johnx

I've been working on dual citizenship for a while — trying to bridge geospatial data technologies and the decentralized web.

I gave a talk today at @foss4gna.bsky.social — here it is 👇

✨ Astral: A Spatial Extension for the Decentralized Web

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9CC...

Tom MacWright on Shutting down Placemark

As a person who resists the hubris and posturing so common in tech, I appreciated @macwright.com’s openness + honesty in this podcast.

As the solo founder of an open source geospatial project (and a Placemark user), I also found the content and insights invaluable.

🙏🙏🙏

pca.st/episode/703c...

This is where we’re at, I guess … the best minds of our generation, all the frantic madness, the resource and ingenuity, and this is the outcome.

The incentives are so strong – the pattern feels intractable. I’m reminded of Diogenes the Cynic.

Notes on Location Proofs - John X An exploration of proof-of-location systems, their technical implementations, privacy implications, and potential applications in Web3 and beyond.

My work focuses on next-gen geospatial data technologies for the open internet.

Lately I’ve been researching proof-of-location systems with collaborators at UMD.

This new post outlines our current thinking about a new framework for multifactor location verification: www.x25bd.com/posts/notes-...

- Peer-to-peer data storage systems (what I sometimes call "spatial registries") offer interesting new ways of managing geospatial data.

One very interesting use case: self-sovereign policy zone management.
Another: content-addressed climate datasets.

Lots more to say on this ...

- Verifiable geocomputation systems can similarly improve trust and reduce compliance costs.

I'm especially excited about how these two pillars can help us build systems to govern autonomous machines — including safeguarded AI.

www.lesswrong.com/posts/P8Xcbn...
twitter.com/soona/status...

You can dive into what I mean in the paper, but key highlights:

- Proof-of-location systems based on principles of self-sovereignty and verifiability can improve trust in location claims, with many knock on effects

I'll share here first — a collaborator and I have a vision paper on the decentralized geospatial web in review.

Preprint is available here:

Top line — the geospatial web works well, but there are a few places where Web3 design principles show promise to expanding what's possible.

osf.io/bg2uq_v1

I just had a thought – maybe the opposite of perfect is honesty.

I've been meaning to put pen to paper and write down what I've been learning over the past 6+ years, researching the intersection of geospatial + the decentralized web ...

This week it comes together — focused on location proofs, verifiable geocomputation and decentralized data storage. More soon.

How to be More Agentic On a supposedly difficult thing

My friend @leonebaron.bsky.social made me aware of this post from @cate.bsky.social — lots of great advice to channel.

Especially coming back to the roiling world of knowledge work in 2025 after burning out, I'm prioritizing good + durable habits.

usefulfictions.substack.com/p/how-to-be-...

Thoughts on being mortal - Joe Carlsmith You can't keep any of it. The only thing to do is to give it away on purpose.

"your life is always flowing outwards, through you and away from you, into the world;"

joecarlsmith.com/2020/12/06/t...

It's worth noting that Vincent Weisser is one of the OGs in DeSci (Molecule ecosystem), with a deep background in the design principles of decentralization.

x.com/vincentweisser

Training AI models might not need enormous data centres Eventually, models could be trained without any dedicated hardware at all

Did you see this article in the Economist last week?

I'm far from an expert on the pros and cons of different training designs, but at a glance decentralized (well, distributed) training offers quality improvements not in spite of, but *because of* inefficiencies.

www.economist.com/science-and-...

... audio processing and more.

www.x25bd.com/posts/retros...

In 2025 I'll be doing research + product innovation using AI and Web3 tools and patterns. More to come ...

... and next generation geospatial data infrastructure.

The last few months of 2024, I reconnected with my roots in data science — I went through an immersive program catching up on the latest developments in AI and machine learning. Vector embeddings, transformers, computer vision, MLOps ...

I've been interested in geospatial for a long time — my first brush with machine learning was in 2009, studying convolutional neural networks in a remote sensing course I took.

Since then I've worked on location-based apps, geospatial analysis pipelines, interactive map visualizations ...

But while I believe Web3 promotes and important set of design principles, I know it's not a panacea.

Before my foray into the space — and in the past year — I've spent a lot of time trying to understand, and to some extent shape, patterns of human behavior using geospatial data technologies.

Astral At Astral we are building tools to enable the location-based decentralized web

I'm still working in Web3 — I lead Astral, an open source R+D studio building tools + technologies for the decentralized geospatial web.

I'll share more about what we do in due course, I'd love to get feedback and critique here.

astral.global

About a year ago I left my full time role at Toucan (lots of reasons, mostly personal — I was burnt out). 2024 involved a lot of sense-making and tending to the things that tended to get de-prioritized while I was wrapped up in the "founder" lifestyle. Lots to say here — I'm biased towards openness.

Regarding work, I spent the past 5(ish) years at the frontier, looking at how emerging tech (especially Web3) could help us respond to the climate breakdown more effectively.

I have been deeply involved with @kernel0x.bsky.social, co-founded Toucan Protocol, co-chaired a WEF working group and more.

I grew up in the US and am an American, though I've spent the past 6+ years living in the UK, and just recently took steps towards dual citizenship.

I love the community spirit I experience in the US, and the extraordinary landscapes. In the UK (esp. London), it's the cultural and historical depth.

To say a bit more, I lead with where I have spent my time because my sense of place is core to how I experience the world.

Roots are early experiences exploring mountains + lakes in America. These days, I've expanded — most of my tech work incorporates "geospatial" in one way or another.

The requisite "hello new social platform" post — for those who don't (and do!) know me:

Hi. I'm John. I grew up in Colorado + live in London. My work centers around emerging (digital) technology and how it can improve lives + well-being. I love to snowboard, sail, + (slowly) make progress on piano.

It's as good a time as any to start speaking ...