Hacktivism and the real crypto movement

This intervention draws from 30 years of hacktivism history to trace possible future for a movement that has found into cryptography its most powerful empowerment opportunity. An old cage is rusting: the billion dollar cybersecurity farce, the trusted computing straitjacket, and the paternalist throne of die-hard cyberemperors.

In the last couple of decades, planetary-scale computation precipitated the ongoing transformation of existing jurisdictions and disciplinary realms, a trend that is both depicted and tackled by the notion of "algorithmic sovereignty". This talk will address such transformations with particular attention to the web3/crypto sphere, and propose practical and strategic solutions to develop a space for "digital commons", to strengthen freedom against new aggressive forms of human exploitation and centralized control.

Determinism underpins our power: we want humans to understand machines and not the contrary. We need new trustless models in cybernetics, to fight back against the supremacy of centralized black-box governance. Our technical challenge is to create deterministic conditions for replicable computation and implement algorithms whose mode of operation can be scientifically proven, communicated with simplicity, forked, and debated. Algorithms of dissent.