Building the Future
The fourth chapter describes how technological decentralisation emerged with advancements in cryptography and acted as a political counterweight of resistance to the encroachment of centralised governments across (online) spaces. The decentralist worldview is shown to be rooted in the specific political geography of the West Coast of the United States that, during the latter half of the 20th century, became a crucible of counterculture and entrepreneurship. Fuelled by this vision, a monetarist desire to create fairer economies through algorithmic decentralisation gave rise to the advent of cryptocurrencies. The intersection and slippage of this technologically deterministic imaginary (preaching a freedom from hierarchy and control) with geographies of material practice is developed throughout following chapters.