[svlug] Blockchain

[Michael Eager]

On 06/29/2018 12:08 PM, Karen Shaeffer wrote:
 > My understanding is blockchain is one of the most disruptive technology
 > concepts out in the wild today. Some folks have opined blockchain has
 > the capacity to bring down the Google and Facebook empires at some
 > future date:
 >
 > http://rbharath.github.io/why-blockchain-could-one-day-topple-google/

To quote the article: "there’s something to blockchain mania, but 
perhaps you’re not seeing why the technology is a threat to modern web 
titans like Google."  Describes me to a T.

The article goes on about Byzantine Generals, agreement between 
distrusting parties, smart Etherium contracts, and whatever.

Google is an advertising engine, harvesting user data to focus ads. 
There's not a lot of trust in this, nor is a lot required.  My searching 
for wombats doesn't involve a contract between me and Google.  If Google 
gives me a photo of a Tasmanian Devil instead of a wombat, either I will 
be fooled because I don't know better, or I'll know that they are wrong. 
  If Overstock.com starts feeding me ads of stuffed wombat cushions, I 
know where they got the clue I might be interested.

The article hypothesizes a "privacy preserving Google Street View" based 
(in some unclear fashion) on blockchain.  It presumes that individuals 
provide photos and decide what info is made public.  It wasn't clear how 
blockchain facilitates a publicly-sourced SV.  Blockchain might 
hypothetically allow one to verify ownership of a photo, but to what 
end?  If you don't want a photo public, don't make it public.

The article goes on to hypothesize that this become as big as Google, 
with billions of participants and becomes "an existential threat to 
Google itself".   It skips the part where they explain how it goes from 
having one participant, to ten, a hundred, and so on.

Google spent millions of dollars taking photos of streets around the 
world.  I presume it did this to drive visitors to its website, but they 
also sell advertising on the maps.  It didn't depend on crowd-sourced 
street photos.  It didn't depend on people granting permission to 
display photos of their house on their street.  (Actually, that is one 
of the values that Google Street View would have over a crowd-sourced 
system.  I can look on any street where a Google SV car has gone and get 
a picture, without having to depend on the residents having published a 
photo.)

Counterfactual hypothetical arguments are fun, but to be credible, there 
has to be some way that you connect real-world facts to they 
hypothetical conjecture.  When you start from the premise that something 
becomes big enough to be a threat to Google, and use that premise to 
show that it is a threat to Google, the argument becomes circular.

There's not much different in this article that asserting that flying 
cars represent an "existential threat to Tesla", and support that 
argument by hypothesizing that everyone owns a flying car no one will by 
a Tesla.  The logical fallacy is begging the question.

 > Blockchain obviously has great entrepreneurial potential today. Is the
 > timing right? Well, that is the uncertainty factor. When. Not if.

There's value in secure contracts, efficient money transfers, low cost 
escrows, etc., all built on blockchain.  Blockchain will certainly 
affect companies like banks, escrow companies, or stock exchanges, where 
there is a contractual relationship and trust is an issue.  It will 
affect other kinds of commerce, both domestic and international, where 
it will be integrated into existing (or perhaps new) supply networks.

There's a huge amount of hype around blockchain, especially BitCoin and 
the hundreds (thousands?) of other cybercurrencies based on blockchain. 
Some folks are going to make a lot of money.  Lots of folks are going to 
lose a lot of money.


-- 
Michael Eager    eager at eagerm.com
1960 Park Blvd., Palo Alto, CA 94306