Welcoming New Subscribers

I’ve noticed a small influx of new subscribers over the past few weeks from Bobby Azarian’s (wonderful) Road to Omega newsletter.

Welcome!

This week, I’d like to briefly share a bit about myself and my intent for this newsletter to help orient newcomers and give existing subscribers an update.

My name is Shingai, and up until fairly recently, my career has narrowly focused on the world of cryptoeconomic systems and blockchain-based technologies. I entered college in 2008 and studied the social sciences with the intent of finding a career working in policy. However, by the time I graduated in 2012, I was completely disillusioned with the U.S political system. I believed that widespread grassroots adoption of open-source peer-to-peer systems like Bitcoin (and later Ethereum), represented our only hope for meaningful political and economic reform.

After over a decade in crypto, where (despite tremendous technical progress) I’ve witnessed many of the same dysfunctional social dynamics play out that turned me away from policy, I’m revisiting my roots in the social sciences. This time, I’m intent on taking an approach grounded in systems science.

This newsletter, System Explorers, started off as a way for me to start learning in public and connect with like minds. I expressed my desire to explore systemness, the set of essential attributes that make up any system. I then proceeded to explore George Mobus’s proposed twelve principles of systems science which represent one compelling unified theoretical framework for systems science, a field which is still fairly immature and fragmented.

After several months of writing, I realized I was so passionate about studying systems that it was worth returning to school and formally studying the topic. So I applied for and enrolled in Binghamton University’s M.S. in Systems Science program. This has been incredibly fulfilling, albeit time-consuming. I’ve had less time to focus on the newsletter and my writing has been less structured and focused than it was when I started.

Over the next few months, you can expect more semi-random musings on systems in general as well as crypto and political economy through the lens of systems. I’ll also share some experiences and insights from my current courses in computational tools and modern complexity theory. This summer I’ll take the opportunity to reflect, reorient, and map out a clear future direction for the newsletter that supports my desire to build a more cohesive and collaborative community of system explorers.

Thank you all for your interest and your support!

-Shingai