@brockm - Just listened to The Progressive Bitcoiner episode you were on. Your discussion of meme culture made me think of this other podcast episode you might find interesting: https://theculturejournalist.substack.com/p/checkpoints-ruby-justice-thelot-third-spaces
TLDL: The podcast presents Ruby Justice Thelot’s case study on how communicative “third spaces” can exist on internet platforms (in this case, tens of thousands of YouTube comments accumulating over almost a decade under a video for the soundtrack to Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest)—and some of the challenges censorship or centralized platforms may pose to those structures. It dovetails into a discussion of what that means for the “Balkanization & Babelification of the Internet,” which is just a more academic way of saying “how online echo chambers are created.”
I find it to be a pretty compelling anecdote for thinking through the value of things like censorship-resistance, accessibility, and the role of media and platforms generally.
Don’t disagree with your sentiment. One general problem I see in the counter-messaging to Warren’s bill/views (and others like it) is too much emphasis on the principles behind crypto, and not enough on the reality of what can be done to address the bill’s concerns.
Government tries to solve problems (real or imaginary) that it believes (rightly, wrongly, or duplicitously) the public is incapable of solving itself. I want to see more messaging and discussion that is literally as direct as possible—e.g. “How Bitcoin stops terrorist financing” or “Why crypto is a better alternative to eliminate terrorist financing than the government and big banks.” Even the Blockchain Association’s November 15 letter to the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee was lukewarm—only stating that proposed regulations would be “counter productive” to national security interests with a citation to a single WSJ letter to the editor from a different crypto lobbyist that effectively said “blockchains are public, so terrorists don’t like using them.” True or not, it’s too abstract.
Legislators that barely know how to use google need to be persuaded by offensive messaging and education that is tangible, which means discussing and demonstrating the utility of solutions to the problem they’re confronting. It’s against these concrete backdrops that the more ethereal appeals to freedom, equality, etc., can be contextualized—and against which the government’s alternatives can be evaluated.
I see where you’re coming from—but I think the problem is that too much gets lost in the gap between people’s inherent conception of rights and the reasons why those rights should or should not be infringed. Even if it’s the case nothing is owed to explain why a right should exist, there has to be an articulable reason why it shouldn’t be taken away if there’s a belief that doing so is necessary for some higher-order reason (e.g., national security).
My fear is that when lawmakers go into the chasm to learn about crypto, they leave without having anything concrete to assuage these higher-order concerns. E.g., if a politician goes in to learn about crypto with the belief it can be used to fund terrorism, but is willing to be persuaded otherwise, it is going to be tough to move their position when most of the readily-accessible knowledge base they can draw from is comprised of middling statements like “it’s not that widespread,” or “it’s not as bad as banking.”
I’m not saying they can’t also weigh those alongside the other positive benefits crypto can offer, but that those benefits are easier to dismiss or devalue in the absence of other positions that directly clash with the specific issue—especially one where the consequences under consideration (e.g. terrorism) are taken so seriously by those in government.
HFT's current stage is a point on a really interesting through-line of how systems align themselves to push information exchange to its limits. We've gone from shouting hawkers bartering in open-air markets to skyscrapers filled with floors of traders shouting into phones to 5 quants doing math in a basement server room.
Thanks both! I'll check each of these out. I've had a tendency to come at this sort of stuff from what I guess I'd say is a more speculative point of view, but I think we're seeing complexity getting directly injected into people's realities at a time that's faster and more palpable now than I've ever felt before (not that I've been around that long...). Hence the ask -- I've been looking to dig even further into more "rigorously analytical" approaches like the ones you've each cited.
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