The stack
Last updated
Last updated
In developer lingo you often talk about things such as a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). At a more infrastructural level you could also start to include the hardware that runs the code and that people interact with. Going even further the supply chain itself is part of the technology stack that enables applications to run. Benjamin H. Bratton took this to the conceptual limit to describe an accidental megastructure in the book . Proposing a "political and design theory of planetary-scale computation for a new geopolitical architecture".
Taking inspiration, The Stack Report similarly looks to investigate the dynamics between both system and human behaviours. De-centralization is a core design principle of the internet from its early cold-war and in recent years has regained attention as an ideal to strive for in the design of technologies further up . With teams attempting to intentionally re-design internet-scale networks further to be more de-centralized. Potentially leveraging blockchains and digital currency for different kinds of power dynamics and ownership models between the various stakeholders involved in building this megastructure.
The central starting point to investigate these themes and stories is the Tezos network including the ecosystem of supporting technologies and de-centralized applications built on top of it. Tezos is a blockchain network with an on-chain governance model that gives control over the protocol to the holders of the native xtz token.
Over the course of "21 and "22 the Tezos network grew to be one of the larger blockchain systems used by artists to explore how de-centralized smart conract applications and non-fungible tokens can extend artistic practice. In its brief history already multiple in-situ experimental proof-points for the concept of decentralization can be identified such as the of the digital art platform (now reincarnated as ). This can be credited to multiple aspects, Github serving as platform for developers to publish their open source software, the network as accessible smart contract platform due to its low fees and the (IPFS) to host all of the media assets.
The Stack Report itself towards the end of "21 from the creative chemistry of these experiments in creating de-centralized artistic communities and platforms. These communities, software systems and platforms serve as the data space that the stack report builds on and .