As Bitcoin surpasses previous price records and re-enters mainstream consciousness following several wilderness years, the twelve year old cryptocurrency appears to have “arrived” in the eyes of the market. The value proposition of an ungoverned, uncensorable digital means of value transfer is clear for all to see…but can our planet afford the thermodynamic price tag? To maintain the integrity of its transaction record, the Bitcoin network creates a hard boundary to the outside through exacting validation requirements. There is no sensitivity to the consequences of the thermoeconomic challenges it issues. This inability of ‘mined’ cryptocurrencies to differentiate the energy sources used to secure them has led to criticism as to their indifference to their ecological externalities.
0x005 Preview ::: The Indifference Engine @ RC3 Placemaking Solarpunk
We held a one-off Non-Fungible Salon around unique tokens, collectibles and digital commodification. Audio report now available.
SalonCast001 - Non-Fungible Tokens by 0x Salon
0xSalon001b ::: Memetics & Mimesis ::: are.na Research Archive
For 0x Salon’s first venture beyond our own memetic practice and into a meta-discussion of internet memes, we aim to bring together meme admins and practitioners, researchers and theorists, and casual viewers alike. Our discussion will move beyond the Dawkinsian notion of memetics often invoked in academic discourse and instead center banal internet memes, which circulate between our screens and spread forcefully into the world outside.
Exploring the emergence of life and collective behaviour, and agency at the level of the individual and the collective. We’ll connect the drivers towards self-replication from physics and the speculative astrochemistry of primordial life to ecological-evolutionary games, information theoretic approaches to individuality and the emergence of collective behaviour in natural and synthetic contexts.
