Governing Objects from a Distance: Blockchains as Organizers of Environmentality

Of the phenomena in the field of media technologies that have conquered imaginations and funding buckets recently, blockchain technologies, next to artificial intelligence and machine learning, might be considered the most striking example. The blockchain constitutes a protocological internet layer for values that corresponds to a continuing monetization pressure and ongoing expansion of identification strategies. Notwithstanding these trajectories, behind this prospective killer application resides first of all a sovereign chronological regime that has the capacities to prove and modulate the existence, identity and administration of data, assets, goods and services from a distance on granular scales.