In this document, my intention is to help you learn more about Spect. While I do this, I hope to share with you our world view, where we are in this massive ecosystem and where we are going.

Preface

We’re all born creatives and curious, questioning everything we see around us. You may have heard your parents reminisce about the time they took you out on a trip and you wouldn’t stop asking questions.

Then something happens along the way and we end up where we are today, machines that breathe.

We’re exposed daily to products that personalize to our needs. Yet, no one reading this today can say the same thing for organizations that we work for. Have you ever had a feeling of being “stuck”? Or, having to sell your soul to make a living? If you have, you’re not alone. Traditional organizations have built great products and services and we should be very thankful for that. However, they have failed to optimize for individual satisfaction of the people that make up their organizations. We’re a group of well oiled revenue generating machines without the freedom to showcase our individual creativity. Yes, we’re told to take ownership of the work that we do, but do we truly get ownership of the work that we do?

At the cross-roads

Why work at a traditional organization with hierarchies as of May 2022?

• Clearly defined job description
• Clearly defined communication channels
• Clearly defined compensation for your job
• The thrill of competing with other organizations
• An upcoming promotion
• A sense of legitimacy

Why work at a DAO as of May 2022?

• Opportunity to display individual creativity permissionlessly
• Freedom to choose your job description and working hours

Notice two things from above.

1. We dont define what DAOs are. That’s because we don’t have a definition. DAOs as a category of organizations are more “definition agnostic” as of May 2022 than they are “decentralized autonomous”. It does seem that most people working for a DAO today agree on the values of decentralization and some agree on automating certain functions in the organization. However, most DAOs today are neither decentralized nor autonomous.

   If we did have to form a general definition of a DAO, our best one as of May 2022 would be the following.

   An organization that personalizes to the needs of the individuals working in it, optimizing for both individual work satisfaction and collective well-being within the organization.

2. The number of positives working for a traditional organization is still more at least in absolute count than working for a DAO. You may have expected quite the opposite, but this is just how it is as of May 2022.

Moving from low resolution organizations to high resolution organizations

We must figure out a way to move from low resolution organizations that generalize its employees into departments and titles to high resolution organizations that personalizes itself for the individual with roles and responsibilities.

At Spect, we’re building a playground of coordination tools for DAO contributors to be able to maximize collective well-being while personalizing for the individual.

Why playground?

A playground is where multiple groups of people (often children) play various games in different areas of the ground. Some stand and watch, while others switch between games. Some are highly competitive, while others are just having fun.

This is analogous to how we’re thinking about Spect. We’re building Spect with a high degree of customizability, making it possible for organizations to define and experiment with their workstreams, their compensation mechanisms and their membership to optimize for the well-being of the collective and the satisfaction of the individual at the same time. We ourselves are running several such experiments at Spect with the curiosity and enthusiasm similar to the 6 year olds in our analogous playground.

Coordination

Coordination failures are a result of a well-known concept in game theory called the “Prisoner’s Dilemma”. Here’s a quick recap of Prisoner’s Dilemma.

Lets say two criminals are caught by the police and given the option to either stay silent or betray the other criminal. If both stay silent, each prisoner goes to jail for 1 year. If one prisoner betrays the other, he walks free while the other goes to prison for 10 years. If both betray each other, each go to prison for 5 years. Assume the prisoners have no way to communicate (or coordinate) with each other.

The optimal strategy for a criminal in such a scenario is to betray the other criminal, as this leads to a shorter sentencing for both scenarios - where the other criminal betrays and where the other criminal stays silent.

As both criminals play their optimal strategy, each gets 5 years in prison. If only they could coordinate, they could have both gotten away with a much shorter sentencing of 1 year.

Similar to this, it is often an optimal strategy for each individual entity (person or organization) to optimize solely for its own self interests. To do this, traditional organizations and software that powers these organizations have created silos around themselves. At Spect, we want to help

1. Break down silos within and among organizations
2. Break down silos between software that power organizations

If Spect is maximally successful

1. Building organizations that cater to the needs of the individual will not only become easy, but it will become the norm.
2. Collective well-being in both local and global communities (digital and physical) will be at an all time high.
3. It’ll be possible for individuals to find the organizations that they best fit in by trial, not by guesswork.
4. People will be able to do more of what they love.

Values

Long Term

We are here for the long term to build a better future that is a paradigm shift from what we are used to today.

Open Source

Products and services created at Spect that are stable and in production will always be open source.

Conclusion

DAOs come with the promise of revolutionizing how we coordinate as humans to build beautiful things, solve complicated problems and achieve our most ambitious goals. To make this a reality, we not only have to start thinking differently in terms of how we work but also figure out what we should optimize for as an organization.

Spect is at the forefront of this revolution. Through the products that we build at Spect and the way that we setup our own organization, we are striving to achieve our mission of building and helping build high resolution organizations that optimize in a balanced way for both the individual and the collective.

Here are some useful links to learn more about Spect.