cc dark crystal crew: @peg @mu @kieran @kieran-two (is kieran-two still even active?)

#crab-meet in Naarm ( #melbourne ) to co-design a Trust and Cryptography Workshop

moebius crystal first seeded: %BKM0Udi...

image caption: this picture emites a curious, enticing and magical power in it's vibe to me, like the feeling of being out at sunrise and the air is potent and rich with the oncoming flood of warm glow light. the picture is a portrait rectangle and taking up 55-65% of the view is a oblong crystal also floating in portait in the centre of the image. Below are three people sat forming a triangle underneath cross legend performing some type of ritual. they are almost bowed forward with their hands stretched forward towards the base of the crystal. light is beaming out of their hands towards the base of the crystal. where the three beams meet there is a sparkling connection. at the base of the crystal underneath the three beams and on the red desert like sand/floor is an enticing coral turquoise crystal shard shining. it's unclear what connection it has to the scene but my feeling is a central one. there is a fourth person bringing something to the scene. it could be a snack of some description perhaps a loaf of bread, or it could also be a rock, but I am not sure how it would be used. In any case this person seems to be intentionally walking towards the ritual scene. They have the meditative presence about them like the person tending to the hot coals as part of a sweat lodge. a key player in the scene but somehow peripheral. I could describe the crystal but it would take me a very long time. there are 21 panels that I can view. There are bubbles and map like contours there and some many other depths. The last thing I will say is that this crystal is the crystal which was the inspiration for the Dark Crystal project here in SSB's logo. I feel happy every time I see this image, and in some way powerful

Context

Part of the strength of the Dark Crystal pattern is that it is a threshold scheme. Like multisignature or a joint-bank account some actions are only empowered when a predetermined threshold of participants agrees to the action. When setting up social data recovery with Dark Crystal you are asked to establish a quorum from amongst your custodians.

Aims of the Workshop

I'd like to design a workshop which investigates how people are already thinking about thresholds in their lives. How are people already using these humans ways of thinking to solve problems. After surfacing some of this info I would like to then apply this lense to the realm of ... wait for the scary word... dum, dum DUM, threshold cryptography! At Dark Crystal we allow people to determine quorums but we're not actually sure how people would think about this and how they would use it. It would be neat for us to know more! The aim of this codesigned workshop would be to design a session and some exercise which could be run by our distributed team, locally for each team member amongst their own adjacent communities so we can start to surface finds in a communicable way.

Parting Story

I am going to share a story, but it is not my story. I haven't asked for express permission so I won't attribute to them, but I feel comfortable relaying as they told me about it personally and also communicated it over twitter in and around the time, so I think it's fair to assume it is part of the public record.

I have an acquaintance who is very queer and very brown and very online and very vocal. They were travelling to Trumps Amurica in and around a time when people had been being turned around at the border or detained for hours. Prior to going the established a Safety Team. They gave their Safety Team of some number of people the passwords to their social media and other important digital and phone number information. They left instructions that if they went silent for a period of time after the flight then they should shout about this through their twitter account to let their Internet Community know what was happening. Each member of the Safety Team had the passwords in cleartext. This required lot of trust. As it turns out nothing happened and the trip to the USA was uneventful. However, a falling out with one of the Safety Team and so there was a scrabble to change all their passwords. Trust is an already vulnerable thing and it changes over time.

Threshold cryptography has a potential part to play in these types of Human Social Constructions - Lets figure out how to think about this more as People, Together.

cc: @hailey @Teq @manni @Laniyuk @mnin

tags: #dark-crystal #darkcrystal #design