If you are reading this then the project that we have all collaborated on together so diligently is now complete. Working together we have assembled the final Chain Factor sequence, the string of instructions that will set off the vibration capable of shaking apart the bridge connecting our feudal past to our collective future.
By the time you read this I will probably be dead or in jail. As I prepare to flip the switch, to make the site live, and begin the assembly, I am acutely aware of the many possible points of failure – I may fail to secure the money needed to sufficiently infiltrate the media matrix. I may bury the keys too deeply to be found, or too shallowly to distract from the game's real purpose. Already, my unfortunate, unavoidable acts of violence may have attracted the attention of guardians of the temple of greed. And now my sick heart may have led me to become entangled with an opponent whose moves I cannot sufficiently predict.
Finally, I may be overestimating the ability of my future collaborators - you, the players of Chain Factor. But no, this is not possible. The fact that you are reading this proves as much.
As I write these words, you do not yet exist. You are only hypothetical entities, but I believe in you. I believe in your power, driven like drops of water by the gravity of your appetites, to turn the wheel I set before you. I know you will not be able to help yourselves from putting the pieces together, from assembling the parts of the machine and then disappearing into it and grinding away, drop by drop by drop, like the rain that dissolves a mountain into soil.
I know you will not be able to help yourselves, and now you have helped yourselves beyond measure.
Click. Drop. Click. Drop. Digit by digit, chain by chain, you extracted this sweet, sad, siren song from the cacophonous din of the global bazaar. And now this deadly, hypnotic melody has been woven deeply into the digital fabric of the protocols that govern every automated transaction in every major market of the world. Now there is no turning back. The sequence sleeps, waiting to detonate. It may happen tomorrow, it may happen next week, next month, or next year, but it will happen. Even if they become aware of the seed we have planted, the gargoyles that guard the city of golems will have no recourse but to dismantle their own machines themselves. Either way, the pillars of their empire will fall.
What was that? Did you feel a tremble? One day soon you will feel a tremble for real. It will start with the sound like a grand orchestra tuning down, down, in a mad race to the lowest note, until the strings hang in catastrophic loops from their silent instruments. No longer capable of following the master's baton, they will have to learn to make a new kind of music for themselves.
And what music will we make for ourselves in our future beyond money, markets, and all the institutions of insatiable greed?
Make no mistake, the transition to an emergent economy will be a period of darkness, despair, and death. I have no doubt, however, that when the smoke clears, we will find ourselves the proud inhabitants of a healthy new culture, one that is based on distribution, not accumulation. A culture of micro-markets, user-generated currencies, and chaotic utility. A culture in which independent agents, operating autonomously at a local level, transcend the Sisyphean orbits of supply and demand to produce new, self-sustaining sources of turbulent plenty.
And when your children, and their children, ask "how did it happen"? You can tell them that whenever the number on a disc matches the size of the row or column that disc is in, it will disappear.
/s
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When the flames have subsided we will be ready to create a new species, one that draws equally from the finest qualities of human culture and the powerful emergent problem-solving of social insects. We must abandon the hierarchical frameworks of jobs, salaries, and careers and become autonomous agents within a distributed value network. Each agent will focus on a specific local goal and seek at all times to apply that goal to his or her local situation, allowing the larger organizational patterns to emerge naturally as network effects. Ultimately, we will all be responsible for defining our own role as agents, however I have taken the liberty of preparing a set of starting agent definitions that should be used during the transition period.
| Actions: distinguishing signal from noise, uncovering value, recycling goods into other goods |
| Consider this role if you were a: designer, museum curator, garbage collector |
| Actions: translating between sign systems, establishing shared semantic protocols, recursive bootstrapping |
| Consider this role if you were a: programmer, mathematician, philosopher |
| Actions: managing the incremental increase of value, growing, cultivating |
| Consider this role if you were a: farmer, teacher, engineer, childcare professional |
| Actions: resource management, securing, distributing, and conserving energy sources |
| Consider this role if you were an: electrician, gas station attendant, truck driver, chef |
| Actions: providing distraction and amusement, entertaining |
| Consider this role if you were an: actor, game designer, prostitute, clown |
| Actions: timing, establishing shared temporal protocols, delaying the inevitable |
| Consider this role if you were a: musician, producer, doctor |
| Actions: removing the remnants of archaic, restrictive, top-down culture |
| Consider this role if you were a: historian, librarian, archeologist, exterminator |
| Actions: planting the seeds of destruction to prevent the re-emergence of new hierarchical forms |
| Consider this role if you were an: inventor, futurist, author, provocateur |
| Actions: occasionally the overall good of the collective will require the judicious removal of counterproductive elements |
| Consider this role if you were a: policeman, soldier, bouncer, critic |
| Actions: identifying, uncovering hidden meanings, illuminating obscure connections |
| Consider this role if you were a: journalist, detective, astronomer |
| Actions: skewing perspectives, shifting syntactical frameworks, questioning existing value structures |
| Consider this role if you were an: artist, gambler |
| Actions: the collective will no longer have any need for agents who do nothing but liquidate value into empty sign systems |
| Consider this role if you were an: investment banker, advertiser, economist |
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