Designing beyond the machine: Tokens, Blockchain & Contracts - with Michael Zargham

Podcast Notes

Michael Zargham, founder and CEO of BlockScience and Board Member of the Metagov Project, shares his views on how Blockchain and other emerging technologies are making new ways of organizing possible. Yet, Michael believes that, so far, we are not fully using the potential of these affordances to create something new. 

Smart contracts are becoming widespread, but does the relationship between crypto and organizing stop there? What’s next? Which new “non-familiar” possibilities of design will we see unlocked in the next few years? Michael describes how systems designers will need to be humble and leave space for systems to evolve through enabling constraints. He also believes that the gap between the complexity of organizational design and transparency of decision-making is closing through “healthy DAOs”, blurring the line between those making the rules and those acting upon the rules.   

Michael holds a Ph.D. in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania where he studied optimization and control of decentralized networks. Thanks to his experience, Michael Zargham has a non-common point of view on designing beyond the machine.

Key highlights: 

• How new affordances for organizing are created by Blockchain and other emerging technologies; 
• The gap between the complexity of organizational design and how it is documented;
• The “Animating purpose” is core to what the organization does and why;  
• How to design mechanisms without being mechanistic;
• How designers need to leave empty space and provide enabling constraints; 
• Systems engineers as civil engineerings: the civil servant ethics approach
• Finances as constraints rather than goals in emerging mutualist institutions

Topics (chapters):

00:00 Michael Zargham’s quote

00:59 Intro and Michael Zargham’s bio

02:33 New technologies, new affordances.

06:04 Beyond Smart contracts: how deep is the relationship between crypto and organization?

09:03 The new “non-familiar” possibilities of designing next generation voting public 

14:41 How an organization can “use” the Conviction voting

19:55 The gap between organizational design and the documentation of the organizational design

24:23 “Animating purpose” is core to the organization and what it does

29:49 A new era of “Design as a participatory system”? 

33:26 The role of the designer: risks and opportunities. 

40:59 The civil servant ethics approach for designers

46:18 Michael Zargham’s breadcrumbs

Recorded on 12 October 2022.

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Music 

Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music