Events
Live cast series SESSION #1: The use of disorder in the blockchain city
Blockchain technology is often described as a distributed logbook, a tool for administration across networks of peers that can keep track of all kinds of transactions and resources. As such, it is often seen as simply a way to make bookkeeping more efficient or transparent. However, new functionalities of the blockchain called ‘smart contracts’ make automated, algorithmic decision-making possible, meaning that this narrow and a-political understanding is no longer sufficient. Blockchains can now do much more than ‘keep track’. Smart contracts turn them into systems of governance, with various kinds of rules and rights hard-coded in their design.
As more and more blockchain projects engage in urban systems such as (local) governments, commons communities, and social entrepreneurship, it is becoming clear that they have much greater consequences and influence social systems in fundamental ways. Blockchain is a technology that presents a veneer of order, but human nature is not neatly categorizable in algorithmic logics. What will urban blockchain governance systems mean for the messy and creative human nature that persists underneath? What might life be like among all these blockchains?