Blockchain Control

Abstract

Blockchain technology is often discussed and theorized in relation to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Its quality as a technology that produces advanced encryption keys between objects, however, also makes it interesting to those who seek to connect physical objects to digital elements. The reason for this is that the link between objects needs to be 'secure' from undesired external interference. In relation to such interests, blockchain has been identified as a highly attractive technology to support the general digitalization of society towards the Internet of Things, smart cities etc. In extension, the implementation of blockchain technology implies that it may work as a tool that has the capacity to direct which objects may/may not interact with each other. The 'ledger of everything' that blockchain may possibly produce as regards the 'Internet of Everything' is even suggested to make humans and other intermediary technologies redundant. In this essay, I argue that in order to sustain legal critique when the world moves into the next era of digitalization, we need to understand -and question -how technological control operates through e.g. blockchain technology by locking physical and digital elements to each other.

Nothing to lose but their (block)chains

“…Is it possible, however, to imagine a digital identity project that does not produce such capture? To assess this question, we can adapt Käll's (2018, 139) observation that it is “those who have never been fully human who have most to gain from the turning posthuman.” Using this idea, we can contrast how signs inscribed on blockchain would operate on our cosmopolitan netizens and stateless Rohingya, respectively.…”

“…Swartz (2017) argues that the potentially disruptive uses of blockchain remain fantasy and are increasingly displaced by those which intensify control, such as banking. Further, Käll (2018) asserts that as the physical objects we “own” become encoded with digital signatures inscribed on blockchain, the person‐thing relationship becomes not only more closely drawn but also traceable and locatable. Herian (2018a, 6) sums this up as “(big) business as usual.”…”

Blockchain imperialism in the Pacific

“…In certain jurisdictions, blockchain advocacy has secured the state’s imprimatur as a technology of ‘uncensored truth’ (Walch, 2017: 744). What is envisioned here are social relations increasingly assuming the characteristics of encrypted data with blockchain ‘replacing law as a means for capitalist control’ (Käll, 2018: 136). As a regulatory regime, blockchain enforces code as ‘ex-ante’ law and as a set of technical rules determined by proprietary software (Hassan and De Filippi, 2017).…”

The potential for new materialist justice via Nordic feminist perspectives of law

“…Space as a new materialist tool furthermore opens up to rethink traditional feminist questions and divides between private and public space in relation to technological advances. As new materialist researchers have pointed out, the addition of digital layers to things that previously did not have such layers both affords new means of control and new types of production and logistics (Braidotti 2013;Haraway 1991;Käll 2018;Käll 2020). As I furthermore have discussed in a report for the Equality Ombudsman (DO) in relation to the prevalence of sexist marketing, it is also becoming obvious that where feminists could once call for a stricter regulation in public spaces -the publics spaces as such are becoming more liquid and controlled by market actors and thereby more difficult to regulate in the traditional sense.…”