Now starts my third year on Substack
Some stats for 2025:
✍️17 essays, 45K words (39 overall, 98K words)
📜The longest (6.7k words): Beyond Decentralization, https://www.linkandth.ink/p/beyond-decentralization
📜The shortest (882 words) : Work-life balance? https://www.linkandth.ink/p/work-life-balance
🥇Most viewed and liked (2025 and all time): Requisite Inefficiency, https://www.linkandth.ink/p/requisite-inefficiency
My 2nd year on Substack
Some stats for 2025:
✍️17 essays, 45K words
📜The longest (6.7k): Beyond Decentralization, https://www.linkandth.ink/p/beyond-decentralization
📜The shortest (882 ) : Work-life balance? https://www.linkandth.ink/p/work-life-balance
🥇Most viewed and liked: Requisite Inefficiency, https://www.linkandth.ink/p/requisite-inefficiency
Fourth post (
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/universal-data-facade-part-1
) in the Containment series (
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/containment-series
)
It's 50y since the publication of Platform for Change by Stafford Beer, so the title of my talk at this year's Metaphorum (an annual conference for developing Beer's legacy) was Protocols for Change. Here's the 60-slide deck I used.
https://kvistgaard.github.io/slides/protocols/metaphorum-2025/
#protocols #platforms
And here's the recording
#protocols #platforms
It's 50y since the publication of Platform for Change by Stafford Beer, so the title of my talk at this year's Metaphorum (an annual conference for developing Beer's legacy) was Protocols for Change. Here's the 60-slide deck I used.
https://kvistgaard.github.io/slides/protocols/metaphorum-2025/
#protocols #platforms
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Leaders either cause harm or don't remain for long. Platforms, whether digital or otherwise, are susceptible to power imbalances and misuse. Protocols can enhance the resilience of socio-technical systems and the agency of the participants.
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/leader-platform-protocol
#protocols #platforms
Here it is, finally, the non-nerdy, updated and refined version of the theory of Requisite Inefficiency, which some of you may remember from over a decade ago.
Some of what is not needed for what is known is an indispensable resource to deal with what is unknown.
Times are bad. #LLM s no longer obey the prompts, and everyone is writing on #Substack
We live in a second-order observer society, which makes the use of aggregated data for both mundane and important decisions the norm, regardless of the lack of trust.
AI is another second-order observer, changing how the society works.
The majority of the AI users are third-order observers, and some are fourth-order observers.
Second and fourth-order observations invite gaming the system.
#AI #LLM #cybernetics
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/ai-enables-fourth-order-observations
We live in a second-order observer society, which makes the use of aggregated data for both mundane and important decisions the norm, regardless of the lack of trust.
AI is another second-order observer, changing how the society works.
The majority of the AI users are third-order observers, and some are fourth-order observers.
Second and fourth-order observations invite gaming the system.
#AI #LLM #cybernetics
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/ai-enables-fourth-order-observations
The Middle Ages are called the Dark Ages.
Yet, there was some accountability and there is none today (see
The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies)
And contrary to the popular narrative, there was a lot of innovation.
(BTW, what does the "infinite merchant's ledger" remind you of?
Unary Boundary Logic videos:
Void-based Axioms, 45min https://vimeo.com/1040314440
Postsymbolic Virtual Queries, 21min https://vimeo.com/1040314031
Optimized Deductive Reasoning, 41min https://vimeo.com/1039534775
Who am I to argue?
(I mean, seriously, it's your Copilot working inside your tool Powerpoint. How hard can it be? And it's not for the lack of investments or experience)
#microsoft #powerpoint #AI
Decentralization is about preventing power asymmetries. Power asymmetries tend to find new shapes and forms, which are difficult to detect in the early stages and nearly impossible to change later on. They were latent in Twitter as long as it had benevolent dictators. When that changed, there was and a flow of energy into the decentralized media and decentralized movements. It didn't take long before fragmentation set in. (Bateson would call that phenomenon "schismogenesis," In hashtag#LoF terms, there was a re-entry of the centralization/decentralization distinction decentralization.)
Since decentralized protocols are a direct manifestation of the value of their proponents and builders, they have given new fuel to the ongoing decentralization discourse. So we have extreme decentralists and others supporting hybrid, switching, and other flavors.
However, there are two fundamental problems with the decentralization discourse:
1. Decentralization tends to become a surrogate of the motivation for it and a goal in itself.
2. Decentralization is too neat to absorb the messy social world.
Preventing power asymmetries is a cause worth fighting for. But decentralization is not a good hill to die on. You may not be able to imagine how power asymmetries can be avoided without decentralization, but lack of imagination is not an argument.
Details in my latest article https://www.linkandth.ink/p/beyond-decentralization
#decentralized #protocols
An enterprise-wide transformation can be successful if it brings something that works and is useful. But that's not sufficient. It also needs to be used.
Is that sufficient? Not yet. You need to add two factors related to power.
https://www.linkandth.ink/p/4u2p
#transformation
Just realized that the W in 4U test (4U2P and other variants) is how technology appears in the test and this is in line with the autopoietic view of technology proposed by André Reichel (work/fail code, following the principle of the Luhmannian functional differentiation of society)
There will be more that and on the two Ps.
Next up on Link&Think is a long article on #decentralization (of social media and general).
The main argument builds on four previous essays:
1. https://www.linkandth.ink/p/autonomy-and-cohesion
2. https://www.linkandth.ink/p/cohesion-forces-and-tools
3. https://www.linkandth.ink/p/decoupling
4. https://www.linkandth.ink/p/cohesion-via-standards-and-protocols
The X-odus goes on.
We were all very lucky that there were enough mature technologies which, with some push, provided the promised lands.
What's the political spectrum of decentralization movements (Fediverse, crypto, IPFS, Solid)?
An initial suggestion:
- techno-libertarians
- techno-anarchists
- techno-greens
- techno-marxists
Comment and extend.
I use Buffer to schedule posts for Mastodon and Bluesky, and I hope they (or another such service) will add Primal/nostr at some point.
Now the full conversation with Luc Hoebeke on representations is out https://www.linkandth.ink/p/conversations-with-luc-hoebeke-series
Check it out, and stay tuned for the next one.
#cybernetics #democracy