Blockchain will change the world. Or not.
Twice this week, people have relayed to me incredible promises for the power of blockchain and how it will change the way we do everything. This is quite some feat for a technology that few people understand, even in principle, and even fewer can describe with clarity.I have a number of issues with this idea. It’s not that I don’t think blockchain has great potential. There’s a clear attraction in the robustness of its distributed nature and the potential for transparency that represents. I can see how it might be valuable for managing contracts and deeds — matters of public record that don’t necessarily have tight privacy concerns around them.But blockchain is an architectural choice, not a technological solution in its own right. It is one way we might choose to tackle particular problems, and one of many. It is suited to some situations and not to others — like the storage of personal data.However well encrypted it may be, you cannot store personal data in a blockchain-based system and comply with the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). The regulations may change, though I’m not totally convinced that they should. Even if they do, it will take a long time.
Why Blockchain is not like IoT or AI
It’s great that people are enthused by the idea of a technology and its potential applications. But blockchain is quite different to other technological buzzwords doing the rounds at the moment, like AI and IoT (internet of things).These are much broader classifications of groups of technologies (at least in the way that the terms are commonly used — academics might object to broader uses of the term ‘AI’). This leads to criticism that they are nothing more than marketing terms, and sometimes that is fair. These terms don’t define single architectural choices, but rather opportunities to tackle new problems, or address old ones differently. Within these definitions your solution can be endlessly tailored to the challenge at hand.But say you’re going to apply blockchain technology to a particular problem and you are dramatically narrowing your range of choices — perhaps beyond what is wise.
Blockchain will change some worlds
There will undoubtedly be some industries for which blockchain is a revolutionary technology. Some people will get incredibly rich off the back of it. Ultimately, perhaps it will prove to be a good basis for alternative currencies. But it isn’t some universal technological panacea that will solve everything. While it might changes some worlds, it won’t change every world.Like this? Get more at subscribe.bookofthefuture.co.uk