Social Construction of Blockchain: A Brief Review from Arpanet to Date

Internet, technologies, and a myriad application of both constitute a vital part of modern society. Without which, one cannot conceive the modernity of our epoch. The creation and innovation of the Internet is a human envision and adventure towards a new world, through which people's capacity of surmounting institutional goals, overcoming bureaucratic barriers, and overthrowing established values is highlighted (Castells, 2001:8). History is fascinating because it was in the deep past, albeit it is also recurrently repeated and reflected at the present. While looking back the very origins of internet-Arpanet and examining its contemporary extreme: blockchain, though there are notable differences due to distinct socio-economic environments, their key essences are very similar. Arpanet was designed and managed by a group of computer scientists and further grassroots with a shared dream to change the world through a communications architecture based on principles on which the Internet still operates today (Castells, 2001:8-25). Similarly, emerging blockchain developers are motivated to change social dilemmas imposed by monopolistic platforms that have supplanted many of our everyday life venues in the digital world. Platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and the like, offer 'free' access to their products, whereas users are exploited "free labours" (Terranova, 2000) generating great amount of data, namely "capital" (Sadowski, 2019) for platform companies, or put it differently, "platform capitalism" (Langley & Leyshon, 2017). The creation of blockchain-based information infrastructure, for example Twetch and Streamanity respectively resembling Twitter and YouTube, demonstrates blockchain pioneers' dream of a new digital world where users own their data and their online activities are rewarded by cryptocurrencies. Generally, blockchain is seen as the solution to various problems of contemporary society, ranging from its finance origin to charitable causes (e.g. Bunduchi et al., 2018; Chow, 2018; Farooq et al., 2020; Hu & Li, 2020; Kewell et al., 2017) and digital identity (Dahan & Sudan, 2015). It appears that actors gathering around blockchain are trying to subvert the existing politico-economic systems and social values to build an "ideal" world.

Blockchain technologies are undoubtedly benefited from previous internet development which is a result of social, political, and economical environment. Mentanko (2020) outlines social construction of the internet with key events throughout the internet's history: the introduction of Arpanet in 1969; France's networked computing, the Minitel, in the late 1970s, and the primary prototype of the world wide web designed by Berners-Lee in 1990. Arpanet was created under the political tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was initiated out of United States' ambition to build a technological military superiority over the Soviet Union (Castells, 2001:17) after the Soviet Union has sent the first spaceflight Apollo to the Moon. Those who developed the internet during the first decade has framed its technical nature with social, political, economic, and cultural ramifications in mind (Braman, 2011:303). Similarly, France's version of networked computing was built out of the fear of losing cultural superiority. In the late 1970s, the country's elites realized that the telephone network of France is one of the worst in the industrialized world, and that the United States' dominate position in the computation industry threatened their national sovereignty, or at least damaged their cultural pride (Milland & Driscoll, 2017). Minitel was primarily designed for anonymous online chatting, companionship, and sex (Feenberg, 1992:308). Motivated by the growth of Minitel's users, entrepreneurs seized the opportunity to create new services for profits (Milland & Driscoll, 2017), which in turn altered its programming code. This illustrates how and why the sociopolitical environment and actors involved can shape the development of a technology. The internet, which was initially controlled by the military and used for academic research, was not accessible by the public until in the 1990s when the world wide web was designed (Abbate, 1999:183). The world wide web not just addresses shortcomings of previous internet applications, but also responds to millions of public users' demand to enjoy the provisions of its new role as an entertainment medium, a shop window, and a vehicle connecting one to the world (Abbate, 1999:212-4). Public's access to the world wide web then empowered various social movements such as the liberation movement of women and the black American. The emergence of blockchain could be seen as a demonstration of a technological movement for trust, security, privacy, democracy, decentralization, and anarchism.

Shortly after the 2008 financial crises, the author(s) known as Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a peer-to-peer system using proof-of-work to record public history of electronic transactions without relying on trusted third-party institutions (Nakamoto, 2008). The system is bitcoin which is seen as a social response to the 2008 financial crisis (Bousfield, 2019:291). The existing banking system is trust-based and a powerful centralized authority is needed to collect increasingly more user information to prevent fraud (Nakamoto, 2008:1). Bitcoin proposal was born from strong normative demands on privacy, disintermediation and self-autonomy of money users (Hütten & Thiemann, 2018:36). Blockchain's peer-to-peer and cryptographic foundation has the merit of decentralization which circumvent centralized banks and governments so as to protect user's privacy along with security (Bousfield, 2019:297). Arguably, at the beginning, bitcoin and blockchain technologies are a group of people's responses to the challenges of and concerns about existing financial system.

While early versions of internet were more socially constructed by users, the digital world today is more centralized by players like Facebook and Google who possess data, information and consequently power (Mentanko, 2020:41). These monopolistic platforms collect users' data to fuel their capitalistic growth, while users contributing to their data base have no rewards but only exploitation of their labour. Therefore, the adherents of blockchain technologies, who realized the problem of free labour, have further united to build their blockchain-based social media platforms, Twetch and Streamanity for example, to claim the ownership of data. Apart from this, blockchain and cryptocurrencies have been utilized for other charitable causes. Due to the criticalities such as declining donation, issues of transparency, and skepticism of CEO pay, some non-profit organizations have resorted to blockchain to receive cryptocurrency donation and increase accountability through traceable transactions (Rangone & Busolli, 2021). The United Nation is also using blockchain to create digital identities for citizens and refugees to enable them have access to resources and help (Dahan & Sudan, 2015). Nevertheless, blockchain information infrastructure is still evolving through heterogeneous entrepreneur activities to maintain, extend, and propagate the infrastructures (Jabbar & Bjørn, 2019:1), disrupting various aspects of the real world through technology services and promising imaginaries. As pointed out by Pinch and Bijker (1984:404) that "science and technology are both socially constructed cultures and bring to bear whatever cultural resources are appropriate for the purposes at hand". This also demonstrate Feenberg's (1992:305-9) argument that technology is a social object constructed by social, economic and political environment, as well as influenced by social groups and their different interpretations.

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