[NetBehaviour] TOKENOMICS Re: comments on blockchain, art, etc., discussion with Ruth

[Kenneth Fields]

hi marc,
I’m looking at projects like:
https://economicspace.agency/ <https://economicspace.agency/>
https://colony.io/ <https://colony.io/>
https://www.coalaip.org/code-page/ <https://www.coalaip.org/code-page/>
https://semanticblocks.wordpress.com/ <https://semanticblocks.wordpress.com/>
https://ujomusic.com/ <https://ujomusic.com/>
http://ceptr.org/ <http://ceptr.org/>
https://gridplus.io/ <https://gridplus.io/>

Something more than than hardware/software is emerging now, right? 
I think it is in the protocol layer with fairer/open game theory rules built in.
This just might work in the financial, health, law, government, education,
arts and energy sectors to name but a few of the domains. A written fair contract.

My concern is to realize/sustain a community/economy that plays live p2p music on the internet.
I’ve found that creating decent software isn’t enough to make this work. There has to be an interesting story too. 

> It is not only the physical, cultural, political, proprietorial and technical, enclosures we need to change, but also enclosures of the mind. Can the blockchain help us do that?

So yes, I think it can. It is in the DNA of the psych/tech continuum if you will. You’re putting the blockchain prior here.
But where did the blockchain come from, but out of some deeper sequence of the positing of memes and modeling 
in the human sphere. Does invention: logic, language, telephones, money, electromagnetism, relativity help 
to ‘change the enclosures of the mind?’ Sure, because there is a constant interplay of matter/mind going on.
Look at the impact of relativity and cybernetics in the last century.

Blockchain, at this moment, just signals the desire for decentralization and rebalancing. Why wouldn’t that 
be the right call at the right moment?

Ken


> 
> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 07 Nov 2017 05:43:33 -0500
> From: "marc.garrett" <marc.garrett at protonmail.com>
> To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity
> 	<netbehaviour at lists.netbehaviour.org>
> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] TOKENOMICS Re:  comments on blockchain,
> 	art, etc., discussion with Ruth
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> 
> Hi Ken,
> 
> Welcome to the list and thanks for sharing your project on the list.
> 
> As you can see we're a varied community, actively engaged in examining the processs of change at different levels, whether it is artistic, political, cultural, social, technical, contextual, alongside grounded - networked, community values.
> 
>> My interest in blockchain is something of an attention filter.
>> It?s like moving house; you have to go through all your stuff
>> and box up only the things you NEED to bring with you; facebook,
>> youtube, twitter - get rid of it.
> 
>> We can simply move completely over to the next web, and as a
>> consequence reclaim some of the old passion of the early internet.
>> Time to build again; scout ahead.
> 
> My own personal interest in the blockchain comes from an anarchist position, where disruption of the 'supposed' clean shift from 'all life on earth' to Fintech is challenged all the way. My other intention is to explore and build (collectively) alternatives to libertarian and neo-liberal narratives dominating everyday people's lives, via top-down implementations. And, because I'm a critically curious human being I'm interested in contemporary forms of technology and how these engineered shifts in society change us.
> 
> At present, facebook, youtube, twitter etc, are diverting the collective gaze from building their own artistic/cultural/technical contexts on their own terms. I agree with you there is an urgent need for decentralization of these power systems, dominating people's attention as I said in my recent editorial on Furtherfield, "Like cows nonchalantly munching at the metaphorical graze". https://www.furtherfield.org/digital-cash-cows-now-editorial-2017/
> 
>> Artsmesh (http://artsmesh.com) was always meant to be decentralized,
>> and we achieved that goal partially - embedding gnuSocial as a repository,
>> but for the most part keep it focused on LIVE. With blockchain, it?s now ?Buy Live.?
> 
> This is interesting, do you mean by 'Buy Live' that is networked live access via tokens?
> 
>> expertise outside of the old rusty vessels/institutions.
> 
> Well, that's Furtherfield and many of the people who use this list ;-)
> 
>> And what about the new language of fine art - its now finArt!
> 
> I think 'finArt' is not a new thing, even though the term's context may include a contemporary edge in respect of blockchain and bitcoin culture.
> 
>> So those are two filters acting on my psyche, blockchain and live. But yet another filter
>> seems to be emerging, a strange movement of cutting edge research from academia
>> to finance! Who would of thunk it? The white papers are exciting and ground
>> breaking, unlike the quicksand of much of the recent academic discourse in the arts and tech.
> 
> Well, in regard to academic discourse in the arts and tech, on the whole - it has always needed to be broken down and decentralized, as has the arts. There has been some great writings out there which have thankfully reflected upon how culture is being changed by technology and what this could mean, in ways that challenge top-down assumptions and their narratives.
> 
> So, my other take is, are we by moving into the blockchain technology merely 'setting up/adding' more elitism on top of other froms of elitism, and deluding ourselves by thinking that we are opening things up for better?
> 
> Are we really just building more (complex and unreachable) walls, and new enclosures?
> 
> For instance, there is a feeling of the wild west in most of the bitcoin and blockchain rhetoric which is just horribly, shallow and sexist. A modern day wild west, a 'Californian Ideology' version of it, alongside the usual unquestioning (old fashioned, unreformed) white male, with far too much money and power making investment decisions on things they either do not know the consequences of, or don't care.
> 
> Peter Linebaugn, in his brilliant book 'Stop, Thief! : The Commons, Enclosures, And Resistance', writes about the cowboy novelist, Elmer Kelton, and about the 1883 Canadian River cowboy strike in Texas. Saying, "The cowboy's independence has been perverted into egotistical individualism of American manhood by Hollywood, which figures him as a gunslinger and the "Indian" as a killer." Even though there may be some brilliant exploiters of this technology where the projects and ventures are for the good (we'll see). It is at best, another way of diverting our energies from saving the planet?
> 
> It is not only the physical, cultural, political, proprietorial and technical, enclosures we need to change, but also enclosures of the mind. Can the blockchain help us do that?
> 
> Wishing you well.
> 
> marc
> 
> Co-Founder, Co-Director and main editor of Furtherfield.
> Art, technology and social change, since 1996
> http://www.furtherfield.org
> 
> Furtherfield Gallery & Commons in the park
> Finsbury Park, London N4 2NQhttp://www.furtherfield.org/gallery
> Currently writing a PhD at Birkbeck University, London
> https://birkbeck.academia.edu/MarcGarrett
> Just published: Artists Re:thinking the Blockchain
> Eds, Ruth Catlow, Marc Garrett, Nathan Jones, & Sam Skinner
> Liverpool Press - http://bit.ly/2x8XlMK
> 
> 
> End of NetBehaviour Digest, Vol 18, Issue 1
> *******************************************

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