| Wow. The article is significant because it identifies and proposes a solution to a fundamental problem everyone has (even if they don't recognize it yet). Craig Newmark concurs with the poster per a gigaom interview. "Newmark called some form of distributed trust system “the killingest of killer apps” for the web over the next decade" (http://gigaom.com/2010/03/18/craig-newmark-on-the-webs-next-...). A giant multidimensional karma score, a peer-based FICO score for reputation, a PKI-like vouch system, an Advogato-like acceptance scheme to cover all internet activity solves so many things. - Know who to trust on craigslist, airbnb, etc.
- Astroturfing/trolling disappears on your favorite political forum.
- Gamed ratings disappear from your favorite music discovery site.
- Online referendums, with the assurance of only one account per unique person, are possible.
- Promotional online giveaways with a one per person limit become easy.
- Gone are account verification hoops like sms codes to a required cel phone.
- The usefulness of consumer complaint boards is restored.
- Trolls may finally become a relics of some ancient internet past.
- Amazon-turk inflated rankings no longer can mislead ebay buyers. Bitcoin solving it's own local problem may very well fix everything else on the intarwebs. I would expand on the posters call for "decentralized peripherals: a decentralized exchange, a decentralized DNS, Namecoin, and also a decentralized web of trust." Open source R&D, with decentralized governance and distributed funding by the crowd, is what should be powering all this. Hackers should crowd-fund a collectively beholden R&D outfit that churns out solutions for fundamental things like reputation and decentralized peripherals. Right now such a role is played out haphazardly?, incidentally by matured startups that donate or "give back" according to their narrow focus some other narrowly focused institution. A wider more comprehensive, more coherent approach is achieved when hackers cut out the middle steps and self-organize to solve the fundamental problems they face everyday. Open source R&D... what should we call it? |