Blockchained to what (end)? a socio-material provocation to check distributed futures

This chapter braces against the ideological tide washing in on peer-to-peer, distributed ledgers based upon cryptography, or phrasing that adds ‘blockchain enabled’ to various forms of digital communication practice. Through a media studies lens we theorise blockchain as ‘Web 3.0’ technology, signalling the emergence of ‘human programming’, where people become the conscious linkages between disparate machineries while serving their underlying vulnerabilities. We also draw upon historical analysis of community access television (CATV) and the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) to argue that radical ideologies have intertwined with ‘new media’ and specifically networked media since the 1960s and follow an innovation and adoption trajectory of expansion and contraction. Through the case study of Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency based upon the blockchain protocol, we examine its initial innovative frames of expansion through decentralisation and disruption of the centralised banking system. We then move to highlighting its tidal contraction via reabsorption into centralised structures and point to the indelible changes brought to the communication-life floor are left after these technologies engage the socio-political. We conclude this critique by considering how smart contracts are ledgers of built personal data that are inescapable for their subjects.