blockchain | Chris Aldrich

Am I wrong in thinking that the reason they’re calling it Web3 instead of Web 3.0 for parallelism with Web 2.0 is that hashtagging it on Twitter just doesn’t work with the period in there? (i.e. #⁠Web3.0 doesn’t link properly on Twitter the way it does on my website.) And if I’m right, is this a problem that we can expect the blockchain to fix? #⁠HistoricalLinguistics

I’m excited to discover tonight that my website unwittingly supports the new bockchain technology!

I always just called it “chicken feed.”

🎧 Episode 120 The Social Impact of Intelligent Systems | Human Current

Listened to Episode 120 The Social Impact of Intelligent Systems by

Haley Campbell-Gross from HumanCurrent

In this episode, Haley talks with Dr. Mihaela Ulieru, a scholar of distributed intelligent systems, Founder and President of the IMPACT Institute for the Digital Economy, and a Fourth Industrial Revolution champion at the World Economic Forum, where she advocated to include Blockchain among the "Top 10" in 2016. Ulieru talks about the interplay between society and technology and its effects on our humanity. She shares many paradoxical examples for how technology, like artificial intelligence and blockchain, can help us transcend our limitations while also preying on them. Ulieru also urges leaders to educate themselves on the ways blockchain can streamline their business, stating it’s now “a matter of survival”.

Sometimes I get the impression that our hosts in this series can be a bit too credulous when they don’t have the technical background to push back on their interviewees. This episode is a prime example.

While Dr. Ulieru may have some of the technical background to talk about blockchain, I think it’s a bit irresponsible for her to be evangelizing it the way she is without more concrete and successful examples. This interview falls into the trap of many conversations about blockchain and evangelizing it without enough push back on its long term potential.

About 30 minutes in she mentions the Sapien Network as a replacement for social media using blockchain. I’m curious to dig into it a bit to see what it is and how it actually works. Is it or could it be IndieWeb friendly? I don’t have high hopes, but I’ll try to take a peek shortly. Again here she simply evangelizes that it’s the solution to our problems without any discussion about why except to say “but blockchain!”. At present their site says they have 5,800 users.

At about 34 minutes in she also mentions a YouTube replacement on blockchain called Snacked (perhaps I misheard her?), but I was unable to track down such a site with the functionality she mentioned. Here again she states a reasonable problem, and simply states the solution as “blockchain!” without any direct specifics about why blockchain is a good solution and how it works to make a marked improvement.

“For any business that can use blockchain (to improve their processes) and is not using it now, I think it’s a race against time right now, so educate yourself because it’s a matter of survival for your business. Especially educate your leaders.” — Dr. Mihaela Ulieru
Statements like this can be deadly for businesses when they’re done in this sort of evangelizing fashion without any supporting reasoning below it. There is too much blockchain FUD out there, particularly when the technology is over a decade old, and there are very few, if any, real success stories and lots and lots of vaporware.

🎧 The Gillmor Gang: Smart Speakers | TechCrunch

Listened to The Gillmor Gang: Smart Speakers from TechCrunch

Doc Searls, Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, January 12, 2018

I remember a bit why I haven’t listened to any episodes in over a year… While Gillmor presents himself as a liberal, it seems like he’s a bit too pro-Trump and gives him too much credit. He might often be playing devil’s advocate, but…

There’s some vaguely interesting information in here on blockchain and where it may be going, but it’s still too “tech-y” even for the tech crowd. There aren’t enough people on the show who are knee deep in the topic to make their pontifications on the topic worthwhile.

I want to start to catch back up on back episodes, but we’ll see how far we get.

👓 The World’s Oldest Blockchain Has Been Hiding in the New York Times Since 1995 | Motherboard | Vice

Read The World’s Oldest Blockchain Has Been Hiding in the New York Times Since 1995 (Motherboard)

This really gives a new meaning to the “paper of record."

👓 Becoming More Interested in icos | Ben Werdmuller

Read Becoming more interested in ICOs by

Ben Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)

I started looking at blockchain from a position of extreme skepticism. Over time, mostly thanks to friends like Julien Genestoux and the amazing team over at DADA, I've come to a better understanding. I've always been interested in decentralization as a general topic, of course - the original visi...

Ben, like you I’m highly skeptical of the word blockchain when applied to any business. My background in cryptography and information theory indicates that the technical side of things is generally on the up and up, but the long term use with huge ledgers and massive transaction scale doesn’t seem to scale the way most seem to be hoping it will.

The one interesting business use case I’ve seen was on the fundraising front, but it also has a lot of the downside you mention for use in building a business. If it helps lay out a sketch of what the thing would look like from a startup perspective, I’m including the recorded talk I saw a few months ago. Still I say caveat emptor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ9yf9ahsPM

👓 It’s Time to Unlock The Web | Julien Genestoux – Medium

Read It’s Time to Unlock The Web by Julien Genestoux (Medium)

The web needs a better business model — and we believe the technology is finally here to do it.

I like the general idea behind this and Julien Genestoux is certainly someone to take seriously… but blockchain?! really?? I can’t wait to see what comes of it.

📅 RSVP No to Innovate Pasadena: Women in Blockchain

RSVPed Unable to Attend Innovate Pasadena-Friday Coffee Meetup: Women in Blockchain

Blockchain is poised to become one of the seminal developments in technology, and some talented women are leading the way in adapting blockchain technology across a wide array of industries. Blockchain spending is expected to grow 81.2% annual from 2016 – 2021. $945 million was spent on blockchain solutions in 2017, with the spending expected to skyrocket to $2.1 billion this year. Women in Blockchain and Crypto want to enable women to thrive in the booming blockchain space by growing our network of like-minded women to create opportunities for networking, education, and professional advancement in the blockchain space. Two female leaders in blockchain will give a presentation on the current landscape of blockchain, the applications of blockchain technology across a variety of industries, and also discuss their own projects including putting AI on the Project PAI blockchain and exploring uses for blockchain in healthcare. Sho Guo is the VP of Marketing and Partnerships at ObEN, an artificial intelligence company developing Personal Artificial Intelligence (PAI), a 3D intelligent avatar that looks, talks and behaves uniquely like its human counterpart. ObEN is an early adopter of Project PAI, a fully decentralized blockchain based network designed to give people trackable ownership and management rights to their PAI. Prior to ObEN, Sho was the Director of International Marketing for Caesars Entertainment and spent 5 years working in television and production, including work on the Beijing Olympics for NBC. Sho is an Emmy award winner with an MBA from UCLA Anderson, B.S. in Management Science and B.A. in Film from UC San Diego. Stacy Jain is a Director of Strategy and Program Execution at Kaiser Permanente, one of America’s largest and most innovative integrated health care providers. An experienced executive consultant with a demonstrated history of delivering large, complex healthcare systems and programs in the hospital & health care industry, Stacy has continuously driven business solutions via technological innovations along with her exceptional leadership in building trusting partnerships across multi-disciplines. Previously she has worked with other healthcare organizations such as Dignity Health, Catholic Healthcare West, and L.A. Care Health Plan. Part of her current mission is to execute an agile transformation strategy to enable the business to quickly adapt, make investments at the right places and to improve speed to market. With more than 15+ years in defining, shaping and evolving the delivery of patient care, she has a relentless passion to stretch and advance digital healthcare, especially in mental/behavioral health care. Stacy has recently been looking at applications of blockchain in healthcare with an emphasis on security, medical record sharing and humanistic information economy. Stacy is also working on building women-led communities in AI and blockchain. Her goal is to build communities in the Los Angeles area which would empower more women to participate in the blockchain industry. Twitter Handles: @ObenMe @ProjectPAI Speaker emails: Sho Guo: sho@oben.com Stacy Jain: Stacy.Jain@gmail.com

Sadly, it looks like a deadline is going to prevent me from attending.