Re: <nettime> Geert Lovink & Patrice Riemens: The Bitcoin Experience,

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

On Sun, 01 Feb 2015, Brian Holmes wrote:

> On 01/30/2015 08:34 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:
> 
> >However, technological advances to which the current banking system
> >is ill-prepared, especially at the 'retail' level (never mind the not
> >improbable collapse of the financial/monetary system as we know it),
> >makes that non-banking, and possibly non-centrally regulated,
> >electronic payment systems will win the day, especially in the realm
> >of transactions by or between individuals.
> 
> Imagine that Europe finally emerges from this financial crisis as a
> real state, able to tax. Then on the verge of another great crisis,
> with Russia about to try relaunching an opt-in gold standard, China,
> the US and the EU agree instead to install a global electronic
> currency with total traceability and transaction taxes for a variety
> of social ills that have in the meantime become extremely pressing:
> carbon emissions, financial speculations, dumping of cheap products
> etc. Retrospectively, the social sculpture of Bitcoin proves to be the
> Hegelian ruse of reason preparing the desperately needed world state.
> You don't like it? Nowhere to hide.
> 
> curious about that one, Brian

Yeppa. For the social sculpture bit I stick to my 6 april 2013 article
about the end of the Taboo of Money. Eros, Thanatos... and Money.  The
narrative unfolding goes in more than one direction of course, as you
note here and as the cypherpunks have missed to understand.  Lured into
being rockstars has never improved a better understanding of the world.
Perhaps art is the last bastion of sense - or psychedelics? :^)

Back a year ago it was Inke Arns the sharpest mind to understand the
real issues at stake, when in her intellectual sculpture she made me
share a stage with Christina von Braun at HMKV in Dortmund. Now I really
hope somoene translates her book in english, because my Deutsch is not
good enough for this: "Der Preis des Geldes. Eine Kulturgeschichte."
(Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin 2012)

However yeas Brian. Have a look at Factom for instance http://factom.org
no need to have the post-atomic post-financial crisis coming to get the
spooks all busy in running blockchains around your necks, very soon now!
And where is Mad Max in this?! Gimme back Tina Turner!! :^)

So well, speaking of what philosophy of technology is about, lets try to
understand the genealogy and the socio-political meaning of the latter.
In case of Bitcoin, today, as we can settle a fair amount of theoretical
and technical literature on blockchain technologies and at least two
specular sci-fi scenarios, its the time to dig into real use cases.
I'll post more about this.

ciao

-- 
Jaromil, Dyne.org Free Software Foundry (est. 2000)
We are free to share code and we code to share freedom
Web: https://j.dyne.org Contact: https://j.dyne.org/c.vcf
GPG: 6113 D89C A825 C5CE DD02  C872 73B3 5DA5 4ACB 7D10
Confidential communications: https://keybase.io/jaromil


#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org