On the “Pattern” of Digital City-State

Author: Hu Yilin

Hu Yilin was once an associate professor in the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University.He is currently a freelance scholar, initiator of CNDAO, and founder of TIANYU ARTech studio.

Today I chatted with SeeDAO’s baiyu for a while and outputted my ideas on the construction of a digital city-state.My focus is to carry forward Arendt’s thoughts and rebuild the “public sphere” in the digital age.

SeeDAO’s ideal is to be a “digital city-state for 1 million Web3 vagrants”. My noise is: The number of 1 million is large, it is far from big enough, but it is small, it is not small enough.What is not big enough means that if Web3 is the general trend, then the future “Web3 vagrants” cannot be only 1 million. Chinese people alone have to count 10 million. At least 10 million should be available.And not small enough means, but as far as a “city-state” is concerned, there shouldn’t be so many people.The Athenian city-state only has hundreds of thousands of slaves, and generally speaking, the Greek city-state is between thousands and tens of thousands.

I have always believed that living in the digital world will become a life form that people will focus more on in time and in the future (in a sense it is now).So in a sense, everyone will be “digital nomads” and have the desire to seek a home to settle in the digital world.

But this “city-state” that settles personal identities in the digital world can be a state of “small country but few people”, and does not require millions of people to squeeze into the same “plaza” to act together.The Greek city-state system, or the feudal system in medieval Europe or China’s Spring and Autumn Period, can support the independent existence of “small countries” to a certain extent.But the environment conducive to small countries is short-lived. The ancient water conservancy technology (the theory of Eastern autocracy), the modern gunpowder industry (the theory of gunpowder empire), and the modern industrial system all promoted the prosperity of “big powers”.But these environments that help big countries squeeze small countries no longer exist in the digital world. In the digital world, small communities will not face a crisis of destruction. As long as there is a consensus, a small group of people can always maintain their territory in the digital space.

Therefore, in the future, ideal, rich and diverse Web3 world, I believe that there will be countless DAOs, countless city-states, empires, tribes and other organizational forms coexist, and each network country can have its own political system and operating norms.History has proved that the state of small countries and a hundred schools of thought can best promote the prosperity of ideas and creation.

Therefore, in terms of interpersonal relationship rules such as politics, culture, and law, there is no need to design a stereotyped plan that can accommodate 1 million people.But the entire digital world still needs to establish some underlying consensus.For example, blockchain itself is a consensus that creates the world and provides the basis for “economic activities” for the digital world.

What are you going to do next?My idea is that we need to build some “terrain”.

From a large scale, the hilly terrain and multi-island sea environment of ancient Greece promoted the development of the city-state system.Corresponding to the digital world, we may have a space that is conducive to the new city-state system, but we may also have a space that is more conducive to the new empire system.This aspect can be built in some underlying consensus.For example, I do not appreciate Ethereum’s shift to the PoS mechanism. The PoS mechanism ensures that large investors can “sit and eat without leaving any empty space”, which is conducive to the retention of large investors for generations. In other words, the underlying environment of PoS is more conducive to the growth of the hereditary aristocratic system or capital oligarchy.This does not mean that the future Ethereum world will definitely form such a system. Of course, there will be various accidents or games to determine the future destiny, but the underlying environment always provides a certain bias.Bitcoin’s PoW mechanism is closer to liberalism, but it is not perfect either. It may strengthen the connection between the digital world and the physical world and strengthen the power of energy monopolists.Although I prefer Bitcoin, I think the digital world where Bitcoin competes with Ethereum is better than the world where Bitcoin is only.Perhaps neither of these are enough, as the more different “terrains” are, the better.Anyway, it is easy for “vagazines” in the digital world to move freely. Even if I think some terrain is bad, there is no need to erase them. It is always a good thing to choose more space.

On a small scale, “terrain” includes the boundaries between the private sphere and the public sphere.In ancient Greek city-states, there was a clear line between the private and public spheres – your doorstep.Inside the home, you are in a private field, everything inside can be kept confidential from the outside, internal rules can be unequal (parents discipline their children), and internal affairs within the family focus on what Arendt calls “necessity” – that is, solving the matters that people as animals must deal with when eating, slapping, sleeping, cleaning, food and clothing, reproduction, etc.This part of the matter is cumbersome and can never be handled. When you are full today, you have to think about what to eat tomorrow.So you cannot wait until you “completely solve the problem of inevitability” before stepping out of the house to pursue other affairs, especially those that are superior to animals and exclusively belong to humans.So the door of the house is a boundary. When you go out, it means that I “temporarily put aside” my animal needs and enter another space. In this space, what I focus most on is not what to eat tomorrow, but things that animals cannot care about, and only people think are worth pursuing.This is what Arendt talks about “action” (sometimes “work” also belongs to this category, but “labor” does not belong to this field) – among the Greeks, it is various activities that pursue “excellence”: outstanding athletes, outstanding drama actors, outstanding politicians, outstanding wise men, outstanding warriors… The excellence of these people is not measured by how much food they provide, but is measured by everyone in the public sphere.

The boundary between the public and private domains has been eliminated in modern society (Arente’s so-called labor society). When people enter the so-called public space, they still care about the “necessity issue” – noble people always care about the “food and clothing” of others, while vulgar people like to care about the desires related to “reproduction”.In short, the inevitable demand of animal nature has entered public space and has become the main issue of so-called “politics”.Therefore, Aristotle’s “housekeeping” became the “economics” (ethics) of later generations, and the issues that were originally concerned within the family became public issues in the whole society.But the problem is that such necessity problems can never be solved, so people will never be able to spare time to pursue human affairs that transcend animals.People who are committed to these transcendent affairs should instead be sneaky. When others ask, “Can you eat this for food?”, it seems that they always have some reason, and in the end they can only make some excuses by “can you make some money.”

Many people like to say “How to do art without eating”, trying to override the meaning of “eating” over various fields such as art and philosophy (the reason why they rarely override “science” is just because they believe that science can help people eat enough).But the “necessity” of eating proves that the meaning of eating is “the lowest” and is the first one to be shelved.Shelving is not giving up, it does not mean that creators who pursue art give up eating, but that they can draw a clear line – they only discuss the issue of eating within a certain line, and after they step out of this line, they can put the issue of eating.I gave a personal example when I was in the cafe: I was going home to take care of the kids, and the kids were very important to me, but when I was chatting in the cafe, I had to put the kids on for the time being and focus on the public issues being discussed.If my child was crying next to him, your lover was acting cute next to him, and his parents were cooking later, then our discussion would be very bad.So we need to find a space such as a cafe. This space is both open and relatively closed. Open means that anyone can come in, but closure means that it must temporarily isolate noisy, chaotic, and never-ending transactions outside.

I admire Arendt, and I also see that in the digital world of the future, the lost and distorted “public sphere” may be revived in a new look.For example, when we “go online”, we naturally get rid of the “field of necessity” and get rid of the animal body, so as to pursue the value of spirituality with confidence.This is not so much an ideal of Web3.0, but rather an old story of Web0.3.When the Internet was just emerging, hacking culture was absolutely mainstream.Programmers share their creations without asking for rewards, not seeking profit but seeking fame. Hackers pursue excellence, compete for strength, respect each other, and communicate selflessly.In that era, the young Bill Gates, who called for “making money through programming”, was the outlier.The mainstream culture of the Web0.3 era was partly inherited by the later open source community, but more netizens who were concerned about necessity affairs flocked to the Internet.Therefore, in the era of Web2.0, the nature of the Internet as a public domain has deteriorated again.One of the significance of Web3 is to “reconstruct the threshold”, divide boundaries within the digital world through new technologies, and promote the formation of public space.

Public space is not a huge space that is monolithic, and public space is also composed of small spaces that are both open and closed.For example, cafes, streets, and classrooms are all public spaces, each with different thresholds and different degrees of enclosure.A small circle formed based on Web3 identity authentication can also be a public space with different thresholds and styles.

These public spaces can be of countless styles, such as cafes that can also have countless styles.But they can also have several basic forms, which we can also find references in Greek city-states.Specifically, the “terrain” we are talking about also refers to the internal structure of the “city-state”.Finally, I thought of another word – “pattern”.Countless Greek city-states have their own characteristics, but some basic “patterns” are unified.For example:Town hall, market, temple, stadium, theater, spring room.They are all public spaces, but have different locations.

town HallIt is the highest civic council, generally discussing the most serious public affairs, launching various proposals and debates here, and resolving differences by voting.Benchmarking against the digital world is the core parliament of DAO.

market(Agora, also the square) is a more open space where there can be serious debates, but there can also be general chat.People can also sell opinions and goods here.Benchmarking to the digital world is the NFT market plus public social page.

TempleIt is also a space in Greek city-states, but it is more inclined to cultural and artistic content. It is often hosted by high-end clergy, providing questions and answers (oracles, interpretations), and also playing the role of publicTreasurehouse, libraryfunction.Benchmarking to the digital world can be AMA and sermons, treasury and resource libraries.

stadiumIt is a competitive stage for pursuing excellence, where people compete with each other in many utilitarian games, and ultimately point to the highest honor of the Olympics.Benchmarking to the digital world is “games” and their communities.In addition, the gymnasium is also an important place for Greek citizens to receive education. The wise teach knowledge in their leisure time. Therefore, the school was developed from the meaning of leisure time, and later Plato Academy and the like were also established on the basis of the gymnasium.Games and learning are isomorphic, which is also matched with the concept of gamified learning in deschool.

theaterProvide public entertainment and public talks, and also pursue “celebrities” to meet the social needs of entertainment and gossip.Benchmarking the entertainment industry and its communities in the digital world.

Spring RoomIt is the public bathroom where people take off their secular identities and meet honestly, and may talk about more vulgar topics.Benchmarking to the digital world is an anonymous community.

In short, when building a digital city-state, we can design basic rules on the “bottom environment”, and the key is to provide “terrain separation” or environmental “pattern”.We must separate public spaces from private spaces, and we must also separate public spaces of different styles.Different DAOs may have different emphasis, but the overall separation specifications may be common and are worth building first.