Re: <nettime> Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

On Mon, Jan 1, 2018 at 10:21 AM, byfield <tbyfield@panix.com> wrote:

my objection to the idea of 'dual-use' technologies: it assumes there are separate domains, war and peace, military and civilian. The freedom to apply that distinction is precious indeed, and it's becoming very fragile.

I agree with you that major technological developments take place as a crisscross of corporate-capitalist and military-state efforts, and I'd add that what matters is the particular form that relation takes as it unfolds in time and space. That was true with the synthesis of nitrogen in Germany around the time of WWI (fertilizer/explosives) and it was true with nuclear power in the US during and after WWII (A-bombs/electricity). Today, the crisscross of self-driving cars and autonomous military vehicles is something that can be analyzed as it unfolds. From my viewpoint, the concept of dual use does not cloud the issue. Rather it asks that one interrogate, and maybe even seek to influence, the particular form of development that is unfolding.

I'm fully aware that the world I live in has been decisively shaped by this relation between civilian and military technologies. Still I am as disgusted by the DARPA Grand Challenge as I am by the failed American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The revulsion that I felt at seeing American engineers, from garage enthusiasts to the high-end university professors, participating wholeheartedly in the development of the next generation of battlefield robots was not some unreflected moralism. It was a political revulsion - even though the weapon was, and still is, being pointed not at 'us', but at 'them.'

To all that you might respond: But what is the real value of the supposedly 'peaceful' side of this divide? Isn't the self-driving car just a ploy to put millions of truck and taxi drivers out of a job? Isn't this supposedly 'peaceful' technology actually a weapon being pointed at us? Great questions! That's exactly the kind of analysis I'm missing. Because it points to major consequences of the way that specific interest groups are steering technological development.

To me these kinds of questions are more interesting than the life and death of Bitcoin. Libertarian hackers think that with one rogue invention they can change the course of history. Meanwhile the nexus of corporate/military technology continues to evolve, provoking massive and radical transformations of society in its wake. We're unable to discuss it, much less influence it, because we don't have the analytical language to distinguish between possible futures. I can totally understand your frustration with this. The neoliberal world, in which things like Austrian economics and its associated technologies really mattered, is vanishing before our eyes. The whole point of being an intellectual is to see what's emerging on the horizon.

best, Brian