Decentralization: an incomplete ambition

tags: Internet Protocol Digital Sublime

Notes

Introductory rituals

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motivating frustration goes something like this: The underlying protocols for the Internet and the Web work owe their benefits and health to their decentralized architectures, yet they have become infected with centralized pathogens, such as government censorship and monopolistic corporations predicated on user surveillance (Benkler, 2016; Brooker, 2018; Kahle, 2015). The proposed cures are chiefly technical ones, such as new distributed networks and blockchain protocols.

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claims about decentralization in early computer culture paled in comparison to the centralized institutions surrounding them.

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alleged decentralization as a new form of totalizing management through the specification of protocols— indeed, “the most highly controlled mass media hitherto known”

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thanks to the guise of de- centralization, regulators have allowed online media to centralize to an extent that previous broadcast regimes never could.

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Argument and structure

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even the most apparently decentralized systems have shown the capacity to produce economically and structurally centralized outcomes. The rhetoric of decentralization thus obscures other aspects of the re-ordering it claims to describe. It steers attention from where concentrations of power are operating,

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lack of clarity around the term is functional, in that it enables people of varying ideological persuasions to imagine themselves as part of a common project.

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Ambitions

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nature generates order not by primordial design but through natural selection among organisms; wealth flows toward open, diverse markets more eagerly than it follows autocratic commands. What other human errors might be remediated with decentralized forces?

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Political cultures

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urge to decentralize has offered the promise of bypassing central governments regarded as corrupt, facilitating private enterprise and foreign investment, and fostering more responsive political and civic institutions through local accountability

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widespread effort to reform large national militaries into the networked image of their insurgent opponents

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celebrating the already “off-centered” nature of all nation-states—since governments’ claims to unity, totality, and centralization always exceed the reality of their control.

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Network cultures

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Tim Berners-Lee (1999) saw decentralization as a “fundamental property” of his invention. “It had to be completely decentralized,” he later wrote. “That would be the only way a new person somewhere could start to use it without asking for access from anyone else. And that would be the only way the system could scale” (p. 16). He concluded his memoir on the subject by relating this design to the radical openness of his Unitarian Universalist church.

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Digital Sublime

Blockchain cultures

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Definitions

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Political meanings

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Network meanings

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Blockchain meanings

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Recentralization

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Centralizing politics by decentralizing

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Alexis de Tocqueville could see a pattern at work in post-revolutionary France. “When a nation abolishes aristocracy, centralization follows as a matter of course,” he wrote. “Every thing tends toward unity of power, and it requires no small contrivance to maintain divisions of authority” (Tocqueville et al., 1998, p. 82). Centralization, he further surmised, “increases in depth at the same time it diminishes in appearance” (Schmidt, 2007, p. 10). This paradox recurs with remarkable consistency.

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The quest for decentralization, he contends, relies on a the presumption of a “centered subject,” an autonomous, isolated, and mostly fictional kind of individual. And it is a fiction with consequences; for instance, Frug shows how such assumptions lend legal preference to more atomized suburban ways of life

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The Internet's Achilles' heels

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DNS as a “centralized Achilles’ heel by which it can all be brought down or controlled” (p. 126). Yet years later, this structurally centralized feature of the Internet rarely represents a source of trouble.

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Regardless of any decentralization in the underlying technology, economic imperatives—such as delivering the returns that venture-capital investors expect—have produced centralized networks.

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In 1999, Berners-Lee did not anticipate this threat; “Happily,” he wrote, “the Web is so huge that there’s no way any one company can dominate it”

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urge for smoother user experience has steered other decentralized protocols into centralization

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Git version-control system is now primarily used not through the distributed storage among users for which it was designed but through GitHub,

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“Computerization is always going to promote centralization even as it promotes decentralization—often in one and the same motion.”

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Blockchains to the rescue

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multiple breaches of the popular Mt. Gox exchange between 2011 and 2014 had cascading effects across the system. As with email and Git, even on a decentralized network users were clustering around a convenient platform; more recently, Coinbase has become the centralized portal

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the agreed-on database of a blockchain- based network is itself a form of centralization,

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exponential distributions due to network effects place limits on what such replication can accomplish.

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distribution of wealth among Bitcoin accounts, which is more unequal than the remarkably unequal global economy as a whole, especially thanks to the accumulations of early adopters

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“can we really say that the uncoordinated choice model is realistic when 90% of the Bitcoin network’s mining power is well-coordinated enough to show up together at the same conference?”

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What is it, then, that blockchain technology decentralizes?

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even in these earliest years of crypto- network experiments, it is not clear that authority, trust, or wealth are being meaningfully decentralized

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Missing pieces

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Postredecentralization: Conclusions

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there are other mechanisms of centralization as well—such as the accumulation of network effects, corporate financing, regulatory policies, and more. A theory of decentralization must include a theory of centralization as well.

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avoid demonizing any- thing with a center. Centralized structures can have virtues, such as enabling publics to focus their limited attention for oversight, or forming a power bloc capable of challenging less-accountable blocs that might emerge.

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A centralized, quasi- democratic institution as flawed as the US Federal Reserve System, which Satoshi Nakomoto sought to replace, has features arguably more accountable to the common good than the ad-hocracy of Bitcoin miners.

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Any ambition for decentralization will remain chronically incomplete without accompanying ambitions for accountability.

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References

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Notes

Introductory rituals

claims about decentralization in early computer culture paled in comparison to the centralized institutions surrounding them.

alleged decentralization as a new form of totalizing management through the specification of protocols— indeed, “the most highly controlled mass media hitherto known”

thanks to the guise of de- centralization, regulators have allowed online media to centralize to an extent that previous broadcast regimes never could.

Argument and structure

lack of clarity around the term is functional, in that it enables people of varying ideological persuasions to imagine themselves as part of a common project.

Ambitions

nature generates order not by primordial design but through natural selection among organisms; wealth flows toward open, diverse markets more eagerly than it follows autocratic commands. What other human errors might be remediated with decentralized forces?

Political cultures

urge to decentralize has offered the promise of bypassing central governments regarded as corrupt, facilitating private enterprise and foreign investment, and fostering more responsive political and civic institutions through local accountability

widespread effort to reform large national militaries into the networked image of their insurgent opponents

celebrating the already “off-centered” nature of all nation-states—since governments’ claims to unity, totality, and centralization always exceed the reality of their control.

Network cultures

Blockchain cultures

Definitions

Political meanings

Network meanings

Blockchain meanings

Recentralization

Centralizing politics by decentralizing

The Internet's Achilles' heels

DNS as a “centralized Achilles’ heel by which it can all be brought down or controlled” (p. 126). Yet years later, this structurally centralized feature of the Internet rarely represents a source of trouble.

Regardless of any decentralization in the underlying technology, economic imperatives—such as delivering the returns that venture-capital investors expect—have produced centralized networks.

In 1999, Berners-Lee did not anticipate this threat; “Happily,” he wrote, “the Web is so huge that there’s no way any one company can dominate it”

even the subversive peer-to-peer file sharing networks adopted server-like “ultra-peers” and “super-nodes” in order to ensure faster indexing and searching

urge for smoother user experience has steered other decentralized protocols into centralization

Git version-control system is now primarily used not through the distributed storage among users for which it was designed but through GitHub,

“Computerization is always going to promote centralization even as it promotes decentralization—often in one and the same motion.”

Blockchains to the rescue

multiple breaches of the popular Mt. Gox exchange between 2011 and 2014 had cascading effects across the system. As with email and Git, even on a decentralized network users were clustering around a convenient platform; more recently, Coinbase has become the centralized portal

the agreed-on database of a blockchain- based network is itself a form of centralization,

exponential distributions due to network effects place limits on what such replication can accomplish.

distribution of wealth among Bitcoin accounts, which is more unequal than the remarkably unequal global economy as a whole, especially thanks to the accumulations of early adopters

“can we really say that the uncoordinated choice model is realistic when 90% of the Bitcoin network’s mining power is well-coordinated enough to show up together at the same conference?”

What is it, then, that blockchain technology decentralizes?

even in these earliest years of crypto- network experiments, it is not clear that authority, trust, or wealth are being meaningfully decentralized

Missing pieces

Postredecentralization: Conclusions

we cannot accept technology as a substitute for taking social, cultural, and political considerations seriously. Decentralized technology does not guarantee decentralized outcomes.

there are other mechanisms of centralization as well—such as the accumulation of network effects, corporate financing, regulatory policies, and more. A theory of decentralization must include a theory of centralization as well.

avoid demonizing any- thing with a center. Centralized structures can have virtues, such as enabling publics to focus their limited attention for oversight, or forming a power bloc capable of challenging less-accountable blocs that might emerge.

A centralized, quasi- democratic institution as flawed as the US Federal Reserve System, which Satoshi Nakomoto sought to replace, has features arguably more accountable to the common good than the ad-hocracy of Bitcoin miners.

Any ambition for decentralization will remain chronically incomplete without accompanying ambitions for accountability.

References