Re: <nettime> Ten years in, nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

[byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

On 31 Dec 2017, at 14:11, Brian Holmes wrote:

> > the idea of 'dual-use' technologies... is mostly a clerical 
> > distinction
> So the people behind the DARPA Grand Challenges are clerics?
>
> Ted, we could have a relatively boring discussion about how US 
> military investments have played a role parallel but not analogous to 
> that of central-planning agencies like Japan's MITI when it comes to 
> steering technological development - but either I misunderstand you, 
> or you seem behind the curve on this one? What exactly is your 
> objection?
DARPA / etc certainly aren't clerical, and their impact has been beyond 
comprehension. And they're also just a vanguardist face of a much larger 
force. If anything, people tend to grossly underestimate the range and 
depth of military activities on the fabric of everyday life.
Not so long ago the bucket of stuff we call 'technology' was mostly 
artisanal: variations on themes whose boundaries were defined by 
specialized types of labor. In a world were that legacy was still 
dominant, it made more sense to declare X or Y technologies 'military' 
and/or 'peaceful.' That's what I meant by 'clerical': file under ____. 
But times have changed.
More and more energy has gone into filling in the blanks between X and 
Y: systematic efforts to assemble libraries of knowledge, techniques, 
and resources that turn the difference between (two arbitrary examples) 
a 'gun' and a 'ship' into a smooth continuum. So, to offer a silly 
example, a few centuries ago you'd go to a gunsmith or a shipwright; a 
few centuries from now you'll say here's the challenge, and the system 
will spit out some bespoke system that's that's sort of a gun and sort 
of a ship. But it could just easily be a 'sock' and a 'carburetor' or a 
'bobblehead' and a 'stethoscope.' The endpoints matter less than the 
ability to fill in *all* the blanks between them: resourcing, materials, 
manufacturing, application, deployment, maintenance, and of course 
financial.
Biochemistry is a good applied example: if you need a protein with 
receptors A/B/C arranged in spatial configuration X/Y/Z, then the 
challenge is to (a) identify the biochemically inert molecular scaffolds 
that'll support those specifications, then (b) work backwards to figure 
out which would be most efficient to manufacture, given resources D/E/F. 
But the boundaries that define biochemistry (or any other field) are 
becoming porous: increasingly it's just one approach among many for 
manufacturing whatever.
In such a world, it becomes much harder to declare X or Y technologies 
'military' and/or 'peaceful' — or, rather, the definition become more 
capricious. And, when every aspect of this relies on Turing machines, 
what exactly are we trying to define? This problem came into clear focus 
in something Morlock mentioned in earlier, ITAR, the US regulatory 
structure aimed at limiting 'International Traffic in Arms Regulations,' 
which until ~1997 classified cryptography as a weapon. Cypherpunks-type 
led the challenge to that by arguing that math is a form of speech, that 
you can't prohibit the laws of the universe, etc. But that was just the 
tip of the iceberg.
With every passing day, we see how seemingly benign things can be 
'weaponized.' We could dismiss that phrase as just some lite/pop 
appropriation of a bureaucratic distinction, but I think that's 
backwards on every level. It assumes that things that were seen as 
benign or beneficial are now being misused. But I think the reality is 
that, for many people, those things were never entirely benign or 
beneficial — they were just the perks that one part of the population 
enjoyed. It's not an accident that the weaponization of everything is 
happening precisely when a certain world order shows signs of collapse. 
The pearl-clutching classes will look around and tell themselves that 
the world is changing *because* evil-doers are weaponizing the stable 
ideas and institutions of society — for example, that Trump won 
*because* Russia manipulated the US elections. That may be true, but the 
analysis doesn't end there: we could look back at US efforts to bring 
down the USSR, or US interventions in others' elections, or the US's 
neglect of its own electoral machinery, or whatever. But beyond those 
debates, which are usually moral, we can see how the idea that things 
are being 'weaponized' is less about how they're being used than who 
they're being pointed at — 'us.'
Hence my objection to the idea of 'dual-use' technologies: it assumes 
there are separate domains, war and peace, military and civilian. The 
freedom to apply that distinction is precious indeed, and it's becoming 
very fragile. We can respond by quoting lines from Yeats's Second Coming 
and praying that our retirement savings lasts longer than we do — 
basically what the 'centrist' US is doing. Or we can recognize what lots 
of people have been saying all along, that the distinction was never so 
clear.
Cheers,
Ted
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