[community] Revisiting the discussion about blockchains...

[Ather Shabbar]

This is one way to reduce the size of government!  The role of legislators
as intermediary - it's like the "wild west".

On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 10:10 AM, Jutta Treviranus <jutta.trevira at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Last year I broached the topic of blockchains to many people on this list,
> asking what the implications and opportunities were for inclusive design.
> How could we make use of a fully decentralized immutable technical system
> without intermediaries (e.g., trusted diversification of academic
> credentialing without academic institutions as gatekeepers) and what were
> the risks for an area currently dependent on regulations for intermediaries
> (e.g., regulating UBER for ridesharing vs. a completely distributed person
> to person ridesharing system)?
>
> Several of you gave very good arguments for dismissing blockchain
> technologies. I spoke to Tim Berners Lee about the implications of
> blockchains at the WWW2016 conference and he maintained that the same
> functionality can be derived from existing Web technologies and standards.
> He said the same later in his keynote address.
>
> Since then Don Tapscott and his son have released a book on the potential
> of blockchains:
> http://dontapscott.com/2015/06/blockchain-revolution-the-brilliant-technology-changing-money-business-and-the-world/
> <
> http://dontapscott.com/2015/06/blockchain-revolution-the-brilliant-technology-changing-money-business-and-the-world/
> >
>
> ….and our friends at the Internet Archive co-hosted a summit on the topic
> (unfortunately I couldn’t go because of all the things happening here this
> week) that included Tim, Vint Cerf, Brewster Kahle and others. See:
> http://www.decentralizedweb.net <http://www.decentralizedweb.net/>
>
> I wanted to revisit this discussion…. not necessarily limited to the use
> of blockchains specifically (for one thing the power consumption of
> maintaining and growing them seems to be prohibitive) but how to achieve
> the functions that blockchains promised.
>
> What are your thoughts?
>
> Jutta
>
>
>
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