Interviewers: Tang Han, Bai Yu

Interview guests: Flynn, Huang Sunquan

Editor's Note: From April 9th ​​to May 7th, 2021, the "Rural Construction China Thought Exhibition" sponsored by the Space Production and Rural Practice Research Group of the Visual China Collaborative Innovation Center of the China Academy of Art will be held at the Gaofan Photography Art Museum in Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou Held at the Gaofan Memorial Hall. After several years of field work, the team led by the curator Professor Huang Sunquan unfolded a completely different story through the narrative of the text."contemporary art exhibition"The way of partial visual presentation.

At the same time, there are three important breakthroughs in the exhibition. First, the MetaDAO team commissioned by the curatorial team and the Institute of Network Society used the decentralized network platform Decentraland to reproduce the prototype of the Beibei urban landscape plan in the 1930s and 1940s , and held a month-long online exhibition simultaneously in the virtual space of "Beibei"; the second is to use the current hot roam research to establish a completely open and continuously increasing database open to the public, providing attention to rural construction People with information can read all the stories of this exhibition at any time, and can also read the field report of the curatorial team in the near future; third, the document stories, charts, videos, etc. of this exhibition can be obtained from arweave.org (AR) The sponsorship of the founder Sam (who was the keynote speaker at the Fifth Network Society Annual Conference) will be stored in a space that will never disappear in theory, and will remain permanently on the distributed nebula of the blockchain.

The exhibition realizes the integration of real rural areas and virtual space, and presents the rough rural history with the power of cutting-edge technology. Whether in virtual space or in the real world, this exhibition has attracted people's attention. CryptoC had the honor to conduct an interview with the curator Professor Huang Sunquan and the MetaDAO team that constructs the virtual space. The details are as follows:

Dialogue with MetaDAO: Infrastructure Organizations in the Metaverse

Tang Han @CryptoC: When was MetaDAO established? Who is it made up of? What is the vision for its establishment?

Flynn: MetaDAO was established in August 2020. It is currently a DAO organization (decentralized autonomous organization) composed of artists, architects, programmers, blockchain enthusiasts, and game enthusiasts. The formation of the fantasy team is based on our extension of the Internet Declaration of Independence, open source culture and cypherpunk, and a profound exploration of the interweaving of the virtual world and the real world. We illustrate our understanding of this topic by attempting a series of experimental works. The purpose of establishing a group is to attract partners who are interested in Metaverse topics to communicate and discuss. We contribute to the future virtual world as a part of this era by reading books, papers, experiments, and making projects.

Tang Han @CryptoC: Who will support the operation of MetaDAO? What is the entry and exit mechanism of MetaDAO?

Flynn: The company behind MetaDAO is MetaverseLabs. MetaverseLabs bought some good land on Decentraland in the early days, and now these lands are worth a lot of money, and they will provide resources for the operation of the DAO organization.

MetaDAO is a self-organization, we are relatively free to join and exit now. However, if you want to apply to join, you must have a certain understanding of our team members before you will officially allow members to join. Everyone's work is mainly based on personal interests.

We've tried a lot of things that require different disciplines to work together. Members can propose an idea or a project and introduce his idea and project to the community, and if everyone is interested, they are free to join.

Tang Han @CryptoC: In addition to Decentraland, are you still focusing on other Metaverse games? Such as Sandbox and Crypto Voxels?

Flynn: Like the two games you just mentioned, we are actually involved. We have established a MetaDAO group space in crypto voxels (https://www.cryptovoxels.com/play?coords=S@100W,123S). On Sandbox, our team members also participated in the first creative competition in China last year and won two awards.

We are an organization that is very open to the world of the metaverse, not limited to a certain space. Even, we don’t restrict ourselves to the metaverse world of the blockchain; open worlds like Minercraft, although they cannot be NFT at present, we will pay attention to them.

Tang Han @CryptoC: Your circle of friends is very interesting. During the Chinese New Year last year, you called on everyone to celebrate the New Year together in Dragon City in Decentraland, a purely virtual world. What do you think of the fact that human life is becoming more and more virtual?

Flynn: I think virtual integration into life is an unstoppable trend. According to the definition within our MetaDAO group, we are now in a cyberspace.

The mobile phones or mobile Internet we usually use are already a very mature and complete cyberspace. But what we are focusing on now is the next development of this cyberspace. There is a certain difference between the metaverse form and the cyberspace. The metaverse world will be more immersive and will have some deep integration with reality, such as physical perception. And some of the things we are doing now are to welcome the arrival of a world like Metaverse.

Dialogue with Huang Sunquan: Go forward, look back

Baiyu @CryptoC: In my opinion, Rural Construction itself is an alternative practice organization based on the countryside and the countryside. Mr. Huang, you chose to present such field practice in the digital world, that is, the virtual space of Ethereum. Mr. Huang, what is the opportunity for you to do such a virtual exhibition in Dragon City of Decentraland? Will there be such a practice in the future?

Huang Sunquan: The reason why we have such an exhibition on Decentraland is mainly because we got to know MetaDAO. We held a Mesh Network workshop last time when we held the annual meeting of the Internet society, and there happened to be a team member in MetaDAO who was a student of our Gome Transmedia, and they volunteered to help Mesh Network create a virtual world. I think this Great idea.

From your first impression, you may think that rural construction is a very rustic or backward thing, which is very related to mud, but has little to do with digitalization. But I have never wanted to make Xiangjian into such an exhibition. Because the countryside itself contains power, and if this power can be presented in the online world, it will be a very unique thing.

So I was thinking: Is it possible for us to reconstruct a certain period of history in the virtual world, such as building an important place like Beibei. After rebuilding it, if this scene can be kept on the blockchain, the previous stories can be told to the future people through the current people, and it will become a very interesting historical interweaving process. It is like a historical barrage, many people can go in and return to history, chat with current people, and future people can continue to join.

In my opinion, Beibei is just the beginning. In the process of urbanization, China's countryside is gradually disappearing. It would be very interesting if these vanishing villages could be rebuilt in a virtual space. That is to say, there are not only completely imaginary things in the virtual world, but also human memories that have been accumulated through history. Then we are involved in a very important thing, called the memory of history and the stone of history. I think this is a challenge to the habit of only going forward and not looking back in the virtual world.

Can we both go forward and look back? I hope that if we can continue to do this, it should be quite interesting.

Baiyu@CryptoC: Teacher Huang is the director of the Gome Network Society Research Institute. One of your research topics is the network social movement, and you have also participated in some community activities before. How do you see the world we live in becoming more and more like the virtual world of Cyberpunk Kerry? Will there be a difference between urban and rural areas?

Huang Sunquan: This question is very good. Last year's Network Society Annual Conference was the 5th, and we invited many scholars to express their views. To put it simply, modernity is a process in which people break away from the inherent etiquette and rural culture, and then reintegrate into the so-called urban life. Then informatization actually creates two very extreme gaps, one is called self (myself), and the other is network (network). For example, the social relationship that people are used to has actually become the relationship between themselves and the Internet.

Any cyberspace has a gap between urban and rural areas, or a process of struggle and integration between the network and the self. The point is how we look at the development of the world without a linear perspective of historical development. All the descriptions of cyberpunk we see now have some kind of dystopian complex, such as the imagination that the industry has developed to the extreme, the world is destroyed, and the earth is about to end. But this kind of thing blocks a lot of interesting possibilities and blocks our way forward. ——Because we seem to have only one way.

We cannot give up discussing the road ahead because of cyberspace and ignore the problems that are happening. In a cyberspace with a huge gap between urban and rural areas, how can we extend the sense of trust we have built from the blockchain to rural areas? This is a very big topic.

We participated in the Platform Collaborative Conference in Hong Kong in 2018. In Europe and the United States, we have been involved in a lot of rural areas, assisting local rural cooperatives to improve their technology, and then turning it into a platform cooperative that can be used to resist the exploitation of e-commerce platforms such as Taobao or Alibaba. In Europe, they even issued fair coin, so that all cooperatives in Europe can conduct transactions between cooperatives on the basis of blockchain. Therefore, blockchain technology is not limited to the currency circle or only high-level culture. It is also valuable and meaningful to ordinary farmers and farmers who generally engage in cooperatives. It mainly depends on how we imagine this matter.

Whitefish @CryptoC: As a decentralized global computer, Ethereum gives us a lot of room for imagination about new organizational forms. For example, the practice of DAO (decentralized self-organization) is emerging in the blockchain industry. There are also some community token projects. In fact, I think they are very similar to some local money projects that I know of in Catalonia, that is, local community currencies. From my point of view, I think the practices described by these new concepts of blockchain have many similarities in essence with the alternative practices done by pioneers such as Mr. Huang and many other pioneers who have devoted themselves to community activities. . So I would like to ask Mr. Huang, what impact do you think technologies such as blockchain can bring to some forms of human organization, or community practices?

Huang Sunquan: You just mentioned Catalonia. In fact, after the financial turmoil in 2008, there were a lot of autonomous organizations and cooperative organizations in Catalonia, because they no longer believed in banks, and they did not believe in national banks. After 2008, there was a very important book , is telling the story. (Note: "Aftermath: Culture in Economic Crisis")

After 2008, 2/3 of the output value of the Catalonia region basically relies on autonomous organizations, mutual aid associations and cooperatives. They have established educational cooperatives and seed cooperatives, and even theaters can form cooperatives or self-governing organizations. Also, they invented things like time banks as work-for-work practices, which are plentiful. There is an article translated from the website of our institute that talks about the practice in Catalonia. (Beyond the Crisis - Emergence of Alternative Economic Practices https://www.caa-ins.org/archives/1909)

The significance of the practice in Catalonia is that when the country fails, or when the existing monetary and financial system fails, we can explore a new possibility. I think this happens to be the meaning of DAO. But I have a special opinion:

I think the existence of decentralized autonomous organizations is precisely because of the existence of autonomous organizations.

Before the birth of MetaDAO, only people like MetaDAO are willing to do this, and MetaDAO can appear. So for me, technology and people are two things that are useful together. Technology will not help us change anything, but people who are willing to use technology to change the world, this group of talents can help us move forward.

There have been more and more such cases in recent years. They may not fit the concept of decentralization, or even use blockchain, but they do change a lot of things. For example, I have a group of good friends in New York. They are from colab (https://colab.coop/), which is an international programmer cooperative. At that time, most of the workers who helped with housework in New York were women from Puerto Rico. If they accepted the project through rabbit, the platform would take 70% of the money, and they could only get 30% of the money.

This group of colab people went to build a platform for women in Puerto Rico. New York citizens can post their needs through this platform, and women can take orders and do them. This self-governing organization can maintain the operation of this platform with a small amount of money, and the program is written by colab people. Information can be found on the Colab website. After this operation, this group of Puerto Rican women can get 70% of their salary, and 30% goes to the collective to maintain the platform and server costs.

I also have a group of friends who have set up Next Commons Lab (https://nextcommonslab.jp/), and they have a project called Next communities21. They have found many communities in Japan, and each community has started to develop time bank. Starting from the time bank, each community can recognize each other's currency. It is useless if an organization only has its own currency recognized. When connecting groups, they have found more than a dozen communities in Japan. Each community has its own time currency, and these communities can exchange currencies. exchange. For example, if my community produces rice and your community produces fruit, then the two of us can directly use this currency to buy and sell each other. They feel that this kind of decentralized organization based in the community can help those community residents regain their self-confidence faster and more concretely, so that their transactions can proceed more smoothly.

Tang Han @CryptoC: I am impressed by what you just said about "going forward, but looking back". At present, human beings are indeed undergoing a vigorous technological revolution, and they are constantly migrating to the virtual world. It seems that everyone is embracing such a future, for fear of falling behind. People rarely care about some "mud" things, but these things are indeed dying fast in the real world we live in.

Huang Sunquan: According to the data we have, in the growth rate of China's GDP in recent years, the output value of real estate accounts for more and more of the growth rate of GDP, which includes various values ​​generated in our land circulation, including business rights, contracting rights, and subcontracting rights, etc.

The output value of real estate accounts for an increasing growth rate of GDP, especially in the past two years. This means that the pace of urbanization is accelerating. For example, you don't need to go to the city now, because the city will come to your door by itself. Some of the villages, peasant culture, and peasant life that we are traditionally used to are about to disappear, because it will soon become a town.

The country is urbanizing. But if we just mourn or have a nostalgic experience, it is actually not helpful. One of the questions we have to consider now is: Can farmers be taught to use Internet technology so that they can integrate into urban life. If not, they will definitely become the least marketable and influential people among the townspeople.

We can actually see that many farmers took a sum of cash after going upstairs, and then he didn't know how to live, and he didn't know what to do after the cash was used up. By the second generation of the farmer, they no longer have the homestead in their hands, so his children don't know what to do. Such problems are happening in large numbers, and we need to promote solutions.

Baiyu @CryptoC: Urbanization is one aspect. On the other hand, has the invasion of the online world brought great changes or problems to the countryside?

Huang Sunquan: Yes, there are many cases. After the epidemic required everyone to take classes online, the children of peasant families felt very uncomfortable. Because many of them do not have computers at home, they can only use mobile phones, but the mobile phones have various interfaces, and it is very troublesome for children to do homework and hand in homework. If we don't have enough subsidies or care in terms of policy, then the rural children will be stretched a distance.

In addition, with WeChat, teachers will set up scary WeChat groups. In the group, teachers will ask parents how to tutor students, and even accuse them of not paying attention to students' homework after class. It is an even harder job for rural parents who either don't have the time or the ability to direct their children. Such educational practice is very unfavorable to rural areas.

In addition, the relationship between rural areas is indeed getting weaker and weaker. I know that many rural villages are now using WeChat to organize village committees or villagers’ meetings, but there are many announcements, and a virtual community has not yet been able to truly form a field where everyone can speak. Since everyone is still a bit scrupulous about speaking on it, this group will eventually become a policy announcement group or even a warning group. So there is no public life in the countryside. The public cultural facilities such as rural cultural auditoriums, squares or temple cities that we saw in the early days are all gone now.

Let's take a look at Taobao Village. The redder the Taobao Village, the lower the standard of public life, because all the cultural auditoriums have become Taobao University or Taobao Stage. Every villager pulls down the door and keeps producing things inside. At the same time, considering the relationship of competition, he is also afraid that his neighbors will know what he produces, what packaging he makes, and so on. The relationship in the countryside has been weakened by this kind of commercial society, and it may even be more intense than the competition in the city.

I have probably seen dozens of Taobao villages, and every time I visit, there is always a sense of desolation. These villages have cement roads and hard pavement, and the lights are on, and the signal is fast, but there is no one in this village. They don't go out, just keep producing in the living room and factory. I seldom see the old people in the village chatting in groups of three or four, and the rural life I was so used to suddenly disappeared.

It's a very new world, like cyberpunk. The world is new, but there are no people left. I think this is a very big shock to me.

Whitefish @CryptoC: Is this related to the organization of the village? As you mentioned just now, will the organizational form of "time bank" or cooperatives in Catalonia change the production and living atmosphere in the countryside? Would it be a good form of practice?

Huang Sunquan: It is hard to say whether it is good or bad.

I have been concerned with two very small farmer cooperatives. One is the Shanxi Yongji Puhan Cooperative, and the other is the Anhui Nantang Cooperative. Let’s talk about Yongji. They are a cooperative of cooperatives, and 6,000 villagers are members of the cooperative. This is a real cooperative. It is not a public-private partnership, nor is it corporate. There are cadres and directors within the cooperative, and meetings are held to determine the distribution of their benefits. This cooperative is not like the cooperatives outside, which only produce a single product. They will produce a variety of grains, fruits and vegetables suitable for four seasons.

The food they grow is delicious, but they don't sell it on Taobao, so I asked them why. They told me: If several natural villages are united, the food they produce will be eaten by the people in the village, and a small part will be taken outside to be self-sufficient. They don't need Taobao Village at all, and they don't believe in Taobao Village.

The case of Nantang is similar to them. In fact, this proves that for a self-sufficient real village, as long as production and reproduction match, they will gradually be able to keep knowledge and information industries in it.

These two cooperatives are currently developing relatively slowly. Cooperatives need to deal with many details, such as how much grain to produce each year, how to exchange seeds with members each year, etc. There is a special consulting team in the cooperative to coordinate this matter. It is very small and inconspicuous, but I think if this model can continue and many young people are willing to stay in the local area, then they don’t need to go to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou to find help from those technology companies.

In the short term, they are unlikely to develop platform cooperatives as quickly as in Europe, but I think this kind of development is more practical and more suitable for the development of contemporary China. The reason why Catalonia can succeed is precisely because it has a very long history of resistance and a very strong cultural and political identity, so they can easily rally against Spain. And China is very different from them, but this kind of thing slowly emerging from the bottom is very interesting. I very much hope that those of you who understand technology can go to the countryside with us more, because the countryside really needs you s help.

Tang Han @CryptoC: I look forward to more exhibitions you will launch in the blockchain-based virtual world, Mr. Huang. Such exhibitions are difficult to eliminate and can bring more shock and power to people. The offline exhibition may be removed in a day or two, but the on-chain exhibition, if you don’t remove it, it may become a museum, and it will still stay there after a long time. A record of our present history.

Huang Sunquan: Yes. You said it very well. This is my dream, but I don’t know how to realize it. For example, this exhibition MetaDAO has helped us a lot, so we can make Beibei in Decentraland, but I know that Beibei is in The rent on decentraland is quite expensive, and it is impossible for me to let MetaDAO support us all the time.

I am now discussing with some foreign technicians whether it is possible to move a model like Beibei to a network for storage in the future, so that we can build it village by village in the future. Among the millions of villages in China, there are always some very valuable villages, which are worthy of our reconstruction of the scene of this village. If this thing stays in the virtual world, it can digitalize our historical memory.

If this thing is feasible, then we can even crowdfund our project to everyone through NFT. I can't think too clearly now, but my imagination is:

At least in this process, I can tie the so-called very high-end technology with this kind of actual investigation and human behavior. It would be a very interesting avenue, both historical and future.

I often joke that we are witnessing a funeral of Chinese rural culture. The funeral is not a shame, because all rural areas are about to disappear, and it will definitely become something else. It's about how we document the funeral, or how we get people to witness it. Although I don't quite know what to do about funerals, at least I am an honest recorder and field researcher, which is very important to me.

White Fish @CryptoC: Mr. Huang mentioned a very important point just now. In metaverses like Decentraland or Sandbox, land is expensive. Just like I asked you the question at the beginning: the blockchain only brings a technical possibility, but if we don’t think in terms of production relations, there will be new differences between urban and rural areas and the gap between rich and poor . There are already people hoarding land and speculating real estate on Decentraland, and there will be new poor people in the digital age.

Huang Sunquan: MetaDAO's land is very valuable, and now Flynn is a rich man.

Flynn: We actually don't agree with the current state. We believe that through technology, things that are scarce in reality can become more accessible in the virtual world, such as land. In fact, our group does not agree with the positioning of land as a scarce product in these virtual worlds.

Such a positioning is actually contradictory. For example, there are many content creators who want to come in to create something for the world and provide vitality to the world, but due to the high price of land, these creators have no way to come in, which will make the world very closed. It has no content output, and even if the land price is not high, if the land has certain restrictions, it will not be able to meet the development needs of the future world. We believe that the future world will be very different from such a mechanism setting.

Huang Sunquan: We want to launch the action of Fighting Landlords in the virtual world. Compared with the past, we have made progress. There is a virtual world that is not restricted by the real world; however, if the rules of the virtual world are the same as the real world after half a day, then what are we working on? This is something we can think about next.