Abstract
Few recent developments in information technology have been as hyped as blockchain, the first implementation of which was the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Such hype furnishes ample reason to be skeptical about the promise of blockchain implementations, but I contend that there’s something to the hype. In particular, I think that certain blockchain implementations, in the right material, social, and political conditions, constitute excellent bases for common knowledge. As a case study, I focus on trust in election outcomes, where the ledger records not financial transactions but vote tallies. I argue that blockchain implementations could foster warranted trust in vote tallies and thereby trust in the democratic process. Finally, I argue that if the promise of blockchain implementations as democratic infrastructure is to be realized, then democracies first need to ensure that these material, social, and political conditions obtain.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Philosophy and Digitization: Dangers and Possibilities in the New Digital Worlds
- A Story of Surveillance? Past, Present, Prediction
- The Need for Speed – Technological Acceleration and Inevitabilism in Recent Danish Digitalization Policy Papers
- Normalizing Surveillance
- Disoriented and Alone in the “Experience Machine” – On Netflix, Shared World Deceptions and the Consequences of Deepening Algorithmic Personalization
- Elections, Civic Trust, and Digital Literacy: The Promise of Blockchain as a Basis for Common Knowledge
- The Institutions of Privacy: Data Protection Versus Property Rights to Data
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Philosophy and Digitization: Dangers and Possibilities in the New Digital Worlds
- A Story of Surveillance? Past, Present, Prediction
- The Need for Speed – Technological Acceleration and Inevitabilism in Recent Danish Digitalization Policy Papers
- Normalizing Surveillance
- Disoriented and Alone in the “Experience Machine” – On Netflix, Shared World Deceptions and the Consequences of Deepening Algorithmic Personalization
- Elections, Civic Trust, and Digital Literacy: The Promise of Blockchain as a Basis for Common Knowledge
- The Institutions of Privacy: Data Protection Versus Property Rights to Data