Talk by Jaya Brekke at the 'Blockchain: Utopia or U-turn?' symposium at Onassis Foundation, 2019
What is a blockchain? How might blockchain technology change our lives? Thinkers, artists and hackers at a festival that explores the economic and artistic applications—subversive and otherwise—of this exciting technology in our networked world.
The symposium at the Onassis Foundation included Voltnoi & Quetempo, George Papageorgiou, Denis Jaromil Rojo, Benjamin H. Bratton, Dimitris Vourakis, Marco Sachy, Brett Scott, OMSK social club, Matthew Liston, Ruth Catlow, Kei Kreutler, Mat Dryhurst, David Gerard, Jemima Kelly and James Bridle.
Blockchain technology comes from an explicitly anti-authoritarian technological history: decentralized peer-to-peer networks were developed as a way to circumvent authorities in the face of shut-down, censorship and control. But in the years since Bitcoin, blockchain projects tend to attempt reproduce the very techniques and actions of authorities, albeit in a decentralised manner, and in ways that actively seek to be beyond control. In this talk, Jaya Klara Brekke will trace through how the project of decentralized network technologies shifted from a political economy of flows, open access and self-determination, to fine-grained enforcement of access control, property rights and systems beyond control through new forms of algorithmic authority.