“If we can wander, without fear, not only in the streets of Paris, which bristle with police, but especially in rustic walks where you rarely meet passersby, is it to the police that we owe this security? Or rather to the absence of people who care to rob or murder us?”
― Pyotr Kropotkin, Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal
“当我们不仅可以在警察林立的巴黎街道上，还可以在少见路人的乡村步道上毫不恐惧地漫步的时候，我们的安全归功于警察吗？还是说，是因为没有人想要抢劫或谋杀我们？”
—— 彼得·克鲁泡特金， 《无政府主义：它的哲学和理想》
From the very beginning of the idea of abolishing centralised institutions of governance and their monopoly of violence, decentralisation has entered public discourse not only as a technical term, but also as a highly politicised ideal. In this episode, we are going to talk about: In the contemporary world of technologies and applications that appear to be associated with decentralisation, is decentralisation merely a rhetorical strategy? Are substitutes for centralisation responsible for the human being? Do decentralised technologies need to call upon centralised resources to sustain themselves? Can a virtuous vision of freedom and equality at technological level lead to good results?
在取消集中化的宰制机构和其暴力支持这一思想诞生之初，去中心化就不仅仅作为一个技术术语，而且作为一种高度政治化的理想进入公共讨论。但是，在那些看似与去中心化相关的技术和应用中，作为一种话语展演的去中心化究竟是否仅仅是一种修辞策略？代替中心化之物是否是负责任的、可存续的？去中心化的技术是否需要调用中心化的资源来维系？技术层面上自由、平等的良善愿景一定能带来好的结果吗？Hannah在本期节目中从她的mastodon使用经验分享开始，试图碰触这些缠绕的问题。
BGM
Freedom - Anthony Hamilton/Elayna Boynton
Materials Mentioned
Hannah's
Baran, P. (1964). On Distributed Communications Networks. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 12(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1109/tcom.1964.1088883
Benjamin, W. (1935). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books.
Blanke, T., & Pybus, J. (2020). The Material Conditions of Platforms: Monopolization Through Decentralization. Social Media + Society, 6(4), 205630512097163. https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120971632
Mastodon. (n.d.). Mastodon documentation. Docs.joinmastodon.org. Retrieved June 7, 2023, from https://docs.joinmastodon.org
Rochko, E. (2017, February 20). The power to build communities. Mastodon Blog. https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2017/02/the-power-to-build-communities/
Schneider, N. (2019). Decentralization: an incomplete ambition. Journal of Cultural Economy, 12(4), 265–285. https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2019.1589553
Schrape, J.-F. (2019). The Promise of Technological Decentralization. A Brief Reconstruction. Society, 56(1), 31–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-018-00321-w
William's
Bao, G. (2015). The common sense of modern politics [政治学通识]. Peking University Press.
CrimethInc. (2022). The city in the forest: Reinventing resistance for an age of climate crisis and police militarization. Retrieved from https://crimethinc.com/2022/04/11/the-city-in-the-forest-reinventing-resistance-for-an-age-of-ecological-collapse-and-police-militarization
The Initium Media. (2023). The art of resilience: Inspiration from Atlanta's abolish the cop city movement. [韌性的藝術：亞特蘭大「廢除警察城」運動的啓示]. Retrieved from https://theinitium.com/article/20230717-international-cop-city
