Crypto and the Conservation of Centralization

The rise of Web 2.0 was heralded as an advancement by not just allowing people to read and write content and do transactions but to connect with each other in new ways. That gave rise, eventually, to Facebook and other social networks, along with a raft of “sharing economy” companies that peddled a fantasy of building community at the heart of busi... See more

Ok, so how is this remotely the same as PCs being cheaper? Well because to some people this matters a great deal. Why? Because much of the power held by large companies (and by governments) comes from the fact that they operate and control databases. Facebook alone gets to decide who can read and write from their database and what parts of it anyon... See more

Blockchain developers believe that this time they’ve found a structural answer to recentralization, but I tend to doubt it. An interesting question to ask is what the next locus for centralization and control might be.