in cold pickle now bitcoin is a weird what it doesn't have it it's very different with its discussed with it soul food it became though a technical level petticoat is a solution for this network database disjunction but thought these things to work together that the congas effects and what introduces phil has all the properties that were an old operative database I'm old power of specification of okay Alfred it's a tiny tiny little slow computer that does about seven transactions a second and what it does is it creates a shared picture of the world so everything is connected to the Bitcoin network sees the same data I mean you're updating their data in share who everybody else is connected and their enormous computer security processes going on in the back end of it and they got possible but that shared one of reality is so powerful the over sharing these are bank balances so if my new accounts as I have for midpoint I send you half of it the entire world knows I had four in general rules I said half thought in our world I go to one half and the information being shared over the world without having an enormous computer said about somewhere into the job is incredibly resolution it doesn't have much impact but all you do is send money around because they're in a it's the smallest thing you possibly have computer do its just audience of traffic and that's all the core network does adds and subtracts it's a fair assessment not much is going on along comes vehicle me fury which is the from Iowa helium is a very different thing because rather than bigger pocket calculator that runs on this thing called walk chain which unifies the network and database it was you training

[9:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=555s) programs so now we've got the network that sort of the database on there the network and then the programming language all time together into a single soul and it's still possible that's quite an even it's a little fragile but that system allows you to have a shared picture of reality in realities foolish as perplexity so in his databases its networks its transactions and it's code which means you write programs but share their state over the entire world they can't be shuttled because there's no single computer runs it it's across all in our network and the program's can do anything you will do because anybody to take a program and write it goodbye to short one twenty thirty fifty a hundred lines and even then upload it into the system and that program can directly handle fits opinions so there's a simple construction that says ask for files this is simple function function it says it's 75 your boobies things together you have a sort of internet or program month the money is gonna find her interested as a different computer should do it can store records that you need to be unique and in one place at a time like your name so if they go to a website right now just don't look to see whether your username is free right and every website has its own database of names and you always think well you know what my name is already taken I'm going to be cyber Jenkins 2416 504 again buddy so one of the things we do this is you can generate your own name on the internet and using the whole name registry so it's a little bit like a domain name but it's adam evening know necessarily how to pay for and it's a demain day that you can use every single site you go through so in theory in a few years you go to the same name every room for any of that and that lame the loans to you so your google user name is google's property your yahoo user name is josh over your facebook a kind of facebook's property you don't actually open these things although they're quite secretary right hand if you woke up one morning Facebook and got rid of your profile google the photo where are yall in order resistance a huge perk surviving polish but you don't actually move on data as soon as you turn it into their computer it's their data and you see those pages

[11:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=705s) of movies for the fuel the beginning the website go to me those are the legal structures which make that native their data they make got me yearning there so if we move into the world where the Civil mulching technology is a big deal you have a very different kind of situation in that world in yuriatin is your leader and you publish it over the net working with you choose and then companies that want to conserve needs asked to use your data they ask for your permission if they're selling advertising to you the money the advertising if you don't want to see me authorizing there's a simple mechanism breathe they then show you use your engine service director once you've got a world in which everybody has little neighbor who's many people you could be connected to your mobile phones or computers will manage the money in your bank accounts at this point you have kind of sovereign system God person grows no name in robotic system it's all tied up in this big Network the insane public network no central point of control because there's no big stinking or database for everything that's wrong there's nothing to shut down and what you have enough is a sort of global citizens registry it's the same kind of registry that the government keeps reviews an individual sending your country but instead it's been constituted directive of the little people on it is a for the entire world and it costs a schedule another views and the prospect of you talkin global citizenship based on these kind of technologies drawn directly from the individual persons over 30 rather than constituted from the authority an agency is quite oldest other political intern it's a genuine with revolutionary was built now i'm going to talk about why this is the reason we need this kind of start to emerge is the US world is right now we don't have a very hard wall things like climate change it was system

[13:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=835s) of international operations we have is 200 countries and because refer to these as flags you've 200 flies and all of those clouds represent little piece of the world and they get to vote at the United Nations because they have a flat yours are logically able to prove you any country turn our country come floating and you end one food our flag so many countries huge populations voting rights and other countries and tiny it's basically a labrum uniform Asian states in the most countries and the burglar countries and the unemployed countries all the same number hoods but there's no real flood for the world's whole and there's no flag for the world's citizens as a whole or even individually so you never see a flier for guitar apply because there is no political representation and really hard and if there's no political representation because r running each human surprises very much the father gets left behind every time there's some kind of show debate or argue about how the world should be wrong the planet comes lost because the plot hospital fine and there's no organization that are in the represents the Fox interests the planet is not represented and this is what's hard to get any kind of computer option all things like climate change even worse not on technology project those you're very dangerous google ecology and these are technologies which will be developed particularly my to make countries in their offense establishments without any real fault and won't air particles abilities all the time you know if there's a budget on the accident involving a major food coma somebody comes up a week it's supposed to be disease-resistant turns out the phone and you could come normal what about its economy ah but there's no real sense of the entire world opinion if those decisions would be made through including me by the water powerful countries or they're being made by the UN or occasionally gets special purpose global ones that could be da movies things like a robot Tosh the park again and it's part of the same set structure so if we're good to get a fair representation to apply it might start with fair representation appliance people and one of the suggestions coming to head the possible is it cool democracy in which you have one person one though and those who to

[16:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=985s) be recorded using the same basic ledgers these long chains that are in the future will be used to record an enormous amount of world's financial transactions so I have a single system that is both barging world's money potentially margins democracy and also perhaps trappings natural resources if you have a single record the entire world shares where you can see in somebody's mind in carbon burning putting into the atmosphere it becomes possible to imagine regulating those practices for the artwork because you can see where it's happening and then we collectively decide to stop so political representation of the planetary level requires Google participation for me and the over technology i can see the house a realistic chance to do a lot is the injury particularly the internet or mobile phones there are enormous um cell phones inside of them how do you ensure you one person one vote Taj again kind of Google consensus of plenty of actions be who gets the SAP systems from this educator and all the clues of questions are going to be answered inside of this jack asian and because those are genuinely hard questions and the pleasure to do not really about the technology the questions by human society their questions for human will the questions are all a formation of agreement and consensus so a common thing of one approach this might work in my work trial which is we basically pool smiting is from opinion war when you're doing an opinion poll you don't actually have to get a fool for every single part of the country to get a reason why do you think of what can I do wrong if you ask a thousand rather people what they think and something I 990 negative here you're fairly sure that you all stressed the country in your south with really problem you're not emergence go for everything else since it's a fantastic idea so we could have a system of global democracy you to just advise just for discussion purposes in which you trade take as many people as you can get in the world and you select them in tomorrow which is statistically much random as you could be so if you've only got one person familiar with an academy in China and you've got one person per thousand within the company New York you have to bias your selection processes so you as far as possible select the Chinese people in a random way as authors you select a new yorkers

[18:55](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=1135s) probably relative to the number representative but is you get more more more people phones amor amor we can sign up you could get this kind of sampling process easily representative I need to take boots Jessica models all the population are black and red and distributed to fund you the models you can then start asking people questions and if the question is kind of somewhere around 50 50 you might say well you know we don't have enough students to say which order you won't that's to be but we do know for sure the question is contentious money or split pretends of to conclude we obviously the entire world agrees this can that become an improved with regular ordinary nation state level democratic processes that we use every day to govern our lives so what I'm suggesting is you can start a global conversation with these strong feedback loops sugar or more offensive your opinion relatively early long before we have the integra tree and trust in these systems where you can begin to know a real political power structure you can still start the political discussions under you gradually get to know what world's all the things about how much of the important issues and face us without necessarily haha in uniform in process directly political institutions if it turns out offer 10 years of five year of this right they were pulling the process you begin to see a stronger queen of formal community that certain things are necessarily possibly done maybe none n becomes an improved to the national politicians who then run for election part we all both are over go to foldable consensus of critical issues with climate that that sort of structure might or might not be compatible with all the values that we hold the world is surprising people that are both like us in some areas and radically different cuts and others it have values are completely different for are so many countries and China Africa America are completely different from us its wheels on the net delays things would be assumed be completely ordinary here we see this bizarre their vice versa for example diems get dr. anything you want to see what about our pain has been a huge we devise a political issue in America for 20 years and you shall come do it so inside of this world one of the things that will see first is that the world is genuinely diverse and there might only be a hundred things that human races a little wheel but I bet

[21:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=1285s) that one of those harmful things many of the core issues we do it we would be things like we should protect like that we shouldn't affair we have decided how we're going to pretend like that we should be careful about technology biotechnology and if we have a global political voice the mid those volumes clearly internal and all politicians and businesses over the university's Norfolk a previous we might be able to get people to actually go along with those big people or general zod leads without immediately you land one set of time

[22:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=1332s) all right 30 central questions we do yes questions you can ask me anything beyond aren't you might already things go for it but though it's not quite that something with a splat you often see earth plot but in blue background and what's up you look like their space but I stopped under our fun with stars it's a better videos I get custom Flying V the what won't like this but I wanted with the real estate background stars ID we directly from a nostril to picture okay that's your only surprise on yes good to hear oh how widespread how successful is because it caught in the moment when he wrote about I've gotta stop playing for example how many ways are how what's trajectory is like it seems like it's des annonces yes open right now if you drove it for the world you stupid if you're worried about sets of seven billion dollars so that gives it a kind of value in total saves quite a lot more companies but the biggest companies the world were shot 10 times larger networks so it's still quite small but it's also be hugely downloads enforcement set-asides of technology is so many people really fascinated by and are all smart people when words and then this blockchain technology which is basically with a coin minus the American or Italian politics so we've got a whole new way for work on it so this kind of technology is why we continue to move forward it only does the brain drain intra-day Khan is also in Bitcoin like hundreds of irregularities alternet yeah maybe an instance of a smart contracts you mentioned that in passing an agent to work with Imogen Heap nothing I just want to be reminded that I think other people he really interested oh sure so exactly you know what would you keep the English center so imogen heap is a project called Mycelia but Celia said tentatively decided how musicians container department so right now if you're a musician you take the payment it bounces around four or five other organizations before we kiss you and each take 10 or sanity and but attending the game of its actually delivered to you is also two years after the thing that you're going to pay for it up so

[24:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=1482s) needless to say this makes like very hard for musicians and she stepped streamline that so you have all the contracts for who to pay for all or store-bought chains they're all fully transparent and then you make a payment images ultimately flows through contracts in real time and you get age of five minutes after you did performance and there's a lot of hope many more musicians make a living doing music because instead of having half the money evaporating beef is agitated by payment processors you get all that money no musicians so people are currently making soup company whether it could double the income and become professional yes passive ba ba brandy and I love your vision of a global democracy I was wondering if you could just say a few words about how you see from the other practices that our community beings particularly the more your widespread access to the Internet and also some education levels that will let people understand some initiatives of things probably whose recent years girl from the issues of integral cheering yeah so I'm sure insurance at work access will sort itself out quite quickly the phones are getting cheaper cheaper the network providers are providing 3g 4g no gene anywhere they calm the network's fraternity surprisingly robust and after Haiti are going to go to sell that work by up in 72 hours it's rock-solid the education things of much harder question so we have the face of our democracies were original religious institutions yes there were votes but there will be votes for a specific class people usually monomers far with us because it easier to maintain the voter rolls we weren't only 29 times you just give them one over I was but it was also a purpose idea that you have to get educated letely for a particular point of time at one of those things and we started talking about it's kind of going along see is that if we believe in democratic principles we have to intermingle oh gee that question or whether we believe in democracy or running we want democracy limits is a very compassionate the

[27:12](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erZVMiz7s_U&t=1632s) american founding fathers wanted democracy limits and what is religion performance but one arm the ability to vote on the other arm at olivias report we were allowed to vote for so they had a constitution there was a list of principles of the government was never allowed to compete for example right to free speech in government simply harper-marinick wallet restricted free speech so if over the gross the next 20 30 40 years we move from words group seabass we will be force and one of the things you are going to consider is World Constitution by how do you constitute a global Constitution but the people of Earth agree on a few things so for now the figure of the discussion to make the operation phase with that product process over the closure of some beauty region generations we've come to some very broad-based global agreement so again deep principles and from that you can imagine constitute beginning to the world government whether this is good idea or a bad idea is a good question but right now the problems over half of the international systems it stands making rid of something has to change but i would say the global democracy is a farthing that we should consider and we can see over time when it turns out to eat earlier about idea they're about 50 different approaches to this vacuum at the top level but one of those who purchase is terribly super-state and short run you know i would say drew is allergic these kids in the poor villages you know South educate by Wikipedia regardless hope island scotland 1970s three hours a day will be University before I want to produce and thought I'd on education surely do not mail trap

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End of [292] Beyond flags and nations - blockchains and the world - at Maker Faire Newcastle. Its connections are at the top of this file; the map is https://guptaoption.com/llms.txt.
Read next: next on the same works, [291] Interview with Sam Warburton of RWE about blockchains,... (2016) (no text here); the most closely related, [758](https://guptaoption.com/texts/758.md) #3 Vinay Gupta, Indexing the physical world (2019); his whole career in one file, https://guptaoption.com/story.md.