Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Research Articles

Vol. 5 No. 2 (2023): Blockchain Scenes

‘Life World’ on Ledger: A ‘Scenic’ View

DOI
https://doi.org/10.33621/jdsr.v5i2.145
Submitted
June 1, 2022
Published
2023-06-29

Abstract

This paper explores the sociological and cultural implications of blockchain technology, specifically focusing on three prominent blockchain ecosystems: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Algorand. The study utilizes the concept of the lifeworld, which encompasses collective human perceptions and everyday communicative social interaction, to analyze the formation and perpetuation of lifeworlds within these ecosystems. By employing scene theory as an analytical framework, the research identifies structural and thematic aspects of the lifeworlds represented in the discourse on Reddit and Twitter. The analysis reveals how these virtual spaces shape the unique social orderings, normative politics, and cultural identities associated with each blockchain. The study emphasizes the role of identity expression, cultural attitudes towards money, and the dynamics of boundary work within these scenes. Overall, the paper provides insights into the distinct lifeworlds and dynamics of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Algorand, showcasing the significance of sociocultural factors in blockchain ecosystems and illustrating how a scenes lens offers insights into dynamics at the ecosystem level that may not be visible in an exploration of blockchain technology at the level of technological category.

References

  1. Algorand Foundation. (2022). About Algorand protocol.
  2. https://algorand.foundation/algorand-protocol/about-algorand-protocol
  3. Allen, D.W.E., Berh, C., and Novak, M. (2018). Blockchain: An entangled political economy approach. Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, 33(2), 105–125. https://doi.org/10.1332/251569118X15282111163993
  4. Austin, J. L. (1975) How to do things with words, 2nd edn. Oxford University Press.
  5. Baker, P. (2020). Agorland’s movie into DeFi gives ALGO price a boost. Coindesk, 20.
  6. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/20/algorands-move-into-defi-gives-algo-price-a-boost/
  7. Beam, C. (2021). From Doge soldiers to Bitcoinists: A field guide to the crypto faithful. Businessweek. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-08-18/from-doge-soldiers-to-bitcoinists-a-field-guide-to-the-crypto-faithful
  8. Bennet, A., and Janssen, S. (2016). Popular music, cultural memory, and heritage. Popular Music and Society, 39(1), 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2015.1061332
  9. Bennett, A., and Peterson, R.A. (eds.). (2004). Music scenes: local, translocal and virtual. Vanderbilt University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17vf74v
  10. Bennet, A., and Rogers, I. (2016). Popular music scenes and cultural memory. Palgrave Macmillan London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40204-2
  11. Berger, P.L., and Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Anchor Books.
  12. Bitnodes (2022). Reachable Bitcoin nodes, https://bitnodes.io/
  13. Calderon, N.A., Fisher, B., Hemsley, J., Ceskavich, B., Jansen, G., Marciano, R., and Lemieux, V. (2015). Mixed-initiative social media analytics at the World Bank: Observations of citizen sentiment in Twitter data to explore “trust” of political actors and state institutions and its relationship to social protest. In 2015 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data). IEEE, 1678-1687, 15(5), 233–253, https://doi.org/10.1109/BigData.2015.7363939
  14. Caluya, G. (2006). The (gay) scene of racism: Face, shame and gay Asian males. Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association e-Journal, 2(2), 1-14. Available from https://www.academia.edu/846082/THE_GAY_SCENE_OF_RACISM_FACE_SHAME_AND_GAY_ASIAN_MALES
  15. Caluya, G. (2008). The Rice Steamer: Race, desire and affect in Sydney’s gay scene. Australian Geographer, 39(3), 283-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049180802270481
  16. Casemajor, N., and Straw, W. (2016). The visuality of scenes: Urban cultures and visual scenescapes. Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, 7(2), 4–19. https://doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.VOS.7-2
  17. Casey, M. (2004). De-dyking queer space (s): Heterosexual female visibility in gay and lesbian spaces. Sexualities, 7(4), 446–461. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460704047062
  18. CoinMarketCap. (2022). Cryptocurrencies. https://coinmarketcap.com/
  19. Clark, J. (2016). The long road to Bitcoin. In A. Narayanan et al. Bitcoin and
  20. cryptocurrency technologies: A comprehensive introduction (pp. ix-xxvii). Princeton University Press.
  21. Dodd, N. (2014). The Social Life of Money. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  22. Dodd, N. (2017). The Social Life of Bitcoin. Theory, Culture and Society, 35(3), 35-56. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417746464
  23. Drysdale, K. (2019). Scene thinking. In Intimate investments in drag king cultures: The rise and fall of a lesbian social scene. Palgrave Macmillan, 3–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15777-7
  24. Etherscan. (2022). Ethereum node tracker. https://etherscan.io/nodetracker
  25. Fridman, L. (Host). (2021, March 14). Silvio Micali: Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Algorand, Bitcoin & Ethereum (No. 168) [Video podcast episode]. In Lex Fridman Podcast. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdhgOk4-fE
  26. Gieryn, T. (1999). Cultural boundaries of science: Credibility on the line. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226824420.001.0001
  27. Grimes, S. M. (2015). Little big scene: Making and playing culture in MediaMmolecule’s LittleBigPlanet., Cultural Studies, 29(3), 379–400, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.937944
  28. Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. I: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon. Original work published in 1981.
  29. Habermas, J. (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. II: Lifeworld and System (T. McCarthy, Trans). Beacon. Original work published in 1981.
  30. Husserl, E. (1965). Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Philosophy as rigorous science, and Philosophy and the crisis of European man. (Q. Lauer, Ed & Trans.) Harper. Original work published in 1910.
  31. ISO [International Organization for Standardization]. (2020) Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies—Vocabulary. (ISO Standard No. 22739:2020). www.iso.org/standard/73771.html
  32. Islam, A. K. M., Mäntymäki, M., and Turenen, M. (2019). Why do blockchains split? An actor-network perspective on Bitcoin splits. Technological Forecasting & Social Change, 148, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2019.119743
  33. Jänicke, S., Franzini, G., Cheema, M. F., and Scheuermann, G. (2017, September). Visual text analysis in digital humanities. Computer Graphics Forum, 36(6), 226-250. https://doi.org/10.1111/cgf.12873
  34. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.
  35. Lemieux, V.L. (2022). Searching for trust: Blockchain technology in an Age of disinformation. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108877350
  36. Locke, T. (2022). Dogecoin falls hard after short-lived Elon Musk buy pump. Fortune. https://fortune.com/2022/04/26/dogecoin-down-elon-musk-twitter-crypto/
  37. Lopez, O. and Livni, E. (2021, Sept. 7). In Global First, El Salvador Adopts Bitcoin as Currency. NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/world/americas/el-salvador-bitcoin.html
  38. McGuire, P. (2013). Such weird: The founders of Dogecoin see the meme currency's tipping point. Wired. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jp5x3d/dogecoins-founders-believe-in-the-power-of-meme-currencies
  39. Moretti, F. (2005). Graphs, maps, trees: abstract models for a literary history. Verso.
  40. Nakamoto, S. (2008). Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Bitcoin.org.
  41. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
  42. Nelms, T. C., Maurer, B., Swartz, L., & Mainwaring, S. (2018). Social payments:
  43. Innovation, trust, Bitcoin, and the sharing economy. Theory, culture & society, 35(3), 13-33. http://doi.org/10.1177/0263276417746466
  44. Pak, A., and Paroubek, P. (2010). Twitter as a corpus for sentiment analysis and
  45. opinion mining. In Calzolais, N., Choukri, K., Maegaard, B., Mariani, J., Odijk, J., Piperidis, S., Rosner, N., and Tapias, D. (eds.) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC'10). Eurpoean Language Resources Association, 1320-1326. http://lrec-conf.org/proceedings/lrec2010/pdf/385_Paper.pdf
  46. Pritchard, A., Morgan, N., and Sedgley, D. (2002). In search of lesbian space? The experience of Manchester's gay village. Leisure Studies, 21(2), 105-123. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614360110121551
  47. Ridge, D., Minichiello, V., and Plummer, D. (1997). Queer connections: Community,“the scene,” and an epidemic. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 26(2), 146-181. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F089124197026002002
  48. Ridge, D., Plummer, D., and Peasley, D. (2006). Remaking the masculine self and coping in the liminal world of the gay ‘scene’. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 8(6), 501-514. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691050600879524
  49. Searle, J. R. (1985). Expression and meaning: Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511609213
  50. Shera, J. H. (1961). What is librarianship? Louisiana Library Association, 24(3), 95-97. Also published in McCrimmon, B. (ed.). (1975). American library philosophy. Shoestring Press, 165-171.
  51. Shneiderman, B. (2003). The eyes have it: A task by data type taxonomy for information visualizations. In Bederson, B., and Shneiderman, B. (eds.) The craft of information visualization. Morgan Kaufmann, 364-371. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-55860-915-0.X5000-8
  52. Simmel, G. (2004). The Philosophy of money, 3rd edn. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203481134
  53. Sinclair, S. and Rockwell, G. (2022). Voyant Tools v. 2.5.4. https://voyant-tools.org/
  54. Straw, W. (1991). Systems of articulation, logics of change: communities and scenes in popular music. Cultural Studies, 5(3), 368-388.
  55. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502389100490311
  56. Straw, W. (2002). Scenes and sensibilities. Public, 21(23), 254-257.
  57. https://public.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/public/article/view/30335
  58. Straw, W. (2004). Cultural scenes. Loisir et Société/Society and Leisure, 27(2), 411-422. https://doi.org/10.1080/07053436.2004.10707657
  59. Straw, W. (2015). Some things a scene might be: Postface. Cultural Studies, 29(3), 476- 485. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.937947
  60. Taylor, E. (2007). Dating-simulation games: Leisure and gaming of Japanese youth Culture. Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 29. Available from http://www.asia-studies.com/2seras07.html
  61. Thomas, J.J., and Cook K. A. (2006). A visual analytics agenda. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 26(1), 10-13. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2006.5
  62. Tukey, J. W. (1977). Exploratory data analysis. Pearson, 131-160.
  63. van Manen, M. (1990). Reseraching Lived Experience: Human Science for an Action Sensitive Pedagogy. Althouse Press.
  64. Valentine, G., and Skelton, T. (2003). Finding oneself, losing oneself: The lesbian and and gay ‘scene’ as a paradoxical space. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4), 849-866. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0309-1317.2003.00487.x
  65. Walch, A. (2015). The bitcoin blockchain as financial market infrastructure A consideration of operational risk. New York University Journal of Legislation & Public Policy, 18, 837-893. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2579482
  66. Werbach, K. (2019). Summary: Blockchain, the rise of trustless trust? Wharton PPI B-School for Public Policy Seminal Summaries. https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=pennwhartonppi_bschool
  67. Williams, J. P., and Copes, H. (2005). “How edge are you?” Constructing authentic identities and subcultural boundaries in a straightedge internet forum. Symbolic Interaction, 28(1), 67-89. https://doi.org/10.1525/si.2005.28.1.67
  68. Woo, B., Rennie, J., and Poyntz, S. R. (2015). Scene thinking: Introduction. Cultural Studies, 29(3), 285-297. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.937950
  69. Wright, A., and De Filippi, P. (2015). Decentralized blockchain technology and the rise of lex cryptographia. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2580664 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2580664