| You know what this reminds me of? Back in the day the hype was "open" and openness. That's the wave that companies like Twitter and Facebook rode to grow. At the time there was no time to talk about any of the hip hot topics you hear about today like "russian trolls", "political ads", "regulation", "twitter's harassment problem" and so on. The cult belief was open and free and connected and inclusive will magically create a beautiful utopia. Openness was thrown around as the obvious solution to anything. This "decentralised hype" looks very much the same. It's thrown around mindlessly as the obvious and magical solution to problems. When in reality it leaves many things unsolved and almost always turns into "theoretically decentralised but there are like 10 people who actually control it". A part of it is people looking for an excuse and a cover to gain power. A part of it is nerds wanting to solve everything with the single hammer of tech that they have. Bitcoin is a good recent example of how quickly the utopic ideals and promises give their place to a good old blood bath. In the same way that "open everything" hype created problems that now people are complaining about. I think a decade of "decentralise everything" hype will eventually backfire in the same way. And once people see and feel the consequences they will get annoyed and will be asking for the opposite of it. "We said openness and freedom of speech ... but not these horrible people ... take these people away" "I said freedom of speech .. everyone can publish stuff yay ... but NO FAKE NEWS! fact check it all and make sure it's all true" "I said decentralised but I don't want these inconvenient consequences of a decentralised system" Same thing that happened with the open/free/freedom/connected wave. Also see this Dilbert: https://i.imgur.com/FlC0K2l.jpg |
