%0 Journal Article %J Technology Innovation Management Review %D 2021 %T Distributed Ledger Technologies and Social Machines: How to “smartify” the economy with blockchain-based digital extension services? %A Gregory Sandstrom %K artificial intelligence %K blockchain %K digital economy %K digital platform %K distributed ledger technology %K economic development %K extension services %K extension thinking %K innovation diffusion %K Internet of Things %K ledger community %K smartification %K social machines %K web science %X This paper examines the broad impact of digitalization on economic development. More specifically, it addresses the computer science-derived notion of "social machines", along with the invention of distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) (or blockchain), as potential signposts on the pathway to "smart(er) digital economies". The paper investigates blockchain-based ecosystems as examples of social machines that assist in economic "smartification" and development. It looks at distributed ledger-based communities (DLCs) that provide examples of functioning social machines for a variety of business and personal network communications purposes. It then analyses the scaleup of DLT-based social machines by comparison with "extension services", largely in education and agriculture, which are currently undergoing processes of digitalization. Overall, this conceptual study examines the general horizons and potential impact of blockchain and social machines on the provision of online products and services, across a range of sectors and industries. The paper offers interpretative assistance to managers, entrepreneurs, technology experts, and academics with lingering questions about blockchain in and for business and economic development. %B Technology Innovation Management Review %I Talent First Network %C Ottawa %V 11 %P 42-57 %8 06/2021 %G eng %U timreview.ca/article/1449 %N 6 %1 Technology Innovation Management Review Gregory Sandstrom is Managing Editor of the TIM Review. He is a former Associate Professor of Mass Media and Communications at the European Humanities University (2012-2017), and Affiliated Associate Professor at the Social Innovations Laboratory, Mykolas Romeris University (2016-2017) in Vilnius, Lithuania. His PhD is from St. Petersburg State University and the Sociological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He interned at the S.I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology, St. Petersburg, sector on Sociology of Science (2010). He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Science Council (2013-2015), for which he conducted research visits to the Copernican Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (Krakow), the University of Edinburgh's Extended Knowledge Project, Cambridge University's History and Philosophy of Science Department, and Virginia State University's Science and Technology Studies program. He worked for the Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking, leading student and faculty language and communications workshops, most recently (2013, 2014, 2017) in Yangon, Myanmar. His current research interests are distributed ledger technology (blockchain) systems and digital extension services. %& 42 %R http://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1449