Greetings, greetings!
So much has happened during the prior month that it makes us feel like that we’re jumping to warp speed whenever we look up from our keyboard!
We’ve minted The Headliners #17 and #18 of the total 52 editions planned for the 2023 season. Of the dozens of important news headlines we could have chosen, we focused on two important subjects for the members of Immutable Type for this edition.
Media credibility
Decentralized rights of citizens and communities
Media Credibility
“Let’s move on,” James Clayton
Immutable Type is a project that will work to directly empower journalists to break free from undue influences upon their work, including narrative capture.
Elon Musk and a BBC reporter, James Clayton, engaged in an exchange during Clayton’s interview of Musk which left us all wanting for a bit more depth on the part of Clayton.
I don’t agree with Greenwald’s use of language toward Clayton below, but this video is worth viewing. Clayton does not represent himself as very well prepared, nor particularly credible with his angle of questioning.
One of the major risks to a stable society is to lose trust in ones institutions.
We must be able to believe in the information we access to make decisions. When our trusted sources of information lose credibility, such as the media, we begin to tune out all information, even the most urgent and important information. “It” all becomes too big to influence, so we don’t bother participating in decision making and delegate critical thinking to our hired representatives. The fox eventually begins to run the henhouse.
Clayton’s micro failure on one of the biggest stages is an excellent example of why trust erodes. He was flummoxed from appearing uniformed at best and, perhaps, as per Greenwald’s take, of being a “scumbag reporter”.
I prefer to give Clayton the benefit of the doubt without further evidence to his intent; BUT, our grace isn’t necessary, nor perhaps event prudent. We have all the tools we need for journalists to empower themselves to become independent operators who act for the public good. We have public ledgers, smart contracts, and voting mechanisms to help support great work in the public’s interest.
The technology of Immutable Type is being built to support transparency of published works, sources of funding for the work published, revenue and funding for reporters and journalists to be financially independent of centralized media’s influence, and a market for tokenized information.
The Headliners #17: Let’s move on…
Headliner #17 is an unfortunate representation of the external influence upon information gathering and storytelling journalism professionals are subjected to in their daily work.
Details of Mint
Title: Let’s move on…
Free-to-mint
2 per wallet
52 Editions
Randomly assigned edition numbers
Polygon blockchain
Decentralized Rights of Citizens and Communities
SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce wrote a dissenting opinion worthy of history, so we minted it as an NFT.
Read her work here:
Rendering Innovation Kaput: Statement on Amending the Definition of Exchange
https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-rendering-inovation-2023-04-1
The dissent by Peirce provides a critical review of the negative impact upon American culture imposed by regulators’ treatment of technical innovations, specifically decentralizing technologies.
The SEC commissioner’s dissent calls to the front the direct risk of innovation flight to competing jurisdictions, as well as the threats made by the SEC to organizations that have attempted to follow the SEC’s current process and register new innovations in good faith with the commission.
Today’s Commission treats the notice-and-comment rulemaking process not as a conversation, but as a threat.
Force Centralization
The commissioner opens with some necessarily strong words:
Thank you, Mr. Chair. Stagnation, centralization, expatriation, and extinction are the watchwords of this release. Rather than embracing the promise of new technology as we have done in the past, here we propose to embrace stagnation, force centralization, urge expatriation, and welcome extinction of new technology. Accordingly, I dissent.
“force centralization” is the piece that put me most on edge, personally, though the entire dissent rings as clear as a bell. We are limiting American liberties by threatening decentralizing technologies, which are written as software code, which is free speech, which is liberty. Forced centralization is loss of liberty.
One of the values of Immutable Type is to decentralize media power to local citizens. Centralization leads to unchecked power, aggregation of wealth, and limited choice for consumers. This is true of media, speech, technology, banking, and decision making. “Force centralization” is an eerie description of the current stance of the SEC, and it’s coming from within the SEC’s own walls.
The 1984 trope is well used to describe the threats of absolute power from centralized authorities, and it’s not unwarranted to infuse this NFT with references to Big Brother as part of the seed phrase of the AI generative piece.
The outcome is pretty interesting, and it may ruffle some feathers, which is preferred. We need public discourse, and we need communities to be informed of the advancements of technology and legal boundaries being imposed by regulators.
Details of Mint
Title: Rendering Innovation Kaput
Free-to-mint
2 per wallet
52 Editions
Randomly assigned edition numbers
Polygon blockchain
Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
As always, thank you for reading and sharing. I’m excited for the upcoming drops on Immutable Type.
We’re learning loads each day and hope you enjoy the work as we build.
Cheers,
Founder, Immutable Type