“Forking as Cultural Practice: Institutional Governance after the DAO” presented by Tarasiewicz

Symposium:

• ISEA2017: 23rd International Symposium on Electronic Art
• More presentations from ISEA2017:  

• Institutions in Crisis Panel

• Forking as Cultural Practice: Institutional Governance after the DAO

• Matthias Tarasiewicz

Venue(s):

• University of Caldas, Caldas, Colombia

• Keywords: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Code Governance, Code Politics, Coded Cultures, Consensus, Cryptography, Cryptopolitics, Cypher-punks, DAO, Disruption, Distributed Autonomous Organisations, Ethereum, Forking, Governance, Hacker Culture, Innovation

  Since the microcomputing revolution in the 1970s we live in the age of permanent (technological) disruptions, but institutional and educational practices have barely changed. “Technologies come and go but the university remains, in a recognizable and largely unchanged form” (Flavin, 2017). Disruptive technologies, such as distributed consensus systems (blockchains, DLTs) challenge the role of the university as gatekeeper to knowledge and question the structure and organisational architecture of institutions. The only chance for traditional institutions is to find interfaces to informal and technology-driven “production cultures” (Tarasiewicz, 2011) to be able to radically reinvent the university. If the universities don’t react to technological and societal change, they will be forked, replaced, and decentralized.

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Category:

• Panel