A technological framework for scalable ground-up formation of Circular Societies

Abstract: The Circular Economy (CE) is regarded as a solution to the environmental crisis. However, mainstream CE measures skirt around challenging the ethos of ever-increasing economic growth, overlooking social impacts and under-representing solutions such as reducing overall consumption. Circular Societies (CS) address these concerns by challenging this ethos. They emphasize ground-up social reorganization,address over-consumption through sufficiency strategies, and highlight the need for considering the complex inter-dependencies between nature, society, and technology on local, regional and global levels. However, no blueprint exists for forming CSs. An initial objective of my thesis is exploring existing social-network ontologies and developing a broadly applicable model for CSs. Since ground-up social reorganization on local, regional, and global levels has compounding effects on network complexities,a technological framework digitizing these inter-dependencies is necessary. Finally, adhering to CS principles of transparency and democratization, a system of trust is necessary to achieve collaborative consensus of the network state.