Gregory's Server@alxd I just can’t take a book seriously which proposes central bankers and cryptocurrency as the sovereign solution to our troubles, you know?
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19 comments
 @mycorrhiza @adamgreenfield if you are yet to read it, can I ask you a favor? Could you please count the Zurich chapters and the number of recommended cafes and candy shops along with the streets and how to get there? I just... can't. @adamgreenfield I spoke with some Carbon Reward people and I can imagine a book discussing that, but that would be an economic epic focused on changes in daily life and how different corporations try to game the system. I also can imagine showing the bureaucrats as heroes fighting to preserve the spirit of the solution, hunting the cheaters. The problem is, KSR is not even attempting that. For him the Blockchain Just Fixes Capitalism. That's the heart of the plot.  @alxd Oh, it is known. I felt it incumbent on me to read it twice, while writing “Lifehouse” – I kept wanting to believe he’d identified some nuanced angle that prevented it from being that exactly. Nope. It was that exactly. @alxd That has not *generally* been Stan’s jam, which is why MFTF was so very disappointing. @adamgreenfield honestly speaking, I don't know if "The Ministry of Sustainability" is doable as a single book; looking at all the angles and levels of the changes needed. I could imagine it as a series, maybe even as some mega-anthology from multiple authors? My take on solarpunk and climate fiction is to first see the uncomfortable things we don't want to see, so I could "cover" some activism, hard open data problems and so on, but would ask someone else to tackle the scientific parts. @adamgreenfield one way or another, I think that striving for a Single Climate Masterpiece might always pull us in the direction of too elegant, too pure, ignoring some really important parts of the world and problems to come. That also means that "consuming" climate fiction might be different, potentially harder than reading science fiction, since the reader would need to do a lot more emotional and intellectual work.  @alxd @adamgreenfield in KSR's defense, he has disavowed "blockchain" since. I find it interesting that the "central bank-issued, negative carbon-backed digital currency" has happened, except for the carbon part. At least that is my reading of the digital euro: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.html @alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield okay, not joking, I apologize for the annoying question, but - Do you have any >source< on KSR disavowing Blockchain? Apparently he says that a lot around the world, but he is never recorded / he never says it clearly in his writing. The Chain is just such a vital part of the book's plot, that I have no idea how it could work without it as a Magical Technology. @alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield regarding the digital currency, I do admit that I know too little about it to comment on either technically, economically or societally. I will get back to you when I read more on it :) @alxd @adamgreenfield noo, nothing magical. It's just a slow database, and everything you can do with it you can do without it. The currency KSR imagined IMHO would work just as well with a regular secure database. Or maybe it would not, but that would be because of non-obvious monetary economics spillovers. I know little about this stuff, but I am a professional economist, so I do know a little, and cannot find any obvious inconsistencies. @alxd @alberto_cottica If you’ll forgive me, I can recommend the cryptocurrency and blockchain chapters of my 2017 “Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.” They hold up surprisingly well. @alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield if you ever remember the interview, I'll owe you coffee ;) I tried searching for it, but all the problems he describes with tech in the Ministry are very... non-committal. As in - he doesn't notice that without Blockchain the plot of the Ministry jus doesn't work. It's not that "ah, the cars should have flown lower", it's... the whole premise is just broken. @alxd you owe me a coffee! @alberto_cottica @adamgreenfield thank you so much, I do owe you coffee ;) I think I remembered it right then, he's backtracking on the terminology, not the solutionism / magical thinking itself. @alxd hmm... I will have to disagree here nothing magical about digital currencies. And one of the central banks depicted in Ministry has the rollout of a digital form of cash on schedule right now. But I'll still take you up on coffee! :-) @adamgreenfield |
@adamgreenfield @alxd still have that book (which I picked up at a speaking event with Stan) sitting on my to-read pile. I fully expect it to frustrate me, and your review only suggests that my expectations are properly calibrated.
I did hear the man himself explain his world-view — and I don’t share it! I suspect some combination of age and class position explain the gap. There’s this whole crop of writers, 10-30 years older than me (Stan is a bonafide Boomer) who seem to share many of my values, but have more faith in institutions (and less faith in regular folk) than me.
@adamgreenfield @alxd still have that book (which I picked up at a speaking event with Stan) sitting on my to-read pile. I fully expect it to frustrate me, and your review only suggests that my expectations are properly calibrated.
I did hear the man himself explain his world-view — and I don’t share it! I suspect some combination of age and class position explain the gap. There’s this whole crop of writers, 10-30 years older than me (Stan is a bonafide Boomer) who seem to share many of my values,...