For his lecture for the Center for Experimental Lectures (at Interstate Projects, 2017) Devin Kenny illustrated how the physical infrastructure of the network, supposedly developed in the 20th century, actually developed much earlier. Drawing from a variety of sources and traditions, Kenny’s alternative genealogy understands routes of the African diaspora and practices developed during and after the Middle Passage as the origin of network technologies. BailBloc, a computer application he also helped conceive, takes the seemingly apolitical and highly dubious culture of cryptocurrency and bends its networking potential towards an abolitionist politics. Developed by The New Inquiry’s “Dark Inquiry” lab, BailBloc mines the cryptocurrency Monero through a cloud of users who allow the app to operate in the background on their computers. The Bronx Freedom Fund then uses the real dollars generated by this scheme to post bail. (JL)

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