tyaga.org

Since there are not a lot of development updates for this quarter, I will spend some time looking back at 2009 development ‘highlights’ instead. (The embarrassing fact that these are highlights says something about my odd interests in life.)

While tyaga.org’s philosophical foundations have remained stable and consistent (see satconomy.org), the technical details of the implementation have not always been easy to follow. There really is a lot of art involved in system design, even in an ‘objective’ technical field such as information systems. On a more encouraging note, the accounting system, which was called Entity Module in early 2008, has really become more stable this year. The code is much easier to read and the naming conventions have been mapped to the revised ocaup terminology. The seemingly unnecessary effort to implement transaction recovery outside of built-in database functionality is also paying off, especially as the protocol emphasis shifts towards allowing long-duration web-service type transactions. I still have not released the revised code pending the addition of other functionalities, primarily held up by the issues discussed next.

The effort to build on top of the Prowl demo was, to put it mildly, not very successful. In hindsight, it is easy to see that by using the publication of records as a form of ‘instantaneous reporting’ at the time of transaction, the payment messaging requirements had become too tightly coupled with reporting requirements. To drastically lessen this dependency, I am currently investigating a different approach that should be better in many ways than PaCT. In general, the same conceptual ‘parts’ are used but re-arranged for better modular ‘fit’ and orthogonal development. I expect this new approach, tentatively called Inter-entity Payment Protocol (IPP), to be demonstration-ready by early next year.

Finally, there have been brief but encouraging discussions with other currency design enthusiasts. The potential for collaborations is definitely brewing, but there has to be a good, even if not exact, matching interests on the importance of representing market entities in a currency brand index. More often than not, other projects emphasize visualizing individual contributions and personal reputation metrics, while the emphasis in this site has always been on enabling performance evaluations of specialized organizations that provide products and services to the market. In other words, tyaga.org’s information system design focus is on auditable budgets and inter-entity transactions between organizations, NOT internal transactions between members of the same organization or barter community.

That is pretty much 2009 in a nutshell. I will outline general projects ideas and work plans for the year 2010.

Now that I have finished concentrating on other projects and commitments, I look forward to continuing tyaga.org’s development work. One of the web sites that I visited recently was the community way (CW) in Comox Valley. The information design aspect that caught my interest was the ‘current numbers’ page with links to a graph and spreadsheets.

What follows is not a critique of the reporting system design as used by CW – for all I know, that design serves CW’s needs perfectly. I also do not question the community emphasis of the CW currency system and I sincerely would like to see such a system succeed wherever it is implemented. My goal in offering the following comparative analysis is to better explain the technical nuances behind tyaga’s evolving IS design requirements.

It has become obvious to me that the use of offline transaction instruments, such as minted notes, checks, or store-and-forward devices, could not be tracked efficiently and would not be conducive to the development of dynamic currency brand reporting systems. So while my earlier design notes referred to the importance of offline devices, I have since revised the technology requirements to focus on online devices. The most promising device in this regard is a basic cell phone with SMS capability, which is already widely deployed and inexpensive to own. While a QR-code app is not required to post transactions through SMS, a camera phone with that capability would simplify data entry and transfer between transactors.

Another design change, as described in a recent post, is the use of public keys for better non-repudiation and auditing capabilities. The example index on this site clearly illustrates the required tracking and metrics at the level of an entity, as represented by its currency brand, and not simply aggregated for a whole community as shown in CW’s current numbers graph. I am not sure of CW’s requirements for auditability, but tyaga’s design requirements include the auditability of any published performance and evaluation information for each entity.

Finally, it is clear that an under-developed reporting system does not hinder CW’s implementation. In contrast, a robust and dynamic reporting system is required to implement tyaga’s concept of spontaneous, targeted non-cooperation against specific currency brands. A currency brand index, constructed with dynamic information from reporting systems, should help participants make informed decisions on whether to accept or reject a currency brand in a transaction.

Again, I applaud CW as one of the rare, actual, working implementations of alternative trading systems. At the same time, I am reminded that there are not many development or implementation efforts that seek to address tyaga’s main information systems requirements.