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Recommended - The White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto

02.24.2019 by Ollie //

The White Paper by Satoshi Nakamoto

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First appearing ten years ago, The White Paper was a short but strikingly graceful outline of how an electronic cash system called Bitcoin might function without reliance on a central authority such as a bank or government, and was attributed only to a mysterious individual or group called Satoshi Nakamoto. At first glance, Ignota's decision to follow up last year's excellent Spells: 21st-Century Occult Poetry with a seemingly tangential examination of the birth of Bitcoin and blockchain technology might raise a few eyebrows. However, the reasons for this decision are made very clear in editor Ben Vickers' preface; The White Paper constitutes the origin myth not only of cryptocurrency but potentially of a system of knowledge capable of reorganising all human social and political relations. A decade on from Bitcoin's implementation and particularly in the wake of Nakamoto's long silence, The White Paper might be considered a magical text, a sacred doctrine that appeared from nowhere and contained the power to alter reality.

The White Paper itself occupies only nine pages of this volume, and while it remains a revolutionary text in its own right, what really shines here is Jaya Klara Brekke's highly accessible guide that accompanies it. Brekke unpacks many of the paper's key ideas—from obscure aspects of cryptography and computation to privacy, transparency, and trust—and illuminates them next to the political concerns of post-crash 2009 as well as those emerging in the years since. For those of us who struggle to maintain a slim grasp of the real-world implications of blockchain technology, or those of us with an interest in contemporary myth-making, this is crucial reading.

Published by Ignota 31st January 2019

Categories // Recommended Tags // Myth, Politics, Technology

Recommended - New Dark Age by James Bridle

10.21.2018 by Ollie //

New Dark Age by James Bridle
£16.99 / hardcover

Reserve

The most significant crises of our age - climate change, spiralling economic inequality, fundamentalist politics, and information overload - are, for James Bridle, chiefly crises of cognition above all else. While the internet has made the world feel more visible than ever before, our inadequate ability to think this new world has led us into a paradoxical age of darkness, a time in which the knowable becomes ever more distorted by the complex informational systems in which we are fully embedded.

The links Bridle explores between state surveillance, global financial systems, computational thinking, climate change, platform capitalism, and right-wing populism (not to mention the startling, nightmarish world of children's YouTube) provide little salve next to the scale, complexity and urgency of these issues. However, what New Dark Age does offer is a crucial lens through which we might begin to think the systems we have built, a lens that recognises the legacies of colonial power which emerge through them, and understands that deleting your Facebook is not enough.

Published by Verso on 19th June 2018

Categories // Recommended Tags // Politics, Technology

Event - Xenofeminism: Helen Hester in conversation with Joanna Walsh

03.29.2018 by Pages of Hackney //

Xenofeminism by Helen Hester

*Please note that this event will take place on 29th March, not the 22nd as previously advertised.*

Join us as we welcome Helen Hester to talk about her new book, Xenofeminism, with Joanna Walsh.

In an era of accelerating technology and increasing complexity, how should we reimagine the emancipatory potential of feminism? How should gender politics be reconfigured in a world being transformed by automation, globalization and the digital revolution?

These questions are addressed in this bold new book by Helen Hester, a founding member of the Laboria Cuboniks collective that developed the acclaimed manifesto 'Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation'. Hester develops a three-part definition of xenofeminism grounded in the ideas of technomaterialism, anti-naturalism, and gender abolitionism. She elaborates these ideas in relation to assistive reproductive technologies and interrogates the relationship between reproduction and futurity, while steering clear of a problematic anti-natalism. Finally, she examines what xenofeminist technologies might look like in practice, using the history of one specific device to argue for a future-oriented gender politics that can facilitate alternative models of reproduction.

Challenging and iconoclastic, this visionary book is the essential guide to one of the most exciting intellectual trends in contemporary feminism.

Helen Hester is Associate Professor of Media and Communication at the University of West London, and co-founder of the Laboria Cuboniks collective. She is also the author of Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, and editor of the collections, Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism, and Dea Ex Machina.

Joanna Walsh is a writer, journalist, and campaigner whose work has appeared in Granta Magazine, gorse journal, The Guardian, The New Statesman, The Stinging Fly, and many others. Her new book, Break.up, is due to be published by Semiotext(e) in April 2018, and her previous books include Worlds from the Word's End, Vertigo, and Hotel. 


Tags // Feminism, Politics, Technology

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Tue 09

Live - The Manningtree Witches: A.K. Blakemore Live Tarot Interview with Jen Cownie

March 9 @ 19:30 - 21:00 GMT
Thu 04

Live - Blueberries: Ellena Savage in Conversation with Kerri ní Dochartaigh

March 4 @ 19:30 - 21:00 GMT

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