Re: cypherpunks Digest, Vol 25, Issue 9
on the topic of Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures: There unusually a lot of btc discussion on the list lately: technical (the fork), philosophical and practical. On the philosophical/political side: btc is great, I like it, I use it, but, come on, we all know that by design (increasing difficulty of the chain and proof-of-work system) btc is determined to be a space race. Before you can maintain the network with simple hardware, and get btc for it, now you have to be a mining rig. We know that btc is good for P2P financial transactions, but the first important question now is: How do you earn bitcoin? (as an individual, you can't mine, if you are not a programmer or a designer, how do you earn btc?) It becomes less and less of a question how do you spend btc, but still, unless I mined a lot in the past or bought it for cash, where do I get it? Secondly, the rhetoric we hear often in the mainstream btc discussion is "it is a solution for banking the Unbanked" This talk is obviously dodgy - lets say "the unbanked wants to be banked" if you have an account with nothing in it, and no way of filling it in, there is no point. The only good thing about btc walled vs bank account when its empty is that there is no one is proposing you to get an overdraft or a loan. But still, empty btc wallet is pretty useless. Rather decent response to poitical btc frenzy I found in this post - https://blog.caseykuhlman.com/entries/2014/bitcoin-somaliland.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=%24feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+underWater+desert+Blogging Another mainstream talk is: its not about bitcooin, it is all about blockchain technology. Thats correct, it can be useful for some stuff. But what drives me up the walll is a hype around it mixed with vagueness. "We can build all this amazing socio-technical systems with it" and very rarely, amongst general public (not blockchain devs) you come across concrete ideas of a design. What exactly does this weird data structure does in a very specific social context? What are exact detailed functions it has, how does it integrates with other layers - software and hardware. So the talk "some devs will write cryptographically verifiable scripts for us which interact on the blockchain and it will give the world some cool ways of interaction" is just dangerous. Similar rhetoric brought humanity things such as Facebook. The only thing which i consider right in the blockchain discussion that "ok, it allows adding some features to a system that can be useful in some particular cases" On the technical side: fork, xt-code etc - I would like to organise and stream a panel discussion on WCN <http://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/> channel soon-ish. I dont want to turn cypherpunk list into a Bitcoin Talk :) but will ping a link here and the time we will schedule it. On 8 July 2015 at 01:22, <cypherpunks-request@cpunks.org> wrote:
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Today's Topics:
1. Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (grarpamp) 2. "Google is to surveillance capitalism what GM was to managerial capitalism" (Razer) 3. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Juan) 4. Re: Hacking Team has been hacked (hard) (Razer) 5. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Sean Lynch) 6. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Lodewijk andré de la porte) 7. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Sean Lynch) 8. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Lodewijk andré de la porte) 9. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Juan)
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Message: 1 Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400 From: grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> To: Cpunks List <cypherpunks@cpunks.org> Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org Subject: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] Message-ID: <CAD2Ti28Tw7Kz+RoW3DYqEPbB4KfS= TiTSwbtneL7ps1QsKvzvw@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Then again maybe I am missing the key reasoning for this fork.
People often miss the fundamental reasons Bitcoin exists, the various conjoined ethos behind its creation. This is to be expected, it's so far ouside any thinking or life process they've ever had to do or been exposed to. It's also partly why figuring out what to do or code or adopt, is hard. And certainly not made any easier by the long term need and the current value at stake.
Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai without it being gated, permitted, hierarchied, middlemanned, taxed, tracked, stolen and feed-upon until pointless... this simply doesn't compute for these people. Their school of thought is centralization, profit, control and oppression. So of course they see txrate ramming up against an artificial wall as perfectly fine, it enables and perpetuates their legacy ways.
Regardless of whichever technical way the various walls are torn down, what's important is that they are. And that those who are thinking outside the box do, and continue to, take time to school these legacy people such that they might someday become enlightened and join the ethos.
Otherwise might as well work for ICBC, JPMC, HSBC, BNP, MUFG and your favorite government. Probably not as much fun though.
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Message: 2 Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:32:35 -0700 From: Razer <Rayzer@riseup.net> To: cypherpunks@cpunks.org Subject: "Google is to surveillance capitalism what GM was to managerial capitalism" Message-ID: <559C3763.1000205@riseup.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization
Shoshana Zuboff, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Harvard Business School
April 4, 2015
Abstract: This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its implications for ‘information civilization.’ Google is to surveillance capitalism what General Motors was to managerial capitalism. Therefore the institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian.
Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and ‘continuous experiments.’
An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and departs in key ways from the centuries long evolution of market capitalism.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 15
Keywords: surveillance capitalism, big data, Google, information society, privacy, internet of everything
On 07/10/2015 04:25 AM, ksenia bellman wrote:
on the topic of Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures:
There unusually a lot of btc discussion on the list lately: technical (the fork), philosophical and practical.
On the philosophical/political side: btc is great, I like it, I use it, but, come on, we all know that by design (increasing difficulty of the chain and proof-of-work system) btc is determined to be a space race. Before you can maintain the network with simple hardware, and get btc for it, now you have to be a mining rig. We know that btc is good for P2P financial transactions, but the first important question now is: How do you earn bitcoin? (as an individual, you can't mine, if you are not a programmer or a designer, how do you earn btc?) It becomes less and less of a question how do you spend btc, but still, unless I mined a lot in the past or bought it for cash, where do I get it?
Yes, mining by individuals hasn't been feasible for some years. And there aren't that many ways (so far) to earn Bitcoin. So most users will need to buy Bitcoin. If anonymity doesn't matter much, that's generally not very hard. <SNIP>
On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 12:25:36 +0200 ksenia bellman <k@friendlygruppen.se> wrote:
Before you can maintain the network with simple hardware, and get btc for it, now you have to be a mining rig.
Right.
We know that btc is good for P2P financial transactions,
Well, that's the theory, but as you just mentioned, at least part of the network isn't looking too much P2P-like anymore...
but the first important question now is: How do you earn bitcoin? (as an individual, you can't mine, if you are not a programmer or a designer, how do you earn btc?)
Working for people who pay in btc. For instance, selling drugs to them =)
It becomes less and less of a question how do you spend btc, but still, unless I mined a lot in the past or bought it for cash, where do I get it?
I don't think that's really a problem. You can earn btc like you earn any other kind of money. Or you could at least if btc was a common medium of exchange. (you can of course simply buy btc)
Secondly, the rhetoric we hear often in the mainstream btc discussion is "it is a solution for banking the Unbanked" This talk is obviously dodgy - lets say "the unbanked wants to be banked"
But why should they? So that they can be easily monitored? THAT is dodgy too.
if you have an account with nothing in it, and no way of filling it in, there is no point. The only good thing about btc walled vs bank account when its empty is that there is no one is proposing you to get an overdraft or a loan. But still, empty btc wallet is pretty useless.
Rather decent response to poitical btc frenzy I found in this post - https://blog.caseykuhlman.com/entries/2014/bitcoin-somaliland.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=%24feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+underWater+desert+Blogging
Sorry, that's a typically retarded rant against 'anarchy'. Bitcoin isn't the same thing as political anarchy so valid criticism of bitcoin isn't the same thing as valid criticism of political anarchy. "If You Want to Sit At The Adults' Table Act Like Adults" Adults know the basic meaning of words and know that the STATE of somaliland isn't 'anarchy'. Adults are intellectually honest. Unlike the author of the article you linked.
Another mainstream talk is: its not about bitcooin, it is all about blockchain technology. Thats correct, it can be useful for some stuff. But what drives me up the walll is a hype around it mixed with vagueness.
Yep. It is mostly bullshit. Blockchain 'technology' (technology? it's just an algorithm) seems like a more robust version of digital signatures. And what of it? What kind of fundamental problem does a better digital signature system solve?
"We can build all this amazing socio-technical systems with it"
That is bullshit. But that bullshit is not the same as the political theory of anarchy. In other words don't confuse bitcoin with anarchy, regardless of what bitcoin pushers may say.
and very rarely, amongst general public (not blockchain devs) you come across concrete ideas of a design. What exactly does this weird data structure does in a very specific social context? What are exact detailed functions it has, how does it integrates with other layers - software and hardware. So the talk "some devs will write cryptographically verifiable scripts for us which interact on the blockchain and it will give the world some cool ways of interaction" is just dangerous. Similar rhetoric brought humanity things such as Facebook. The only thing which i consider right in the blockchain discussion that "ok, it allows adding some features to a system that can be useful in some particular cases"
On the technical side: fork, xt-code etc - I would like to organise and stream a panel discussion on WCN <http://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/> channel soon-ish. I dont want to turn cypherpunk list into a Bitcoin Talk :) but will ping a link here and the time we will schedule it.
On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 6:25 AM, ksenia bellman <k@friendlygruppen.se> wrote:
[snip]
- Do not top post. - Do not reply including entire bulk digests, cut them down to relavant. - Do not use "digest vol issue" as subject, use the same subject as whatever specific message in the digest you are replying to.
On 07/10/2015 03:26 PM, grarpamp wrote:
On Fri, Jul 10, 2015 at 6:25 AM, ksenia bellman <k@friendlygruppen.se> wrote:
[snip]
- Do not reply including entire bulk digests, cut them down to relavant.
[Snigger] No one pays by the byte anymore (...coderman). [extracting tongue from cheek] RR
participants (5)
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grarpamp -
Juan -
ksenia bellman -
Mirimir -
Razer