2021 ·
BIM (Blockchain In Media) Research Program
· Exhibition
·
Blockchain
October 8 - December 3, 2021,
at the Orléans Theater
“At the root of certain radical technologies, there is not only a practical application but often much broader fantasies and powerful ideologies. This is the case with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, whose founding white paper was published on October 31, 2008, on Halloween night, by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto, at the height of the global financial crisis. This decentralized, peer-to-peer currency, born in a context of widespread distrust, was designed to bypass both states and banks.
The workshop aims to map out the various ideological and political currents – sometimes contradictory – and their ramifications, which underpin the creation of this digital currency and the architecture that supports it, the blockchain. Movements such as the cypherpunks, who advocate for proactive use of cryptography to protect privacy and oppose intrusive governments, libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who foresee an imminent collapse of the state in favor of a spontaneous market order, and even the Extropians, an influential Californian subculture, who believed that, through this currency, the agent of chaos, they could unlock innovation and live forever.
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