The Chain Mail Gaze by Wassim Z. Alsindi | Devcon SEA

[Music] G maale gaze by Wasim Z alindi please give him a warm [Music] welcome hello everybody um it's slightly um out of place to have such cheerful music introducing this talk perhaps um so the title of it is called the chain male Gaye and hopefully the reasons for that will become apparent as we go on but I'm sure you've all heard of the male gaze and the kind of externalities and you know um unfavorable things that come with that but what about the chain mail gaze well hopefully we'll find out not got very long so I'll try to you know give you a survey of what's actually quite an extensive uh anthropological and philosophical research project okay some pictures of big strong men and their swords looking into the distance perhaps thinking about lands to conquer short poetic refrain the church and the network Zeal and time death and money all sides of the same coin I want to talk to you about uh interim project that led up to where we're going to that was called profit motives looking at at the false Divinity of capital how it animates uh motivations and Desires in the technology space that might not be immediately apparent for as long as there's been Financial Capital risk and speculation have orbited manipulated and harnessed it as narrative feedback machines simultaneously reading and rewriting realities markets exist as a distributed conversation between uh among speculators driven by profit motives and appetite for divination and prophecy today new strains of techn colonialism are emerging which are the latest of a series of Echoes throughout Western history and ascendant cabal of Technology Elites are attempting to reshape the world in their favor whilst hiding in plain sight behind the technologies that have enriched them theirs is a Promethean zealotry without faith affecting an aura of design Divine sanction for the purposes of elevating the ego enriching the chosen ones and creating empires of various Stripes but was it not always so I want to read you a short story fictional speculation about where we might be going in the future and it's called seething like a state decentralization has a cost the price of Anarchy the price is always due but the rewards weren't cheap to reap so solid ccru what most did not expect was that payment would become due at the grandest scales of governance the West failure state forged under the fire of Pier Prussia was ambushed by upstart modes of power opening new vistas of communication commodification and communion the orientations that nation states had used to enshrine their power only made it easier to undermine them the bigger they were the harder they fell brex Topia the European Union NATO's cave the United State machine all returned to dust the decline in the nation state of the nation state in the Roaring 20s became a cannon of canonicity for an entire generation of Soul Traders it wasn't even just the bit levers in those days there were many networks many Messiah many ideologic all with their own profit motives so many of you have doubt doubtless heard of this concept of the network state that has emerged in the last few years um exit fantasies arguably fueled by the failure or the uh shortcomings the shortfall of the full promise and the dream of web 3 I'm going to read you a short section from baji Fan's self-titled book from 2022 a network state is a social network with a moral Innovation a sense of national Consciousness a recognized founder a capacity for Collective action an in-person level of Civility an integrated cryptocurrency a conceptual a consensual government limited by a social smart contract an archipelago of crowdfunded physical territories a virtual capital and an onchain census that proves a large enough population income and real estate footprint to attain a measure of diplomatic recognition the magic words in here are recognized founder and diplomatic recognition well and territory I would say so these projects carry echoes in my mind at least of some of the earliest um Expedition s that set out from the West in search of new territories to conquer and subjugate so many of you have doubtless heard of things like Liber land Sealand seasteading institutes uh you know this is the zahi designed metaverse HQ of liand on the screen here um there's been so many attempts to make like crypto Islands uh Bitcoin cruise ships and they've all failed it's quite interesting but what seems to be different now is the level of capital at at on hand as a result of Market success of these Technologies to the people that want to reshaped the map of the world in their own you know uh uh to their own preferences into their own cause we know that leaders of nation states we even have leaders of nation states that are uh cheerleading some of these Technologies uh Nai the authoritarian strong man in El Salvador would like to build a Bitcoin City uh financed by volcano Bonds in his country he's not done it yet but meanwhile he's removed the Judiciary removed term limits and instituted one party Rule and most of the Bitcoin is a cheering this on so I ask myself are we still in this for the freedom and now you know made possible by ethereum Dows and all the rest of it we have projects like alif herbit and even prais Praxis and on the left and prosper on the right so these projects are trying to build physical cities private territories Network States um or at least the you know what may develop into the BAGI concept of the nation state it's at this point I want to introduce the chain mail gays today's Tech overlords are the descendants of Europe's Crusaders well financed zealous Fanatics wreaking destruction on the planetary other in the name of their greater good the Vatican sponsored waves of 11 invasions that began in the late 11th century with the midw of capitalism colonialism and Technology as we know it today with the network day organizational concept a card rayer of powerful ideals blessed with tokenized wealth a toying with the prospect of reshaping National Frontiers mirroring the desires of Frankish noblemen and their nightly orders a thou in the Levan a thousand years ago and that's all the time I have 7 minutes for a thousand years of Western history thank you very much [Applause]