Are Public Goods Always “Good” and Will Personal Tokens Just Lead to Slavery ft. Annaliese Milano
This week I sat down with PhD student at the London School of Economics under David Graeber and Laura Bear in Anthropology and occasional CoinDesk contributor, Annaliese Milano (@AnnalieseMilano). In this episode we spoke about her current research interests in public goods, or what she prefers to call public things. Her research suggests that studying blockchains and cryptocurrencies as public things which extend political communities in time and space and through which people reimagi...
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Hello, everyone. You're listening to The Blockchain Socialist. I'm your host, and I'm here with a special guest. Her name is Annalise Milano. She's a PhD student at the LSE under David Graeber and an occasional CoinDesk contributor.
Hi Annalise, how are you doing? I'm well, thanks. How are you? Thanks for having me on.
I'm good. The, actually the, to give a little bit of maybe like the story is that I, I found you whenever you were giving an interview, on a panel to people like Brett Scott and Jonathan Harris, who are my two, actually, latest guests. And I thought you'd be a really interesting person to have on, due to some of the interesting research that you're doing. So I know you're doing a lot of stuff around public goods and related to the, to the blockchain industry. So I was curious to hear if you can explain a bit about the research that you're doing and that you're working on at the moment.
Thanks. Yeah. So, my initial proposed research, and of course, I think with I'm an anthropologist, and when you sort of start writing your proposed research, it inevitably changes once you actually get to the field to do field work. So, I'm dealing with that at the moment, but my initial proposed research aimed to explore blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies as public things. And by that, I mean things like public parks or public phone booths and things like that. So, these goods that are accessible to the public that everybody in theory has access to, although that's distributed differentially. And this is different from the kind of the traditional economic definition. My research essentially wants to look at blockchain and cryptocurrencies as public things that are being employed in the service of a new public good. And so, it's a bit confusing because public things and public good, so there's a difference there. Public good is sort of the ideas about what's right for society, kind of our goals for society and ideals and sort of ethics there. So with that, my research sought to look at blockchains as things that might be public goods that people are trying to use to repossess privately operated and government controlled economic infrastructures. And by that, I mean things like money and banking. And so, they're doing it through technological means, like coding, etcetera, etcetera.
Would things like that also include the internet?
Sure, yes, definitely, definitely. And so, I'm particularly interested in why money is such a big deal for this community, and why it's so central to their vision of the public good, and what kind of examination of what what an examination of that can kind of reveal about people's different aims and ideas about what is worthwhile and what is good for society?
When I think about the public good in, like, blockchain world, I sort of think how in the beginning of sort of the evolution of blockchain and mainly in Bitcoin, it was sort of like, it's there's mostly sort of like a rejection of public goods, I think, or public things. It tends to be dominated by people who are, very right wing libertarian. And so, they're generally more individualistic, types of political thinkers. But then as sort of the space has evolved, I think there's been this sort of acknowledgment that, it having this super individualized system actually doesn't work for a long term success, in terms of having, like, funds for, like, progressing the the general technology. So, I mean, I've read a few articles about how Ethereum is sort of like a public good, although it's funded through voluntary donations. So, I mean, does does a blockchain like that, does that fit under your conception conception of public goods or public things, as you say?
Sure. I think, and to go back to what you sort of said initially, I'd just like to put in that, I kind of disagree with you there. I think that there is a definite libertarian sort of right wing tilt to the industry at times, but I think there are also people from the other side as well. Yeah. But I think that despite sort of these people's interest in private property and things like that, Bitcoin was really a project that came out of free and open source software, which is fundamentally open and fundamentally collaborative. And so, I think in my view, that software gets treated as a public thing, and so the contributions are public. It's something that everybody shares and works on and contributes to. And so, for me, Ethereum, I would certainly consider it a public good, but not really because of the donations that people fund it with, but because it is an open source software project.
Well, if it's because if it's, an open source software, could that be, does it still matter then if, for example, I mean, I know that one of the issues in, like, open source software is, the fact that there's a lot of corporate presence, in open source software, and it a lot of times, big companies tend to use it for, you know, their own profit making sort of ventures. Is that is it it's still considered a public good, I guess, no matter who is using it and what they're using it for?
I would I would say 100%. And I I think that it is I mean, that's one of the things that I think is really interesting in the industry is to look at how corporations are extracting value from these infrastructures. You have things like Quorum, which were built on JP Morgan's blockchain, which was essentially just built on a copy of Ethereum. And that was, of course, free for them because they just copied the software and made it their own thing and made some adjustments to them. And that's not uncommon for these corporations to just use bits and pieces of open source software. So I think it's an extractive practice, but nonetheless, I think that these blockchains would be considered public goods.
Yeah. There's, like, the the thought of, like, something that is a public good doesn't necessarily mean that it's, good, I guess, for everyone in a certain sense.
Yeah. Certainly. And, I mean, they are contested things, you know, and they are sites where people, you know, they're people coalesce around these things, and it's people of all different kinds and of all sorts of political motivations and etcetera, etcetera. So there's nothing inherent to them that makes them good per se. They can certainly be they can have negative effects.
Yeah. It's it's confusing when you call it a good.
Yeah. Certainly. Which I think which is why I like public things a little bit better, especially when you're talking about that in tandem with an idea of public good, what is good for the public.
Yeah. We have Ethereum. Right? That's have they have a sort of, like, this Ethereum, the EIP process where they, like, give new proposals. There is, like, the Bitcoin community that, that, has their own process for making new, you know, additions to the network or changing things a little bit, block sizes and such. But then you have some platforms that are a little bit more advanced, that have, like, more intense sort of governance mechanisms. Things like LISC or Decred or Dash, where I know, they have this sort of system where instead of all of the, transaction fees going to the miners solely, they have like a portion of that going to this shared pool of funds that gets given out to different developers for them to work on things and have them get paid from what I understand. Does is that what is your thought on those that type of evolution of the space in general in relation to public things?
Yeah, I guess, you know, it's it's just a different type of governance, really. And it's people trying to, because I think when you have, you know, with Bitcoin and Ethereum, you have the influence of whales and miners and things like that, like the sort of the barriers to entry for anyone wishing to exert influence on the blockchain is it's pretty high. To be a miner, you have to have a great deal of infrastructure. It costs a lot of money. It's not the sort of thing that you can just do from your PC anymore. And so I think that it's these other alternative governance projects are interesting because I think in part, they're trying to break down barriers to entry, for other people, so they're increasing accessibility to what, to these blockchains, which are effectively public goods. So I think it's interesting in that regard.
It I guess, like, for me, I guess, it sort of looks like, because before you know I mentioned that bitcoin is sort of, there's a lot of right wing libertarians and I'm, and I mean that in that that's sort of like in their, it seems to be in their sort of like internal sort of political views. Some of them of course not all. They have, you know, it's like they don't necessarily practice what they preach I feel like sometimes, but there's this sort of like understanding that the the general community needs to come together and and work towards some sort of goal. And I figured that this sort of thing of like a more advanced governance mechanism is sort of like a rediscovery in a way of just how to manage things better, I guess. Like these public goods and things that are in common. Rather than having something like with Bitcoin, where at the moment it really feels like if you want to have any sort of power in that network, you have to have a lot of resources. And that's sort of it seems to me like the realization of the downsides of sort of limitless access to a public good in a way. So I don't know if you agree with that or, Sorry.
What would be the limitless downside to the access in public good?
Like the downside to limitless access. Because really just those with a lot of resources will really be able to exert, well they will have much more influence over the overall network than, than your average person. So, it's sort of like these advanced governance mechanisms are the recognition of that a little bit, which is why it sort of makes it more accessible to be a part of that governance structure by having these like slightly more complex, mechanisms.
Yeah, definitely. I think so. Like I said, I think that they're very much about breaking down barriers to entry, but they're also more I mean, a lot of them, if you look at something like EOS when it launched, which does the delegated proof of I don't know if it still does, but they had a delegated proof of stake system, and there was a lot of rhetoric about democracy and things like that, which is really interesting. And it is, it's set in contrast to the rhetoric around Bitcoin, I think. And so you have people trying to create governance systems with constitutions and things like that. And really, I think the interesting thing there is too, is, these people have sort of tried to kind of, a lot of the governance is happening off chain in that situation. It's not necessarily as built into the protocol, which is an interesting thing with blockchains because they're all about trusting the protocol.
There's some technical limitations that they're still, still discovering. Right. And how do you really program a democracy? You know? So these projects, these blockchain projects that are sort of, working around the area of public goods, do you see them as being largely attempts at privatization of current public goods that we've sort of, I mean, I think we can say is, has been happening for the past few decades under, under neoliberal economic policy, or is this really something completely different?
No. I think that's do I say it's different? I don't really think it's about privatization. I think it's actually about the opposite. I think that people are really frustrated that the government and or private corporations control things like money and banking. And I think people find this immensely frustrating. And so, I think that they are trying to recapture those things and redirect kind of different flows of capital and make them more accessible to everyday people, and also to make the decision making around those things more accessible to everyday people. Obviously, there's a great deal of unease with quantitative easing in the industry, and that's something I think, that reflects the fact that people are very frustrated that they're not able to vote for central bankers and things like that and have direct input into those processes. And so, I think that's why there's such a strong backlash that in the industry, you find people coalescing around Bitcoin, who are very fixed on the idea that it has a fixed supply of money and things like that. So I think it's fundamentally about recapturing things that are privately controlled, bringing them back into public control. Obviously, access to controlling those things is differentially distributed. If you're not a programmer, it's going to be hard for you to exert influence on these things, undoubtedly. But at the end of the day, I think it's about recapturing private things, making them public.
Yeah. It's, I would agree. I think, you know, I've said this before, but that blockchain isn't really a neoliberal project, although there are neoliberal strains to it. But I think by and large the overall community is actually very frustrated with neoliberalism, or at least what I would call as neoliberalism in general. Yeah. So I think it's, it's interesting because there are so many things that are like, that we sort of like take for granted, I guess, in a way that are public goods, but that we don't really have a say in. We just sort of let, either elected or unelected officials take control of it. And I think that's something that, frustrates a lot of people, whether or not they are victims of something, they are victims of privatization or not.
Definitely, and I think that, to kind of add to what I was saying earlier, I think that there is a neoliberal proclivity to privatize things. And we do see that public goods, non tech public goods have increasingly become under pressure to be privatized and privately managed. And I think in light of the decline of physical public things in the neoliberal era, people have begun to pursue them and build them and reimagine them online. And so that's why I think blockchain is a particularly important thing to study.
Mhmm. Yeah. That is interesting. So another, I think, interest of yours that we've discussed a little bit before, before the call was your interest in personal tokens. So I think this is a it's also a really interesting and slightly, like, frightening type of, good thing that's going on in the blockchain space where people are wanting to tokenize themselves in certain ways, and they want to create a market of people trading tokens that represent them in some sort of way that, like, I've read that personal tokens sometimes can, you can use it to pay, like, for, you know, an hour of your time. I've seen people do, so it's it's common or not. I don't know if how it's not really common, but it's something that's being pushed for like influencers and such. But, before we get into that, I was curious what your thoughts are on what the logic is behind this push for personal tokens. I mean, keep knowing that, like, I think we largely agree that there isn't really a like blockchain isn't a neoliberal project. And I would in sort of I think a lot of times people associate neoliberalism with sort of like just a continuation of individualism or like a the atomization of like the self rather than thinking of oneself as part of a collective. So I was curious on what you think is behind this push for personal tokens in the blockchain space.
Sure. So, there are a few things going on. I think, one, they're fascinating because they are so very different from Bitcoin, and other types of money that we typically interact with. Generally, sort of those things function because they're anonymous and they're meant to be anonymous, not personal. These obviously are, of course, of course, the opposite of that. And so I think in terms of why they're emerging, I think you can kind of look at it from two perspectives. One, you can say, this is a neoliberal thing, sure, and really it's an extension of financialization, potentially, where we're literally trying to financialize ourselves. Tokenizing yourself is like a very peculiar thing to do. The kind of idea of selfhood that you're dealing with there is potentially very strange. And I think I kind of mentioned to you when we were corresponding that I think that in some ways, these things have emerged because of precarious situations. Like the people who you're seeing are being targeted by businesses that are starting personal tokens are in part influencers. And this is one group that has to deal with big corporations, the platforms that they run, and are sort of subject to the whims of those platforms, the so called value that they create on their platforms, it's not really their own. So people argue that they're being exploited. So, those people find personal tokens particularly appealing because they're able to capture the value that they're creating, but they're doing it in weird ways. They're using their tokens to reward their fans for liking things and sharing things, and they might give you a shout out in their newsletter. So, the sorts of relationships that this is creating, they're kind of bizarre. And someone who has a personal token startup said to me that you should be able to own the relationships with your fan. And I said, Fans. And I sort of said, How could you possibly own a relationship? I think that's kind of a complete misunderstanding of relationships between people and also property, because property, of course, people think about it as, you know, this thing, I own this thing, that's the end of it. But really, property is a relationship between people where we agree this thing is mine, and we agree that you're not going to do X, Y, and Z with it, but we might agree that it's okay for the law to do X, Y, and Z with it. So, this is fundamentally like a social contract issue. So, thinking about relationships as a thing to be owned, it just doesn't work, I think. And so, the long story short is that these things are creating particular types of relationships, and I'm interested in kind of figuring out what those are. I don't yet have any answers on that. But it's possible that these are just an extension of financialization. The second story is, kind of one that comes from the anthropologist Keith Hart, who predicted back, all the way back in 2000, he wrote this great book called Money in an Unequal World, which is phenomenal, and I'd highly recommend it. But he predicted that some form of personal money would emerge due to the communications revolution. And he argues that money's chief function is to remember things and to remember interactions between people. And he sort of argued that one day, this money would emerge, it would be different from anonymous money, and people would sort of express themselves through these personal tokens. And so, it would be kind of an invention through which people would seek to measure the consequences of their actions. And so you can argue that that's potentially what's going on here. People are creating their own currencies to keep track of relationships and to initiate different sorts of relationships than they're getting kind of in the blockchain world with Bitcoin and things like that. By, like,
new relationships, I mean, it really feels more like, I mean, that's sort of like, I mean, is that different from, like, a financial relationship where, like, I owe some money to someone else? Or, like, or do you see is I imagine this is different than that.
Yeah. So I think, basically, I mean, so his idea was that these new forms of money would emerge as a type of personal credit, where you would sort of say, okay, it's like an IOU. So sure, I give you my token. I tell you that it's redeemable for some of my time. You have to trust that I'm going to honor that, sort of thing. Does that does that answer your question?
Yeah. It's Yeah. I mean, to me, the really crazy thing is that, I mean, yeah. I mean, like you say, it's just like this huge financial push to almost financialize everything to the point of, like, human to human relationships. Mhmm. And it's just very bizarre, how you can think that you can own a relationship with someone else. It, like, to me that there's almost like a hint of slavery in that almost. I'm kind of scared to say that.
I did watch a video recently where someone, sort of said, who's involved in personal tokens and has their own, and he sort of said, Well, some people are worried that these will just turn into a mechanism for indentured servitude. You know, so I think that, I mean, and another really strange thing that people are able to do with these things is speculate on them. One particular company that I sort of interviewed, creates tokens, and you're encouraged to speculate on them, and you're effectively speculating on someone's worth. And so, if you think that they're worth more than their market price, you'll speculate, and they want them to signal to the community that there's someone worth investing in. And so, it's all, I mean, you're literally turning yourself into a financial product. It's very weird. But I'm hopeful that you know, there is some potential for the second interpretation, which is, like, the key part version of what could possibly happen with these things. I hope that there's some room for that to potentially take off, but I I think that might be helpful.
I mean, what happens if someone, you know, if they, like, I don't know, break their leg, does that mean that their market value goes down? Like like the the token, I guess, is like like, their ownership of, like, someone's income? It it
depends upon what you decide to do with the tokens. And, ultimately, I guess that's generally up to you. These companies that sort of, will launch them for you don't necessarily specify what you can and cannot do with them. I guess they just don't want you to make them securities. That's the big thing that they don't want. They don't Yeah. They don't wanna regulate it. No. So, they don't wanna visit from the SDC. But it's ultimately up to you whether you use it as sort of what someone has called like a freelance token, where it's one token equals an hour of your work, you buy the tokens upfront, the person gets paid upfront, and you hope that they will honor their promise to work for you at some later date. Or you could use them to tokenize your contract, a contract like Spencer Dinwiddie, who was a basketball player did. That's slightly different. So, I mean, there's any number of things that you can do with these things.
Mhmm. I mean, is there any other sort of, like, historical precedence to something like this?
Sure. I mean, I think that there were incredibly complex credit relations prior to, I mean, in the last several hundred years, sort of banks would issue promissory notes and things like that, and then you could take those and buy things with them. And that wasn't like a state sanctioned form of money. There have been all sorts of different types of money over the years. And so I do think there is some historical precedent for this, particularly when you look into the history of credit.
Yeah. But I imagine not as like so individualized.
Yeah. I I mean, I don't think that it I I imagine that there's not a lot of precedent for someone sort of assigning a token to an hour of their time. I think that's probably a newer phenomenon.
Yeah. Based on what you've been researching on this, do you see any potential dangers of this modification of yourself in an, like, any, like, in an even more extreme digital way than a lot of, like, gigawork platforms already function? Or are there any, like, big benefits you can see to this? Because I imagine there are plenty of people who who argue, you know, that this is actually a very good thing and that actually, you know, this makes you own, your time and your labor more, for example.
Sure. For me, financialization, I think, if that's sort of the interpretation that we're working with with these tokens, tends to be a bad thing. And, I mean, I think people who like these tokens will argue that they give people more autonomy over their time. It's easier for them to work on a number of different, like, open source projects, for example, because they're not tied to a particular company. They can divide their time as they like. But I do think that it's a problem when you start speculating on human beings. I mean, this sort of thing was kind of made illegal a long time ago, with Yeah. You know, like, insurance was initial initially a thing that sort of started out like this. People would, speculate on each other's lives. And so that was practice. So, I think there's all sorts of potential for things to go wrong. However, people who are in favor of these things also argue that if you were able to strike up some form of personal credit, you might be able to insulate yourself from, for example, someone said to me, like a failing economy. They literally said, Just because your government is failing and your currency is worth nothing, that shouldn't have any bearing on you, and creating your own economy, which is what he called it, a personal economy with a personal token, might be a way to insulate yourself from from a failing economy. And I think that's fascinating too, the concept of a personal economy as if you could sort of ever exist in isolation from other people. Yeah, it's kind of a paradox,
no? Yeah. Yeah. My my foot and my hand are trading, derivatives on my liver right now.
Right.
Hey, everyone. If you're enjoying this interview so far and want to be sure that more content like this can be created, you can donate to my efforts through Patreon. So if you go to patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist, you can donate $3 per month or more to help me out and join other patrons like Andrew, Sam, Paul, and Matthew. At the moment, I've spent more on this project than I've earned from it due to hosting costs, so any amount really helps. And in future, I'm hoping to do more complex bits of content like through video to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation, if as long as we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. If you can't help out financially, I understand. One of the things that you can do instead is to respond to the community post that is on the r/cryptoleftist subreddit. It's pinned to the top, so it's not difficult to find, but I'll leave a link in the show description. If you don't have a Reddit account, feel free to look at the post and just respond in the discord group or in the comment section of whatever you're listening. The purpose is to analyze people's responses to the question, which is related to your thoughts on blockchain and its relation to left wing politics. And then what we'll do is create an infographic and share that with the rest of the community once we have enough responses and we've done the analysis. So that's it from me, and here's the rest of the interview with Analise Milano. Mary, is there something to say? Because I I've heard of this concept before about, like, tokenizing, for example, a band or something. Or I could I could I mean, the same thing could be done with influencers, I guess, to, like, raise money for themselves. And so is there anything to say around using these type of tokens for circumventing some sort of middleman? So I mean, in the case of, you know, music record producers, or you could say the same thing for VCs, for other types of projects. I mean, do you see this as, you know, beneficial
in that type of way? I think it it potentially could be, but the question there is, like, at what point does that just become another initial coin offering? I have heard people argue that, you can kind of invest in the future of a band or an artist in a very direct sort of way if you buy their token as opposed to just buying their album or something like that or a piece of their work. And you can do it early on in their careers and potentially get a return for that. But it's a way for you to, someone literally said to me, to invest in their future. So in some ways, I suppose that could be good. Obviously, it's hard sometimes for artists and for musicians to bootstrap support and things like that, and to get the funding that they need to sort of start out. But again, I think it just becomes a question of at what point does that sort of just kind of turn into another form of an initial coin offering, and what are the consequences of that? No.
I mean, it seems to me more like, like, the structure itself isn't really any different. It's just like who is funding you is slightly different, but the relationship is somewhat the same. I mean, it's still like, maybe, maybe a slightly less extractive relationship, but still, a sort of extractive relationship, it seems.
Sure. I guess, you know, potentially investing in you you like someone's artwork, so you say you want to support their career and you buy their token. It's a different thing from a tech part or a tech project saying that they're going to build this great form of technology that they've not yet built, and would you like to invest in it directly?
Yeah. What they should do instead is give to their Patreon.
But But I think it's like you know, they're thinking that it's an alternative to Patreon. Yeah. Like, exactly Yeah. Try to disintermediate those sorts of, Sure. Help people out.
Well, that's true. I think, there are benefits to Patreon, of course. I can't hate on it. Yeah. But I think what is interesting, though, is that, what was supposed to be, like, a really big deal with, this NBA point guard, Spencer Dinwiddie, tokenizing his contract is that he only raised a tenth of what they what their goal was. So they only raised $1,300,000 when they wanted to we wanted to sell, dollars 13,500,000.0. So it still seems like it still did a bit of a ways away maybe, from reaching mainstream sort of, adoption, I guess.
Yeah. And I think it's unclear to people what the risks are still.
Yeah. I mean, it's if I buy this contract into this NBA player and he gets injured, you know, what happens then? Of course. You know, what happens if, you know, x y z happens? It's still they have the the no idea how you would calculate the risk on that.
Right. Because you're ultimately investing in people. And how do you really calculate those sorts of risks? Because people are unpredictable and unpredictable things happen to people and they're not corn. You can sort of potentially calculate this with corn and what might happen to the crop in any given year, but people, it's a bit harder to do that with people.
Yeah. And are there any other, like, really weird examples of personal tokens you've seen as well? I think, well, yes, actually. Some,
there is a guy who has decided that he would like his token investors to make life decisions for him.
Oh my gosh.
And I guess, yeah, so, you know, where he should move to, what he should wear on a given day potentially is sort of all sorts of different questions. They have input on those things. And he sort of said, well, you know, I'll do this within reason. I'm not going to ask them if I should sort of marry someone or not. But that's what he's doing.
And this is not like an art project. This is like this is how he plans to make money.
And I think he, he had said that he'd like to potentially turn a bad idea into a startup somehow. So I I have no idea how that would work, but I think that's by far the strangest case that I've heard of yet. Wow.
So keeping that in mind, I know that you plan on also potentially getting your own personal token as part of your research, as you mentioned to me, before you started talking. And so I was curious what type of experiments you were thinking about playing around with with your own personal token.
Sure. Yes. So, I my personal token is, about to launch courtesy of Roll, which is a company that issues them. And so I wanted I mean, in anthropology, our primary method is participant observation, and so I wanted to experience this in a very direct way and sort of work out what kinds of relationships are coming out of these tokens, how are people using them, what are the kind of goals for these tokens and how do people think that they're What are the tactics that people use to, kind of get what they want out of them? And so, yes, so I will have my own personal token. And I'm still not 100% sure how I will use it. I think that I will try to use it as a form of personal credit and see kind of where that takes me. And if anybody, because you don't know if anybody will even be interested in buying your token, you know? Right. Yeah. So it's a little bit nerve wracking sort of thing. I think I have to advertise on Twitter, which is something that I'm kind of mortified about.
So we won't be able to invest on who you will marry or something
like that? No. No. I think I'll leave that. Yeah. Okay. I'll leave those decisions to myself for the for the time being. But I mean, I think I mentioned to you that I think one interesting way to think about, tokens is potentially by looking at, there's an essay by this guy called Marcel Mauss, it's called The Gift, and he was kind of an early anthropologist. He was actually, I think, the nephew of Durkheim, so quite early on, and he wrote about gift exchange, and his sort of idea about gift exchange was that it's something that creates sort of ongoing relationships between people, and the idea there is they do that because they ultimately contain something of the giver. There's a little bit of yourself in every gift you give, and it is that which compels the person who's received the gift to reciprocate. And so I think it's an interesting question with personal tokens, of kind of, well, what happens when you give someone your token? Do they reciprocate in any way? And can they thought of as gifts in any sort of way? I have no idea. It's something that I'm interested in and kind of, and looking at. But I think it's it's some it's potentially an interesting avenue to kind of take things down. Whether it will be fruitful remains to be seen. Yeah. I
I think, that's true. I mean, if if you give your friends some some of your own personal token and, you know, will they be will they feel compelled to make their own personal token to give to you or something? Or actually, but at the same time you've had, you know, these I don't know if you know what like an airdrop is where, you know, a new a new, cryptocurrency project just like randomly sort of or, you know, under certain limitations, give a small amount of their token to random people. I get those every once in a while, and sometimes you receive them and you're just like, what the heck is this? And then I think it's meant to just like spur people to find out what that is. And then maybe they'll buy more or like, you know, they give it to them on an exchange or something, and they have such a small amount that they need to buy more in order to move it. So it just makes the exchange money. But I think this sort of personal gift thing is is much different. And, like, I'm I'm very curious to see how that ends up.
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's a question of, like, do people really perceive that these tokens are personal enough such that they really do contain something of you that would compel them to reciprocate? The people that I spoke to argues that they are kind of mimetic representations ourselves, and that people really do see them as a substitute for, the person that they're meant to represent. I don't know if that's true, but I think it probably will be revealing when I give these tokens out, if people feel compelled in any way to kind of create a relationship with me or to return something to me, or if it's just because, or if they think that, oh, well, these things are really just worthless. So there's no obligation to kind of continue the relationship or even to exchange something in return.
Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, it's there's a difference between looking at like, you know, a number on a screen as a representation of one coin or something versus, I don't know, a personalized card to someone. One of the last things I wanted to talk to you about was since, you were a, or sometimes contributor of CoinDesk. So I was curious about what your experience is like, working there and when will they unionize?
Well, I used to sort of, joke with them every so often that I was going to attempt to unionize the company, and they didn't love that. But, it it was a joke that I made fairly frequently. I had a good experience working there. It was, I think, me, as someone who doesn't come from a technical background in any way, working there was a really good way to kind of get immersed in the blockchain industry and figure out what was going on, and learn about the technology, very quickly, and kind of get a handle on it. And And that has enabled me to do my research in a more effective way, I think.
I guess one of the reasons I sort of asked that is since sometimes I think people on the left, who already have sort of maybe a bad opinion about, about blockchain or cryptocurrencies in general, they tend to assume that everyone who's sort of mildly associated with it are sort of thinking in one direction or you know generally think that they are, right wing libertarians or something. And I guess you know you are already an example of someone who isn't like that, but I imagine that having the experience of working in there you can say that it's not as dry and cut as I think maybe sometimes criticize it to be.
Sure. And I I think that there's a lot of room for, other political interventions in the blockchain and other types of political action around the blockchain. It doesn't have to just be right wing libertarian people all the time. I think it's unfortunate that it hasn't attracted more leftists and Marxists and leftists of all creeds. I think there's a lot of potential for for to do some good.
Well, thank you so much for coming on. That's all the questions that I have. For the last part, I guess, where can people find out more about you and keep up with your work?
Sure. Probably Twitter is the best way to do that. I'm at annalise milano, and, I rarely tweet. But if I do have any anything interesting to say, it might appear there someday.
Well, I guess you will possibly be tweeting about your personal token.
Yes. That will that will probably happen at some point soon.
Alright. It's cool. Well, thanks a lot, for coming on.
Thank you.