Distributing Chains
Distributing Chains was a PhD research project in political geography built around one question: what matters politically in blockchain technology? It ran at Durham University and ended in a thesis, Disassembling the Trust Machine: three cuts on the political matter of blockchain.
This is an independent archive of the project's public pages as they stood in 2019. It is not run by the author, the university or any event organiser mentioned in it.
The thesis
The whole thesis is a single PDF of about 3.5 MB, posted on the project site in June 2019: Disassembling the Trust Machine, 2019 (PDF). It follows Bitcoin, Ethereum and Faircoin through three strategies: diffraction, dissensus and the (re)distribution of the possible. The about page explains how the three fit together.
Short texts to start with
Delegation uses a door closer to show how a political decision gets frozen into a device, then asks what should and should not be handed to blockchain code. Block Busters #1 is the longer essay on the "Nerd Reich", first run at openDemocracy in April 2016. The dissensus protocol is a list of questions written for developers as a counterweight to consensus protocols.
Three image posts, decentralisation, consensus and technology, each pair a technical term with what it does not guarantee.
Project pages
- Objectives and research questions: what the project set out to map and ask.
- Publications and essays: books, chapters, reports and teaching material.
- Talks, interviews and exhibitions: the 2017 and 2018 appearances.
- The 2018 seminar series: aims and syllabus of an 8-week course on the political economy of blockchain.
All posts
- Disassembling the Trust Machine (seminar series)Reading list and aims of an 8-week seminar on the political economy of blockchain.
- TechnologyImage post: technology is not neutrality.
- ConsensusImage post: computational consensus is not social consensus.
- DecentralisationImage post: decentralised computation is not decentralised power.
- Dissensus protocol?Questions for developers on code, the unknown and the Satoshi Oath.
- Block busters #1The dawn and delusions of the Nerd Reich, first published at openDemocracy.
- 01 DelegationDelegation as a way into the political implications of technology.
The same list is available as posts by Jaya, and by topic: Articles, Block busters, Consensus, Decentralisation, Delegation, Uncategorised.