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supervision of dr. Gabriela Pullman
cheese and anthropologist and she's
fantasy known for her work on the
Atlantic's community and the hacker
group Anonymous so what is my purpose
here you know I ask that all the time
it's like a bunch of these like techies
here and I have to learn the lingo and
nothing makes sense humor makes no sense
it's a process right so we're trying to
do is trying to bridge the gap between
the social science I can be man and walk
Cheney because I think there's a lot
that we can learn from each other so
tech people think that social science is
useless that it's not a real okay but on
the other hand social science academics
critique watching as a hyper libertarian
technology that's supported by a bunch
of technocrats and I know that's not
necessarily truth but so yeah I want to
know how can we proceed forward so that
there is greater mutual understanding
between us and can we coddle the
children's hands and build together
historical base current
I'm learning I'm learning so the story
of how I got into watching is actually a
pretty interesting one so my partner was
in the watching industry and basically
he got invited to an IC 3 bootcamp at
Cornell University and not knowing
really much about blockchain at the time
I decided since I go on see what it's
all about
course I've encountered a lot of these
like hyped up media articles on walk
change so I wanted to find out for
myself what it was about by you know
talking to like really prominent people
there so yeah so I went there and there
was like this excursion which was like a
hike with fatality and there I was just
like hiking with him and asking him all
these questions like what do you think
about his earring was your vision
embarrassingly enough ok I will admit I
did not know who he was at the time only
now like whoa I was yes so I'm very
inspired and basically I wanted to know
more about this very unique community
and that's really good coffee to embark
on this research so before I knew about
the culture of dynamics that we Syrian I
just assumed like many high tech like
Silicon Valley even eat you know it was
like super technique of being the
rainbows and unicorns certainly didn't
help that and just like so here on the
same page few techniques hoping it's
basically an ideology that's encountered
and technologic communities
that's premise on the belief that
advances in technology could bring about
a perfect society or help fulfill
utopian ideals in the near future
so before really going into the
community I started observing how the
general public perceives blockchain so
some of my general observations were
like people outside of crypto watching
space thing it's a hyper libertarian
technology you know she's so much like
right libertarians got a running it and
there was actually a conference in
Montreal this year that I
the ietf conference which is the
internet engineering task versus the
guys that establish standards for the
Internet's and it was really interesting
how nobody spoke about blocking there
nobody mentioned anything and I talked
to some prominent people and asked them
like what do you think the watching and
they just tended to avoid with that
whole discussion and it's like what is
going on here then going into more depth
on these discussions they said oh you
know what what changed was like a bunch
of these people are just trying to solve
every human problem with you know this
technology and it's just a huge sham
planet it's really not better in the
social academia they think it's like a
hyper libertarian technology with this
technical O'Neill twist and of course
that's the general public that assumes
that is hype or just something that
supports criminal activity based on
their knowledge of Bitcoin so going into
this research I had to pool tonight so
the first one I wanted to know what are
some of the ideology that exist in a
theory and suddenly I wanted to know to
what extent this tech neutral beam is a
prevail in the community narratives
and this led me to draw two findings so
basically I found that aetherium
accommodates developers and other actors
with distinct political motives up
perspectives right you come let
anarchists and right libertarians and
everything in between and secondly
developers are not really Tecna you tow
peon
to my surprise so I was really
interested in how there's like this
plethora of diverse ideologies in in
Syria and I really wanted to unpack that
like I wanted to know what was behind
this phenomenon and this led me to draw
two more conclusions basically have to
do with the design of the protocol and
the philosophy of decentralization so
the design of the protocol so part of
the reason why those nine percent
colleges in Syria is based on how a
Syrian is actually designed great
so artifacts actually have politics and
there is a theorist named Langdon winner
forward this theory that all technology
is in fact so this means that all
technological artifacts in their design
they have political properties and the
and impact on the ways that they enact
social ordering so uses the example of
bridges that were built over
overcut ways on Long Island in the 1920s
and they were built in such a way to
discourage buses from entering them
which resulted in limiting the access of
racial minorities and low-income groups
who use these buses to get to popular
beaches we were at that time so this
means that technological society
enforces a specific political agenda and
in the case of bridges it was a racist
agenda and to this day even though our
attitudes towards racism have somewhat
improved the bridge is still continue to
stand up there and enforce the dynamics
so this inherently means that specific
design choices can affect how power is
distributed and that certain
technologies are compatible with some
form of organization than others so the
best example is nuclear energy right
that requires highly centralized and
authoritarian forms of organization in
order to be operated so what this really
says is that we need to consider the
relationship between
technological design and its material
outcomes and this really got me thinking
about Bitcoin in this area and how we
can apply this theory to these two
protocols so like bitcoin is a fairly
it's a fairly restrictive protocol it's
you know House of limited language
script and it's mostly just a cash
protocol where is um you know it's based
on entering a complete language salinity
or Viper
and it had unlimited potential so it
allows people in in this industry to
basically encode their values and it
allows through this diversity to happen
whereas Bitcoin it's more secures and
there's less room to experiment with it
so therefore you're only getting like
not as diverse of values of like
inferior so that's that and then
secondly second reason why there's
diverse perspectives and experience
because of the philosophy of
decentralization itself however to be
honest with you like I don't know where
decentralization is I don't think there
was a clear-cut definition for it and
actually center ization has long been
central to economic and political
philosophy but has only recently become
a core technical
imaginary so just so we're clear it
wasn't the technology that emerged with
a sanitized technology but actually
political philosophy that later on
seeped into the technical fields so
something interesting about the
philosophy of decentralization that it
can accommodate people with different
perspectives and ideologies to imagine
the cells as part of a common project
and we can conceptualize
decentralization as something in social
science we call a boundary object which
is a theoretical term that signifies a
concept or an actual object allows for
actors from distinct political
aspirations to cooperate on a project
despite having different and sometimes
even conflicting interests and this has
been a defining feature of open-source
communities and likewise etherium which
accommodates developers with various
political motives from left-leaning
anti-capitalist agitators to capitalists
friendly libertarians but the thing is
is that everyone has their own idea
about what decentralization is and that
of course can be a good thing but you
know because it allows for collaboration
and to work efficiently but at the same
time this lack of the choose specificity
also can obscure an internalization
I will speak more about that in the next
slice to come so I'm going to continue
on with the research goals so so I
covered the first one and the second
research role I had in mind is to what
extent does tech nutopia nism prevail in
the community an aerialist
of area and the result was not technical
yeah it's shocking right and these are
some of the quotes I received that I
pulled from my introducer crypto hype
it's just a blind leading the blind
we see the Challenger faced us which
means that being optimistic isn't always
easy
most of us are not here to make a profit
but are here for the intellectual
challenge and curiosity making back
Davis does a lot of the service to the
technology and others along the similar
lines so then this got me thinking where
is the hype all right before that this
led me to draw the conclusion that in
fact
aetherium developers are very pragmatic
level-headed and reflexive of their
privilege and technocratic status and
these the ones that I've spoken to about
I can't speak bro
so where is this hype really coming from
so watching public reputation is now
hyper libertarian and perhaps this is
for a good reason its uptake has been
largely in capitalist supporters
so this hype is essentially being used
as a marketing we don't like in icos and
whatnots and it's being used by profit
driven entrepreneurs extreme right-wing
libertarians and technology fetishes and
since watching this in its nation see
these stories are needed I get it
like you sort of need the height in
order to fill in some of the
uncertainties that currently exist in
relation to watching and the only
problem however is that the capitalist
venture people are the ones who are
basically influencing the narratives
about blockchain and they're basically
shaping public perception of watching so
what does this all mean so I'll just
provide you with like a bunch of
information and yeah so this is this is
where I want to talk about how I do
research questions start to infuse into
so diverse perspectives and we fear in
its nerium does not necessarily
represent all of the perspectives in how
the public perceives blockchain so the
theorem allows for divers ideologies to
exist in the space and make
collaboration possible go through design
and the philosophy of decentralization
however this does not mean that people
who enter into this network are equal
and some have greater resources and
skills which can result in resentful
ization and this can be seen in the
Bitcoin network for example so there are
certain factors such as early adoption
wealth an external economy and access to
let's say will cross electricity for
mining which can create concentration
yet what we call this technology
decentralized it just diverts attention
from factors that can potentially leads
to some degree of centralization so
really it's the people with resources
like the venture capitals who are
determining a lot of the public
discourse on blockchain and this is one
of the reasons why to use force even as
a height and this right-wing libertarian
technology so I think what we really
have to think about is finding a way of
defining centralization because I say
the truth is really risky and and this
is because oftentimes when something
gets
centralized across new forms of
centralization to emerge somewhere else
in the system and this is something that
has not only been found in tech but
actually a pattern noticed by political
science and studying government
institutions yet we continue to use the
term anonymous and translation and it
obscures it from areas of centralization
and we've seen this even in mining pools
right they're the perfect example so I
say don't expect any system to be fully
decentralized is that it might be more
helpful to be more clear about what the
particular features of a system a given
design seeks to decentralize and
decentralizing mediations cannot expect
to get rid of some every centralizing
influence in the outside world
this is just not realistic and this
means that while technology that is
meant to be centralized can introduce
new possibilities which of course can be
liberating it can also invite more
unfavorable conditions such as
unaccountable concentration of power
because it always goes both ways
therefore at the end of the day it's not
really about caring whether something to
decentralize or centralize what we
should be asking is whether the thing
we're building is accountable meaning
that if we should be meaning that if
perhaps like let's say we're
the needs of user service room to change
that or if we're not meeting the needs
of libraries we can still change that it
doesn't make sense to pursue
decentralization at the expense of
everything else if that means that you
know even though they were just creating
outcomes that run the risk of enabling
on a common unaccountable concentration
of power so going forward I have two
propositions or aetherium so I propose
we stop using the watch-chain as a
solution narrative and instead focus on
using the blockchain as an alternative
method and the reason why it's because
watching is precisely empowering right
now because it's the underdog it
introduces diversity into the existing
systems allowing people to have more
options pursuits of people in the space
though they see it act like the means to
it and I think when it's an ambition as
replaceable and superior to every
traditional institution that's kind of
like if it's amplified to the extreme
that's when it begins to take on a
slightly dystopian term and take it
takes on like this libertarian narrative
which is fairly extreme tonight I don't
think us where we want to be going
depends another recommendation I have is
to start building networks it's you know
with other with other industries and in
other fields so for example like ITF
maybe academic ones and it's many
no matter where ahead in the world I
always see the same people and I mean
it's great an office it's a community
but at the same time it also becomes a
plow circus and I think what we really
have to strive for it's
interdisciplinary because that is
basically what is going to challenge us
and make us step outside of ourselves
and make us questions like why are we
doing X and not Y right it's gonna give
us some broader perspectives to some
salt to solve some of the challenges
that perhaps we're not seeing because
we're like in our own headspace so yeah
that's basically what I have for today
thank you so much for listening if you'd
like to debate or chat with me on any of
the points that I'm happy to uh I love
to argue stop thank you so much
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one privacy in the box
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what sister
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