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Bitcoin is more of a technology than a currency, as such it does not have to have been a political act to create it.

mattzito 13y ago
That's an interesting variant on, "The personal is political" - "The technical isn't political". Some technologies are by their nature effectively neutral - the knife can be used to cut food, shave your face, kill your enemy. In a more recent example, the microprocessor is a neutral technology. But many technologies are inherently political - the Pill, for example, or ICBMs. I would argue that Bitcoin may be more of a technology than a currency, but it is an inherently political technology, designed as it is to provide an abstract, somewhat anonymized general ledger technology.
- monochr 13y ago
  Every technology is political. The only time it stops being political in an overt sense is when it no longer provides an advantage over other technologies which can do its job. Taking the knife. It's invention was somewhere around the dawn of time for our species so the distinction between political and evolutionary event is blurry. But it's impossible to deny that it empowered the group of our ancestors who could build knifes, their advantage was so overwhelming over those who couldn't that today there isn't any human who isn't a tool user of some sort. The micro-chip is very much more recent and still clearly political. The societies which can produce them control those who can't utterly. The NSA spying is only the latest in a long string of such events, the use of microchips to cripple weapons used against their creators is another. This technology favors very complex societies that can spend billions of dollars on building fabs, designing chips, training engineers etc. Now for a thought experiment why a complex society like ours isn't predestined to be the state of humanity. Imagine that tomorrow some scientist somewhere finds out you can create a small stable anti-matter bomb by shaking a tomato on a stick at the sky during a storm. All of the advantages of all weapons since the bronze age are annihilated in a second. Large cities just mean a whole society can be destroyed quicker. Everyone from Amazonian Indians to San Fransisco's tech elite have exactly the same destructive ability, to a very good approximation. In a world like that you'd very quickly end up with a population that lives no closer to each other than the maximum blast radius of said tomato. The majority of technology will more than likely disappear since it gives no immediate advantage to those who posses it and population would plummet since one person can now take on a whole army. For a further exploration of the impact of technology on the politics of a society see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_story%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_sto...
dragontamer 13y ago
Robert Moses's Bridges are a technology as well. But his bridges were a political tool to segregate New York City. Since his bridges and tunnels were shorter than certain busses, he made it impossible for African Americans to commute to certain areas of NYC in the early 20th Century. Politicians can use anything they want as a weapon for their viewpoints.
Torgo 13y ago
You have made the fallacy of presuming that technology is neutral.

That's an interesting variant on, "The personal is political" - "The technical isn't political". Some technologies are by their nature effectively neutral - the knife can be used to cut food, shave your face, kill your enemy. In a more recent example, the microprocessor is a neutral technology. But many technologies are inherently political - the Pill, for example, or ICBMs. I would argue that Bitcoin may be more of a technology than a currency, but it is an inherently political technology, designed as it is to provide an abstract, somewhat anonymized general ledger technology.

monochr 13y ago
Every technology is political. The only time it stops being political in an overt sense is when it no longer provides an advantage over other technologies which can do its job. Taking the knife. It's invention was somewhere around the dawn of time for our species so the distinction between political and evolutionary event is blurry. But it's impossible to deny that it empowered the group of our ancestors who could build knifes, their advantage was so overwhelming over those who couldn't that today there isn't any human who isn't a tool user of some sort. The micro-chip is very much more recent and still clearly political. The societies which can produce them control those who can't utterly. The NSA spying is only the latest in a long string of such events, the use of microchips to cripple weapons used against their creators is another. This technology favors very complex societies that can spend billions of dollars on building fabs, designing chips, training engineers etc. Now for a thought experiment why a complex society like ours isn't predestined to be the state of humanity. Imagine that tomorrow some scientist somewhere finds out you can create a small stable anti-matter bomb by shaking a tomato on a stick at the sky during a storm. All of the advantages of all weapons since the bronze age are annihilated in a second. Large cities just mean a whole society can be destroyed quicker. Everyone from Amazonian Indians to San Fransisco's tech elite have exactly the same destructive ability, to a very good approximation. In a world like that you'd very quickly end up with a population that lives no closer to each other than the maximum blast radius of said tomato. The majority of technology will more than likely disappear since it gives no immediate advantage to those who posses it and population would plummet since one person can now take on a whole army. For a further exploration of the impact of technology on the politics of a society see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_story%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_%28short_sto...

dragontamer 13y ago

Robert Moses's Bridges are a technology as well. But his bridges were a political tool to segregate New York City. Since his bridges and tunnels were shorter than certain busses, he made it impossible for African Americans to commute to certain areas of NYC in the early 20th Century. Politicians can use anything they want as a weapon for their viewpoints.

Torgo 13y ago

You have made the fallacy of presuming that technology is neutral.