At the most basic level of understanding, resources (or assets) are things that agents can create, use, consume, exchange, share, cite... They are inputs and outputs to actual processes. Their flows through actual processes are recorded in ledgers as economic events (using the REA language), see also NRP-CAS. Thus, resources are treated as primitives in the REA ontology, which is used to model the economic of OVNs. When we apply access rules to a resource, or pout it under a given property regime, we talk about assets. In standard REA accounting, a Resource is simply an entity that has economic value and can be tracked as it flows through Events performed by Agents. This is a correct but minimal definition — adequate for accounting, inadequate for governance.

In peer production, a resource is also:

An information carrier: it encodes design intent, provenance, contribution history, and quality evidence
A coordination node: agents discover it, express intent to use it, negotiate access, and coordinate around it
A trust anchor: its history of use (how it has been treated, maintained, transacted) is evidence about the agents who interacted with it
An economic attractor: governance rules embedded in a resource determine who can access it (use, consume), and therefore shape the economic topology of the network around it

From the standpoint of information systems, a resource is not merely a record in a ledger, it is a socially embedded object with its own identity, governance constitution, and economic role.

See also Resource Type page for an in-dept characterization of a resource as it is treated by information systems such as NRP-CAS or Nondominium.

Property regime

All resources are under some type of property regime.

Resource flows

The property regime interacts with organizational models to determine how resources flow in a given context. See more on Tangible Resource flows.

Sensorica has pioneered Nondominim, a distributed application that facilitates the flows.

Sources

OVNs implement peer production, which start from the premise that ‘it doesn’t know where the needed resource come from or how they will be located’. Thus, all processes are crowdsourced.

Market

Resources are commodities, i.e. artifacts that have been designed to propagate through transactions, which are mediated by monetary currency.

Intangibles

Relationships, networks and interaction are seen as sources of shared enrichment and value, not commodifiable. Large scale platforms, operated through netarchical capital, see human relationships and interactions as sources of economic rent. Netarchical enterprises provide stability and integration across multiple platforms, but see user interactions as commodifiable and exploitable.

Governance of resources

Rules that govern access to resources for their consumption or use. They are related to property regime and the rights associated with them. These rules also dependent on the type of resource. See more on Physical resource governance. See also Sensorica's governance document.

To reduce transaction costs (for accessing, i.e. using or consuming resources that are shared across a network) we can represent them in a digital environment using resource types.

With respect to blockchain, resources can be represented and governed by ricardian contracts. See more on the economic model.

With respect to Holochain, resources can be represented as data entries in DHT tables.

Resources in the NRP-CAS

Resources are the primary building blocks of the NRP-CAS, which is based on the REA ontology (resources, events, agents). They are represented and grouped by Resource Types within the NRP-CAS. Furthermore, resources are listed in an inventory in the NRP-CAS. See also pool of shareables.

The main idea in the OVN model is to implement resource in the NRP-CAS in a way that they are decoupled from organizational contexts, venture or project, and treat them as composable, free floating building blocks across the network. This is related to credentials, identity, individual profile and transaction. See work on Vallueflows, hREA and Nondominium. The economic argument is to reduce costs to innovation and production by recycling and reusing resources, reducing idle time of resources (latent or unused capacity) and to increase potential by providing a large number of permutations for assembling resources into creative and productive activity.

In Sensorica we also talk about adjacent possible, proposed by Helene Finidori, which refers to a new thing that can be made by adding just a bit of work / effort on top of what already exists. In other words, using a combination of existing resources one can figure out a new use / function, thus increasing innovation potential.

Resource Primitives

According to Greg Cassel from this reference.

Note that each of three technical resource types below-- mental, physical and media-- may hold the cultural context of being personal and/or shared resources.

mental resource

Mental resources include all thoughts and feelings.

We distinguish mental resources as foundational resource primitives to reduce our risk of conflating them with physical and media resources, per the following points:

Mental resources are expansive, including many thoughts and feelings which are difficult or practically impossible to model, map or measure. We often represent mental resources using language and media resources. Just note (again) that the map-- such as a governance resource-- is never the (mental) territory! Note that philosophical materialists might argue that mental resources are ultimately physical, determined solely by the development of nervous systems, but this text is decidedly non-materialist. (See Dialogic Holism if desired for philosophical context.)

identity

Identity consists of whichever types or identifiers enable us to sufficiently distinguish important elements, including instances of types, in a relationship, network or system.

Identity is distinguished here as a mental resource to indicate its primacy in perception and pattern recognition.

Note that identity is often personal and/or shared. For example, identity is useful for inner dialogue, simulations and roleplaying exercises which navigate different aspects of personality.

physical resource

A physical resource is a collection or system of physical energy and/or matter which has one or more useful traits.

Note that all matter is essentially contained energy, per mass-energy equivalence, but don’t concern yourself with physics or chemistry here unless you want to! Most physical resources contain multiple types of energy and matter. For example, many consumer products contain dozens of physical materials, as well as contained energy which is accessibly stored within batteries.

Physical resources are essential to life, and are valued for physical and chemical traits such as building material or food, fuel and energy, etcetera. They also function as the mediums which contain and transmit media resources.

Physical resources are deeply integrated with this document’s emphasis on ontological primitives,per (but not limited to) the examples below:

Recordings always represent physical resources (usually light and/or sound), although they often carry additional information via spoken or written language.

Models frequently represent or refer to physical resources, often in association with agents and governance resources (see below).

Governance resources often focus mostly, or even solely, on how agents govern the use of physical resources.

Deeper Description & Linkage is highly applicable to designing and describing complex physical resources. More specifically, key systemic inputs and outputs are often physical resources, and outputs are often products which require extensive research and development, including strict specification not only of products, but of production systems.

In contrast to the strict specification referred to in #4 above, many key physical resources are commonly known and practically interchangeable, or fungible, in many social contexts. (For example, a recipe might require an egg but not a specific egg.) However, projects often must track the precise usage and flow of such fungible physical resources via maps, including ledgers and databases.

The bodily or physiological capabilities of agents are physical resources, and thus are implicitly present in many personal and shared resources.

We can distinguish some physical resources with the important subtypes below:

permanent structure

Permanent structures are constructed physical resources which can’t be physically moved or removed without impractically expensive effort.

Permanent structures include most buildings, residential and otherwise. Like many resources (physical and otherwise), permanent structures are typically possessions which are governed by specific agents.

Because of their “practical permanence”, permanent structures are often especially associated with the governance of territories (see below) and related legal ownership systems.

territory

Territories are physical regions.

Territories may be as tiny as rooms, building interiors and small yards, and they may be as big as-- or even bigger than-- political nation-states. While tiny territories (such as rooms) are often defined three-dimensionally, most large territories are primarily defined according to boundaries/borders upon the surface of the Earth. (However, these large territories are sometimes defined as extending above and below ground level.)

Territorial governance includes most of what we’ve historically called “governments”, and is the primary basis of legal jurisdiction. Territorial governments often seek to influence or control most physical and media resources which are used within their boundaries, although only the most coercive governments (as well as some other institutions) attempt to control mental resources.

media resource

A media resource is a source of information superimposed on one or more mediums.

The definition above flexibly includes all signals, media items and channels, as well as all collections, networks and systems of media items and channels. Media resources are the main focus of this text because they include all recordings, models and maps, therefore including all of the governance resources which enable methodical project and task management.

The media resource primitives below are strictly focused on the substructural development of media networks of all types. They can, in relation to the other primitives here-- especially Functional Media Primitives-- be used to describe and develop all media networks and media systems.

sign

A sign is any phenomenon which represents other phenomena or concepts.

For example, the letter s is a sign, as is the word sign and its synonyms in any spoken and written languages.

signal

A signal is a sign or collection of signs which have been superimposed on one or more mediums. 5.1

stream

A stream is any uninterrupted flow of signs from a specific source, with or without an intentional beginning or end.

The signs within a stream may (or may not) contain any number of discretely-identifiable signals. Streams are often particularly relevant to digital channels.

message

A message is an intentional signal with identifiable limits or boundaries.

Messages are often created by streams, such as a stream of audible sounds from a human speaker. They may also be defined by packaging, such as a letter or email.

media item

A media item is a specific message which is mutually determinable, and practically identical, for everyone within an identifiable social context.

This definition is unusually subtle and technical 5.2 but it will enable us to sufficiently define, design, develop and govern decentralized digital media items, in addition to traditional media. This definition not only distinguishes items from the concepts and phenomena which they represent (i.e. “the map isn’t the territory”), but enables us to:

strictly link items to media channels which determine, influence, or are influenced by their contents strictly link items to specific roles in media channels, such as editor Media items have been immensely important, both culturally and technically, for millennia. Recently, the immense importance of media items has been responsible for all of the engineering, effort and money that’s gone into developing blockchain technology. While media items aren’t thoroughly classified here in Resource Primitives, all of the Functional Media Primitives must be sufficiently defined as media items to perform their social functions.

General traits: Media items are generally divisible and composable, and they can be replicated and adapted, including the ongoing development of two or more versions with the same source.

See also Appendix A: Media Items for deeper exploration, and examples, of media items.

media channel

A media channel is any field or path which can transmit signals between two or more agents and resources. 6

One of this text’s key premises is that identifiable media channels generate all media networks-- digital and otherwise-- and all governed media items, including all governance resources.

Non-determinism: Media channels can be identified, and can often be governed. However, they’re often very creative, generating indeterminate or non-deterministic contents or outputs. For example, many media channels may be openly used by ungoverned agents to send diverse signals, and even structured channels-- such as online forums-- often enable the addition, editing or deletion of content.

Sourcing/ determination of media items: Despite the general non-determinism of media channels, we can use governed channels to generate deterministic media items, such as governance resources which reliably represent social understandings and agreements.

Formatted versus unformatted channels: While many media channels are relatively open and flexible, we also develop many in which it’s only culturally permissible and/or technically possible to transmit or use data in specific formats. This applies especially to most software programs, which can only use certain types of data or files and, furthermore, have user interfaces which only enable certain types of inputs from agents.

media link

A media link is an intentional link between two or more media channels, items or sets.

Media links often create collections, classes and categories. Each media link technically creates a new media channel, although that channel may be practically identified by the technical media link-- an interface-- which defines a (new or previously established) link by amplifying, attenuating, requiring or prohibiting certain types of interaction. (For example, a hyperlink creates a one-way channel allowing an agent to quickly navigate to a linked item.) 6.1

External links

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