 Great book about Bitcoin by one of the leading educators of the technology. Some great, original insights as well.
Some notes: Bitcoin is "the concept of decentralization applied to the human communication of value" (p. 2), with Bitcoin we go from "institution-based money" to "network-based money" (p. 3). Because it is decentralized, innovation can happen without permission, in the most interesting areas, the margins--this "enables exponential growth" (p. 6). Blockchain + proof of work + P2P network + cryptography = bitcoin, blockchain is not the sole technology behind bitcoin. Bitcoin is immutable because financial transactions recorded onto blockchain and guaranteed by proof of work makes it nearly impossible to change, authorities are unable to tamper with financial transactions because of the consensus algorithm, and the energy, cost, and time requirements to do a 51% attack. Bitcoin mining takes a large amount of energy (Bitcoin mining uses more energy annually than Switzerland), but Antonopoulos gives us an interesting perspective on this: the purpose of mining is to guarantee security with proof of work, bitcoin is a side product; energy is just the material to create history on the blockchain, to create this digital monument of immutability. Antonopoulos the anarchist seems to predict that Bitcoin will eventually overtake the "unholy alliance" of money and state. The 2008 financial crisis has shown us that the rule of law is hardly an instrument of justice, these mechanisms are "soft promises" by those in authority in contrast to the immutable, decentralized systemof Bitcoin, which contains a "hard promise." Nassim Taleb makes an appearance: Bitcoin is an anti-fragile system that becomes robust through the constant attacks to it; meanwhile the banks live in constructed and artificial safety, large and vulnerable. Bitcoin vs Ethereum: Ethereum allows programming flexibility, Bitcoin trades flexibility for security. We have only touched the surface of what can be done with Bitcoin and Ethereum: there is not yet the required infrastructure, the concentration of users, etc for a lot of possible applications to succeed. The most creative insight: Bitcoin changes the form of money. Money is transferred in "containers" (p .78), because the current financial system does not allow enough flexibility for micro- transfers and micro- micro- transfers. And so we receive a monthly or biweekly salary (the container of the money). With Bitcoin, money can be seen as an endless stream, a flow uninhibited by a container. Like how streaming videos changed people's experience of audiovisual material, what will streaming money mean, and how will it change our experience with and the function of money?--a provocative question.
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 Lu Xun's first collection of short stories is Outcry (1922), why is this second collection Hesitation? I looked for signs of a post-May Fourth hangover within the collection but I ended up giving up such a reductionist reading. (Admittedly, Outcry is also not written in the mood of a drunken orgy either, the first-person narration device in all the stories in Outcry allows Lu Xun to express his ambivalent attitude.) While some of the stories demonstrates this post-revolutionary fatigue and pessimism ("Upstairs in the Tavern"), others seem to be irreconciliable with this paradigm.
Some Stories: New Year's Sacrifice The bourgeois and educated narrator returns to his hometown Luzhen for New Year's. We hear the story of the miserable, unfortunate Xianglin's wife (whose personal name is never revealed), a woman who has slipped through the cracks of safety of various Chinese social structures (e.g. family) and is left alone, helpless, and begging for a living. A strange moment occurs when the narrator re-encounters Xianglin's wife, she asks him: "'After a person's died,' she spoke with a soft, secretive urgency, coming a few steps closer, 'after a person's died --does their soul go on living?'" This fills the narrator "with terror" and induces a "blind panic" (p. 163) in him; he feels guilt at the inadequacy of his response to the uneducated Xianglin's wife, and comforts himself as he ended his response with 'I don't know'--an abdication of responsibility. Lu Xun may have been thinking about himself and other educated elites who sympathized with their poor Chinese countrymen; what kind of responsibility, what kind of relationship did they have with the great majority of China? Our Learned Friend Satirical portrait of an intellectual (not sure if Lu Xun was attempting a general diagnosis). Yuan Liaofan (who changed his name to Gao Erchu, an attempt to show kinship with Gao Erji or the Russian Gorky), starts his new job at an all-female school (a progressive development for that time). He laments the fact that he has to lecture on Eastern Jin, and not the Three Kingdoms, he had read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms and figured himself familiar with that historical period. (Note: Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a popular novel about that period of Chinese history.) He doesn't prepare properly for his first lecture, feels the mocking eyes of his female students, and at the end of the story, concludes that all-female schools are a plight to society while he goes and gambles with his friends. The Loner The educated intellectual in the first-person considers his friendship with Wei Lianshu, a similarly educated type who is the eccentric stranger in the town. One of the better stories, but I need a closer reading before being able to write anything substantial. In Memoriam The first-person protagonist writes about his relationship with Zijun. As a modern, educated couple they decide to live together. Their circumstances become precarious and the narrator decides to split from her, perhaps partially responsible for her later death. Interesting story because of the existentialist undertones (and this was pre-Sartre): "Desolation and the silence of the grave were everywhere about me. I seemed to see the lonely darkness of all who had died a loveless death and hear their bitter, despairing struggles." "I spent my days sitting or lying in the cavernous emptiness of the apartment, allowing the deathly silence to eat at my soul." "This time, everything that had brought me happiness, love, life was now gone, replaced only by hollowness, a hollowness that I had created with the truth." I wonder if this is the despair that Japanese literary critic Takeuchi Yoshimi spoke of in his reading of Lu Xun's novels.  An entertaining, informative, non-technical, character-driven narrative and introduction to Bitcoin.
Popper recounts the origins of Bitcoin: it was an attempt by fringe, anarchist-libertarian online communities (the Cypherpunks) to create a currency that decentralizes the power held by state monetary institutions and allows individual privacy against centralized governments and large corporations in financial transactions--a reconceptualization of money. Members in these communities tried for over a decade to look for a solution, until in 2008 the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto came up with a solution in the form of blockchain technology, a decentralized, communally held database of financial transactions. In Bitcoin's early days, people got involved due to their political ideals and the promise that the technology held for the future: Bitcoin grew slowly through fringe online communities. Once it became mainstream, Bitcoin lost these ideals, it became appropriated by and subsumed under the organizations and institutions that it was originally dreamed up to resist, and the founding communities were pushed aside by Silicon Valley and to a lesser extent, Wall Street. (Although it was used in different ways in different contexts; in Argentina, due to an unstable currency and state manipulation of currency exchange rates, Bitcoin functioned as an alternative currency that displaced state authority.) Popper writes a very character-centered narrative, as if the story of Bitcoin could be written through the activities of a handful of men. For example, he writes on page 265 that "Collins and Patrick shared a similar genial sensibility and a dry sense of humor, and they fell into an easy relationship"--could Bitcoin have gone in a completely different direction if they did not have a dry sense of humor? (This was when the American government thought of Bitcoin as a menacing technology for black market activities; Collins and Patrick represented a sympathetic government official and a lawyer advocating for Bitcoin, respective.) Popper seems to suggest from this narratorial technique that Bitcoin could have went in a completely different direction if were not for these individual decisions. Earlier on Bitcoin's history (when it was still being discussed by the Cypherpunks) this might have been true; while I am critical it makes the narrative entertaining nonetheless.  Warning: a bit theoretical
I am not too big of a fan of structuralism a la Levi-Strauss (it is probably because I am misreading him), but I like Marshall Sahlins' brand of structuralism, which he elaborates in this collection of essays. He focuses his attention on the histories of the peoples of three islands on the Pacific: Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand. First essay is an addendum on Sahlins' famous analysis of Captain Cook's encounter of and subsequent death by the Hawaiians. Sahlins' analyzes their "Aphrodisian" culture, in which beauty and the aesthetic are intertwined with the political and moral (I cannot repeat all of Sahlins' analyses here). In either case, Sahlins' describes a "political economy of love" in which "the structure of the kingdom is the subliminated form of its forces of sexual attraction" (p. 19). I must admit that this is a bit hard to wrap my head around (although Sahlins' point about the base and superstructure in this culture was duly noted), but Sahlins' attempts to use this as an example of a "performative" system (or statistical model) where the cultural order is created through individual "interests" (interests being another key word in Sahlins' structuralism) as opposed to a "prescriptive" system (or mechanical model). This is a very potent theoretical dichotomy. However, performative structures are not completely 'free;' there is a symbolic system that guides these actions--the Bourdivine "habitus." The second essay is an "anthropology of history" where Sahlins' general point is that "different cultural orders have their own modes of historical action, consciousness, and determination--their own historical practice" (p. 34). Sahlins first explores heroic histories in hierarchical cultures where kings literally (in a figurative way) stand-in for the community, giving them a greater power to shape history--this is opposed to Occidental notions of history, where history is made by people (although people have mostly been white and male). Additionally, Sahlins describes the Maori version of history: for the Maori, the past, which extends to the mythic past, structures "life-possibilities" (p. 57), history is not made by the present, it is the maker of the present. Third essay is about the "stranger-king," a figure in the Polynesian cultural structure. This figure is opposed to our notions of political authority: the stranger-king comes from beyond and imposes himself upon society, so political authority comes from without, not within (so not democratically elected). The stranger-king is eventually incorporated into the culture through marriage or other forms. Sahlins uses this figure to comment on the diachronic and processual nature of structure (contra strictly synchronic conceptions of structure). As he writes: "...this diachrony is structural and repetitive, it enters into a dialogue with historical time, as a cosmological project of encompassing the contingent event" (p. 77). Structure and event are not oppositional terms. Final essay repeats his famous analyses of the synbolic misreadings between Cook and the Hawaiians which led to the former's death. This collision of the two cultures led to a transformation of both cultures while they acted on established symbolic structures--Sahlins' famous "structure of the conjuncture." Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change, to repeat Sahlins' witty inversion of the French bon mots.  Great great introduction to literary theory. Eagleton moves swiftly through various approaches, summarizing and problematizing each the major theoretical developments in each approach, deconstructing both "literature" (the object of study) and eventually, "literary theory" (by demonstrating the lack of a unified methodology).
"We must conclude, then, that this book is less an introduction than an obituary, and that we have ended by burying the object we sought to unearth" (p. 204). Eagleton shows throughout his comprehensive survey that literary theory is a product of historical/material conditions, and that what is considered as proper literary criticism is used as an ideological instrument of ruling class domination. He proposes a strategic use of various approaches to investigate the material effects of texts (not limited to whatever the literary institution designates as canon), broadly termed Rhetoric. I think I will refer to this book in the future for recommendations on lit crit books, although for the next few months I should be reading mostly into Barthes.  In Empire of Signs, Barthes goal is to "isolate somewhere in the world (faraway) a certain number of features... and out of these features deliberately form a system.” He calls this system Japan.
I'm not sure exactly where this book fits in Barthes' oeuvre and his intentions, but as the excerpt of a review on the back cover points out, "in this fictive Japan, there is no terrible innerness as in the West... For Barthes Japan is a test, a challenge to think the unthinkable, a place where meaning is finally banished." It is interesting how Japan is described as a system that is in opposition to the West, this was also the case in Levi-Strauss' lectures on Japan and Junichiro Tanizaki's essay about Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows. Perhaps it id due to the legacy of Orientalism. Barthes' powers of observation are exemplary; tactile sense makes way into his analysis like in this chapter, "Chopsticks": ... Another function of the two chopsticks together, that of pinching the fragment of food (and no longer of piercing it, as our forks do); to pinch, moreover, is too strong of a word... ... Here we have a whole demeanor with regard to food; this is seen clearly in the cook's long chopsticks, which serve not for eating but for preparing foodstuffs: the instrument never pierces, cuts, or slits, never wounds but only selects, turns, shifts... ... In all these functions, in all the gestures they imply, chopsticks are the converse of our knife... they are the alimentary instrument which refuses to cut, to pierce, to mutilate, to trip... by chopsticks, food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence...  A self-help (although self-cultivation would be the better word) book. Puett and Gross-Loh summarize the philosophies of Chinese thinkers and write about their contemporary applications for a popular audience. They highlight some very practical lessons. Better than a lot of the self-help books I read in my teens.
Some notes: - good bibliography for learning more about the philosophers - interesting use of ritual (not sure if it's a redefinition of how ritual is conceptualized in Anthropology, Professor Puett is trained as an anthropologist) - goodness as being contextually created, not stable and universal like how Occidental philosophers define it - self-divination through self-cultivation, a provocative concept  Haven't read Murakami in a while.
Nothing surprising with this novel for those who have read him: the first-person (boku) protagonist, a normal guy who paints portraits for a living, separates from his wife at her sudden and unexpected request. His life goes from stability to being thrown into disorientation: he drives without purpose throughout Northern Japan for a month before deciding to stay in the mountains in his friend's father's cabin; it is here that he discovers the latter's masterpiece, Killing Commendatore--the father had been a renowned Japanese artist. He is thrown (not of his own volition, often happens in Murakami novels) into a strange adventure. This period of his life, where he is forcefully removed from the flow of ordinary life, is generative. The protagonist goes from a prostitute for the rich (this is how he likens himself in the novel; his portraits have value only as commodities, not artworks) to exploring a personal artistic style. This nine month period of his life (same length as pregnancy) results in some original works of art and the partially-dream-assisted, partially-immaculate pregnancy of his wife. After this nine month period he gets back with his wife and returns to being a mere portrait painter, a mere painter of commodities. Several previous Murakami characters and images re-appear in this novel. The protagonist is always the same protagonist. Menshiki is the cool, lone wolf character (Nagasawa in Norwegian Wood, Komatsu in 1Q84) whose intelligence allows him to rise up above the systems that ordinary people live in. Mariye is the quirky and weird female adolescent character (Fuka-eri in 1Q84, May Kasahara in Wind-up Bird Chronicles). The well in the Wind-up Bird Chronicles reappears as well, and it similarly acts as a portal into a different metaphysical space. While it is always nice to take a stroll in Murakami's world, it was just a nice walk in the park, not a life-changing hike in the Alps. The novel seemed to me a bit flimsy and unnecessary. He attempts a weak foray into Japan's colonial legacy and connects it to Nazi Germany (not a direct connection) through Killing Commendatore and through the Amada family (his friend's family)--he undertakes a much more powerful exploration in Wind-up Bird Chronicles. He tries a feeble statement on life and art--life and art tangibly transform the other in the novel, and Ideas and Metaphors take on physical forms--but this has been done better elsewhere, like in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice. One last observation: there are strange kinship relations.  One of the most interesting and memorable essays written.
I doubt my ability to write a good review; Haraway is in conversation with a lot of feminist theory (not my strong point) and proposes the figure of the cyborg to consider a new politics. Writing in the 1980s, the cyborg was merely an incipient fantasy, but Haraway's elaboration of this figure is precocious and simply put, genius. The cyborg is a transgressive figure of the late 20th century that renders porous three previously strict boundaries: one, the boundary between human and animal (the de-exceptionalization of homo sapiens, more evident now); two, the boundary between organism and machine (think of prosthetic bodies, AI etc.); and finally, the boundary between the physical and non-physical (we can think of our devices, which communicate with invisible signals and waves). The cyborg can be a troubling figure of patriarchal control and cybernetic domination, but it is, as she writes, "about lived social and bodily realities in which people are not afraid of their joint kinship with animals and machines, not afraid of permanently partial identities and contradictory standpoints" (p.15)--this is (if I comprehend correctly) similar to the political voice called "women of colour," an "oppositional consciousness" composed of those who cannot be categorized into the essential "social categories of race, sex, or class" (p.17). The cyborg is a figure of a new emerging world order that is transforming from "an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system" (p. 28). Haraway notes the implications of the transformations from one system to the other, some of which include: organism -> biotic component small group -> subsystem reproduction -> replication nature/culture -> fields of difference labor -> robotics mind -> artificial intelligence We move from 'natural' and essential categories to fluid, cybernetic systems of communication; from heterogeneity into the homogeneous language of coding practices. A note of the writing itself: Haraway's writing is fertile, witty, provocative, improbable; I can only think of a handful of writers whose writing style has stimulated me as much as she has (Nietzsche, Sontag). Haraway employs Christian analogies to describe this transformation and to great effect: we have fallen from organic wholeness, idyllic nature (and essential categories) to fragments and partial connections; we are left only with a nostalgia for a common language (Babel).  Kundera in The Art of the Novel, writing of unexplored avenues of the novel, writes of Jacques le Fataliste as being one of "the two greatest novelistic works of the eighteenth century, two novels conceived as grand fames. They reach heights of playfulness, of lightness, never scaled before or since" (p. 15).
Jacques the Fatalist is a novel unlike any I have read before, it is Diderot's elaborate joke, a story of stories interrupted by stories and impossible circumstances that prolong the eventual conclusion. Diderot's presence is felt throughout the novel, and he teases the readers, putting on full display his powers as a novelist who joyfully constructs the novel according to his prerogatives. It felt quite liberating to read Jacque le Fataliste, as an extended exploration of possibilities. I could definitely sense Kundera's own debt to Diderot in his own firm authorial presence, and I think that Italo Calvino may also have been thinking of Jacques le Fataliste while writing If on a winter's night a traveler. There is the same second person narratorial reference to the novel's readers, and the same meta-narrative structure. I could not understand the philosophical point that Diderot was attempting to convey, I do not know what kind of conversations philosophers were having about free will vs determinism. |
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