26 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
26 lines
4.7 KiB
Markdown
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# Introduction
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This deliverable consists of the implementation of smart-rules effectively executing cryptographic operation and data transformations using a human readable language modeled according to the taxonomy expressed in DECODE's deliverable D3.5 "Initial definition of Smart Rules and Taxonomy".
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Since DECODE project's inception, reaching this point of development has been my personal ambition and it is perhaps the most important practical realization of a solution for some of the techno-political implications I've illustrated in my Ph.D thesis "Algorithmic Sovereignty".
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## For the awareness of algorithms
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The goal of this task is ultimately that of realizing a simple, non-technical, human-readable language for smart-rules that are actually executed in a verifiable and provable manner within the Zenroom controlled execution environment.
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To articulate the importance of this quest and the relevance of the results presented, which I believe to be unique in the landscape of blockchain smart-contract languages, is important to remind us of the condition in which most people find themselves when participating in the regime of truth that is built by algorithms.
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As the demand and production of well-connected vessels for the digital dimension has boomed, machine-readable code today functions as a literature informing the architecture in which human interactions happens. The telematic condition is realised by an integrated datawork continuously engaging the observer as a participant. Such a “Gesamtdatenwerk” [@Ascott_1990] may seem an abstract architecture, yet it can be deeply binding under legal, ethical and moral circumstances.
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The comprehension of algorithms, the awareness of the way decisions are formulated, the implications of their execution, is not just a technical condition, but a political one, for which access to information cannot be just considered a feature, but a civil right. It is important to understand this in relation to the "classical" application of algorithms executed in a centralized manner, but even more in relation to distributed computing scenarios posed by blockchain technologies, which theorize a future in which rules and contracts are executed without requiring any human agency.
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The legal implications with regards to standing rights and liabilities are out of the scope here, while the focus is on ways humans, even when lacking technical literacy, can be made aware of what an algorithm does. Is it possible to establish the ground for a shared language that informs digital architects about their choices and inhabitants about the digital territory? Going past assumptions about the strong role algorithms have in governance and accountability [@Diakopoulos_2016], how can we inform digital citizens about their condition?
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When describing the virtualisation of economic activity in the global context, Saskia Sassen describes the need we are observing as that of an analytical vocabulary:
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> The third component in the new geography of power is the growing importance of electronic space. There is much to be said on this issue. Here, I can isolate one particular matter: the distinctive challenge that the virtualization of a growing number of economic activities presents not only to the existing state regulatory apparatus, but also to private-sector institutions increasingly dependent on the new technologies. Taken to its extreme, this may signal a control crisis in the making, one for which we lack an analytical vocabulary. [@Sassen_sovereignty]
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The analysis of legal texts and regulations here shifts into an entirely new domain; it has to refer to conditions that only algorithms can help build or destroy. Thus, referring to this theoretical framework, the research and development of a free and open source language that is intellegible to humans becomes of crucial importance and, from an ethical standing point, DECODE as many other projects in the same space cannot be exempted from addressing it.
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When we consider algorithms as contracts regulating relationships (between humans, between humans and nature and, nowadays more increasingly, between different contexts of nature itself) then we should adopt a representation that is close to how the human mind works and that is directly connected to the language adopted. In this thesis I interpret algorithms as the systemic product of complex relationships between contracts and relevant choices made by standing actors [@standing2014Monico]. The ability to verify which algorithms are in place for a certain result to be visualised, to understand and communicate what these algorithms do, to describe and experiment their repercussions on reality is in fact conditioning the very choices standing actors will make.
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