Things we read in 2021
More than anything else, we spent 2021 reading. Absorbing information, finding views to course correct our own and uncovering articulations to give form to thoughts we felt but didn't quite grasp yet.
We also did some articulating of our own (to be posted later this week) but what you’ll find here is much more…well, articulate. Let’s cut to the chase before we have to break out the thesaurus:
10 links to catch up on from 2021:
→ What If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency?
by Jason Hickel for Current Affairs
→ Systems control: on the book “Under a White Sky”
by Danyl Mclauchlan for Spinoff
→ Ecological Leninism: Adam Tooze on Andreas Malm
by Adam Tooze for London Review of Book
→ Notes on Web3
by Robin Sloan
→ Crypto Cities
by Vitalik Buterin
→ A Prehistory of DAOs
by Kei for Gnosis
→ Governing In The Planetary Age
by Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman for NOEMA
→ Moving Castles
by GVN908 and ARB for Trust
→ New Value Systems
by Black Socialists on Twitter
→ Human History Gets a Rewrite
by William Deresiewicz for Atlantic
Bonus can’t miss report:
→ BACP
by 221a
Bonus must-reads from before 2021:
→ Traditional Ecological Knowledge (2000)
by Raymond Pierotti and Daniel Wildcat
→ Anarchists must say what only anarchists can say (2003)
by Monsieur Dupont
→ Let’s Degrow Up and Grow Down! (2017)
by François Schneider
→ Making Kin with the Machines (2018)
by Jason Edward Lewis, Noelani Arista, Archer Pechawis, and Suzanne Kite
→ Decentralizing everything never seems to work (2019)
by Nathan Schneider
Hungry for more? Other worthy reads sprinkled throughout below, across the themes we started to recognize looking back (top 10 bolded).
It’s important to emphasize here that these are merely patterns within our own readings, speaking to our interests and views—rather than anything like a universal trend of 2021. Nonetheless, four things stood out.
Climate Out of Control
The first is the ongoing failures of the pandemic underlining the lengths we have yet to go with the climate crisis. Awareness isn’t really the issue anymore, and arguably we didn’t need a star-studded film to parody the sad state of affairs (besides, we thought Jennifer Lawrence’ attempt in 2017’s “Mother!” a much more visceral and effective form of climate cinema). But it remains quite terrifying how hard it remains to face up to political reluctancy, technical inability, financial obfuscation and quite plainly; lack of control—however much we can now recognize the control we had in creating the problem, just reversing that control doesn’t seem to be as easy as it should be.
→ What If We Treated Climate Change as an Actual Emergency?
by Jason Hickel for Current Affairs
→ Systems control: on the book “Under a White Sky”
by Danyl Mclauchlan for Spinoff
→ Ecological Leninism: Adam Tooze on Andreas Malm
by Adam Tooze for London Review of Book
→ Regenerative agriculture needs a reckoning
by Joe Fassler for the Counter
→ A nonprofit made millions claiming it could cut down trees
by Lisa Song and James Temple for Tech Review
→ Soil-Science Upends Plans to Fight Climate Change
by Gabriel Popkin for Quanta mag
→ Saving the Climate in a Triple Crisis
by Mariana Mazzucato for The New Republic
This very existential dread, mixed with ample time at home and online (if lucky enough to have spent the year so), put 2021’s focus square onto the next three themes: approaches in search of, if not a way out of the climate crisis, then at least a way through it.
Web3 Morals and Mirages
Somewhat overlapping are 2 and 3; Web3 and questions of (self)-governance (also extending to questions of ownership, public goods and direct democratic influence).
While web3 has already become both buzz and trigger word, its financially incentivized fanfare was inescapable this past year. Whether the tools of Web3 can in fact be bent towards the revolutions and evolutions in (self)governing mechanisms that we are in need of, is to be debated. But those debates are worthy to read up on.
→ Notes on Web3
by Robin Sloan
→ Crypto Cities
by Vitalik Buterin
→ A Prehistory of DAOs
by Kei for Gnosis
→ Sc3nius
by Packy McCormick for Not Boring
→ Is web3 a Petri dish?
by Gordon Brander for Subconscious
→ Blockchain voting is overrated / underrated
by Vitalik Buterin
→ No Ethical Activism Under Capitalism
by Emmi Bevensee for C4SS
‘ello Guv’nance
Perhaps at the bare minimum the momentum and capital of Web3 can be funneled into a renewed energy for general rethinking of (self)governance: a reimagination of democracy, what we hold in common and who we allow to participate in the decision-making of our most important choices. Which is what the 3rd theme hones in on, inevitably here and there overlapping with the Web3 conversation as well.
→ Governing In The Planetary Age
by Jonathan Blake and Nils Gilman for NOEMA
→ Moving Castles
by GVN908 and ARB for Trust
→ The 100-Year Cycle Of Change
by Nathan Gardels for NOEMA
→ For Planetary Governance
by Benjamin Bratton for Strelka mag
→ The Exponential Age Will Transform Economics Forever
by Azeem Azhar via Wired
→ Can a Worker's Co-Op Thrive in Big Tech?
by Nora Jenkins Townson with Benedict Lau and Yurko for Early mag
→ Better Living Through Networks
by David Ehrlichman via Jose Mejia for FWB
Vying for Better Values
The final theme takes a step away from the technical means with which we can accomplish change, and concerns itself more on formulating what we want to change towards. It’s a broader sweep but also the most inspiring. Reframing history and redefining the possible, what’s happening in these reads more than anything is the articulation of society’s values. Perhaps this is where our interests make a full circle back to our origins from before we started Decentralized Agency a year ago; the shaping of culture and through it a new common sense that’s ideally as radical as the problems we face.
→ Systems change grounded in social change
by Black Socialists on Twitter
→ Human History Gets a Rewrite
by William Deresiewicz for Atlantic
→ Amid the Wildfires; on Mike Davis
by Micah Uetricht for The Nation
→ From Its Myriad Tips
by Francis Gooding for London Review of Books
→ The Art of Mutual Aid
by Andreas Petrossiants for Eflux
That’s it for our readings of 2021 and the patterns we saw within them. If you want to know more about what we were writing, and thinking, then see our 2021 reflections on our first year as Decentralized Agency (to be posted later this week).
Meanwhile, here’s to making 2022 become more hopeful while staying cautious of false hopium.
Final bonus links:
Trap Metaphysics
by McKenzie Wark for Eflux
Adam Curtis Explains it All
by Sam Knight on New Yorker
Willi Smith: Swervin’ in the Kingdom of Dreams
by Will Perkins for Purple
Backchannel
by Ink & Switch
Lil Internet on Energy Use
on Twitter
Indigenous AI on Interdependence podcast
Reading the far-right: The Salazar Option (triggering)
Technically from before 2020:
After Escape: The New Climate Power Politics
by Adam Tooze for Eflux
World-Making, “Mass” Poverty, and the Problem of Scale
by Dipesh Chakrabarty for Eflux
How Russia Wins The Climate Crisis
by Abrahm Lustgarten for NYTimes