[jazzyjackson]

This is unnecessarily defeatist. You can make improvements to a broken world, including new frameworks for compute that removes dependency on billionaire data brokers.

As an Adam Curtis fan (for all his faults), I don't believe technology is neutral nor that progress is teleologic. I do believe that people could be better served that software that works in their interests instead of against them.

And funny you mention a broken world, as if we're doomed to be excluded from the paradise of eden, the very first walled garden. Those of us working on distributed applications are trying to make walled gardens obsolete, no forgiveness required :)

[itsanaccount]

those of you working on distributed applications are trying to transfer power from current tech companies to new tech companies.

thats it. thats all it is. all the madness about cryptography replacing trust just makes that power more concentrated.

[emurlin]

What do you mean by replacing trust with crypto? Like in 'code is law'? If so, yeah, you can't replace one thing with the other because they're fundamentally different things that may only overlap in certain areas.

But on a broader scale, I don't see what in cryptography makes power inherently more concentrated. Crypto is just a way for enforcing certain trust relations that have already been established or agreed upon. Just like you can use crypto to help centralise power (e.g., allowing you to only run signed applications that can only show signed content), you can use crypto to help decentralise power with tools for confidentially presenting content and allowing you to vet your applications haven't been tampered with.

In both cases the underlying technology has many common components, and what changes is the use you make of it.