Introduction

This article outlines the various Open-Source Software tools being developed & maintained by Hackergram, a network of individuals which connects communities by the means of technology.

History

Hackergram — founded in 2012–13 after initial discussion among founder members who came from varied backgrounds like arts, community behavior and dynamics and tech-enthusiasts.

The Mojolab Foundation — was registered as a foundation trust around the same time with the intention of developing & maintaining non-revenue generating projects, eg. News Reporting for Rural Communities.

TechZone Academy — is a startup which works in rural Uttarakhand on skill training, developing software for the general public & enterprises and supporting new and upcoming businesses by providing services. Pay As You Like (PAYL) is one model that Team Hackergra uses for some kind of work with some customers.

The primary aim is to develop Open Source Software for public good & communities.

Software Tools

1. Mojobol

During the fiscal year 2011–12 CGNet Swara had a Software requirement for IVR Systems. A basic IVR platform with a Phone SIM connected to a Server physically was developed. In this, the call arrives & then the Asterisk PBX system took over after that.

Mojobol — asterisk.py contains all source code for the system to interact with python. Developed initially by a Microsoft Research Student. It is an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system which when run, can read, interpret call flows made using Verboice Designer and play as an automated telephonic response.

Team Hackergram integrated it into a Laptop Server that was essentially a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Gateway. Thus, they made it portable. The codebase ‘Mojobol’ is under GPL licence.

Key difference between Swara and Mojobol is the number of call flows and flexibility in design. Verboice (Open-Source tool) was used. It basically translates the callflow to a .xml file.

It has been set-up for various entities as outlined below:

1. Environics Trust — In the Sharda valley near Indo-Nepal International border. The idea was to develop a platform that would enable the residents to talk about locally relevant issues, Eg. Ecological Shift due to Pancheshwar Dam, Trafficking across the border etc. As part of the project, two servers were setup, one in Nepal and other in India so as to track the safety of migrant labourers at Banbasa, as a lot of human-trafficking goes on in that area.
2. Jal Jeevika — connect with fisheries providers managing ponds. A community of experts can answer their questions. A mobile app also has been developed in this regard which provides an interface for easy connect between the experts and the fisheries managers. This platform will provide location-specific advisory support, market intelligence, IVR based support services for small farmers and link them to various support agency like a bank, a government program, insurance agency for better integration.
3. JSS, Ganiyari — to help ASHA, Anganwadi workers track births and other parameters in rural landscape.
4. Indonesia — by palm oil plantation people to establish a Community TV System.
5. Afghanistan — to track violence activities against women.
6. Uttarakhand — JSS set up a helpline during the Covid-19 pandemic to sensitize people about the vaccines.

Repository : https://gitlab.com/mojolab/mojobol

2. Shwaas

Shwaas is an upgrade to two earlier tools, Swara & Mojobol. It is a completely open-source tool which is quite robust. In Shwaas we can add custom callflows, program various buttons and

also transmit it by using a minimal amount of hardware.

It uses Open-source tools such as Asterisk, LinPhone also.

Repository : https://github.com/hackergram/shwaas-extended

3. Xetrapal

How much internet can one automate?

This question got Team Hackergram thinking in 2018 after the Cambridge Analytica scam had broken. As a consequence to this event, A lot of platforms eg. Facebook closed their API’s accessibility. Trying to find hacks to this. One name which pops to mind is Selenium, an automation platform for testing software.

There are a few questions which come to mind when we here automation:

Could we interact with Facebook Pages ? Could we simulate human activity on Twitter ? and so on and so forth…

Security Agencies are quite interested in this to understand its utility in the defense sphere eg. How do you identify a fake profile on a social-media platform etc.

Social Media platforms have started being vigilant against this kind of automated activities. Hence, tools like these need to be constantly updated.

Xetrapal can perform Open-Source Intelligence Gathering eg. Automating News Reports Scanning, Media Monitoring etc.

4. DIET ChatBot & Natural Language Processing

CIS(Center for Internet and society), Bengaluru-Asked to use Machine Learning to judge whether in Hindi TV Media sector, male journalists were more trolled than their female counterparts. It was found that the difference is negligible and both are trolled almost in equal amounts.

Diet Chatbot Platform — as a tool to develop good quality chatbots. It has Largely human based training.

The challenge here is to make domain specific conversational interfaces.

5. Sammati & Distributed Ledger Technology

In the 21st Century, fuelled by a rapidly changing world powered by the Internet. Digital currency makes barter possible. Hence, we require tools to transact, to be able to keep a check on the transactions, ensure authenticity and security in the whole process, thus leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) & Social Equity Exchange. Ultimately, we would be able to Transact Value without Transacting Money.

‘Sammati’ a Hindi word means consensus and consent means permission with a common understanding. Hence, it is an apt name for a tool which is being developed by Team Hackergram in the emerging area of DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology).

6. COWMesh

COWMesh (Community Owned Wireless Mesh) is a mechanism for communities to take ownership of local communications and reduce the cost of access to information. The model is particularly useful for remote communities where information access is available only at a premium cost. COWMeshes use WiFI and other low cost deregulated media to share content locally.

It has practically been implemented at Rani Kajal Jeevan Shala, a community-run school in the hinterlands of Alirajpur in Madhya Pradesh.

The Road Ahead

Team Hackergram is looking for people who can contribute to the list of software tools and also in the development of new-age technologies tools.

Co-create with us !

listener@hackergram.org

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Originally published here – https://ikalorano.medium.com/open-source-software-at-hackergram-6182a0869b5a

“NULLCON: The neXt security thing!

nullcon.net

Asia’s Premier Information Security Conference, Training & Exhibition platform for security & privacy practitioners, executives, academia, organizations …”

As a security enthusiast when you see that you want to be a part of that action. You want to know what’s new, what’s trending, tips and tricks to manage security, offensive or defensive. As a non-techie to attend an event with approx 2000 people associated with security in some way or the other you expect to be bowled over by the “cool” things you are going to encounter.

The event was organized in Goa in one of the premium convention centers. There was a hall of exhibition with stalls where organizational representatives were talking about their products that included online security courses, cloud based software that could protect your systems and servers from being attacked. Some of the stalls were empty with just the banners of their organizations or LED screens with their names on it which had turned blue due to no one being around for a long time. While two people exactly spoke to me about their organizations and their work, the rest were simply not interested as soon as they heard Civil Society Organization.

I also went to some of the volunteers to get some recommendations about any kind of social tech/ tools/ people who may have some sessions of on security for common people. One of the lady suggested that I attend the sessions scheduled on the last day which was mostly meant for journalists. Since I was already there, I decided to attend a few sessions that were on various topics ranging from Cyberspace and Sovereignty to Internet shutdowns in India to understand the perspective of the security community towards what they understand as a problem which was mostly application and cloud based.

When I saw so many curious minds working in teams towards solving a bug bounty or hack into someone’s WiFi, I cannot help but think what if we could also use this platform to raise problem statements from the development sector and provide that opportunity as well to the techies who may be inclined that way. When you have a platform like NULLCON, I believe it can be used to add a social aspect to the event. 

The last day of Rootconf was meant for journalists and human rights defenders and some sessions were quite useful. However as an info-activist, a term I like to label myself with, I would definitely say that I was expecting more- More people in love with security, more community members who were conscious of the impact their community has on the world rather than individually.

I hope next year NULLCON may be interested to explore extending their platform to include Civil Society Organization members from the grassroots to understand their security related problems in real time and can find solutions to help communities be safer and more aware online.

A very Happy 2020 to everyone! Here are the results of the first ever Hackergram member survey that was conducted in Dec 2019. Thanks to everyone who participated and we hope to have a very productive year ahead!

How would you like to engage with Hackergram?

We will be reaching out to the members who have expressed a desire to be desginated as co-founders for a peer review shortly!

What themes would you like us to focus on in 2020-21?

Since Tech For Good is a generic underlying theme to the others, we would be looking to apply that as a background theme to all of the other themes. 

What activities would you like us to organize in 2020-21?

We will be reaching out with event and activity schedules shortly. 

How would you like to contribute towards the Hackergram network?

We will be reaching out to individual members to represent Hackergram at events as well as share collateral for outreach via social media. We look forward to your support in 2020!

What services do you think that हैकरgram network should/ could provide to the members?

Some of the services suggested by members –

• Tech support – Basic responses to “How do I…” type queries
  • Existing efforts
    • Send us a query via WhatsApp or an email to listener@hackergram.org and we will share it with the technologically inclined members for assistance!
    • A few of the members are active on Stack Exchange and other public forums. If you do post a query on a forum, please share with us and we will try and get group members on that platform to respond. 

Suggestions welcome on how to improve this!

• Co-working spaces – A healthy working environment with optional accommodation
  • Existing efforts
    • Co-working space in Naukuchiatal is now open for residencies as well as short stays on a nominal cost sharing basis. 

If you’d like to share your space (with or without cost) please do let us know at listener@hackergram.org and we will add your space and terms to the list!

• Linkages to work – A showcase for members’ work
  • Existing efforts
    • We would love to share more of our members work via our pages, please tag us on social media and we will reshare, this would enable the network to highlight the work of network member organizations.

If anyone would like to partner on a nice news feed visualization for the site please do let us know!

• Networking opportunities – more opportunities to meet new people on the network

Starting 2020 we will be hosting more events (both online and offline) where people can meet up. We will reach out with invitations and schedules shortly!

• Alternative Internet Services – e.g. VPNs, secure file storage, secure communications channels etc

We will be reaching out with some suggestions and requests for comment on this set of services shortly.

• E-platforms

The demand here seems to be for a platform, where people can communicate about specific topics. Given the huge number of platforms and models available today, we would love to hear more from the network on what platforms they are already using and would prefer we engage on, as opposed to designing more new platforms. 

• Wellness support

We would love to host events in partnership with network members where people could come together and work on personal development through group and individual work.

Suggestions welcome

• Tech education – courses on technical skills
  • Existing efforts
    • TechZone Academy, one of our member organizations already provides online training and certification in a variety of courses. Classes are conducted in person or over screen sharing sessions. Exams are conducted online. You can also become a TechZone certified trainer provided you pass one of our trainer exams, which entitles you to certify students based on TechZone’s courses. 

• Basic self defense training 

    We would be approaching some of our international and national network organisatons already working in this area to share their knowledge for such training. Also the organisations/individuals who have reached out to us with a specific interest in this area would be nominated for such training within the South Asia region. 

Suggestions welcome!

• Online security training
  • Existing efforts
    • Digital Detox Curriculum

Hackergram has collaborated with TacticalTechnology Collective to translate their Digital Detox Kit. We have translated the kit in Hindi and Bengali. We would be publishing the kit in these two languages on Hackergram website and also the TTC website. We encourage our members to reach out to us if they would like to share it within their communities and in any collaboration they are looking for. 

• On demand online training sessions
• Social entrepreneurship training

Several members currently provide consultative services to social enterprises. We would be happy to assist more organizations who are transitioning between the for profit and non profit spaces. Apart from that we would also like to create a pool of such network member consultants so we could reach out to them and vice versa whenever a project shows up requiring certain set of skills. This would enable us to create a vibrant and interactive network communicating on skill, knowledge and opportunity share.

• Legal advice

We have at least two legally qualified members. However more specific requests on this would be helpful.  

• Documentation and other forms of knowledge sharing

We have started a new set of videos on our channel. Please do follow along and let us know what you would like to see more of! Please also let us know if you would like to contribute content for the channel or for one of our other social media streams!

We are also working on an overhaul of the website and any help with aesthetics would be much appreciated!

• Environmental awareness programs

Hackergram members have been volunteering on reforestation projects around the Nainital area. More suggestions on this set of services would be very welcome. We would like to encourage network members to collaborate with Hackergram to find possibilities e.g. funding, budgeting, proposal writing etc.

Please give your feedback/ideas about how you think हैकरgram could do better?

The feedback we got was broadly along the following lines

• More communication
• Better execution
• More follow up
• More visibility
• Better sustainability 

We hear you!

Is there any individual/group/ organization that you would like to invite to be a part of the हैकरgram network?

Several of you have mentioned organizations or individuals who you would like to invite. We will be reaching out shortly to ask for introductions!

Earlier this month I attended a workshop with the rather heartwarming title – “Regulating For Inclusion”. The workshop was organized by the Association for Progressive Communications, Mozilla, Gram Marg, IIT Bombay, IIT COE, and the White Space Alliance.

While the intent of the organizers was clearly to engage with both policy makers and practitioners in the space to enable a progressive discussion towards affordable access to communications for all, the experience was a bit like attending a memorial service for the telecom industry in India.  

Barely half a decade ago, similar gatherings typically had standing room only with a few hundred people attending and large advertisement-like banners announcing the support of telcos like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. This time there were barely 30 people at the outset, and by the time the workshop ended it was largely speakers and organizers only. The telcos, represented largely by members of the COAI were essentially complaining to the last few people who would listen about the joint bullying of the Government and Reliance Jio, one of their own member corporations. Reliance Jio was invited to the event as well, but remained conspicuous by absence. In hindsight the lack of enthusiasm for what should have been a golden opportunity for collaboration is hardly surprising given the shambles that the Indian telecom sector is currently in.

The affordable connectivity discourse in India effectively started with the National Telecommunications Policy of 1994, which effectively opened the door for foreign and domestic investment in Indian telecom. The journey from there to the latest National Digital Communications Policy of 2018 has been an interesting one from grassroots implementation practitioner perspective. 

I entered the ecosystem somewhere midway into the story as an implementer of affordable access solutions in 2010, when I started consulting for the CGNet Swara mobile citizen journalism project. 

By 2010, the 2G spectrum case was already afoot. Despite the number of players in the mobile communications space, the reach and quality of service in rural and remote areas was quite deplorable.  Roaming tariffs were still in place and inter-circle calls were charged at a higher rate than intra-circle calls. At the time the solutions to lowering cost from a grassroots perspective was to locate low cost portable IVR servers in each circle where coverage was needed and to link them up using free cloud services via the BSNL broadband over copper line connections that provided the best speed possible in most rural and remote areas. 

Even as the Android operating system and the new 3G data services that made it usable began to be rolled out in urban areas, rural India still remained largely underserved from a mobile telephony perspective as the smaller players exited in the wake of the 2G scam, leaving a handful of the larger ones in place. These were already locked in a tussle with the government over licensing fees and revenue sharing agreements (one that culminated recently with the Supreme Court’s October 24 judgement) and had very little revenue to allocate to improving rural connectivity. In the 2013-2015 period there were attempts by larger corporations like Google and Facebook to improve the connectivity landscape via public WiFi projects. Here the urban startup lobby started a major pushback online in the name of Net Neutrality. The Net Neutrality conversation in India was in retrospect almost detrimental to affordable access since it largely focussed on ensuring equitable access for  smaller Indian companies that largely served an urban, upper income market. Almost no attempt was made to bring in the larger population into the debate to get their views on the matter. As a result, most of these efforts failed to make a serious impact on the rural connectivity scenario. 

With the in-fighting in the private sector being what it was, the job of ensuring rural connectivity fell back to the government. The USOF had already been established in 2002 and was funded with revenue shares from licensed telcos, a fact that the telcos have never failed to underscore as their contribution to rural connectivity. In 2011 a large chunk of the USOF was allocated to BBNL with the intention of creating a national fiber backbone network. The fiber network was also expected to provide some relief on the backhaul front to telcos in rural areas. However, by 2015, only 60000 panchayats had actually been connected.   

WiFi (2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz) was delicensed in 2005 which allowed for some experimentation in the connectivity space. During the 2012-16 period I participated in setting up three different community networks in different parts of rural India as part of the COWMesh (Community Owned WiFi Mesh) project . 

The first was a local village network in rural Karnataka, now maintained as the Janastu-Mesh, the second in rural Madhya Pradesh in a residential school for children from indigenous communities, and the third again a local village network for shared access to the Internet in Uttarakhand. All of these efforts were driven from the grassroots up with no top down support from the government or the corporate sector. This was by design, as one of our goals was to measure how feasible it actually was for a community to own and operate communications networks. In all of these networks our biggest challenge was connecting to the Internet. 

In Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh, the locations we were working in had access to only 2G connectivity, since none of them were within line of sight of BSNL or BBNL’s range of operation.

In Uttarakhand, we were able to link up the network to the Internet via two broadband connections with the princely bandwidth of 512Kbps each, which was the fastest connectivity available until the arrival of Jio in the area, in 2017.

The last four years have been particularly interesting from the point of view of grassroots connectivity. BBNL has been revived as BharatNet and the government appears to be pushing the project quite hard. However, the availability and  cost of access to BharatNet still remains a barrier to entry for community networks to really be able to leverage it. The Common Service Center program has also been revived, with the goal of having Village Level Entrepreneurs leverage the connectivity provided by BharatNet to provide digitally enabled services in rural India. However, digital literacy being what it is in the country, the demand and revenue potential for such services is still quite low. As a result VLEs are finding it necessary to supplement their revenues through sales of FMCGs, mobile accessories and payments, and in some cases even pirated entertainment content. 

TRAI did a little experimenting on its own in 2017 with the WANI open WiFi pilot in 2017, where the attempt was to establish an interoperable open standard for WiFi access points across the country. This was a fairly progressive attempt but received very little participation and a fair amount of pushback from the telcos, who immediately quoted the 1885 Telegraph Act on the sanctity of licensing. The pilot was deemed successful but widespread adoption of the open standard is yet to happen. One of the key challenges that remains unaddressed here is the complexity of establishing interoperable roaming agreements between a large number of operators. 

WiFi based ISPs who are leveraging the new fiber connectivity are coming up, but maintaining service quality remains a challenge for most of the newer players. This is in no way exacerbated by the routine finger pointing between BSNL and BBNL on the operations and maintenance of the BharatNet fiber network. 

Meanwhile Jio has been wreaking havoc on its competitors in the mobile telecom space with its aggressive pricing while simultaneously building a fair amount of coverage in rural India. The Supreme Court verdict that has hit the telcos with back dues on AGR will likely result in a further consolidation of the private telecom sector. From what it appears, the government appears to be fully in support of this consolidation. 

At the time of writing, the quality of connectivity is definitely improving in rural India. 

However the choices in backhaul providers continues to shrink or remain static at one or two. 

As a result, the causes of concern at the consumer level should be price setting by dominant players or cartels and overarching government control on information access. 

Evidence for the former being a valid concern is already available, with Jio and other telcos hiking up subscription prices by 40% over the last month. The criticisms of the new Personal Data  Protection Bill provide ample food for thought on the latter. 

From where we stand, the only affordable connectivity at the grassroots will be through the government fiber backbone and the SMEs that leverage it.  

Community networks can still play a major role in bringing this connectivity to the last mile as well as in democratising access to information by working with the government at a policy level.

The involvement at the policy level is particularly key. In our experience one of the key value propositions of bringing communication to remote areas is to enable comment on policy from regions which have been largely unheard and ignored in policy debates. 

Also, having a policy position that one can voice is also a strong way to engage the community at a local level

However, as Mike Ginguld of Air Jaldi pointed out to me at my very first community networks workshop in 2012, the challenge for community networks will always be less about technology and more about economics and community dynamics. So far community network implementers in India have not been successful in finding the right mix. 

Perhaps a good place to start would be to recognize that collaboration and interaction among community network implementers is the only way to actually find replicable models that can sustain themselves. 

It may also be time to look beyond grant based funding and start by identifying what economic value a community network can realistically serve for a community rather than designing for pilots and prematurely announcing “success” as soon as the network is up and running.

Programs like BharatNet and CSC and opportunities for policy interaction such as the Regulating for Inclusion workshop can only work for the community if the community is willing to make the effort. 

If not, there’s always Jio. 

Last weekend, after a long hiatus from conventions and gatherings, I attended the Ashoka OneSolution event in Gurgaon. I am especially grateful to the Ashoka team for inviting me, because while it is always pleasant to meet people dealing with challenges similar to the ones we face at हैकरgram, this event was particularly special. The level of empathy and resonance I found at this event was quite unprecedented. I’m using this space to capture some reflections, primarily for the purpose of revisiting later to review.

Changing views on organizational structure and funding

Since हैकरgram is not a registered entity, does not pursue institutional funding and works purely through self sustaining volunteer members, we have always found ourselves somewhat peripheral to the global development sector. At the OneSolution event, I found many people both from the Ashoka fellow network as well as other organizations who seem to be coming around to the same view as us, that institutional grant funding is something to be treated with caution and used in moderation. More and more groups, organizations and individuals are seeking sustainability through value creation and trade, which resonates strongly with the principle of social equity exchange that we have been following and promoting. Where in the past I have had to turn away people interested in writing large scale, high intensity funding oriented proposals, this time I was able to identify many opportunities for low intensity, long term, value based collaborations that show promise of adding to long term sustainability for multiple participants.

Acceptance for the “disappointingly simple” solution

Shortly after leaving the United States and entering the world of Indian non profits, I spent a substantial amount of time evangelizing the notion that “There’s plenty of room at the bottom” and that simple, open source, free tools and processes are of far more benefit than monolithic, single-purpose platforms commissioned for the purpose of specific development projects. At that time, technology typically represented 30-40% of a development proposal budget (anecdotal, no statistical research done). We were recommending spends of 10% or less on technology as a rule. This made us quite unpopular as technologists, because it often ended up making the other parts of the budget look excessive.

I was therefore very pleasantly surprised when in our pre-panel discussion my panel lead, Anand Arkalgud of Socion mentioned the need for “disappointingly simple” solutions. Coming from a veteran scale and impact coach, this was serious validation that our vision has not been misplaced! Even during the session, most participants responded positively to some of the most simple and basic concepts rather than visions of grandeur through technology.

One of the questions during the session was, “How do we effect behavior change through technology?”. My answer probably fell in the category of “disappointingly simple” from the technological perspective and “pseudoscience” from the perspective of the “hard technologists”. However as we teach in our Digital Self Defense course at हैकरgram, information (and consequently its security or lack thereof) influences human behavior only through what is described as the “Ashta Paash” or “Eight Nooses” in the Kularnava Tantra (Ullasa XIII, Verse 90) –
Hate, Doubt, Fear, Shame, Disgust, [attachment to] Community, Wellbeing and Species
(घृणा, शंका, भयं, लज्जा, जुगुप्सा, कुल, शील एवं जाति)

Systems that successfully enable positive leverage of these “leashes” or determinants of behavior are the ones that are most successful in causing behavior change.

I was very pleasantly surprised to see the positive response to this statement, particularly from senior attendees, many of whom have had years of experience before I was even born! I look forward to engaging with many of the attendees on enabling such solutions!

Acknowledgement and acceptance of the “hacker” way

Whenever I tell people that I am a hacker and that I train other hackers, there is always a sense of apprehension. This is shortly followed by the question “Ethical, I hope?”. My usual response is that if you wouldn’t ask a doctor if they are an “ethical doctor”, why would you ask a hacker if they are an “ethical hacker”. Hacking like any other activity is ethics neutral. The person engaging in it is ethical or unethical!
At the OneSolution gathering what was most touching was the number of people who came forward to share either their own experience as hackers as well as the number of people (particularly mothers and grandmothers) who came forward to share their own experiences with young hackers in their families and communities. While I wait for the introductions to these young hackers, I’d like to share this for other people out there who have hackers in their communities and don’t know what to do with them –

Hackers are often misunderstood and feared for no tangible reason. One of the areas that हैकरgram works on is creating a broader conversation around hacking than the one limited to digital security and other technology.
I truly believe that hackers and the hackish approach to thinking can help solve some of the biggest concerns facing us today, primarily in the area of behavior change.
The “infiltrate and subvert” approach, generally associated with breaching computer networks is just as applicable to engineering sustainable behavior change in communities. Whether the behavior change is directed towards more consumerism or towards a positive social outcome is determined by the ethics of the party engineering the change.

The jugaad concepts of Lateral Approach, Medial Applicability and Frugal Utilitarianism (LAMAFU) are as applicable to finding local solutions to chronic problems as they are to building hackish technological solutions to digital concerns.
In fact, I learned one of the most important lessons about hacking from someone who is would not normally be associated with hacking or even technology. At a SRUTI gathering in Mangaon in 2012, I heard Ulka Mahajan ji of the Sarvahara Jan Andolan share this mantra for social change – “No system is monolithic! Every system has gaps. [To change a system] Get in the gaps!”

Through the connections enabled by the OneSolution event, I look forward to enabling a LOT more “getting in the gaps”!

 

This month we’ve started our first ever paid residency program. We’re quite excited because this is the first time हैकरgram will be generating revenue directly, rather than through an incubated business.

The first two residents who’ve applied for and successfully obtained invitations to the first ever हैकरgram Residency program are Karan Joshi and Suryaveer Gaur of Bhimtal, Uttarakhand. Karan will be studying data analysis and Suryaveer will be studying information security.

If they successfully complete the goals they have set for themselves, they will both be invited to be co-founders at हैकरgram.

We wish them both the very best of luck!

Whether you believe in free will or predestination, reproduction is something you’re not alien to. Everyone thinks about it, everyone has an opinion about it, and everyone is in some way engaged in it. There are several forms of reproduction, but all can be classified into asexual and sexual, with the differentiator being that asexual reproduction requires only one organism and sexual reproduction requires at least two. Reproduction is also one of the accepted “signs of life” along with homeostasis, metabolism and response to stimuli.

The word reproduction though is somewhat misleading in my opinion since to me reproducing what has already been produced is only relevant as long as one is practicing or learning a skill. To my mind what is described as reproduction is actually the creation of new versions of oneself, something like a code release.

There’s an old adage, that by yourself, all you can create is a mess. The suggestive connotations of this aside, the “mess” that gets created is a mess simply because it likely has relevance only to the organism that created it.

If an organism doesn’t find what it’s producing messy (i.e. it has a great reuse, reclaim and recycle policy that works) there’s not much need for other organisms. When the surplus production starts to get messy, that’s when another, complementary organism is needed that can utilize the product of the first organism in some life process of its own, if nothing else, to consume the excess. An organism that also produces a complementary output that the first organism can consume is all the more attractive. These basic principles operate for a wide enough variety of known life forms (including a few debatable ones) and can be used as a reference model.

Here’s an interesting simulation –

When applied to creating value, the same analogy can be extended. There are certain expressions of value I can create by myself, but increasingly most of my self expression requires the support of other people’s intention.

For example, writing this blog post requires me to use other peoples creation as links and sources so as to not sound completely insane. These links and references serve an important purpose. They  tell the reader that my thoughts are not just my own, they are part of a shared collective which has a general purpose and general direction, which is emergent and is evident to observers who have the ability to apply the Flemish perspective . This collaboration is implemented by my citing them and thereby including them in the creation of this post. The intellectual property laws of the world, with their modern expression in the form of Creative Commons Licenses and other sharing norms are the framework in the context of which these citations give credibility to this post.

However, when there is some new expression that I want to create, for which the dataset perceivable by me is inadequate , which has never been shared so far, I need to collaborate with someone to engage with in “brainstorming” or in our current context, a “big bang”, from which conceivably a new chain of causation (which has not been explored before will begin).

Such collaboration is the basis of social equity exchange. Now in reproduction genetic codes are combined. Whether or not the human genome, or the helical strand of DNA, also represented as a chain composed of blocks linked quite strongly to each other is a good analogy for a blockchain or not, is something I will let the biologists comment on. However, my premise is that in the digital world, where we propose to model  the social equity exchange, it suffices as representational enough to be a facilitator.

The Internet itself is a gargantuan distributed database, simultaneously the genesis and outcome of advancement in distributed digital data manipulation. Assuming the Internet to be an analogy for the biosphere, the blockchain could well be the equivalent of DNA, a means to store reliable, authentic data over time.

Since the blockchain facilitates the hard to revoke and hard to repudiate recording of digital events over time, the metaphor of sexual reproduction then expresses itself in this new biosphere as combination and mutation of blockchains.

As always, I prefer practical examples to theoretical ones, so let me create one by extending an invitation to engage in social equity exchange. Now, as with sex, one doesn’t necessarily want to engage in it with just anyone. It is generally advisable to co-create only with people you know and trust (there’s that word again).

I’ll use Sairam Natarajan (who has consented to participating in this demo) as my potential “mate” here.

Sairam has recently entered what he calls “the Business of Ethics”, an area around which he intends to create digital content. I am already engaged in that process (as I write). The invitation I am extending to him is to collaborate with me on creating content that covers both the technological as well as the ethical aspects of social equity exchange itself. What I am proposing is that as we develop our individual streams of content, we periodically get together to do a shared video or podcast or written article.

Now while the intention to collaborate has been expressed, no exchange has been agreed on here.

In order to do somewhat formally agree on an exchange we need what is called a contract.

A contract is a voluntary arrangement between two or more parties that is enforceable by law as a binding legal agreement.

Now, Sairam and I both live in different UKs, he in the United Kindom and I in Uttarakhand, India. If we were doing this the old fashioned way, the first thing we would have to agree on is which country’s law will we abide by, India or the United Kindgom.This question alone is enough to severely limit the value trade between geographically distanced people. So, to test if our exchange is workable, we’ve chosen to replace the “law” that will enforce this contract with the agreements of mutual conduct that Sairam and I have build over the last 18 years of knowing each other. The penalty that each of us faces for non performance is a lowering of the “social equity” we have in each other. If we repeatedly fail to perform on agreements we make, we will eventually lose all of it and considering that we have not done so in 18 years, by most risk management algorithms, we can extrapolate that into the future. Of course there is the chance that one of might live longer than the other, but that is generally the risk one is willing to carry when doing a friend a favor.

Now that we are following the law of friendship as the law, our other mutual friends (who have read this post) can all serve as arbitrators in the event of a dispute, should the level of conflict be high enough to warrant it.

By publishing this post, I am entrusting BigRock, my hosting provider, with the job of keeping a copy of my offer in existence. I will have a backup on my computer just in case and the Internet will create its own backup copies over time as people link  to this article (if they do).

In terms of the offer, to make things tangible I am offering to create a website to promote his business (of ethics) online. Said website will be complete when he says he is satisfied with it and I am making no commitment as to how long that will take. The consideration that I am expecting from him in return is to create an assessment report on which countries are the best ones to set up a blockchain think tank in from a policy and business risk perspective. Said report will be said to have been delivered when I express my satisfaction with it.

Here we have altered another typical element of a contract, which is time of performance. Because Sairam and I share some value perceptions, we can set up our own event, the occurrence of which will render the contract fulfilled. Of course we could also agree on a date and time, but its more fun this way.

Now all Sairam has to do is to indicate his acceptance to me either by phone call, or whatsapp message, or email or a comment on this post from an ID (or any other format that could be attached to this post) that he is willing to endorse and we have an agreement ready to implement.

This is always been the most natural way of doing things. The legal framework of nations is created to facilitate just this sort of exchange and to resolve disputes arising therein. However, the legal framework as it exists today, simply cannot keep track of all the agreements and disagreements that exist. And that is where the blockchain and smart contracts come in. They are simply a scalable way to manage agreements between people, and to create new agreements…all contributing to the evolution of the species as a whole.

Once Sairam has indicated his acceptance (or refusal), the outcomes will also be shared on this blog (and likely on one of his)

Links and Refs:

Wikipedia article on reproduction – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproduction

Wikipedia article on life – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

The Pirate Organization – Harvard Business Review Publication – https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Organization-Lessons-Fringes-Capitalism/dp/1422183181

Contracts – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract

DNA – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA

Smart Contract – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_contract

The Hitchikers Guide To Ethereum Smart Contracts – https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-smart-contracts-in-ethereum-848f08001f05