What connects Luther's Reformation with decentralized information technologies? A look at the past and the future.
This article first appeared in German at Freischwebende Intelligenz. You can find all the articles by Free-floating Intelligence in English here – subscribe now, to get the articles by e-mail! This article has been written with the Pareto client.
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It was October 31, 1517, when an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg—or perhaps not.
Historical research is not entirely agreed on the specific act of posting the theses. What is certain, however, is that the theses circulated rapidly and set in motion a wave that ultimately led to one of the greatest paradigm shifts in European history. The Reformation broke with the omnipotence of an institution that claimed to be the sole mediator between man and God. Luther insisted that every human being could speak directly to God, that the Scriptures should be accessible to everyone, and that indulgences – today we might call them “premium access to salvation” – were a corrupt business model. What does this have to do with our digital present?
More than one might initially suspect. Today, more than 500 years later, we find ourselves once again in a time of upheaval, in which established institutions of information dissemination and control are being challenged. The Catholic Church of the early 16th century claimed sole authority over truth and salvation, much as today’s large technology companies and centralized platforms claim control over our digital existence and communication. And just as in the past, resourceful minds are looking for ways to decentralize this power.
What is communication?
What Luther did here was first and foremost an act of communication. Communication requires a sender, a receiver, a speech act, a medium, and a unity of time and space. We have all of this when we stand in front of each other and talk to each other. This is the most direct, unadulterated form of communication.
Even paying with coins and bills is essentially an act of communication, in which information is transmitted through a payment process. We will return to this point later. Luther formulated his thoughts and signed his theses, perhaps with his seal. In the end, he achieved the effect he wanted, but the communication process was never secure. The place where he posted the theses did not belong to him.
The theses were quickly removed. Luther chose an insecure means of communication because he knew no better. At least he could be sure that his message would most likely reach the faithful, his target audience. The unity of space and time prevailed, at least for a brief moment.
Luther had little choice in how to communicate: the Church had established itself as the unquestionable mediator between heaven and earth—it alone had a monopoly on interpreting scripture, it alone could grant forgiveness of sins, it alone decided who would receive salvation. The sale of indulgences was only the most visible manifestation of this system of control. Above all, until the invention of printing, the Church had a monopoly on public communication through writing, and it had a censorship apparatus and the Inquisition at its disposal to suppress unwelcome information and punish heretics. Luther lived in an age of ecclesiastical totalitarianism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiWLYHwxfOU&t=1s
What is Nostr?
Since Luther, little has changed at the core of the problem. Time and again, those in power try to gain control over information that is exchanged directly from one person to another. Whether it was the totalitarian systems of the 20th century or today’s big tech companies acting on behalf of the “best democracies ever,” it hardly matters who censors and controls. Most of our communication today is digital. We hammer our opinions onto the pinboards of social media, the virtual cathedrals and pilgrimage sites of the modern age, and they are just as reliably removed if they don’t suit the owner of the cathedral or the government as they were 500 years ago.
The big question today is once again: How can direct, unadulterated, and secure communication between people be made possible in the digital age?
This is where the Nostr protocol) comes in. Nostr stands for “notes and other stuff transmitted by relays.” Nostr is an open-source communication protocol consisting of thousands of nodes that are privately operated, i.e., by ourselves. Anyone can operate a relay, i.e., a node. Relays are the places where information is stored and retrieved. In Luther’s example, it was the church door. In our digital space, they are centralized information containers, usually servers that belong to others. Luther posted his theses in someone else’s space. We do nothing different when we post on popular social media platforms. We pin our content to digital bulletin boards that are owned by others.
In today’s world, if Luther wanted to communicate something very important that should not be deleted, he would be best advised to go to Nostr.
What would Luther do on Nostr today?
- He would write his theses as digital text, for example using the editor on Pareto.space, one of many tools that provide access to the Nostr protocol. Luther could also send his theses as a newsletter via Pareto.
- Before doing so, Luther would have created his Nostr ID, a system based on a freely available cryptographic process that generates a key pair consisting of a public key that is visible to the outside world and linked to his identity, and a private key with which he signs his publications.
- In the biography of his profile, which would then be visible on a good 100 Nostr apps, he might write: “I post here, I can’t help myself.”
- Once Luther has logged in to Nostr with his key pair, he can publish his theses. His text is a signed Nostr event, which is kept available for others to access on the nodes (relays) he uses.
- Since the information is stored redundantly on several relays, it remains accessible and available at all times, making it highly resistant to censorship; in a decentralized network, there is no single point of attack. His theses are now suddenly posted on many church doors, and these belong either to him or to other participants in the network who are also fighting against censorship.
- Not only can his text not be deleted by others, its integrity cannot be altered. Only the person who wrote and signed the text, i.e. Luther himself, can do that. The text belongs to him and him alone. Nostr also stands for the possessive pronoun “Noster” in Latin, meaning “ours,” “our own.” That which belongs to us and only us.
Thanks to censorship, we are ending censorship
Luther did something revolutionary. He challenged the existing monopoly on faith by introducing a new rule: everyone has personal access to God and does not need a central mediator or gatekeeper, such as the Catholic Church. In faith, personal access is prayer. In the world of communication technology, this is called a protocol. The protocol is the intermediary between us, and if the protocol belongs to no one because it is open source and therefore in the public domain, like the air or the sun, then it is also the communication between two or many people.
A protocol is not an opinion, a product, or a company. It is a language, a code, a tool that does not ask if it is allowed. It is simply there. Protocols are the constitution of the digital world. Whoever controls them controls reality. Bitcoin is the protocol for money. It takes away the central bank’s hammer of interpretive authority. It needs no approval, no bank, no nation. It is money in its purest form: code that is scarce, decentralized, and true.
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Nostr does the same thing as Bitcoin does for money, but for information. It takes the hammer out of the hands of the media, the platforms, and the information ministries. No more censorship of ideas. No more banning of heretics. No algorithmic invisibility. No tracking and data sales. Just people communicating and ideas remaining visible — for anyone who wants to see them.
The history of censorship has always been both a humanistic beacon and a technological success story. It was censorship that made the means of circumventing censorship so necessary. Censorship promoted the printing press and, later, blogging on the internet. Under the pressure of censorship, encryption and obfuscation techniques flourished, such as cryptography (visible encryption) and steganography (hiding communication, for example using invisible ink). In order to achieve freedom, humans have always built tools, both analog and digital. Despite the almost natural recurrence of centralization of power, the means of production for self-empowerment are now effectively in the hands of the many.
It is not possibilities that are lacking, but action. The division of central power cannot be achieved by a mere attack on the central power, but only through the decentralization of power. For at its core, as Etienne de la Boétie knew well over 500 years ago in his essay on voluntary servitude (“servitude volontaire”), tyranny does not rest on the seizure of power by one individual over many, but on the voluntary surrender of freedom by the many and its transfer to one individual. If this is the core of centralised seizure of power, then the logical counterprogram is the reconquest of freedom, the reconquista libertatis. This is the task we now face (and cannot avoid).
The foundations of humanity have never changed. We are all born under the same sun, on the same earth, breathing the same air and drinking the same element, water. Why should anyone be allowed to rise above others and deny them their voice? And yet the history of humanity is paved with precisely this raw act, fed solely by the will to power of individuals and their elevation above others. Languages and protocols cannot be the privilege of the powerful; they grow from the bottom up, they precede every seizure of power and may even outlive it, even if today’s powerful also presume to seize control of language. Even in ancient Rome, the principle applied that the emperor was not above language, and therefore he was not above protocol or a piece of code.
Do you recognize the melody?
History is a succession of “towers and squares,” of centralized structures and decentralized structures, writes historian Niall Ferguson in his book of the same name. In virtual space, platforms are increasingly being replaced by decentralized networks and protocols. Free code thrives best in an environment of informational repression.
The centralizing power of the church gave rise to the Reformation. Oppression by the monarchy awakened the forces of democracy. Monetary centralization and the crisis of the Ponzi-like fiat money system gave rise to the Bitcoin protocol in the storm of the last financial crisis. Towers were followed by squares. Platforms are followed by protocols.
Digital central power and its hunger for control over information are now giving wings to decentralized protocols such as Nostr. Action and reaction, always oscillating against and with each other, that is the course of history. Every movement in one direction causes movement in the other direction. Where there is pressure, there is “counterpressure.”
How can a technological layman distinguish between centralized and decentralized technology?
The former brings individuals closer into the clutches of a company. You always pass a checkpoint, have to identify yourself, or leave your email address and phone number. The latter only brings individuals closer to themselves. Here, you create your own space out of nothing. That is the simple beauty of Bitcoin and Nostr.
Bitcoin enables the direct exchange of digital money, as in the form of cash payments, entirely without intermediaries. Nostr does the same for direct digital communication. Once you understand it, you won’t want anything else, because you realize that everything else is pointless: Why hoard the monopoly money of a central bank cartel that can be multiplied at will?
Why put intellectual content on someone else’s digital bulletin board where you own nothing?
In real life, you don’t build your house on someone else’s property. Why should you do it in virtual space? All the nice posts on Facebook, Twitter, and the like are ultimately just artifacts carved into digital sand that can disappear forever with the next wave of censorship. Nostr prevents that.
We are now on the threshold of a new decentralized age in which control is increasingly shifting back from central authority to the individual.
The decentralized age gives individuals back control over two important levers of reality: money and information. Bitcoin allows the fruits of one’s labor to be preserved more permanently than in other asset classes. Nostr allows us to reclaim the power to interpret reality. It is the power of interpretation of the many powerless against the few powerful.
If Luther’s posting was the 95 theses, then Nostr is the 96th thesis: the claim that no one can slam the door shut anymore. That we need a public network that does not censor, but simply transmits.
We live in a time when code changes more than laws. Bitcoin and Nostr are not projects. They are protocols of freedom. They take the scepter from the Leviathan without overthrowing it. They simply ignore it.
Luther once said, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.”
Today we post, “Here I send, and no one can delete me.”
And if I may add, à la Luther: “And when it comes to censorship and deplatforming, regulatory authorities and Big Tech can kiss our asses.”
This slightly revised article also appeared in the fifth issue of “Gegendruck,” which is dedicated to the theme of “Shaping the Future.” You can order the magazine here.
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