Hydraulic Despotism
from btrmt. lectures Hosted by Dorian
Karl Wittfogel’s theory of hydraulic despotism was savaged by his peers and rightly so. But the pattern he was reaching for—that whoever controls the essential flowing resource controls the people—is the story of modern infrastructure. Energy, social media, payment systems, AI compute. We handed over the water. We don’t have to hand over everything else. Rather read? I also made this episode into an article: https://btr.mt/analects/hydraulic-despotism-lecture And the piece it’s based on: https://btr.mt/analects/hydraulic-despotism. Stuff I mentioned: The Betterment article that inspired this From Zero: on recreating systems from scratch Digital Selves: taking control of your digital presence True Family Ties: on the erosion of our communities Karl Wittfogel and Hydraulic civilisations on Wikipedia Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism Thames Water’s debt crisis (BBC) Russia-Ukraine food insecurity (European Council) Nvidia valuation (BBC) Mann’s Infrastructural Power on Wikipedia Platform Capitalism and its dynamics Callon’s Obligatory Passage Points and Latour’s Actor-Network Theory on Wikipedia Essential Facilities Doctrine on Wikipedia EU Digital Markets Act on Wikipedia Cory Doctorow, “The Post-American Internet” (39C3 talk)—on the new coalition, anticircumvention law, and Eurostack Cory Doctorow on enshittification and adversarial interoperability Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons Selye’s Eustress—the distinction between good stress and bad stress The beauty of stress Related stuff: Education is Entertainment: on why some ideas stick
Embed this episode
What this episode covers
Karl Wittfogel's theory of hydraulic despotism was savaged by his peers and rightly so. But the pattern he was reaching for—that whoever controls the essential flowing resource controls the people—is the story of modern infrastructure. Energy, social media, payment systems, AI compute. We handed over the water. We don't have to hand over everything else.
No transcript yet.