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

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

On 2018-03-02 22:27, Carsten Agger wrote:
> On 03/02/2018 09:17 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote:
> > That article is technical nonsense. 'Blockchain' that has PoW 
> > consisting of 1.6 second of handset CPU is trivial to fake. And where 
> > is the consensus? Car does the same? Or is car running 500KW GPU 
> > cluster doing hash verified by ... who? Cheap PoW ("Proof of Work") is 
> > contradiction in terms.
> >
> > This is actually a good illustration of utter bullshit that passes for 
> > 'technology'.
> >
> > We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!
> The good thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian visions is that
> they won't ever actually come to pass. Blockchain is impractical and
> useless from a technical point of view. It's pure hype and nothing
> more.
>
> On the other hand, the bad thing about the Blockchain-based dystopian
> visions is that everything bad that you could conceivably do with a
> Blockchain you could do better and much more efficiently with an
> ordinary database.
>
> So there are definitely reasons to worry about the future surveillance
> nightmare, but Blockchain is not one of those reasons, because it
> won't ever make much of a difference in the technological sense. Its
> hype might, but Blockchain itself is useless outside the realm of
> cryptocurrencies. I say that as someone whose background is in
> technology, specifically computer science.


And then, cryptocurrencies don't make very much economic sense either. 
Their only merit is have bootstrapped rethinking money and currencies - 
even though not necessarily in the 'right' direction.

On a more general plane, dystopian visions (whether Blockchain-based or 
not) and surveillance nightmares unfortunately represent the entropy 
state of social systems, and can only be avoided with a lot of 
consciencious, collaborative efforts - exactly what the current 
dispensation actively discourages ...

Have a happy week-end!
p+7D!
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