加密飞行 Vol.9 | 世界作为社区的实验场：Timour＆Edge City

💡Editor's note/编者按

从十余年前的数学、计算机科学和经济学领域到如今的加密、人工智能和 Pop-up city，Timour 的丰富经历，似乎映现出一代青年极客的精神迁徙。赛博文化和数字空间并不是唯一的载体，伴随对实验性设计空间和共在场域的强调，他们决定在世界各个角落追寻曾经的加州梦幻之影。他对网络化社区和主权模式充满兴趣，希望能够通过去中心化的方式重塑社会协作；作为一个低门槛的开放环境，Pop-up City的演进运动为各式各样的社会实验和技术迭代提供了属人的“培养皿”。当社区成为一座绿意盎然的生态实验室，如此全世界都将是它所培育作物的试验场。

From his early years in mathematics, computer science, and economics to his current explorations in crypto, AI, and Pop-up Cities, Timour's diverse experiences seem to reflect the migratory spirit of a generation of young tech enthusiasts. Cyberspace and digital culture are not the only mediums of expression—driven by an emphasis on experimental design spaces and shared physical presence, they have set out to chase the fading echoes of the Little Californian Ghost across the globe. Deeply fascinated by networked communities and models of sovereignty, Timour seeks to reshape social collaboration through decentralization. As a low-barrier, open environment, the evolving movement of Pop-up Cities serves as a living "petri dish" for various social experiments and technological iterations. If communities can be transformed into lush ecological laboratories, then the entire world becomes a testing ground for the crops they cultivate.

此文是「加密飞行」专栏首辑访谈策划之一，来自友邻社区 SocialLayer 的 Eggy 和 Jiang。作为一群经常在各地巡游的 “飞行员”，他们所带来的独特视野，正是「加密飞行」所想要展示的：一群从过去降落，置身于此刻，并渴望着挑战和探索更好未来的远航者。我们期待着这种展示，能够飞跃语言与物理距离的障壁，成为未来加密公民同现实之间的桥梁。

This article is one of the first series of interviews for the "Crypto Flight" column, curated by the SocialLayer community members Eggy and Jiang. As a group of "pilots" often journeying across different places, they bring a unique perspective—exactly what "Crypto Flight" aims to showcase: a group of voyagers descending from the past, living in the present, and yearning to challenge and explore a better future. We hope this showcase can transcend barriers of language and physical distance, becoming a bridge between future crypto citizens and the realities they face.

Social Layer × Uncommons
Reporter: Eggy＆Jiang
Translator: Sevenfloor
Edit:0614

「加密飞行」(Crypto Flight)

「加密飞行」(Crypto Flight) 是 Uncommons 的人物访谈专栏，围绕活跃在以太坊及加密世界一线的先锋个体，记录加密现实，生产多元视角，将交谈和日常语言作为方法，化约发生在彼处的遥远真实。取自 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 的 Vol de Nuit(长夜飞逝)，象征密码朋克与加密公民飞向世界尽头的挑战和探索精神。

*本专栏接受投稿，公开招募访谈者和译者，欢迎联系WeChat: RealUncommons 投稿或开设你擅长并且感兴趣的专栏。

"Crypto Flight" is a series of interviews by Uncommons, focusing on pioneers active in the Ethereum and crypto world. It documents the reality of the crypto space and produces diverse perspectives, using conversation and everyday language as methods to distill distant and far-off truths. Inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Vol de Nuit (Night Flight), it symbolizes the challenge and exploratory spirit of cypherpunks and crypto citizens as they venture to the ends of the world.

This column welcomes submissions and is open to recruiting interviewers and translators. Feel free to contact via WeChat: RealUncommons to submit your work or start a column on a topic you are passionate about and interested in.

本文为《加密飞行 Vol.9 | 世界作为社区的实验场：Timour＆Edge City》的访谈节选。
访问全文请前往 Uncommons 的 Newsletter：
加密飞行 Vol.9 | 世界作为社区的实验场：Timour＆Edge City

About

Timour Kosters
Co-founder of Edge City
Find him here: twitter.com/timourxy...

Eggy
Ph.D Candidate in Design for Social Innovation
Contributer of Social Layer

创新的原型：设计空间
Innovative Prototypes: Design Spaces

Eggy

I really like the word you used, a design space. Could you say more about it? Why do you use this term?

我很喜欢你用的这个词，设计空间。您能详细介绍一下吗？为什么使用这个词？

Timour

I think that ultimately innovation comes from experimentation. It comes from trial and error. And so, spaces that are well geared towards trial and error and experimentation tend to be areas where new ideas can form and be tried and iterated on. I'm a big fan of kind of bottom-up emergent change and innovation. So I'm always drawn to areas, the technology space more broadly is a good example of this, of just places where you can really experiment, and the barrier is low to try something to get started. People generally are open. They share learnings from across different teams, from across different industries.I think the blockchain space is a really good example of this, right? It is an experimentation layer for new forms of governance and economics and financial systems. And it has certain properties embedded into it. For example, lots of the code is open source. The community culturally is very open to sharing learnings and lessons with each other. So it’s a perfect petri dish for experimentation. And I think that creates a good design space, meaning you can try things out, see how they work, improve them, etc.

创新来源于实验，并且不断地尝试与改进。那些适合进行试验与反复试错的空间往往是新想法能够形成、测试并迭代的地方。我非常推崇自下而上、自发性的变革与创新，包括我自己也总是被这样的领域吸引。从科技角度来看，它是非常好的实践场所，你可以轻松地进行实验。在这里尝试新事物的门槛很低，人们通常都很开放，愿意跨团队、跨行业分享经验与学习成果。

区块链就是一个很好的例子。它是一个为新型治理模式、经济体系和金融系统进行实验的层级，内嵌了某些特性，许多代码是开源的，社区文化也非常开放，成员之间乐于分享。因此，这里堪称一个完美的实验培养皿。这种环境创造了一个很好的设计空间，意味着你可以大胆尝试，看看它们是怎么工作的，然后不断改进优化。

Eggy

So did you think the experiments you have been involving, like Zuzalu, ZuConnect and Edge City have met your expectation? Have they met the expectation in terms of being a design space?

你觉得你参与的这些实验，比如 Zuzalu、ZuConnect 和 Edge City，在这方面有没有达到你的预期？作为一个设计空间，它们符合你的期待吗？

Timour

Short answer, yes. We've already seen so many different ideas start to form, people coming with old ideas, or ideas they've been having for a long time and realizing, this is the perfect place for me to actually try it. Which I think is really cool. But I think one of the challenges for us is tracking the impact that we're actually having. Because people come to these places, they learn new ideas, they meet new co-founders or whatever, and then they go off and start new companies and we're not necessarily in contact. We're not really yet doing a good job of tracking all of the impact we've had. So yeah, it's definitely fulfilling the expectation of being a space for experimentation and innovation. But I think we’re still so early that we're only going to see where that goes in time.

简单的来说，是的。我们已经看到许多不同的想法开始成形，有人带着过去的点子，或者他们已经酝酿了很久的想法来到这里，然后意识到，“哇，这是一个真正适合我尝试它们的地方。” 这真的很酷。其中一个挑战是如何追踪我们实际产生的影响。人们来到这些地方，学习新的理念，结识新的联合创始人或者其他伙伴，随后他们离开，创办新的公司，但我们并不一定保持联系。在追踪这其中所产生的影响方面，我们目前做得还不够好。从实验和创新的空间来看，它确实符合我们的预期，但我觉得我们仍然处于非常早期的阶段，最终会走向何处，只能等待时间给我们答案。

跨主体协作的可能性
Possibilities of Cross-Subject Collaboration

Eggy

For yourself, what's your expectation in this society prototype you're trying to like having this achievement?

那么，对于你自己来说，你对这个社会原型的期待是什么？

Timour

I'm a big fan of this kind of bottom-up theory of change, I'm always skeptical of any strong top down solutions. I think we're giving ourselves the chance of emergence and seeing what occurs at the same time. Some of the stuff that I'm very interested in is new models for networked communities and networked sovereignties, meaning communities that start to really gain sovereignty and have some collective power essentially and communities that really are global. So they don't necessarily fit within traditional contexts of nation states, but they can be almost cross sections across those traditional buckets and can collaborate across country lines, which is very difficult right now in terms of anything meaningfully interesting and can collaborate and hopefully do good in the world. Next week, Primavera de Filippi will be hosting a workshop on exploring Coordinations, that's what I'm particularly interested in.

我非常认同“自下而上”的变革理论，并且对任何强硬的“自上而下”的解决方案都保持怀疑态度。我更喜欢让事情自然涌现，同时观察会发生什么。我特别感兴趣的一些方面包括网络化社区和网络化主权的新模式。这指的是一些开始真正获得主权并拥有一定集体力量的社区，尤其是那些具有全球性的社区。它们不一定符合传统国家的框架，但他们可以跨越这些传统的界限，形成一种交叉性。社区能够跨越国界进行合作，这在目前任何领域都是非常困难的。同时，我希望它们的合作能够在世界上产生积极的影响。下周 Primavera de Filippi 会在这里举办一个探讨Coordinations的工作坊，我非常感兴趣。

Eggy

I just went to Primavera de Filippi's talk. She's talking about building an AI intelligent monster, where different agents and humans can collaborate together. And how is the new mechanism or how the new organizational structure should be formed because now there are many talents that all work for the big company, but things will change since the agent comes up. So maybe that is a way we all want to collaborate with some of the agents and then what's the new form of this organization, this could be kind of new thing.

我正巧刚刚去听了 Primavera de Filippi 的演讲。她提到构建一个由 AI 智能“怪物”组成的系统，不同的智能代理和人类可以一起协作，这涉及到新的机制和组织该如何形成。现在许多人都在为大型公司工作，随着智能代理的出现，这种情况可能会发生改变。或许我们都能够与一些智能代理进行协作，这些合作会催生出一种新的组织形式，它可能会改变现有的运作方式，重新定义我们如何进行协作。

Timour

That's very interesting. I feel like historically, one thing I really want to study a bit more are just processes of centralization and decentralization of power and these are things where certain eras and certain times of history have kind of swung the pendulum in different directions. So just to give some very basic examples, for a long time, we had very centralized forms of power in the kind of later stage monarchies, for example, and then we had the enlightenment, we had kind of the breakthroughs of democracy, some kind of decentralization there, then again, centralization through the modern nation state and now through the internet, there's all kinds of directions, there's all kinds of like opposing vectors in this tension where on the one hand, information is decentralizing, anyone ostensibly has the ability to reach anyone else on the planet or even big groups of people with the things that they want to say, which is incredible. At the same time, there is centralization of the information silos or the information places. So this touches, what we're living through right now is this back and forth of again, decentralization, centralization, where technology is giving power to both sides. It allows us to coordinate and create networks of individual agents that have much more power. At the same time, it gives incredibly powerful tools to the current sources of centralized power, governments and some of the big tech companies.

这非常有趣。我特别想深入研究的问题是权力的集中与去中心化的循环过程。在历史的不同时期，权力的钟摆会向不同方向摆动。举个例子，我们经历了很长一段时间非常集中的权力形式，比如君主制，然后开始了启蒙运动，民主的某种突破出现了，权力开始下放；接着又出现了现代民族国家的权力集中化；而现在通过互联网，我们看到各种方向的发展，这种权力的拉锯展现出多种矛盾：一方面，信息在去中心化，理论上任何人都可以把他们想要表达的内容传递给地球上的任何人，乃至更大的群体，这是非常了不起的；另一方面，信息又在集中化，比如信息孤岛或者更集中化的信息平台。我们正在经历的，实际上是权力集中与去中心化之间的反复拉锯，技术为两边同时提供力量：一方面，技术让我们能够协调并建立起个人代理的网络，从而拥有更大的影响力；另一方面，它也为当前的集中权力来源——政府和一些大型科技公司——提供了极其强大的工具。

开源与自由、平衡与挑战
Open Source and Freedom, Balance and Challenges

Eggy

I always think about how lucky I am, living in this rapidly evolving era. We can witness so many thing. So did you encounter any challenges during your participation or your organizing this kind of stuff?

我总在想，生活在这个快速发展的时代是多么幸运，我们可以见证很多事情。在你参与和组织 pop-up city 的过程中是否有遇到过什么挑战呢？

Timour: One is that it's just incredibly hard work. So people burn out from organizing this. And yeah, so that's one thing. That will improve. We'll get better at this, processes will get better. We, like our team, just love it so much. So we have that innate drive. But when we help others to do the same or it's just very different, it's a different type of event. And therefore it's a difficult one. Yeah. There's infrastructure challenges, current infra just isn't set up for this kind of event. You got to manage the vibe. That's challenging. Yeah. Make sure things feel good for people. 

One of the biggest things, and this is where some detractors get or folks who are skeptical of this kind of thing, mentioned a lot that there's this thing around inclusivity and exclusivity, which I think is very important to be thoughtful about. Because we're very much aiming to be a very open space, right? Open space for ideas and participation and et cetera. At the same time, because it is a physical in real life event, there are natural capacity constraints. You know, there's just literally constraints on the physical space. So we have to choose who is kind of in the container and who is not, you know? And how do we do ticketing? How do we do applications, et cetera. And beyond that, we've also noticed that we need to be thoughtful about who's here just because it creates a better experience for everyone involved. So, you know, we generally look for people who are curious, and kind of brilliant or working at the frontiers of their fields. So if we get someone who's just really mean or just a complete asshole, it kind of ruins the entire vibe. And it's amazing how one or two people can really affect the whole thing. But obviously that's a subjective thing, right? Like we have to be to not let our own biases filter into the process. So anyway, the way that we, the way that we've been approaching this is just by trying to open source everything that we learned through organizing these events and therefore allow other people to do the same. Yeah. Like to organize their own events like this or to, you know, pretty soon there's going to be dozens to choose from. And then if someone's not a good fit for our one, they can go to a different one.

首先是这件事真的非常辛苦，组织者们都精疲力尽。我们会改进和变得更好，流程也会更加完善，我们的团队也非常热爱这件事，这成为了一种与生俱来的驱动力。然而，当我们帮助其他人做类似的事情时，这就成为了一种完全不同的形式，因此也更加困难。基础设施的问题也很重要，目前的基础设施并不适合这种类型的活动，管理活动氛围是一项很有挑战性的工作，我们要确保参与者的体验良好。

还有一个重要的挑战是包容性与排他性之间的平衡，这也是一些批评者或持怀疑态度的人经常提到的问题。在这方面保持谨慎是非常必要的，我们的目标是打造一个非常开放的空间——可以自由表达思想、参与活动。但作为一场线下活动，它存在自然的容量限制，物理空间的限制意味着我们必须决定谁可以参与，谁不可以，这涉及到如何分配门票、如何处理申请等问题。此外，我们也意识到需要对参与者的选择保持审慎，因为这样可以为所有参与者创造更好的体验。我们通常会寻找那些好奇心强、友善、才华横溢或者在各自领域前沿工作的人。如果我们遇到一个非常刻薄或混乱的人，整个氛围都会被破坏，这非常令人惊讶，一两个人真的会影响整件事情。当然，这显然是一件主观的事，我们需要避免让自己的偏见影响这一过程，所以，我们的解决方案是试图开源我们通过组织这些活动学到的一切，让其他人也可以效仿、组织类似的活动。这样，很快会有许多类似的活动可以选择，如果有人不适合我们的活动，他们就可以去参加另一个活动。

Eggy

I think it's pretty challenging that you mentioned being inclusive and exclusive because in many communities, you need to set certain boundaries and then the people will feel the belongings. Otherwise, it's fully open. Maybe people don't need to feel the sense of belonging and they don't want to contribute as well. So it's kind of challenging. I really like getting into this point. And also you mentioned about, if there's people in this container, but it has a very bad vibe and you will ruin something. So what's your experience about dealing with this stuff? Because I heard that many communities may be facing this kind of issue now. They have these rules about, if you touch this, touch this, then we need to let you go. But I think there will be other community members who think about why you have this power. You could kick off some of the people and what is the inclusive environment you mentioned. So how to deal with that? And do you have any experiments?

在包容性和排他性之间取得平衡，这确实非常具有挑战性。社区需要设定一定的边界，才能让人们产生归属感，如果完全开放，人们可能不会感到归属，也不愿意为社区做出贡献。你提到，如果有些人在这个“容器”里散发出很不好的氛围，就会破坏整个环境，这确实是个挑战，你在处理这些问题上有什么经验吗？我听说许多社区都面临类似的问题，他们会制定一些规则，比如如果有人触碰了某些底线，就需要请他离开。但这样一来，可能会有其他社区成员质疑，为什么你有这样的权力，你可以决定某些人被踢出社区？这似乎又不符合“包容性”环境的理念。所以，在面对这些问题时你是如何处理的？有没有类似的实验或尝试？

Timour

Right now, honestly, we are kind of attempting to be benevolent leaders in this whole situation. We're super early. We're just trying to get this thing off the ground. So we make a lot of those decisions, thankfully we haven't had to do anything crazy like kick someone out. But if we got complaints about someone in the community or something, I think we would just kind of politely ask them to leave. And we have some baseline policies around that, which we share and we'll act on. But over time, I imagine we'll kind of build community best practices. We can learn from the fact that we are not the first to do this kind of thing, right? People have been gathering for thousands of years. There's some best practices. We have a lot of friends doing smaller things, but more permanent ones or et cetera. So we can learn from them and take on their practices around community, conflict resolution and stuff like that.

坦率地讲，目前我们遇到这种情况的方案是试图扮演“仁慈的领导者”。我们还处于非常早期的阶段，只是试图让这个事情起步，因此我们会做出很多决策。幸运的是，我们还没有遇到必须采取极端措施，比如让某人离开的情况。但如果社区中有人被投诉或出现问题，我们可能会以一种礼貌的方式请他们离开。我们有一些基础的策略，会在需要时共享并加以执行。不过，长期来看，我设想我们会逐渐建立起社区的最佳实践。我们并不是第一个做这类事情的人，人类聚集的历史已经有几千年了，其中有一些可以借鉴的实践。我们还有很多朋友在做规模较小但更长期的社区建设，我们也可以从他们那里学习社区管理、冲突解决等方面的方法和经验。

译后/Sevenfloor
Postscript

Pop-up city，一场短暂的聚会孕育了一片跨越学科与文化的沃土。在这里，社区网络的脉动如涟漪般向外扩散，从一场场短暂而紧密的相聚中瞥见未来社会模式的雏形。它是一种新型的网络化社区，是一场跨越国界的协作实验，这种形式是否会推动新型社会组织模式的诞生？如何为未来人类生活、未来的社区治理创建可行性范本？

作为 pop-up city 的组织者，Timour 分享了他在构建创新社区与社会原型实验中的独特经历与深刻思考。从个人背景的多元交织到 pop-up city 的核心理念，在访谈中，我们探讨了组织过程中的挑战、与地方利益相关方的互动，以及社区未来发展的潜力。Timour 强调了 pop-up city 作为实验与创新设计空间的巨大可能性，包容性与排他性的微妙平衡，以及社区网络的构建方法实践。也许没有人知道未来会怎样，但我们允许每一颗种子发芽，让任何可能性在这里发生。

Social Layer × Uncommons
Reporter: Eggy＆Jiang
Translator: Sevenfloor
Edit:0614

👇文中图片来源
X @timourxyz
@yaoeo

Who we are 👇

Uncommons
区块链世界内一隅公共空间，一群公共物品建设者，在此碰撞加密人文思想。其前身为 GreenPill 中文社区。
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Social Layer
Social Layer 是一个模块化社交基础设施，旨在帮助全球范围内的快闪城市（Popup City）、意向性社区（Intentional Community）和分布式社群节点的运营、扩展和相互连接。
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