chor on same song ness
chor pharm on same song ness
via michel bauwens tweet [https://x.com/mbauwens/status/2109887398108877200?s=20]:
* Networks and Sovereignty
https://thecuttingfloor.substack.com/p/kill-your-darlings?
Chor Pharn discusses network theorists: Parag Khanna, Balaji Srivanasan, Benjamin Bratton, Isabella Kaminska and Di Dongsheng:
benjamin bratton et al..
“A second constellation formed around a *recurring embarrassment: every generation announces that a new network has made old sovereignty obsolete, and then discovers a court, a balance sheet, a port, a grid or a central bank sitting underneath it.
*aka: same song.. as long as any form of m\a\p
findings (aka: the things i can’t unsee) from on the ground ness deep dive and why we need tech w/o judgment
ie: the dance won’t dance unless/until it’s 1\ all of us 2\ legit free
nothing to date (ever since that day) has gotten to that root of problem
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
why joe (c) on freedom ness isn’t yet legit free dom ness
Parag Khanna taught me to see connectivity as strategic terrain. Ports, corridors, fibre, logistics, cities and finance were not decorations on the geopolitical map. They were part of the map. From Singapore, this was intuitive. We exist partly because flows cross here.
But centrality is not control. A node can be exquisitely connected and exquisitely dependent. The same cable that creates relevance creates exposure. A hub earns rents while the network is routed through it and discovers its vulnerability when the network reroutes.
as long as the only ‘centrality’ are the 2 missing pieces that every soul craves.. otherwise.. it is control
Connection -> agency was the illicit arrow.
Balaji Srinivasan pushed the network argument further. Digital communities can coordinate before geography. Crypto can create monetary communities before states have categories for them. Remote work can detach valuable labour from place. Exit becomes cheaper. A network can accumulate identity, capital and organisation before it possesses territory.
This was not nonsense. The mistake was to let bargaining power become sovereignty.
any form of m\a\p.. ever since that day
The network can leave California. It still needs somewhere to land. The sovereign has courts, police, land, electricity and the right to say no.
Benjamin Bratton made the same destabilisation more serious. The Stack was not a fantasy of escape from sovereignty but an account of sovereignty becoming layered. Earth, cloud, city, address, interface, user: computation increasingly assigns identity, routes action, structures visibility and governs access. The state is no longer the only system performing sovereign-like functions.
again.. any form of m\a\p.. nothing to date has gone that deep.. ever since that day
the stack et al
This aged well. It may age even better in a world of machine agents.
still not deep enough.. benjamin on agentworld ness.. benjamin on agent/1st-pinciple ness et al..
But Bratton’s temptation is computational: if the world becomes sufficiently legible, perhaps it becomes governable. A system can model the climate and fail to decarbonise. It can model a pandemic and still have politics. A digital twin is not custody.
any form of m\a\p – ie: legible ness
Legibility -> governability.
Then Izabella Kaminska enters and asks everyone to stop talking for a moment. Who settles? Where is the collateral? Who needs dollars? Who owns the liability? What happens when the clever new money meets a balance sheet at three in the morning?
yeah.. good to question.. but our questions always still center on forms of m\a\p.. we need global detox to let go of whalespeak
e: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening – so we can hear what’s already on each heart as global detox in order to org around legit needs
I have always liked people who ruin a grand theory with an operational question.
how about.. what are the conditions for us all to be legit free
Kaminska’s plumbing is not a footnote to the network world. It is the reminder that abstract flows terminate somewhere. A stablecoin settles against something. A digital transaction eventually encounters law, capital, accounting, energy and a real counterparty.
But plumbing can also become its own master key. Deep incumbent liquidity does not tell us where productive capability is moving. Financial, industrial and technological power can remain unbundled for decades.
Di Dongsheng brings the same problem into Chinese grand strategy. China can manufacture at enormous scale and still operate inside financial, technological and maritime circuits whose ultimate permissions it does not own. Currency, ports, shipping, capital and energy are not secondary to sovereignty. They are circuits through which sovereignty becomes operational.
‘operational ‘in sea world.. need a means to get out of sea world.. not keep operating in it..
sovereignty ness as cancerous distraction as well
Yet Di can slide from dependence to the desire for custody. If a circuit matters, control it.
Not every dependency should be owned. Some should be diversified, insured, substituted or tolerated. Attempts to eliminate dependence can manufacture the coalition that makes dependence dangerous.
any form of m\a\p perpetuates myth of tragedy and lord
The constellation survives because nobody wins.
need a means for life over survival ness
Khanna and Balaji are right that networks alter power.
Bratton is right that sovereignty becomes layered.
Kaminska is right that the abstract stack has plumbing.
Di is right that external circuits can constrain a physically powerful state.
And the old sovereign keeps returning, not as the only actor but as the entity that still controls many of the interfaces between layers.
This matters enormously for machine civilisation.
An agent may reason independently and still need a wallet.
why we need tech w/o judgment.. so we can let go. of reason ing ness.. and get to and org around itch-in-the-soul ness
A model may be open and still need a chip.
A company may be AI-native and still need a jurisdiction.
The network did not kill sovereignty.
It made sovereignty an interface problem.”
again.. to me.. sovereignty itself as symptom to deeper problem
we need a problem deep enough to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. in an ecosystem open enough to set/keep 8b legit free
ie: org around a problem deep enough (aka: org around legit needs) to resonate w/8b today.. via a mechanism simple enough (aka: tech as it could be) to be accessible/usable to 8b today.. and an ecosystem open enough (aka: sans any form of m\a\p) to set/keep 8b legit free
()
notes/quotes from chor’s substack:
I had left a question at the beginning. Why did I always find capability more exciting than constraint?
I think I can answer it now. Because I had quietly assumed capability was freedom.
I am no longer sure it is. Some of the things that make a life worth inhabiting are not exercises of optionality at all.
rather.. for life over survival ness.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
They are commitments. Attachments. Dependence on particular people.
to me.. this are still the finite set of choices of decision making/optionality ness
Obligations one does not optimise. Places one does not leave simply because another jurisdiction offers better terms. Limits one accepts rather than engineers around.
cancerous distractions to the dance
This is difficult territory for a strategist. Strategy wants another move. *Life sometimes asks for the opposite. Stay. Choose. Accept. Care for something that reduces your options.
*whalespeak.. ooof
There is no 2×2 for this.
Thank God.
I began angry at people who had misled me. That was too easy. They had given me instruments. I had turned some into darlings. Then I made new ones. The mistake was never abstraction. We cannot think without throwing most of reality away.
actually we can’t do/be life over survival ness w/o letting go. of all the irrelevant s.. aka: all data/whatever to date..
The mistake was allegiance. We have become remarkably good at asking how civilisation acquires the power to choose. I am less certain that we know what is worth choosing.
huge.. 1\ because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us.. and 2\ why we need tech w/o judgment for global detox and 3\ because graeber can’t know law et al
Kill Your Darlings
no killing.. but warning ness et al
________
_______
_______
_____
_____
______
