Unpacking Micropayments Part 2: User Base Dichotomies, and a Cyberpunk Sensibility

By maxhampshire, March 30, 2017

“Our new technologies have fractal effects that can be observed on global levels, societal levels, and individual levels. Consider the environmental effect of high-tech manufacturing; consider conflict minerals going into so many laptops; consider the effect the ubiquity of smartphones has on geopolitical discourse; on national discourse. Consider where the American stock market would be [...]

Unpacking Micropayments Part 1: Lightning, Scalability, and Going Off-Chain

By maxhampshire, March 14, 2017

“…we believe that a third web is coming. The first was the World Wide Web of documents, with hyperlinks between nodes. The second was the Social Web, with links between nodes representing friend relationships. And the third is the Machine-Payable Web, where the links between nodes represent payments between machines. Why would such a web [...]

Weaponize the Infosphere

By maxhampshire, February 21, 2017

Violent demonstrations against a presentation by Milo Yiannopoulos – the “most fabulous supervillain on the internet” – by protestors at Berkeley University several weeks ago led to the (in)famous Breitbart writer’s appearance being cancelled. The ensuing media frenzy also led to the controversial figure garnering far more (and far broader) attention than if his presentation [...]

Analogy: Between Captchas and Clickworkers

By maxhampshire, January 25, 2017

Analogy is an Amsterdam-based consultancy platform applying the strategies of industry leaders to independent publishing. Their aim is remarkably simple, and admirably straightforward in its presentation: “to adopt the strategy of the winner” One of several projects operating out of the PublishingLab (part of the Amsterdam Creative Industries Network), Analogy successfully provide a set of [...]

A Creeping Convergence: Observations on OneCoin and Steemit

By maxhampshire, January 19, 2017

On the surface, both OneCoin and Steemit are platforms that promise a lot and deliver very little. Deeper analysis of the differences between the two, however, begins to reveal novel aspects of the communities contributing to these platforms, and grants an insight into the power-dynamics of groups engaging with cryptocurrencies and the first fully-realized “social [...]

A Computational Commons: Solidarity Through Automation?

By maxhampshire, January 11, 2017

“In our age, capital is emerging as a form of computation. What about the common?” Matteo Pasquinelli – Capital Thinks Too Political action in the age of algorithmic management doesn’t mean resisting automation – it means working intelligently with it to create a partially automated commons. Investment management firm Bridgewater Associates have tightened the grip [...]

Crowdfunding future subversion

By maxhampshire, December 15, 2016

While crowdfunding has a long history that far predates the internet, online platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo pushed the relentlessly positive and entrepreneurial spirit any crowdfunding exercise demands into new territories. By contrast, Silvio Lorusso’s Kickended.com is an archive of Kickstarter projects which not only failed to meet their target, but in fact failed to [...]