We Are the Neotechnics!

February 8, 2024

Tl;dr As a corollary and expansion to Vitalik Buterin's philosophy of technological optimism (d/acc), we invoke Lewis Mumford's neotechnic revolution, a transition to decentralized power structures catalyzed by alternatives to fossil fuels. Mumford envisions a technologically advanced form of the medieval workshop and horticulture based production modes, a decentralized manufacturing apparatus which we argue aligns with both Vitalik's defensive technology thesis and the web3 project at large. We end by proposing a Quadratic Funding round to catalyze research and development around web3xdecentralized production.

Since its arrival on the scene in late November, some of our members have been geeking out(opens in a new tab) on the potentials of Vitalik’s philosophy of technological optimism(opens in a new tab), “d/acc.” The piece is a strange and provocative hybrid, fitting (for example) interplanetary habitation with sustainable decentralized infrastructure in a single thesis of “defense.” This meta-frame appealed to us, putting into space opera-scale relief the connection between the distributed ledger and the decentralized urban & regional infrastructure that has been our ongoing concern as localists.

We see the landscape, in cyberspace and in soil, of decentralized power, free association, peer production and individual improvisation propelled by common pool resources. How can one defensive technology aid the other?

As Vitalik gives the issue only brief attention, it might be useful to bring in another meta-frame that can further place the decentralization project on the stage of history. That is, the pre-WWII historian and literary critic Lewis Mumford’s technological theory of history, given in his book Technics and Civilization(opens PDF in separate tab). … Don’t worry, we didn’t actually read this 1934 tome (or not all of it) - only stumbled upon it by way of the much more fun and straightforward work of C4SS’s Kevin A. Carson. Carson, who happens to be a huge scifi nerd(opens in a new tab), has many books worth checking out, but the one we keep returning to (and that contains Mumford’s frame) is The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low Overhead Manifesto(opens PDF in separate tab).

In the preface, Carson narrates Mumford’s three epochs of technological revolution since the middle age. The first, called “eotechnic”, refers to the period between the fifteenth and the eighteenth century, characterized by mechanistic results of the early scientific imagination, clockwork machinery, advanced agriculture and horticulture methods, and most importantly for Mumford’s argument, water and wind power. Because of the naturally distributed nature of this energy source, innovation took on a deeply heterogeneous character: you might find three radically different windmill or watermill prototypes just miles away along the Rhine. The political economy of this time in Europe is a complex issue, but one might notice that this period corresponds to the last stand of the landed peasantry and the existence of the commons before the Enclosure movements of the late 17th and 18th century.

The next period, called “paleotechnic,” is one of centralization and reinvigorated state power, again determined by a dominant energy source and its effect on production:

The so‐called “Industrial Revolution,” in conventional parlance, conflates two distinct phenomena: the development of mechanized processes for specific kinds of production (spinning and weaving, in particular), and the harnessing of the steam engine as a prime mover. The former was a direct outgrowth of the mechanical science of the eotechnic phase, and would have been fully compatible with production in the small shop if not for the practical issues raised by steam power. The imperative to concentrate machine production in large factories resulted, not from the requirements of machine production as such, but from the need to economize on steam power.

You can see where this is going: the concentration of productive capacities, the emphasis on extractivism and mercantilism, the East India Trading Company, the pollution and cutthroat capitalism of 19th century Western Europe are all sprouted from this initial mobilization around an expensive and concentrated energy capacity.

Mumford’s third stage dates to the late nineteenth century, the neotechnic, an “electricity and alloy complex” to replace the rule of coal and iron. And with it, the potential for a restoration of autonomy and decentralized production, the dampening of state power. Carson notes that this period roughly corresponds to the writing of the utopian mutualist anarchist Peter Kropotkin. The neotechnic phase was a continuation of the heterogeneity and distributed innovation of the eotechnic period, even implying a “marriage of town and country, of industry and agriculture” (Mumford) as horticultural innovation could flourish on the same level as technologically emboldened workshop and village innovation. Refined tools for the circulation of information could mean diverse branches of innovation aiding and multiplying each other.

As Carson notes, much in line with Michel Bauwens' work on peer production(opens in a new tab), these utopian tools of decentralized technological power are now well developed. And yet, from the perspective of Technics and History, we still live in the long eighteenth century - the neotechnic toolkit remains underutilized (except by urban and rural pioneers of autonomy of the type cities like Portland and Berlin know well). More importantly, the political exit from extractivist and centralized regimes has not caught up with the liberatory capacities of the neotechnic energy paradigm.

Under the executive sovereignty of an 81 year old president, we seem to live in the dead shell of an obsolete power system. But, as all technological optimists know, regimes of production and coordination have the power to leave behind unjust and insufficient political structures. Whither Target, down with the banks. We are the neotechnics, and we will decentralize across scales!

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“WE ARE THE NEOTECHNICS!”

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Portland is home to a robust underground infrastructure of local-scale production capacities. We say underground because you can walk right by these warehouses and minor complexes, full of hardware hackers and woodshops, CNC machines and welding stations without noticing. To illustrate, here is a rough map, stripped of names, of spaces we are aware of with some or all of these capacities, offered cheap or freely and run at a community level:

One thing we notice hanging out in these spaces is how familiar to the web3 spirit their members are. These renegade technologists tend to value horizontal organizing and the intergroup discipline of well-maintained commons, mixed with an unapologetic sense of individualism and non-negotiable autonomy. They are neotechnics like us. And yet, even though they are so close, many of these shops remain insulated from each other, surprisingly unaware of the other workshops around. (As one welder told us while building a cargo bike, 'when I have my head in a project, I'm not thinking about other people's shit.') They haven't bridged the gap from personal economy to political economy because they haven’t discovered the coordination infrastructure to scale. Maybe that’s where web3 comes in.