In the Name of the System

• Published in: Australian humanities review no. 66; p. 1
• Main Author: Allon, Fiona
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bundoora Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) 01.05.2020
• Subjects: Algorithms; Archives & records; Artificial intelligence; Automation; Blockchain; Decentralization; Democracy; Democratization; Digital currencies; Energy industry; Feedback; Financial institutions; Internet; Learning; Libertarianism; Marriage; Mediation; Peer to peer computing; Performativity; Politics; Positivism; Public access; Self concept; Self instruction; Semantics; Utopias
• ISSN: 1325-8338; 1325-8338

Depending on what one selects to read from the substantial, idiosyncratic archive of commentary that has developed alongside the technology, blockchain has the potential to inter alia remove the need for third-party mediation or 'middlemen' in commercial, monetary and legal transactions, render obsolete the need for trust in social and political institutions and by implication the democratic state itself, reconfigure the way we understand and exchange value, decentralise and hence democratise power, dramatically change how we conduct our personal and online identities, and, ultimately, install a failsafe, automated system of algorithmic governance in nearly every sphere of daily life. According to entrepreneur and co-founder of the decentralised computing platform, Ethereum, Joseph Lubin, 'everything-really everything-we do on the Internet or via any kind of digital channel is about to undergo a radical change' (quoted in Peck). [...]at a time of 'self-learning' algorithms and machines, artificial intelligence and distributed computing platforms, it may also be useful to consider what is a ledger-based 'system', how does it organise or produce historical certainty, and where or what are its social and technical limits? A Brief Detour via Bitcoin Blockchain technology first attracted attention as the distributed public access ledger underlying Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer network of digital money developed by Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the individual or even group of developers that posted the initial proposal for Bitcoin. Or do I go with a simple stable maths based crypto that doesn't change issuance levels on a whim?' Even before the appearance of Bitcoin in 2008, a common project for anti-state libertarians had been the development of digital cash, a form of electronic money that could circulate without the need for a central bank, a clearing house or a centralised authority, which could be transacted pseudo-anonymously (Brunton 2019). [...]although the ledger technology underlying Bitcoin is proclaimed to be immune to external manipulation-unlike so-called fiat money-Frances Ferguson (155) has argued that the cryptocurrency has actually demonstrated that it is wholly subject to 'the semantics of human suggestion and command', influenced by the hype, stories and narratives that are now inseparable from the system itself and which, just like the 'animal spirits' John Maynard Keynes observed decades ago, create bursts of panic buying, selling and market turbulence. Perhaps more than the desire for epistemological clarity or certainty, or for a singular perfect history, then, the blockchain vision really wants to install a 'data positivism' that seeks to deny the performativity of technical models, the inherent feedback loops of systems as well as the radical relationality and contextuality of meaning, including what is conveyed by the apparent neutrality of 'information'. [...]the common-sense appeal of radical democratisation surrounding blockchain demands both caution and critical reflection.