Introduction to Issue 1: Decentralization

A letter from the editor, and a guide to the stories in the issue

In a short commentary posted to her website in 2004, science fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote that the concept of technology is “consistently misused to mean only the enormously complex and specialized technologies of the past few decades, supported by massive exploitation both of natural and human resources.” Rather, she argued, technology should be understood more expansively, as the way “society copes with physical reality… the active human interface with the material world.” Technology, as the sum of “what we can learn to do.”

This magazine is about technology. It builds on Le Guin’s formulation by asking how society copes with digital reality, what happens at the interface between humans and the digital world. It does not separate the internet from IRL. It understands that there are serious problems with the complex, specialized digital technology that we use, that cannot be solved simply by more complex, specialized technology. It urges us to re-examine our own agency in our relationship to the digital world, and think about what we can still learn to do. 

The theme of our first issue is “decentralization.” I am drawn to this word because it contains social and cultural concerns as much as engineering ones. Decentralization in contemporary “tech” discourse tends to reference protological innovations (such as blockchain, peer-to-peer software) that offer alternatives to “centralized authorities” (the banking system, Silicon Valley platforms). But it also refers to an ongoing push and pull throughout human history between rebels and rulers; the way power is distributed, accumulated, transformed, and dispersed at every layer of society. I think these continuities offer us a useful starting point to speculate about what comes next. They are a reminder that we already understand what’s at stake. 

We hope you will read the following stories as meditations and quietly radical interventions, suggesting the ways in which technological revolutions are hidden in plain sight, and often already within our grasp. We are grateful for your attention. 

Wilfred Chan
Editor, New_ Public Magazine