05-29, 12:30–12:55 (CET), Flower
In this talk, I argue that blockchain technology and the Chinese Social Credit System (SCS), while coming from completely different backgrounds, grapple with the same problem: how to cultivate trust, or more precisely civic virtue, in a society of strangers? I explore how civic virtue is cultivated in the SCS and in blockchain-based systems, discussing challenges of domination and conformism.
I am deeply interested in how emerging socio-technical systems are reconfiguring the world of politics and citizenship. In this regard, I have written about the politics of blockchain technology (e.g., in the book Blockchain Governance with MIT, co-written with Primavera de Filippi and Morshed Mannan) and about the Chinese Social Credit System. In the concept of civic virtue, which has been central to political philosophy since Aristotle, I have found a fruitful way to talk about the promises and pitfalls of these systems, as what matter - perhaps foremost - is how they modulate our moral and political dispositions.
Wessel Reijers is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Media Studies, Paderborn University. Additionally, he holds visiting scholarships at the Technion and at the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute. He received a PhD in technology ethics from Dublin City University. Previously, he was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute, a Research Associate in the ERC project “BlockchainGov”, led by Dr. Primavera de Filippi, and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna.
Wessel’s current research explores the impacts of emerging technologies on citizenship, most notably coming from social credit systems. Additionally, he explores the nature of distributed governance, investigating its potential as well as its pitfalls.
Wessel is the author of Blockchain Governance, Narrative and Technology Ethics and co-editor of the edited volume Interpreting Technology.
Apart from his research, Wessel likes to write fiction, make music, and make some paintings once in a while.