On Sunday, October 26, 2014 I spoke at the Silicon Valley Ethereum Meetup about the philosophy and technology of “Smart Contracts”. Here are the slides as a pdf file. Here is a ustream video of the first 51 minutes of the talk (unfortunately the recording stops there). There was also an audio recording but apparently interference with other audio equipment makes it hard to listen to.
Smart Contracts 101 with Steve Omohundro
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Sunday, October 26, 2014, 6:00 PM
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Hacker Dojo Large Event Room
599 Fairchild Drive, Mountain View, CA (map)
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To kick off a series of discussions of key Ethereum concepts, Steve Omohundro will present the basics of smart contracts. He’ll discuss:
• Why contract law is society’s programming language.
• Nick Szabo‘s radical invention of smart contracts in 1993.
• The smart contract facilities in Bitcoin.
• The smart contract facilities in Ethereum.
• How to create “DAO”s (“Distributed Autonomous Organizations”) and “DAS”s (“Distributed Autonomous Societies”) using smart contracts.
These presentations are intended to be interactive with lots of questions and discussion. Ideas will be presented in a clear and easy to understand way for those new to Ethereum while still being engaging for experts.
Steve Omohundro 
I recall when we met briefly at the Luke’s house during the launch party of Our Final Invention — I think it somehow came up that Bitcoin could do contracts, and you were surprised and interested in learning more. Looks like it ended up being quite the rabbit hole!
Ethereum is fascinating. I wish I could make the talk!
Ted
Ted, Yes! Thanks so much for suggesting I look into Bitcoin contracts. Tons of great ideas and I think it’s just beginning. And I’m starting to believe it may be a natural framework for integrating AIs into society.