elements of computing

icon picker
related work

Joel Monegro’s “emphasize each building block as a protocol

I think this is a cool way of framing, though it constrains the building blocks to be talking to each other via a network protocol.
There’s another way: blocks could simply be one “import” statement or library call away.
Reasons for using an import could be
(a) lower latency: a network call takes time which could hurt or kill the usability;
(b) simplicity: using a library (or even embedded code) is usually just simpler than connecting on the network, paying tokens, etc;
(c) more mature: the protocol stack is just emerging now.
We have awesome Unix libraries going back decades, even Python and JS blocks going back 15+ years.

Fred Ehrsam’s “” → an emphasis on web business models

image.png

Stephan Tual’s “

its layer of blocks serve applications (blocks for messaging, storage, consensus, governance, ..)
actually mixing three things: apps, the “what”, and the “how”.
To me, blocks should be the “what”.
So, messaging is an app (should be at the application level);
storage needs to be more fine-grained;
consensus is part of the “how” (hidden within some blocks);
and governance is also part of the “how” (therefore also hidden).
It also has [network] protocols as a separate lower-level block,
though I see those as one of the possible ways that blocks can talk to each other, alongside library calls.

Alexander Ruppert’s

image.png
to be continued...
Want to print your doc?
This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
CtrlP
) instead.