A manifesto for a new way to work.
Introduction
‘The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.‘ — Alvin Toffler
We want to build a better world and do business with those that share those ideals. Unification of labor and capital is a cornerstone of that belief. It is the cure for capitalism run amok, widespread inequality, and disengaged workers. The organizations of the past are based on extractive capital models. A few board members make the decisions and decide where to spend the surplus.
We believe that a new form of “boosted capitalism” is required. A decentralized model that is not only a method for growth and prosperity but also an engine for the distribution of resources. This additive model promotes a virtuous cycle within an econonic ecosystem. The game dynamic changes from competitive to cooperative as we up skill, acquire new knowledge, and deploy a system that is both profitable and equitable by design.
Their is no question the old system is broken.
As of this writing, corporate profits and stock markets are at an all-time high. However, as income inequality spreads, communities begin to lose economic viability and long-term sustainability. Inevitably crime, substance abuse, mental illness, domestic violence, and suicides increase as a result of economic disparity. The world order has been affected by technologies abilities to reach inside our governments and inside our brains through social media.
What happens when the industrialized world transforms into a bifurcated society of haves and have-nots? Who is going to buy the product that the robots make or the services AI will provide? What happens when there’s a surplus of labor that cannot be repaired or remedied through the creation of more jobs? At the same time, a few elite tech workers in NYC and SF/Silicon Valley have a likely career path to receive professional athlete paydays?
Through inaction, we’re enabling a world of economic abundance for some and more significant social inequality for others. Without a sustainable change, this will be our probable future. Yet what can one person do? A sad reality precipitated by unquestioned standards for how business ‘should be conducted.’
Our vision
Many would accept the current trends as inevitable and do nothing while the corrupt distort reality for their interests. We intend to do better. We can unite towards a bold new future for our community and by extension the world; by embracing the coming changes and applying technology to create a preferred future. In the ideal state, when powered with the assistance of AI and a broad network of communities, we can empower modern workers to reach new heights regardless of their background, location, skill set, or socio-economic status.
What would this distributed guild of modern knowledge workers look like? Beginning with the best engineers, developers, founders, former executives, investors, and solopreneurs joining forces and referring projects, sharing expenses, building bridges to other communities and networks of people. The benefit is akin to load balancing a server — only with skill sets, reputation, and availability. This improves the effacacy and utilization of workers time.
What if next-generation organizations were based on shared common bond, a token economy, and a self-correcting governance system? A new type of organizational structure, one that can be modeled, critiqued, improved, and duplicated.
The focus of our efforts has been on a protocol that standardizes the statement of work (SOW). It is currently a subjective process that is common to many professional services where margin is lost and client expectations unmet.
By embracing change and using our strengths as a collaborative community, we can grow our talent pool, up-skill workers, and rethink ways of doing things focused on the common good, rather than an extractive non-reciprocal interests of a few wealthy shareholders, and institutions alone. Why shouldn’t capitalism evolve?
We recognize that professions embody our sense of identity and should be more than a vehicle for day-to-day sustenance. We believe companies have an ethical and moral responsibility for the foods we ingest, the items we produce, and the world in which we live.
We have an opportunity and an obligation as leaders to envision a preferred future for generations to come. It’s time to be daring, rather than merely accepting the status quo and optimizing for the next quarter. What if we could build a self-sustaining community, as a distributed network and alliance with access to world-class talent with a fraction of the overhead costs?
Today’s organizations are building on a linear world: hierarchical, closed, top-down and focused on centralized ownership and control.
The rules have fundamentally changed. A new system needs to be re-imagined iteratively and through the efforts of many. As we transition into an augmented human-machine future, we must be careful. We believe that given enough data and computing power, an all-encompassing system could understand people better than we understand ourselves and that such a system should not enslave and marginalize, but rather empower and distribute the benefits to many.
We reject the status quo.
We look beyond traditional approaches to “business as usual,” traditional culture, communication, incentives, and organizational structure that limits the human potential to grow and innovate.
How we change the rules.
Proposals come through the a network of individuals; work is divided and matched based on a best fit, skill, and reputation of participants in the network.
Blackbox works on behalf of the entire network to ensure prompt payment, and the OS manages interoperability between multiple organizations. Each “participant” receives ~90% of their portion of the project revenue. The 10% remainder goes to a general fund that covers costs for all members (sales, operations, licensing, legal, etc.). All payments are held in reserve and contributors are compensated via cryptographic tokens to ensure a frictionless exchange of reinforcers in the real world . The reserves provide members liquidity as transition into a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).
The Blackbox Network
We’re a community of individuals who believe in co-creating the future of work. Beginning May 2017, we’ve grown to a global network of PhDs, executives, and tech founders across eight countries. The total cumulative in-kind investment by the community includes hundreds of engineering writing requirements, hours to build client and internal tools, thousands of recorded calls and cataloged interviews. The broader network includes organizations, agencies, and collectives from all around the world.
Forming a next-generation guild
Universities arose out of the guild movement. Craftsman and artisans joining forces to perfect their craft. To create a preferred future, we will need the wisdom from the past, the leadership of the present, and a vision for the future. We will need a specific set of short, medium and long-term actions creating a preferred image for the ‘common good.’
It’s human nature to move towards tribes and natural desires for growth and shared contribution. It is by this nature that we form a strategic alliance of modern technology and knowledge workers. Beginning with a unique cohort of the most sought-after skills in the world.
Sitting in cubed working environments doing repetitive tasks, and enduring soul-destroying work for the sake of short term certainty, perceived security, or accumulating material possessions has become an antiquated model. For a generation that values flexibility, freedom, trust, diversity, and equality for all, we believe we can and should do better.
There is a tremendous amount of organizational inefficiency that includes payroll, project management, administrative decision-making, expensive business tools, among other areas. We see the advantage of providing a stable, yet an evolving platform that solves the common burdens organizations face. The result is efficiencies of scale and access to resources, well beyond anything possible within the silos of centralized systems. The biggest challenge is trust.
Open source software flourished because developers felt that their peers validated their contributions. It helped them improve their standing in the community and often resulted in plum jobs and/or opportunity to start new companies.
As solo-preneurs, practitioners, freelancers or collectives we envision a world where contributors are fairly compensated for the value they add so we created the Proof of Value (PoV) consensus protocol which is an unbiased, quantified compensation model that appropriately rewards contributors based on effort, skill, and priority.
An operating system is required which enables frictionless exchange across geography and time zones, provides fair value for their contributions and competencies. When aligning human self-interest correctly we further motivate strong and persistent networks.
Future Trends
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” — William Gibson
Now, you may be wondering — “Where do I fit in all of this?” If you’re a parent, or just getting your career started, you’ll have a different perspective than someone entering retirement.
Disruptive technology is nothing new. What is new is the rate at which change is happening. Computer technology is evolving at an exponential pace. Quantum computing, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and artificial intelligence are capabilities that stand to radically transform our world with frightening prospects for civilization. Given the fragility of leaders, corruption, and bureaucratic systems today many foresee the dystopia that is on the horizon. Globalization has left behind a segment of society that feels betrayed, frustrated, and angry. In cities across the United States and elsewhere around the world, work is exported, exploited, automated, or eliminated.
We’re living in a unique moment in time. We have lost our ability to regulate or control the technological-driven changes taking place in and around us. The very idea of what an ‘organization,’ an ‘institution,’ or a ‘company’ is, needs to change to suit life, not the other way around. Marginal changes will not solve the problems caused by the widespread separation of human labor from capital. This is a root cause of inequality. The problems are systemic.
From Silicon Valley and NYC to elite tech workers around the world; we are in a unique position of power. Skilled talent has become the workforce that is highly sought after. Global demand for data science workers has exceeded supply. Machine learning and software engineers are the new alchemists.
“We are already becoming tiny chips inside a giant system that nobody understands” — Yuval Noah Harari
New Rules for Impact
Technology and data are expanding at an exponential rate. The convergence of “frontier tech” such as AI, blockchain, and IoT will radically transform every business sector in the years to come. We believe that the current corporate and capital structures limit an individual’s potential to create value. Titles, departments, hours, offices, outdated processes like performance management systems, and siloed thinking perpetually minimizes human potential. Why should the next revolution in decentralized business models adopt the limitations of industrialized thinking?
We know when freed from the constraints the value that is created is exponentially higher. Centralized and competitive models are now at the beginning stages of making way for cooperative and decentralized models that offer far more significant advantages. Blockchain and decentralized innovation is one area where new entrants can outmaneuver and in fact bypass the retro bias of the existing systems. To improve the world around us, we need to uncover new frameworks, rethink business models, and develop new methods that adds new value, and has a positive impact while also generating profit.
Courageous entrepreneurs are already challenging the status quo all around the world. By harnessing the power of a positive social agenda we’ll enable a new model of growth and value to emerge.
Founding Beliefs
- The future of work model is designed around an entrepreneurial mindset.
- We believe in creating an boosted capital model that unifies labor and capital.
- The convergence of “frontier tech” such as AI, Blockchain, and IoT will radically transform every business sector in the years to come.
- We believe that the current corporate and capital structures limit an individual’s potential to create value.
- We believe in being surrounded by like-minded individuals where we can grow and contribute.
How does it work?
The infrastructure comprises decentralized management tools, automation solutions, crowdsourcing mechanisms, and instruments for the collaborative evaluation and curation of content. In summary, the infrastructure is a token incentivized platform for knowledge workers.
- Projects submitted to our network
- Software coordinates resources & automates repetitive tasks
- QA/QC tracking until project is complete
- Reputation tracking and transparency
- Task management with a token-incentivized model
- Recurring revenue from software and service contracts
- Talent + our ‘A.I. Toolbox’ ensuring delivery
The Blackbox protocol can help different types of industries and any enterprise that would benefit from the decentralized, indirect coordination of large groups of individuals scattered across the globe.
- Blackbox develops foundational tools that coordinates the people layer on top of blockchain technology to empower decentralized collaborations.
- We provide the protocols that make it possible for any decentralized group of individuals to easily deploy Dapps based on spontaneous, large-scale and open collaboration.
- Blackbox protocols enable people to coordinate themselves through a decentralized governance model that distributes token rewards and reputation to all collaborators, based on an agreed upon value of their contributions.
- Blackbox eventually aims to enable large-scale and systematic cooperation among people without the coordination of any central authority.
Conclusion
We’re building the blueprint to re-imagine what an organization is at its core. We’re moving us all forward towards a better way to work and add value. The Blackbox Network is the ecosystem to contribute and measure that value. Influence is earned through a reputation system by consensus review (voting) and consistently demonstrating execution skills (Proof of Value). We are on the cusp of a transformation, in how business is conducted, as well as for human productivity and creativity.
