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Week 3: Hacker, Cyberpunk, Cypherpunk, Crypto-Anarchist, Blockchain

September 14, 2017

A blockchain is a magic computer that anyone can upload programs to and leave the programs to self-execute, where the current and all previous states of every program are always publicly visible, and which carries a very strong cryptoeconomically secured guarantee that programs running on the chain will continue to execute in exactly the way that the blockchain protocol specifies. (Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Blog, April 13, 2015)

Objective

  • To understand the 70 year history of tech culture and the strands of it that Cryptoculture embodies
  • To understand the mechanics of blockchain dynamics

Method: Discussion and Tutorial

  • This week will be broken down into a discussion and a tutorial on how Bitcoin and Ethereum work
  • Please bring a laptop if you have access to one

Assignment

Note: Due by noon Monday, September 18.

  • Set up your own Ethereum wallet on myetherwallet.com, print your paper wallet and store it somewhere safe, then email Troy your public address
  • Sign up for coggle.it and email Troy your username

Readings

Note: please read in the order below. Many of the texts are short and entertaining, so it should be a digestible amount. You may have already read most of the Rao readings.

Watchings (optional)

Agenda

3.0: Recap and Early Manifestos Discussion (deck)

  • Discuss: Week 2 concepts (assign in colony.io and ask the class to vote on how many tokens to assign to each)
    • Exit, Voice, Loyalty
    • Disposition, Active Form
    • Normalization
    • Appreciative and Instrumental Metaphors
    • Promethean, Pastoral
  • Lecture: Story of Prometheus animated by Piero di Cosimo
  • Discussion: Early Manifestos (build out mind map)
    • The Conscience of a Hacker (1986)
    • The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1992)
    • A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (1993)

3.1: Hackers and Crackers, Phreakers and Leakers, Cyberspace, Cyberpunks, Digital Dualism, Cypherpunks, Crytpo-Anarchists (deck)

  • Lecture: History of Hacking
    • MIT Media Lab to Star Wars
    • Crackers and Phreakers
    • Hacking in film
    • Cyberspace
    • Hacker Ethic
    • Normalization of Hacking
    • Anonymous and Snowden
  • Discussion: Computer Metaphor and Conspiracy
    • The Computational Metaphor, Kevin Kelley (1998)
    • Conspiracy as Governance, Julian Assange (2006)

3.2: Pancomputationalism, Digital Physics, Cybernetic Epistemology (deck)

  • Lecture: Network History
    • Turing ontology is anti-architectural
    • Cellular Automata and Digital Physics: Von Neumann and Konrad Zuze
    • Cybernetics and the Nervous System: Weiner and McLuhan
    • Interpersonal Computing to Planetary Scale Computing
  • Brainstorm:
    • Things we think of as computers
    • Contemporary conspiracies
  • Discussion: Blockchain Readings
    • “The Rise and Fall of Silk Road”, Wired (2015)
    • “Visions, Part 1: The Value of Blockchain Technology”, Vitalik Buterin (2015)
    • “Blockchains Never Forget”, Venkatesh Rao (2017)

3.3: The Internet (deck)

  • Lecture: Centralization
    • Baran's network typologies and the nuclear incentive
    • packet switching
    • ARPANET
    • TCP/IP and The Internet
    • WWW
    • network effects and digital monopolies
  • Demo:
    • ping example.com
    • traceroute example.com
    • inspect page source in Chrome browser

3.4: The Blockchain (deck)

  • Lecture: Cryptography, Double Spending, and the Blockchain Solution
    • The Onion Router (TOR)
    • cryptographic hash functions and the avalanche effect
    • public key cryptography and zero-knowledge proofs
    • digital signature
    • double spend problem
    • The Bitcoin Blockchain Solution and Satoshi Nakamoto
    • Mining
    • Silk Road and MtGOX
    • Forking
    • Altcoins, Colored Coins, Shitcoins
  • Discussion: Choose seminar assignment
    1. Discursive: Recontextualize ‘Architect’
    2. Active Form: Game of Pickaxes