Civic Virtue in Social Credit and Blockchain-based Systems

Overview

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.


Description

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.

Start time

May 29, 2025 - 12:30pm