Promiserver : procedurally executed, socially enforced microcontracts

This thesis envisions the future of trust and social commitment in a highly connected society. Starting with a distributed, democratized labor force and economies of efficient niche production and consumption, we predict radical shifts in the meaning and methods of commitment and the institutions of trust. The central experiment of this thesis is Promiserver, a web-based service and toolset for creation of lightweight contracts-dubbed promises-that are written as code. The service decouples commitment logic from specific applications, providing a generalized tool and forum for dynamic creation, binding, and evaluation of promises. The goal of Promiserver is to facilitate new models of collaboration by offering a sensible, lightweight, and agile promise system as an alternative to traditionally heavy legal commitments.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Fitzgerald, Brent Paul

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Maeda.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39341

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/39341