Baudrillard, Bitcoin, Professionalism and Power
Design Theory Reflection 9
In the video about Baudrillard, the narrator talks about Baudrillard’s conceptions of sign and exchange values. He argues that the reason diamonds are valuable is because of what they signify, who wears them, and their possible exchange value — not because diamonds are intrinsically valuable. He also goes on to give an example of how who is seen drinking particular kinds of wine also adds on to this conception. If a famous person is seen drinking a certain brand of wine, then people begin to think that that wine must be good and valuable, because the associated signal is that of wealth. The association with wealth creates desirability from the “average” consumer, which contributes to the creation of value.
This made me think a lot about cryptocurrency, and NFT’s. I’ve tried reading about cryptocurrency and blockchain and mining and it just makes no sense to me. For a while, I thought that maybe I wasn’t smart enough to understand why cryptocurrency and blockchain is really important, and why it’s so important and revolutionary. But then, recently, when I learned about NFT’s, things started to click for me more. I think that cryptocurrency is related strongly to what Baudrillard talks about with sign value and exchange value.
NFT’s are essentially .jpeg images that can be bought and exchanged at high values because it’s the only one that exists. The only people who are really interested in buying and exchanging NFT’s seem to be extremely rich people like Elon Musk. Because of the association with Elon Musk, NFT’s are becoming increasingly popular amongst average people, who are hoping to get in and make their money before other people.
Similarly, the meme cryptocurrency, DogeCoin has had its value heavily inflated and influenced by Elon Musk. Just by him tweeting about it, the value of DogeCoin has risen over 1000% in just a few days. Therefore, I believe that owning and exchanging cryptocurrency has become a new signifier of wealth and status — it shows that an individual can have proximity to the wealth of a billionaire, as well as be ahead of their time by investing in new and unusual technologies. It demonstrates a person’s proximity to celebrity, power and elite knowledge.
I also found the discussions around Foucault to be particularly interesting. Foucault’s major work, Discipline and Punish, discusses how society polices us to behave in certain ways, and thus teaches us to police ourselves to behave in certain ways. We are disciplined as a society, but we discipline ourselves also, as individuals. I think professionalism is a great example of this. In the workforce, people are expected to wear certain clothes, use certain jargon, and speak in mostly detached terms — it is inappropriate to bring concerns from outside of work to work, and it is important to keep personal matters personal. Behaviors are definitely reinforced by the company itself. Someone may be chastised for dressing “inappropriately” or for entering the wrong door. These things eventually become internalized, and people internalize these behaviors, associating them with good and bad behavior.
This can become problematic when trying to organize for better working conditions. Companies have made it taboo for employees to discuss their salary, which makes it difficult for people to ensure they’re being paid equitably for their work. Workers can be tone-policed, which causes them to code-switch, and create personalities that are completely different at work than at home. This usually targets black people, which of course, is racist. The problem with these codes is that people become so worried with following these arbitrary rules that it’s hard for workers to stand up for themselves in a way that is meaningful and true to themselves, for fear of maybe losing their jobs or being taken away from responsibilities that benefit their career.
I found this discussion to be particularly interesting because it points to how deeply power lies. We often think about control in terms of an external force enforcing certain behaviors as good and certain behaviors as bad. This is definitely true, but what we don’t talk about enough is how we control ourselves in order to adapt and survive in the world. This shows how deeply power runs. The ideas of power are so strong that they embed themselves into our subconscious — in ways we don’t think of or realize. I really liked Foucault’s discussion on this, because it’s important to think of power in a manner that is much more expansive than we realize.
