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9781839768347

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Rachel O'Dwyer offers an introduction to the politics of modern tech darlings: from cryptocurrency to Web3. [Tokens] explores the future of money, which O'Dwyer points out is increasingly being replaced by tokens , and questions what it means when digital platforms become the new banks. While these tokens offer new types of relationships, ownership, and governance, O'Dwyer warns that they also usher in novel forms of surveillance and discipline. -- Brit Dawson * GQ, All the best books to look forward to in 2023 *

"Rachel O'Dwyer offers an introduction to the politics of modern tech darlings: from cryptocurrency to Web3. [Tokens] explores the future of money, which O'Dwyer points out is increasingly ""being replaced by tokens"", and questions what it means when digital platforms become the new banks. While these tokens offer new types of relationships, ownership, and governance, O'Dwyer warns that they also usher in novel forms of surveillance and discipline. -- Brit Dawson, All the best books to look forward to in 2023 * GQ * Rachel O'Dywer takes us on a fascinating and important journey into the vast realm of hidden currencies that operate in the shadows of mainstream money systems. She shows how unorthodox tokens have been enlisted by those seeking emancipation, but rather than uncritically praising them as breakthrough innovations, she also skillfully draws out the deep ambiguities inherent within them: powerful corporate players are quick to take advantage of the grey area on the edge of standard monetary systems to accumulate more profit and data. A must read for anyone exploring the politics of Big Tech and Big Finance. -- Brett Scott, author of <i>Cloud Money</i> No one has done more thoughtful research or has more nuanced takes than Rachel O'Dwyer. She mercilessly cuts through the hype and yet leaves room for hope. -- Lana Swartz, author of <i>New Money</i> In this endlessly fascinating book, Rachel O'Dwyer illuminates the deep strangeness and complexity of money. Written with engaging style and deep intellectual rigour, Tokens is a bracing and enriching exploration of the future of techno-capitalism. -- Mark O'Connell, author of <i>A Thread of Violence</i> Token economies are not your typical markets. Enabling a recent explosion of digital grey economies, tokens are used to represent belonging, appreciation, fandom and exclusivity mediating identities, access and incomes across the vast peripheries of the formal economy. Read O'Dwyers book immediately for a full spectrum overview of how tokens have facilitated fields of social potential and experimentation that have nevertheless been locked down and exploited by the tech companies who own the underlying rails. -- Jaya Klara Brekke"

Author Information

Rachel O' Dwyer is a lecturer at the School of Visual Culture at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She was a Fulbright Scholar at UC Irvine and the Microsoft Research labs, Cambridge; she is currently a fellow at Connect, the centre for Networks and Telecommunications at Trinity College, Dublin. She is the co-editor of Neural Magazine and has written for outlets such as Convergence, MIT Press and the London Review of Books. She has curated a number of exhibitions of digital practise that explore the intersection of art and the Blockchain.

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