The DAC can replicate itself, and is able to gain control over more resources / infrastructure.

The natural-system user

If we try to build a framework for a DAC acting as a proxy for natural- systems, we have to reconsider them as users in the technosphere. Vilém Flusser’s work in ‘Dinge und Undinge’ (‘Things and Absurdities’) undermined the diametric conceptualization of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, suggesting that since human understanding of ‘the natural’ as that which is neither affected nor produced by humans, can only occur via the tools of culture – such as art and science – ‘the natural’ cannot be separated from ‘culture’.5 _{Thus, everything is infected by culture, and}

we are unable to properly understand interactions with non-human agency.

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66 _{This inability to conceptualize, thus act with, entities outside of the}

anthropomorphic frame has been granted additional urgency by the work of Benjamin Bratton. Within ‘The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty’ 6 _{Bratton posits that, viewing our increasingly networked} digital technologies through a computational lens, we must understand contemporary geo-political reality as a set of mutually-affecting, interactive layers, stacked atop each other. These layers – respectively the Earth, Cloud, City, Address, Interface, and User layers – should:

...Be seen not as so many species evolving on their own, but as forming a coherent whole: an accidental megastructure called The Stack that is both a computational apparatus and a new governing architecture. We are inside The Stack and it is inside of us.7

Furthermore, it quickly becomes apparent that artificial, digital en- tities (such as terra0) traverse – and actively affect – many of these layers far better than we carbon-based entities do, simply in virtue of their nature as (at least partially) digital (thus informational) entities. Indeed, Bratton states – referring to the mechanics of this megastruc- ture – that:

…Its primary means and interests are not human discourse and human bodies but, rather, the calculation of all the world’s information and of the world itself as information. We, the humans, while included in this mix, are not necessarily its essential agents, and our well-being is not its primary goal.8

However, the inability of the human to keep up with the speed and precision of both the Stack and the artificially-intelligent, ecological- agents inhabiting it, can (at least partially) be assuaged, via an under- standing of artificial-agents as merely differently-abled forms of agents much like ourselves. If we consider all agents as merely different tokens of the type ‘user’ (e.g. Animal-user, AI-user, and Natural-System-user), we can thus understand ourselves as human-users, interacting with terra0 as an augmented-organism-user, an augmented-forest-user, and / or a natural-system-user. Importing this resolution back onto the scale of argument designated by Flusser’s work also hints at a resolu- tion to his previously outlined dichotomy; within the reality posited by Bratton, strict demarcations of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are simply no longer coherent. Removing the dichotomous nature of our conceptu- alizations of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ via blurring and intermingling the boundaries of their referents opens up space for non-humans to act in, and with, the world via technology as agents of the same (if not higher) importance than humans.

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Non-human ownership

Discussion of DACs as proxies for natural-systems obviously requires a prior discussion of the notion of non-human ownership.

‘Property’ describes the most comprehensive form of possession of a thing, material or immaterial, at the legislative level.9 _{Features of such} legally-defined forms of property are that ownership can be assigned to a legal entity (not necessarily a person), the recognition of the rights of the owner, as well as the limits of these rights. One also discusses property as a ‘bundle of rights’ which symbolizes the economic and power relations existing between persons and things. Property operates in the legal, economic, and social spheres simultaneously, and is defined as the allocation of material or immaterial goods to a ‘real’ person or ‘legal’ entity-persona.

Blockchain technology and smart contracts enable non-human agents such as terra0 to administer capital and therefore to claim the right to property for the first time. Whilst non-human, legal entities such as corporations already hold some property rights, entities such as DACs – entities with agency – are the first non-human agents with the technical capability to act on this ownership autonomously.

Property, however, is primarily discussed at the present time as something over which only human actors have control, agency and responsibility – either themselves, or as representatives of a legal entity. terra0 begins in this legal grey area, originating in the

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68 _{technological change brought about with the invention of blockchain}

technology and smart contracts but speaking directly to forms of non- human agency in natural-systems also. Since an individual’s property is protected in accordance with their rights, one would assume that non-human entities which have gained the right to property are entitled to similar rights as natural persons. Although the European Parliament has drafted a proposal classifying ‘working robots’ as ‘economic persons’,10 _{this appears to pertain solely to discussions of} tax. However, answering questions related to this notion of robotic- economic persons, such as how to properly tax a DAC, will require discussing non-human agents as property owners. It appears that an EU-wide discussion of autonomous non-human agents having property rights – as being on-par with legal persons – might be on the horizon.

terra0

terra0 emerges from the notion that DACs can be proxies for natural- systems, and enable them to better manage their technical and eco- logical resources.

Overview

terra0 is a conceptualization of a self-owned forest; an ongoing art project and a prototype of a self-utilizating piece of land. Although we – the project initiators – are necessary to begin the process, the scope of our agency will eventually be reduced to zero; terra0 will act

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with complete autonomy.

From an economic perspective, a corporation cannot be separated from its purpose or function. Thus the means of existence of every corporation is based on its usability by third parties – people, or other legal entities. The worth of the usable aspects of a forest can be pre- cisely calculated according to contemporaneous values of its materials – wood – on international the market place. Beside its function as a source of raw material, the forest also holds the role of service contrac- tor – for leisure activities, for example.

terra0 creates a framework whereby a forest is able to sell licenses to log its own trees through automated processes, smart contracts, and blockchain technology. In doing so, this forest accumulates capital. A shift from reliance on third parties to self-administration enables the forest to maximize and sustain its marketable resources. With this capital, via the DAC, the forest buys itself from the project initia- tors, eventually owning itself. The augmented-forest-user, as owner of itself and administrator of a financially marketable resource, is in the position to financialize itself, buy more land, and therefore to expand.

Realization

In the first phase of the project, a forest will be purchased by the pro- ject initiators. In order to set up terra0’s initial economic model we, the initiators, had to take an inventory of the trees. Data relating to the trees, including species, age, size, diameter (at breast height), and health were collected manually and fed into a computational database based on ‘Ertragstafeln’ (‘yield tables’): empirical models represent- ing the development, growth, and overall trends in behaviour of the forest.11

Following this stage, a smart contract – containing all contractual defi- nitions, like an ownership model which determines when the contract can rewrite the ownership to itself and the economic model will be drawn up. This smart contract serves as a representation of the whole terra0 system, self-regulating its material exploitation in accordance with a certain set of rules based on the implemented ‘Ertragstafeln’. When the contract is drawn up the forest will be signed over to it; the property will no longer legally belong to the project initiators, but instead the augmented-forest-user terra0. The DAC is then indebted to the project initiators – this debt will be represented by ‘terra0 to- kens’. At this stage, the initiator holds all terra0 tokens, representing

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70 _{its debt.}

In the second phase of the project, the smart contract will be acti- vated, and therein act autonomously on the blockchain. The prede- termined economic model embedded in the contract will control the material exploitation of the forest.

The contract has a database which has received information from the project initiators about the trees. When triggered, the smart con- tract can compute – with the help of the database and the projected growth models – how many logging licenses it can sell, in the form of wood tokens. This decision is based on certain criteria, such as the age, health, and size of a given tree. It generates these tokens (which are buyable with ether) for sale through the customer who wishes to purchase a logging license. The smart contract uses the Ether earned from this process to pay for both its own hardware facilities, and ac- cess to trusted information from databases, which it needs in order to keep the system running.

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terra0 will sell licenses to log certain trees through a market website to private customers. When a given sum of money is earned via selling these licenses, terra0 will begin to repay its debt to the initiators by buying its terra0 tokens back from them. Once repayment is com- plete, the project initiators will hold no more terra0 tokens, making the forest the sole shareholder of its economic value. The forest, in economic terms, will control itself, it will be an autonomous eco- nomic unit.

From this point, the forest is no longer a source of material to be utilized by third parties, but instead interacts with them as a peer. Therefore, terra0 can be seen as a prototype for an autonomous eco- nomic unit in a post-human system of relations.

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72 _Conclusion

terra0’s ambition is to provide a framework for a self-utilizing piece of land, instantiating new territory for the discussion of post-human futures. For simplicity, our prototype will judge and work with simple economic criteria. The current aim of the project is simply to set up a working system, and not necessarily to define, or elaborate on, the numerous criteria needed to accommodate for the huge variety of all natural-systems. Nor can this project accommodate the complex ethi- cal questions around the use of human value-systems to approximate the worth of natural resources. Further research is required by biolo- gists, ecologists, and philosophers, in order to evaluate the usability of DACs as proxies for natural-systems in the future. What terra0 does do, however, is provide a new ground-zero for such discussions.

Notes 1 http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53855.0 2 http://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/white-paper 3 http://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a-decentralized-autonomous- corporation-part-i-137964427 4 http://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/392/deodands-dacs-for-natural-systems 5 Flusser, Vilém. Dinge und Undinge. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1993.

6 Bratton, Benjamin H. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Chicago: MIT Press,