Think a Second Time

Primavera De Filippi (Author)

Blockchain Governance

1,An engaging and comprehensive exploration of how fundamental ideas in political and legal thought shape the governance of blockchain communities, and are, in turn, shaped by blockchain technology. How can digital cash truly be "trustless"? What does it mean that blockchain offers a new paradigm of the "rule of code"? How are decisions made when a blockchain system faces an emergency, and who gets to make those decisions? In Blockchain Governance, Primavera De Filippi, Wessel Reijers, and Morshed Mannan offer answers to these questions and more, in an accessible, critical overview of legal and political issues related to blockchain technology, now the foundation of a multi-billion-dollar industry. Moving beyond the hype, they show how blockchain offers fertile ground for experimentation with radically new ways to govern people and institutions. Blockchain-based systems, like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tezos, and countless others, offer new ways of organizing digital cash, "smart" contracts to execute transactions, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to collect art, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to coordinate humans and machines. What these applications have in common is that ...

Jonathan Rauch (Author)

Cross Purposes: Christianity's Broken Bargain with Democracy

2,Why the crisis of Christianity has become a crisis for democracy "Concise and elegant. . . . Rauch applies careful research and incisive prose to examine, diagnose, and prescribe a cure for the maladies afflicting contemporary religious-political dynamics."--Michael M. Rosen, Commentary What happens to American democracy if Christianity is no longer able, or no longer willing, to perform the functions on which our constitutional order depends? In this provocative book, the award-winning journalist Jonathan Rauch--a lifelong atheist--reckons candidly with both the shortcomings of secularism and the corrosion of Christianity. Thin Christianity, as Rauch calls the mainline church, has been unable to inspire and retain believers. Worse, a Church of Fear has distorted white evangelicalism in ways that violate the tenets of both Jesus and James Madison. What to do? For answers, Rauch looks to a new generation of religious thinkers, as well as to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which has placed the Constitution at the heart of its spiritual teachings. In this timely critique Rauch addresses secular Americans who think Christianity can be abandoned, and Christian ...

Layli Maparyan (Editor)

Womanism Rising

3,Womanism Rising concludes Layli Maparyan's three-book exploration of womanist studies. The collection showcases new work by emerging womanist authors who expand the womanist idea while extending womanism to new sites, new problems, and new audiences. Maparyan organizes the contributions around five key ideas. The first section looks at womanist self-care as a life-saving strategy. The second examines healing the Earth as a prerequisite to healing ourselves. In Part Three, the essays illuminate how womanism's politics of invitation provides a strategy for enlarging humanity's circle of inclusion, while Part Four considers womanism as both a challenge and antidote to dehumanization. The final section delves into womanism's potential for constructing worlds and futures. In addition, Maparyan includes a section of works by womanist visual artists. Defiant and far-sighted, Womanism Rising takes readers on a journey into a new generation of concepts, ideas, and strategies for womanist studies.