Crypto: What’s Death got to do with it?
Death is the ultimate mystery. It is thus unsurprising how many hubristic technologists have decided to take up “death” as the ultimate problem to be solved. Currently, a plethora of ideas and experiments circulate within technological and scientific circles that are dedicated to anti-aging and life resurrection initiatives. Thanks to Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, there are also many books and articles being written on “Biohacking”, serving as essential references for those who are in constant search for the fountain of youth. Dave Asprey is one such example of a Silicon Valley investor/tech entrepreneur who now plays the role of a leading biohacker ever since his launch of “Bulletproof Coffee” products and the book, “The Bulletproof Diet”.
So, what is the deal with technologists and their obsession to optimize just about everything?
Aside from Silicon Valley’s evident infatuation with youth and the social pressures many tech employees and CEOs face in relation to aging, the relationship between the human body and the desire to optimize it actually goes much deeper than coconut oil, mico-dosing on shrooms, and drinking expensive organic coffee.
Biohacking and computer hacking share a similar ethos. Both are premised on the principle of optimization, experimentation, and a “do-it-yourself” attitude. Like in computer hacking, which recognizes how the nature of a system and its operations can be modified or manipulated using certain techniques, biohacking applies a similar framework to the human body, envisioning it as a system that can be tinkered with and improved vis-a-vis the implementation of certain optimization techniques and practices. It is thus unsurprising that many computer hackers also happen to be biohackers, though this of course doesn’t always have to be the case.
Interestingly enough, before “biohacking” came to be known for what it is today, its spirit and philosophical ideas actually stem from an older philosophical movement called “Extropianism”. This is a philosophical framework that is premised on improving the human condition using techniques of science and technology. It essentially views the human condition as limitless and it is from here that ideas about immortality tend to originate from.
At this point you may be thinking: that’s great, but what exactly does all of this have to do with crypto?
Contrary to popular media narratives, the story of Bitcoin doesn’t begin with Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, there have been a handful of subcultures and progenitors (pre-Bitcoin) that have helped make crypto imaginable, possible, and even successful.
I’d like to bring your attention to the fact that some members of the Cypherpunks — one of the earliest movements to endorse privacy-enhancing technologies — were in fact, extropians! In other words, not only were some of these individuals interested in creating decentralized currencies free from government censorship, but they also became committed to developing money that could withstand the test of time so to speak.
Cryonics is a scientific practice that involves freezing human bodies with the hope that scientific advancement will allow their revival in the near or distant future (think of the movie “Demolition Man” with Sylvester Stallone). Among the cypherpunks (who were extropians), there was a growing interest in cryonics and what is less known is that some of them even had themselves cryogenically frozen. With this, it became essential to device some sort of currency system that could be transferred into the future without having to lose its store value.
Subcultures are powerful in that they challenge the status quo through alternative visions of a near or distant future. For those interested in learning more about the subcultures that helped make crypto what it is today, I recommend reading Media scholar and New York University Professor, Finn Brunton’s, book, “Digital Cash: the unknown history of the anarchist, utopians, and technologists, who created cryptocurrencies”.
Brunton vividly paints a montage of the various projects, experiments, and subcultures that underwrote the pre-history of Bitcoin. What is remarkable is how the aspirations of some of these subcultures at one point in time took on a science-fiction-like character. Undeniably these visions have now materialized themselves into reality.
Understanding Bitcoin’s pre-history and the various movements that participated in it, only goes to show that
Bitcoin’s core values already long existed as a philosophy.
And indeed, as part of the philosophy of extropianism and their commitment to human immortality, we see how a tool like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has come in handy. Hal Finney, the famous cryptographer who was one of the first to use Bitcoin software to receive the first payment from Nakamoto, certainly thought so. Suffering from ALS throughout the latter years of his life, when he passed away, his body was taken by Alcor Corporations and cryogenically frozen. Other cryonic-related efforts include Co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, donating $2.4 million to age reversing initiatives.
The extropian spirit continues to ripple in crypto communities. But what exactly is the appeal behind this quest for eternal life? Perhaps hackers, as problem-solving individuals simply perceive “death” as a kind of limitation that can be overcome with the employment of proper technics. After all, the hacker life-world is premised on “breaking” down boundaries and limitations.
Cryonics, among other practices in hacker communities, have undeniably been influenced by science fiction.
Interestingly enough, Bitcoin surprisingly mimics Neil Stephenson’s science fiction novel, “Cryptonomicon”. This is a story that takes place in two different time periods — World War II and the late 1990s during the Asian financial crisis. It is here where the earliest prototype of a decentralized and autonomous currency is described. Who would have known that Stephenson’s fiction about a decentralized currency would traverse from fiction to reality in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis? However, here we are just scratching the surface.
Many references to science fiction can be found in hacker cultures. for example, the hacker group “Legion of Doom” from the 1980s and 1990s, borrowed their name from a once-popular cartoon series, Challenge of the Super Friends. Another example is the way Allen Moore’s popular comic series V for Vandetta and the famous Guy Fawkes mask worn by the main protagonist has been adopted into the practices of the hacktivist group, Anonymous.
Science fiction was powerful in that it allowed hackers to situate the political stakes of activism. For example, in the 1990s, when the freedom of the early Internet was increasingly becoming compromised and open-source advocates were targeted by governments, movies like “the Maxtrix” and “Star Wars” served as powerful narratives for hackers.
Science fiction eventually also found its way into video games. Video games have undeniably played an important role in the formation of hacker cultures, influencing their world views. According to author Colin Milburn, in his book “Respawn: Gamers, Hackers, and Technogenic Life games, as objects of experimentation”: games have attracted hackers precisely because they are able to“extend our perceptions while presenting tricks and tactics for inhabiting the world differently”. It is no coincidence that Edward Snowden — the whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency — like the stories of many other hackers, began with an early life exposure to video games.
In Snowden’s case, he loved how games provided him with a sense of freedom of expression. Although not all hackers are gamers and not all gamers are hackers, video games have become appealing to some precisely because as Milburn explains, they “extend our perceptions while presenting tricks and tactics for inhabiting the world differently” (p. 9).
Fun Fact: even Hollywood actor and director, Alex Winter, famously known for his role as Bill, in the “Bill and Ted” franchise — an American science fiction comedy that features two metalhead slackers traveling through time — has directed multiple sci-fi films and documentaries, including “the first blockchain-funded, blockchain-distributed, and blockchain-focused documentary” called “Trust Machine”.
Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain
Hackers, like many subcultural movements critical of existing social orders, find refuge in online spaces. There, one can make his or her own avatar, choose a new identity, and shape the kind of world they want to live in, especially if they are not fond of the existing one. For Snowden, games were inspiring precisely because they allowed him to find novelty, a possibility to inhabit a different kind of world, or as he notes in his autobiography, “the freedom to start over”.
The freedom to start over here coincides with an important feature of video games known as “respawning” — the ability of a character to reappear after being killed. Milburn describes respawning as a defining feature of “technogenic life”. Contrary to traditional life forms that just tend to “spawn”, technogenic life can “respawn”, aligning with some of the ideas of extropianism.
Video games, like other digital media, produce “an excess of technogenic life” Milburn explains, and this is what makes them so fun in the first place. They allow us to imagine a life that can be reprogrammed, falling in alignment with some of the ideas and concepts behind extropianism that aim to expand the human condition.
It is therefore unsurprising that crypto communities, like many other hacker communities that aspire to “break” things, understand that the human body is also a system that can be tampered with. Indeed, some of its operations can be dialed up (or down) using certain techniques.
Death is an inevitable phenomenon, but what if this wasn’t the case? That’s precisely what the biohackers are trying to solve.
It has been well documented that people living in certain parts of East-Asia have lived well beyond 120 years. Proper diet, nutrition, energy exercises like ta-chi, meditation, and qi gong are some of the practices that seem to help maintain life vitality. More importantly, it has been documented that a life lived with a purpose where daily stress-reducing activities are practiced outweighs high-intensity interval training, bulletproof coffee, stem-cell implants, and other corporatized (and let me add expensive) biohacks. For westerners, where patience and mindfulness is not particularly a cultural forte, it is obvious why many prefer to resort to these quick fixes.
Investing large funds into speculative scientific practices like cryonics may come across as naive and even nonsensical. But for the hackers, who always seem to be one step ahead of us, exogenic life is a concept that, to them, may not appear to be so far-fetched. After all, there was a period in history when a digital and anonymous currency seemed nearly impossible to achieve, belonging solely to the realm of science fiction.
This piece was inspired by some of the literature mentioned here. If you have any comments/feedback or would like to collaborate with me, I would love to hear from you. You can reach me on Twitter at @annbrody7.
