About

This blog touches on technology, economics, anthropology, media, and politics.  Some of the posts are inspired by books I’m reading or lectures I attend, so I claim no ownership of the ideas involved, though I would argue that nobody ever can.  Posts here have been quoted or referenced on Popular Science, Forbes, Financial Times Alphaville, RIA Novosti’s InoSmi, AllThingsD, Zero Hedge, and (most importantly) the front pages of Reddit and Hacker News.

Simulacrum (from the Latin meaning “likeness, similarity”) was used by French postmodernist Jean Baudrillard to describe a copy with no original, a simulation designed to mask the absence of a reality. The concept tied in with his understanding of the “hyperreal” or “more real than real,” our recurring preference for exaggerated artificial forms.

CC is the domain for the Cocos Islands, a set of tropical atolls and coral reefs in the Indian Ocean. Alas, I do not live there. I initially picked it as a reference to Creative Commons, and because I liked the reference to a “carbon copy” (as in email Cc) which plays on the meaning of simulacrum. But CC can also be the local cyber cafe, your credit card, a complementary currency, or even cheat codes, all themes which feed into the wider concept of simulation, and thus the spirit of this blog.

I started this blog as a postgraduate researcher in UCL’s anthropology department studying the Bitcoin community.  Since then I have gone on to join CoinJar, Australia’s largest digital wallet service, as their UK lead.

I am based in London, UK.

– Lui

(@yablochko)

15dWyUA472ShdoG1Z4ZPKQ1vURn7G7Vz5Q