Who Controls the Killswitch?


I spoke to Eric Alston again! Eric is a professor at University of Colorado and recently completed a fellowship with the Summer of Protocols studying the governance of killswitches. His report is titled “Killswitch Protocols: Or On Engineering Recursive System Death” and co-authored with Seth Killian and Garrette David.

During the interview we discussed the history of killswitches, the many ways they can be governed and the implications of the governance system they lie in like in blockchain governance. But killswitches are not just about complex technical systems but also social ones, and so we also take a look at killswitches in complex social systems like labor strikes as an example and how they are governed.

You can also find the interview in video form on YouTube here.

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