Sunday, January 31, 2016

Blockchain Is a Trojan Horse

Blockchain is a Trojan Horse!  Blockchain equals Trojan Horse.  Blockchain = Tojan Horse

Same = Same.  Exactly Same things are exactly one in the same thing.  They are only one thing to the extent that one one selected very specific unique entity trait attribute, method and message the only "thing" that makes them different is a name.  In essence that is the only thing that makes the two things different.  A rose by any other name.....etc.

That is my way of getting to the point that this is an Analogy.

Conceptual understanding of Object Oriented structural nature of one thing transfers to understanding another thing.  Understanding the nature of the object is the path to understanding what the object does.  Designing the Object Oriented conceptual structural relationships of what an object is determines what an object does. 

This is going to get complicated but I want it to all hang together like a blockchain of thought.  Thought that is strictly from my Object Oriented Analysis and Design point of entry to the Problem Domain expressed as a Domain Model.

Blockchain is many things in its Object nature that does many things in its functional application of what it does as a function of what it is.  In the case of Blockchain as a Trojan Horse it is a delivery vehicle that delivers from the originating Subject of the relationship an unintended consequence to the receiving Object of the relationship.  It hooks the fish.  What the bait is not what the fish perceives the bait to be because its perception of the bait is driven by what the bait does for the fish, not what it is.

Bait and Switch.

Its a business model.  A political model. Hope and Change.  Hope is a thing.  The bait.  Change is an action.  The uncompleted phrase that begs an object in the Subject/Verb/Object structure of natural language is completed by the recipient filling in the unspoken Object of the Subject: "Hope".  What that might be in reality as a function of the creator of the unfinished phrase might not be what the receiver believed to be the thing they thought.  They essentially deceived them self by clever design of the creator of the statement that was not even a proper sentence.

How clever was the design of a statement like "Hope and Change"?  It is not a structural sentence.  It is a slogan composed to two noun joined by "and" that communicates to the recipient of the slogan that "Change" is a verb action, not a noun thing result.  Change has no real noun meaning.  What "Change"?  The recipient fills in the blank of what they hear as a verb with what they think will be the function of Change.

"Hope and Change" is the "Bread and Butter" of expert conceptual manipulators employing the the functional oriented programming of Natural Language for Object Oriented control of the Problem Domain.  Most people focus primarily on the action first and foremost to derive meaning not the objects related by the action.  Give them only the conceptual objects and their mind will fill in the action that they believe joins the objects they are presented with.  The action that they choose is their choice that can be subtly manipulated by the framing of the objects.  Then "let" them freely make up their own minds of what the meaning of a two things joined by an action verb is.  That meaning is what the functional sentence or unfinished slogan does.

Try this slogan generator.

Or this one.

It will work on people with dominant action oriented thinking approaches to extracting meaning based on their focus on a verb.  They will find some higher degree of abstract meaning in the slogans than people with dominant object oriented thinking approaches to extracting meaning that will find a low degree of meaning in the slogans.  They will get the joke of ambiguity meaning based on the nouns used.  Functional oriented thinkers will not get it as quickly, or at all.

There are thinkers and there are doers.  Thinkers think about creating structures of real or conceptually abstract things and their relationships that get doers to do something the thinkers want done.  There are more doers in than thinkers in the world.  Functional Doers look at Object Thinkers and wonder what they did to get all the money they have.  Functional doers don't have the dominant way of thinking it takes to see the answer to see the difference is all in the primary approach of controlling objects to get things done as a function of object management being more effective than controlling actions to get things done.

It is the difference between managers and supervisors of  workers doing the action work.  Managers manage objects.  Supervisors manage the worker functions of the manager's object design.  Workers  function in the application of the object model to produce.

When the Object Model operating system is so inefficiently constructed that it no longer produces beneficial results a better one, devised by higher order Object Oriented system design creators comes along with a better mouse trap.

BlockChain is that object model.  An interesting one.  BlockChain is transaction oriented.  It is all about validating a chain of transactions.  It would seem to a perfect functional transaction oriented control design.  It would seem to be to the functional oriented thinker.  They, the function oriented thinkers among management,  would see it that way.  The function oriented managers that control by the function nature of the balance sheet to invoke operating system control.

It sets up a situation for elegant design to have the cat skin itself by applying its own self skinning tool of functional system orientation.

It is a complicated sting.  Like the movie "The Sting"
At what point any viewer saw the sting coming, or got it at the end, or walked out wondering what the sting was even after revealing it in plain sight probably has a high correlation to Object vs Function orientation.

Putting the Sting on an entity that believes it is a master of the Sting is an elegant thing that approaches getting the cat to skin itself.

That is what BlockChain will do as a Trojan Horse.  Bankers thing they own the Sting in the way they have structured the banking operating system Object Model.  That Object Model gets the user to focus on the function of the application programs hiding the Object Model in the background.  BlockChain is a higher order abstraction of the legacy banking system Object Model that will subvert the legacy banking system.

Exactly how that is accomplished is a beautiful thing.  Bankers themselves that created the legacy system Object Oriented design have become so focused on what that system function does....make tons of money for them....that they have set themselves up for a Sting by more Object Oriented schemers that will take advantage of the Mark's focus on the action to win.  The same strategy that bankers have always used to dominate the game!

Bankers are focusing on how Blockchain will streamline Transactions!!!

http://www.businessinsider.com/citi-blockchain-technology-could-turn-banks-to-dumb-pipes-2016-1?r=UK&IR=T

The Trojan Horse is rolling toward the Bank and the Bank is opening up the Bank Vault.  The Bank Vault used to be where all the cash was stored.  Now only 3% (in the USA) of currency is in the legacy Bank Vault.  97% is now on a Secure Server Vault.  That is the open door that the Trojan Horse of BlockChain is rolling under the slogan of what BlockChain will Do for a bank, not what it Is that will stick it to the legacy less Object Oriented banking system model made more Function Oriented in nature not only by Technology but the Functional Oriented greed of the legacy system managers.

Just desserts are oh so sweet.

Roll on you elegant Trojan Horse.  Give the legacy banking system so much more than what they are expecting to more efficiently extract (theft by design, aka control fraud) money from their captured clientele.


This is how it is going to go down.  It is writ large on the wall.

Blockchain will become the accounting control method.  Accounting control is a functional oriented system.  It is based on the Function of money creation, managing money once it is created from nothing and loaned into the monetary system as debt money.  It is all so pathetically (good thing for its demise) a functional based system it will fall as its own victim of design.

Bankers rubbing their hands together in anticipation of all the money they will get from Blockchain techno finance and schemes they can cook up using it.  There is a bigger fish behind them but they are so used to dominating the domain they never had to worry about anything behind them, even government.

A joy to behold what is coming and this is the rub:

Blockchain is all about a continuation of the validity of the chain.  Debt money creation is about creating debt money over and over as it gets loaned into existence and then extinguished and all the games of leverage played with it.  It is almost as good if not better than laundering money.  Make it disappear and then make it come back all new again.

Banks will want to do the same with Blockchain transactions.  Make the validity of the transaction chain go on forever.  Traceable back to the first transaction that introduced money related to the first transaction.  The big surprise will be when the currency as well as the transaction are linked each in their own but related blockchains.

That is the essence of the monetary system I have proposed as presented from so many points of entry in this blog about what money is.

Apple Pay is a Trojan horse preview of the way the winds of change are blowing.  It is not blockchain but after it replaces credit cards then blockchain currency is a relatively small and easy step.  It only addresses credit cards which is an "outsourced" bank clearing function.....creeping up on core function.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/12/21/how-apples-trojan-horse-will-eat-the-credit-card-industry/
  
Why Apple Pay Isn’t a Trojan Horse Intent on Eating the Credit Card Industry: 
“Apple Pay is, however, a Trojan horse. Once Apple has established its platform, it won’t need the banks and credit cards any more. It will be able take advantage of another new technology, the blockchain, to offer an alternative payment option.” 
Then he goes on to debunk the idea because Apple is not interested in doing that?  

Ha!  Yes, absolutely!  Debunk that crazy idea that Blockchain will eat any big boy lunch. 

Slogan maker results on Blockchain!  1,076 Slogans.  Some are really good!

Try "Debt Money" in the Slogan Maker. 

Keep your eye on the slogan all you function oriented banksters.  Don't pay any attention to the man behind the curtain!

Saturday, January 30, 2016

How Much Debt Is Too Much Debt?

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rising-debt-unfounded-fears-by-robert-skidelsky-2016-01

Good Question.  Beyond the title I can't say too much about how the author replies with an answer.  From which and whose perspective?  Whose perspective from two difference standpoints.  One being the owner of the asset side of the balance sheet debt.  The other being the owner of the liability side of the balance sheet debt.

Good question but in the standard style of such a significant question it beats around the bush and fails to scare up a real answer to the question.

The answer is really for whom does the answer have the greatest meaning.  I see it as the holder of debt as their asset to whom payment is required by contract.  The entity owing the debt may for various reasons, maybe the principal one simply being that they have to much total debt and must tell those they owe money to in order of priority to go pound sand.  The last to be told that will probably be the one that will pound them for non-payment or cut off body parts for each increment of debt owed.  That is the unwritten but understood part of the those debt contracts and it is not in the small print but write large.

How much debt is too much debt from the standpoint of the entity to whom the debt is owed?  Too much when it kills or cooks the goose laying those golden repayment eggs.  So a single goose gets killed to send a message.  When too much is owed by all the geese in the yard that can't cover the cost plus profit of loans to them then that is too much debt for the collector of those golden eggs.

Unless......they can get the protector of the hen house to make payment to the fox on behalf of the geese.  Then the protector extracts whatever was paid to the fox from the geese.

Does that situation begin to approach the level of having too much debt?

Debt is only one of the children of a bigger parent concept called "Risk and Reward" that inherits attributes, methods and messages to implement its methods communicating with a wide variety of related entities that are all connected in the Problem Domain of "Debt" that is a child of a greater Parent Domain of Risk and Reward. 

Life is a high level Problem Domain that relates at that higher level with the Problem Domain of Risk and Reward.  We are direct high level Children of Life.  Financial Debt is a several steps down the generational line as a sectoral child of Risk and Reward.  Children of each domain and their children interact.   When breaking limits are reached they are resolved at higher levels.   At the highest level Debt (which is a lower level child of Risk and Reward) raises in importance to the highest level in relation to Life.

The Parent level of both Risk and Reward and Life??????

Go Figure!  It ups the stakes and the ante to the highest level parent for ultimate settlement doesn't it?  At the granular level.  At the aggregate level.  Final resolution.  The system must be fundamentally restructured so that is not possible.

Too much debt is when the collector of the debt no longer is in league with the protector of the debtors and the collector chokes on the debt that is owed, jumps out a window or swings to a different tune when it no longer calls the steps.

Too much debt owed by the debtor?  The answer is equally applicable at the granular as well as the systemic aggregate level.

The problem is the debt money finance system.   A system in which "Big Debt" finance contracts are paid off in the same currency medium created by the contract.  The same currency medium that is overwhelmingly used to pay off small debt.  Most often the kind where debt settlement is made immediately in real time by cash, physical or digital, currency.  The same currency that also pays off Big Debt over a long period of time.

Little debt matters used to be Retail Consumer Commercial Banking.

Big debt matters used to be Wholesale Finance banking.

Glass-Steagall stuff.

It is not so much a question of too much debt but the category of the debt.  When it is all the same with no division between its fundamental nature, magnitude and application then all debt is the same.  When it is categorized and managed independently then the answer becomes more precise.

Otherwise the answer is........

As much as possible for me without killing thee........or having thee kill me.

That works for me to the extent that I have protection from thee  and thee not from me.

It is the business model of a crook:  What can I get away with?

The best of all worlds for the crooks business model is that the victim does not know they have been victimized.  If they do there is nothing they can do about it without the whatever they might be able to do is worse for them than the crook.  Kind of like reporting a crime to the police and they come to shoot the one that reported it.

Does that happen?  It sends a message.  Kill too many and the message gets effectively returned.

That is when how much is too much.

Goldman is good at protecting itself from the ravages that it might suffer from Risk and Reward and its financial debt child.  Keep it down at a low level and own the entity that would otherwise settle it at a higher level approaching the Life level of its granular and aggregated citizens that is the Parent to the their child called Government.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/case-sheds-light-on-goldmans-role-as-lender-in-short-sales.html

Bill Black has proposals for solving debt crime at a high Parent Problem Class Level.

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2016/01/announcing-bank-whistleblowers-groups-initial-proposals.html

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/02/the-bank-whistleblowers-united-who-are-we-and-why-are-we-trying-to-help-implement-real-banking-reform.html

Essentially it balances granular level power of a Whistle Blower to exercise Risk and Reward attributes equal to the aggregate level power of Big Banks to manipulate Risk and Reward with a crooked institutional business model.

Oh for the days when a cheater with an Ace up its sleeve rose quickly to the top level of Life and Death.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Bottom Feeding In the Data Supply Chain - Vigilent Mobile Companion

Update 26 Jan 2018: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141972032

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/this-is-just-evil-massive-private-license-plate-database-tracks-car-locations-over-years.html

License Plate Readers are a continuing interest.  This is added to prior blogs but appropriate on the heels of the most recent prior blog entries related to personal privacy and monetizing personal  information on a Data Supply Chain.  In a much earlier blog about LPR I considered an LPR on my car to harvest plate ID as a drove and sell it on the market to anyone that would buy it for a fraction of a cent per plate time and location.  Truck drivers could do the same to monetize their driving.  As equipment prices go down it becomes more cost effective.

Occasionally I check for cheap or free software to use on existing equipment to act as an LPR.  This software is available to turn an iPhone into a dashcam.   However I have not seen features that would enable it to do LPR.  However, if my iPhone can do facial recognition then it would seem that it might also be able to do LPR with an API.

This looks interesting: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vigilant-mobile-companion/id953236853?mt=8  The same Vigilent as the beginning link.  I am amazed that this is now available. Downloaded the APP.  Now everyone can monetize their driving.  Selling it gets a two-fer for the buyer.  Not only the info I record but where I was when I recorded it!  Some might not thing of the second piece of info.

I'm in business.  Hello, Vigilent.  How much will you pay per 100 plates read with time and place info?

OOps!  I have to register to use the App!  It is exclusively for Vigilent law enforcement customers.

No doubt somebody will create a public app for the same thing.

Imense has iPhone LPR reader apps on the iPhone App store

Stan Smith - Knowlegegivers

I think that Stan Smith is offering a gold mine simply because it is to good to hold onto, needs greater resources to develop application and the general potential benefit to everyone is so great. 

I also think that his IP is brilliant and offering it makes him a hero.

Stan Smith is a good guy to share his brilliance so willingly. 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/block-chain-data-supply-2016-stan-smith-knowledgelevers

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Monetizing Personal Data Using The Blockchain

I knew I was going to like this at Linkin when the title caught my eye in a search on 'Blockchain Monetization.

"EMPOWERING INDIVIDUALS TO MONETIZE PERSONAL AND IOT DATA USING SMART CONTRACTS AND THE BLOCK CHAIN" -- by Stan Smith, Knowledgelevers

What I anticipated was confirmed in the second sentence where he used my favorite word: Granular.  The real nitty gritty smallest uique unit building block of the structure.  What followed was a fantastic find.

Stan talks tech like a pro but an examination of his background is a surprise.  He is certainly multi talented!  His ability to talk tech appears in one of his patents: https://www.google.com/patents/US8862506 buried in that is is true foundation ability in social science as demonstrated extract from the patent:  "The social benefit of the invention is to enable an individual to control access and distribution of their personal data as they actively exercise their rights to privacy and assert ownership of the intellectual property."  

Fantastic!  

Some credit most certainly goes to Stan's associate, Adam Tanner.
And also here.   He authored this: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-data-brokers-make-money-off-your-medical-records/

I would call them both social technologists.

The patent does not contain the words Block Chain or BlockChain.  However that is exactly the concept explained by a portion of the patent.

The prior post looking at Nextdoor and its privacy policy caused me to think back a couple of previous blog entries to Blockchain and its potential applications.  Nextdoor is just another social media company making money off personal information.  The privacy statement of all these companies does not say they are using it and selling as a database.  No, they are sharing with third parties and official affiliates.

Why don't I get a cut on my personal data?  I'll sell my whole life story or any part of it for a price, if it is worth it to someone.  Information about me is personal or public.  Some personal information about me is given to an entity in which I have some trust not share it externally.  Some strictly personal information is obtained by stealth.  By means of not opting out when the default is opt in.  It takes advantage of me not knowing or looking for all the gotcha's.

There is the matter of determining what person private data about myself that I have exclusive personal ownership of by right of ownership?
Good question!

This is an extract from the Nextdoor Membership Agreement:  
" Content. You retain all ownership rights to the text, photos, video and other content you submit to Nextdoor (collectively, your “Content”). You give us permission, in the form of a nonexclusive worldwide license, to use, copy, and publish your Content as described in our privacy policy."

Whatever I do own I could sell on a blockchain contract and receive a micro payment (maybe even a macro payment!) in accordance with a blockchain contract for every single time it was used or updated by me.  Like a royalty payment?  All I need is an aggregator agent to control and collect the royalties.  

No more free lunch for all those harvesting my personal data which is mine by right to sell if want but not their right to take or assemble from bits and pieces.

Excellent piece, Stan Smith.  

I am studying it in detail but I can see the day coming when the Blockchain empowers Individuals to monetize personal and IoT data using smart contracts and the Blockchain.  Big data will not like the idea of  "Cost of Goods Sold"  when their business model is "Get it for Nothing". 

How about this for an idea:

Every business that sends me an email to sell something must make a micro payment specified by me as a standard fee to my crypto currency account as an automatic payment based on usage of my blockchained email address.  Consider it like the cost of a stamp put on a letter solicitation sent to me except the price of the stamp is paid to me not the post office and the payment is automatically made on the blockchain.  

That is a way to monetize my email address on the Blockchain.  

I am open for business! 

A wealth of info about data monetization at this link: http://us.wow.com/wiki/Data_monetization

Serpent 2.0:  https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Serpent




Nextdoor - Business Model- Privacy Policy and Member Agreement

This blog entry starts life as a placeholder.  I am a Nextdoor registered user.  Initially it looked like a local community friendly way to share neighborhood interests.  It has changed.  Changed to the extent that I have become interested in its business model.

Perhaps the best way to get a glimpse of its business model is to look at the Privacy Policy.  Last updated: December 29, 2015 at the time of this posting.  That legal thing we agree to in the terms of service acceptance that nobody ever reads.  The privacy statement is a required thing that explains how personal information is obtained, used and shared.

The Privacy Policy and Member Agreement  changes cited by this link ("We will be updating our Member Agreement and Privacy Policy on January 7, 2016.") have not yet been applied to the site Privacy Policy and Member Agreement statement I am viewing dated "December 29, 2015" at the Nextdoor site today. 26 Jan. 2016.  The

 https://nextdoor.com/privacy_policy/

The member agreement is an integral part of the Nextdoor Privacy Policy:  https://nextdoor.com/member_agreement/

The Nextdoor website has suddenly become non-responsive on both my computer and smartphone.  "503 Service Unavailable".

More research to follow.  Focused on cookie policy but specifically on this from the Privacy Policy:

"Cookies, Web Beacons and Similar Technologies. Like most online service providers, we use “cookies” – small data files with unique identifiers that are stored on your computer or mobile device — as well as web beacons and similar technologies. Some come from us, some come from our service providers, and some are placed by third parties......To learn more about our use of cookies, web beacons, and similar technologies, click here. "

Going to the link it only addresses cookies.  not web beacons or any other "similar" technologies.








Monday, January 25, 2016

Form First Function Follows. Vice versa for the Banking System

The golden rule of nature: Form first, function follows.

The bankster's rule of gold:  Function first, form follows.

The banking system is built on a fallacious conceptual design rule.  It has been very successful....until now.  Function is a shifting sand to build upon.  Objects called Rocks are better.

A system structured fundamentally on function orientation instead of persistent object properties is bound to fail over time.  Philosophically  true, I think.  When the function of time runs out, the last and greatest function based entity verb that rules the system called the passage of time, then all object things are over.  Until then mankind structures its best and lasting systems on the premise of the persistence of objects over time.  Objects oriented management of things dominate the creation of our best conceptual structured system designs.  What they do as functional processes follow.  Attempts to dominate and dictate conceptual structured system design based on functional process control fundamentals first to create things as function of process are a shaky way to build a system.

The way I look at money there are only two things to examine.

1.  What money is.  Money as a noun entity as the singular granular instance of its class and plural aggregates categories of money up to the total class of all money.  Specific definitions of what money is apply.

2.  What money does.  Money as a verb action.  Transaction is an equal but better word.  Transaction as a medium of exchange between two entities in a trade of money for something.

Our monetary system relates what money is and what money does to apply it to satisfy our needs.  Our needs are many but the monetary system is essentially our decision making tool with which to make choices about which needs we want to satisfy and our resources to satisfy them.  It is a social decision making tool we agree to use at the individual level as well as aggregated individual levels all the way up to the total aggregate level of all of us as a nation. 

A good system example working model of the relationship between what money is and what money does is an Operating System and  Application Programs that use it to do something. Works for me.  An Operating System is a combination of Hardware and Software working together to provide the framework for Application Programs which are exclusively Software to do something.  The Operating System has its own Software that at the machine level bridges the relationship between physical hardware and directly related and mirror image linked logical conceptual representations of physical attributes and relationships.

Operating Systems and Application programs are New Age technology.  Digital Age.  The legacy Operating system and Application Programs used, and still use its own language.  Our Natural Language with it own operating system and application programs which has acquired a new way of expression to serve our needs.  Much better, most would say.  Others might see it as a faster way to make mistakes.  The beauty of a tool is in the eyes and in the hand of the (be)-holder.

Everything old is new again!  People used to talk to their "Tin Lizzie" machine.  Now our machines  can talk not only to us but with us.  Hey, Siri!

Why the elaborate preface to what I want to say?  That is what I do when I want to collect my thoughts.  Start from the beginning in order to extend them.  The big wind up before the pitch to make sure it is frames well to get it to where I want to go.

The Information Age extends our historical natural language evolution that maybe started with one grunt for yes and two grunts for no.  The Information Age is not so much a revolution but a faster evolution of our natural language, in its broadest terms,  by means of using machines and a more precise language (math) based systems to extend what natural language does for us.

The way I see it, technology has enhanced our legacy language system and extended its utility.

Money is an age old legacy system with its own evolution over time.   It is a well entrenched legacy system that has adopted Information Age technology to extend itself.    

The way I see it technology applied to our legacy monetary system has exposed the need to change the basic operating system.  Failure to change the basic operating system will allow the legacy system to make mistakes faster and fail because its foundation has always been intrinsically faulty.

The legacy monetary system is structured on the creation of money through debt processes.  Debt is a social functional originated concept.  The function of debt creation assumed by a bank established an Application Function as the foundation of the legacy Monetary Operating System.

Selection of what thing is to be held constant in a system and what thing is to be variable determines the nature and operation of the system.  Nouns denote things, verbs denote actions but verbs are a conceptual thing as well at a higher level of abstraction where the rule says:  All things are things.

The Information Age is structured on the creation of an Operating System to provide the foundation on which Application Programs are created.

Grunting in a cave did not create the vocal system.

The legacy monetary system was and remains structured on a functional process of debt creation.  The thing that money does not what money is.  That was a better way for bankers to create the banking money system because structuring it on what money does in action rather than what it is as a thing does exactly this:  Detaches what money is a thing from what money does as a functional action and makes it a variable fractional child of function managed by bankers. 

Using natural language in all its continuing legacy beauty this is what the bankers did:  Put the functional wheel process of rolling before the horse that made it roll.  Put functional process first enabling substance on which that process was built to be manipulated....Leveraged.

Leverage.

Leverage is an illusive concept.  It has meaning as both a noun and a verb.  Furthermore, in the frame of the physical world its power is a mathematical computation with limiting parameters expressed by a formula.  In the frame of the conceptual word of money its power is a computational formula but not constrained by physical reality.  In that conceptual world nothing can be leveraged to something.  The focus is not the two nouns in the relationship but the use of leverage in its verb function form.

It is the old trick of getting the mark to focus on the action of the shell game having three shells, not the the three objects involved to select the object that has the pea beneath it.  A skilled flim flam artist wins every time if they put the mark in the frame of focus on the action.  Theirs is an function based system of operation.

As usual in my way of expressing things I get to the conclusion at the end that should have been stated at the beginning or probably used as the title descriptor of what this blog entry is all about.

I will do both.

The time has come to restructure the monetary system on an object oriented base where the object foundation of the system comes first and the function of the system follows.

Object form first, function follows to implement the power of subject form to object result.

A bigger thought:  Are we what we do in action or who we are in substance?   Action may be said to speak louder that words.  Speaking louder is only a measurement degree of action.  Does it necessarily translate to having a greater conceptual meaning that dictates who we are?

Some systems must be built on form first.

Some must be built on function first.

Which approach for which system is an appropriate  place to start?

It all depends.

I think that the legacy banking system started out on the wrong foot.  The function foot but the right foot for the banking system.  The other foot, the object based foot, is the better lead to get a better footing on stable ground.

There is something about Blockchain and money and finance that intrigues me but eludes my grasp.  At the core is a better hold on what money is and what money does.  Form and function.

Maybe it is this:

Blockchain currency gives object form structure to money first.   That is the foundation of the system.  Then the function of transaction follows.  The first transaction is the birth of a persistent object existence that preceded birth.  The transaction itself was the incarnation of the object.  The object defining what money is becomes the transaction.  When money is spent it is literally the re-spending of a transaction received that became locked into the historical block chain.

A transaction in the legacy debt based system is the verb that joins buyer and seller in the transfer of money as a medium of exchange.

In the blockchain monetary system the transaction of spending crypto currency into the system the first time monetizes the the unit of currency into a transaction object money container block upon which the system having a variable amount in each fixed transaction container is built.  It is like a variable denomination on a dollar bill.  Impossible on a physical bill but possible on a variable conceptual "bill".

Intuitively, and that feeling is rapidly emerging into fact, I see blockchain currency as fundamentally an object based monetary system in comparison to the legacy banking system that is a functionally based system design.

This is big change.  The banking system obviously would not want this applied to the foundation of currency but must recognize the accounting advantages for what money does.  Seeing that and adopting blockchain for accounting as the banking system is well on its way to doing has a foreseeable result of paving the way inevitably for a blockchain currency system.

What are banks doing when they intend to use blockchain as an accounting control.  It looks to me exactly what is being done in applying blockchain to currency.  Objectification of a functional process transaction into an object container to be managed on its foundational entity object attributes, known methods and message emitting and processing.

This turns function based legacy system money and finance conceptual design into an object based Information Age system design.

The old function based legacy banking monetary and finance system design is headed down a slippery slope that my dad would call going to hell in a hand basket.  As it goes to the hell it deserves I think that those that recognize the direction will grab onto an object rather than hold on to a function creating leverage.

Is it possible for banksters to grab onto an object oriented system but still have the advantages related to the legacy function based system designed for leverage?

Don't know about that except that they are very clever.

There are big bucks involved here.  That is something to be clever about.

There is also a new kid on the block that was the domain of banks.  The kid who helped banks with all of its Information Age gadgets, bells and whistles.  The quants on the inside.

The new kid on the block is the Technology Sector that once was employed by the banking system.  The Technology Sector that is thinking "We could own a share of the banking business instead of working for it".    They have hobbled themselves to long with their functional based system into which they wanted us to pound in a round peg to a square hole.  Parts of the legacy banking system are ripe low hanging fruit for the picking.

If blockchain is a fraud killer then wither go the banks? 

In the process of writing this blog entry the idea that blockchain turns a transaction function into a money container object emerged as a new thought. The more I think about it the more I feel this may be the simple elegance of turning the function oriented nature of money, what money does, into the object oriented nature of what money is.

Stated more simply:  "Blockchain monetizes transactions"  It turns the transaction into money.  No counterparty.  No balance sheet.  It turns a function into an object medium of exchange.  Neat idea?

Searching Google on "Blockchain monetizes transactions" returns the result:  "No Result".  If this is such a splendid concept then why has it not been expressed before..ever..as far as Google knows.

Chalk up another bragging right on the score board!

Maybe blockchain is too broad.  Going to the term that gave birth to something bigger than itself: "Bitcoin monetizes transactions"  No results.

Almost like a two-fer!

Getting more basic:  "Blockchain monetizes"  No results!

"Bitcoin monetizes" gets 9 results.

Maybe I need a better understanding of Monetization at Wikipedia.  Not much help except that monetization is a functional process of turning something into money.  That something being an object to begin with.  Turning the first transaction process of a blockchain crypto currency into money to be used as a medium of exchange object in every subsequent transaction is initial direct monetization of a pure action turning it into a conceptual object.   Like...uh...printing money.  There was explanation of that at the link in the   Monetizing Debt subsection.  Debt is an object created as a function of the contractual balance sheet entry process that comes first then continues to validate the existence of money created by monetizing the debt, as long as it exists on the balance sheet.

It would appear that Blockchain money creation that monetizes a transaction directly into money cuts out the intermediate step of creating the object Debt as the function of a process as well as all the downstream balance sheet accounting as long as the debt exists.

That of course is the elegant beauty of the blockchain currency.  In addition to all of its other attractive features.

Is "Blockchain Monetizes Transactions" really an astounding reading of what is written on the wall?  If so why am I the first to put it in writing....as far as Google knows.  What do I know?  Will I soon be hearing voices that are not there?  Perhaps we will have elegant conversations about what we see written on the wall.....or the shadows?

Maybe I need to see the light find the answers to all my questions and suppositions related to my crazy notions about the nature of money and banking.  Maybe reading Eric Tymoigne's 3 part series on Money and Banking at New Economic Perspectives will reveal what a beautifully balanced system the Banking Money and Finance system is and how it functions to perfection in all its complex glory.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!






Sunday, January 24, 2016

Everybody Must Get Banked

But I would not feel so all alone....everybody must get banked (stoned)!...Bob Dylan, Rainy Day Woman.

Who is not banked?

The Unbanked. 

What is the reply to the old business question; "Who are our customers?".

Is the more important question for business growth; "Who are not our customers?"

The Unbanked are not a bank's customers.

This is an abstract of  Unbanked and Underbanked Consumers in the U.S., 4th Edition
The abstract is not the report but it gives a good look into the probable content.

The full report is something a banker can read for the price of $4,500.00.  Delivered on line.  Put it in the shopping basket and checkout.  Its greatest value is probably not telling bankers what they already know but providing a certifiable reference validity to support decisions based on cost effectiveness and future return on investment aimed at....yes, of course:  Everybody Must Get Banked!

What might stand in the way of extracting big bucks to the banksters from the Unbanked?  

The Postal System providing banking services to the Unbanked.  Bernie Sanders supports this.  The number he uses however is 100 million people.  Careful with the numbers, Bernie.  That number is probably more an estimate of potential users both banked and unbanked.  It is not the commonly cited more or less number of around 10 million Unbanked adults.

Who else supports the Postal System providing services for the Unbanked (as well as the banked, anyone can use the service)?

Bloomberg  That is a financial publication.  Banksters read it.  Bloomberg supports government services to the Unbanked???  Has hell frozen over?  Maybe on the East coast.  Yes, Bloomberg supports the idea but its proposed solution is that the Post Office be a store front for commercial banking operations:  "There's a better way. Instead of competing with the private sector, the postal service could offer a curated selection of third-party financial services, of the Bluebird and LendUp variety." Why share the business with the Post Office when it is better to take it all.  Privatize the Post Office.  That's a bank plan for the banked as well as the unbanked.  Between the banked and the unbanked what is left?  Looks like total market domination!

The Big Business dream.  But wait!  The eternal business question remains.  When we get all Banked and Unbanked adults under the coverage of commercial bank system accounts who are then in the category of "not our customers"?  Who do we target? 

Watch for banks advertising in cartoons.

But I digress because it amuses me in getting to the point.

When everyone is banked and there are no "Unbanked".  Every banked person or entity has a bank account.  Identified by a bank account number.  The bank account number by default becomes a universal identifier.  Identification numbers are increasingly linking.  For example: ...data published in the ($4,500.00) report show that, as of 2015, some 93% of unbanked adults have a mobile phone...almost two-thirds have a smartphone".  That is the Unbanked population.  Probably the same for the Banked, maybe more.

Bank accounts tie into so many other personal data element identifiers including an increasing number of biometric markers associated with accounts for security purposes.

Bob's lyrics must be revised to a more fundamental commonality than "Everybody must get Banked".

"Everybody must get Accounted."

That means everyone must have a unique bank account number to transact with a medium of exchange that is only digital and must be associated to specific entity or human individual account.

What is the exception to that rule?

Blockchain Anonymity  This link is only one example. The first one on a Google search that looked like it was good enough to make the point.

Bankers have a love hate relationship with Anonymity depending on if it works to their advantage or not.  Like many other things.  Fill in the blanks with those other things and they all boil down to this.

(Insert something here)...for me... but not for thee.  That is a business model.  Works like this: Money for me but not for thee.......ok, enough to keep the host alive. 

Just one example:  Anonymity for me (and my big bucks customers) ...but not for thee.

Blockchain Anonymity cuts both ways.

A general rule business rule, "Know Your Customer" applies to banks.  In a blockchain digital currency system trust is in the blockchain system not the bank linking a currency owner to its account in the Swift system.

This survey reports the degree of trust in banks. 75%.  Just to make trust in banks look good the next line is Telcoms.  1%

Banks have a lot to lose if people put their trust in a blockchain digital currency system in which transactors are anonymous. Customers may use a bank sponsored blockchain currency system but will they be anonymous to the bank?  That means the bank would not know its customer and be able to mine all the data related to that customer?

Are bankers skinny?

Fat chance!

It is a conundrum for the banking system.  How to use the blockchain technology to serve itself but not shoot itself in the foot with it.

Bob Dylan would probably like the revised lyrics:  "Everybody must get Anonymized" There is something socially rebellious in that.

Banksters would not like that and neither would the NSA.  The NSA has a business model too.  Know Your Customers.  Knowledge for me (to only divulge under court order like a bank) but not for thee...

How to deal with an open public ledger crypto blockchain technology.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't?

It is a puzzlement!

Either the transactor in a blockchain currency system is linked to their transaction and is discoverable at some level of security or.......the transactor is not.

Binary relationships and an "exclusive either/or'' True/False or Yes/No choice between two things like Known vs Anonymous user Identification system is not a puzzlement.  It is a rock and a hard place.  The solution to have one's cake and eat it too must be a clever one.   It will probably not be a public one.  That is a binary relationship also:  Public/Secret.

Blockchain technology is going to change the game.  The rules are either going to be public or private.  It depends on who has the power to make the rules.  That is an even bigger game and we are all watching it play and know who the big power players are on the field and neither one is the home team. They are playing with our ball by their rules.

https://www.google.com/search?q=lucy+football

Banks did not want the low paying return on Commercial banking.  They wanted to keep it but break down the wall between Commercial retail banking and wholesale Finance.  They got that in order to make big bucks on Finance.  They got that.  Let them keep it.  Regulate it.  Prosecute and execute criminals that break the law.  I never knew I was such a law and order guy!

Take the burdensome low return Commercial banking function, the one that deals with common people's day to day use of the medium of exchange away from the banks.  Give it to the Postal System in the form of a blockchain digital currency.  Most of it is done on line.  That is the trend.  However there will always be a brick and mortar site in every populated area.  Unless the sell of of property to private enterprise removes them.  That of course is a private enterprise business model game plan.

Whatever the big banks are doing with the application of blockchain technology is being done through R3.   An 11 bank test of applying the technology to finance was reported 4 days ago.
Two days ago:  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545806/microsoft-bets-that-bitcoin-style-blockchains-will-be-big-business/

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/541686/banks-embrace-bitcoins-heart-but-not-its-soul/

"Major financial institutions like some technical features of Bitcoin but are building their own versions that leave out the digital cash and built-in economics." 


Embracing the heart but not the soul.  Interesting headline.  Prescient perhaps.  The heart is the physical engine of the body.  The more abstract "soul" is in my view the somewhat less conceptually abstract thing called "mind". 

In a match up between mind and body the mind controls body like a driver controls the car.  The mind of the system is what currency is.  The body is the vehicle of what currency does.  Mind drives body to perform its functions.  Mind is the subject.  Body is the object.  Like a dog wags it tail.  It takes a powerful tail to wag the dog but it is being done until the dog gets fed up with being wagged, chasing its tail.

The biggest disruption of blockchain technology is setting the stage where the tail does not have as much power to wag the dog.  Not only in finance.

R3 announced its association with the banks to test blockchain  applications in Sept. 2015.  4 days ago R3 announces test results involving 11 banks.  Things are moving fast!

Privacy for me... Like I guessed at earlier in this blog entry.............
"In theory, a system like that could be built on top of Bitcoin. But some of its features are not a good fit for the financial industry, such as how its blockchain is public, says Brown. “Customers tend not to want their private financial transactions visible to everybody,” he says. Instead, banks could get together to operate a semi-private blockchain, powered by servers distributed between them, and accessible only to trusted institutions, says Brown." 

Listen up Big Finance.  Here is the deal on who is in charge.

We might be at the end of the line.  The bottom of the food chain, so to speak.  We are in charge however.

It is our ball.  Our money by our sovereign right.  It is what we use as the medium of exchange in the course of our lives.  We have the right to the ball and the system in which it is played.  If you do not want to play with our ball in a mutual game on a level playing field then we take the ball and go home.  That, of course is to no advantage to either of us.

Let's negotiate like labor and management used to do before things got out of hand in the game of We the People vs We the few with big bucks and power to buy what We the People elect.  There is some negotiating to be done with your proxies in Washington DC but if we stick it to you we will by association stick it to them.  They will stick it to you first, did it once before if you remember, when it they realize which way the winds are blowing.   They need to be reminded of the direction and what blowing winds can bring.

R3CEV LLC is working for big finance to create a closed system based on the Ethereum network.

http://r3cev.com/

http://www.coindesk.com/r3cev-distributed-ledger-wall-street/

Big money is flowing into this fast.  This report from yesterday: http://bitcoinist.net/ethereums-market-cap-takes-the-number-three-spot/

Yes, but what about the buffalo?

That is a reference to Arte Gibson.  On the show "Laugh In" during a standard routine he would interject an off the wall serious question:  "What about the Buffalo?".  the routine would stop for a moment then go on.  It was funny in an abrupt attempt to change the subject to something unrelated.

What about China?

China is investigating blockchain.  Maybe China dances to the tune of We the People in the People's Republic more than we do.  At least has more of the general welfare in consideration.  What if China introduces blockchain medium of exchange digital crypto currency system and integrates it with a blockchain finance system?  An open ledger system in which all the players are publicly known?

Everybody sees what money everybody has and what they are doing with it.  Where it comes from.  Where it goes.

What if a population of 1.5 billion people wanted all their money to be on a public ledger where the identity of any person or entity using the monetary system is public knowledge on a public ledger?  Where every person must be linked to their money in a block chain account.  Is that social engineering?  By consent or demand of the People or by the dictate of the People's Republic Government.

Just a stray buffalo thought at this point.  What if everybody knew as much about all my money transactions as I do and I knew the same about them.  Would we all start fighting each other to get what they have?  Question the legitimacy of where the money came from?  Maybe not if all our dealings are fair and square.  Interesting thought.  What would happen as a result?

Time to go out the door and enjoy the day.


Saturday, January 23, 2016

Banks and Blockchain Technology

Banks are taking notice of Blockchain!

Two days ago:  http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35370304

This week:  http://r3cev.com/press/2016/1/20/r3-brings-eleven-major-global-financial-institutions-together-on-a-cloud-based-distributed-ledger

Today:  http://www.pionline.com/article/20160122/ONLINE/160129944/11-banks-complete-experiment-using-blockchain-technology

Links looking at banks and blockchain abound.  This is a search on the last month.

Blockchain can be a public or private extended ledger

Yes, blockchain is a valuable accounting method.  That is obvious to Banks.

This is a roundup of what Big Banks are saying about Blockchain.

China likes it:  http://forklog.net/peoples-bank-of-china-intends-to-create-a-digital-currency/

Wonderful!

The world banking system is a debt based money system.  Banks create money from nothing by loaning it into existence by means of writing a number in two balancing accounts.  While it is in existence Blockchain technology is a more efficient way to manage the accounting problem not only for money but so many things related to what money does. 

Bank loan money is extinguished as repayment reduces both sides of the account balance sheet to a zero balance.  Then the loan account becomes a history record.  What existed as money in circulation during the life of the loan becomes non-existent upon loan payment.

Banks being banks and having a well entrenched legacy banking system.  It is all structured on a debt based system by which they loan money into existence and extinguish it over and over in a loan cycle process.

Public ledger blockchain, at least in its current system structure, goes on forever.  Digital currency is introduced into the system by its first transaction as a medium of exchange.   Unlike the bank loan contract to repay over time.  The first acceptance of a digital blockchain currency as a medium of exchange is its very first transaction.  Every transaction after that in the blockchain is validated.

I will bet any amount of money on this:  In the high level architecture model of banks adopting blockchain technology there will be, without a doubt, the continuation of a legacy system of extinguishing loaned money as the loan is repaid according to legacy balance sheet account concepts.

That is counter to the concept of a perpetual blockchain open ledger.  That is why it must be a private bank blockchain to preserve the fundamental debt based money scheme of the banking system. 

If Blockchain digital currency (which is really transactions related to money amounts) does not go out of existence with the repayment of a loan then they (and linked currency amounts)  continue to exist after the loan is repaid.  They become "loanable funds"

That is a very different ball game.  One that is half way to a positive based monetary system.  The need for "fractional reserves" can be phased out. 

However, the need for money supply management continues.  Transition to a positive money based blockchain system has extremely significant implications for how that system is to be managed and even greater implications for exactly who will manage it.

I think the Banking System will not have their Blockchain cake and eat it too. 

Blockchain is a Trojan horse that the Banking system is smart enough to see coming and erect defenses to protect its world wide debt based money system.  Once blockchain technology is introduced the next logical step is to convert to a positive money based system.  In that system once blockchain currency is introduced to the monetary system it never goes out of the system.  It is managed by sidelining it in a limbo account to regulate the money supply. 

The blockchain of transactions never ends.

Who Owns What?

There is a point to the prior blog entry beyond the amusement of claiming ownership bragging rights.  Ownership is an important conceptual thing in our lives.  Change in ownership is an important function of Ownership.

Who owns what? is a conceptual "Parent/Child" relationship question that is a structural foundation of Object Oriented Analysis.  The simple idea is:  Children inherit attributes and methods of the parent.

Analysis aimed at establishing entity relationships begins with asking: What is this entity's Parent and Children.  Simple to start.  It gets complex quickly but Object Oriented Design OOD tools help to get it all organized for programming, which is even more complex but has its tools too.

In our current digital monetary system amounts of money are a Child of a Parent called Account.  Accounts have a multitude of children among which one is currency in digital form broadly called Money Supply.  Money in digital form cannot exist without relationship to an owning Account.  In our current digital Money Supply world there are no digital money orphans.  Digital Money Children that have no immediate Parent Account.  All Digital Money amounts must have a relationship to a Parent Account.  If your parents did not have any children you can't either.

In the digital domain "Money Account" is the Parent of the Child "Money Amount".  What entity is the Parent of "Money Account"?  Ultimately the Parent entity up the line of Parent/Child relationships it is not "What" but "Who".   That is true if the rule is:  All money is "owned" at any given time by somebody.  Money is a social decision making tool.  While it may be entrusted in some manner to an entity making decisions with it, it looks to me like at the top of the Parent/Child relationship chain is a private person or collective of private persons.  All of our Money Supply currency is the sovereign domain of our government.  We the People.  That is the highest level Parent in the Monetary System. 

What money do we all own as the highest collective Parent of our own Monetary System?

We own the National Debt.

What is the ultimate child of the digital Monetary System.  The child entity that is the parent of no child?  I contend that it is a numerical entity representation of value related to a Parent Account.  That is bottom line of my account held by a financial institution doing accounting for my money.  What I call my money may not be "my" money.  It could be in my account because I borrowed it.  An equal amount is in the account of someone that I owe the borrowed money to.   That account owner would call it their money.  It is a time thing.  A function of time depending on a contract.

It is a strange system!  The system can be explained.  However the explanation is difficult to understand.  Nobody really understands it. That may be a feature.  That may be a problem.  A feature to those few that understand it.  A problem to those that do not.

It should not be so complicated!

That is my conception of our digital currency system from the view point of Parent/Child Object Oriented entity relationships.

Change the Parent a Child belongs to and relations throughout its entire system change.  That is true for human Parent/Child relationships.  That relationship to Mother/Father pervades the human race.  Change that to a new Mother/Father and the results are significant.  Not so significant if the child continues to eat, sleep and live its life as before regardless of the change if emotional attachment is not considered.Money pervades the life of people world wide.  Make changes in the established Parent/Child digital money system and the results are significant for the Parent entity of the Child Account.    Not much of a change for the owner of currency in the account that does the accounting for the number of currency units in the account.  Money is money. 

New System of Accounting enters.

Peer to peer.  Peers being owners of currency in their account.  The account being a public ledger account for which there is no Institutional Accounting Entity other than the system itself.

This is a strange way of looking at it but in this new system digital currency becomes child's play.  It is always better when there are no adult parents around or their authoritarian presence is minimized. 

Call it Freedom.  We know the rules, they give us rights to play on a level field with boundaries.

Peer to peer currency systems still have a Parent problem when the Parent holds the purse.  The purse is the Parent to the children peers.  This is where the legacy Parent/Child Object Oriented entity relationship changes.  Dramatically for the Parent.  Not so much for the Child at first glance.  Look deeper however and there is a significant change, especially significant over time and we learn what the change can do for us.  The same thing that Peer to Peer Internet and World Wide Web have done over time.  Like boiling a frog.  The temperature increase is not noticeable over time but in this case it is a good thing when we come to realize what has happened.

The system is changing.  Spending money in an account with Apple Pay is still spending money as much as I may marvel at how the process has changed.  The transaction still gets me gas in the tank. 

Spending a peer to peer digital money still gets me gas in the tank but behind the accounting curtain there is no banking system using Swift to settlement juggling money among Accounting institutions.

There is also no ultimate debt base account that gave birth to the currency by loaning it into existence and to which the digital currency must be returned to pay off and extinguish itself reducing initial balance sheet debt that created it.  I call it revolving debt.  Same as revolving credit.  Debt sound more like what it really is.

I contend that peer to peer digital currency block chain systems are not debt based money systems.  They do not have a debt related Parent account structure.  There is no counter party debt.  It is a triple based accounting system as opposed to a two party balance sheet system where a banking system  institution is the third party maintaining accounts and creating money by loaning it into the system. 

In this revolutionary system Banks are no longer Parent entities creating Children Accounts into which is born a loan amount that is a variable number simply entered by a bank. That has some degree of self validating existence by the mere fact the same number was entered into two accounts.  One credit and one debit.  One an asset and one a liability.

Benevolent Parents care for their children and nurture them to become Parents themselves someday. 

Banks are not benevolent parents.  Some Parents that are not benevolent and want children to support them not just while they are growing but forever for their own banking self interest raise rebels that cut the Parent/Child relationship. 

Same goes for nations.  1776.

Blockchain is a very disruptive technology.  The legacy "keys to the kingdom" are held by a number of Parent entities in our world today.

With apologies to Mathew 16:19:

I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom...: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in the Blockchain; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in the Blockchain.

In a peer to peer digital currency system Banks not longer have the keys to the kingdom if they can't create debt money in a Bank Account.  Digital currency creates itself as a function of its first transaction being accepted.  All subsequent transactions validate themselves based on the first transaction and all subsequent transactions and associated amount being accepted.  

The Child called digital peer to peer currency gives birth to itself?

Lives forever?


The transition process from the legacy debt based system to a peer to peer blockchain accounting system?

When a legacy money system payment is made to a bank in settlement of a loan then the loan Account is extinguished, not the numerical amount of money paid to the bank.  That number value lives on as  units of currency in a limbo account to be loaned into circulation by the bank transaction called a loan of pre-existing units in a limbo account.  Over a cycle of the existing revolving debt account there will be less pure debt based money in existence as money no longer really goes out of existence.  It goes into the bank's loanable funds limbo blockchain account.

I'm no longer Catholic.  Haven't been since Vietnam.  However the fundamentals of the religion still have value.  The concept of Limbo as well as Incarnation of other religions have a conceptual system structure value.  I like the Limbo concept to perpetuate blockchain money Re-Incarnation loans by banks.  Banks can keep their own legacy balance sheet accounting systems to keep track of loans.  Loans however become merely one application of peer to peer blockchain currency.  Loans are no longer the Parent of all money.  Only that portion that is loaned.  

National Debt can extinguish itself in the same manner until there is only peer to peer money that went through limbo to be born again as or debt free based peer to peer blockchain currency.  A currency that only goes through limbo once.  That is unlike banks loaning peer to peer blockchain digital currency that revolves eternally through a limbo state in the blockchain, subject to appropriate money supply management on an open public ledger.

Who Owns What?

It is all our money.  All of it.  We own it.  We own the system if the system is public ledger blockchain digital currency.  We have the keys to the kingdom of money and finance.



Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money

The subject line "Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money" expressed in quotes by this Google search term link at the point of time of this blog entry publication returns this search result:  No results found for "Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money".

I therefore claim bragging rights for being the first to enter the sentence to the Google searchable World Wide Web (WWW).  Of all the sentences entered to the WWW I am the first to enter this one. It is a cheap thrill but it makes me feel like summiting Everest for the first time...in a small way.

The beauty of this sentence I lay claim to creating is in its simplicity and truth.  A true work of art by a wordsmith.

Google "Bitcoin is"  and there are  about 617,000 results.  Every one of the results is an attempt to explain Bitcoin by whatever words follows in the sentence.  Bitcoin is a new and complex thing.  No wonder there are so many hits on this phrase.

I am the first to describe what Bitcoin is in this uniquely specific word string I created.  Looking at the result of the same search term without quotes shows that the general concept has been expressed before. This exact and simple way of describing Bitcoin is a first.  It is mine!  I made it! I claim it!

A bitcoin expert would probably say:  Anyone who knows anything about Bitcoin knows  that Bitcoin is transaction denominated money!  Yes, probably true but nobody ever wrote it on the WWW.  Maybe they said it on Youtube.  I can't search that.

I have coined the term "Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money" and hereby place it in the public domain of block chain sentences available for anyone to use in the future.

My only stipulation on the free use of this sentence that I created is the right of attribution.  Anyone (identity anonymized) using this exact written sentence or exact phrase in a sentence or title in the content of any written matter entered in the WWW Google searchable data base must inform me of when and where it was entered to the WWW.  I will then add this information to the "Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money" user blockchain.

There will be penalties for failure of any user to comply with my stipulation of the right of attribution and associated requirement that I be given the specified usage information.  Google search on the term "Bitcoin is Transaction Denominated Money" and testing search results against the reported blockchain user data base of usage will identify scofflaws.  Their anonymized identity will be entered into the "scofflaw blockchain"

I hereby claim bragging rights to be the first to coin the phrase "scofflaw blockchain" as hereby introduced into the WWW for the first time as documented by the date/time of this blog entry to the WWW.  I place this word phrase I created it in the public domain with the stipulation of right of attribution.....etc, etc.  Violators shall be entered in the "scofflaw blockchain".

Explanation of "transaction denominated money":  When Bitcoin is spent in a transaction it is actually a blockchain transaction of a transaction specific amount of bitcoin related to a transaction in the owner's Bitcoin wallet.  It is a transaction that is spent.  The transaction has a specific amount associated with it that in itself equal to or greater than the amount of Bitcoin owed.  If it is less than the amount of Bitcoin owed then additional Bitcoin denominated transaction must be added as necessary to equal or exceed the total amount of Bitcoin owed.

I hereby claim creative bragging rights for the phrase: "transaction denominated money"......etc, etc.

All bragging rights are claimed for original terms specified herein and minted by this blog entry established by publication at 6:44 am PST on 23 Jan. 2016.

Friday, January 22, 2016

IBM Watson - AlchemyLanguage and Bill Moyers

The prior blog was about Clive Crook writing sentences from which the AlchemyLanguage API could extract any Relations.  When it could extract something from a sentence and parse it to an extracted sentence that extracted sentence was often a poor correlation to the original sentence written by Clive Crook.  I expressed my opinion not only of the original sentences written by Clive Crook but also the nature of his writing.

On a skill scale of writing and communication it is my opinion that Clive Crook at one end of the spectrum.  In comparison, who might be at the other end of the skill spectrum.  I have my heroes there.

Bill Moyers.  Everything he writes is a structural beauty to me in his assembly of nouns and verbs to sentence structure.  His sentences convey meaning.  His paragraphs express complete abstract thinking that flows from his use of words in sentences, sentences in paragraphs.  Paragraphs that assemble to flow together to express in a most thoughtful effective manner what he has to say.  He says it all clearly, convincingly. 

What Bill Moyers says is beautiful.  That is my opinion of what he writes and I used the word "says".  That is a funny thing because everything I read that Bill Moyers writes I am not only reading the words but I hear him saying the words.  His delivery is as beautiful as the words he writes.  He is a great communicator.

I will test what Watson's AlchemyLanguage API delivers in the analysis of something Bill Moyers wrote.

http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/92657:bill-moyers-welcome-to-the-plutocracy

Test the first three paragraphs input to the text analysis of Alchemy API and look at Relations.  Do your own look at the entire analysis.

Relations extracts the original sentence.  It does not extract all sentences.  It extracted none in 5 paragraphs written by Clive Crook.  Each extracted sentence is parsed for noun verb relationship.

This sentence for example from the test of what Bill wrote.  The original and the extraction are the same.  The sentence is complex in structure as well as meaning.

"What journalist, writing on deadline, could have imagined the walloping kick that Rosa Park’s tired feet would give to Jim Crow?"

It parses to a clear Subject, verb, object relationship.  So do many of Bills sentences to a ssubstantial degree.

Bill writes well.  Bill thinks well.  I think that Alchemy API would come to the same bottom line conclusion.

IBM Watson - AlchemyLanguage API and Clive Crook

The IBM AlchemyLanguage API is a sophisticated analysis tool.  It analyzes natural language content.  Clive Crook is a professional investment specialist.  He speaks English.  The way he speaks it mystifies me.  I look at it an conclude it is pompous, arrogant and bombastic.  That is a harsh personal judgment based on feeling.  I am a reason and logic based thinking guy.  I do have some feelings like most guys.  Sometimes guys even let their feminine mind express itself.  Sometimes I give into my feelings and let them lead my thinking and guide my actions instead of logic and reason.  Because....love?  Totally irrational by design?

Anyhow, I have these feelings about Clive Crook.  Sorry Clive.  I just feel that way.  Perhaps I should not.  Why do I feel that way?  I need to consult with someone that does not have a feeling side.  Simply and purely logical and rational.  Sounds like a machine to me.  Maybe some perfectly macho guy perhaps.

Perhaps IBM's Watson is the guru I seek? Watson uses the AlchemyLanguage API to analyze Natural Language.  Watson is smart.  It can learn about us from its ability to process natural language then use what it learns to give us an analytical look at what we say.  A different way of looking at what we say and telling us things about what we say, the way we say it to extract meaning of what we say and present it in an analytical fashion the way Watson's machine brain looks at it. 

I doubt that Watson would cry if given the most tear wrenching story.  Wastson would however rate it in terms of negative/positive from what it could infer from processing what we say.

Watson.  Siri's smarter (as far as machines go) Big Brother.  Ha, ha!  Sorry Watson that is a joke if you did not get it.  Say "Ha, ha" if you did.  Twice if you thought it was really funny. Four imoji smiley faces if you are ROTFLMAO.

Enough fun at Watson's expense.  Time to have fun at Clive Crook's expense.

The AlchemyLanguage (AL) does a good job at parsing our Natural Language and telling us something about it.  Try the API.  Give it a test drive with your own input.  Check it out.

AL does not understand what Clive Crook says.  Maybe it is because we are two countries divided by a common language? 

I read what Clive writes.  It looks like English to me.  All I get out of it is a feeling and some cloudy idea that he is either a genius talking way over my head or he does not know what he is talking about because his mind mixes up all the logical, rational conceptual relationships of the words he uses.  What he writes therefore comes out looking like he really has a grasp of the higher level conceptual structure he is talking about weaving together low level conceptual nouns and verbs.

Nouns and Verbs are low level conceptual expressions that Watson eats, digests and turns into machine intelligence at an amazing rate.  Watson learns from what it eats and grows as it links the low level conceptual words into higher levels of understanding, intelligence and even machine knowledge.

Ok, Watson, if you are so good at what you do that you can beat the best human chess player then put his in your   AlchemyLanguage  API and smoke it.  Tell me what you think (unlike what I may feel) about what Clive Crook says.

"A reasonable possibility is this was for health related reasons. Regardless, it is arrogant. Even if there was a good explanation for why people would be left, understandably, disappointed, why simply get up and go without saying it.

If Clinton had come out with something like “sorry, I’ve been running behind schedule all day for X- or Y- reason, I don’t want to have to cancel my next appointment at Z- event, I do hope you’ll understand etc. etc.” people would have, almost universally, appreciated that."

You, the reader, if any, may take what Clive says and put it in the AL API to see the results.  Nobody ever really looks at this blog in the first place.  I do not write for readers, only myself.  Readers are a figment of my imagination because the don't exist here.

AL API analysis:

Entities: Clinton.  My analysis: Right on!  I agree!  Writing something about "Clinton".

Cut to the chase and go to "Relations".

AL API says:  None Detected! WTF?  Clive said something.  I can read a bunch of words he said.  I quoted them in this blog.  I can read what AL API looks for when I go to the "Relations" explanation link.  I learned how to do sentence diagramming in 3rd grade.  I loved doing it.  AL API says no Relations detected?  IBM paid big bucks for this?  Somebody separated the relationship between IBM and its Big Bucks for this to enhance Watson's Deep Learning Capabilities"?

Words in a sentence have syntax and semantics

At the link of what Clive wrote and the AL API analyzed for Realtions and looking at the Naked Capitalism website responses to it I find that "abynormal" got what Clive said and had a belly laff.

In reply to "abynormal" Clive wrote:

"Doh! Beginners error there, wasn’t it!? You see, I forgot for a moment it was that Hillary Clinton we were talking about and hope tormented me. Thanks Aby, I’m back to reality now and have shaken off that regrettable lapse into naivety."

Applying what Clive wrote above to the AL API it parsed to this sentence in Relations: "You see, I forgot for a moment it was that Hillary Clinton we were talking about and hope tormented me." 

Relations further reduced this parsed sentence to its subject noun - verb- object noun simple structure:

"we hope tormented me"  We is the subject noun.  Hole is the verb. "Tormented me" is the object noun phrase.

At least the AL API found something that Clive said that had enough value to parse because it could be reduced to a fundamental thing we call a sentence at the most basic relationship level.  Subject noun - Verb - Object Noun.  What grade did I learn that in?

AlchemyLanguage simply does not get what Clive has to say.  By inference or deduction or whatever the AL API uses to do what it does the "Relations" conclusion is he had nothing to say that could be parsed in accordance with some algorithm of NLP?

Does AL API get what I am saying?   This requires a test.  I will use the prior paragraph beginning with:  "AL API says:"  and see what AL API says about it.

The result is long.  I will copy and condense it.  The AL API Relations displays the following:

"Clive said something
He said a bunch of words
IBM paid big bucks for this"

That in a nut shell is what I said but the point I intended to make was that Clive actually wrote something but the AL API "Relations" could not find any relationships among the words he used to say it.  In conclusion.....he said nothing with any value to parse?

Maybe what is needed is something more lengthy that Clive Crook wrote to discover if he has anything to say that the AL API can parse in accordance with what Relations seeks to express by means of its parsing functions.

For example what Clive says here: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/01/why-bitcoin-is-not-disruptive.html.

It is something that he seems to have written exclusively for Naked Capitalism.  He is a writer for major publications.  I can't find anywhere else on the WWW where this appears.  I believe that it is probably entirely in his own words without any external editing.  Let's just say it is without any filter.

Selecting the first 6 paragraphs of what Clive wrote and entering it in the text analysis of the AL API the result is that Relations did not find any relations in the words of the first 5 paragraphs.  Do the entry yourself and look a the results.  I took the same selection to a reading level analysis program and the reading level is very high.  Maybe that is the problem?

I read the same first four paragraphs and my analysis is that they are bombastic pomposity.  Bombastic pomposity is a high level conceptual abstract that Watson has yet to achieve in its artificial intelligence.

For example purposes these are the first four paragraphs of what Clive Crook wrote:

By Clive, an investment technology professional and Japanophile
Have you ever, as I have, watched something on television, read an article in a newspaper or online – or similar – where the topic has been that with which you’re especially knowledgeable about? Perhaps you’re, say, a teacher and the piece has been about education or child development. Or maybe you’re a mechanic and it is a feature on auto maintenance. You might have a hobby, let’s pick painting, and a non-expert is trying to explain what it is to paint.
Whenever I, being in finance, encounter the output of a journalist or – worse – an economist or a politician trying to tell the audience something about a financial matter (particularly if it is my specialism, consumer finance and money transmission) I rarely hear or read the first sentence without encountering an error of such fundamental magnitude that it renders pretty much everything that follows completely wrong. At first, I thought that it was because my knowledge is about an esoteric or complex subject. Finance really isn’t complex, no matter how many attempts are made to make it so, but I speculated that as it wasn’t exactly commonplace then maybe that excused to all-too-frequent inaccuracies I found when it was covered in the general media.

So I began to tell people I knew what I was encountering. They responded in exactly the same way. Educationalists bemoaned how woeful and wrongly reporting of schooling, teaching and the delivery of learning was compared to how it actually happened – as they knew, as a fact, from their own first-hand knowledge. Social workers told me that it appeared when the subject was reported, those doing the reporting seemed to have no concept whatsoever of what a social worker was. The guy who fixed my leaky pipe said that most of what was on television to do with plumbing was rubbish. And so on.

I suppose I should be expecting it. Journalism has descended into – along with a lot of “professions” a generalist skill set. Add in time pressures, often rigorous imperatives on word counts, readability (or using too long words, if it is television) along with the lack of subject matter knowledge and it is hardly surprising we’re drowning in misinformation.

There are a few – a very few – sources of good information. Specialised financial publications can be one such source. But even there, there’s no guarantees. The Financial Times, for instance, is invariably good to excellent. The Economist, however, is so in hoc to vested interests and conventional wisdom, it is not worth bothering with. Outside the niche media, though, if you read or see a feature on some aspect of finance or economics, you’re more likely to come away dumber than when you started. That is some achievement. I’d like to think that we make Naked Capitalism one such source of sufficiently good quality coverage to help begin to redress the balance of so much wrong thinking caused by wrong understandings."

The AL API finally finds something it can analyze in the first sentence of the 6th paragraph.

The subject matter that Clive is writing about is: "Why Bitcoin Is Not Disruptive".  He laments the journalist and other uninformed professionals misrepresentation of financial matters on which he, "being in finance" recognizes as a misrepresentation because he is a subject matter expert.

"Whenever I, being in finance, encounter the output of a journalist or – worse – an economist or a politician trying to tell the audience something about a financial matter (particularly if it is my specialism, consumer finance and money transmission) I rarely hear or read the first sentence without encountering an error of such fundamental magnitude that it renders pretty much everything that follows completely wrong."

Clive might be a finance expert.  He analyzes Bitcoin by means of  transactional relationship charts to show that it is not a disruptive technology.  He proves himself to be correct.

Clive himself falls into the misconception trap.  He fails to see, because his all seeing and knowing eye sees only finance transactions, that Bitcoin is a Blockchain application and Blockchain is going to be greatly disruptive to finance.  He does not see or understand that. 

Fortunately, his countryman does.  https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/uk-chief-scientist-bitcoin-blockchain/Chief Scientist Sir Mark Walport sees beyond the application of Blockchain to bitcoin and its potential for substantial systemic changes in government.

Blockchain applied to finance is, I think, going to be very disruptive.  Clive Crook can't see the forest for the trees.  He is very good at looking at the trees in the financial forest that he lives in.  He has no view of a bigger picture.  I think that anything outside of his view of the legacy financial world claimed to be disruptive change is a threat to the status quo expressed by those that are not subject matter experts like he is.

Simple sentence:  Clive Crook is arrogant, bombastic and pompous. AL API extracts that in Relations exactly as I wrote it.  Looks like I said something that it could parse.  It will probably go into Watson's brain AI memory.  Someday Watson will be intelligent enough to give its conclusive judgment analysis of Clive Watson and determine if what I feel as well as think about Clive Crook compares to what Watson thinks about Clive Crook.

Someday in the far future if this blog and this entry lasts that long a grand son or daughter might discover what gradpa wrote and ask Watson what is analysis of all that is.  Maybe Watson will confirm that grandpa was a wild and crazy guy or what................Maybe Whatson will say he spent too  much time thinking.