http://popchassid.com/10-images-change-tefillin/

Ritual Tech and The Blockchain

Uncategorized

I have been thinking about some sort of intervention in crypto currency. First I was thinking about the different proofs for validity – proof of work, proof of stake, and my favorite, proof of authority.  I was thinking about a project where validity is no longer logical coherence but some sort of consensus algorithm, and what are the implications for this.  So for example I could write a poetic statement or a statement in general and it could be persisted to the blockchain based on some sort of consensus algorithm  – this is an interesting idea of ponder. What if we have the metaphoric algorithm, the rhythm algorithm, we only accept statements in iambic pentameter or something. hmmm

I was also thinking about the structure of the blockchain, the genesis block and the onto-theological implications.

For many years I have thought about prayer wheels, and prayer tech in particular. I guess you could call this ritual tech: leaving notes at the western wall, tefillin, rosaries, votives. These are some ways or methods that people pray or amplify their prayers.  I have read The Power of Eight by Lynn McTaggart and ways people today are approaching prayer differently. I am also interested in the relationship between prayer and poetry: Prayer as a sort of performative poetry, or performative speech act.

I am also taken with the idea of Ethereum as the world computer, this sort of echos the world soul, the animus mundi.  What would it mean to have your prayers read or performed by the world computer. So first I imagine a smart contract, it has a prayer associated with it, and the prayer is executed perhaps every time some action occurs – it could be linked to solar or stellar events, it could be linked to human interaction, it could run on a private blockchain and runs whenever a new blockchain is added. What are the actions of the prayer, these too could be specified by a smart contract.  The prayer could generate sound, or be connected to some actuator, the prayer could donate money, the prayer could just add a transaction to the blockchain – prayed.

I really like this, I feel the simplest thing would be to just have an interface where people can either write a prayer or empower another prayer (powers of eight style).  The simplest way to do this would be to use ethereum or some sort of token, prayerco.in. Maybe the more people that pray the more coin is generated and that this coin is freely given to whomever asks for it.

Leave a Reply