Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, NFTs and smart contracts are the fashion of the moment. They promise (yet another) revolution. They attract public and private investments. They allow those who have embraced them to make fortunes and lose everything. They are also, however, yet another step towards electronic slavery disguised as a dream of freedom. Thanks to these technologies – but more generally to the way the information technology market works – we transfer to private operators the control over the economic and intellectual value we create with our work and our commitment of thought. In exchange for what?
The productive and economic processes based on information technologies are based on the inversion of the relationship between need and its satisfaction. First comes the “solution” and then the “problem” that this solution must solve: the tail, in short, wags the dog.
It is true that, just to limit ourselves to the last century, Ford said that if he had to listen to the people, he would have to breed faster horses instead of making cars. As it is true that Steve Jobs argued that most of the time people don’t know what they want until it is shown to them. However, it would be incorrect to deduce from these approaches a general rule according to which the important thing is to create something salable, then you will make sure that it serves something. In other words, the fact that a “technology” is available does not imply that it must necessarily be used. This is even more true if we consider that blockchain, cryptocurrencies but also ebooks, music and various services work as long as telecommunications operators, but especially governments, allow it. It is taken for granted, in fact, that the physical infrastructure on which blockchain and its derivatives rely is always available, functioning and, above all, free from blocks or political constraints.
This is not the case, because as recent history shows, the first reaction of countries in which unrest is breaking out is the blocking of telecommunications networks. This does not only happen in countries considered authoritarian but can also occur in the USA and also in Italy, where since 2019 the Presidency of the Council has received the power to activate the kill switch that shuts down the national internet in an emergency. And if there is no internet, there is no Blockchain, Bitcoin, NFT and so on. Similarly, given the dependence of these technologies on telecom operators and on Data-Centre Provider It is quite intuitive to understand that the freedom promised by its supporters is actually a different form of electronic slavery.
Blockchain
So let’s ask ourselves, first of all, if we need blockchain. This technology, says the vulgate, is used to guarantee transparency and publicity for transactions between two or more subjects, entrusting the protection of the authenticity of the exchange to distributed control. But what is the value of this “guarantee”? None, unless a law gives blockchain ledgers a particular legal status. Giving full legal value to a blockchain, however, is not something that requires a few paragraphs in a bill. It would be necessary to set up a complex system to meet the needs of the legal system to do something that is already done with other systems. It would cost a lot, even from an energy point of view and would deliver the network to those who have the computing power to generate the proof-of-work that “seal” i ledger. For their part, on the other hand, the current tracking systems studied in logistics, industrial production and the agri-food sector already make it possible to meticulously reconstruct the path of raw materials and products without the need to reinvent the wheel.
Similar problems concern the attempt to use a blockchain to identify people. Legal identity belongs to the state, not to the individual. It is the State that, right from the issue of the birth assistance certificate and then the registration in the registry office certifies who I am and who – in the case of collaborators of justice or other persons in particular conditions – I can become. There are no legal alternatives and, consequently, there cannot be any of a technological nature.
Finally, but perhaps first of all: why should a decentralized system based on blockchain be conceptually preferable to a hierarchical system of a State nature? What are we afraid of, living in a democratic country firmly rooted in Western culture and values?
cryptovalute
First of all, they are nothing new and do not necessarily depend on a blockchain. In this sense, therefore, they are nothing new because the first “currency” to use cryptographic tools was Digicash in 1993. Secondly, they are not “coins” because they are not legal tender and therefore are not a means of payment. If instead of Euros a shopkeeper is willing to accept Bitcoin or the famous Cameroon mud pizzas, the problem is all his own. Finally, cryptocurrencies have no objective value, but only conventional because they are “valid” only for those who recognize them as an exchange value. As long as Bitcoin and its derivatives were exchanged on circuits separate from those of the financial system, they had at least an ideological function: to steal the monopoly on the creation of value from the state and therefore at least partially realize the anarchic utopia. However, since private investments have turned cryptocurrencies into objects to speculate on, they have lost their revolutionary reach. Wanting to use some language back it could be said that cryptocurrencies are now a full part of the capitalist system.
NFT
A similar fate (but without the initial revolutionary inspiration) afflicts i Non Fungible Token (NFT), a variation of the technology that makes cryptocurrencies work and which serves to “unicize” a file and trace its transfer of ownership. NFT, it is said, serves to give value to digital works of art (zzate) and to protect the rights of authors and those who buy their works. It is no coincidence that it has attracted the attention of entertainment multinationals such as Disney or Netflix.
First of all, to understand if we need NFTs we have to decide what we mean by “work of art” and, perhaps, re-read Benjamin’s work on the work of art in the era of its technical reproducibility published in 1935. That said – as a lawyer would say – worth the follow. If what counts about a work of art is the aesthetic experience it stimulates, then there is no difference between original and copy, especially in relation to works created natively in digital. So, to “appreciate” a cryptopunk sold for 12 million dollars, I don’t need to download the original (assuming it is public), or to buy an “authorized copy”. I just need to take a screen shot of one of the many images available online to satisfy my “aesthetic need” especially if I have to live it on the screen of a smartphone or tablet. Conversely, looking at one of the Caravaggio exhibits in Sala 90 of the Uffizi is an experience that no photograph or reproduction “authenticated” by an NFT could allow. In this regard too, however, one should meditate on the role of a physical copy of the painting made by professionals (not necessarily forgeries) in the sector. Also in this case, from the point of view of those who benefit from the work, the difference between original and copy gradually loses meaning. If, then, you take it a step further and look at the Next Rembrandt it turns out that the aesthetic experience is not even linked to a specific work, but to the artist’s style. The Next Rembrandt it was not painted by Rembrandt but by software that imitates its expressive language. From the viewer’s point of view, however, this does not matter because what matters is the final effect. If the colors are used as Rembrandt would do, if the stroke is like Rembrandt’s, if the subject is one that Rembrandt would have painted, then the picture is as if it were by Rembrandt (whoever deals with AI will have recognized, in this reasoning, the functionalist argument on the basis of which we try to prove that a software can if not be, at least seem intelligent). So, returning to the point, what matters is whether the work was created with the stylistic features of a specific artist and not whether it was created by the “original” artist.
If, therefore, and at least for digital art, there is no difference between original and copy, NFTs only serve to feed the collecting market. That is, speculation. This being the case, then it is appropriate to call them by their name: i Non Fungible Token they are like anti-copy systems: they are for those Digital Right Management so much opposed by the Free Software community. Mind you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with studying how to protect the intellectual property of digitized assets, but it is important to be clear about the meaning of the words.
Smartcontracts
The idea behind smart-contracts is to entrust a software (but the word is reductive) to manage the negotiation and fulfillment of a contract. A (today) banal purchase on an ecommerce platform is conceptually based on a smart-contract: the obligations of the parties are “codified” in the procedure for selecting the product, payment and shipping of the goods according to what has been “incorporated” in the platform. Nothing different, conceptually speaking, from buying a pack of cigarettes from a vending machine.
Smart-contracts proper rely on the inevitable blockchain and, at least on paper, they should dynamically manage the contractual relationship. But just look at the examples used most often to explain what they can serve to understand what are the structural problems of this technology. Three critical issues emerge above all: the need for interfacing with a huge number of platforms, the impact of programming errors on people’s rights, the transfer of the power to judge from the Courts to the technicians.
Thinking that a smart-contract can be used to manage the payment of, say, the installments of a car lease implies that, at least, the systems of the finance company, the customer’s bank, the car manufacturer and the car itself are connected. Already at this level of complexity is the order of problems that can occur is evident.
To this we can add, and we come to the second problem, the fact that there are no programs without errors. As the complexity of the software grows, the number of bugs grows and therefore in an infrastructure like the one described that should interact with very different systems it is inevitable to expect blocks and malfunctions that could affect millions of people at the same time. Not to mention the security issues of individual platforms.
Finally: who should judge on these malfunctions (and even before on compliance with the obligations assumed by the parties)? Certainly not a judge. Unless, in fact, the magistrate has a degree (and experience) in computer science it is quite unlikely that he will be able to realize what he is doing. The consequence is that the decision will in fact be delegated, as often happens in very complex processes, to a technical consultant.
Conclusions
If we wanted to summarize in one sentence the enormous dimension of the problems caused by the distorted approach to technological innovation, there would be no better choice than a book as unknown as it is prophetic: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. The mad are running the asylum.
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