Blockchain Papers

Nicolás Rojas Cortés

Have you heard that some people wrote a story about the future? What? People can’t write a story of what hasn’t happened yet? Well, Nietzsche was also told that a philology of the future was impossible. To be precise, the new version of the Posthuman Studies Reader is not exactly a story in the historiographic sense, but rather in a relaxed sense; more that of a guide that will allow us to understand the assumptions on which we will draw to live in the near future. We find ourselves, in this sense, with a compendium capable of introducing us in the process of becoming self-aware of our limits—biological, educational, philosophical—as a human species.Structurally, this work is made up of an Anti-Prologue, an Introduction, and four sections, which I will focus on in this review. From the beginning, both in the Introduction and in the first section, “A. Pedigrees of Posthuman Studies as an Academic Discipline and Contemporary Posthuman Movements,” one may be pleased to find that progress in academic disciplines related to posthuman studies is real.It was already several years ago that Nick Bostrom presented “A History of Transhumanist Thought” (2005), and it is today that, thanks to this Reader, we can find a series of indications that allow us to expand our knowledge of the common roots not only from which transhumanist thought has emerged, but also that give birth to ways of thinking that generally seek to go beyond humanism. As the editors claim, the “pedigree” that we are able to find here does not emerge from a specific form of philosophy, but rather from a “critical posthumanism,” a “field of a gradual integration among Transhumanism, Metahumanism and Posthumanism, an evolving but firm ground, wide open to the new philosophical concepts about a less anthropocentric, less racist, more ethical and more clearly politicized future” (11). The roots of our past, then, will mark the path of our future.I cannot help but notice that the inspiration generated by the scholarly works of Stefan Lorenz Sorgner can already be found in the Introduction, and this is not surprising, since it is sufficient to look at the word “pedigrees” in the first section to understand that we are dealing with a work that is fully aware of the latest research in this field. Let us remember that Sorgner had already produced a study called “Stammbäume des Meta-, Post- und Transhumanismus,” contained in his book Transhumanismus: “Die gefährlichste idee der Welt”!? (2016), originally written in German. However, I would dare to say that the book’s first section seeks to mark the route of what I have called a history of the future rather than to make a deep and exhaustive reflection on the roots of “Critical Posthumanism,” which is fully understood as long as we, citizens of the future, also make our contribution to discover, reconstruct, and explain how is it that our humanist, classical, modern, and enlightened roots were able to generate the conditions for sensing the possibility of surpassing ourselves as a species.If we compare the names of philosophers, scientists, and scholars presented in the Introduction to Posthuman Studies Reader with the names presented by Bostrom in his “History” (2005), we will find that the keynotes that configure “critical posthumanism” go beyond humanism and rationalism. It is the presence of the “scientific cosmist,” of Nietzsche and his idea of the “overhuman,” of contemporary scientists—among which I can highlight my countryman Francisco J. Varela and the Buddhist Jon Kabat-Zinn—and representatives of feminism and the LGBTQ+ movement oriented toward posthumanism that we can say that this book is the result of long debates, and that it presents itself as a work that is coherent with the world in which we live and with the world in which we are going to live: that is, a world neither humanistic, nor Western, nor solely masculine.Following this route, we find ourselves with our first stop on the road to our future, section B, “Transhumanism” (41–136). The section begins with an excerpt from the text Knowledge, Morality, and Destiny by Julian Huxley While the text is notable for being the first publication in which the word “transhumanism” was presented, Huxley also assigned to human beings a descriptive note that we share with nature itself, namely that all reality is a process. This allows us to outline an approach to self-transformation that is wider and more universal than that of the already known humanisms. This characteristic note will be complemented by the proposal of FM-2030, who in his text “Transhumans-2000” already hints that we are “biofluid,” that is, a biological entity that can flow beyond its limitations. However, it is not until the appearance of Natasha Vita-More’s “Transhumanist Manifesto” that we are able to find a proposal to systematize the conditions that underpin the transhumanist project: (a) challenging aging; (b) enhancing and improving our bodies and brains; and (c) understanding ourselves as a life form that is not restricted by others. These conditions allow us to begin to systematize the transhumanist project as a philosophical worldview. They do not point strictly to human biological evolution, but rather refer to the need to control uncertainty in order to control perpetual progress and, consequently, achieve self-transformation into a transhuman existence. It is noteworthy that Natasha Vita-More has the intuition that a transhuman existence does not imply only adding gadgets to our bodies or designing bodies without a transdisciplinary strategy and perspective, since the transhuman cannot participate in a social existence without a perspective capable of confronting political absolutes and biases. Thus, self-transformation as such implies existing beyond modern morality, beyond an economy of scarcity and beyond discriminatory cruelty.On this basis, it is easy to understand the composition of the section. Going beyond the three elements recently mentioned implies a reflection on specific experiences of our existence. Transhumanism, as a philosophy, cannot be conceived as an a priori reflection and must confront our actual experience. David Pearce, with his manifesto “The Hedonistic Imperative,” is the first to confront us with the possibilities that nanotechnology and genetic engineering present when dealing with the experience of both physical and mental pain. Already, in 1995, Pearce detected what today is a devastating and real emergency, that global suffering should be a topic of global policy discussion. Depression, manic states, and bipolarity are mentioned by the author as examples that show contemporary health standards to be pathologically low. Nonetheless, an existence at the level of our current possibilities can take care of these health standards by developing the possibilities of not only suppressing the psychological states of euphoria, but also programming ourselves with a kind of euphoria that allows us to abandon our lugubrious present. This last possibility can only be conceived from a discussion that takes us into account not only as objects of transformation, but also as subjects capable of deciding on our transformation.In this way, Anders Sandberg’s “Morphological Freedom. Why We Don’t Just Want It, but Need It” argues for the need to extend the “personal right” to modify our bodies according to our own desires in order to pursue happiness. This right implies maximum personal autonomy, an idea that would directly confront contemporary ethical debates, namely women’s right to their own bodies, reproductive rights, or euthanasia. In this sense, morphological freedom would require a tolerant society that does not allow its ethical judgments to be clouded by paternalistic ways of relating to individuals. This morphological freedom, which implies understanding self-transformation as an ongoing process and not as an ideologically determined telos, is also an invitation to get hold of the different types of health that already exist, as in the case of disabled people who do not want to be “repaired” because they have already learned to cope and live with their own existence. In short, Morphological Freedom is a commitment not only to the notion of maximum personal autonomy, but also to a tolerant and pluralistic society.The inclusion of Fukuyama is necessary at this point in the narrative. His popular work “The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas: Transhumanism” may, in fact, kick off this whole Reader; is there a greater representative of the bioconservative than he? There may very well be, but his naïve and uncritical ideas end up strengthening authors such as Max More and his proposal of “The Proactionary Principle.” Although the intentions of people like Fukuyama may be good at their core, they are still blinded by prejudices and weak methodological approaches. In this sense, “The Proactionary Principle” is a coherent and rational response to the impossibility of denying technological progress, but also to the need to be ethically responsible for the inevitable development of science and technology.I believe that the inclusion of “Democratic Transhumanism 2.0” by James Hughes is a sufficient gesture to refute Fukuyama and, at the same time, demonstrate that the transhumanist movement is not as naive as the bioconservatives depict. Hughes’ self-awareness when characterizing the transhumanist and bioconservative discussion as another dimension of the complexity of contemporary politics is remarkable, because if a reflection seeks to match up to the height of our times, it must be able to offer a radical interpretation of democracy in order to support a coherent relationship between (a) new social possibilities brought about by emerging technologies, (b) a state policy capable of anticipating and dealing with threats from the misuse of emerging technologies without bioconservative biases, and (c) the multiplicity of perspectives involved in defending the dignity of all people who fight for the right to control their own bodies without being coerced by society to adopt ideologically “normal” bodies. This is why I believe that Hughes’s work is an incredible contribution not only to the teaching process of what transhumanism is, but also to show that if we want to think about the present, it is necessary to adopt a multiple perspective.Unfortunately, I do not agree with the inclusion of the following text. In its defense, I understand that the content is expressed in a rather literary way; however, beyond the metaphors and literary style, Nick Bostrom’s “Letter from Utopia” manifests what I consider to be a naive transhumanism. It is enough, for example, to take into account his considerations on suffering (131) to understand that, beyond the rhetoric of his approach, Bostrom’s utopian transhumanism overlooks many moments in the history of philosophy. There is much debate on suffering—from the Epicurean philosophers or Nietzsche, just to name a few—for a specialist at Bostrom’s level to present the ideas contained in his paper. Nevertheless, as I have argued throughout this review, I am more than convinced that philosophy as a discipline progresses and, in this sense, “Letter from Utopia” has allowed great scholars such as Hauskeller (2012) and Sorgner (2018) to respond to these ideas and push transhuman researchers to the limits of the question for this movement.In this sense, it appears as a great achievement to me that “Nietzsche, the Overhuman, and Transhumanism” by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner is the article that coherently connects this first section with the rest of the book. It is necessary for me to be honest and thank Professor Sorgner for inviting me to participate in this review; however, I cannot deny that it is also difficult for me to be objective with this text, as it is because of this reading that I first became familiar with transhumanism. While the article is a direct response to Bostrom’s History (2005), it also, in my view, represents an excellent exercise in pushing transhumanism out of the comfort zone of its presuppositions. The goal now is not only to overcome our condition through genetic improvement, but also to reconsider our relationship with science, values and culture. Thus, Nietzsche’s “dynamic philosophy” in Sorgner’s perspective makes it possible to coordinate a new face of transhumanism in a coherent fashion: a transhumanism that is no longer naively materialistic or scientistic. Beyond the specific content of the article, it is necessary to highlight the level and number of discussions that were born thanks to this paper. The sole mention of Nietzsche and Transhumanism: Precursor or Enemy? edited by Yunus Tuncel (2017) is enough to highlight the impact of Sorgner’s proposal in the academic field. The reception of his proposal has been diverse, with both support and criticism, but Professor Sorgner’s production has not yet concluded, and, in later works, he has even admitted “a weak Nietzschean or posthumanist version of transhumanism” (2016). I believe that it is this version of Nietzschean transhumanism that editors Sampanikou and Stasieńko had in mind when coordinating the content of this Posthuman Studies Reader, as the following sections of the book seek to exhibit an overcoming of our condition by destroying the assumptions that hold us subjected to humanist ideas. This thought could not be more Nietzschean.The next section, “C. Posthumanism” (137–278), is the longest in the book and the one that also, in my view, provides the most significant contribution to the task of expanding a notion of transhumanism that attempts to think beyond its human condition without relying exclusively on technology.I find interesting to begin by mentioning that one can find the aforementioned Nietzschean heritage already at work in the excerpts from Donna Haraway’s works. It is undeniable that one of Nietzsche’s greatest scholars clearly has something to contribute to the goal of characterizing ourselves, and Haraway senses this insofar as her “Manifesto for Cyborgs” can be understood from the biopolitical reflection of Michel Foucault. When she affirms that “The Cyborg is our ontology” (143), what is being affirmed is a decision in the face of humanist dualism. From this starting point we can no longer take as a given our dependence on dual separations (mind–body; animal–machine), but rather, just like a mythological tale, Haraway’s works are the starting point for doubting the boundaries that have ideologically determined us. And one may wonder what these boundaries are. I believe that the first question, in a primordial sense, should be “What are we?” in order to be able to understand what is at stake when we ask ourselves about the meaning of the posthuman. I think that N. Katherine Hayles recognizes this methodological step when she says that “human being is first of all embodied being, and the complexities of this embodiment mean that human awareness unfolds in ways very different from those of intelligence embodied in cybernetic machines” (163). With this in mind, rather than an anti-human perspective, one should create perspectives capable of understanding ourselves as the result of historical evolutionary processes that do not end in the use of technological prostheses but culminate in a different understanding of ourselves.I emphasize that Hayles’ characterization leaves room for the question of “What is a human being?” and it seems to me that the inclusion of Neil Badmington’s “Posthumanism” is a good way of illustrating the power of the issue just mentioned, for it seems that if one wanted to the question “What a is human being?” with a form of as the one could that to that is, the possibility of an to that question will on a of boundaries that are In this ideas are in the of in her of the and in of when the technologies of the the of what is a human being would be and our current idea is by itself in the face of what is different from an and one who would be as an existence that these limits or and even on the ideas of one could as an entity in the process of his own allows to extend the limits of our embodied human one I believe does in her an of to on indications in order to allow such as to generate for a methodological debate with humanism. I then, that of is an excellent of how posthumanism is capable of confronting humanism. also and assumptions into question, and this is it necessary to reconsider the elements that had been by the humanist perspective, namely on an capable of the from which we can understand ourselves in order to understand ourselves as of the world and neither nor from nor from its descriptive In a and to we could say that when “What the of posthumanism with that posthumanism is “a of that is, to ourselves no longer from the of but to do on new that can the limits that humanism on out the of a one wonder this approach could have in the It seems to me that an to this question should be a and about this is what we find at the end of this section. In the excerpt from The we find the of “a posthuman in the when a is the of the I believe that this exercise is necessary even if one does not the of since could it even to us in a of ethical that for the complexities and actual of the to and more than on the of all that has been presented However, one can the humanist and ask “What of the if at we say is is the question that could configure the of this section, a by text a text that is not only because it is a between Nietzschean and and but also because it a of that like humanism and itself in that are still of ourselves at their However, seems to that the possibility of thinking beyond the of the in the need to in a way, which is in her perspectives have been an overcoming of what we are by of and an overcoming of what we are by of a And one may what is transhumanism overcome its and itself with posthumanist This question that I ask is even a personal as I would like to do research on this topic and the possibility that a form of transhumanism capable of care of is to of itself about its doubting and give birth to new without naively limits such as in science or is The Reader do not mean as an one last overcoming of our human the proposal by both Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and the last section the book with a proposal that in of one of the that has been a of this the that philosophical reflection can can it not if in his “The of and the and in a that the of transhumanism are the and and its of the and affirms the and not only firm in this but also takes the ideas of and and a philosophy of I were to present a of his I would say that is an an for an politics in which it makes no to the what we can think is already the future is and of believe that the intuition the word may be the to understanding for that can be in of this new way of thinking is no longer thought out as a to philosophical rather, is a on a Nietzschean that, now without without concepts such as and which the of a new of ourselves, and not the of and that can us in the still present and in the in the last Reader text, I would like to point out that, in my view, Sorgner presents at ideas for namely and by ourselves to our through a of and could we and in this of that we cannot step into do I this in several This Reader is a guide to get into philosophy. I would like to have the to this content in my in the near future. I am to be able to point out that, beyond the different perspectives in this Reader, what its is an ethical toward we are not able to on ourselves and our existence how can we even begin to face the that are is only a of the of not thinking about ourselves beyond In this last sense, this Reader will be a of the people who to give an to the very same that will how we will live in the near future.

Edwar Andrés Pineda Rincón, Luis Gabriel Moreno-Sandoval

The Electronic Health Record (EHR) has brought numerous challenges since its inception that have prevented a unified implementation from being carried out in Colombia. Within these challenges, we find a lack of security, auditability, and interoperability. Moreover, there is no general vision of the patient’s history throughout its life since different systems store the information separately. This lack of unified history leads to multiple risks for patients’ lives and the leakage of private data because each system has different mechanisms to safeguard and protect the information, and in several cases, these mechanisms do not exist. Many researchers tried to build multiple information systems attempting to solve this problem. However, these systems do not have a formal and rigorous architectural design to analyze and obtain health needs through architectural drivers to construct robust systems to solve these problems. This article describes the process of designing a software architecture that provides security to the information that makes up the Electronic Health Record in Colombia (EHR). Once we obtained the architectural drivers, we proposed Blockchain mainly due to its immutable distributed ledger, consensus algorithms, and smart contracts that securely transport this sensitive information. With this design decision, we carried out the construction of structures and necessary architectural documentation. We also develop a Proof of Concept (POC) using Hyperledger Fabric according to the literature analysis review in order to build a primary health network, in addition to a Smart Contract (Chaincode) using the Go programming language to perform a performance evaluation and do a safety analysis that demonstrates that the proposed design is reliable. The proposed design allows us to conclude that it is possible to build a secure architecture that protects patient health data privacy, facilitating the EHR’s construction in Colombia.

Raifa Akkaoui

With the recent emergence of the smart healthcare era, and patients relying more on personalized health monitoring based on Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices; patients’ lives are becoming highly threatened in case they fall victim to counterfeit devices. Thus, verifying whether these body sensors utilized are authentic and reliable in an unimpeachable, credible, and auditable manner without any centralized management is of crucial importance. Furthermore, manipulating data and hijacking in an IoMT context are also of tremendous criticality. Motivated by the aforementioned challenges, in this article, a smart contract-based scalable authentication scheme dedicated for IoMT devices is proposed. The scheme mitigates the deficiencies of the traditional established systems that are extensively built on centralized approaches, vulnerable to distributed denial of service attacks, by leveraging blockchain’s decentralization and security properties. The scheme ensures confidentiality, anonymity, and privacy as it is built on a consortium blockchain and integrity by offering secure firmware updates and protects patients from counterfeit devices by leveraging the physical unclonable function. The authentication approach was implemented on Ethereum and evaluated with regard to its computation and communication costs to prove its feasibility and effectiveness as well as its security by presenting a formal analysis using ProVerif.

Outi Korhonen, Juho Rantala

This essay considers the ideological context of blockchain technology. This technology is often celebrated for its potential for decentralization, distribution, privacy, and a lack of intermediaries and coordinators for transactions and general governance. Because of these features, blockchain technology, and, in particular, its most famous inauguration—the bitcoin blockchain—is frequently identified with libertarianism. In this essay, we argue that the ideological context of blockchain technology is much more complicated. In addition to unraveling a number of background ideologies and their role in this technology, we raise the ontological issue concerning the relationship of ideology to technology. These matters have implications for, among other things, the approach that should be taken to blockchain's governance, as well as how international lawyers may approach this “foreign”-seeming phenomenon that has its proponents from the European Central Bank to the United Nations (not, however, forgetting the private sector nor the digital underground).

Primavera De Filippi, Andrea M. Leiter

Blockchain technology has spurred the emergence of powerful narratives to promote new ways of governing outer space. The list of proposed uses for blockchain applications in outer space is endless—from property registries for asteroid mining, to supply chain management systems, or interplanetary cryptocurrencies for the space economy—along with Elon Musk claiming that “SpaceX is going to put a literal Dogecoin on the literal moon.” Yet, thus far, none of these projects have gone beyond simple declarations or white papers, mostly due to the inherent limitations on the effective enforcement of blockchain-based rules outside of their own technical framework. In this essay, we argue that blockchain technology is relevant for outer space because it fosters novel narratives advancing possible futures characterized by new modes of governance. The strongest and most prominent of these narratives is the crypto-libertarian one, which draws heavily on the absence of a state, the sanctity of property, and the primacy of private ordering through decentralized markets. But there are other narratives proposed by relevant actors in the blockchain space that are dedicated to other modes of governance. By focusing on alternative narratives for blockchain technology, we illustrate how the possible applications of blockchain technology in outer space may extend beyond the current libertarian dreams, to support a more commons-based approach to outer space governance.

Kelsie Nabben

No abstract is available for this record.

Kelsie Nabben

Blockchain-based “Decentralized Autonomous Organizations” (DAOs) communities risk perpetuating the 1990s Californian Ideology of techno-elitism in their imaginary of “autonomy” via technological determinism, free-market economics, and “engineering” approach to social and political challenges (Barbrook & Cameron, 1996). Imaginations include algorithmic governance via Artificial General Intelligence agents running on decentralized blockchains, hiring labor in DAOs, and bartering payment in cryptocurrency. The role of humans in this imaginary is limited. This piece explores autonomy in blockchain-based DAOs to investigate visions of algorithmic assemblages. Do DAOs imagine a different future where the role of humans is one of symbiosis and augmentation with machines? I draw on cybernetic interpretations of DAOs as “autopoietic” organisms to imagine a co-constitutive relationship between people and algorithms in the information age. By understanding the promises and practices of blockchain technology and decentralized governance, we can better engage with these emergent objects of social and policy inquiry.

Federico Carlini, Roberto Carlini, Stefano Dalla Palma, Remo Pareschi · 5 authors

Recent advances in technology have drastically downsized costs and implementation times for genomic services. The wide availability of low-cost genomic technologies and easy access to genomic data can significantly improve healthcare productivity and efficiency, all to the benefit of social well-being in general. For example, by creating the conditions for researchers to identify the causes of multiple diseases and contributing to the development of new drugs, we can improve the quality of life and give people, as users of genomic services, the means to positively impact their health. This article describes how blockchain technology can lay the foundations of an ecosystem that encourages users to acquire and share their genomic data in full awareness without fear of being circumvented to participate in the benefits and advances in genomic research. The starting point is Genesy, an innovative blockchain platform that transcribes genomic data, thus facilitating and, at the same time safeguarding, the users of genomic services in their relationships with parties interested in accessing and using data they own, such as research centers, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, and geneticists. This result is obtained by exploiting blockchain technology's capabilities to notarize data and prevent their unauthorized use, and at the same time to make them objects of possible transactions between different parties. Looking ahead, the Genesy model can be generalized to promote an ecosystem, and a fair market, for all types of biomedical data.

Demetrios Joannou, Roy Kalawsky, Miguel Martínez-García, Chris Fowler · 5 authors

A key requirement for an integrated digital tool chain is secure access and control of data assets. Not all stakeholders will have the same access to or control over the flow of information, some will be able to input or change data whilst others will only be able to read the data. Simply providing secure access protocols is not sufficient because copied data can quickly become disassociated and modified from its original instantiation, leading to its reuse elsewhere or later in the lifecycle but in an inappropriate way. Therefore, data management mechanisms are required that capture information about the data along with any decisions or modifications it has undergone during the course of its life, thus providing complete traceability for later validation purposes. This undertaking is essential across the systems engineering lifecycle. This pursuit involves controlling who can access and modify data within the lifecycle. This paper describes a solution to this by the introduction of blockchain technology, a relatively new technology that allows digital information to be distributed but not copied, making it an immutable set of time-stamped data managed by a network of connected systems and services. Though blockchain technology is not commonly referred to when discussing Industry 4.0, the technology’s capabilities should add value when applied in a context of data management and security within the lifecycle of a product or services and in conjunction with digital twins, big data, and IoT. This paper describes how permissioned blockchains can be implemented within a systems engineering lifecycle, providing example architecture patterns showing how data provenance can be maintained throughout.

Khaled Shuaib, Heba Saleous, Nazar Zaki, Fida K. Dankar

Scientific research in the area of human genomics is no longer restricted to scientists. With the introduction of companies such as 23andme and Ancestry, the interested people of the public have been getting involved in genetic studies. However, the nature of the data being collected and its link to confidential, personal information will need to be properly secured and complete to prevent the same issues faced by electronic medical records in healthcare: fragmentation and risk of disclosure. By integrating blockchains with genomics and healthcare, patients and research participants will be able to participate in their own healthcare and research, increasing patient and user centricity. In this paper, a layered architecture of how blockchains can be implemented in genomics and healthcare is proposed. The proposed architecture shows how communication between users, researchers, and medical professionals can be improved while encouraging genetic research while improving security and privacy.

Giuseppe Maria Albanese, Jean-Paul Calbimonte, Michael Schumacher, Davide Calvaresi

No abstract is available for this record.

Onat Kibaroğlu

As a technology that can be traced back to the late 1990s in its structural fundamentals, ‘blockchain’ came into mainstream public discourse as of 2017. Previously discussed in the fringes of the technology-savvy circles, blockchain has now become a global phenomenon and indeed an industry that is rapidly growing and capturing a notable share of the public imagination along with academic discourse. Blockchain’s emergence in the realm of technology is essentially thanks to the invention of bitcoin as both a speculative asset and as a digital store of value. Many governments around the world have made public claims regarding their enthusiasm for adopting ‘blockchain’ in various ways; varying from Russia, Estonia, and Ukraine in Europe all the way to Venezuela in Latin America and even the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean. This paper puts out the objective of achieving self-sovereign identities on the blockchain is a promise that has not yet manifested on the ground, albeit it disproportionately captures a significant share of the contemporary discourse on the three larger concepts of self-sovereignty, digital identity, and the blockchain. A key reason for the lack of manifestation of this promise is that there is little agreement as to what is actually meant by ‘self-sovereign identities’ —in stark comparison to the major consensus over the concepts of ‘blockchain’ or ‘cryptocurrencies’. In order to explore the genealogy of the core concept of ‘identity’, the theoretical genesis of ‘biopolitics’ is consulted, demonstrating that our contemporary technological epoch is best defined as an era of the emergence of ‘bio digital’ power. The paper ultimately argues that the reason for this disproportional share of discourse is created by certain actors to utilize the growing rhetoric on ‘blockchain’ and the libertarian notion of ‘self-sovereignty’ as façades to potentially pursue capitalist objectives. Keywords: blockchain, self-sovereignty, bitcoin, capitalism, digital identity, privacy, data, cryptocurrencies.

Shane J. Ralston

No abstract is available for this record.

Ruyan Wang, Hanyong Liu, Honggang Wang, Qing Yang · 5 authors

The ubiquitous nature of a connected health system imposes challenges with regard to the design of system architecture, security, and privacy. Different from traditional centralized systems, a distributed blockchain-based security protection architecture is proposed. In particular, smart contracts, as an intelligent protocol in the blockchain technology, are exploited to automatically achieve system confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity. Research challenges related to security and privacy issues in our proposed architecture are then analyzed, followed by potential solutions. Finally, security performance simulations and analyses are conducted to validate and evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed security architecture.

Xudong Huang

A blockchain is a system for storing and sharing information that is secure because of its transparency. Each block in the chain is both its own independent unit containing its own information, and a dependent link in the collective chain, and this duality creates a network regulated by participants who store and share the information, rather than a third party. Blockchain has many applications in healthcare, and can improve mobile health applications, monitoring devices, sharing and storing of electronic medical records, clinical trial data, and insurance information storage. Research about blockchain and healthcare is currently limited, but blockchain is on the brink of transforming the healthcare system; through its decentralized principles, blockchain can improve accessibility and security of patient information, and can therefore overturn the healthcare hierarchy and build a new system in which patients manage their own care.

Gabriel Axel Montes, Ben Goertzel

The accelerating pace of development in artificial intelligence invokes fundamental questions regarding what constitutes a mind. Considering that AI has sprung from the cognitive enterprise of humanity and that there is the likely prospect of constructing some form of 'global brain', examining such questions may help to refine the conversation around AI and understand what might constitute a global brain. We draw on recent work in philosophy of mind and cognition—viewing mind as being representational and/or enactive in nature and function—, and hone in on insights that practices and accounts of non-ordinary consciousness (NOC) lend to this discussion. We discuss the concept of a "mindplex", which is comprised of individual constituents (humans and/or AI's) and an encompassing collective global brain that both concurrently possess cohesive 'theatres of consciousness'. We posit that these theatres of an AGI global brain have correspondences with key aspects of the inherent nature of consciousness and reality (as understood outside the AI context) as gleaned through NOC. We propose that these considerations are poised to strongly contribute to the construction of mindplexes by reflecting in their functional architecture the nature of mind and engineering mindplexes in tandem with ethical and value-alignment considerations. Furthermore, we propose the adoption and implementation of AI on distributed ledger technology (DLT), such as blockchain, which would provide support for the evolution of a global brain mindplex.

Quinn DuPont

This article investigates ethical research risks associated with cryptocurrencies and the related family of digital "value" technologies. It provides an empirical analysis of innovation and recommends guiding principles for ethical research and development. Ethical research risks are identified through 1) an analysis of research methods and ethics disclosure practices in published empirical research; and 2) a survey of academic research practices and researcher opinions. These data identified multiple research ethics issues. It was discovered that most researchers have extensive and undisclosed industry relationships, have undisclosed conflicts of interest arising from token ownership, and report low use of institutional review or ethics guidelines, among other issues. Three novel research risks-conflicts of interest, risky methods, and disclosure-are then introduced and compared to the risks of conventional research. It is argued that these technologies introduce ethical risks and opportunities beyond their sector. These findings suggest a new class of ethical and normative research practice, comparable to fields such as bio-or nanotechnology ethics. Based on these analyses, eight principles for ethical research are described, with practical lessons for the researcher.

Calem John Smith

No abstract is available for this record.

Jannice Käll

Blockchain technology is often discussed and theorized in relation to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Its quality as a technology that produces advanced encryption keys between objects, however, also makes it interesting to those who seek to connect physical objects to digital elements. The reason for this is that the link between objects needs to be ‘secure’ from undesired external interference. In relation to such interests, blockchain has been identified as a highly attractive technology to support the general digitalization of society towards the Internet of Things, smart cities etc. In extension, the implementation of blockchain technology implies that it may work as a tool that has the capacity to direct which objects may/may not interact with each other. The ‘ledger of everything’ that blockchain may possibly produce as regards the ‘Internet of Everything’ is even suggested to make humans and other intermediary technologies redundant. In this essay, I argue that in order to sustain legal critique when the world moves into the next era of digitalization, we need to understand - and question - how technological control operates through e.g. blockchain technology by locking physical and digital elements to each other.

Authors unavailable

No abstract is available for this record.

Quinn DuPont

Abstract This paper argues that many so‐called digital technologies can be construed as notational technologies, explored through the example of Monegraph, an art and digital asset management platform built on top of the blockchain system originally developed for the cryptocurrency bitcoin. As the paper characterizes it, a notational technology is the performance of syntactic notation within a field of reference, a technologized version of what Nelson Goodman called a “notational system.” Notational technologies produce abstracted entities through positive and reliable, or constitutive, tests of socially acceptable meaning. Accordingly, this account deviates from typical narratives of blockchains (usually characterized as Turing or state machines), instead demonstrating that blockchain technologies are effective at managing digital assets because they produce abstracted identities through the performance of notation. Since notational technologies rely on configurations of socially acceptable meaning, this paper also provides a philosophical account of how blockchain technologies are socially embedded.

Fabio Angeletti, Ioannis Chatzigiannakis, Andrea Vitaletti

Our personal data is now more valuable than ever. The uncontrolled growth of internet-centered services has led us to accept many compromises about how we share it. In the era of Internet of Things, personal data is collected continuously. Now, more than ever, we are in need of privacy-preserving applications where users always retain control of their personal data. In this paper, we present a secure way to control the flow of personal data in the specific case of the recruitment of participants for clinical trials. We take special care to protect the interests of both parties: the individual can keep its data private until an agreement is reached, and the Clinical Research Institute can be assured that it is acquiring useful and authentic data. We provide a proof-of-concept implementation and study its performance based on a real-world evaluation.

Benjamin R. Lewis

“The Drugs Didn’t Mix”:On the Overvaluation of Misvaluation Benjamin R. Lewis (bio) Keywords addiction, akrasia, misevaluation, psychiatric nosology In this well-researched, articulate, and compelling paper, Summers presents the position that addiction is a misvaluation upon which a pattern of behavior is based and which resists contrary evidence. This inability to change one’s values in response to contrary evidence is the prime wrong at stake, given its implied diminishment of rationality (and hence adaptive functioning). In approaching this conflicted set of issues, Summers carefully surveys an impressive range of sources—from clinical DSM-based diagnosis (and inherent limitations thereof) to neurobiological underpinnings of decision making and attention, to social determinants influencing the question as to what counts as ‘addiction’—and settles on the more modest goals of elucidating why difficult cases are difficult and what set of factors would be important insofar as settling the questions at stake. And the questions as to what counts as an addiction certainly are difficult, beset by social mores, classification limitations, and no clear demarcating neurobiological boundaries between so-called passions and addictions. I am reminded of a quote from Butch Trucks, drummer for The Allman Brothers, describing a collaborative concert they played with The Band and The Grateful Dead: “It’s one of the only times I can remember where the jam didn’t work because the drugs didn’t mix. The Band were all drunk. The Dead were all tripping. And we were all full of coke. So we tried to jam, but there was just no common ground” (Edwards 1999). The permutations here as to enhancing/inhibiting, adaptive/maladaptive, socially acceptable/unacceptable, and passion/addiction are truly complex (and perhaps unlikely to be parsed philosophically by the musicians themselves). The concept of akrasia, or weakness of will, is often invoked in philosophical discussions of addiction. This is not examined explicitly here, but is nonetheless active both in the discussion of misvaluation as well as the associated moral judgments. From the outset, Summers takes a broadly internalist position: motivation (and hence behavior or action) is driven by evaluative judgements. In this case, an addict’s behavior is determined by a wrongfully held value or values: say, the immediate hedonic pleasures of intoxication over and above the more abstract and long term values that sobriety may present (i.e., employment, maintenance of relationships, avoidance of legal issues, financial stability, health outcomes.) For Summers, [End Page 41] it is the fact that the addict ought not to hold this set of values that determines it to be ‘addiction’: it is a misvaluation. This misvaluation in inferred from a pattern of behavior that is maladaptive or dysfunctional: “Using ‘value’ and ‘valuing’ in an ordinary way, we can further distinguish as we must, between the value we claim to have and the values we in fact do have, those we demonstrate in our actions” (Summers 2015, 33). For Summers, the proof is in the pudding: your chosen actions announce your values. Had you valued differently, you would have acted differently. This is essentially the same internalist position presented by R. M. Hare, which precludes the possibility of akratic action in the first place. If an agent does action x, it necessarily follows that he judged x to be the best option available at the time: “it becomes analytic to say that everyone always does what he thinks he ought to [if physically and psychologically able]” (Hare 1952, 169). If an addict chooses to relapse on heroin, it necessarily follows that he determined this to be his best available option (at least at the time). Although resolving the seeming paradox of akratic action, this position is unsatisfying in that it fails to capture the clear apparent clinical reality of individuals struggling with substance use disorders: that they can indeed place full value in sobriety and yet still have difficulty acting in accordance with that value (all of the time). Externalist positions, such as that described by Alfred Mele (2002), argue that evaluative processes and motivational processes dissociate: action can be driven by more proximate rewards in a motivational sense despite having vague, unclear, inadequate, or conflicting reasons for action. Ainslie’s notion...

Elizabeth Welch

Much of the discussion of the ethical concerns involved in the care of those with Disorders of Consciousness (DOC) has been presented in terms of the dichotomous “right to die” / “right to life” (RTD/RTL) framework with nearly singular focus on (1) assessing whether the individual retains “consciousness,” and (2) making the “right” choices about the use of life sustaining treatments (LSTs). However, the lived experience of the family, friends and medical providers who have close contact with individuals with a DOC indicates that the ethical concerns involved cannot be reduced to the RTD/RTL framework, to proofs of consciousness, or to the right to make choices about treatment. Rather than advocate for a “right” choice in regards to use of LST in those with DOC, this essay utilizes the writings of Paul Ricoeur to illuminate the sources of our ethical confusion and to engage in deeper ethical reflection. I describe DOC from the perspective of neuroscience and review recent research. I then critique conceptions of autonomy and personhood within medical ethics, especially in so far as a model of consumer choice dominates conceptions of autonomy and cognitive capacity is considered a determinant of moral worth. I present Ricoeur’s understanding of autonomy as a relational project and his description of individuals as capable and fragile in varying degrees as an alternative. I proceed by examining the concepts of “sanctity of life” and “pain and suffering,” where I use Ricoeur’s description of all humans as acting and suffering, and his description of solicitude as the model for responding to suffering. I conclude with Ricoeur’s description of the ethical intention of “aiming at the ‘good life,’ with and for others, in just institutions” as an approach to analyzing ethical dilemmas and clarifying what it is at stake in various alternatives.