Indy Learning Commons

The paradox of information systems[edit] Drummond suggests in her paper in 2008 that computer-based information systems can undermine or even destroy the organisation that they were meant to support, and it is precisely what makes them useful that makes them destructive – a phenomenon encapsulated by the Icarus Paradox.[9] For examples, a defence communication system is designed to improve efficiency by eliminating the need for meetings between military commanders who can now simply use the system to brief one another or answer to a higher authority. However, this new system becomes destructive precisely because the commanders no longer need to meet face-to-face, which consequently weakened mutual trust, thus undermining the organisation.[10] Ultimately, computer-based systems are reliable and efficient only to a point. For more complex tasks, it is recommended for organisations to focus on developing their workforce. A reason for the paradox is that rationality assumes that more is better, but intensification may be counter-productive.[11]

What Is a Blockchain Oracle? A blockchain oracle is a secure piece of middleware that facilitates communication between blockchains and any off-chain system, including data providers, web APIs, enterprise backends, cloud providers, IoT devices, e-signatures, payment systems, other blockchains, and more. Oracles take on several key functions: Listen – monitor the blockchain network to check for any incoming user or smart contract requests for off-chain data. Extract – fetch data from one or multiple external systems such as off-chain APIs hosted on third-party web servers. Format – format data retrieved from external APIs into a blockchain readable format (input) and/or making blockchain data compatible with an external API (output). Validate – generate a cryptographic proof attesting to the performance of an oracle service using any combination of data signing, blockchain transaction signing, TLS signatures, Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) attestations, or zero-knowledge proofs. Compute – perform some type of secure off-chain computation for the smart contract, such as calculating a median from multiple oracle submissions or generating a verifiable random number for a gaming application. Broadcast – sign and broadcast a transaction on the blockchain in order to send data and any corresponding proof on-chain for consumption by the smart contract. Output (optional) –  send data to an external system upon the execution of a smart contract, such as relaying payment instructions to a traditional payment network or triggering actions from a cyber-physical system.

One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.

Types of Structure Outliners take advantage of what may be the most primitive of relationships, probably the first one you learned as an infant: in. Things can be in or contained by other things; alternatively, things can be superior to other things in a pecking order. Whatever the cognitive mechanics, trees/hierarchies are a preferred way of structuring things. But it is not the only way. Computer users also encounter: links, relationships, attributes, spatial/tabular arrangements, and metaphoric content. Links are what we know from the Web, but they can be so much more. The simplest ones are a sort of ad hoc spaghetti connecting pieces of text to text containers (like Web pages), but we will see many interesting kinds that have names, programs attached, and even work two-way. Relationships are what databases do, most easily imagined as “is-a” statements which are simple types of rules: Ted is a supervisor, supervisors are employees, all employees have employee numbers. Attributes are adjectives or tags that help characterize or locate things. Finder labels and playlists are good examples of these. Spatial/tabular arrangements are obvious: the very existence of the personal computer sprang from the power of the spreadsheet. Metaphors are a complex and powerful technique of inheriting structure from something familiar. The Mac desktop is a good example. Photoshop is another, where all the common tools had a darkroom tool or technique as their predecessor.

‘In a complexinformation society, with a highly developed divi-sion of intellectual labor, we have no option butrely on information from sources that are usuallytrustworthy.’