[NetBehaviour] Defensive Stance Re: arts blockchain and DAOWO
ruth catlow
ruth.catlow at furtherfield.org
Sun Dec 10 12:26:00 CET 2017
On 09/12/17 19:59, Aditya Mandayam wrote:
> re: "the logic of war and defence at the heart of cryptocultures",
> while I understand where this is coming from, something seemed to me
> to be a tad displaced.
Hi Adi,
Thanks for the reminder that a defensive stance is the correct one to
take as much against /mistakes/ as against /enemies/.
War-based analogies - in which we are to defend ourselves against a
faceless hoard of enemies - inevitably elicit a heroic, righteous and
competitive self-image in their users. I think this matters, is
problematic, and theorists could take more care;)
It is fantastic to try and conjure the analogy that might be associated
with defense against a torrent of exponentially proliferating mistakes
with an apparent life of their own.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice?
(or perhaps we are each one of those mistakes)
I think that the BGP could also be said to deal with the speed of light
problem - that we just cannot know what is happening in two places at
once but we must nevertheless act.
Analogies anyone?
:)
Ruth
What would interest me is a discussion around Bitcoin and the notion of
personal wealth. By this I mean the realization and subsequent
reclamation of personhood; of one's body, one's /persona/, one's very
own /corpora /being subjected to endless surveillance in the pursuit of
- to paraphrase John Lanchester in the LRB
<https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product> -
the "profoundly bathetic" goal of serving you ads.
>
> In the abstract to /The Byzantine Generals Problem
> <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/byzantine-generals-problem/>
> /(Lamport et al 1982), Leslie Lamport writes about how he "long felt
> that, because it was posed as a cute problem about philosophers seated
> around a table, Dijkstra’s dining philosopher’s problem received much
> more attention than it deserves." He adds: "The popularity of the
> dining philosophers problem taught me that the best way to attract
> attention to a problem is to present it in terms of a story."
>
> Note how he adds that the problem in question (one from distributed
> computing) was sometimes called the "Chinese Generals Problem", and he
> nearly ended up calling it the "Albanian Generals Problem" because "at
> the time, Albania was a completely closed society, and I felt it
> unlikely that there would be any Albanians around to object". Jack
> Goldberg was "smart enough to realize that there were Albanians in the
> world outside Albania, and Albania might not always be a black hole,
> so he suggested that I find another name".
>
> The paper itself starts off stating: "Reliable computer systems must
> handle malfunctioning components that give conflicting information to
> different parts of the system. This situation can be expressed
> abstractly in terms of a group of generals of the Byzantine army
> camped with their troops around an enemy city."
>
> The goal of spinning a narrative around an abstract and somewhat
> esoteric problem in distributed computing was to attract attention to
> it. Lamport et al were following the lead of the inimitable Edsgar W.
> Dijkstra himself, who certainly imbued his research with charisma and wit.
>
> The BGP is a fiction. It isn't a story of Byzantine war, or Byzantine
> defence. It has nothing to do with Byzantium, or Constantine I, or the
> Ottoman Empire. It has as much to do with the above than it has to do
> with Enver Hoxha, the erstwhile communist dictator of Albania (i.e.,
> nothing).
>
> What would interest me is a discussion around Bitcoin and the notion
> of personal wealth. By this I mean the realization and subsequent
> reclamation of personhood; of one's body, one's /persona/, one's very
> own /corpora /being subjected to endless surveillance in the pursuit
> of - to paraphrase John Lanchester in the LRB
> <https://www.lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-lanchester/you-are-the-product> -
> the "profoundly bathetic" goal of serving you ads.
>
> Maciej Ceglowski, the eccentric and eloquent founder of the
> bookmarking website Pinboard.in has compared this data deluge to
> radioactive waste in his funny and prescient talk, /Haunted by Data
> <http://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm> /(Ceglowski 2015).
> Radioactive waste management, as Ceglowski puts it, has similar
> properties to data collection because "No one knows what will become
> of sites like Twitter in five years or ten. But the data those sites
> own will retain the power to hurt for decades."
>
> Another angle of interest is a well-known phenomenon within technology
> circles (and a personal pet obsession of mine) is cutting-edge
> military research ending up in consumer tech. We all know this, of
> course. The Internet was ARPAnet, the CIA had drones long before
> anyone else did, and DARPA kickstarted robocars with their /Grand
> Challenge <http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/> /(of which I was
> a tiny part). Bitcoin stands alone in this regard. Nakamoto, whoever
> they may be - despite reports that NSA has, through stylometric
> analysis, deduced their identity (identities) - acted alone,
> coagulating decades of research with an elegant (and highly readable)
> solution to the BGP. One of the more surprising aspects to those more
> technically inclined amongst us is finding out that /Nakamoto used
> Windows/ / - /a virtual no-no in academia, and rare amongst
> technologists. An approach unlike any other, as Arvind Narayanan and
> Jeremy Clark detail in their excellent piecemeal analysis of Bitcoin's
> heritage, Bitcoin's Academic Pedigree
> <http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3136559> (Narayanan & Clark,
> 2017). I quote: "Its inventor, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, was an
> academic outsider, and bitcoin bears no resemblance to earlier
> academic proposals."
>
> Apologies for the length of this reply. I'd be keen on furthering the
> conversation in a new thread, or otherwise.
>
> - Adi
>
> On Sat, Dec 2, 2017 at 1:36 PM, ruth catlow
> <ruth.catlow at furtherfield.org <mailto:ruth.catlow at furtherfield.org>>
> wrote:
>
> On 30/11/17 02:23, Patrick Lichty wrote:
>>
>> So, in conversation with Ruth, I have been researching
>> zero-emissions solar mining, and where I am having a moment of
>> dissonance is the current logatithmic curve of Bitcoin with
>> computation. I am wondering if there is a corresponding energy
>> curve with this valuation spike.
>>
> Oh, that's an interesting question.
> I would imagine that the value of Bitcoin (against fiat
> currencies), like any commodity, would go up when people buy it
> and then don't spend it or trade it. In which case a rise in value
> might signify a rise in purchasing transactions - but not
> necessarily a rise in overall transactions.
>
> I can't see how ledger propagation would have any effect on this.
>
> hmmm
>
> :)R
>>
>>
>> Secondly, I have noticed that the valuation curve has rece3ntly
>> gotten really weird. Serious momentary downward spikes. I’m not
>> curious about this economically, I’m more interested technically.
>> What happens with this? I was wondering if ledger propagation
>> preventing serious spikes like this.
>>
>> Hmmmm….
>>
>> Also, Because Cryptokitties,
>>
>> *From:*NetBehaviour
>> [mailto:netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org
>> <mailto:netbehaviour-bounces at lists.netbehaviour.org>] *On Behalf
>> Of *ruth catlow
>> *Sent:* Sunday, November 26, 2017 7:07 PM
>> *To:* netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org
>> <mailto:netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: [NetBehaviour] arts blockchain and DAOWO
>>
>> Hello Rob
>>
>> On 25/11/17 05:21 AM, ruth catlow wrote:
>>
>> - Environmental and energy costs – more on this soon but
>> I have been looking at Faircoin – proof of cooperation
>> and I wonder if the clear-as-daylight, explicit mapping
>> of environmental harm onto crypto-currency trading could
>> provide the impetus for a global move to 100% renewables
>> and zero carbon emissions.
>>
>>
>> Decred's experiments in governance (and energy efficiency...)
>> are more reflexive and to my mind sounder than Faircoin's for
>> reasons I discuss indirectly in "Blockchain Poetics" -
>>
>> https://www.decred.org/
>>
>> Please could you spell it out!?
>> :)R
>>
>>
>>
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>
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--
Co-founder Co-director
Furtherfield
www.furtherfield.org
+44 (0) 77370 02879
Bitcoin Address 1G7SPFpvHhVEqn5trpNEcyNWbDcyZXuAnh
Furtherfield is the UK's leading organisation for art shows, labs, &
debates
around critical questions in art and technology, since 1997
Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company limited by Guarantee
registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
Registered business address: Ballard Newman, Apex House, Grand Arcade,
Tally Ho Corner, London N12 0EH.
--
Co-founder Co-director
Furtherfield
www.furtherfield.org
+44 (0) 77370 02879
Bitcoin Address 1G7SPFpvHhVEqn5trpNEcyNWbDcyZXuAnh
Furtherfield is the UK's leading organisation for art shows, labs, &
debates
around critical questions in art and technology, since 1997
Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company limited by Guarantee
registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205.
Registered business address: Ballard Newman, Apex House, Grand Arcade,
Tally Ho Corner, London N12 0EH.
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