Steven Johnson, in Beyond the Bitcoin Bubble:
The true believers behind blockchain platforms like Ethereum argue that a network of distributed trust is one of those advances in software architecture that will prove, in the long run, to have historic significance.
I’m very late to the game in reading Johnson’s piece in the NYT. I’ve had it stored in Pocket for far too long. I’m glad I took the time this morning while drinking my coffee to read it. It is very good. It includes many things I think about most; the open web, how tech giants are so important in what the future will look like, and what we can do to mitigate the downsides of them owning the future.
Since 2011, I’ve been asked about Bitcoin and blockchain from time-to-time. My advice to people (including myself) is to recommend people do their own research.
I’ve been buying BTC lately. Partly because the price is rather low at the moment but also partly because I have a completely different goal in 2019. I’m not prospecting. If my wallet’s value appreciates, excellent. If it doesn’t, I don’t care. My goal in 2019 is to use crypto currency (likely Bitcoin or Ether?) to pay for some every day mundane things. My goal is to transact the equivalent of around $10,000 USD in some form of crypto during the course of the year. That could be accepting crypto or spending crypto. It is my hope that by not being a hodlr, and also not trying to get rich, that I will help the crypto financial ecosystem in some small way.
Going back to Johnson’s piece. He writes a lot about the open web and the open protocols that are in place and how on top of those certain companies own things like our identity. He doesn’t quite go so far as to mention the Building Blocks of the indie web but I wish he had. But I think we’re starting to see decentralization on many fronts happen. I think 2018 was a big year for this and I think the shift is only going go accelerate.
I’m not going to make any predictions specifically for 2019 since I believe it will take longer than that. However, with blogging being easier than ever, with Mastodon and indie web protocols, and Solid and many other projects happening – I think we’ll start to see the power of Facebook and Google splinter. Even if it only splinters a little it will be a good thing for the open web.
My indie web goal is to bring my personal site a little more inline with indie web principles. As you long time readers will know, supporting the indie web exhausted me. I gave up. It was too hard. But, the beginning of such things is hard and I should buck up and figure it out. If I do and somehow help make it easier for the next person the web will be a better place.
I recommend reading Johnson’s entire piece.