Decentralization: an incomplete ambition
Decentralization: an incomplete ambition
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去中心化：一个不完整的野心
DOI：
10.1080/17530350.2019.1589553
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发表时间：
2019
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
Nathan Schneider
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Nathan Schneider
摘要权力下放是一个广泛使用的术语，在各种情况下，特别是在政治学和话语周围的互联网。它今天在区块链技术的倡导者中很受欢迎。尽管它经常被当作一个技术术语使用，但更可靠的是，去中心化似乎是一种修辞策略，它将注意力引向拟议中的社会秩序的某些方面，而远离其他方面。它的要求远远超过理论上或一贯定义的要求。这种非特定性有助于吸引不同的参与者参与共同的政治和技术项目。然而，即使是最明显的分散制度也显示出产生经济和结构集中成果的能力。因此，权力下放的修辞掩盖了它声称描述的重新排序的其他方面。它将注意力从权力集中的地方转移，推迟了关于这种权力应该如何运作的有价值的辩论。要使权力下放成为制定未来社会安排和相关技术的可靠概念，它就应该具有高标准的具体性。它也不能取代以适当的问责机制预期的集中化。
ABSTRACT Decentralization is a term widely used in a variety of contexts, particularly in political science and discourses surrounding the Internet. It is popular today among advocates of blockchain technology. While frequently employed as if it were a technical term, decentralization more reliably appears to operate as a rhetorical strategy that directs attention toward some aspects of a proposed social order and away from others. It is called for far more than it is theorized or consistently defined. This non-specificity has served to draw diverse participants into common political and technological projects. Yet even the most apparently decentralized systems have shown the capacity to produce economically and structurally centralized outcomes. The rhetoric of decentralization thus obscures other aspects of the re-ordering it claims to describe. It steers attention from where concentrations of power are operating, deferring worthwhile debate about how such power should operate. For decentralization to be a reliable concept in formulating future social arrangements and related technologies, it should come with high standards of specificity. It also cannot substitute for anticipating centralization with appropriate mechanisms of accountability.