How Ted Nelson's Computers for Cynics is Relevant to Cryptos
Replace the word "computer" with "crypto" and this short, amusingly cynical video remains very relevant today.
Much of cryptospace is a battle for control. Ideas such as decentralisation of governance are obviously about control; in this case it is about the attempts to remove control and thereby weaken those who would want to exert their particular ideology. But other aspects of decentralisation, going all the way down to some rather old internet protocols, also boil down to one group of people making decisions for others.
Ted Nelson makes the important point that what most people think of as technology is actually "cultural politics masquerading as technology." That smartphone you irradiate yourself with has layers of physical and semiotic processes designed to elicit particular behaviours. Yes, there are also layers of technology but they are hidden under the glossy veneer of a slab of modernity.
The technologies that are pushed by corporations and governments are those that enable more control over you. They are not "inevitable" (a popular propagandist trigger word) but rather the outcomes of politics. This is happening within the crypto world and the broader space of decentralised ledger technologies, including blockchains.
To not see this is to ignore the whole history of technology.
To ignore the fundamental differences between a truly decentralised (and possibly equitable) system and a pseudo-decentralised system with centralising tendencies, would be to throw away this opportunity to move humanity away from its barbaric gangsterism.
"We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims." Richard Buckminster Fuller.
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