Morlock Elloi on Fri, 23 Feb 2018 19:09:27 +0100 (CET)


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Re: <nettime> Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)


After witnessing assorted Bitcoin, blockchain, Ethereum and related meetings, lectures, conferences and such, audiences ranging from people from the street to Ivy League PhDs:

- Most informal meetings have pure religious feeling; people smile and listen. The content is irrelevant. Idiocy rules. Most come for the cult value - tech scene lost the ideological steam, and anything, anything that projects into rosy (dys)(u)topia can get lots of attention. Every industry needs a church. 1 in 100 attendees understands issues;

- Professional/academic gatherings are fueled by the VC money, hoping to take a piece of the action from the finance folks. Large number of otherwise sane postdocs are churning out irrelevant papers with word 'blockchain' in them. 1 in 10 attendees understands issues. Lots of lurkers from the finance industry. Some shake their heads in disbelief;

The confluence of the religious component for the masses, and a fuzzy possibility of grabbing control of money flows from the traditional players, appears to be the winning combination. One feeds the other.



Since anything a blockchain can be put to use to can be done more
easily, more efficiently, more securely, and usually also at a lower
_final_ cost by humans, I have come to suspect, nay be convinced, that
blockchain and other pieces of tech solutionism are mainly intended, and
deliberately so, to take human beings out of as many loops as possible,
possibly with the perspective of getting rid of them altogether when
transitioning into the bliss of post-human algocratic singularity for
the sole benefit of an ueberfintech elite, indubitably gifted with
eternal (because machinistic) life to boot.

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