Where did the name EOS come from?
It certainly does not take a genius to discover that Eos is also the name of the Greek Goddess of the dawn and that Athens was the birthplace of democracy. If EOS was indeed derived from this historical context, why would that be?
It may be because democracy or 'people power' as an idea is potentially the best form of governance that human beings have yet devised. The problem has always been, as with many great ideas, the way it was implemented. Democracy has never been implemented very well or been able to resist corruption for long enough to reap the benefits.
Why is 'people power' a good thing? It's good because nothing underpins a society of specialists more than trust. It is essential that the trust is maintained though a common sense of fairness. In order to achieve fairness, enough people need to be directly connected to decision making in order to establish rules that can accommodate differences of opinion without undermining trust. Those elevated participants charged with executing the will of the people must be accountable.
One of the failings common to all attempts to implement democracy in the past has been a lack of accountability. The reason for that was the very high degree of secrecy (or a lack of transparency.) With secrecy it is very easy to avoid accountability and before you know it, you are no longer part of a democracy. On the other hand, if you have transparency, then those executing the will of the people have something to lose and in the end, the connections between the people and the rules are maintained, trust is maintained.
Democracy has it's flaws, for instance, why should 30% of people live by the rules of 70% of people? If we are talking about advantage, obviously the 70% would not want to give an unfair advantage to the 30%. But if we are talking about innovation, the 70% may not have the vision. Even so, one might presume that eventually the 70% would catch up. Direct democracy can be continuous after all. The second that opinions change, rules can change....or change back. It may be that after living within an actual democracy for many years, the superficial differences between us will become less acute bringing even more stability to the democratic system.
Blockchains have made true democracy the most possible to implement that it has ever been. Perhaps EOS, possibly the most advanced iteration of that technology, will be the best implementation of democracy there has ever been in the history of humanity.
It is said that...
Eos rose each morning from her home at the edge of the ocean to usher in the light of the sun.
If EOS is to be the new engine and universal medium for human governance and transactions, it is very reassuring that the development team would choose such a name. Trust needs to be earned, even in a technology that does not require participants to trust......trust in the governance model, trust in the developers and code, trust in each other. At least with EOS we have many layers of promising precedent where trust has a running start;
Graphene, DPOS, Bitshares and Steem.
Already, we are beginning to trust that we no longer need to trust. One day soon and every day thereafter, EOS may greet us like the first rays of the dawn sun, nurturing humanity's first steps towards the dawn of a new age of civilisation and enlightenment.
The power of EOS may be in it's ability to scale without barriers to entry, to provide the best form of governance yet devised and truly become the medium in which we may build to last.
I welcome Eos as I welcome the dawn, with a deep breath, a joyous heart and a mind of hope and possibility.
Happy Steeming
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athenian_democracy
Thank you for posting @benjojo.
A fine, well written article...since history repeats itself....Steemians thank you for tying the present with the past in such a lovely way.
Yes....in Dan's most recent interview he pronounced EOS as E.....long e and OS .....as the oss in the word boss. That does get ones attention. ^_^
The interesting thing regarding freedom is that it is an innate desire of man to be free.
All the best to you and your family. Cheers
Thank you bleujay....I think I was actually way off! :) There are too many flaws in democracy for Dan and team to have limited themselves to that model. I do struggle to comprehend what would be better if implemented as intended. Thankfully, we are not limited by my imagination or intelligence! To wish and hope for something even better is a wonderful thing and with the best of us working day and night on it....how can we fail? ;)
Yes....agreed......in terms of democracy as we today know it.
Read Dan's reply above and he is right....we, humanity in general is sadly lacking in knowledge to understand what is best...therefore too ignorant to make decisions on matters of how to govern ones self let alone make decisions regarding an entire people.
Perhaps it was John Adams, who said......the people must have values, virtue, integrity for a democracy to function as intended.
It is the human factor that lacketh.....Man is too weak to function properly on his own....he can either accept God's power or default to satan's system. Thus the historical struggle between good and evil. Principle...When we reject the Giver...God...the gifts of freedom...prosperity..etc. are withdrawn.
Thank you for opportunity to discuss and ponder these things.
All the best to you. Cheers.
Yes I totally get that we are our own worst enemy :) The question I have is, given a more stable environment, can we grow beyond those limitations that make self-governance virtually impossible?
Perhaps if we augment our capacity for intelligence and knowledge? Do we need to become cyborgs before we can achieve harmony? Would we still be human at that point.....does that even matter? ;) I really do wonder where all this will lead.
Indeed where does all this lead.
Since it seems history trends or is cyclical...it seems we have an opportunity here for an integrity from the honesty of the blockchain.....an opportunity to operate from a basis of trust and then the rest is up to us and that is where the variation begins. Creme always rises to the top......is the principle....
A cyborg comes with the connotation of no soul....no volition operational....therefore it can be assumed that while there will be those who surrender their volition to someone or something....man desires to exercise his volition...thus many differences resulting in either a saturation of good or evil at any given time in history.....cycles.
Again not sure who said it....he said...he gave a nation two hundred years to exist when it began under a system of democracy. The people forget the 'why' and operate from a 'how'.
bleujay sees the blockchain discovery/frontier as an opportunity....nothing more or less.
It is truth that gives us capacity for knowledge, life, liberty and happiness.
Thank you for your reply @benjojo.
Very interesting thoughts. Perhaps this is the opportunity we've been waiting for, the one we need. You are absolutely right that the real work comes after. It's easy to self-destruct. The pursuit of deeper truth and discovery of purpose will be up to us!
Democracy has failed pretty much everywhere it's been tried. It's really hard to see why people still like it so much.
Hopefully EOS won't be ruined by democracy.
Indeed it has. Do you think democracy has ever really had a chance anywhere though? The ideas behind democracy are sound, don't you think? I'm always up for an improvement!
Democracy is flawed because it is open ended authority that transfers power to those who can manipulate public opinion. From here it can stir up wars.
The average person isn't informed enough to make decisions on almost any issue and no elected individual can even comprehend all the info let alone resolve all the internal contradictions and competing interests.
So the failure of democracy is in the limited distribution of knowledge and intelligence. How can that ever be resolved? Is it your intention to build systems that are just good enough that we have the time to try to address this issue by spending more of our money on things that will help mitigate that issue?
Steem is an example of massively decentralized budgeting. It isn't a democracy and not everyone needs to read and evaluate everything.
Markets work by communicating information indirectly. Governance needs to have similar properties to markets.
Thanks dan, you've given me a lot to think about as usual.
What I mean is, can we grow beyond those limitations that challenge our ability to self-govern? Is the thing we are lacking time and an appropriate environment in which to do it? All else is a patch right?
Democracy fails in practice and in theory. Humans are very irrational and can't work very well in a situation where they don't get immediate feedback for harmful actions. If somebody votes badly, they are externalizing the consequences to everybody, and the voter himself doesn't necessarily get any kind of negative feedback for the action. It's hard to correct your behavior without direct feedback.
You might want to check out books like The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies and Democracy and Decision: The Pure Theory of Electoral Preference.
Thank you samupaha, you are very kind to take the time to recommend these books. I do understand what you mean with regards to flawed decision making. When I start to think about these problems, I always end up concluding that the only solution is to not be human :) or do the best we can to minimise the impact of our flaws. Obviously, the application of blockchain technology is an attempt to accomplish the later. What is the best form of governance that you are currently aware of?
LOL, I'm not being kind, I'm just very frustrated that so many people still like democracy. :P
What is the best? It depends on a lot of things. Culture, demographics, potential threats, etc.
So there is not a one particular governance model that will fit for every society every time.
That's why I support systems that guarantee freedom for individuals and groups to use the governance model they see the best. We need to have a lot of choices for everybody so we can try a lot of different systems at the same time. Over time we'll see which ones work and which ones do not.
The goal is to let individuals move under a jurisdiction they like the most. People should be voting with their feet instead of in elections.
I don't like democracy exactly....I just thought that it has never had a chance to work and was the best we had. I totally agree with you and Dan....it has big flaws.
What we need is perfect people power, whatever that is?! I'll have a go...for any group of people, they have all the information all of the time that enables them, despite their human differences, to align the rules by which they chose to live in harmony. They completely agree on anything of importance because their interests are aligned and they are not susceptable to outside influence. As a result of their harmony, they are able to adapt their rules to fit perfectly with their changing environment or needs allowing them to effortlessly adapt. Any differences between them are superficial and therefore lack any power to create disharmony. All of that relies upon us no longer being human. Shame.