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

[Magnus Boman]

>
> ...
>
> Hi,
>
> thanks guys for your opinions on blockchais, But neither pointing to
> authority in the matter (apprently we are all experts all the time) nor
> polemicizing against a non-mature technology will help me in
> understanding the phenomena. let's get back to the subject in ten years.
>
> -Oli
>

oblig hack: I just finished attending Financial Crypto 2018, including a
Bitcoin workshop and a Smart Contract workshop. For the latter, I co-wrote
a paper with the take home msg that smart contracts is neither smart, nor
contracts (https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.09535).

The consensus (!) at the utterly useless closing conference panel was that
the (permission-less) blockchain is as useless as the panel itself, but it
will probably take decidedly less than the ten years you are asking for,
Oli, to make it useful for certain applications, e.g. as a distributed
ledger for land ownership and use, or my fav: an immutable cultural
geography ledger. Runner up anti-dystopia alt-right norm eliminator:
trustless norm encoder for intensional communities (cf. "Circles").
M.
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surveillance instincts 70 years ago

[Morlock Elloi]

Cryptome recently published a collection of declassified intelligence 
documents from Italy at the end of WW2 
(https://cryptome.org/cic/cic-italy/cic-italy.html)


While today everyone talks about surveillance, it's interesting to look 
at the history, to understand what it really is. Contemporary machine 
collecting is impersonal, detached and appears benign to many.


This particular document, for example - 
https://cryptome.org/cic/cic-italy/cic-italy-10SEP46.pdf, demonstrates 
meticulous and pedantic manual transcribing of seemingly irrelevant 
information. Someone spent hours, if not days, compiling this, which 
means that it is *not* irrelevant.


Compare this to the cheap automated collection we have today, and how 
much the balance has been shifted.


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

[Morlock Elloi]

I regret to be this anal - nettime is not (that) technical forum, but in 
this case blockchain has has nothing to do with securing IoT 
communications. At best, blockchain can provide authentication (ie. 
public key tied to identity), with properly expensive PoW, which is not 
the case here.


This reminds me that there is one sensible use of blockchain: public key 
directory. Too bad no one uses PGP any more.


Which brings me to another really interesting question: why don't DNS 
CAs use blockchains for storing certificate chains, instead of burning 
them into browsers via custom deals with multiple browser peddlers?




I believe that this use of blockchain is simply as a secure protocol for
the internet-of-things – and for (future) autonomous driving. (It's that
potential external control of one's car – or whatever – that's spooky.)


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

[Anthony Stephenson]

>
>
> 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'.
>
>
I believe that this use of blockchain is simply as a secure protocol for
the internet-of-things – and for (future) autonomous driving. (It's that
potential external control of one's car – or whatever – that's spooky.)

-- 

- *Anthony Stephenson*

*http://anthonystephenson.org/* 
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[tbyfield]

On 2 Mar 2018, at 15:17, Morlock Elloi wrote:

> We need blockchain powered nettime! BLOCKTIME!

block.critique


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**Vice and "Sense Perception"** (by Joe Sachs)

[Newmedia]

[Joe Sachs, Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 2002, Introduction, Part II, "The 
Mean," pp. xi, xx-xxi, also St. John's Review, "Three Little Words," 1997]

Three words that anyone who has tried to understand the *Nicomachean Ethics* 
has had to wrestle with are HABIT, the MEAN, and NOBLE [originally underlined]. 
 They might be said, very loosely, to refer to the efficient, formal and final 
causes of moral virtue . . .

But there is such a thing as bad character, and this is what Aristotle means by 
vice, as distinct from bad habits or weakness.  It is possible for someone with 
full responsibility and the free use of intellect to choose always to yield to 
bodily pleasure, or to greed, or to ambition.  Virtue is a mean, first because 
it can only emerge out of the stand-off between pairs of opposite habits, but 
second because it chooses to take its stand in principle; Aristototle makes 
clear that vice is a principled choice that following some extreme path toward 
[as described by Mandeville in his 1717 "Fable of the Bees," upon which 
"capitalism" was founded] or away [as described by "Puritans," including those 
who founded the USA and drove its Civil War ] pleasure is right.  (1146b, 
22-3) [Ethics, Book VII, Chapter 1] Principles are wonderful things, but there 
are too many of them, and exclusive adherence to any one of them is always a 
vice.
In our earlier example [re: eating a slice of cake], the true glutton [one of 
the "Seven Deadly Vices"] would be someone who does not just have a bad habit 
of always indulging in the desire for food, but someone who has chosen on 
principle that one ought always to yield to it.  In Plato's *Gorgias*, 
Callicles argues just that, about food, drink, and sex.  He is serious, even 
though he is young and still open to argument.  But the only principled 
alternative he can conceive is the denial of the body, and the choice of a life 
fit for only stones or corpses. (429E) This is the way most attempts to be 
serious about right action go astray.  What, for example, is the virtue of a 
seminar leader?  Is it to ask appropriate questions but never state an opinion? 
 Or is it to offer everything one has learned on the subject of discussion?  
What principle should rule -- that all learning must come from the learners, or 
that without prior instruction no useful learning can take place?  Is there a 
hybrid principle?  Or should one try to find the point mid-way between the 
opposite principles?  Or is the virtue some third thing altogether?
Just as habits of indulgence [i.e. those generated today by *electric* media, 
designed to maximize economic consumption and thus "growth," which is what most 
people today call "capitalism"] always stand opposed to habits of abstinence, 
so too does every principle of action have its opposite principle.  If good 
habituation ensures that we are not swept away by our strongest impulses, and 
the exercise of intelligence ensures that we will see two worthy sides to every 
question about action, what governs the choice of the mean? 

Aristotle gives this answer: "such things are among particulars, and the 
judgement is in the act of sense-perception." (1109b 23-4) [Ethics, Book II, 
Chapter 8] But this is the calmly energetic, thought-laden perception to which 
we referred to earlier [or what Aquinas called "cogitative" or "particular" 
reason, the culmination of the "interior senses," Summa Theologica, Book I, 
Question 78, Article 4].  The origin of virtuous action is neither intellect 
nor appetite [e.g. "emotions"], but is variously described as intellect infused 
through-and-through with appetite, or appetite wholly infused with thinking, or 
appetite and reason joined for the sake of something; this unitary source is 
called by Aristotle simply *anthropos. (1139a, 34, b, 5-7) [Ethics, Bool Vi, 
Chapter 1] But our thinking must contribute right reason (*ho orthos logos*) 
and our appetites must contribute *right* desire (*he orthe orexis*) if the 
action is to moral stature. (1114b, 29, 1139a, 24-6, 31-2) [Ethics, Book III, 
Chapter, Book VI, Chapter 1] What makes them right can only be something for 
the sake of which they unite, and this is what is said to be accessible only to 
sense-perception [i.e. the "interior" not the "exterior senses"] . . .
[This distinction between the "interior" and "exterior senses" (sometimes 
referred to as "inner wits" in English) is *not* something that Sachs seems to 
make clear, as, indeed, few others have either.  In particular, Marshall 
McLuhan appears to make the same mistake, in this regard, as did his mentors -- 
by avoiding this discussion and instead being satisfied with a hoped for 
*balance* of the "exterior" senses, as reflected in his focus on the "sensus 
communis" and "synesthesia" ]
[McLuhan seems to have been so concerned about an imbalance in favor of sight 
(i.e. caused by the Printing Press and, thus, Protestantism) that he was 
"blinded" by the follow-on corresponding 

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

[Carsten Agger]

On 03/03/2018 09:20 AM, Patrice Riemens wrote:

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.


Talking about monetary alternatives, I find LETS currencies much more 
interesting, such as (e.g.) the Puma in Seville, 
https://monedasocialpuma.wordpress.com/


One important difference from Bitcoin etc. is that the scope of LETS 
currencies are strictly local - they simply don't work outside of their 
area. Also, they are strictly community-based, meaning that they will 
only work if you build a community around them or use them to strengthen 
an existing one - they are much more collectivist, even "socialist" or 
at least left anarchist in mobilizing local communities around, e.g., 
the creation of food markets; thirdly, this means that their value as a 
currency is directly proportional to how much the money circulate - the 
more they do, the more of the local economy is being build by people in 
that locality itself, and the better; but fourthly, that also means that 
these currencies are complimentary and can't stand alone (you can't by 
oil or electric power with money that's only good in your own 
neighbourhood).


If we want to rethink money, there are many more directions in which to 
go than the cryptocurrencies' neoliberal vision of a return to the gold 
standard. The concept of "aging money" as defended in Michael Ende's 
novel "Momo", among other places, is an example.


Nice weekend to everyone!
Carsten
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Re: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[oli]

On 02.03.2018 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.
> 
> Best
> Carsten


Hi,

thanks guys for your opinions on blockchais, But neither pointing to
authority in the matter (apprently we are all experts all the time) nor
polemicizing against a non-mature technology will help me in
understanding the phenomena. let's get back to the subject in ten years.

-Oli


-- 
gpg --recv-keys 0xF7FF417738641ACAB2AABB0540A278BC354F8D5A

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Blockchain Halelujah! (was: Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens]

Re-routed to nettime, since the off list discussion got interesting. 
Below a  piece by Eduard who asked me to post it on nettime - after some 
light editing.

Cheers and don't churn out too many blockchains in the w/e!

(It might be advisable to read bottom up from now ...



 Original Message 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Re:  Josh Hall: Blockchain could reshape our 
world – and the far right is one step ahead (Guardian)

Date: 2018-03-03 09:30
From: Patrice Riemens 
To: Morlock Elloi 
Cc: Eduard Karel de Jong , Geert Lovink 



Woooaaah! Time for a fresh Sokal-Bricmont! I can't wait!


On 2018-03-03 08:45, Morlock Elloi wrote:

You wouldn't believe pointless papers that postdocs at top
universities are churning out:

"Securing Bitcoin wallets via threshold signatures"
"Scalable and Incentive-Compatible Blockchain Design"
"A Smart Contract for Boardroom Voting with Maximum Voter Privacy"
"Hawk: The Blockchain Model of Cryptography and Privacy-Preserving
Smart Contracts"
"Thunderella: Blockchains with Optimistic Instant Confirmation"

I cannot even imagine what a college course on the blockchain would
comprise of. Sounds like a course on replacing front left tire on 2010
white Toyota Camry.


On 3/2/18, 08:08, Patrice Riemens wrote:


Aloha,

I am amazed, nay flabbergasted, too at the amount of hot air being
displaced by the Blockchain (indeed what the French call 'une usine a
gaz'). In a recent NYT there was an article about college cousres on 
the

blockchain being in such heavy demand (i& in the US that means
'effective' demand) that universities were scrambling to fill the gap.

Such a phenomenon creates a reality entirely of its own, which you
cannot negate. Criticising it will earn you no credit whatsover, and
when the whole thing collapses - not if but when, and that still can
take some time, see BTC (or 'XBT')'s current valuation), nobody's 
going

to compliment you on foresight - some might even accuse you of having
provoked it.

Sometimes, this, together withthe 'acceleration' going with it, gives 
me

a strong taste of TEOTWAWKI upcoming ...

Cheers all, p+7D!
(snowed in in Fiesole's publib ... ;-)


-

Post by 


Indeed! Blockchain is nothing new!! At least not new at the higher of
level of trust in society or the possibilities of IT technology  to
lead to a dystopian future.

However, what is actually new with Blockchain, is the huge amount of
hype around it, the worldwide ramping up of university courses in
blockchain programming, and the apparent, blissfull ignorance of
many of those participating in it of the libertarian (read: illiberal,
right wing) bias it 
encapsuletes: "There is no need to trust another human to

interact with, since algorithmic consenus takes over, your property
rights are clearly determined  for all to see, be challenged by no one, 
and  they're fixed for eternity too."


This hype leads potential users of the technology to forget common IT
development practices, abandon legacy systems, and ignore all the many
subtle and not so subtle requirements for IT system to work discovered
during years of operation and maintenance.

Abandoning a legacy system, starting with a "Tabula Rasa" is several
orders of magnitude cheaper than extending an old system.

Using blockchain gives an excuse to bypass written and unwritten and 
ignore

regulations and customer protection laws, as these may not fit with the
centralised processing model of each time updating just as single
block in the chain of blocks.

In this reasoning Blockchain is really a new type of technological
threat, not because of its technology but because of the (not so) hidden 
agenda of its proponents and believers.


It could well be that the near-religious belief in the transformative 
nature of the Blockchain actually reveals a deep satisfaction with the 
status quo, often expressed these days in a longing for radical change
(a.k.a. 
'disruption'). The tabula rasa promise implied by Blockchain may 

then be recognised as what is needed to make that change. This reminds 
me of what I once heard about cultural context of the start of WWI: 
There was, on 
both sides, dissatisfaction with the (political) status quo,

and a brief quick war was precisely the technological 'fix':
telephones, machine guns and the railway network altogether would make 
for just such a "Tabula Rasa"...


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

[Patrice Riemens]

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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