blockchain

pages: 271 words: 52,814

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy by Melanie Swan

23andMe, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, asset allocation, banking crisis, basic income, bioinformatics, bitcoin, blockchain, capital controls, cellular automata, central bank independence, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative editing, Conway's Game of Life, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, digital divide, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, friendly AI, Hernando de Soto, information security, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, lifelogging, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, microbiome, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, operational security, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, personalized medicine, post scarcity, power law, prediction markets, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI@home, sharing economy, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, software as a service, synthetic biology, technological singularity, the long tail, Turing complete, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks

and popular culture, Bitcoin Culture: Bitfilm Festival pricing, Relation to Fiat Currency terminology, Currency, Token, Tokenizing Web metaphor, Blockchain 2.0: Contracts Bitcoin Association of Berkeley, Campuscoin Bitcoin terminology, Technology Stack: Blockchain, Protocol, Currency BitDrop, Coin Drops as a Strategy for Public Adoption Bitfilm Festival, Bitcoin Culture: Bitfilm Festival bitFlyer, Dapps Bithandle, Digital Identity Verification BitID, Digital Identity Verification-Digital Identity Verification Bitmessage, Dapps BitMixer, eWallet Services and Personal Cryptosecurity Bitnotar, Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit BitPay, Merchant Acceptance of Bitcoin, Financial Services Bitreserve, Relation to Fiat Currency BitShare, Relation to Fiat Currency, Blockchain 2.0 Protocol Projects BitTorrent, The Double-Spend and Byzantine Generals’ Computing Problems, Blockchain Ecosystem: Decentralized Storage, Communication, and Computation block chain cryptography, The Double-Spend and Byzantine Generals’ Computing Problems block explorers, The Double-Spend and Byzantine Generals’ Computing Problems Block.io, Blockchain Development Platforms and APIs Blockchain 1.0, Technology Stack: Blockchain, Protocol, Currency-Regulatory Status (see also currency) practical use, Summary: Blockchain 1.0 in Practical Use-Regulatory Status technology stack, Technology Stack: Blockchain, Protocol, Currency-Technology Stack: Blockchain, Protocol, Currency Blockchain 2.0, Blockchain 2.0: Contracts-The Blockchain as a Path to Artificial Intelligence (see also contracts) applications beyond currency, Blockchain 2.0: Contracts-Blockchain 2.0: Contracts origins and applications overview, Blockchain 2.0: Contracts-Blockchain 2.0: Contracts protocol projects, Blockchain 2.0 Protocol Projects Blockchain 3.0, Blockchain Technology Is a New and Highly Effective Model for Organizing Activity-Societal Maturity Impact of Blockchain Governance (see also justice applications) academic publishing, Blockchain Academic Publishing: Journalcoin-Blockchain Academic Publishing: Journalcoin (see also publishing, academic) for censorship-resistant governance, Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models consumer genomics applications, Blockchain Genomics-Genomecoin, GenomicResearchcoin (see also genomics, consumer) decentralized DNS system, Namecoin: Decentralized Domain Name System-Decentralized DNS Functionality Beyond Free Speech: Digital Identity digital art, Digital Art: Blockchain Attestation Services (Notary, Intellectual Property Protection)-Personal Thinking Blockchains (see also digital art) digital identity verification, Digital Identity Verification-Digital Divide of Bitcoin freedom and empowerment potential of, Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models-Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models health-related applications, Blockchain Health (see also health) and Internet administration, Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models learning applications, Blockchain Learning: Bitcoin MOOCs and Smart Contract Literacy-Learning Contract Exchanges (see also learning and literacy) science applications, Blockchain Science: Gridcoin, Foldingcoin-Charity Donations and the Blockchain—Sean’s Outpost as transnational governance structure, Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models-Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models blockchain application progression, Dapps, DAOs, DACs, and DASs: Increasingly Autonomous Smart Contracts blockchain archival system, Blockchain Ecosystem: Decentralized Storage, Communication, and Computation blockchain attestation services, Digital Art: Blockchain Attestation Services (Notary, Intellectual Property Protection)-Personal Thinking Blockchains (see also digital art) automated digital asset protection, Digital Asset Proof as an Automated Feature benefits, Proof of Existence Bitnotar, Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit Chronobit, Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit contract services, Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit hashing and timestamping, Hashing Plus Timestamping-Limitations, Batched Notary Chains as a Class of Blockchain Infrastructure limitations, Limitations notary chains, Batched Notary Chains as a Class of Blockchain Infrastructure personal thinking chains, Personal Thinking Blockchains-Personal Thinking Blockchains Proof of Existence, Proof of Existence-Limitations Virtual Notary, Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit blockchain development platforms, Blockchain Development Platforms and APIs blockchain ecosystem, Blockchain Ecosystem: Decentralized Storage, Communication, and Computation-Blockchain Ecosystem: Decentralized Storage, Communication, and Computation blockchain government, Blockchain Government-Societal Maturity Impact of Blockchain Governance (see also governance) blockchain interoperability, Technical Challenges blockchain neutrality, Blockchain Neutrality blockchain technology, Blockchain Technology Is a New and Highly Effective Model for Organizing Activity-Blockchain Layer Could Facilitate Big Data’s Predictive Task Automation administrative potential of, Blockchain Technology Could Be Used in the Administration of All Quanta and artificial intelligence, The Blockchain as a Path to Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain AI: Consensus as the Mechanism to Foster “Friendly” AI-Smart Contract Advocates on Behalf of Digital Intelligence application to fundamental economic principles, Fundamental Economic Principles: Discovery, Value Attribution, and Exchange-Fundamental Economic Principles: Discovery, Value Attribution, and Exchange applications for, Preface-Blockchain 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0, M2M/IoT Bitcoin Payment Network to Enable the Machine Economy-Mainstream Adoption: Trust, Usability, Ease of Use appropriate uses, The Blockchain Is Not for Every Situation-The Blockchain Is Not for Every Situation as complementary technology, Conclusion capabilities of, The Blockchain Is an Information Technology concept and overview, What Is the Blockchain?

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Blockchain 3.0: Justice Applications Beyond Currency, Economics, and Markets Blockchain Technology Is a New and Highly Effective Model for Organizing Activity Extensibility of Blockchain Technology Concepts Fundamental Economic Principles: Discovery, Value Attribution, and Exchange Blockchain Technology Could Be Used in the Administration of All Quanta Blockchain Layer Could Facilitate Big Data’s Predictive Task Automation Distributed Censorship-Resistant Organizational Models Namecoin: Decentralized Domain Name System Challenges and Other Decentralized DNS Services Freedom of Speech/Anti-Censorship Applications: Alexandria and Ostel Decentralized DNS Functionality Beyond Free Speech: Digital Identity Digital Identity Verification Blockchain Neutrality Digital Divide of Bitcoin Digital Art: Blockchain Attestation Services (Notary, Intellectual Property Protection) Hashing Plus Timestamping Proof of Existence Virtual Notary, Bitnotar, and Chronobit Monegraph: Online Graphics Protection Digital Asset Proof as an Automated Feature Batched Notary Chains as a Class of Blockchain Infrastructure Personal Thinking Blockchains Blockchain Government Decentralized Governance Services PrecedentCoin: Blockchain Dispute Resolution Liquid Democracy and Random-Sample Elections Random-Sample Elections Futarchy: Two-Step Democracy with Voting + Prediction Markets Societal Maturity Impact of Blockchain Governance 4. Blockchain 3.0: Efficiency and Coordination Applications Beyond Currency, Economics, and Markets Blockchain Science: Gridcoin, Foldingcoin Community Supercomputing Global Public Health: Bitcoin for Contagious Disease Relief Charity Donations and the Blockchain—Sean’s Outpost Blockchain Genomics Blockchain Genomics 2.0: Industrialized All-Human-Scale Sequencing Solution Blockchain Technology as a Universal Order-of-Magnitude Progress Model Genomecoin, GenomicResearchcoin Blockchain Health Healthcoin EMRs on the Blockchain: Personal Health Record Storage Blockchain Health Research Commons Blockchain Health Notary Doctor Vendor RFP Services and Assurance Contracts Virus Bank, Seed Vault Backup Blockchain Learning: Bitcoin MOOCs and Smart Contract Literacy Learncoin Learning Contract Exchanges Blockchain Academic Publishing: Journalcoin The Blockchain Is Not for Every Situation Centralization-Decentralization Tension and Equilibrium 5.

pages: 430 words: 68,225

Blockchain Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction in 25 Steps by Daniel Drescher

bitcoin, blockchain, business process, central bank independence, collaborative editing, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, job automation, linked data, machine readable, peer-to-peer, place-making, Satoshi Nakamoto, smart contracts, transaction costs

com/documents/universal-payment-channels.pdf. 6BitFury Group. Public versus private blockchains: Part 1, Permissioned blockchains. White paper. 2015; BitFury Group. Public versus private blockchains: Part 2, Permissionless blockchains. White paper. 2015. Blockchain Basics 239 different types of blockchains can be seen as a conceptual advancement as they have an impact on major characteristics of the blockchain such as its purpose, distributed nature, and architecture. Privacy The openness of public blockchains has already been the subject of discussions and further development since it conflicts with the level of privacy required in some application contexts.

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By the end of Step 23, you will understand why the original idea of the blockchain as explained in the previous steps may not be suitable for large-scale commercial applications, what changes were made to overcome these limitations, and how these changes altered the properties of the blockchain. Introduction xv Stage V: Using the Blockchain, Summary, and Outlook Steps 24 and 25 consider how the blockchain can be used in real life and what questions should to be addressed when selecting a blockchain application. This stage also points out areas of active research and further development. By the end of Step 25, you will have gained a well-grounded understanding of the blockchain and you will be well prepared to read more advanced texts or to become an active part in the ongoing discussion about the blockchain. Accompanying Material The website www.blockchain-basics.com offers accompanying material for some of the steps of this book.

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The incompatibility between two or more opinions or goals is called a conflict, which can be solved either by finding a compromise or by deciding in favor of one option to the disadvantage of all alternatives. This step presents two major conflicts of the blockchain that are represented in two of its major technical limitations and how the attempt to overcome them led to the invention of four distinct versions of the blockchain. © Daniel Drescher 2017 D. Drescher, Blockchain Basics, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-2604-9_23 214 Step 23 | Reinventing the Blockchain Conflicting Goals of the Blockchain The blockchain faces two conflicts: • Transparency vs. privacy • Security vs. speed Transparency vs. Privacy The blockchain clarifies ownership based on the whole history of transaction data, which is available to everyone.

pages: 161 words: 44,488

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology by William Mougayar

Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, business logic, business process, centralized clearinghouse, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, fixed income, Ford Model T, global value chain, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, market clearing, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, prediction markets, pull request, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, smart contracts, social web, software as a service, too big to fail, Turing complete, Vitalik Buterin, web application, Yochai Benkler

Banks as Backends Blockchain Inside Regulations Versus Permissionless Innovation Landscape of Blockchain Companies in Financial Services Blockchain Applications in Financial Services Strategic Questions for Financial Services Key Ideas from Chapter Four Notes 5: Lighthouse Industries & New Intermediaries The New Intermediaries Lighthouse Industries Key Ideas from Chapter Five Notes 6: Implementing Blockchain Technology Internal Strategies for Tackling the Blockchain The Blockchain Czar Organizational Models A Blockchain Functional Architecture Core & Protocol Blockchain Software Development Writing Decentralized Applications 12 Features of a Blockchain Platform Decision-Making Framework Key Ideas from Chapter Six Notes 7: Decentralization as the Way Forward What Happened to the Decentralized Internet?

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Blockchain applications need the Internet, but they can bypass the Web, and give us another version that is more decentralized, and perhaps more equitable. That is one of the biggest promises of blockchain technology. There is more than one way to build blockchain applications. You can build them natively on a blockchain, or you could mix them in an existing Web application, and we will call that flavor, “hybrid blockchain applications.” Since the Internet is comprised of a public version and several private variations, blockchains will also follow that path. Therefore, we will have public and private blockchains. Some will be natively bolted to a blockchain, whereas others might be a hybrid implementation that is part of an existing Web or private application.

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CONTENTS Foreword Acknowledgments A Personal Preface Notes Introduction 1: What is the Blockchain? Visiting Satoshi’s Paper The Web, All Over Again One or Several Blockchains? Introduction to Blockchain Applications The Blockchain’s Narrative is Strong A Meta Technology Software, Game Theory and Cryptography The Database vs. The Ledger Looking Back So We Can Look Forward Unpacking the Blockchain State Transitions and State Machines— What Are They? The Consensus Algorithms Key Ideas from Chapter One Notes 2: How Blockchain Trust Infiltrates A New Trust Layer Decentralization of Trust—What Does it Mean?

Mastering Blockchain, Second Edition by Imran Bashir

3D printing, altcoin, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, business process, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, cloud computing, connected car, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, Debian, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, domain-specific language, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, full stack developer, general-purpose programming language, gravity well, information security, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, litecoin, loose coupling, machine readable, MITM: man-in-the-middle, MVC pattern, Network effects, new economy, node package manager, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, platform as a service, prediction markets, QR code, RAND corporation, Real Time Gross Settlement, reversible computing, RFC: Request For Comment, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, seminal paper, single page application, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, smart meter, supply-chain management, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vitalik Buterin, web application, x509 certificate

PacktPub.com Contributors About the author About the reviewer Packt is searching for authors like you Preface Who this book is for What this book covers To get the most out of this book Download the example code files Download the color images Conventions used Get in touch Reviews Blockchain 101 The growth of blockchain technology Distributed systems The history of blockchain and Bitcoin Electronic cash Blockchain Blockchain defined Peer-to-peer Distributed ledger Cryptographically-secure Append-only Updateable via consensus Generic elements of a blockchain How blockchain works How blockchain accumulates blocks Benefits and limitations of blockchain Tiers of blockchain technology Features of a blockchain Types of blockchain Distributed ledgers Distributed Ledger Technology Public blockchains Private blockchains Semiprivate blockchains Sidechains Permissioned ledger Shared ledger Fully private and proprietary blockchains Tokenized blockchains Tokenless blockchains Consensus Consensus mechanism Types of consensus mechanisms Consensus in blockchain CAP theorem and blockchain Summary Decentralization Decentralization using blockchain Methods of decentralization Disintermediation Contest-driven decentralization Routes to decentralization How to decentralize The decentralization framework example Blockchain and full ecosystem decentralization Storage Communication Computing power and decentralization Smart contracts Decentralized Organizations Decentralized Autonomous Organizations Decentralized Autonomous Corporations Decentralized Autonomous Societies Decentralized Applications (DApps) Requirements of a Decentralized Application Operations of a DApp DApp examples KYC-Chain OpenBazaar Lazooz Platforms for decentralization Ethereum MaidSafe Lisk Summary Symmetric Cryptography Working with the OpenSSL command line Introduction Mathematics Set Group Field A finite field Order An abelian group Prime fields Ring A cyclic group Modular arithmetic Cryptography Confidentiality Integrity Authentication Entity authentication Data origin authentication Non-repudiation Accountability Cryptographic primitives Symmetric cryptography Stream ciphers Block ciphers Block encryption mode Electronic Code Book Cipher Block Chaining Counter mode Keystream generation mode Message authentication mode Cryptographic hash mode Data Encryption Standard Advanced Encryption Standard How AES works Summary Public Key Cryptography Asymmetric cryptography Integer factorization Discrete logarithm Elliptic curves Public and private keys RSA Encryption and decryption using RSA Elliptic Curve Cryptography Mathematics behind ECC Point addition Point doubling Discrete logarithm problem in ECC RSA using OpenSSL RSA public and private key pair Private key Public key Exploring the public key Encryption and decryption Encryption Decryption ECC using OpenSSL ECC private and public key pair Private key Private key generation Hash functions Compression of arbitrary messages into fixed-length digest Easy to compute Preimage resistance Second preimage resistance Collision resistance Message Digest Secure Hash Algorithms Design of Secure Hash Algorithms Design of SHA-256 Design of SHA-3 (Keccak) OpenSSL example of hash functions Message Authentication Codes MACs using block ciphers Hash-based MACs Merkle trees Patricia trees Distributed Hash Tables Digital signatures RSA digital signature algorithm Sign then encrypt Encrypt then sign Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm How to generate a digital signature using OpenSSL ECDSA using OpenSSL Homomorphic encryption Signcryption Zero-Knowledge Proofs Blind signatures Encoding schemes Financial markets and trading Trading Exchanges Orders and order properties Order management and routing systems Components of a trade The underlying instrument General attributes Economics Sales Counterparty Trade life cycle Order anticipators Market manipulation Summary Introducing Bitcoin Bitcoin Bitcoin definition Bitcoin – a bird's-eye view Sending a payment to someone Digital keys and addresses Private keys in Bitcoin Public keys in Bitcoin Addresses in Bitcoin Base58Check encoding Vanity addresses Multisignature addresses Transactions The transaction life cycle Transaction fee Transaction pools The transaction data structure Metadata Inputs Outputs Verification The script language Commonly used opcodes Types of transactions Coinbase transactions Contracts Transaction veriﬁcation Transaction malleability Blockchain The structure of a block The structure of a block header The genesis block Mining Tasks of the miners Mining rewards Proof of Work (PoW) The mining algorithm The hash rate Mining systems CPU GPU FPGA ASICs Mining pools Summary Bitcoin Network and Payments The Bitcoin network Wallets Non-deterministic wallets Deterministic wallets Hierarchical Deterministic wallets Brain wallets Paper wallets Hardware wallets Online wallets Mobile wallets Bitcoin payments Innovation in Bitcoin Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) Advanced protocols Segregated Witness (SegWit) Bitcoin Cash Bitcoin Unlimited Bitcoin Gold Bitcoin investment and buying and selling bitcoins Summary Bitcoin Clients and APIs Bitcoin installation Types of Bitcoin Core clients Bitcoind Bitcoin-cli Bitcoin-qt Setting up a Bitcoin node Setting up the source code Setting up bitcoin.conf Starting up a node in testnet Starting up a node in regtest Experimenting with Bitcoin-cli Bitcoin programming and the command-line interface Summary Alternative Coins Theoretical foundations Alternatives to Proof of Work Proof of Storage Proof of Stake (PoS) Various stake types Proof of coinage Proof of Deposit (PoD) Proof of Burn Proof of Activity (PoA) Nonoutsourceable puzzles Difficulty adjustment and retargeting algorithms Kimoto Gravity Well Dark Gravity Wave DigiShield MIDAS Bitcoin limitations Privacy and anonymity Mixing protocols Third-party mixing protocols Inherent anonymity Extended protocols on top of Bitcoin Colored coins Counterparty Development of altcoins Consensus algorithms Hashing algorithms Difficulty adjustment algorithms Inter-block time Block rewards Reward halving rate Block size and transaction size Interest rate Coinage Total supply of coins Namecoin Trading Namecoins Obtaining Namecoins Generating Namecoin records Litecoin Primecoin Trading Primecoin Mining guide Zcash Trading Zcash Mining guide Address generation GPU mining Downloading and compiling nheqminer Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) ERC20 tokens Summary Smart Contracts History Definition Ricardian contracts Smart contract templates Oracles Smart Oracles Deploying smart contracts on a blockchain The DAO Summary Ethereum 101 Introduction The yellow paper Useful mathematical symbols Ethereum blockchain Ethereum – bird's eye view The Ethereum network Mainnet Testnet Private net Components of the Ethereum ecosystem Keys and addresses Accounts Types of accounts Transactions and messages Contract creation transaction Message call transaction Messages Calls Transaction validation and execution The transaction substate State storage in the Ethereum blockchain The world state The account state Transaction receipts Ether cryptocurrency / tokens (ETC and ETH) The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) Execution environment Machine state The iterator function Smart contracts Native contracts Summary Further Ethereum Programming languages Runtime bytecode Opcodes and their meaning Arithmetic operations Logical operations Cryptographic operations Environmental information Block information Stack, memory, storage, and ﬂow operations Push operations Duplication operations Exchange operations Logging operations System operations Blocks and blockchain The genesis block The block validation mechanism Block finalization Block difficulty Gas Fee schedule Forks in the blockchain Nodes and miners The consensus mechanism Ethash CPU mining GPU mining Benchmarking Mining rigs Mining pools Wallets and client software Geth Eth Pyethapp Parity Light clients Installation Eth installation Mist browser Geth The geth console Funding the account with bitcoin Parity installation Creating accounts using the parity command line APIs, tools, and DApps Applications (DApps and DAOs) developed on Ethereum Tools Supporting protocols Whisper Swarm Scalability, security, and other challenges Trading and investment Summary Ethereum Development Environment Test networks Setting up a private net Network ID The genesis file Data directory Flags and their meaning Static nodes Starting up the private network Running Mist on private net Deploying contracts using Mist Block explorer for private net / local Ethereum block explorer Summary Development Tools and Frameworks Languages Compilers Solidity compiler (solc) Installation on Linux Installation on macOS Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) Remix Tools and libraries Node version 7 EthereumJS Ganache MetaMask Truffle Installation Contract development and deployment Writing Testing Solidity language Types Value types Boolean Integers Address Literals Integer literals String literals Hexadecimal literals Enums Function types Internal functions External functions Reference types Arrays Structs Data location Mappings Global variables Control structures Events  Inheritance Libraries Functions Layout of a Solidity source code ﬁle Version pragma Import Comments Summary Introducing Web3 Web3 Contract deployment POST requests The HTML and JavaScript frontend Installing web3.js Example Creating a web3 object Checking availability by calling any web3 method Contract functions Development frameworks Truffle Initializing Truffle Interaction with the contract Another example An example project – Proof of Idea Oracles Deployment on decentralized storage using IPFS Installing IPFS Distributed ledgers Summary Hyperledger Projects under Hyperledger Fabric Sawtooth Lake Iroha Burrow Indy Explorer Cello Composer Quilt Hyperledger as a protocol The reference architecture Requirements and design goals of Hyperledger Fabric The modular approach Privacy and confidentiality Scalability Deterministic transactions Identity Auditability Interoperability Portability Rich data queries Fabric Hyperledger Fabric Membership services Blockchain services Consensus services Distributed ledger The peer to peer protocol Ledger storage Chaincode services Components of the fabric Peers Orderer nodes Clients Channels World state database Transactions Membership Service Provider (MSP) Smart contracts Crypto service provider Applications on blockchain Chaincode implementation The application model Consensus in Hyperledger Fabric The transaction life cycle in Hyperledger Fabric Sawtooth Lake PoET Transaction families Consensus in Sawtooth The development environment – Sawtooth Lake Corda Architecture State objects Transactions Consensus Flows Components Nodes The permissioning service Network map service Notary service Oracle service Transactions Vaults CorDapp The development environment – Corda Summary Alternative Blockchains Blockchains Kadena Ripple Transactions Payments related Order related Account and security-related Interledger Application layer Transport layer Interledger layer Ledger layer Stellar Rootstock Sidechain Drivechain Quorum Transaction manager Crypto Enclave QuorumChain Network manager Tezos Storj MaidSafe BigchainDB MultiChain Tendermint Tendermint Core Tendermint Socket Protocol (TMSP) Platforms and frameworks Eris Summary Blockchain – Outside of Currencies Internet of Things Physical object layer Device layer Network layer Management layer Application layer IoT blockchain experiment First node setup Raspberry Pi node setup Installing Node.js Circuit Government Border control Voting Citizen identification (ID cards) Miscellaneous Health Finance Insurance Post-trade settlement Financial crime prevention Media Summary Scalability and Other Challenges Scalability Network plane Consensus plane Storage plane View plane Block size increase Block interval reduction Invertible Bloom Lookup Tables Sharding State channels Private blockchain Proof of Stake Sidechains Subchains Tree chains (trees) Block propagation Bitcoin-NG Plasma Privacy Indistinguishability Obfuscation Homomorphic encryption Zero-Knowledge Proofs State channels Secure multiparty computation Usage of hardware to provide confidentiality CoinJoin Confidential transactions MimbleWimble Security Smart contract security Formal verification and analysis Oyente tool Summary Current Landscape and What's Next Emerging trends Application-specific blockchains (ASBCs) Enterprise-grade blockchains Private blockchains Start-ups Strong research interest Standardization Enhancements Real-world implementations Consortia Answers to technical challenges Convergence Education of blockchain technology Employment Cryptoeconomics Research in cryptography New programming languages Hardware research and development Research in formal methods and security Alternatives to blockchains Interoperability efforts Blockchain as a Service Efforts to reduce electricity consumption Other challenges Regulation Dark side Blockchain research Smart contracts Centralization issues Limitations in cryptographic functions Consensus algorithms Scalability Code obfuscation Notable projects Zcash on Ethereum CollCo Cello Qtum Bitcoin-NG Solidus Hawk Town-Crier SETLCoin TEEChan Falcon Bletchley Casper Miscellaneous tools Solidity extension for Microsoft Visual Studio MetaMask Stratis Embark DAPPLE Meteor uPort INFURA Convergence with other industries Future Summary Another Book You May Enjoy Leave a review – let other readers know what you think Preface This book has one goal, to introduce theoretical and practical aspects of the blockchain technology.

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Blockchain 3.0: This third blockchain generation is used to implement applications beyond the financial services industry and is used in government, health, media, the arts, and justice. Again, as in Blockchain 2.0, Ethereum, Hyperledger, and newer blockchains with the ability to code smart contracts are considered part of this blockchain technology tier. This generation of blockchain emerged around 2012 when multiple applications of blockchain technology in different industries were researched. Blockchain X.0: This generation represents a vision of blockchain singularity where one day there will be a public blockchain service available that anyone can use just like the Google search engine. It will provide services for all realms of society.

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This preceding structure is a simple block diagram that depicts a block. Specific block structures relative to their blockchain technologies will be discussed later in the book with greater in-depth technical detail. Generic elements of a blockchain Now, let's walk through the generic elements of a blockchain. You can use this as a handy reference section if you ever need a reminder about the different parts of a blockchain. More precise elements will be discussed in the context of their respective blockchains in later chapters, for example, the Ethereum blockchain. The structure of a generic blockchain can be visualized with the help of the following diagram: Generic structure of a blockchain Elements of a generic blockchain are described here one by one.

pages: 434 words: 77,974

Mastering Blockchain: Unlocking the Power of Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts by Lorne Lantz, Daniel Cawrey

air gap, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, business process, call centre, capital controls, cloud computing, corporate governance, creative destruction, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, currency peg, disinformation, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, global reserve currency, information security, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Kubernetes, litecoin, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, margin call, MITM: man-in-the-middle, multilevel marketing, Network effects, offshore financial centre, OSI model, packet switching, peer-to-peer, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, QR code, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, software as a service, Steve Wozniak, tulip mania, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, web application, WebSocket, WikiLeaks

Aaron Caswell, Expert Blockchain Engineer Get down in the trenches with Lorne and Daniel and find out what’s really inside Bitcoin, Ethereum, altcoin, and other blockchains and forks. Karen Kilroy, CEO, Kilroy Blockchain Corporation Mastering Blockchain goes from the basics to using blockchain in real-life implementations in enterprise-grade environments. Jorge Lesmes, Global Head of Blockchain at everis (an NTT Data company) Daniel and Lorne cover an exceptionally broad range of topics in the blockchain universe with clarity. Mastering Blockchain is a terrific starting place for those trying to gain a comprehensive view of the incredible impact of this technology on the world. Jeremy Allaire, CEO Circle Internet Financial Cofounder, Centre USD Stablecoin Consortium As someone who teaches blockchain, this book would be a great accompaniment to a course, providing a much more robust offering than almost anything I have come across.

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Databases and Ledgers Decentralization Versus Centralization Participants Key Properties of Distributed Verifiable Ledgers Ethereum-Based Privacy Implementations Nightfall Quorum Enterprise Implementations Hyperledger Corda DAML Blockchain as a Service Banking The Royal Mint Banque de France China US Federal Reserve JPMorgan Permissioned Ledger Uses IT Banking Central Bank Digital Currencies Legal Gaming Health Care Internet of Things Payments Libra The Libra Association Borrowing from Existing Blockchains Novi How the Libra Protocol Works Summary 10. The Future of Blockchain The More Things Change Blockchains to Watch How Monero Works Mimblewimble, Beam, and Grin The Scaling Problem Sidechains Sharding STARKs DAGs Avalanche Liquid Lightning Ethereum Scaling Privacy Interoperability Tokenize Everything Summary Index Praise for Mastering Blockchain Blockchain can be a daunting and elusive subject matter, especially for those who see the vast potential in this incredible technology. Mastering Blockchain brings within one’s grasp a solid foundation of understanding, allowing for immediate actionable learning.

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Contentious Hard Forks When a contentious hard fork occurs, the main blockchain of a cryptocurrency splits into two separate blockchains. This is what happened with Bitcoin Cash, a chain that diverged from Bitcoin in 2017, as illustrated in Figure 3-2. Figure 3-2. Blocks generated after the Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash fork Each blockchain inherits the history of the main blockchain before the fork. This includes every previous transaction, every address balance, every block hash, and so on. At the moment of the fork, the two blockchains have identical histories. After the fork, each blockchain creates its own new blocks and its own new record of transactions, and blocks can be mined by different miners.

pages: 515 words: 126,820

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World by Don Tapscott, Alex Tapscott

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, altcoin, Alvin Toffler, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, business logic, business process, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, decentralized internet, digital capitalism, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, future of work, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, general purpose technology, George Gilder, glass ceiling, Google bus, GPS: selective availability, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, Higgs boson, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information security, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lean Startup, litecoin, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, money market fund, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, performance metric, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price mechanism, Productivity paradox, QR code, quantitative easing, radical decentralization, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, renewable energy credits, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, Second Machine Age, seigniorage, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snow Crash, social graph, social intelligence, social software, standardized shipping container, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Nature of the Firm, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, unorthodox policies, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, wealth creators, X Prize, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Austin Hill called it Wall Street’s “Faustian bargain,” an onerous trade-off.28 “People love the idea of not having to wait three days to settle transactions but having them cleared within minutes and knowing that they’re final and that they’re true,” said Hill. “The counterpart to that is all transactions on the [bitcoin] blockchain are completely public. That terrifies a number of people on Wall Street.” The solution? Confidential transactions on so-called permissioned blockchains, also known as private blockchains. Whereas the bitcoin blockchain is entirely open and permissionless—that is, anyone can access it and interact with it—permissioned blockchains require users to have certain credentials, giving them a license to operate on that particular blockchain. Hill has developed the technology whereby only a few stakeholders see the various components of a transaction and can ensure its integrity.

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To him, “There’s a difference between enabling and moving the world in a new direction.” He said, “People still have to want to do it, to take the risk of doing it.”31 So get ready for blockchain Airbnb, blockchain Uber, blockchain Lyft, blockchain Task Rabbit, and blockchain everything wherever there is an opportunity for real sharing and for value creation to work together in a cooperative way and receive most of the value they create. 4. The Metering Economy Perhaps blockchain technology can take us beyond the sharing economy into a metering economy where we can rent out and meter the use of our excess capacity. One problem with the actual sharing economy, where, for example, home owners agree to share power tools or small farming equipment, fishing gear, a woodworking shop, garage or parking, and more, was that it was just too much of a hassle.

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Users This means you and me—people who care about identity, security, privacy, our other rights, long-term viability, fair adjudication, or a forum for righting wrongs and fighting criminals who use technology to destroy what we care about. Everyone seems divided on basic taxonomy and categorization: Does blockchain refer to the bitcoin blockchain or the technology in general? Is it big “B” Blockchain or little “b” blockchain? Is it a currency, commodity, or technology? Is it all of these things or none of these things? Women Leaders in Blockchain As many have observed, the blockchain movement is overpopulated with men. In technology and engineering, males still outnumber females by a wide margin. However, high-profile women are founding and managing companies in the space: Blythe Masters, CEO of Digital Asset Holdings; Cindy McAdam, president of Xapo; Melanie Shapiro, CEO of Case Wallet; Joyce Kim, executive director of Stellar Development Foundation; Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and founder of BitPesa; and Pamela Morgan, CEO of Third Key Solutions.

pages: 348 words: 97,277

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Blythe Masters, business process, buy and hold, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, circular economy, cloud computing, computer age, computerized trading, conceptual framework, content marketing, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, disinformation, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, global supply chain, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, informal economy, information security, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, linked data, litecoin, longitudinal study, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, market clearing, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, off grid, pets.com, post-truth, prediction markets, pre–internet, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Project Xanadu, ransomware, rent-seeking, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, social web, software is eating the world, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, the market place, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, web of trust, work culture , zero-sum game

The former refers to bitcoin’s status as a currency, the latter is a reference to the overarching system and protocol that underpins that currency and other uses for the Bitcoin blockchain ledger. * Addressing an inconsistency in popular parlance, we generally employ three distinct usages of the word “blockchain”: “The blockchain,” which refers to Bitcoin’s original distributed ledger; “a blockchain”—or, pluralized, “blockchains”—to cover a variety of more recent distributed ledgers that share Bitcoin’s chain-of-blocks structure; and “blockchain technology,” referring to the overall field. We also use “distributed ledger technology” to encompass both blockchain and non-blockchain distributed ledgers. We mostly avoid the popular construct of “blockchain” as a non-countable noun.

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the company said that the prototype’s use had generated $6.5 million: Andrew Sawers, “Foxconn Uses Blockchain for New SCF Platform after $6.5m Pilot,” SCF Briefing, March 17, 2017, http://www.scfbriefing.com/foxconn-launches-scf-blockchain-platform/. Blockchain-proven digital tokens point to what blockchain: Michael J. Casey and Pindar Wong, “Global Supply Chains Are About to Get Better, Thanks to Blockchain,” Harvard Business Review, March 13, 2017, https://hbr.org/2017/03/global-supply-chains-are-about-to-get-better-thanks-to-blockchain. Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium: https://www.beltandroadblockchain.org/. Some have described it as a Beijing-led Marshall Plan: “China’s One Belt, One Road: Will It Reshape Global Trade?”

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Beale, Inga Behlendorf, Brian Belt and Road Blockchain Consortium Benet, Juan Berners-Lee, Tim Bessemer Venture Partners Big Data Birch, David bitcoin, use of the term Bitcoin “civil war” consensus logic and cybersecurity and Cypherpunk movement and decentralization digital assets and financial sector and forks history of and open-source innovation permissionless ideal of price of and privacy Satoshi Nakamoto, (pseudonymous creator) and scalability and security SHA-256 hashing algorithm and trust Bitcoin Cash (BCH) Bitcoin Core Bitfinex BitFury BitLand BitLicense regulation Bitmain BitPesa black-hat hackers blockchain agnostic blockchain and blockchain technologies censorship resistance and Cypherpunk community definition and use of the term distributed trust protocol and double-spending problem and energy sector and financial inclusion and financial industry and governance and citizenship hashes history of and identity information and innovation and art and international agencies and Internet of Things and Internet 3.0 potential of provably signed transactions and record-keeping and registries replicated and security sequentially linked and cryptographically secured transactions software-driving consensus and supply chains talent pool tokens and trust as truth machine See also Bitcoin; distributed ledger technology; Ethereum; permissioned (private) blockchains; permissionless blockchains Blockchain Capital blockchain-distributed ledger. See also double-spending Blockchain Health Blockchain.info blockchain labs block.one Blockstream Bloq Blue Apron Bosch Brave New Brave Software Inc. Basic Attention token Breitman, Arthur Breitman, Kathleen Brexit. See also United Kingdom Brody, Paul Burniske, Chris Buterin, Vitalik BuzzFeed Byrne, Preston capitalism Carlson-Wee, Olaf Casares, Wences Casey, Michael.

pages: 309 words: 54,839

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts by David Gerard

altcoin, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bretton Woods, Californian Ideology, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Dr. Strangelove, drug harm reduction, Dunning–Kruger effect, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extropian, fiat currency, financial innovation, Firefox, Flash crash, Fractional reserve banking, functional programming, index fund, information security, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Kickstarter, litecoin, M-Pesa, margin call, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, operational security, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, prediction markets, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Satoshi Nakamoto, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Singularitarianism, slashdot, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, tulip mania, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks

Blockchains won’t clean up your data for you Six questions to ask your blockchain salesman Security threat models Permissioned blockchains Beneficiaries of business Blockchain Non-beneficiaries of business Blockchain “Blockchain” products you can buy! UK Government Office for Science: “Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain” Chapter 12: Case study: Why you can’t put the music industry on a blockchain The rights management quagmire Getting paid for your song The record industry’s loss of control and the streaming apocalypse Berklee Rethink and blockchain dreams Imogen Heap: “Tiny Human”. Total sales: $133.20. Why blockchains are a bad fit for music Attempts to make sense of the hype Other musical blockchain initiatives SingularDTV Summary Conclusion Further reading Glossary Acknowledgements About the author Index Notes A Bitcoin FAQ © Christian Wagner http://brokenlibrarian.org/bitcoin/ Short Version 1) Should I buy Bitcoins?

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Matt Levine from Bloomberg notes: “The word ‘blockchain’ has managed to make that boring back-office coordination work sexy, which means that it might actually get done.”375 This, rather than anything blockchains themselves offer, seems to be the most productive result of business blockchain trials to date. Once that’s in place, you can increase efficiency markedly by taking the blockchain bit out. Six questions to ask your blockchain salesman If someone is trying to sell you on blockchains, the obvious skeptical questions will get you a long way: Are they confusing “might” and “is”? (Almost all business blockchain claims are full of “might” and salespeople talking about “the possibilities.”) Do they have present-day working blockchains that do every one of the things they’ve claimed you can get from blockchains?

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Chapter 7: Spending bitcoins in 2017 Bitcoin is full: the transaction clog Bitcoin for drugs: welcome to the darknet Ransomware Non-illegal goods and services Case study: Individual Pubs Chapter 8: Trading bitcoins in 2017: the second crypto bubble How to get bitcoins From the first bubble to the second Bitfinex: the hack, the bank block and the second bubble Chapter 9: Altcoins Litecoin Dogecoin Ethereum Buterin’s quantum quest ICOs: magic beans and bubble machines Chapter 10: Smart contracts, stupid humans Dr. Strangelove, but on the blockchain So who wants smart contracts, anyway? Legal code is not computer code The oracle problem: garbage in, garbage out Immutability: make your mistakes unfixable Immutability: the enemy of good software engineering Ethereum smart contracts in practice The DAO: the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code Chapter 11: Business bafflegab, but on the Blockchain What can Blockchain do for me? But all these companies are using Blockchain now! Blockchains won’t clean up your data for you Six questions to ask your blockchain salesman Security threat models Permissioned blockchains Beneficiaries of business Blockchain Non-beneficiaries of business Blockchain “Blockchain” products you can buy!

pages: 80 words: 21,077

Stake Hodler Capitalism: Blockchain and DeFi by Amr Hazem Wahba Metwaly

altcoin, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, blockchain, business process, congestion charging, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, information security, Internet of things, Network effects, non-fungible token, passive income, prediction markets, price stability, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Skype, smart contracts, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin

Stake Hodler Capitalism: Blockchain and DeFi (Decentralized Finance) Table of Contents Stake Hodler Capitalism: Blockchain and DeFi (Decentralized Finance) Disclaimer Introduction Author's Note Chapter 1: DeFi Apps: The Ultimate Killer Apps in Blockchain What Is DeFi? Cryptography Chapter 2: Blockchain Storage structure Decentralization Transparency How secure is blockchain? Bitcoin vs. Blockchain Ways Blockchains Are Implemented Banking and finance Currency Health care Records of property Supply chains Pros and Cons of Blockchain Blockchain Advantages Disadvantages of Blockchain Chapter 3: Introduction to Smart Contracts The Operation Process of a Smart Contract How can you use smart contracts?

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Examples of platforms that offer private blockchain solutions are IBM Blockchain, Azure Blockchain, and AWS (Amazon Web Services) Blockchain solutions. In the blockchain, every node has a complete history of the blockchain's data since its birth. For Bitcoin, the data is the full history of all Bitcoin transactions. If there is an error in one node's data, it can use the thousands of other nodes as a reference to correct itself. This way, a single node within the network will not change any information held in it. Hence, the history of transactions in every block that encompasses Bitcoin's blockchain is not changeable.

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The crucial factor to comprehend here is that Blockchain's sole purpose isn't Bitcoin, to record a ledger of payments; however, in theory, blockchain can be used to make records of any number of data points rigidly. This could be in the form of regular monetary transactions, votes in an election, product inventories, state identifications, deeds to homes, etc. Presently, there is a broad variety of blockchain-based projects looking to carry out blockchain to help society rather than just recording transactions. A good instance is that of blockchain being used as a way to vote in democratic elections. The nature of blockchain's immutability means that illegal voting would become a bit more difficult to happen.

pages: 416 words: 106,532

Cryptoassets: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond: The Innovative Investor's Guide to Bitcoin and Beyond by Chris Burniske, Jack Tatar

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Alvin Toffler, asset allocation, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Blythe Masters, book value, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Future Shock, general purpose technology, George Gilder, Google Hangouts, high net worth, hype cycle, information security, initial coin offering, it's over 9,000, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, Leonard Kleinrock, litecoin, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, packet switching, passive investing, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seminal paper, Sharpe ratio, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skype, smart contracts, social web, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, two and twenty, Uber for X, Vanguard fund, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks, Y2K

The same will likely be true of blockchain technology. If these distributed databases of value are to be truly transformational, they will have to interoperate and value one another. THE MANY USES OF THE WORD BLOCKCHAIN Despite increased interest in blockchain technology, confusion remains as to what it specifically means due to imprecision in the use of the term. For example, “a blockchain,” “the blockchain,” “blockchain,” and “blockchain technology” can all refer to different things. Typically, when people say the blockchain, they are referring to the original, or Bitcoin’s blockchain. At the risk of redundancy but in pursuit of clarity, we will always use “Bitcoin’s blockchain” instead of “the blockchain.”

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At the risk of redundancy but in pursuit of clarity, we will always use “Bitcoin’s blockchain” instead of “the blockchain.” On the other hand, terms such as a blockchain and blockchain technology typically refer to derivatives of the original that now may have nothing to do with Bitcoin. Meanwhile, blockchain is normally used to refer to the concept itself, with no particular implementation in mind. It is the most amorphous, so our least favored of the terms. Chapter 3 “Blockchain, Not Bitcoin?” In drawing a line between public and private blockchains, we have entered contentious territory that the innovative investor should understand.

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The October 31, 2015, issue of the Economist featured “The Trust Machine” on its front cover, and while the article tipped its hat to Bitcoin, its focus was the more broadly applicable “technology behind bitcoin” and used the term blockchain throughout.14 The combination of Masters, Bloomberg, and the Economist led to a spike in interest in blockchain technology that set off a sustained climb in global Google search volumes for “blockchain” that is still in an upward trend. In the two weeks between October 18 and November 1, 2015, just after Bloomberg and the Economist published their articles, global Google search volumes for “blockchain” grew 70 percent (see Figure 3.2). Figure 3.2 The rise in Google Search trends for the term “blockchain” Data sourced from Google Search Trends Masters’s focus for blockchain technology in financial services is on private blockchains, which are very different from Bitcoin’s blockchain. Pivotal to the current conversation, private blockchains don’t need native assets.

pages: 960 words: 125,049

Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood Ph. D.

air gap, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, continuous integration, cryptocurrency, Debian, digital divide, Dogecoin, domain-specific language, don't repeat yourself, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, functional programming, Google Chrome, information security, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, litecoin, machine readable, move fast and break things, node package manager, non-fungible token, peer-to-peer, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, pull request, QR code, Ruby on Rails, Satoshi Nakamoto, sealed-bid auction, sharing economy, side project, smart contracts, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vickrey auction, Vitalik Buterin, web application, WebSocket

In the past, we used the term “blockchain” to represent all of the components just listed, as a shorthand reference to the combination of technologies that encompass all of the characteristics described. Today, however, there are a huge variety of blockchains with different properties. We need qualifiers to help us understand the characteristics of the blockchain in question, such as open, public, global, decentralized, neutral, and censorship-resistant, to identify the important emergent characteristics of a “blockchain” system that these components allow. Not all blockchains are created equal. When someone tells you that something is a blockchain, you have not received an answer; rather, you need to start asking a lot of questions to clarify what they mean when they use the word “blockchain.”

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If you are curious, the bytecode looks like this: PUSH1 0x60 PUSH1 0x40 MSTORE CALLVALUE ISZERO PUSH2 0xF JUMPI PUSH1 0x0 DUP1 REVERT JUMPDEST PUSH1 0xE5 DUP1 PUSH2 0x1D PUSH1 0x0 CODECOPY PUSH1 0x0 RETURN STOP PUSH1 0x60 PUSH1 0x40 MSTORE PUSH1 0x4 CALLDATASIZE LT PUSH1 0x3F JUMPI PUSH1 0x0 CALLDATALOAD PUSH29 0x100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 SWAP1 DIV PUSH4 0xFFFFFFFF AND DUP1 PUSH4 0x2E1A7D4D EQ PUSH1 0x41 JUMPI JUMPDEST STOP JUMPDEST CALLVALUE ISZERO PUSH1 0x4B JUMPI PUSH1 0x0 DUP1 REVERT JUMPDEST PUSH1 0x5F PUSH1 0x4 DUP1 DUP1 CALLDATALOAD SWAP1 PUSH1 0x20 ADD SWAP1 SWAP2 SWAP1 POP POP PUSH1 0x61 JUMP JUMPDEST STOP JUMPDEST PUSH8 0x16345785D8A0000 DUP2 GT ISZERO ISZERO ISZERO PUSH1 0x77 JUMPI PUSH1 0x0 DUP1 REVERT JUMPDEST CALLER PUSH20 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF AND PUSH2 0x8FC DUP3 SWAP1 DUP2 ISZERO MUL SWAP1 PUSH1 0x40 MLOAD PUSH1 0x0 PUSH1 0x40 MLOAD DUP1 DUP4 SUB DUP2 DUP6 DUP9 DUP9 CALL SWAP4 POP POP POP POP ISZERO ISZERO PUSH1 0xB6 JUMPI PUSH1 0x0 DUP1 REVERT JUMPDEST POP JUMP STOP LOG1 PUSH6 0x627A7A723058 KECCAK256 PUSH9 0x13D1EA839A4438EF75 GASLIMIT CALLVALUE LOG4 0x5f PUSH24 0x7541F409787592C988A079407FB28B4AD000290000000000 Aren’t you glad you are using a high-level language like Solidity instead of programming directly in EVM bytecode? Me too! Creating the Contract on the Blockchain So, we have a contract. We’ve compiled it into bytecode. Now, we need to “register” the contract on the Ethereum blockchain. We will be using the Ropsten testnet to test our contract, so that’s the blockchain we want to submit it to. Registering a contract on the blockchain involves creating a special transaction whose destination is the address 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000, also known as the zero address. The zero address is a special address that tells the Ethereum blockchain that you want to register a contract. Fortunately, the Remix IDE will handle all of that for you and send the transaction to MetaMask.

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You can do almost everything you need to do with a testnet node (which connects you to one of the smaller public test blockchains), with a local private blockchain like Ganache, or with a cloud-based Ethereum client offered by a service provider like Infura. You also have the option of running a remote client, which does not store a local copy of the blockchain or validate blocks and transactions. These clients offer the functionality of a wallet and can create and broadcast transactions. Remote clients can be used to connect to existing networks, such as your own full node, a public blockchain, a public or permissioned (proof-of-authority) testnet, or a private local blockchain. In practice, you will likely use a remote client such as MetaMask, Emerald Wallet, MyEtherWallet, or MyCrypto as a convenient way to switch between all of the different node options.

pages: 492 words: 118,882

The Blockchain Alternative: Rethinking Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Theory by Kariappa Bheemaiah

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banks create money, Basel III, basic income, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, business process, call centre, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, cellular automata, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, constrained optimization, corporate governance, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, Diane Coyle, discrete time, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversification, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, Higgs boson, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, interest rate derivative, inventory management, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, large denomination, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, liquidity trap, London Whale, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Michael Milken, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, offshore financial centre, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, power law, precariat, pre–internet, price mechanism, price stability, private sector deleveraging, profit maximization, QR code, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, Ray Kurzweil, Real Time Gross Settlement, rent control, rent-seeking, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, seigniorage, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stuart Kauffman, supply-chain management, technology bubble, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, the market place, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Washington Consensus

While a public blockchain, like bitcoin, is accessible to all, a private blockchain offers a degree of exclusivity. In a private blockchain, a financial institution (for example) could create a blockchain in which the miners are known, trusted, and vetted. As these blockchains are more reflective of the current financial system, a large number of financial institutions are keen on creating and using them. The recent R3 partnership (composed of 46 financial institutions as of June 2016), showcases the extent to which large institutions are seriously dwelling on the use of blockchains. Smart Contracts One of the most dynamic occurrences in the past few years has been the development of Apps.

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While the purpose of the book it to shed more light on the implications of the widespread use of Blockchain technology, the growing diversity within the currency space cannot be fully excluded from the discussion. As the blockchain gains more traction in formal financial circles, its first manifestation in the form of Bitcoin is increasingly being excluded from the dialogue. This seems to be contrary to the symbiotic link between the two. What is more surprising is the fact that this tendency to separate bitcoin from blockchain is a repeat of what happened when the Internet first came into existence. As banks try to harness the power of the blockchain by creating private blockchains, we find ourselves witnessing the same execution of events as when private companies tried to create intranets instead of simply using the Internet.

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Value Web Chris Skinner General book that offers a holistic view of how FinTech and Blockchain firms are using technology to create a new internet of value. Useful for business persons and students. Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy Melanie Swan General book that looks at usability and potential impact of Blockchain from a number of sectors. The author also discusses theoretical, philosophical, and societal impacts of cryptocurrencies and Blockchain. Useful for general readers, novices included. The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology William Mougayar Ideal for business persons with a proclivity for business models.

pages: 273 words: 72,024

Bitcoin for the Befuddled by Conrad Barski

Airbnb, AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, blockchain, buttonwood tree, cryptocurrency, Debian, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Isaac Newton, MITM: man-in-the-middle, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, node package manager, p-value, peer-to-peer, price discovery process, QR code, radical decentralization, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, SETI@home, software as a service, the payments system, Yogi Berra

However, before you build more sophisticated bitcoinJ programs, read “Gotchas When Using Wallets in BitcoinJ” on page 239. Not only does a Bitcoin app need a wallet, it also needs a blockchain. The following lines initialize a new blockchain for us: File file = new File("my-blockchain");➊ SPVBlockStore store = new SPVBlockStore(params, file);➋ BlockChain chain = new BlockChain(params, wallet, store);➌ Because blockchains consume lots of space, we’ll write it to a file named my-blockchain ➊. Next, we create a block store, which is an object that manages the data for our copious blockchain data ➋. BitcoinJ offers several block store types, all with different feature and performance trade-offs.

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In this case, Crowley and Satoshi will each add a block to the blockchain (each thinking that he is the winning miner for that round). The problem occurs when one part of the network copies Crowley’s block and the other copies Satoshi’s. As a result, now two blockchains disagree! Figure 2-13: Bitcoin miners Crowley and Satoshi find a block at the same time, creating two copies of the blockchain. The resolution to the forked blockchain occurs when Satoshi’s version of the blockchain adds another block before Crowley’s, and Satoshi receives the reward. Recall that your Bitcoin wallet program needs an up-to-date copy of the blockchain to function, but it doesn’t know how to resolve a forked blockchain.

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Well, the biggest performance challenge any app that works with bitcoins has to deal with is that the official Bitcoin blockchain is larger than 10GB in size. Do most Bitcoin apps really need all 10GB of the blockchain? To answer this question, let’s consider why the blockchain exists. At a simplified level, a Bitcoin blockchain is responsible for two main jobs: 1. Figuring out how much money everyone on the network has 2. Figuring out whether new transactions broadcast across the network are valid For the first task, the blockchain allows us to examine all the historical blocks in the blockchain and compile comprehensive data about every Bitcoin address ever used and how much money each contains.

pages: 296 words: 86,610

The Bitcoin Guidebook: How to Obtain, Invest, and Spend the World's First Decentralized Cryptocurrency by Ian Demartino

3D printing, AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, buy low sell high, capital controls, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decentralized internet, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, forensic accounting, global village, GnuPG, Google Earth, Haight Ashbury, initial coin offering, Jacob Appelbaum, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, litecoin, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Oculus Rift, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, printed gun, QR code, ransomware, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, Skype, smart contracts, Steven Levy, the medium is the message, underbanked, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

It offered 20MB-sized blocks as a primary feature. block: Transactions on the blockchain are grouped into blocks, confirmed by miners roughly every 10 minutes. They are currently limited to 1MB in size but that is likely to change in the near future. blockchain: The decentralized public ledger that makes Bitcoin work. Every transaction and account is kept track of here. Not to be confused with Blockchain.info the website or its parent company, Blockchain. Also used to refer to any upcoming technology that uses a public ledger to keep track of digital value; i.e., “They are developing their own blockchain technology.” block explorer: A website or piece of software that allows users to observe and follow Bitcoin transactions through the blockchain.

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Today they give tiny fractions of bitcoins that, like full bitcoins previously, are worth fractions of a cent. 51% attack: Proof-of-work is used in Bitcoin to validate the blockchain. It takes computational power to validate and confirm transactions. Changing one transaction will change the verifiable data in all subsequent transactions. Therefore, if there are two competing blockchains with different transaction histories, the one that is longer will be considered the “true” blockchain because it has the most computational power behind it. Since malicious actors usually work alone, it is unlikely that any one group could put more computational power behind its modified blockchain compared to the real blockchain. However, if someone did control a higher hashrate than the combined hashrate of all of the miners working on the true blockchain, that group would be able to outwork the valid chain and get its blockchain confirmed as valid.

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The uses I’ve described so far, while not all strictly involving sending money back and forth, are still financial in nature. But the blockchain can do much more than that. It can store documents in a secure cryptographic manner. A user could encrypt a digital copy of their passport, store the hash of that file on the blockchain and then use that copy as a backup. Two users could record their marriage on the blockchain; in fact, this has already happened.9 Nearly every official document or contract that needs a notary could be stored on the blockchain and while it might not be recognized legally as such, it is far harder to forge a blockchain transaction than a notarized document. The utility could potentially go beyond the financial.

pages: 349 words: 102,827

The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-Hackers Is Building the Next Internet With Ethereum by Camila Russo

4chan, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, altcoin, always be closing, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Asian financial crisis, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Cambridge Analytica, Cody Wilson, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, distributed ledger, diversification, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, East Village, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, hacker house, information security, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Mark Zuckerberg, Maui Hawaii, mobile money, new economy, non-fungible token, off-the-grid, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, QR code, reserve currency, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Stallman, Robert Shiller, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, semantic web, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, South of Market, San Francisco, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the payments system, too big to fail, tulip mania, Turing complete, Two Sigma, Uber for X, Vitalik Buterin

In the case of Bitcoin, “Bitcoin” is the name of both the blockchain and of the cryptocurrency itself (uppercase “B” is used for the network, lowercase “b” is used for the cryptocurrency), while ether is the coin that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. There will be some blockchains that don’t even have their own corresponding cryptocurrency, and there is no one, single blockchain. Each chain will have its own unique characteristics, which is why the term “on the blockchain” that’s used ad nauseam should immediately be met with the follow-up question, “Which one?” In keeping with the open source ethos, Bitcoin is an open protocol that anyone can join, modify, or even copy to create their own, separate version.

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The difference with BitShares was that rather than having a single asset as collateral it would use multiple cryptocurrencies on the Ethereum blockchain to be more decentralized and stable. The system would be managed by a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO, called Maker. As mentioned earlier, Dan Larimer and his father, Stan, proposed the concept in September 2013, and Vitalik followed up with an article in Bitcoin Magazine just a couple of days later. In 2015 DAOs were all the rage in the blockchain world. They fit perfectly into a futuristic, cypherpunk vision where digital money and blockchain-based platforms would replace old, dusty banks and all human intervention would be minimized. Blockchain technology would take people out of the equation as much as possible and leave decision making to computer programs.

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In the land of deserts, ancient religious sites, and cobblestone streets winding through the same noisy markets for the past three thousand years, Vitalik found a cluster of entrepreneurs and developers who were making the biggest strides in the blockchain world. Teams there were trying to push Bitcoin’s limits and test whether it could be used for more than digital currency. The idea was that traits of blockchain technology—such as having no central point of failure, being uncensorable, cutting out intermediaries, and being immutable—could also benefit other applications besides money. Financial instruments like stocks and bonds, and commodities like gold, were the obvious targets, but people were also talking about putting other representations of value like property deeds and medical records on the blockchain, too. Those efforts—admirable considering Bitcoin hadn’t, and still hasn’t, been adopted widely as currency—were known as Bitcoin 2.0.

pages: 494 words: 121,217

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, augmented reality, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brian Krebs, Cody Wilson, commoditize, computerized markets, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, forensic accounting, Global Witness, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, hive mind, impulse control, index card, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Julian Assange, Large Hadron Collider, machine readable, market design, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, ransomware, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, slashdot, Social Justice Warrior, the market place, web application, WikiLeaks

If you don’t get privacy, what do you get?” The temptation was more than Meiklejohn could resist. The blockchain, like a massive, undeciphered corpus of an ancient language, hid a wealth of secrets in plain view. CHAPTER 8 Men with No Names When Meiklejohn began digging into the blockchain in late 2012, she started with a very simple question: How many people were using Bitcoin? That number was much harder to pin down than it might seem. After downloading the entire blockchain onto a UCSD server and organizing it into a database that she could query, like a gargantuan, searchable spreadsheet, she could see that there were more than twelve million distinct Bitcoin addresses, among which there had been nearly sixteen million transactions.

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At one point early in his tenure as an IRS-CI agent, watching the Silk Road’s unchecked growth, he had even gone so far as to suggest to a fellow agent that they try tracing bitcoins on the blockchain. His colleague had laughed at him. “Oh, so we’re going to bring in Satoshi Nakamoto to introduce the blockchain as evidence in court?” the agent had joked. But Gambaryan had read the news coverage on the heels of UCSD’s “Men with No Names” research in late 2013, and it had only reinforced what he’d suspected all along: Despite the prevailing belief of both cops and criminals, cryptocurrency was traceable. So, why not use the blockchain as evidence? If a cryptographically unforgeable, giant ledger displaying every Bitcoin transaction was good enough to prove who owned millions of dollars within Bitcoin’s economy, Gambaryan thought, it ought to be good enough to use as evidence in a criminal indictment, too.

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” * * * · · · It was late afternoon on a fall day in 2014 when Gambaryan got to work tracing Force’s money on the blockchain. Despite having read Meiklejohn’s paper, he possessed none of the data that she’d assembled over months of clustering Bitcoin addresses and identifying them with test transactions. So he simply started copying Bitcoin addresses from Carl Force’s account records—the ones he’d gotten from exchanges such as CampBX and Bitstamp—and pasting them into the search field on Blockchain.info, which displayed the entire blockchain on the web. At first, the collections of garbled character strings seemed meaningless to Gambaryan.

pages: 506 words: 151,753

The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze by Laura Shin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, Airbnb, altcoin, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, cloud computing, complexity theory, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, DevOps, digital nomad, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, Edward Snowden, emotional labour, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial independence, Firefox, general-purpose programming language, gravity well, hacker house, Hacker News, holacracy, independent contractor, initial coin offering, Internet of things, invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, litecoin, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, off-the-grid, performance metric, Potemkin village, prediction markets, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social distancing, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Turing complete, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks

., on the Bitcoin blockchain, see “Summary,” Blockchain.com, June 16, 2016, https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/afd6fc9cb2910445b126cbfd8a8dd58b4d5359356688f416635c12b15fcab7bf. 13. DAO attacker exchanges 1.23628167 BTC for 46.87979279 ETH via ShapeShift, June 16, 2016: on Bitcoin blockchain, see “Summary,” Blockchain.com, https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/8883a039f4b5df3e90a0aa15fc485dcbc1efbbef3bee32bfa0e985ae63c1e11a, originally via ShapeShift API, https://shapeshift.io/txstat/17yqyLree8URtSnZbZu6S5EMKjTMnzo8b7, now at https://laurashin.com/cryptopians/06/13-17yqy., on the Ethereum blockchain, see “Transaction Details,” Etherscan, June 16, 2016, https://etherscan.io/tx/0x512df37c9702e2cbfd761d4f336e6f01911a84a1b3b91f731e9675ef79b81d13. 14.

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DAO attacker converted 0.667 BTC into 25 ETH on ShapeShift, June 16, 2016: on Bitcoin blockchain, see Blockchain.com, https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/009ab0293e8f24c76f1d7fce018dfca1059c1bef6819670d8f11c6c277531bdc, originally via ShapeShift API, https://shapeshift.io/txstat/14mMb4xdSW8hZtzboHFHVzAUhnwLf11sSK, now at https://laurashin.com/cryptopians/06/14a-14mMb., on Ethereum blockchain, see “Transaction Details,” Etherscan, June 16, 2016, https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc6a773490f9e69f4bce6dc1c887c52fb5d51917be256bbb873ef2c18014cf1a8; DAO attacker exchanges .4 BTC for 14.9258 ETH on ShapeShift, June 16, 2016: on Bitcoin blockchain, see “Summary,” Blockchain.com, https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/3b26f606cc9e381b48a1aa87585af3611cee6fcfab325c61a216a783a4866f46, originally via ShapeShift API, https://shapeshift.io/txstat/1FB1MuuCnG9ERrKqZAcsKUPgy19WReRAub, now at https://laurashin.com/cryptopians/06/14b-1FB1M., on Ethereum blockchain, see “Transaction Details,” Etherscan, June 16, 2016, https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd120cfdb68baa17e519cf1e3d18efb35432a77afe8a080961aff42d07199515b; DAO attacker converts .31304245 BTC into 1,283.55 DAO tokens via ShapeShift: on the Bitcoin blockchain, see “Summary,” Blockchain.com, https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/e90687a4e7f3593e5dee704b801b46164509e6e887ecc0ac5a3fc8c44723a285, originally via ShapeShift API, https://shapeshift.io/txstat/1ERErQFpZUjfqmc4HR9SLovx9QxhGiZa1Q, now at https://laurashin.com/cryptopians/06/14c-1EREr., on the Ethereum blockchain, see “Transaction Details,” Etherscan, June 16, 2016, https://etherscan.io/tx/0x46de32fec895a13373c523a8e20263faf2ae5410468b3d9af41127d08dd42688. 15.

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Vitalik Buterin, “The Evolution of Ethereum,” September 28, 2015, Ethereum Foundation Blog, https://blog.ethereum.org/2015/09/28/the-evolution-of-ethereum. 11. Shanghai’s Wanxiang Blockchain Labs. 12. Jemima Kelly, “Nine of World’s Biggest Banks Join to Form Blockchain Partnership,” Reuters, September 15, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-blockchain-idUSKCN0RF24M20150915; Jemima Kelley, “Thirteen More Top Banks Join R3 Blockchain Consortium,” Reuters, September 29, 2015, https://www.reuters.com/article/banks-blockchain-idUSL5N11Z2QE20150929. 13. “DevCon 1,” YouTube, video playlist, last updated March 1, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/playlist?

pages: 457 words: 128,838

The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money Are Challenging the Global Economic Order by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple Newton, bank run, banking crisis, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Bretton Woods, buy and hold, California gold rush, capital controls, carbon footprint, clean water, Cody Wilson, collaborative economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Columbine, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, Firefox, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Fractional reserve banking, Glass-Steagall Act, hacker house, Hacker News, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, litecoin, Long Term Capital Management, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, new new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, profit motive, QR code, RAND corporation, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Shiller, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, shareholder value, sharing economy, short selling, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, The Great Moderation, the market place, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, Y2K, zero-sum game, Zimmermann PGP

* * * For ease of explanation, we’re going to focus on how bitcoin’s blockchain, currency-creation, and transaction-confirmation systems work, though many blockchain variations exist across the cryptocurrency universe. James’s cup of coffee represented one transaction. The system must process many more. The blockchain is managed, as we’ve mentioned, by bitcoin’s core software protocol. Every user of the bitcoin network from Nakamoto to the present has in one form or another downloaded a set of programming instructions that tell their computer or smartphone how to interact, talk to, and work with others on that network. The blockchain doesn’t live on a single computer or server but, as with our Yapese ledger-keepers, is shared around that community of computer owners, or nodes.

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Those nodes include machines that run bitcoin wallets, a form of software that gives consumers and businesses special passwords with which to propose changes to bitcoin balances (i.e., initiate payments) in those limited parts of the blockchain that are assigned to them. The nodes also include the individual PCs—or, more likely these days, specialized mining rigs—that are used by bitcoin miners to build the blockchain and earn bitcoin rewards. Working together according to the preordained system, these nodes collectively ensure the ledger’s contents are legitimate and protected from abuse by rogue elements. The blockchain is everything to bitcoin. In fact, this ever-shifting accounting of debits and credits constitutes the currency itself.

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Once the puzzle is solved, the bitcoin software client that’s running on the winning node’s machine “seals off” a new block of transactions with the block hash and assigns to it a block number that sequentially follows the last block number on the ever-extending blockchain. (At the exact moment that these words were being written, the blockchain was working on block number 318,685—that’s how many blocks had been completed since Nakamoto mined the Genesis Block, and if you converted that into time by multiplying that number by ten minutes, it would bring you more or less out at January 2009.) Because the previous block hash has been included in the new hash, the latest block is now mathematically linked to the blockchain, as if to form the latest in an ever growing line of trailer hitches.

pages: 332 words: 93,672

Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder

23andMe, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, Asilomar, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bob Noyce, British Empire, Brownian motion, Burning Man, business process, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, cellular automata, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, crony capitalism, cross-subsidies, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, decentralized internet, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Firefox, first square of the chessboard, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, George Gilder, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, means of production, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, OSI model, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, quantitative easing, random walk, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Ruby on Rails, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Singularitarianism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, Susan Wojcicki, TED Talk, telepresence, Tesla Model S, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, tulip mania, Turing complete, Turing machine, Vernor Vinge, Vitalik Buterin, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Scrutinizing data on all the available blockchains, including Ethereum, they discovered that by far the most robust, secure, and reliable blockchain was Satoshi’s bitcoin blockchain. Blockstack now faced a critical test, having to move some eighty thousand subscribers from one blockchain to another. Fortunately, the team had already anticipated this kind of challenge with Jude Nelson’s virtual chains in the code.2 Nelson recalls, “Soon we intend to give each application the ability to form its own blockchain securely. I’d argue that this makes it easier for average people to reap the business successes of blockchain-powered companies, since (1) there are more of them now, and (2) they all have tokens whose value may appreciate.

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Blockstack has been in operation on the Net for four years, with hundreds of thousands of users. It is a platform for security and identity for a new distributed Internet. It provides a domain name service rooted in the bitcoin blockchain, a $25 million venture fund, and a scalable model that reserves the blockchain for pointers to memory addresses rather than for data storage itself. It thus uses the blockchain for what a blockchain can offer—security, identity, and trust—while freeing the blockchain from what it cannot offer—huge transaction speeds and storage space. Its key figures are Muneeb Ali, Ryan Shea, Luke Nelson, and Michael J. Freedman of Princeton.

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Again and again he implied that smart contracts could be created on the bitcoin blockchain that critics claimed could not accommodate them. He ended his Arnhem speech by throwing down a gauntlet to his rivals. “I’m not going away. We will scale radically. You’re either with us or against us. We will compete by growing the value through easy connectivity and easy use.” Asked directly what he thought of the rival blockchain from Ethereum, he declared, “I was a bitcoin maximalist in 2013 and I am a bitcoin maximalist today.” A bitcoin maximalist bars all other blockchains. Enter Wright’s nemesis, Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the Ethereum blockchain. It is a platform explicitly designed for smart contracts, token issues, investment vehicles, and autonomous corporations.

pages: 179 words: 42,081

DeFi and the Future of Finance by Campbell R. Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran, Joey Santoro, Vitalik Buterin, Fred Ehrsam

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, bank run, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, collateralized debt obligation, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, fiat currency, fixed income, Future Shock, initial coin offering, Jane Street, margin call, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, non-fungible token, passive income, peer-to-peer, prediction markets, rent-seeking, RFID, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, smart contracts, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

This regulation has led to geoblocking of U.S. customers from certain decentralized exchange functionalities. Layer 2. A scaling solution built on top of a blockchain that uses cryptography and economic guarantees to maintain desired levels of security. For example, small transactions can occur using a multisignature payment channel. A blockchain is used only when funds are added to the channel or withdrawn. Liquidity provider (LP). A user that earns a return by depositing assets into a pool or a smart contract. Mainnet. The fully operational, production blockchain behind a token, such as the Bitcoin blockchain or the Ethereum blockchain. Often used to contrast with testnet. Miner. Cycles through various values of a piece of data called a nonce to try to find a rare cryptographic hash value in a proof-of-work blockchain.

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BITCOIN AND CRYPTOCURRENCY The dozens of digital currency initiatives beginning in the early 1980s all failed.5 The landscape shifted, however, with the publication of the famous Satoshi Nakamoto Bitcoin white paper6 in 2008, which presents a peer-to-peer system that is decentralized and uses the concept of blockchain. Invented in 1991 by Haber and Stornetta,7 blockchain was initially primarily envisioned to be a time-stamping system to keep track of different versions of a document. The key innovation of Bitcoin was to combine the idea of blockchain (time stamping) with a consensus mechanism called proof of work (introduced by Back8 in 2002). The technology produced an immutable ledger that eliminated a key problem with any digital asset: you can make perfect copies and spend them multiple times. Blockchains allow for the important features desirable in a store of value, which were never before simultaneously present in a single asset.

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III DeFi INFRASTRUCTURE In this chapter, we discuss the innovations that led to DeFi and lay out the terminology. BLOCKCHAIN The key to all DeFi is the decentralizing backbone: a blockchain. Fundamentally, blockchains are software protocols that allow multiple parties to operate under shared assumptions and data without trusting each other. These data can be anything, such as location and destination information of items in a supply chain or account balances of a token. Updates are packaged into “blocks” and are “chained” together cryptographically to allow an audit of the prior history – hence the name. Blockchains are possible because of consensus protocols – sets of rules that determine what kinds of blocks can become part of the chain and thus the “truth.”

pages: 412 words: 116,685

The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything by Matthew Ball

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Apple Newton, augmented reality, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business process, call centre, cloud computing, commoditize, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, deepfake, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, game design, gig economy, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, hype cycle, intermodal, Internet Archive, Internet of things, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Gruber, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, non-fungible token, open economy, openstreetmap, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Planet Labs, pre–internet, QR code, recommendation engine, rent control, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, satellite internet, self-driving car, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, social web, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, thinkpad, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, TSMC, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, Y2K

At the same time, rather than rely on tips or posting promotional tweets on behalf of advertisers to generate income, super-users and influencers could be awarded tokens for hosting events. By the end of 2021, Kickstarter, Reddit, and Discord had all publicly described plans to shift to blockchain-based token models. Blockchain Obstacles There are still numerous obstacles facing a potential blockchain revolution. Most notably, blockchain remains too expensive and slow. For this reason the majority of “blockchain games” and “blockchain experiences” are still running mostly on non-blockchain databases. As a result, they are not truly decentralized. Given the computational requirements of large-scale real-time rendered 3D virtual worlds, as well as their need for ultra-low latency, some experts debate whether we can ever fully decentralize such an experience—let alone “the Metaverse.”

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It helps to put aside the idea of NFTs, cryptocurrencies, fears of record theft, and the like. What matters is that blockchains are programmable payment rails. That is why many position them as the first digitally native payment rails, while contending that PayPal, Venmo, WeChat, and others are little more than facsimiles of legacy ones. Blockchains, Bitcoin, and Ethereum The first mainstream blockchain, Bitcoin, was released in 2009. The sole focus of the Bitcoin blockchain is to operate its own cryptocurrency, bitcoin (the former is usually capitalized while the latter is not, in order to distinguish between the two). To this end, the Bitcoin blockchain is programmed to compensate processors handling bitcoin transactions by issuing them bitcoin (this is called a “gas” fee and is typically paid by the user to submit a transaction).

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One of the leading gaming investors in the world told me that nearly every talented game developer she knew, with the exception of those already running world famous studios, was focused on building games on the blockchain. In total, blockchain-based games and gaming platforms received more than $4 billion9 in venture investment (total VC funding for blockchain companies and projects was roughly $30 billion; some speculate another $100 billion–$200 billion more has already been raised or earmarked by venture funds).10 The influx of talent, investment, and experimentation can quickly produce a virtuous cycle whereby more users set up a crypto wallet, play blockchain games, and buy NFTs, increasing the value and utility of all other blockchain products, which also attracts more developers, and in turn more users, and so on.

pages: 226 words: 65,516

Kings of Crypto: One Startup's Quest to Take Cryptocurrency Out of Silicon Valley and Onto Wall Street by Jeff John Roberts

4chan, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, Apple II, Bernie Sanders, Bertram Gilfoyle, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blythe Masters, Bonfire of the Vanities, Burning Man, buttonwood tree, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, democratizing finance, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, financial engineering, Flash crash, forensic accounting, hacker house, Hacker News, hockey-stick growth, index fund, information security, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, Joseph Schumpeter, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Multics, Network effects, offshore financial centre, open borders, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, proprietary trading, radical decentralization, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, rolodex, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, WeWork, work culture , Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Instead, every ten minutes or so, one of the computers on the network rounds up a new series of the most recent transactions and stuffs them into a package of computer code called a block. Each new block refers to the one that came before it, resulting in a long series of transactions wrapped into parcels and visible to everyone. It’s called the blockchain. Today, there are many blockchains, and the term can refer to any piece of software that relies on multiple computers to create a ledger of transactions. But the bitcoin blockchain is the first and the most famous one. The first block appeared on the bitcoin blockchain in 2009 when bitcoin’s shadowy creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, put it there. Since then, computers around the world have added more than half a million additional blocks.

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At Dimon’s own firm, in a high-profile defection, senior executive Blythe Masters left to run a blockchain startup called Digital Asset. Masters was already renowned on Wall Street for inventing credit default swaps, the contracts Warren Buffett correctly labeled as “time bombs,” which could (and did) set off a financial crisis. Now, she would become the face of a faction in the crypto world known as “blockchain, not bitcoin.” It was inevitable that as bitcoin grew, people without the same agenda as the libertarian types in the Valley would find useful apps for blockchain’s ledger technology, and that’s what was happening. “Blockchain, not bitcoin” meant you were part of the group that wanted to use the technology bitcoin had pioneered without the radical decentralized system that let anyone in the world be part of it—a members-only system that produced a tamper-proof common ledger similar to the bitcoin one.

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Gox Bitcoin Foundation, 54, 55, 56, 58–59 Bitcoin Magazine, 87 bitcoin maximalists, 203 bitcoin meetups, 30 bitcoin Sign Guy, 139 Bitconnect, 141–142 Bitfinex, 108, 114 BitInstant, 54–55, 97, 115–116 Bit License, 127 Bitmain, 171–172 Blankfein, Lloyd, 212 Blockchain, 179 “blockchain not bitcoin” faction, 104–105 Blockchain Revolution (Tapscott and Tapscott), 214, 217 blockchains, 19–21, 24 academic research on, 218–219 block size issues, 152–153 enterprise, 73 future of, 214–220 processing time backlogs in, 83 smart contracts and, 89–95 social engineering for, 21 2.0, 88 block rewards, 21 blocks, 19–20 infrastructure problems with, 75–84 size issues with, 152–153 Bloomberg, 179 Bloomberg Businessweek, 49, 112 Brave, 136 Bridges, Shaun, 59–60 Brooks, Brian, 224 Buffett, Warren, 171 Burges, Kolin, 56 Burnham, Brad, 36 Burning Man, 55 Business Insider, 195–196 Buterin, Vitalik, 48, 87–88, 90, 92, 182 cult of personality around, 202 profile of, 167–168 social media scams using, 143 Byrne, Preston, 206 Cantor Fitzgerald, 101–103 capital gains rules, 122–126 cap tables, 215 Carlson-Wee, Olaf, 24–30 on bitcoin valuation, 62 on Coinbase’s complacency, 177–178 on the crypto bubble, 148 in the crypto winter, 172 on dApps, 188 departure from Coinbase, 95–96, 157 hedge fund of, 223 on hiring, 38–39 legacy of, 220 on Mt.

pages: 218 words: 68,648

Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape From Corporate America by Dan Conway

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, bank run, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, buy and hold, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fault tolerance, financial independence, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, Haight Ashbury, high net worth, holacracy, imposter syndrome, independent contractor, initial coin offering, job satisfaction, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Mitch Kapor, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, rent control, reserve currency, Ronald Coase, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, smart contracts, Steve Jobs, supercomputer in your pocket, tech billionaire, tech bro, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing complete, Uber for X, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum’s killer app is the smart contract, an unalterable, ironclad agreement between two or more parties that is validated by the blockchain. If something happens at point X, the blockchain enforces the contracted action at point Y. The people whose computers are “mining blocks” (anyone who wants to) are rewarded with a small amount of ETH for validating these transactions on the blockchain. This is the engine that keeps Ethereum running without any central control or funding. As a fully functional third-party ledger, Ethereum has the potential, as it matures, to run corporate alternatives as decentralized entities. These decentralized corporations running on a blockchain wouldn’t need, or even allow, centralized control.

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I found it ironic to be working for a centralized company trying to eliminate centralized regulations by pulling the right levers in a centralized political power structure while I was obsessed with a technology that functioned in the exact opposite manner. The only way to change the rules or manipulate the Ethereum blockchain was through transparent consensus. No oily lobbying or campaign contributions could foul things up for everyone else The concept of blockchain had made its way into the popular business lexicon. Few knew what it was, and the few who did made a clear distinction between private business blockchains (good) that were centralized in key ways, and the public blockchains (bad) like Bitcoin and Ethereum which weren’t controlled by any one person or group. The latter were considered a little dangerous, according to those wise enough to avoid edgy bullshit.

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Now Ethereum was pulling in the most talented blockchain developers. They were working on hundreds of dApps. They were all decentralized. Once these dApps were released into the blockchain, they weren’t controlled by a headquarters. They were owned by the users of the dApp. All it took was one to hit paydirt to achieve some semblance of widespread adoption. Use of the Ethereum blockchain would skyrocket, as would the value of the ETH token that powered the network. I’d been living the problem of work, the problem of gatekeepers, my whole life. So I had no problem imagining the benefits of decentralization through blockchain. It became clear to me that the potential value of blockchain could be bigger than virtually anything else ever invented if it was indeed a new platform for the economy, for the world.

pages: 661 words: 185,701

The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution Is Transforming Currencies and Finance by Eswar S. Prasad

access to a mobile phone, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, algorithmic trading, altcoin, bank run, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, buy and hold, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, central bank independence, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, democratizing finance, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, full employment, gamification, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, index fund, inflation targeting, informal economy, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, light touch regulation, liquidity trap, litecoin, lockdown, loose coupling, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, mobile money, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PalmPilot, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, quantum cryptography, RAND corporation, random walk, Real Time Gross Settlement, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, robo advisor, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, SoftBank, special drawing rights, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, Vision Fund, Vitalik Buterin, Wayback Machine, WeWork, wikimedia commons, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

If Jack wanted to persist in his double-spending behavior, he would have to expend computing power to continually “fork” the blockchain (create a new branch) and, more importantly, get other nodes to accept each forked version as the valid blockchain. The further back in the blockchain a given transaction was validated, the more computing power it would take to create a new forked blockchain that would have a different transaction history from the point where the fork was inserted. This is why it has become customary to accept large-value Bitcoin transactions as final only if they are buried at least six blocks deep in the blockchain, which would take about an hour for confirmation.

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Later in this chapter, we will delve into hacks of Bitcoin exchanges that have caused people to lose bitcoins from their digital wallets. But the Bitcoin blockchain itself has not been successfully attacked—yet. * * * To sum up this portion of the discussion, the blockchain is a publicly shared ledger of transactions maintained on a decentralized network of computer nodes. Blocks of validated transactions are added to the blockchain through computation performed by individual miners. The consensus mechanism for validating transactions is, thus, decentralized, and the blockchain is updated on the network in real time. The integrity of the blockchain is buttressed by its transparency and the decentralized structure of the network, which makes it largely tamperproof.

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Achieving Consensus through Proof of Work The original Bitcoin whitepaper (Nakamoto 2008) presents calculations showing that a transaction that is in a block six blocks deep in the blockchain (with six confirmations succeeding it) is secure in the following sense: For an attacker who has control of 10 percent of the network’s total hashrate, the probability of being able to create a forked version of the blockchain that is accepted as the valid blockchain by the network, thereby allowing the attacker to double-spend a coin in that block, is less than 0.1 percent, implying a negligible risk. See also Christina Comben, “What Are Blockchain Confirmations and Why Do They Matter?” blog post, October 10, 2018, https://coincentral.com/blockchain-confirmations/. The text at the end of this section draws partially on Michael Casey, “Dollar-Backed Digital Currency Aims to Fix Bitcoin’s Volatility Dilemma,” Wall Street Journal (blog), July 8, 2014, https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/07/08/dollar-backed-digital-currency-aims-to-fix-bitcoins-volatility-dilemma/.

pages: 571 words: 106,255

The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking by Saifedean Ammous

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, Charles Babbage, conceptual framework, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, delayed gratification, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Elisha Otis, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, initial coin offering, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, iterative process, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, means of production, military-industrial complex, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, price mechanism, price stability, profit motive, QR code, quantum cryptography, ransomware, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, secular stagnation, smart contracts, special drawing rights, Stanford marshmallow experiment, The Nature of the Firm, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Walter Mischel, We are all Keynesians now, zero-sum game

A centralized system reliant on a single point of failure is less secure with a larger number of network members able to write to the blockchain as each added network member is a potential security threat. Blockchain Technology as a Mechanism for Producing Electronic Cash The only commercially successful application of blockchain technology so far is electronic cash, and in particular, Bitcoin. The most common potential applications touted for blockchain technology—payments, contracts, and asset registry—are only workable to the extent that they run using the decentralized currency of the blockchain. All blockchains without currencies have not moved from the prototype stage to commercial implementation because they cannot compete with current best practice in their markets.

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It is also possible that bitcoin will stagnate or even fail and disappear. What cannot happen is Bitcoin's blockchain benefiting the intermediation it was specifically designed to replace. For any trusted third party carrying out payments, trading, or recordkeeping, the blockchain is an extremely costly and inefficient technology to utilize. A non‐Bitcoin blockchain combines the worst of both worlds: the cumbersome structure of the blockchain with the cost and security risk of trusted third parties. It is no wonder that eight years after its invention, blockchain technology has not yet managed to break through in a successful, ready‐for‐market commercial application other than the one for which it was specifically designed: Bitcoin.

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As will become apparent from this exposition, the notion that a “blockchain technology” exists and can be deployed to solve any specific problems is highly dubious. It is far more accurate to understand the blockchain structure as an integral part of the operation of Bitcoin and its testnets and copycats. Nevertheless, the term blockchain technology is used for simplicity in elucidation. The next section of this chapter examines the most commonly touted use‐cases for blockchain technology, while the section after it identifies the main impediments to its application to these problems. Potential Applications of Blockchain Technology An overview of startups and research projects related to blockchain technology concludes that the potential applications of blockchains can be divided into three main fields: Digital Payments Current commercial mechanisms for payment clearance rely on centralized ledgers to record all transactions and maintain account balances.

pages: 387 words: 112,868

Digital Gold: Bitcoin and the Inside Story of the Misfits and Millionaires Trying to Reinvent Money by Nathaniel Popper

4chan, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, banking crisis, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Burning Man, buy and hold, capital controls, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Dogecoin, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Extropian, fiat currency, Fractional reserve banking, Jeff Bezos, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, life extension, litecoin, lone genius, low interest rates, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Neal Stephenson, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price stability, QR code, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Simon Singh, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Startup school, stealth mode startup, the payments system, transaction costs, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Virgin Galactic, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks

Rather than holding its customers’ Bitcoins, Blockchain.info kept only a small file for each customer with the private keys of that customer, encrypted in a way that made it impossible for the company to see the keys themselves. Because Blockchain.info held an encrypted file with the keys, they were not on the computer of the user, vulnerable to hackers. But when a customer logged into a Blockchain. info wallet, the log-in process decrypted the file so that the keys were temporarily on the customer’s computer and could be used to access coins that the customer had on the blockchain. The customer’s data—how much money he or she had and the transaction history—was viewable through Blockchain.info’s online template. But the company itself never saw the data. Because Blockchain. info did not hold money or a transaction history for its customers, it couldn’t be subpoenaed to give up customer records.

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This JPMorgan group began secretly working with the other major banks in the country, all of which are part of an organization known as The Clearing House, on a bold experimental effort to create a new blockchain that would be jointly run by the computers of the largest banks and serve as the backbone for a new, instant payment system that might replace Visa, MasterCard, and wire transfers. Such a blockchain would not need to rely on the anonymous miners powering the Bitcoin blockchain. But it could ensure there would no longer be a single point of failure in the payment network. If Visa’s systems came under attack, all the stores using Visa were screwed. But if one bank maintaining a blockchain came under attack, all the other banks could keep the blockchain going. For many technology experts at banks, the most valuable potential use of the blockchain was not small payments but very large ones, which are responsible for the vast majority of the money moving between banks each day.

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For many banks, the biggest stumbling block was the inherent unreliability of the Bitcoin blockchain, which is, of course, powered by thousands of unvetted computers around the world, all of which could stop supporting the blockchain at any moment. This increased the desire to find a way to create blockchains independent of Bitcoin. The Federal Reserve had its own internal teams looking at how to harness the blockchain technology and potentially even Bitcoin itself. Many in the existing Bitcoin community scoffed at the idea that the blockchain concept could be separated from the currency. As they viewed it, the currency, and the mining of the currency, was what gave users the incentive to join and power the blockchain.

pages: 196 words: 61,981

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China's Countryside by Xiaowei Wang

4chan, AI winter, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, cloud computing, Community Supported Agriculture, computer vision, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, drop ship, emotional labour, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Garrett Hardin, gig economy, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, Huaqiangbei: the electronics market of Shenzhen, China, hype cycle, income inequality, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, job automation, Kaizen: continuous improvement, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, land reform, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer lending, precision agriculture, QR code, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, software is eating the world, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological solutionism, the long tail, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, vertical integration, Vision Fund, WeWork, Y Combinator, zoonotic diseases

Underneath the large red sign is a woman at a desolate fruit stand rearranging the oranges in her crate over and over. Hustle has come to Sanqiao. 6. Blockchain chicken is not the actual name of the chicken I am here to see. The official name is Bubuji (步步鸡), or GoGoChicken, as some English PR materials call it. The COO of Shanghai Lianmo Technology, the company behind blockchain chicken, says that he explicitly keeps “blockchain” out of the name. To him, overhyped blockchain projects have turned the term “blockchain” into marketing gloss. These blockchain chickens sell for up to RMB 300 (US$40) on JD.com. Typical buyers are upper-class urbanites—people willing to pay a premium on food.

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Despite Ostrom’s work, the belief in innate human selfishness in a world of scarcity had become ingrained outside of ecology—in fields like information science and economics.6 This belief in selfishness and scarcity is one of the core ideologies that gave rise to blockchain. Although blockchain has become synonymous with Bitcoin, they are not quite the same. Bitcoin is one use of blockchain, but it remains separate from blockchain technology. Some have used a biological analogy to illustrate the difference: if blockchain is DNA, Bitcoin is a distinct species. Blockchain is a special kind of distributed record-keeping system that uses cryptography to prevent records from being falsified, eliminating the need to trust a centralized authority to verify records.

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In the car, driving through the small mountain paths back to the bus stop, I ask Ren, “So, what do you think of qukuailian [blockchain, 区块链]?” Although we’ve seen the GoGoChicken farm, I haven’t explicitly brought up blockchain at all during my visit. “Blockchain? What’s blockchain?” asks Ren. 7. Onstage at the Internet Archive’s Decentralized Web Summit in San Francisco, the founder of the Lightning Network, a protocol layer that sits on top of Bitcoin’s blockchain, is speaking into the microphone. The Decentralized Web Summit is host to an eclectic assortment of people, a caricature of the Bay Area’s tech scene.

pages: 410 words: 119,823

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life by Adam Greenfield

3D printing, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, bank run, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, cellular automata, centralized clearinghouse, centre right, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, circular economy, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, collective bargaining, combinatorial explosion, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, digital map, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fiat currency, fulfillment center, gentrification, global supply chain, global village, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Ian Bogost, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, Jacob Silverman, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, jobs below the API, John Conway, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, John von Neumann, joint-stock company, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, Leo Hollis, license plate recognition, lifelogging, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, megacity, megastructure, minimum viable product, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, natural language processing, Network effects, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Pearl River Delta, performance metric, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-work, printed gun, proprietary trading, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Rutger Bregman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social intelligence, sorting algorithm, special economic zone, speech recognition, stakhanovite, statistical model, stem cell, technoutopianism, Tesla Model S, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Uber for X, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, When a measure becomes a target, Whole Earth Review, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce

, Kybernetes, Volume 31, Issue 2, 2002. 11.Kickstarter exacts a 5 percent commission on successfully funded projects, kickstarter.com/help/faq/kickstarter+basics. 12.Graham Rapier, “Yellen Reportedly Urges Central Banks to Study Blockchain, Bitcoin,” American Banker, June 6, 2016; see also Nathaniel Popper, “Central Banks Consider Bitcoin’s Technology, if Not Bitcoin,” New York Times, October 11, 2016. 13.Pete Rizzo, “Bank of Canada Demos Blockchain-Based Digital Dollar,” CoinDesk, June 16, 2016. 14.See, e.g., a proposal for London’s budget to be executed via blockchain. Arlyn Culwick, “MayorsChain: a blockchain-based public expenditure management system,” July 4, 2015, mayorschain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Whitepaper_Mayorschain-0.01-4July2015.pdf. 15.Simon Taylor, “Blockchain: Understanding the potential,” Barclays Bank, 2015, barclayscorporate.com/content/dam/corppublic/corporate/Documents/insight/blockchain_understanding_the_potential.pdf. 16.Jarrett Streebin, “The Cost of Bad Addresses,” Easypost blog, July 15, 2015; Rainu Kaushal et al., “Effects of Computerized Physician Order Entry and Clinical Decision Support Systems on Medication Safety: A Systematic Review,” Archives of Internal Medicine.

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Because each successive block’s hash value is generated with the signature of the one immediately preceding it in time, it folds into itself the details of every block of Bitcoin transactions ever executed, tailing all the way back to the very first, the so-called Genesis Block. And again, because every participant in the network holds their own local copy of the blockchain, at no point is there the slightest need for transactions to be checked against any central registry or clearinghouse. The entire network works to maintain and protect the blockchain: its shared, public, distributed ledger. Once a block has been confirmed by the network and added to the blockchain, all of the transactions bundled into it are considered to have been settled; from this point forward, they are a part of the permanent record. For very low-value transactions, this is where the story ends; a single-pass confirmation is sufficient to ensure that they probably won’t be overturned.

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But when the string identifying your Bitcoin wallet resides alongside your own encoded fingerprints, on a phone that bears a unique IMEI number, you are inherently at risk of being connected to whatever pattern of transactions you’ve left behind in the blockchain.19 And even without access to the physical device, or anything it may contain, parties to transactions may find that their identities can be pinpointed with surprising ease. As early as 2011, for example, security researchers were able to cross-reference forum posts, Twitter handles and the blockchain’s own record of public transaction data to determine the identity of “anonymous” donors to WikiLeaks.20 The sources of potentially identifying information are legion, and not all that easy for a user to clamp down on. The blockchain itself, of course, retains everything, and shares it on demand with anyone who asks.

pages: 135 words: 26,407

How to DeFi by Coingecko, Darren Lau, Sze Jin Teh, Kristian Kho, Erina Azmi, Tm Lee, Bobby Ong

algorithmic trading, asset allocation, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blockchain, buy and hold, capital controls, collapse of Lehman Brothers, cryptocurrency, distributed ledger, diversification, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, information retrieval, litecoin, margin call, new economy, passive income, payday loans, peer-to-peer, prediction markets, QR code, reserve currency, robo advisor, smart contracts, tulip mania, two-sided market

In the context of Ethereum, Dapps are interfaces that interact with the blockchain through the use of smart contracts. From the front, Dapps look and behave like regular web and mobile applications, except that they interact with a blockchain and in different ways. Some of the ways include requiring ETH to use the Dapp, storage of user data onto blockchain such that it is immutable, and so on. ~ What are the benefits of Dapps? Dapps are built on top of decentralized blockchain networks such as Ethereum and usually have the following benefits: Immutability: Nobody can change any information once it’s on the blockchain. Tamper-proof: Smart contracts published onto the blockchain cannot be tampered with without alerting every other participant on the blockchain.

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Tamper-proof: Smart contracts published onto the blockchain cannot be tampered with without alerting every other participant on the blockchain. Transparent: Smart contracts powering Dapps are openly auditable. Availability: As long as the Ethereum network remains active, Dapps built on it will remain active and usable. ~ What are the disadvantages of Dapps? While a blockchain offers many benefits, there are also many different downsides that come along with it: Immutability: Smart contracts are written by humans and can only be as good as the person who wrote it. Human errors are unavoidable and immutable smart contracts have the potential to compound errors into something larger.

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Tokens It is a unit of a digital asset. Token often refers to coins that are issued on existing blockchain. Tokenize It refers to the process of converting things into digital tradable assets. - - V Value Staked It refers to how much value the insurer will put up against the target risk. If the value that the insurer staked is lower than the target risk, then it is not coverable. W Wallet A wallet is a user-friendly interface to the blockchain network that can be used as a storage, transaction and interaction bridge between the user and the blockchain. X - Y - Z - 1. “How Long Does It Take to Have a Payment Post Online to ....” 2 Jul. 2017, https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/checking-account/how-long-payment-posted-online-account/ 2.

pages: 87 words: 25,823

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism by David Golumbia

3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Californian Ideology, Cody Wilson, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, digital rights, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extropian, fiat currency, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, Ian Bogost, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, litecoin, Marc Andreessen, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, new economy, obamacare, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, printed gun, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, smart contracts, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, Travis Kalanick, Vitalik Buterin, WikiLeaks

In this sense, it becomes a tool for existing power to concentrate itself, rather than a challenge to the existing order: as some better economically informed commentators consistently point out, Bitcoin functions much more like a speculative investment than a currency (Worstall 2013; Yermack 2014), although what one is investing in, beyond Bitcoin itself, is not at all clear. 6. The Future of Bitcoin and the Blockchain BITCOIN IS NOT SO MUCH a single software program as it is software written using a model called the blockchain that is can be used to build other very similar programs (related cryptocurrencies like Litecoin, Dogecoin, and so on), but also less similar ones. The cryptographically enabled distributed ledger, and the blockchain used to implement it, advocates insist, have wide application outside of their current uses.[1] We hear (not infrequently) that the blockchain is as revolutionary today as were “personal computers in 1975, the internet in 1993” (Andreessen 2014).

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The ledger is the first widespread implementation of a software model called a blockchain. The techniques involved in building the blockchain work to ensure that transactions are unique and authentic: “The block chain is a shared public ledger on which the entire Bitcoin network relies. All confirmed transactions are included in the block chain. This way, Bitcoin wallets can calculate their spendable balance and new transactions can be verified to be spending bitcoins that are actually owned by the spender. The integrity and the chronological order of the blockchain are enforced with cryptography” (“How Does Bitcoin Work?”).

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Yet this, in the end, is the extreme rightist—anarcho-capitalist, winner-take-all, even neo-feudalist—political vision too many of those in the Bitcoin (along with other cryptocurrency) and blockchain communities, whatever they believe their political orientation to be, are working actively to bring about. This is not to say that Bitcoin and the blockchain can never be used for non-rightist purposes, and even less that everyone in the blockchain communities is on the right. Yet it is hard to see how this minority can resist the political values that are very literally coded into the software itself. Recent events have shown repeatedly that we discount the power of engineers and/or ideologues to realize their political visions through software design at our peril.

pages: 108 words: 27,451

Magic Internet Money: A Book About Bitcoin by Jesse Berger

Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Cambridge Analytica, capital controls, carbon footprint, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, diversification, diversified portfolio, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, inflation targeting, invisible hand, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, liquidity trap, litecoin, low interest rates, Marshall McLuhan, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shale / tar sands, planned obsolescence, price mechanism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, Satoshi Nakamoto, the medium is the message, Vitalik Buterin

By combining the security of cryptography and the practicality of software, the framework for a new monetary system emerges, which eliminates the need to entrust money to a bank by making banking as trustworthy as money itself. 5.3.1 Blockchain 101: Shared Ledger “We need to come up with use cases for this technology that drive clear benefits for individuals and institutions – these are our customers. Too often we see Bitcoin and blockchain technologies as solutions in search of a problem.” Abigail Johnson, CEO of Fidelity Investments One of the innovations upon which Bitcoin was built has spawned an entirely new class of software-based technology. Originally referred to by Satoshi as the “timechain” in an early version of the software, this technology is known today as “blockchain.” A blockchain is a shared ledger – a shared database – that allows multiple users to inscribe transactions.

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For reference, a node is a computer connected to the network that verifies blocks, and a “full node” goes a step further, saving the complete blockchain – the history of all valid transactions. As a committed ledger of record, blockchain can dutifully underpin a credible monetary system if it standardizes widely known and agreeable protocols (i.e. predetermined issuance schedule and fixed limit of 21 million coins) that are strictly enforced by consensus (i.e. proof-of-work to prevent partisan modifications). 5.3.2 Blockchain 101: Immutable Data “The more people you have to ask for permission, the more dangerous a project gets.” Alain de Botton, Philosopher & Author In recent years, blockchain has become a familiar term in business and technology circles, but its meaning and value proposition have been somewhat blurred.

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Alain de Botton, Philosopher & Author In recent years, blockchain has become a familiar term in business and technology circles, but its meaning and value proposition have been somewhat blurred. Blockchains can effectively be divided into two types – public and private. Public blockchains, like the Bitcoin chain, have no restrictions on the use of their software and network. On the other hand, private blockchains are intended only for select participants, and permission is required from central authorities in order to gain access. They could be likened to cloud-based databases that, similar to Google Docs, selectively permit multiple users to access, contribute to, and edit a shared document. A private blockchain typically does not issue any monetary unit, and therefore has no monetary utility or value.

pages: 247 words: 60,543

The Currency Cold War: Cash and Cryptography, Hash Rates and Hegemony by David G. W. Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bank run, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, central bank independence, COVID-19, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, Diane Coyle, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, global reserve currency, global supply chain, global village, Hyman Minsky, information security, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, market design, Marshall McLuhan, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, one-China policy, Overton Window, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Pingit, QR code, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, railway mania, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, subscription business, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vitalik Buterin, Washington Consensus

An IMF paper on the subject illustrates just what a significant change this new technology might deliver, and why, decades after de Bono floated the idea, the financial system might adopt it (Adrian and Mancini-Griffoli 2019). This implementation would not be due to any idealogical or technological fancy, but because the system is cheaper and offers more functionality: If assets like stocks and bonds were moved to blockchains, blockchain-based forms of e-money would allow seamless payment of automated transactions (so-called delivery versus payment, assuming blockchains were designed to be interoperable), thereby potentially realizing substantial efficiency gains from avoiding manual back-office tasks. When they are properly regulated, as I am sure they will be in time, tokens will be a more efficient way to manage such a mass-market solution.

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As observers pointed out, Griffith may have evolved a sub-optimal communications strategy in connection with his travel plans: When you plan on visiting a country to teach them how to evade your government’s imposed sanctions, best not to tweet about it.52 The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington think tank, summarizes the situation quite well in its position paper ‘Crypto Rogues’ by observing that ‘blockchain technology may be the innovation that enables US adversaries for the first time to operate entire economies outside the US-led financial system’. While technically this may be slightly inaccurate (there are ways to create anonymous transactions without a blockchain, but let us take this use of the term to mean ‘third-party anonymous digital currency’), it does accurately flag that the widespread availability of decentralized financial services threatens to bypass existing infrastructure. The FDD are surely right to say that ‘blockchain sanctions resistance is a long-term strategy for US adversaries’.53 In its report, the FDD highlights four scenarios that might lead to a diminution of the greenback’s role in international trade and finance.

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Kevin Werbach has set out a useful taxonomy, saying that (Werbach 2018) there is cryptocurrency, i.e. the idea that networks can securely transfer value without central points of control; there is blockchain, i.e. the idea that networks can collectively reach consensus about information across trust boundaries; and there are cryptoassets, i.e. the idea that virtual currencies can be ‘financialized’ into tradable assets. Figure 4. From digital value to real-world markets. I will use a slightly different, more generalized approach, as shown in figure 4 (because a blockchain is only one kind of shared ledger that could be used to transfer digital values around), but Werbach summarizes the situation exceedingly well.

pages: 329 words: 99,504

Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie, Jacob Silverman

algorithmic trading, asset allocation, bank run, barriers to entry, Ben McKenzie, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, capital controls, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, data science, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, housing crisis, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, Jacob Silverman, Jane Street, low interest rates, Lyft, margin call, meme stock, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, offshore financial centre, operational security, payday loans, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, Potemkin village, prediction markets, proprietary trading, pushing on a string, QR code, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, ransomware, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, uber lyft, underbanked, vertical integration, zero-sum game

Sam said he hadn’t done a deep dive into USDD, but he was “pretty skeptical of it.” Still, Sam’s own trading firm was a key player on the project. We asked about TRON, Justin Sun’s blockchain and the main one for which Tether seemed to be minting its tokens. Sun and Tether clearly shared close business ties—$30-plus billion worth of Tether were on the TRON blockchain—and Sam was in a position to know something about them. TRON wasn’t a great blockchain, Sam said, but “the scam is not the blockchain. The scam is the token [emphasis mine]. It’s basically worthless.” While TRON had been useful for its low transaction fees, he thought it would eventually die out.

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Here’s the good news: You are now free to forget everything I just said. The operational details of blockchain technology are not important to understanding cryptocurrency’s rise in popular culture. Remember, blockchain is at least thirty years old and barely used by businesses outside of the crypto industry. Since at least 2016, hundreds of enterprises have tried to incorporate it into their business models, only to later scrap it because it didn’t work any better than what they were already using. Ask yourself a simple question: If blockchain is so revolutionary, after thirty years, why is its primary use case gambling?

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In typical Austin fashion, we were ready for things to get weird. But we couldn’t anticipate quite how weird they would get. ° ° ° Our first ever in-person journalist outing—a SXSW blockchain schmoozefest—turned out to be one of the strangest. Having just picked up our press passes, Jacob, Ryan, and I strolled into a bar that had been converted into a demo space for Blockchain Creative Labs, the new crypto venture from Fox Entertainment. Immediately a few ironies presented themselves. Blockchain was supposed to overthrow the old techno-economic order and yet here was one of the country’s most powerful media conglomerates leading the supposed revolution.

pages: 375 words: 88,306

The Sharing Economy: The End of Employment and the Rise of Crowd-Based Capitalism by Arun Sundararajan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Burning Man, call centre, Carl Icahn, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, commons-based peer production, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, data science, David Graeber, distributed ledger, driverless car, Eben Moglen, employer provided health coverage, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane: The New Division of Labor, future of work, general purpose technology, George Akerlof, gig economy, housing crisis, Howard Rheingold, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, job automation, job-hopping, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kula ring, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mary Meeker, megacity, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, moral panic, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, peer-to-peer rental, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, rent control, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, supply-chain management, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, WeWork, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

There’s no risk associated with meeting someone unsavory. Not surprisingly, therefore, much of the initial focus of blockchain marketplace development has been on creating new systems for trading assets that are non-physical: digital and financial assets. In a 2015 conversation I had with Adam Ludwin, the CEO of the blockchain startup Chain I mentioned earlier in the chapter, he described the blockchain as a “new database technology, purpose-built for trading assets,” and sees immense potential in new blockchain based marketplaces for loyalty points, mobile minutes, gift cards, and of course, a range of financial assets.

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CDixon Blog, October 4, 2014. http://cdixon.org/2014/10/04/some-ideas-for-native-bitcoin-apps. 17. Jemima Kelley, “Nine of the World’s Biggest Bank Join to Form Blockchain Partnership,” Reuters, September 15, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/15/banks-blockchain-idUSL1N11L1K720150915#k5rPvtF0AteX3fFK.97; Jemima Kelly, “Three Banks Join #3 Blockchain Consortium Taking Total to 25,” Reuters, October 28, 2015, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/28/us-global-banks-blockchain-idUSKCN0SM1U120151028#2rAUwQDFjkKbPeS1.97. 18. Bitcoin has this feature, although, as of 2015, this was just a couple of percent of the total miner revenue. 19.

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., 184 Artists Against Piracy, 58 Aspen Institute, 157, 179, 187 Asset-light generation, 2 Automation, 164–167 BackFeed, 199 Bandwagon, 44 Bapna, Ravi, 13–14 Barnes, Peter, 189 Barrett, Sara, 106 Barter economy, 36–37 Bauwens, Michel, 32–33, 99–100, 210–211n32 BazaarBay, 97 Beck, Jessica, 11 Beck, Ulrich, 189 Benjamin, Robert, 69, 72–74 Benkler, Yochai, 30–32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 199, 210n19 Bennett and Coleman, 25 Berger, Alan, 15 Berlingen, Flore, 23 BestBuy, 57 Bilateral reciprocity, 36–37 Billock, Jennifer, 39 Bitcoin, 52, 59, 82, 86, 96 and the blockchain, 86–89 as decentralized peer-to-peer exchange, 87–91, 100–101 mining, 87, 90, 101 BitTorrent, 92, 97, 100 BlaBlaCar, 6, 12–13, 44, 48, 203, 204. See also Car sharing platform, 77 trust and, 98, 145 Black Rock, 25 Blecharczyk, Nathan, 7, 8, 131 Blinder, Alan S., 159, 163–164 Blockchain, 18–19, 59–60, 86, 88 blockchain economies, 58–60, 87–95, 100–102 Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy (Swan), 93 Blurring of boundaries/lines, 8, 27, 46, 76, 141–142, 148, 171 Botsman, Rachel, 27–30, 35, 70, 81, 82 Bradley, Jennifer, 157 Brand-based trust, 144–146 Brastaviceanu, Tiberius, 199 Bresnahan, Timothy, 75 Brookings Institute, 179, 184 Brown-Philpot, Stacy, 157 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 75, 112, 165–166 Budelis, Katrina, 14 Burnham, Brad, 85–86, 187 Business of Sharing, The (Stephany), 28 Buterin, Vitalik, 95, 101–102 Button, 201 Byers, John W., 121 California Fruit Exchange, 197 California Labor Commissioner, 160 California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), 153–154 Capalino, James, 136 Capital in the 21st Century (Piketty), 123 Card, David, 166 Car sharing, 1, 3.

pages: 472 words: 117,093

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, asset light, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, backtesting, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, complexity theory, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial innovation, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, law of one price, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Mustafa Suleyman, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, plutocrats, precision agriculture, prediction markets, pre–internet, price stability, principal–agent problem, Project Xanadu, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Davenport, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, Two Sigma, two-sided market, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, yield management, zero day

Posting all documentation for the Ornua–Seychelles Trading transaction on the blockchain reduced a seven-day process to four hours. In June of 2016 the Republic of Georgia announced a project in conjunction with economist Hernando de Soto to design and pilot a blockchain-based system for land title registry in the country. It is expected that moving elements of the process onto the blockchain can reduce costs for homeowners and other users, while also reducing possibilities for corruption (since the land records, like everything else on the blockchain, will be unalterable). Why Not Get Smart about Contracts? As it became apparent that the blockchain could be used to record all kinds of transactions, not just those related to Bitcoins, it also became clear to some that a distributed ledger was the ideal home for digital “smart contracts.”

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utm_term=.80e5d64087d2. 287 James Howells: “James Howells Searches for Hard Drive with £4m-Worth of Bitcoins Stored,” BBC News, November 28, 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289. 288 rising to a high of over $1,100 in November 2013: Blockchain, “BTC to USD: Bitcoin to US Dollar Market Price,” accessed February 8, 2017, https://blockchain.info/charts/market-price. 289 University of Nicosia: University of Nicosia, “Academic Certificates on the Blockchain,” accessed February 8, 2017, http://digitalcurrency.unic.ac.cy/free-introductory-mooc/academic-certificates-on-the-blockchain. 289 Holberton School of Software Engineering: Rebecca Campbell, “Holberton School Begins Tracking Student Academic Credentials on the Bitcoin Blockchain,” Nasdaq, May 18, 2016, http://www.nasdaq.com/article/holberton-school-begins-tracking-student-academic-credentials-on-the-bitcoin-blockchain-cm623162#ixzz4Y8MUWUu2. 289 Kimberley Process: James Melik, “Diamonds: Does the Kimberley Process Work?”

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c=131091&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2056957. 290 In March of 2016: Overstock.com, “Overstock.com Announces Historic Blockchain Public Offering,” March 16, 2016, http://investors.overstock.com/mobile.view?c=131091&v=203&d=1&id=2148979. 291 reducing settlement risk exposure by over 90%: Nasdaq, “Nasdaq Linq Enables First-Ever Private Securities Issuance Documented with Blockchain Technology,” December 30, 2015, http://ir.nasdaq.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=948326. 291 When Ornua, an Irish agricultural food company: Jemima Kelly, “Barclays Says Conducts First Blockchain-Based Trade-Finance Deal,” Reuters, September 7, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-banks-barclays-blockchain-idUSKCN11D23B. 294 “A broad statement of the key idea”: Nick Szabo, “Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets,” Alamut, 1996, http://www.alamut.com/subj/economics/nick_szabo/smartContracts.html. 295 “a decentralized platform”: Ethereum, accessed February 8, 2017, https://www.ethereum.org. 295 In a 2012 onstage conversation: The Well, “Topic 459: State of the World 2013: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky,” accessed February 8, 2017, http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/459/State-of-the-World-2013-Bruce-St-page01.html. 296 “What will the world that they create look like?”

pages: 237 words: 67,154

Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism, a New Vision for the Future of Work and a Fairer Internet by Trebor Scholz, Nathan Schneider

1960s counterculture, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Build a better mousetrap, Burning Man, business logic, capital controls, circular economy, citizen journalism, collaborative economy, collaborative editing, collective bargaining, commoditize, commons-based peer production, conceptual framework, content marketing, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Debian, decentralized internet, deskilling, disintermediation, distributed ledger, driverless car, emotional labour, end-to-end encryption, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, food desert, future of work, gig economy, Google bus, hiring and firing, holacracy, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, low skilled workers, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, minimum viable product, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, openstreetmap, peer-to-peer, planned obsolescence, post-work, profit maximization, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, remunicipalization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rochdale Principles, SETI@home, shareholder value, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, Snapchat, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, workplace surveillance , Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

These are essentially self-organized online commons. A DCO could use blockchain technology to give its members specified rights within the organization, which could be managed and guaranteed by the blockchain. These rights, in turn, could be linked to the conventional legal system to make the rights legally cognizable and enforceable. One rudimentary example of how the blockchain might be used to facilitate a commons: In the United States, former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt has proposed using blockchain technology to create distributed networks of solar power on residential houses coordinated as commons.

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Very quickly, it seems, distributed ledger technologies have made their way into any project broadly related to social or political transformation for the left—“put a blockchain on it!”—until its mention, sooner or later, looks like the basis for a dangerous drinking game. On the other side of things, poking fun at blockchain evangelism is now a nerdy pastime, more enjoyable even than ridiculing handlebar moustaches and fixie bicycles. So let me show my hand. I’m interested in the blockchain (or blockchain-based technologies) as one tool that, in a very pragmatic way, could assist with cooperative activities—helping us to share resources, to arbitrate, adjudicate, disambiguate, and make collective decisions.

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This can create the sense that technical fixes like the blockchain are part of some broader shift to a post-capitalist society, when this shift has not taken place. Indeed, the blockchain applications that are really gaining traction are those developed by large banks in collaboration with tech startups—applications to build private blockchains for greater asset management or automatic credit clearing between banks, or to allow cultural industries to combat piracy in a distributed network and manage the sale and ownership of digital goods more efficiently. While technical tools such as the blockchain might form part of a broader artillery for platform cooperativism, we also need to have a little perspective.

pages: 501 words: 114,888

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

Or, at least, until blockchain came along. With blockchain, since trust is built into the system, the system is no longer necessary. Take a stock trade. Right now, to execute that trade, there’s a buyer, a seller, a series of banks that hold their money, the stock exchange itself, clearinghouses, etc.—roughly, ten different intermediaries. Blockchain removes everyone but the buyer and seller. The technology does the rest. In an attempt to hold on to their thinning slice of the pie, every major bank is rushing into blockchain. Yet arguably moving faster are the thousands of entrepreneurs using blockchain to disrupt these same banks.

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See: https://www.alizila.com/how-alipay-users-planted-100m-trees-in-china/. R3: See: https://www.r3.com/. Ripple: See: https://www.ripple.com/. these companies are using blockchain to replace the SWIFT network: The blockchain blog Cointelegraph has a good piece overviewing SWIFT’s relationship to blockchain. You can find the piece here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/swift-announces-poc-gateway-with-r3-but-remains-overall-hesitant-about-blockchain. 4 billion people, the rising billions, will gain access to the internet: The world population is expected to reach 8.2 billion by 2025, as projected by the United Nations Population Division.

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If you can satisfy it, everything else improves: health, wellness, income, education levels for children. 3-D printing is an incredible tool for fighting poverty. It’s up to us to use it.” Blockchain In the short time it’s been around, the blockchain has accrued some wonderfully colorful monikers. It’s been called the exponential technology of record keeping, the sexiest accounting solution in the history of the world, and the end of government as we know it. In simpler terms, blockchain is an enabling technology, one that began its life by enabling digital currency. Digital currencies, or the notion that we can use ones and zeroes to replace dollars and cents, were first proposed in 1983.

pages: 391 words: 123,597

Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower's Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again by Brittany Kaiser

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Asian financial crisis, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Burning Man, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Carl Icahn, centre right, Chelsea Manning, clean water, cognitive dissonance, crony capitalism, dark pattern, data science, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Etonian, fake news, haute couture, illegal immigration, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Nelson Mandela, off grid, open borders, public intellectual, Renaissance Technologies, Robert Mercer, rolodex, Russian election interference, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Bannon, subprime mortgage crisis, TED Talk, the High Line, the scientific method, WeWork, WikiLeaks, you are the product, young professional

We did, and within the first twelve hours on land, we met many of the top people in the industry, most notably, Craig Sellars, one of the founders of Tether, the first stable coin pegged to the U.S. dollar; and Matt McKibbin, cofounder of both D10E, a blockchain conference series, and DecentraNet, one of the first blockchain advisory firms. We also met a slew of fascinating people involved in everything from blockchain-funded space projects to digital banking services for the unbanked rural populations. Chester and I walked away from the experience on a high. The potential in the field was vast, but even more invigorating was how blockchain seemed to represent the perfect off-ramp for my time at Cambridge. Tech-driven, built around ideas of data security, it was an ideal next step, an act of both personal and professional penance.

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The technology to digitize both money and governance could be the greatest innovation to come out of tech in decades, but because it was a threat to governments and banks around the world, and given that the audience in Davos comprised the world’s wealthiest people and top government officials, we had to get this one right. Between Matt’s contacts in the blockchain industry, my own, and Chester’s contacts around the world, we’d been able to put together a weeklong event called “CryptoHQ,” featuring panels, keynote addresses, and social gatherings of entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Guests included U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin (one of the officials in charge of blockchain policy for the U.S. government); the CEOs of many of the top blockchain companies at the time; mixed with powerful policy leaders such as the head of the European Commission’s FinTech and blockchain strategy. In Davos, Matt and I cochaired the conference with his colleagues from DecentraNet, and we ran the events out of our CryptoHQ “Blockchain Lounge,” a massive three-story affair with a restaurant, après-ski bar, and conference venue, set up on Promenade 67, the main street running through the middle of the World Economic Forum.

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My last trip there had been back in February, for a breakfast meeting with officials from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Federal Reserve, to discuss blockchain policy, the catalyst for the launch of Digital Asset Trade Association (DATA), the first blockchain lobbying organization. DATA had already helped pass eight new laws over the past few months in the State of Wyoming by putting boots on the ground in the State Congress, following the lead of the fierce expert Caitlin Long and the hardworking people of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition. DATA was also working with legislators across the country to implement other laws and regulations for the greater good—what I like to call “blockchain-positive laws” to differentiate them from legislation that hampers innovation, such as New York State’s BitLicense.

pages: 275 words: 84,980

Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin: From Money That We Understand to Money That Understands Us (Perspectives) by David Birch

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, business cycle, capital controls, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clockwork universe, creative destruction, credit crunch, cross-border payments, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, dematerialisation, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, double entry bookkeeping, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial innovation, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, index card, informal economy, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of the telegraph, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, Irish bank strikes, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, land bank, large denomination, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, new economy, Northern Rock, Pingit, prediction markets, price stability, QR code, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social graph, special drawing rights, Suez canal 1869, technoutopianism, The future is already here, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs, tulip mania, wage slave, Washington Consensus, wikimedia commons

And let’s have no limit on the number of different currencies that the banking system’s ledger might hold. Here comes the blockchain What might that ledger look like? The emerging consensus, at least in the finance sector, seems to be that the technology behind Bitcoin, the blockchain, will disrupt the sector (Raymaekers 2015), although many commentators are not at all clear how (or, indeed, why). Melanie Swan posits that even if all of the infrastructure developed by the blockchain industry were to disappear, its legacy could persist (Swan 2015). This is because the blockchain has provided new larger-scale ideas about how to organize financial services and, as Swan and other observers have noted, there is a very strong case for decentralized models.

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She is surely right to say that ‘decentralisation is an idea whose time is come’, and to identify the Internet as a new cultural technology that admits techniques such as shared ledgers. The blockchain is, as I have mentioned, only one kind of such a shared ledger, and the Bitcoin blockchain works in a very specific way. This may not be the best way to organize shared ledgers for disruptive innovation and it may not, in my opinion, point towards where the disruptive influence of shared ledger technology will deliver its biggest benefits to society. Shared ledgers Interest in shared ledger technology has been rekindled as interest in the blockchain has grown. The blockchain is the specific distributed shared ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin (Wood and Buchanan 2015), and it can be seen as a consensus database that everybody can copy and access but, by clever design, not subvert: a permanent record of transactions that no one can go back and change.

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The blockchain is the specific distributed shared ledger technology that underpins Bitcoin (Wood and Buchanan 2015), and it can be seen as a consensus database that everybody can copy and access but, by clever design, not subvert: a permanent record of transactions that no one can go back and change. The key characteristics of this blockchain that make it a special kind of shared ledger – and that are particularly appealing to developers and to its proponents – are that it is distributed, decentralized, public or transparent, time-stamped, persistent and verifiable (DuPont and Maurer 2015). However, the blockchain is just one kind of shared ledger. Let us put the blockchain to one side for a moment and build up a view of shared ledger technology that will both locate the blockchain in the right context and inform interaction between technologists and financial services imagineers.

pages: 200 words: 47,378

The Internet of Money by Andreas M. Antonopoulos

AltaVista, altcoin, bitcoin, blockchain, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, Dogecoin, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global reserve currency, information security, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, Marc Andreessen, Oculus Rift, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, QR code, ransomware, reserve currency, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, the medium is the message, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, underbanked, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

What they fail to grasp is that this medium is not just for the trivial; it spans the entire range of transactional expression from the trivial to the enormous. "The blockchain can encompass the entire range of transactional expression, from the 10-cent tweet to the $100 billion debt settlement." One day, a country will pay its oil bill on the blockchain. One day, you might buy a multinational company on the blockchain. One day, you might sell an aircraft carrier, hopefully for scrap metal, on the blockchain. The blockchain can encompass the entire range, from the 10-cent tweet to the $100 billion debt settlement. We just haven’t noticed yet.

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I want to sit at my kitchen table every Sunday and balance my checkbook and make sure none of my checks bounced. I don’t like all of this electronic instantaneous global transfer. It scares me,” we can slow it down. This infrastructure inversion will allow us to comfortably run traditional banking applications on top of a distributed global ledger — an open blockchain like bitcoin, the open blockchain, probably bitcoin’s open blockchain and simultaneously open the door for other applications, for applications we’ve never seen before. These new applications will look different from traditional banking. As different as a Segway or skateboard looks to those committed to traditional horse-carriages.

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We’ve taken the transaction, which is just 250 bytes, and we’ve separated it from the transport medium, so it doesn’t depend on any underlying security. We’ve made it stand alone so that it can be independently verified by any node that has a full copy of the blockchain. Independently verified as spendable, authentic, and properly signed by any system that has a full copy of the blockchain—in fact, even by systems that only have a partial copy of the blockchain. That transaction can be verified in seconds. All it has to do is reach one node in the network that can talk to miners. That’s it. Once it’s injected into the bitcoin network and once it propagates, you can be almost certain that the transaction will be included eventually and will become valid.

pages: 364 words: 99,897

The Industries of the Future by Alec Ross

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, AltaVista, Anne Wojcicki, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Madoff, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, connected car, corporate governance, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disintermediation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fiat currency, future of work, General Motors Futurama, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, Gregor Mendel, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lifelogging, litecoin, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Nelson Mandela, new economy, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open economy, Parag Khanna, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, precision agriculture, pre–internet, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Satoshi Nakamoto, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social graph, software as a service, special economic zone, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, Travis Kalanick, underbanked, unit 8200, Vernor Vinge, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator, young professional

Bitcoin’s answer to all these questions, and its method for establishing a genuine breakthrough in digital trust, is a cryptographic invention called the blockchain. At its core, the blockchain is the big ledger on which all transactions are logged. And every single transaction going back to the very first Bitcoin payment is recorded on the blockchain, though they’re logged anonymously or pseudo-anonymously. One of the blockchain’s key characteristics is that it is public, and instead of being stored at one central location, it is distributed to every Bitcoin user. By making everything public, the blockchain reduces the possibility of fraud drastically, because you can’t counterfeit the existence of property in public view.

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When Bitcoin was still obscure enough to go largely unnoticed, these dark websites had a brief heyday, but law enforcement agencies have thoroughly penetrated this world and, if anything, Bitcoin has made their work easier. Although the blockchain keeps personal identities secret behind cryptographic code, in order to access the blockchain, people must leave digital footprints that law enforcement agencies know how to follow. THE BLOCKCHAIN AND THE ESTABLISHMENT Bitcoin initially pitted Silicon Valley against the establishment in government, on Wall Street, and among leading economists. However, much of that same establishment now sees blockchain technology as a technological solution to many high-cost transactions. Economists from the left and right, investment bankers, and government officials questioned its value and often its legality.

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Gox was forced to shut down. As the Mt. Gox episode shows, the real security threat to Bitcoin is not the security of the blockchain but the infrastructure around it. In my professional circles, when many people think of Bitcoin, they think of hacking. And while Bitcoin advocates are technically correct when they say that the Bitcoin blockchain has never been compromised, when what you use to buy, store, and transfer bitcoins is compromised, it feels like a distinction without meaning. For all the strength of the blockchain, Bitcoin still needs an enabling ecosystem including trading platforms, payment systems, and pricing indexes to function smoothly and create the level of confidence necessary for high-trust transactions.

pages: 179 words: 43,441

The Fourth Industrial Revolution by Klaus Schwab

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, circular economy, clean water, collaborative consumption, commoditize, conceptual framework, continuous integration, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, digital divide, digital twin, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, future of work, global value chain, Google Glasses, hype cycle, income inequality, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, life extension, Lyft, Marc Benioﬀ, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, Narrative Science, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear taboo, OpenAI, personalized medicine, precariat, precision agriculture, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, reshoring, RFID, rising living standards, Sam Altman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social contagion, software as a service, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Future of Employment, The Spirit Level, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, working-age population, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Positive impacts – Increased financial inclusion in emerging markets, as financial services on the blockchain gain critical mass – Disintermediation of financial institutions, as new services and value exchanges are created directly on the blockchain – An explosion in tradable assets, as all kinds of value exchange can be hosted on the blockchain – Better property records in emerging markets, and the ability to make everything a tradable asset – Contacts and legal services increasingly tied to code linked to the blockchain, to be used as unbreakable escrow or programmatically designed smart contracts – Increased transparency, as the blockchain is essentially a global ledger storing all transactions The shift in action Smartcontracts.com provides programmable contracts that do payouts between two parties once certain criteria have been met, without involving a middleman.

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In “The Robot Reality: Service Jobs Are Next to Go”, Blaire Briody, 26 March 2013, The Fiscal Times, http://www.cnbc.com/id/100592545 Shift 16: Bitcoin and the Blockchain The tipping point: 10% of global gross domestic product (GDP) stored on blockchain technology By 2025: 58% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred Bitcoin and digital currencies are based on the idea of a distributed trust mechanism called the “blockchain”, a way of keeping track of trusted transactions in a distributed fashion. Currently, the total worth of bitcoin in the blockchain is around $20 billion, or about 0.025% of global GDP of around $80 trillion. Positive impacts – Increased financial inclusion in emerging markets, as financial services on the blockchain gain critical mass – Disintermediation of financial institutions, as new services and value exchanges are created directly on the blockchain – An explosion in tradable assets, as all kinds of value exchange can be hosted on the blockchain – Better property records in emerging markets, and the ability to make everything a tradable asset – Contacts and legal services increasingly tied to code linked to the blockchain, to be used as unbreakable escrow or programmatically designed smart contracts – Increased transparency, as the blockchain is essentially a global ledger storing all transactions The shift in action Smartcontracts.com provides programmable contracts that do payouts between two parties once certain criteria have been met, without involving a middleman.

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(Airbnb) – The largest provider of transportation doesn’t own a single car? (Uber) Shift 18: Governments and the Blockchain The tipping point: Tax collected for the first time by a government via a blockchain By 2025: 73% of respondents expected this tipping point to have occurred The blockchain creates both opportunities and challenges for countries. On the one hand, it is unregulated and not overseen by any central bank, meaning less control over monetary policy. On the other hand, it creates the ability for new taxing mechanisms to be built into the blockchain itself (e.g. a small transaction tax). Unknown impacts, or cut both ways – Central banks and monetary policy – Corruption – Real-time taxation – Role of government The shift in action In 2015, the first virtual nation, BitNation, was created using blockchain as the foundation identification technology for citizen’s identity cards.

Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World by Jeffrey Tucker

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, altcoin, anti-fragile, bank run, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Dogecoin, driverless car, Fractional reserve banking, George Gilder, Google Hangouts, informal economy, invisible hand, Kickstarter, litecoin, Lyft, Money creation, obamacare, Occupy movement, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, public intellectual, QR code, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, the payments system, uber lyft

The applications of these P2P networks are enormously surprising. The biggest surprise in my own lifetime is how they have been employed to make payment systems P2P—no longer based on third-party trust—through what’s called the blockchain. The blockchain can commodify and title any bundle of information and make it transferable, with timestamps, in a way that cannot be forged, all at nearly zero cost. An offshoot of blockchain-distributed technology has been the invention of a private currency. For half a century, it has been a dream of theorists who saw that taking money out of government hands would do more for prosperity and peace than any single other step.

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At the conference Coins in the Kingdom, a bitcoin event held at Disney World, I was honored to officiate at the first-ever marriage done on the blockchain. The blockchain is the fantastic digital innovation that provides not only a ledger for the currency unit bitcoin but also an indestructible public record of verified contracts with timestamps. It works without any public authority—or any third party at all. This wedding between my new friends, David Mondrus and Joyce Bayo, was recorded on the blockchain. They “burned” exactly 0.1 bitcoin through a CoinOutlet bitcoin ATM right there in front of all the witnesses. The transaction permits secure messaging, which, in this case, will be the wedding vows themselves, which were then permanently available for the world to see.

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It was released as a distributed technology free for the whole world to use. Five years ago, very few people outside the computer-code community took notice. Those who did take notice doubted the promise of bitcoin’s future. After all, nothing like this had ever existed. Now the blockchain processes up to 100K transactions per day and is being used to empower workers and companies around the world. And even so, we may be just at the beginnings of this shift. Blockchain technology is not just a money; it is a means of bundling, porting, and verifying commodified information of all sorts, including titles, contracts, wills, and more. Ultimately, the cryptorevolution is about parties exchanging value without needing central institutions to mediate their exchanges.

Data and the City by Rob Kitchin,Tracey P. Lauriault,Gavin McArdle

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, algorithmic management, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, complexity theory, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, create, read, update, delete, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, dematerialisation, digital divide, digital map, digital rights, distributed ledger, Evgeny Morozov, fault tolerance, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, floating exchange rates, folksonomy, functional programming, global value chain, Google Earth, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Internet of things, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, linked data, loose coupling, machine readable, new economy, New Urbanism, Nicholas Carr, nowcasting, open economy, openstreetmap, OSI model, packet switching, pattern recognition, performance metric, place-making, power law, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, semantic web, sentiment analysis, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, software studies, statistical model, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, technological solutionism, text mining, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, the market place, the medium is the message, the scientific method, Toyota Production System, urban planning, urban sprawl, web application

An alternative and emerging form of data infrastructure for city dashboards and services are blockchains. Blockchains are sealed and encrypted distributed ledgers of all transactions ever conducted within a system. Each block records key metadata regarding a transaction such as information about sender and receiver, time, value, fees and IP address, and once recorded cannot be altered, thus creating trust. Each block adds to the sequence of transactions forming a chain that leads back to the start of the database. While blockchains are most commonly associated with new financial currencies such as Bitcoin, Chris Speed, Deborah Maxwell and Larissa Pschetz examine their utility for recording and sharing other kinds of transactions.

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While blockchains are most commonly associated with new financial currencies such as Bitcoin, Chris Speed, Deborah Maxwell and Larissa Pschetz examine their utility for recording and sharing other kinds of transactions. To illustrate how blockchains work as economic, social and cognitive ledgers they discuss their use with regards to finance and work. They then detail the development of two prototype city ledgers produced in a design workshop that utilize Bitcoin technology demonstrating how blockchains offer opportunities to capture diverse social practices and transactions in city ledgers. They contend that the blockchain has the potential to create trusted city ledgers (databases), and thus trusted city dashboards, and provide the foundation for dealing with complexity and predicting future outcomes.

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By reflecting on the role of ledgers across different forms, this formative chapter establishes the complexity of capturing and producing data across a myriad of social practices using linear systems. 142 C. Speed, D. Maxwell and L. Pschetz Ledger 1: money, time and the blockchain There are many elements that make Bitcoin an interesting alternative currency, but critically it is the development and implementation of the blockchain – a distributed ledger that contains all transaction records ever conducted. The Bitcoin blockchain is an encrypted, cumulative ledger composed of ‘blocks’ of transactions that are verified by miners and which lead back to the first ‘Genesis’ block whose instance is timed as 18:15:05 GMT, on 3 January 2009, signifying the start of the currency.

pages: 533

Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech by Jamie Susskind

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Robotics, Andrew Keen, Apollo Guidance Computer, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business process, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, computer age, computer vision, continuation of politics by other means, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital divide, digital map, disinformation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, Future Shock, Gabriella Coleman, Google bus, Google X / Alphabet X, Googley, industrial robot, informal economy, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, machine translation, Metcalfe’s law, mittelstand, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, night-watchman state, Oculus Rift, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, payday loans, Philippa Foot, post-truth, power law, price discrimination, price mechanism, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Mercer, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selection bias, self-driving car, sexual politics, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, tech bro, technological determinism, technological singularity, technological solutionism, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas L Friedman, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, universal basic income, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, work culture , working-age population, Yochai Benkler

See Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (New Haven and London:Yale University Press, 2006) and The Penguin and the Leviathan: How Cooperation Triumphs over Self-Interest (New York: Crown Publishing, 2011). 24. Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin is Changing Money, Business and the World (London: Portfolio Penguin, 2016), 7. 25. Tapscott and Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution, 16. 26. Tapscott and Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution, 153–4; Stan Higgins, ‘IBM Invests $200 Million in Blockchain-Powered IoT’, CoinDesk, 4 October 2016 <https://www.coindesk.com/ibm-blockchain-iotoffice/> (accessed 30 November 2017). 27. Melanie Swan, Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2015), 14. 28. Economist, ‘Not-so-clever Contracts’, 28 July 2016 <http://www. economist.com/news/business/21702758-time-being-leasthuman-judgment-still-better-bet-cold-hearted?

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A ‘smart contract’, for instance, is a piece of blockchain software that executes itself automatically under pre-agreed circumstances— like a purchase agreement which automatically transfers the ownership title of a car to a customer once all loan payments have been made.27 There are early ‘Decentralised Autonomous Organisations’ (DAOs) that seek to solve problems of collective action without a centralized power structure.28 Imagine services like Uber or Airbnb, but without any formal organization at the centre pulling the strings.29 The developers of the Ethereum blockchain, among others, have said they want to use DAOs to replace the state altogether. Blockchain still presents serious challenges of scale, governance, and even security, which are yet to be overcome.30 Yet for a youthful technology it is already delivering some interesting results. The governments of Honduras, Georgia, and Sweden are trialling the use of blockchain to handle land titles,31 and the government of Estonia is using it to record more than 1 million patient health records.32 In the UK, the Department for Work and Pensions is piloting a blockchain solution for the payment of welfare benefits.33 In the US, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking into using blockchain technology to protect its military networks and communications.34 Increasingly connective technology is not just about people connecting with other people.

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Schwab, Klaus, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016), 19; Laura Shin, ‘The First Government to Secure Land Titles on the Bitcoin Blockchain Expands Project’, Forbes, 7 February 2017 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/ 2017/02/07/the-first-government-to-secure-land-titles-onthe-bitcoin-blockchain-expands-project/#432b8b494dcd> (accessed 30 November 2017); Joon Ian Wong, ‘Sweden’s Block chain-powered Land Registry is Inching Towards Reality’, Quartz Media, 3 April 2017 <https://qz.com/947064/sweden-is-turninga-blockchain-powered-land-registry-into-a-reality/> (accessed 30 November 2017). Daniel Palmer, ‘Blockchain Startup to Secure 1 Million e-Health Records in Estonia’, CoinDesk, 3 March 2016 <http://www.coindesk. com/blockchain-startup-aims-to-secure-1-million-estonian-healthrecords/> (accessed 30 November 2017).

pages: 170 words: 49,193

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It) by Jamie Bartlett

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, central bank independence, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, computer vision, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, future of work, general purpose technology, gig economy, global village, Google bus, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, information retrieval, initial coin offering, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Gilmore, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mittelstand, move fast and break things, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, off grid, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, payday loans, Peter Thiel, post-truth, prediction markets, QR code, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Renaissance Technologies, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Ross Ulbricht, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart cities, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, Stanford prison experiment, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, strong AI, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, the long tail, the medium is the message, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, too big to fail, ultimatum game, universal basic income, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y Combinator, you are the product

If you’ve ever read that bitcoin is ‘anonymous’, that’s not strictly true, because of this database record. However, even though the blockchain records the transactions, there is no link to the identity of the people behind them, which is why some writers prefer to call it ‘pseudonymous’. A simple way to put it is: the blockchain is a massive, distributed, tamper-proof database that anyone can add to but no one can delete. Bitcoin’s blockchain was designed to store financial transactions, but it can hold other information, too. In fact, a new wave of blockchains allow complicated code to be stored. This could be as revolutionary as the internet itself, because it represents a way to store information in a far more decentralised way.

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Although Silk Road was eventually shut down, there are now several other dark net markets, where stolen personal data, narcotics and child abuse images can be bought and sold, Amazon-style. Let’s imagine a blockchain-based social media platform (there are already versions of this, like Mastodon, which is on the normal net), in which posts are simultaneously hosted on multiple decentralised blockchain databases. Facebook runs on servers that sit in massive data centres controlled by the company – meaning that it can delete or edit what its users see. A blockchain social media platform would be untouchable – no government would be able to edit or remove hate-speech, illegal images or terror propaganda, unless the whole network was somehow vaporised. Blockchain advocates hate ‘middle men’.

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Similarly, powerful AI used in the public interest could yield remarkable benefits in health research, spending decisions, intelligence, strategy and much more. Beyond that, technology like blockchain could dramatically improve how people can hold their governments to account. Central and local governments should explore ways to use blockchains to improve the functions of democracy. For example, we’re used to governments making regular spending pledges at election time, which then simply evaporate. Blockchain-based accounting and contracts could help connect pledges with actual outputs – transforming how the public can track the way our taxes are spent. The UK Government should investigate whether blockchain-based identity systems – whether for land ownership, health records or passports – could improve citizen data security and efficiency, without the government accruing too much power.4 There are many exciting new ways to involve people more in political decision-making too, including secure online voting; but these need to be adopted cautiously – votes every week on every subject is a bad idea

pages: 302 words: 95,965

How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs by Tim Draper

3D printing, Airbnb, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, business climate, carried interest, connected car, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deal flow, Deng Xiaoping, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, family office, fiat currency, frictionless, frictionless market, growth hacking, high net worth, hiring and firing, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Larry Ellison, low earth orbit, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Metcalfe's law, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minecraft, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pez dispenser, Ralph Waldo Emerson, risk tolerance, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, school choice, school vouchers, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Tesla Model S, Twitter Arab Spring, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

The technology behind Bitcoin is called the blockchain. The blockchain also has some amazing potential. It can be thought of as a giant ledger, keeping track of money, data, inventory, contracts, etc. “Smart” contracts can be designed such that they anticipate eventualities and automatically distribute appropriately. And corporations can use the blockchain to automatically pay employees their wages and benefits, pay shareholders their dividends, and pay noteholders their interest and principal payments, all with precise accuracy and automated accounting. Furthermore, companies can use the blockchain to pay their suppliers and receive money from their customers, handling lay away payment plans and warranties without friction or human influence.

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And the US government (and other governments) can manage social security, welfare, Medicare, worker’s comp, disability and all their data verification of citizens and businesses with Bitcoin and the blockchain, since blockchain is the perfect government service employee. It is honest, incorruptible, secure, and fair. Bitcoin and its underlying technology, the blockchain, are changes that allow us to progress. But change is difficult for those people who don’t have the spark of a Startup Hero in their eyes, and many industries will have to go through fundamental changes to adapt to the advent of this new way of thinking. People will have to learn that the bank, being the trusted third party for centuries, will soon be replaced by computers that now monitor their holdings through the blockchain.

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Banks will have to adapt their services as the need for trusted third parties and financial middlemen are eclipsed by a trusted crowd of blockchain monitors. The blockchain, being a perfect ledger, may change the accountant’s role to one of advisor, and smart contracts may change what it means to be a corporate lawyer. People will not need to hoard gold or hard currency since Bitcoin is a far more convenient source for stored value. Governments may recognize that their fiat currencies are inferior to virtual currencies and will have to allow more financial freedom to their citizens or risk losing those citizens. Taxing authorities and welfare service providers may be replaced by blockchain tax redistribution engines and welfare insurance wallets.

pages: 366 words: 94,209

Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Keen, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business process, buy and hold, buy low sell high, California gold rush, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, centralized clearinghouse, citizen journalism, clean water, cloud computing, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, colonial exploitation, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate personhood, corporate raider, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disintermediation, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, Firefox, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, gamification, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global village, Google bus, Howard Rheingold, IBM and the Holocaust, impulse control, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, low interest rates, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, medical bankruptcy, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, power law, profit motive, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, recommendation engine, reserve currency, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social graph, software patent, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, TaskRabbit, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Future of Employment, the long tail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transportation-network company, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, unpaid internship, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, Y Combinator, young professional, zero-sum game, Zipcar

This is a money system that works through protocols—digital handshakes between peers—instead of establishing security through central authorities. Bitcoin is based on a database known as the “blockchain.” The blockchain is a public ledger of every bitcoin transaction ever. It doesn’t sit on a server at a bank or in the basement of a credit-card company’s headquarters; it lives on the computers of everyone in the Bitcoin network. When bitcoins are transacted, an algorithm corresponding to that transaction is “published” to the blockchain. The algorithm is just a description of the transaction itself, as in “2 bitcoins came from A and went to B.” Instead of a list of users and their bitcoin balances, the ledger simply lists the transactions in chronological order.

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Additionally, it is verified by an anonymous peer group, then encrypted so that only those involved in the specific transaction know who participated. This has applications well beyond bitcoins.41 The blockchain can “notarize” and record anything we choose, not just the cash transactions between Bitcoin users. Entire companies can be organized on blockchains, which can authenticate everything from contracts to compensation. Decentralized autonomous corporations, or DACs, for example, are a fast-growing category of businesses that depend on a collectively computed blockchain to determine how shares are distributed. To count as a true DAC, a company must be an open-source endeavor whose operation occurs without the supervision of a single guiding body, such as a board or a CEO.* Instead, a project’s governing rules and mission must emerge from consensus.

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Project workers are compensated for their labor or capital investment with shares in the blockchain, which increase in number as the project develops.42 We can think of DACs as companies whose stock is issued little by little as the company grows from a mere business plan into a sustainable enterprise. Only individuals who create value for the company are awarded new stock proportionate to their contributions.43 Fittingly, the majority of DACs currently sell blockchain-related services themselves. By committing to the blockchain for their own governance and share distribution, DACs lend credibility to the technologies they are selling.

pages: 316 words: 117,228

The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor

Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, digital rights, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, global reserve currency, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, income inequality, initial coin offering, intangible asset, investor state dispute settlement, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, land reform, land tenure, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, means of production, money market fund, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, power law, price mechanism, price stability, profit maximization, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Satoshi Nakamoto, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, software patent, sovereign wealth fund, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, time value of money, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Wolfgang Streeck

Some advances in digital technology, however, have created the possibility of decentralized governance, most prominently among them, blockchain technology. A blockchain is a tamper-proof ledger that contains a complete history of all state changes in transactions that take place on it.2 Smart contracts are pieces of code set to execute on the blockchain. Since every action on the blockchain is recorded automatically, blockchain-based smart contracts create an unprecedented level of granularity, completeness, and trustworthiness in the data gathered. A blockchain typically can only be written onto; it cannot be modified. Because they do not allow parties to back out from existing commitments, smart contracts that are written on blockchain create even more binding commitments than do legal contracts.

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For an excellent summary of Minsky’s thinking of how to stabilize an inherently instable financial system, see Mehrling, “Minsky and Modern Finance.” 274 n ote s to c h a P te r 9 47. Described by De Filippi and Wright, Blockchain and the Law, at Loc. 449 (Kindle edition). 48. Gerard, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contract (Creative Commons, 2017) at Loc 202 (Kindle edition). 49. De Filippi and Wright, Blockchain and the Law, at Loc. 800 (Kindle edition). 50. See also Desan, Making Money, who argues that money is grounded in constitutional law. 51. Mark J. Flannery, “Contingent Capital Instruments for Large Financial Institutions,” Annual Review of Financial Economics 6 (2014):225–240. 52.

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Because they do not allow parties to back out from existing commitments, smart contracts that are written on blockchain create even more binding commitments than do legal contracts. By transacting through blockchain-based smart contracts, participants agree to a set of coded rules that are enforced by deterministic computers. As a result, there will no longer be any need for state power or state law and the world may at long last become as flat as many economists have long imagined it to be. When the digital code replaces the legal code, the commitments we make to one another become hardwired, and even the powerful cannot simply wiggle out of them.

pages: 324 words: 89,875

Modern Monopolies: What It Takes to Dominate the 21st Century Economy by Alex Moazed, Nicholas L. Johnson

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, commoditize, connected car, disintermediation, driverless car, fake it until you make it, future of work, gig economy, hockey-stick growth, if you build it, they will come, information asymmetry, Infrastructure as a Service, intangible asset, Internet of things, invisible hand, jimmy wales, John Gruber, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Metcalfe’s law, money market fund, multi-sided market, Network effects, PalmPilot, patent troll, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, platform as a service, power law, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, road to serfdom, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social graph, software as a service, software is eating the world, source of truth, Startup school, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, the medium is the message, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, white flight, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator

But the blockchain could be the wedge that cracks open the overly concentrated financial sector. Because Bitcoin allows developers to build on top of the blockchain protocol, it enables countless new uses of the underlying technology. Just as Apple’s iOS platform created a world where “there’s an app for that,” we may soon be in a world where “there’s a Bitcoin app for that.” Today, there’s an enormous ecosystem of blockchain-based startups that are building new applications tapping into Bitcoin’s blockchain as a way of verifying transactions. But these startups also put the blockchain to radically new uses.

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However, that doesn’t mean Bitcoin doesn’t have revolutionary potential. Bitcoin the currency is based on a technology called the blockchain, although the two terms are often used synonymously. The blockchain is a novel way of transferring a digital message from one party to another, where both parties can count on the integrity of the message—even if they don’t trust, or know, each other. Essentially, the blockchain is a ledger of transactions that keeps a record all previous transactions in one place. Each “block” in the blockchain requires a record of recent transactions as well as a string of letters and numbers (called a hash), which is produced using cryptographic algorithms.

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Given the large (and growing) number of bitcoin miners out there, this is currently a borderline impossible task. If one miner were to gain control of a significant portion of the network, the entire blockchain would be endangered. But thus far this hasn’t been a real threat. Currently, Bitcoin is by far the largest blockchain network. However, many others (often collectively referred to altcoins) make small alterations to the Bitcoin protocol to adapt it for other uses. But as the nature of the blockchain suggests, a larger blockchain network is a more useful and more secure one. As a result, at present, Bitcoin is effectively the only game in town. However, there are signs that this could change in the near future.

pages: 285 words: 86,853

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Charles Babbage, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Claude Shannon: information theory, commoditize, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, DeepMind, disruptive innovation, Donald Knuth, Donald Shoup, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, factory automation, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, Flash crash, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hacker Conference 1984, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Ian Bogost, industrial research laboratory, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Conway, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, lifelogging, Loebner Prize, lolcat, Lyft, machine readable, Mother of all demos, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, power law, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, ride hailing / ride sharing, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skinner box, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Coming Technological Singularity, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transaction costs, traveling salesman, Turing machine, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, wage slave

But Bitcoin’s second innovation is where we discover a new form of computational arbitrage, in the consensus-driven mechanism of the blockchain. The blockchain is the public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions in the history of the currency. It contains a detailed accounting of every transaction since the currency’s instantiation, a digital file that now exceeds 20 gigabytes in size and must be downloaded locally by every Bitcoin software client. The blockchain is the algorithm that implements the political critique of Bitcoin, a marvel of arbitrage that inverts the traditional relationship between privacy and transparency. Every transaction, every incremental unit of Bitcoin value, is traced through the blockchain, and each of those transactions is tied to one or more buyer and seller identities.

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The system will gradually taper the reward for completing new blocks to zero, thereby ceasing the creation of new Bitcoins entirely, once 21 million Bitcoins have been created.26 At that point, transaction fees alone will provide the incentive for Bitcoin users to dedicate their computers to endlessly updating the blockchain. Figure 5.1 The blockchain, a system for transparent, public accounting of Bitcoin transactions. I am dwelling on the details of this elaborate process for delivering financial consensus because Bitcoin is not simply a decentralized currency but a revaluation of commerce in algorithmic terms. Bitcoin’s true radicalism stems from the fact that the blockchain grounds its authority on collective computation as an intrinsic form of value. To understand this shift we need to consider Bitcoin in the context of the historical value propositions of capitalism.

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These different transaction announcements are bundled up into transaction blocks by Bitcoin “miners,” who then compete to assemble and validate these transactions against the extant communal history of the currency. The outcome of that labor is a new block for the blockchain. To do this, they must solve an arbitrary and highly complex math problem. The miner who is the first to correctly solve the problem “wins” that block. And there is a reward: the first transaction in each new block is a “generation transaction,” that creates a quantity of new Bitcoins (the number gradually decreases over time). The miner who solves the block earns this reward for throwing the most computational resources at assembling the latest block for the blockchain (figure 5.1). The miner also accepts a secondary reward by claiming a small transaction fee for processing these various trades (this fee gradually increases over time).

pages: 390 words: 109,870

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World by Jamie Bartlett

Andrew Keen, back-to-the-land, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, brain emulation, Californian Ideology, centre right, clean water, climate change refugee, cryptocurrency, digital rights, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, gig economy, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jaron Lanier, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, life extension, military-industrial complex, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, off grid, Overton Window, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, post-truth, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, QR code, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rosa Parks, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, systems thinking, technoutopianism, the long tail, Tragedy of the Commons

Every time someone sends a bitcoin as payment, a record of the transaction is timestamped to the microsecond, and stored in something called a ‘blockchain’ (each block representing about ten minutes’ worth of transactions). The blocks are ordered chronologically, and each includes a digital signature (a ‘hash’) of the previous block, which administers the ordering and guarantees that a new block can join the chain only if it starts from where the preceding one finishes. A copy of the blockchain—which is basically a record of every single transaction ever made—is kept by everyone who has installed the bitcoin software. To ensure everything is running as it should, the blockchain is constantly verified by the computers of certain key users who compete to crack a mathematical puzzle that allows them to officially verify the blocks are all in order (and in exchange they get to mint a small number of new bitcoins).

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Many people assume bitcoin to be completely decentralised, but if a miner, or a group of miners, controlled over half the computing power that works on verifying the transaction, it could feasibly force a change on the blockchain transaction list however it wished, create a fork of the blockchain, and all the other computers would start to work on the new version (the protocol is written so that all computers work from the longest blockchain). In bitcoin, a few large pools can register most of the new bitcoin blocks, which could push them to the 51 per cent threshold for mining power: which could result in a takeover. Indeed, in 2014 one mining rig took over 51 per cent of bitcoin’s hashing power for twelve straight hours.

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It wasn’t bitcoin itself that excited Susanne, but the way bitcoin stored information. It works because a copy of every transaction between users is stored on a public, chronologically ordered database, called the ‘blockchain’.18 A copy of that database is hosted on thousands of computers, and new transactions can only be added to that database once they’ve been verified by other computers that check them. The upshot is that it’s possible to add new transactions to the blockchain, but not edit, change or delete old ones. It’s like a magic spreadsheet: a massive, public, chronologically ordered, tamper-proof database that anyone can view and add to, but no one is in charge of it.

pages: 209 words: 53,236

The Scandal of Money by George Gilder

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decentralized internet, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Donald Trump, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Gilder, glass ceiling, guns versus butter model, Home mortgage interest deduction, impact investing, index fund, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, inflation targeting, informal economy, Innovator's Dilemma, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", Jeff Bezos, John Bogle, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, Law of Accelerating Returns, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage tax deduction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, OSI model, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, price stability, Productivity paradox, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, reserve currency, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, secular stagnation, seigniorage, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, smart grid, Solyndra, South China Sea, special drawing rights, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Turing machine, winner-take-all economy, yield curve, zero-sum game

As Moore’s Law improves the computer systems used to validate transactions and integrate them with the bitcoin blockchain, for example, the “proof of work” challenge in the algorithm becomes proportionately more difficult and the reward smaller. Bitcoin “miners” could gain their specified rewards, but they could not use their superfast devices to accelerate their own transactions or capture greater personal returns from them. Regardless of the evolution of computer technology, every group of transactions in the blockchain and every new issue of bitcoins would require a ten-minute span to verify and integrate, mine and mint.

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To the Austrian economics of subjectivity, time provides an objective foundation. In reaching for commodities in which to anchor his system of value, Ametrano should have ended with gold, with its intimate links to the irreversibility of time. In the end, a test of bitcoin or any other blockchain will be the price of gold. If in a mature bitcoin system the gold chain massively bifurcates from the blockchain, it will signify a disorientation of values. As in bitcoin itself, the majority of users will decide which branch bears economic truth.11 Since its creation in 2009, bitcoin’s price movements have been 80.4 percent correlated with the gold price.12 Bitcoin’s relatively tiny float has imparted much greater volatility.

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Fortunately such a payment system has already been invented. It is set to become a new facet of Internet infrastructure. It is called the bitcoin blockchain. It is already in place. It functions peer-to-peer without outside trusted third parties, and it follows Nick Szabo’s precursor, bitgold. Its value, like gold’s, is ultimately based on the scarcity of time. With automation it will become capable of micropayments. Even if bitcoin proves flawed, scores of companies are developing alternatives based on the essential blockchain innovation that can serve as a successful transactions layer for digital commerce. The existence of such a system would enable sellers on the Internet, such as content producers, to name their own prices and collect their funds directly.

pages: 241 words: 70,307

Leadership by Algorithm: Who Leads and Who Follows in the AI Era? by David de Cremer

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, AlphaGo, bitcoin, blockchain, business climate, business process, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, data is not the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fake news, future of work, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Norbert Wiener, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, race to the bottom, robotic process automation, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Stephen Hawking, The Future of Employment, Turing test, work culture , workplace surveillance , zero-sum game

Of specific interest to our discussion here is the finding that 86% of these executives believe that blockchain technology can be applied to the aspects of management that involve leading an organization. How could blockchain technology be used to achieve this goal? Let us first consider, what is blockchain? Blockchain is a distributed database composed of a chain of blocks in chronological sequence. Each block is a collection of data. Blockchain records data about past behaviors of individuals who are all participating within the same interconnected network. The technology behind blockchain thus builds a platform that holds a transparent and immutable record of past events relevant to all individuals within a shared network.

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This network could be a team, department or even the organization in its entirety. Transparency is created based on the history of interactions taking place within the network, which means that a blockchain should have the ability to make individual parties trust each other. Indeed, in 2015, The Economist put blockchain on its cover and called it “the trust machine”. Because of its supposed ability to create trust, it should be possible for blockchain to manage behavior within companies. The key element in blockchain’s supposed role as the trust builder is that it creates a risk-free environment. The past of every individual involved in the network is controlled and the risk of exploitation is therefore virtually zero.

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In light of this movement of algorithms into a role of managing (some may say monitoring) others, an interesting application in this area concerns the potential employment of blockchain technology to manage work relations in organizations. Blockchain is mostly known as the underlying technology of applications, such as Bitcoin. At the same time, the technology is also increasingly being seen as a way of changing how our companies work. One specific application that was pointed out in a recent Deloitte survey is to use this technology to perform the basic functions of management as well as motivating employees more specifically.¹⁰³ This survey revealed that among 1,386 senior executives in 12 nations, 83% saw compelling ways for blockchain to be used by their organizations.

pages: 326 words: 91,559

Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy by Nathan Schneider

1960s counterculture, Aaron Swartz, Adam Curtis, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Mechanical Turk, antiwork, back-to-the-land, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Clayton Christensen, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commons-based peer production, Community Supported Agriculture, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Debian, degrowth, disruptive innovation, do-ocracy, Donald Knuth, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, emotional labour, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, Fairphone, Food sovereignty, four colour theorem, future of work, Gabriella Coleman, gentrification, gig economy, Google bus, holacracy, hydraulic fracturing, initial coin offering, intentional community, Internet Archive, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, jimmy wales, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, means of production, Money creation, multi-sided market, Murray Bookchin, new economy, offshore financial centre, old-boy network, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Pier Paolo Pasolini, post-work, precariat, premature optimization, pre–internet, profit motive, race to the bottom, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart contracts, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, TED Talk, transaction costs, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, underbanked, undersea cable, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vanguard fund, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, working poor, workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, Y2K, Zipcar

Just a few weeks earlier, a nineteen-year-old Russian Canadian named Vitalik Buterin had published a proposal for what he called Ethereum.7 What Bitcoin was for money, Ethereum would be for everything else. It turns out that the basic idea of an ironclad list with no single caretaker—the blockchain—has an enormous range of potential applications. Rather than listing transactions, for instance, it can list contracts and enforce them computationally, resulting in an autonomous legal system without courts or cops. A blockchain of websites could be the basis of a more secure kind of internet. “It’s an operating system for society,” D’Onofrio said. Before long, coders were sketching out prototypes for what they called decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs—entities made up of Ethereum “smart contracts.”

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These initial coin offerings, or ICOs, have re-created a little-regulated free-for-all like the pre–Great Depression stock markets, before government oversight ruined the dangerous fun. They have democratic potential but mostly anarcho-capitalist adoption. Blockchains will become what we use them for, and we will become creatures of those uses. One of those nights visiting Silicon Valley, I stopped by Joel Dietz’s house for the meeting of a group that called itself the Cryptocommons. The house itself had a name, the Love Nest, having become home to a shifting cast of residents who shared Joel’s interests in blockchains, art, and “exponential” relationships. Dietz wore a black T-shirt bearing the white circle that represented his current project, Swarm, a prototype for crypto-crowdfunding, still so new as to be of ambiguous legality; it would later be resurrected as a “cooperative ownership platform for real assets.”

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One of the earliest platform co-ops of all, Snowdrift.coop, is honing a model for helping its co-owners crowdfund free-and-open projects for the commons that nobody will own. Seedbloom, based in Berlin, enables backers of a new project to become its co-owners—a kind of “equity crowdfunding.” It ran the initial membership drive for Resonate, which uses blockchain tech as well, and which later raised $1 million in tokens through a cooperative blockchain project called RChain. The total value of RChain’s Ethereum-based crowd-sale tokens has reached over $800 million; while proposing to develop a sophisticated, next-generation protocol, founder Greg Meredith modeled RChain’s co-op structure on old-fashioned REI.

pages: 218 words: 62,889

Sabotage: The Financial System's Nasty Business by Anastasia Nesvetailova, Ronen Palan

Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bitcoin, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Blythe Masters, bonus culture, Bretton Woods, business process, collateralized debt obligation, corporate raider, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, critique of consumerism, cryptocurrency, currency risk, democratizing finance, digital capitalism, distributed ledger, diversification, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, Gordon Gekko, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, independent contractor, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, market fundamentalism, Michael Milken, mortgage debt, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer lending, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price mechanism, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Ross Ulbricht, shareholder value, short selling, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail

Wire and transfer fees will be decreased by using bitcoin, clearing and settlement can happen instantly, loans and credit applications can be assessed on the spot and consumers will have instant access to the funds they need and the answers they require.32 The political appeal of blockchain is rather unique. The Right cheers the ability of the technology to force a decentralization of the system and independence from formal governance structures. The Left sees an enormous potential of blockchain to democratize finance as a system that has become systemically corrupt, and thus empower people’s direct participation. Academics and economic historians are convinced that technology will forever change banking as we know it. Veblenians are among those who do not share the general enthusiasm. They cast a weary eye on blockchain and its offspring, as well as on the whole new fintech phenomenon.

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The emergence of data as the most valuable asset in the digital capitalism of the twenty-first century, as well as tighter regulation of the traditional financial sector, is paving the way for a new means of doing the business of finance. Many of these innovations are celebrated in the market and beyond. Blockchain – a distributed ledger technology underpinning the drive – is heralded as the radically new way to connect people across various sectors and walks of life. It is rapidly transforming the way business is conducted and services are delivered, from the energy sector to adult entertainers, as well as public services such as insurance and healthcare. Blockchain is probably best compared to the financial equivalent of the invention of email, a seemingly isolated revolution in communication which back in the mid-1990s would herald the rise of a new type of economic organization.

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Blockchain is probably best compared to the financial equivalent of the invention of email, a seemingly isolated revolution in communication which back in the mid-1990s would herald the rise of a new type of economic organization. Enthusiasts argue that a blockchain-powered economy can overcome a lot of the ills and costs of the traditional ways of doing business in finance. Currently, we rely on a dated financial system that depends on paper and outdated software. It is expensive and completely open to fraud and crime. Blockchain disrupts the current bank system by being a real-time updating digital ledger that cannot be changed. This takes paper and fraud out of the equation. Wire and transfer fees will be decreased by using bitcoin, clearing and settlement can happen instantly, loans and credit applications can be assessed on the spot and consumers will have instant access to the funds they need and the answers they require.32 The political appeal of blockchain is rather unique.

pages: 308 words: 85,880

How to Fix the Future: Staying Human in the Digital Age by Andrew Keen

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Ada Lovelace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Andrew Keen, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, computer age, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data is the new oil, death from overwork, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, gig economy, global village, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Norbert Wiener, OpenAI, Parag Khanna, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post-truth, postindustrial economy, precariat, Ralph Nader, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, social graph, software is eating the world, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tech baron, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological determinism, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, the High Line, the new new thing, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, urban planning, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Yogi Berra, Zipcar

They can’t be secretly tampered with or spied upon. Viik describes this as “blockchain before blockchain.” Blockchain, by the way, is new technology that enables the creation of a public database that can’t be tampered with or altered. According to the Canadian futurists Don and Alex Tapscott, this blockchain technology, which they call the “trust protocol,” could be the most significant technological development since the invention of the internet.12 So what Viik means by his “blockchain before blockchain” comment is that while the Estonian ID system doesn’t contain formal blockchain technology, it nonetheless has a similar impact: creating what the Economist, in describing blockchain, called a “trust machine . . . the great chain of being sure about things.”13 As always with new new things, the technological details of this process are less interesting than its political and economic consequences.

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According to the Canadian futurists Don and Alex Tapscott, this blockchain technology, which they call the “trust protocol,” could be the most significant technological development since the invention of the internet.12 So what Viik means by his “blockchain before blockchain” comment is that while the Estonian ID system doesn’t contain formal blockchain technology, it nonetheless has a similar impact: creating what the Economist, in describing blockchain, called a “trust machine . . . the great chain of being sure about things.”13 As always with new new things, the technological details of this process are less interesting than its political and economic consequences. And there are some extremely significant potential consequences of the Estonian government’s entry into the data business. According to Viik, one result might be a new type of rivalry between sovereign governments and Silicon Valley’s private superpowers. “Governments are realizing that they’re losing the digital identities of their citizens to American companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple,” Viik explains.

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Like it or not, this data is only going to grow exponentially with the development of smart homes, smart cars, smart cities, and, above all, all the other smart objects driving the internet of things. We don’t have a choice about any of this. But what we do have a choice about is the amount of transparency we demand of the governments or corporations that have access to our personal data. That’s why Viik’s attempt to create a blockchain-like transparency within the Estonian government’s database of information about its citizens is so important. It may not be an ideal solution but, outside of Utopia, this Estonian model is probably about as good as we are going to get. Speaking of Utopia, perhaps it should come as no surprise that in Thomas More’s little sixteenth-century book, the island of Utopia was organized on transparent principles similar to those in twenty-first-century Estonia.

pages: 296 words: 66,815

The AI-First Company by Ash Fontana

23andMe, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, blockchain, business intelligence, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Charles Babbage, chief data officer, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, combinatorial explosion, computer vision, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, independent contractor, industrial robot, inventory management, John Conway, knowledge economy, Kubernetes, Lean Startup, machine readable, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, optical character recognition, Pareto efficiency, performance metric, price discrimination, recommendation engine, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, single source of truth, software as a service, source of truth, speech recognition, the scientific method, transaction costs, vertical integration, yield management

The idea is to issue a crypto token to a group of people, they submit data to a data network, that data is sold, and the revenue is then distributed back to the owners of the tokens. The blockchain offers two benefits in building a data network. First, blockchains can verify the provenance of data. The data gets a unique identifier upon submission that is recorded by every entity on the blockchain. When someone has a question about when, or even whether, that data was submitted, query the blockchain. Provenance is all but guaranteed where the blockchain has a sufficiently large number of entities verifying transactions. Second, crypto tokens are a way to securely and automatically pay data contributors.

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This is different from customer-contributed data, the difference being that customers pay for the AI-First product, whereas consumers just take the output of a product. CONSUMER GENERATED Token-Based Incentives Blockchain-based ownership tokens, or crypto tokens, can be used to incentivize people to submit data to a network. Given that these tokens are relatively new, it’s worth defining some terms. Blockchain: a decentralized and distributed public ledger of transactions. Crypto token: a representation of an asset that is kept on a blockchain. Data network: a set of data that is built by a group of otherwise unrelated entities rather than a single entity. The idea is to issue a crypto token to a group of people, they submit data to a data network, that data is sold, and the revenue is then distributed back to the owners of the tokens.

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Token owners get paid according to their contributions of data to the network, verified by all entities on the blockchain. Tokens are verified by a decentralized set of entities, meaning that no one party can invalidate a token owner’s claim to payment. Token management systems are scalable for two reasons: one, because, once registered, ownership doesn’t need to be changed or managed, and two, payments are automatically calculated based on a formula depending on the contribution, reducing the potential for conflict between the system operator and contributors. The challenge of running a data network on the blockchain is standardization via validation—that is, automatic compensation for contributions requires automatic verification upon submission.

pages: 477 words: 75,408

The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism by Calum Chace

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Robotics, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, basic income, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, bread and circuses, call centre, Chris Urmson, congestion charging, credit crunch, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital divide, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, Flynn Effect, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, gender pay gap, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, hype cycle, ImageNet competition, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telephone, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, lifelogging, lump of labour, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, McJob, means of production, Milgram experiment, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, new economy, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, PageRank, pattern recognition, post scarcity, post-industrial society, post-work, precariat, prediction markets, QWERTY keyboard, railway mania, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Rodney Brooks, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Malthus, transaction costs, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, working-age population, Y Combinator, young professional

The answer just might be the blockchain. Blockchain People have gone mad trying to understand how the blockchain works, never mind trying to explain it. Its most famous application is Bitcoin, the world’s first completely decentralized digital currency.[cccxlix] In just a few years, the Bitcoin “economy” has grown larger than the economies of some countries. The value of a Bitcoin has fluctuated wildly, hitting a peak of $1,216 in November 2013. The insights which made Bitcoin possible were published in 2008 under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, and the blockchain is at the heart of it. The blockchain is a public ledger which records transactions.

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[cccl] Digital currency is only one of the possible applications of blockchain technology. It can register and validate all sorts of transactions and relationships. For instance, it could be used to manage the sale, lease or hire of a car. When you take possession of a car, it could be tagged with a cryptographic signature, which would mean that you are the only person who could open and start the car.[cccli] The revolutionary benefit of the blockchain is that all kinds of agreements can be validated without setting up a centralised institution to do so. By removing the need for a central intermediary, the blockchain can reduce transaction costs, and it can enhance privacy: no government agents need have access to your data without your permission.

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Your transaction is published on the blockchain’s network as soon as it is agreed, but it is only confirmed, and hence reliable, when a miner has incorporated it into a block. Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation solved a previously intractable challenge in computer science known as the Byzantine General’s Problem. Imagine a mediaeval city surrounded by a dozen armies, each led by a powerful general. If the armies mount a co-ordinated attack, their victory is assured, but they can only communicate by messengers on horseback who visit the generals one by one, and some of the generals are untrustworthy. The blockchain provides a way for each general to know that a message calling for an attack at a particular time is genuine, and has not been fabricated by a dishonest general before it reached him.

Layered Money: From Gold and Dollars to Bitcoin and Central Bank Digital Currencies by Nik Bhatia

Alan Greenspan, bank run, basic income, Bear Stearns, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, central bank independence, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, distributed ledger, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, margin call, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, quantitative easing, reserve currency, risk free rate, Satoshi Nakamoto, slashdot, smart contracts, time value of money, tulip mania, universal basic income

Bitcoin’s design combines SHA2 with intelligent rules so elegant that it’s able to embody gold’s monetary properties in the digital world. Bottom line, the cryptography used by Satoshi was proven and secure. These ingenious rules built a coordination mechanism that he called a “chain of blocks,” but the world would come to call it Bitcoin’s blockchain. Computer Science Before diving into the specific technical innovations of Bitcoin’s blockchain that made it a successful digital currency, we have to acknowledge that understanding Bitcoin on a technical level requires an abundance of computer science expertise. Textbooks have been written on the Bitcoin software, filled with programming-level detail on all of Bitcoin’s major components including keys, addresses, wallets, transactions, and mining.

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You can share your Bitcoin address with anybody sending you money, but only with your password, called a private key, can you spend it. Email is a protocol to send and receive data; its formal name is Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). Bitcoin is also a protocol, but to send and receive value instead of data. Blockchain and Bitcoin Mining What makes Bitcoin tantamount to gold, human civilization’s most proven monetary asset? The answer lies in the rules of the Bitcoin protocol. The Bitcoin blockchain most fundamentally describes a record of transactions simultaneously kept by all peers in the network. In order to properly define blocks and chains, let’s first dive a little deeper into the word peer.

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Once a miner successfully mines a block and wins BTC as a result, the block becomes an update to Bitcoin’s shared transaction ledger so that every peer in the network has the latest understanding of which Bitcoin addresses are associated with exactly how much BTC. Blocks become chained together during this process to leave an accounting record, the Bitcoin blockchain, for all peers to witness. The term blockchain has grown in popularity, but distributed ledger technology is a simpler way to describe a network structure whereby all peers keep a ledger, or a record of transactions. For this reason, the term Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) has been adopted by central banking research departments to describe software that mimics Bitcoin’s original distributed ledger design.

pages: 267 words: 82,580

The Dark Net by Jamie Bartlett

3D printing, 4chan, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, carbon footprint, Cody Wilson, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, degrowth, deindustrialization, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, eternal september, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, global village, Google Chrome, Great Leap Forward, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invention of writing, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Lewis Mumford, life extension, litecoin, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mondo 2000, moral hazard, moral panic, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, pre–internet, printed gun, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, slashdot, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, The Coming Technological Singularity, Turing test, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, Zimmermann PGP

‘He got a sceptical reception at first,’ recalls Hal Finney, the veteran cypherpunk who’d seen several proposals come and go. But Finney noticed Satoshi had included something he’d not really seen before, something called a blockchain. A quantity of Bitcoin is stored at a Bitcoin address, the key to which is a unique string of letters and numbers that can be kept on a website, desktop, mobile phone, or even a piece of paper. Every time someone sends a Bitcoin as payment, a record of the transaction is stored in something called the blockchain. Transactions are collected into blocks, with each block representing about 10 minutes’ worth of transactions. The blocks are ordered chronologically, and each includes a digital signature (a ‘hash’) of the previous block, which administers the ordering and guarantees that a new block can join the chain only if it starts from where the preceding one finishes.

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The blocks are ordered chronologically, and each includes a digital signature (a ‘hash’) of the previous block, which administers the ordering and guarantees that a new block can join the chain only if it starts from where the preceding one finishes. A copy of the blockchain record – a record every single transaction ever made – is maintained by everyone who has installed the Bitcoin software. To ensure everything is running as it should, the blockchains are constantly verified by the computers of everyone else using the software. The upshot of all this is that, at any point, the system knows exactly how many Bitcoins I have in my wallet, so they cannot be copied or spent twice.

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He even added an out-of-place line of text into the ‘genesis block’ (the very first bit of the blockchain – his transactions with Finney), which read: ‘The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.’ To keep governments and central banks out of it, Satoshi placed a cap on the total number of Bitcoins that could ever be produced: 21 million. Although Bitcoins can be bought and sold with real-world currencies, new Bitcoins are not minted by any central authority. Instead anyone who dedicates his computing power to verifying the transactions in the blockchain competes to earn a very small amount of new Bitcoins each time they do so (this is called ‘mining’).

pages: 365 words: 56,751

Cryptoeconomics: Fundamental Principles of Bitcoin by Eric Voskuil, James Chiang, Amir Taaki

bank run, banks create money, bitcoin, blockchain, break the buck, cashless society, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, delayed gratification, en.wikipedia.org, foreign exchange controls, Fractional reserve banking, Free Software Foundation, global reserve currency, Joseph Schumpeter, market clearing, Metcalfe’s law, Money creation, money market fund, Network effects, peer-to-peer, price stability, reserve currency, risk free rate, seigniorage, smart contracts, social graph, time value of money, Turing test, zero day, zero-sum game

A merchant can cease to accept any money, which reduces the utility of the money. This can be considered a custodial risk, but not a default as the merchant has accepted no obligation to trade for the money. As shown in Fragmentation Principle4, changing merchant acceptance is the nature of a split. As shown in Blockchain Fallacy [121] , “blockchain technology” can offer no defense against custodial default. A “tokenized” asset is a security. The opportunity for fraud or theft by the custodian, either directly or as compelled by the state, is not reduced. Just as with commodity monies, such as gold, the custodial risk reduction afforded by Bitcoin is not a consequence of technology or contractual obligation, but the size of its economy.

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Bitcoin as a money [446] is non-custodial. Its units do not represent an asset held by a trusted third party. The money is traded directly between customer and merchant . In this sense all merchants are custodians of Bitcoin’s value . The blockchain fallacy arises from a misconception of the Bitcoin security model, attributing security to its technology as opposed to its distribution of merchants. The term “blockchain technology” reinforces this error, implying that it is primarily the structure of Bitcoin’s data that secures it. Brand Arrogation Bitcoin is a set of essential concepts [447] , not a chain . No person can control the concepts.

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ISBN: 978-1-7350608-1-1 Contents Title Page Copyright Author Editor & Illustrator Acknowledgements Foreword Preface Introduction SECURITY MODEL Axiom of Resistance Censorship Resistance Property Centralization Risk Cockroach Fallacy Consensus Property Cryptodynamic Principles Custodial Risk Principle Hearn Error Hoarding Fallacy Jurisdictional Arbitrage Fallacy Other Means Principle Patent Resistance Principle Permissionless Principle Prisoner’s Dilemma Fallacy Private Key Fallacy Proof of Work Fallacy Public Data Principle Qualitative Security Model Risk Sharing Principle Social Network Principle Threat Level Paradox Value Proposition STATISM Fedcoin Objectives Inflationary Quality Fallacy Reservation Principle Reserve Currency Fallacy State Banking Principle Mining ASIC Monopoly Fallacy Balance of Power Fallacy Byproduct Mining Fallacy Causation Fallacy Decoupled Mining Fallacy Dedicated Cost Principle Efficiency Paradox Empty Block Fallacy Energy Exhaustion Fallacy Energy Store Fallacy Energy Waste Fallacy Fee Recovery Fallacy Halving Fallacy Impotent Mining Fallacy Miner Business Model Pooling Pressure Risk Proximity Premium Flaw Relay Fallacy Selfish Mining Fallacy Side Fee Fallacy Spam Misnomer Variance Discount Flaw Zero Sum Property ALTERNATIVES Bitcoin Labels Blockchain Fallacy Brand Arrogation Consolidation Principle Dumping Fallacy Fragmentation Principle Genetic Purity Fallacy Hybrid Mining Fallacy Maximalism Definition Network Effect Fallacy Proof of Cost Fallacy Proof of Memory Façade Proof of Stake Fallacy Replay Protection Fallacy Shitcoin Definition Split Credit Expansion Fallacy Split Speculator Dilemma ECONOMICS Credit Expansion Fallacy Depreciation Principle Expression Principle Full Reserve Fallacy Inflation Principle Labor and Leisure Production and Consumption Pure Bank Savings Relation Speculative Consumption Subjective Inflation Principle Time Preference Fallacy MONEY Collectible Tautology Debt Loop Fallacy Ideal Money Fallacy Inflation Fallacy Money Taxonomy Regression Fallacy Reserve Definition Risk Free Return Fallacy Thin Air Fallacy Unlendable Money Fallacy PRICE Lunar Fallacy Price Estimation Scarcity Fallacy Stability Property Stock to Flow Fallacy SCALABILITY Auditability Fallacy Scalability Principle Substitution Principle Utility Threshold Property Glossary of Terms Author Eric Voskuil Eric Voskuil is a major contributor to Libbitcoin [1] , a free and open source high performance Bitcoin developer toolkit.

pages: 254 words: 76,064

Whiplash: How to Survive Our Faster Future by Joi Ito, Jeff Howe

3D printing, air gap, Albert Michelson, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Burning Man, business logic, buy low sell high, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, commons-based peer production, Computer Numeric Control, conceptual framework, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital rights, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ferguson, Missouri, fiat currency, financial innovation, Flash crash, Ford Model T, frictionless, game design, Gerolamo Cardano, informal economy, information security, interchangeable parts, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Harrison: Longitude, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, microbiome, move 37, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), PalmPilot, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, pirate software, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, Productivity paradox, quantum cryptography, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Ronald Coase, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Simon Singh, Singularitarianism, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Nature of the Firm, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, the strength of weak ties, There's no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home - Ken Olsen, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Two Sigma, universal basic income, unpaid internship, uranium enrichment, urban planning, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Wayback Machine, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

It’s also entirely possible that Bitcoin itself, the currency, collapses and becomes little more than an answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. So the second and far more important reason to pay attention is that the blockchain—the technology that makes Bitcoin possible—has implications far beyond the future of currencies and financial services. The blockchain is, in our estimation, likely to change the very relationship between individuals and institutions, a revolution in the nature of authority. The importance of Bitcoin and the blockchain—in simple terms, the public ledger in which every Bitcoin transaction that has ever taken place is recorded—lies in its architecture, a structure based on the understanding that the network will pull the resources necessary to its formation and maintenance, without the need for a central director orchestrating, pushing the organization of those resources.

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Because the total number of bitcoins is limited—no more than twenty-one million can be produced with the current code—and the rate of block creation stays fairly constant, the number of bitcoins created by each block must decline over time. Thus, the system is designed so that the proof-of-work functions used to verify transactions become increasingly difficult, making it harder to mine new bitcoins. The number of bitcoins created by the blockchain is set to decrease by 50 percent every four years. As a result, while the earliest bitcoin miners could use their personal computers to validate the blockchain, today’s miners use specialized, high-end server farms. In late 2014, one of those operations comprised six sites in China that collectively produce eight petahashes of computation per second, creating 4,050 bitcoins per month.

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Casey, “Linked-In, Sun Microsystems Founders Lead Big Bet on Bitcoin Innovation,” Moneybeat blog, Wall Street Journal, November 17, 2014, http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/11/17/linked-in-sun-microsystems-founders-lead-big-bet-on-bitcoin-innovation/. 46 “Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains,” r/Bitcoin, Reddit, http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2k070h/enabling_blockchain_innovations_with_pegged/clhak9c. 47 Timothy Leary, “The Cyber-Punk: The Individual as Reality Pilot,” Mississippi Review 16, no. 2/3 (1988). 48 T.F. Peterson, Nightwork (Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press, 2011), https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/nightwork. 49 While the science on the human microbiome, which includes gut bacteria, is still evolving, there’s intriguing evidence that our bacteria have a strong influence not only on our health, but also on our behavior.

pages: 326 words: 91,532

The Pay Off: How Changing the Way We Pay Changes Everything by Gottfried Leibbrandt, Natasha de Teran

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Alan Greenspan, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial exclusion, global pandemic, global reserve currency, illegal immigration, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, interest rate swap, Internet of things, Irish bank strikes, Julian Assange, large denomination, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, M-Pesa, machine readable, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, move fast and break things, Network effects, Northern Rock, off grid, offshore financial centre, payday loans, post-industrial society, printed gun, QR code, RAND corporation, ransomware, Real Time Gross Settlement, reserve currency, Rishi Sunak, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart contracts, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, tech billionaire, the payments system, too big to fail, transaction costs, WikiLeaks, you are the product

Nonetheless, I struck up a conversation with a man who ran a company that ‘did something with blockchain’. I asked him what the business model was. ‘I just raised $20 million through an ICO,’ he said. ‘That pays for everything.’1 No wonder he seemed to be enjoying life. Upstairs was a better-lit room, some fifty chairs and a podium. The chairs were all occupied and a few people were wearing suit jackets. I began to feel more at home. The young man on the podium was explaining how he was going to put woven skirts made in Indonesia on the blockchain; he was looking for investors. Another man asked the room whether anyone wanted to invest and several jacketed hands immediately went up.

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An API call could specify the details of a transfer, including account numbers and amounts, and in return the caller would receive an acknowledgement that the payment has been executed. Without most of us noticing, APIs have already transformed the way in which we use the internet and our mobile phones, and they are now truly revolutionising how we pay. And – sacrilege, we know, for true believers – they can achieve many of the benefits promised by the much touted blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (which we’ll look at in Chapter 22). These APIs allow others – whether foreign behemoths like Amazon and Google or local Indian providers – to embed UPI within their mobile apps. The result is the ‘seamless payment experience’. The apps enable buyers to pay by exchanging QR codes with merchants and merchants to present customers with electronic invoices that can be paid through UPI.

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So to spend part of the BTC 0.02 you sent me, I will perform a transaction that destroys the token you sent me while creating two new tokens as output, each of which has to be assigned to a public address (public key) of a payee. I will send/assign the first token to the public key/address of the person I need to pay, and the second token back to myself, as change. Figure 4 demonstrates how this transaction would appear on the public ledger/blockchain. It shows one input, for BTC 0.02 (around $600), with its public key/address (14R534V. . .). Since this input is the token you sent me earlier, this is the address that I gave you when you paid me. Because I have the corresponding private key, I can prove that I own this input token. Figure 4.

pages: 205 words: 61,903

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires by Douglas Rushkoff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, buy low sell high, Californian Ideology, carbon credits, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, CRISPR, data science, David Graeber, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, digital capitalism, digital map, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, Evgeny Morozov, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, fake news, Filter Bubble, game design, gamification, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haight Ashbury, hockey-stick growth, Howard Rheingold, if you build it, they will come, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, liberal capitalism, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megaproject, meme stock, mental accounting, Michael Milken, microplastics / micro fibres, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mirror neurons, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), operational security, Patri Friedman, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, Plato's cave, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, QAnon, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, SimCity, Singularitarianism, Skinner box, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the medium is the message, theory of mind, TikTok, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , working poor

Chapter 2: Mergers and Acquisitions 25 Tech companies actively sought : Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyperspace (New York: HarperOne, 1994). 25 “new communalists” : Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 26 Operation Sundevil : Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier (New York: Bantam, 1992). 26 “Governments of the Industrial World” : John Perry Barlow, “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, 1996, https:// www .eff .org /cyberspace -independence. 26 fungus and bacteria : Qi Hui Sam, Matthew Wook Chang, and Louis Yi Ann Chai, “The Fungal Mycobiome and Its Interaction with Gut Bacteria in the Host,” International Journal of Molecular Sciences , February 4, 2017, https:// www .ncbi .nlm .nih .gov /pmc /articles /PMC5343866 /. 28 extolled the virtues of the deal : Saul Hansell, “America Online Agrees to Buy Time Warner for $165 Billion; Media Deal is Richest Merger,” New York Times , January 11, 2000, https:// www .nytimes .com /2000 /01 /11 /business /media -megadeal -overview -america -online -agrees -buy -time -warner -for -165 -billion .html. 28 the piece I wrote placed in the Guardian : Douglas Rushkoff, “Why Time Is Up for Warner,” Guardian , January 20, 2000, https:// www .theguardian .com /technology /2000 /jan /20 /onlinesupplement10. 29 People blamed : Seth Stevenson, “The Believer,” New York Magazine , July 6, 2007, https:// nymag .com /news /features /34454 /. 30 hired investment bank Salomon Smith Barney : Tim Arango, “How the AOL–Time Warner Merger Went So Wrong,” New York Times , January 10, 2010, https:// www .nytimes .com /2010 /01 /11 /business /media /11merger .html. 31 probably borrowed : Steven Levy, Facebook: The Inside Story (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2020). 32 stocks quadruple : Lisa Pham, “This Company Added the Word ‘Blockchain’ to Its Name and Saw Its Shares Surge 394%,” Bloomberg , October 27, 2017, https:// www .bloomberg .com /news /articles /2017 -10 -27 /what -s -in -a -name -u -k -stock -surges -394 -on -blockchain -rebrand. 33 “independent, host-led local organizations” : Dave Lee, “Airbnb Using ‘Independent’ Host Groups to Lobby Policymakers,” Financial Times , March 21, 2021, https:// www .ft .com /content /1afb3173 -444a -47fa -99ec -554779dde236. 33 Google was outspending : Shaban Hamza, “Google for the First Time Outspent Every Other Company to Influence Washington in 2017,” Washington Post , January 23, 2018, https:// www .washingtonpost .com /news /the -switch /wp /2018 /01 /23 /google -outspent -every -other -company -on -federal -lobbying -in -2017 /. 33 outspent by Facebook : Lauren Feiner, “Facebook Spent More on Lobbying than Any Other Big Tech Company in 2020,” CNBC , January 22, 2021, https:// www .cnbc .com /2021 /01 /22 /facebook -spent -more -on -lobbying -than -any -other -big -tech -company -in -2020 .html. 33 Numerous studies : Martin Gilens and Benjamin I.

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They had come to ask questions. They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or Ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? But they didn’t seem to be taking it in. No sooner would I begin to explain the merits of proof-of-stake versus proof-of-work blockchains than they would move to the next question. I started to feel like they were testing me—not my knowledge so much as my scruples. Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region will be less impacted by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there.

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In the new, improved, post-crash version of Silicon Valley, extreme capitalism rules. Digital technology is valued most for its ability to scale a business without needing to hire many human beings, and to provide the earnings or—as is more often the case—the hype required to boost the share price. (Companies that add trendy words like “blockchain” to their names have seen their stocks quadruple .) Following AOL’s example of mailing free disks, companies scramble to get subscribers at any cost. A company can lose money for years, as long as its user base is rising—preferably at an exponential rate. But it’s not all abstract. Hockey stick user growth leads to hockey stick stock growth.

pages: 395 words: 116,675

The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge by Matt Ridley

"World Economic Forum" Davos, adjacent possible, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, AltaVista, altcoin, An Inconvenient Truth, anthropic principle, anti-communist, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, British Empire, Broken windows theory, carbon tax, Columbian Exchange, computer age, Corn Laws, cosmological constant, cotton gin, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of DNA, Donald Davies, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Eben Moglen, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Edward Snowden, endogenous growth, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, facts on the ground, fail fast, falling living standards, Ferguson, Missouri, financial deregulation, financial innovation, flying shuttle, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, George Santayana, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Greenspan put, Gregor Mendel, Gunnar Myrdal, Henri Poincaré, Higgs boson, hydraulic fracturing, imperial preference, income per capita, indoor plumbing, information security, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Japanese asset price bubble, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, land reform, Lao Tzu, long peace, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, Necker cube, obamacare, out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer, phenotype, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precautionary principle, price mechanism, profit motive, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, transaction costs, twin studies, uber lyft, women in the workforce

Jeff Garzik, a bitcoin developer, calls it ‘the biggest thing since the internet – a catalyst for change in all areas of our lives’. Blockchains for all What are these enthusiasts on about? The ‘blockchain’ technology behind bitcoin could prove to be an ingredient of an entire new world of technology, as big as the internet itself, a wave of innovation that drives the middleman out of much commerce and leaves us much more free to exchange goods and services with people all over the world without going through corporate intermediaries. It could radically decentralise society itself, getting rid of the need for banks, governments, even companies and politicians. Take the example of Twister, a blockchain-based rival to Twitter, built entirely on a peer-to-peer network.

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The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash,’ said Milton Friedman. And it is not just e-cash; it is the technology behind bitcoin that could finally decentralise not just the internet but society too. The blockchain technology that makes bitcoin work has far-reaching implications. The bizarre evolution of blockchains The story begins in 1992, when the internet was just beginning to emerge. A wealthy computer pioneer named Tim May invited a group of people to his house in Santa Cruz to discuss how to use ‘cryptologic methods’ on networked computers to break down barriers of intellectual property and government secrecy.

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One of the pithiest explanations I have come across is in a recent launch by Ethereum, a business built to follow up on bitcoin: ‘The innovation provided by Satoshi is the idea of combining a very simple decentralised consensus protocol, based on nodes combining transactions into a “block” every ten minutes, creating an ever-growing blockchain, with proof of work as a mechanism through which nodes gain the right to participate in the system.’ If you think that’s hard to understand, you are not alone. I have yet to come across a description of blockchain technology in English, as opposed to mathematics, that is really clear. In outline, I know that bitcoin is effectively a public ledger – a compendium of transactions, stored by bitcoin users all over the world.

pages: 269 words: 79,285

Silk Road by Eileen Ormsby

4chan, bitcoin, blockchain, Brian Krebs, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, disinformation, drug harm reduction, Edward Snowden, fiat currency, Firefox, incognito mode, Julian Assange, litecoin, Mark Zuckerberg, Network effects, off-the-grid, operational security, peer-to-peer, Ponzi scheme, power law, profit motive, Right to Buy, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, stealth mode startup, Ted Nelson, trade route, Turing test, web application, WikiLeaks

The important feature of bitcoin is that it is both completely transparent and, if users know what they are doing, completely anonymous. It is transparent in that anyone can view any transaction that has occurred in any account (or ‘wallet’) at any time they want. Every transaction is recorded in a database known as the ‘blockchain’. Several websites, which anyone can visit and view, keep track of all transactions on the blockchain. Without further information, however, it is impossible to tell who owns the account you are looking at. So while, for example, you might be able to see that $20,000 worth of bitcoin was transferred from bitcoin address 1LK5HQqU6M9qyWSUhfPnV6xtKBCocUp6PY to bitcoin address 13g7xpD27XWDg5NX9dRLEdqumUNL6koh6H, unless the owners of those addresses have advertised the fact, there is no way of knowing who owns either of them.

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Rather than shovels and earthmovers, bitcoins were designed to be mined by computers performing complex mathematical equations, or what Nakamoto called ‘proof-of-work’. In order to prevent people attempting to ‘double spend’ bitcoin, every transaction record had to be added to the blockchain, which became proof that a legitimate transaction had taken place and the bitcoin had changed from one wallet to another. Mining involved computers adding those records to the blockchain. As more transactions took place, it became more difficult for a computer to perform the equation that confirmed the transaction. People who set their computers to compete with each other to be the first to solve the equation were known as ‘miners’, and the miner of the computer that solved the equation would be rewarded in bitcoin.

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As with most sham schemes, BST provided the returns to those who wanted them, and ‘reinvested’ for those who wanted the cumulative interest effect. It managed to run until August 2012, collecting around 700,000 bitcoin, until Bitcointalk became filled with complaints and suspicions. As people examined the blockchain in the aftermath, the internet sleuths of Bitcointalk uncovered a very large wallet that they soon determined belonged to Silk Road. From this, some concluded BST was in fact a clever money-laundering scheme that accepted investors’ bitcoin and returned to them Silk Road’s funds, effectively ‘washing’ the dirty money.

pages: 328 words: 96,678

MegaThreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future, and How to Survive Them by Nouriel Roubini

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, 9 dash line, AI winter, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, deglobalization, Demis Hassabis, democratizing finance, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, failed state, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, game design, geopolitical risk, George Santayana, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global reserve currency, global supply chain, GPS: selective availability, green transition, Greensill Capital, Greenspan put, Herbert Marcuse, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, margin call, market bubble, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meme stock, Michael Milken, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Mustafa Suleyman, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, negative equity, Nick Bostrom, non-fungible token, non-tariff barriers, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, paradox of thrift, pets.com, Phillips curve, planetary scale, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price mechanism, price stability, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, reserve currency, reshoring, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Second Machine Age, short selling, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Stephen Hawking, TED Talk, The Great Moderation, the payments system, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, War on Poverty, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population, Yogi Berra, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

“The concept of renting, the concept of a mortgage, the concept of all this stuff is going to be challenged with this new world because the funding sources are flexible,” says LoanSnap founder Karl Jacob. Using BaconCoin, LoanSnap aims to revolutionize home buying by sharing mortgages via the blockchain that can etch every transaction from day one.20 The first such mortgages changed hands in late 2021. Once inscribed on a blockchain visible to every user, new transactions update the status quo but, in principle, no one can alter or hack what occurred in the past. The rush to DeFi is premature and ultimately misguided. The rapid rise of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, and thousands of fledgling cryptocurrencies since 2010 exposes our collective wilting faith in the ability of governments to back the money they issue.

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A lot of crypto consists of mostly manipulative Ponzi schemes. If we want to revamp a centralized financial system with safeguards and supervision, we don’t need crypto or blockchain. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, 5G, and the Internet of Things can speed transactions, lower costs, and increase reliability. These centralized fintech tools and firms collect and process detailed financial data at blistering speeds without any use of blockchain. Hundreds of firms worldwide have entered the fray with payment systems that handle billions of daily consumer and business-to-business transactions. Companies in the United States and China dominate the industry, but markets have sprouted in other advanced and developing economies.

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Will the US dollar retain its global reserve currency status or be replaced by the Chinese renminbi or other arrangements now that the dollar is increasingly weaponized? Will cryptocurrencies replace all traditional currencies, or will central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) prevail and displace cryptocurrencies? Will high costs and inefficiencies doom venerable financial institutions and usher in decentralized finance built with blockchain technology? Or will centralized fintech—rather than DeFi—challenge traditional banks and financial institutions? These critical questions beg for sensible answers. Data are still coming in. We can point now to tentative conclusions, but we absolutely must figure out the future of money, finance, and reserve currencies, stable or unstable as they may be.

pages: 196 words: 54,339

Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff

1960s counterculture, Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, carbon footprint, circular economy, clean water, clockwork universe, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, digital capitalism, disintermediation, Donald Trump, drone strike, European colonialism, fake news, Filter Bubble, full employment, future of work, game design, gamification, gig economy, Google bus, Gödel, Escher, Bach, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invention of writing, invisible hand, iterative process, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, life extension, lifelogging, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mirror neurons, multilevel marketing, new economy, patient HM, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, power law, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, social intelligence, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, theory of mind, trade route, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, universal basic income, Vannevar Bush, We are as Gods, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

More countercultural solutions, such as bitcoin and the blockchain, are no less technosolutionist in spirit. The blockchain replaces the need for central authorities such as banks by letting everyone on a network authenticate their transactions with computer encryption. It may disintermediate exploitative financial institutions but it doesn’t help rehumanize the economy, or reestablish the trust, cohesion, and ethos of mutual aid that was undermined by digital capitalism. It simply substitutes for trust in a different way: using the energy costs of blockchain mining as a security measure against counterfeiting or other false claims.

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(The computer power needed to create one bitcoin consumes at least as much electricity as the average American household burns through in two years.) Is this the fundamental fix we really need? A better ledger? The problem the blockchain solves is the utilitarian one of better, faster accounting, and maybe an easier way to verify someone’s identity online. That’s why the banking industry has ultimately embraced it: the quicker to find us and drain our assets. Progressives, meanwhile, hope that the blockchain will be able to record and reward the unseen value people are creating as they go about their lives—as if all human activity were transactional and capable of being calculated by computer.

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Heck, humans are the natives, subject to unpredictable ebbs and flows of emotions and hormones and irrational needs. Singularitans consider technology more trustworthy than humans. Surveillance is not just a profit center for social media, but a way of safeguarding digital society from human resistance. Code enforces rules without bias (unless, of course, you happen to be the coder). It’s a blockchain reality, where machines execute the letter of the law without any sense of the spirit. So much the better to accelerate development and reach the singularity before the clock runs out on the habitable biosphere. Computers and artificial intelligences are pure intention, not clouded or tempered by human social priorities or moral misgivings.

pages: 304 words: 91,566

Bitcoin Billionaires: A True Story of Genius, Betrayal, and Redemption by Ben Mezrich

airport security, Albert Einstein, bank run, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, Burning Man, buttonwood tree, cryptocurrency, East Village, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, fake news, family office, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, game design, information security, Isaac Newton, junk bonds, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, Michael Milken, new economy, offshore financial centre, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, proprietary trading, QR code, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Sand Hill Road, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, transaction costs, Virgin Galactic, zero-sum game

And the golden ticket, which will grant him a tour of Willy Wonka’s factory, is like the block reward. Now suppose that by searching for this golden ticket, Charlie is also simultaneously validating purchases of candy bars and recording them in the factory’s business ledger—the Willy Wonka blockchain. And suppose there are many Charlies all around the world doing the same thing, searching for that golden ticket. As they open Wonka bars, they are auditing the Wonka blockchain and checking one another’s work. Willy Wonka’s contest has miraculously incentivized children around the world to work together to validate and record transactions of Wonka bars, helping Willy keep track of who paid for what, thereby protecting his profits and ensuring that his factory stays in business and can continue to make chocolate for everyone.”

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Voorhees explained how Bitcoin “miners”—people with computers running specialized software—validate and audit bitcoin transactions by solving complex math problems generated by the transactions themselves. Once a miner has solved the math puzzle for a new “block” of transactions, the block is added to the Bitcoin “blockchain,” the global ledger of every bitcoin transaction since the beginning of time. For their effort, miners were rewarded by the network with newly minted bitcoins. This is known as the “block reward.” And the more computing power a miner brings to the network, the greater the chance they have of solving the math problems and winning the block reward.

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“Cameron said it first—‘this is either complete bullshit or the next big thing,’ ” Tyler said. His father nodded, looking out at the water. They’d already discussed Bitcoin at length on the phone and during breakfast that morning. His father had immediately seen the mathematical beauty behind the now three-year-old cryptocurrency. The elegance of the blockchain—the open, decentralized ledger where transactions were permanently recorded—immediately made sense to him, and the brilliance of Bitcoin itself, of a currency backed by math and cryptography, with a fixed supply mined by computers running complex equations, certainly thrilled his mathematical mind.

pages: 182 words: 53,802

The Production of Money: How to Break the Power of Banks by Ann Pettifor

Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , borderless world, Bretton Woods, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, clean water, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, green new deal, Hyman Minsky, inflation targeting, interest rate derivative, invisible hand, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land bank, Leo Hollis, light touch regulation, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mobile money, Money creation, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, rent-seeking, Satyajit Das, savings glut, secular stagnation, The Chicago School, the market place, Thomas Malthus, Tobin tax, too big to fail

However, some have hyped up the technology used by bitcoin – blockchain, a distributed database or ledger – and argued that it could revolutionise the distribution of wealth and provide transparent accounts of transactions. We should treat these claims cautiously. In a recent blog, Financial Times journalist Izabella Kaminska argued that financial technology fads follow a pattern similar to new music designated first as ‘hip’ and ‘cool’ but which then fades and becomes ‘so last year’. In the same way, for her as an investigative journalist, Blur (bitcoin) evolved into a love of Radiohead (blockchain). But Radiohead (blockchain) was adopted too quickly by those who then compromised the likeability of the entire Indy genre (cryptocurrency).

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Suffice to say, there is some commentary emerging to suggest we are indeed in a phase transition and what’s cool isn’t the blockchain anymore but rather the defiant acknowledgement that the old operating system – for all its flaws – is built on the right regulatory, legal and trusted foundations after all and just needs some basic tweaking.27 In 2016, $70 million worth of bitcoin was stolen from customer accounts held at Bitfinex. As Kaminska writes, that ‘should give the banking industry pause for thought with respect to adopting blockchain and bicoin-based financial technologies’.28 Speculators have periodically inflated the value of bitcoin to delirious heights.

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But Radiohead (blockchain) was adopted too quickly by those who then compromised the likeability of the entire Indy genre (cryptocurrency). It was time consequently to turn to drum and bass (private blockchains). But drum and bass was being cross-polluted by Indy rock enthusiasts (cryptocurrency enthusiasts) so it became time to embrace something totally radical and segregated, i.e. go backwards to an ironic appreciation of Barry Manilow abandoning all refs to modern musical phenomena (Distributed Ledger Technology). Which puts us roughly at the point where cheesy revivalism should be turning into a general love of the all time provable greats (old school centralised ledger technology, but you know, digitally remastered).

pages: 371 words: 108,317

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Aaron Swartz, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, bank run, barriers to entry, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, book scanning, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, cloud computing, commoditize, computer age, Computer Lib, connected car, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Filter Bubble, Freestyle chess, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, index card, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lifelogging, linked data, Lyft, M-Pesa, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, Mary Meeker, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, off-the-grid, old-boy network, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, placebo effect, planetary scale, postindustrial economy, Project Xanadu, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, robo advisor, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Snapchat, social graph, social web, software is eating the world, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steven Levy, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, The future is already here, the long tail, the scientific method, transport as a service, two-sided market, Uber for X, uber lyft, value engineering, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, Whole Earth Review, Yochai Benkler, yottabyte, zero-sum game

But instead of paying a traditional title company a lot of money to verify a complex transaction such as a house sale, an online peer-to-peer blockchain system can execute the exchange for much less cost, or maybe for free. Some blockchain enthusiasts propose creating tools that perform a complicated cascade of transactions that depend on verification (like an import/export deal) using only decentralized automated blockchain technology, thereby disrupting many industries that rely on brokers. Whether Bitcoin itself succeeds, its blockchain innovation, which can generate extremely high levels of trust among strangers, will further decentralize institutions and industries. An important aspect of the blockchain is that it is a public commons.

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But forget the anonymity; it’s a distraction. The most important innovation in Bitcoin is its “blockchain,” the mathematical technology that powers it. The blockchain is a radical invention that can decentralize many other systems beyond money. When I send you one U.S. dollar via a credit card or PayPal account, a central bank has to verify that transaction; at the very least it must confirm I had a dollar to send you. When I send you one bitcoin, no central intermediary is involved. Our transaction is posted in a public ledger—called a blockchain—that is distributed to all other bitcoin owners in the world. This shared database contains a long “chain” of the transaction history of all existing bitcoins and who owns them.

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Six times an hour this open distributed database of coins is updated with all the new transactions of bitcoins; a new transaction like ours must be mathematically confirmed by multiple other owners before it is accepted as legitimate. In this way a blockchain creates trust by relying on mutual peer-to-peer accounting. The system itself—which is running on tens of thousands of citizen computers—secures the coin. Proponents like to say that with bitcoin you trust math instead of governments. A number of startups and venture capitalists are dreaming up ways to use blockchain technology as a general purpose trust mechanism beyond money. For transactions that require a high degree of trust between strangers, such as real estate escrows and mortgage contracts, this validation was previously provided by a professional broker.

pages: 50 words: 15,603

Orwell Versus the Terrorists: A Digital Short by Jamie Bartlett

augmented reality, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Edward Snowden, eternal september, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Free Software Foundation, John Perry Barlow, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Laura Poitras, Mondo 2000, Satoshi Nakamoto, technoutopianism, Zimmermann PGP

Bitcoin creates an immutable, unchangeable public copy of every transaction ever made by its users, which is hosted and verified by every computer that downloads the software. This public copy is called the ‘blockchain’. Pretty soon, enthusiasts figured out that the blockchain system could be used for anything. Armed with 30,000 Bitcoins (around $12 million) of crowdfunded support, the Ethereum project is dedicated to creating a new, blockchain-operated internet. Ethereum’s developers hope the system will herald a revolution in the way we use the net – allowing us to do everything online directly with each other, not through the big companies that currently mediate our online interaction and whom we have little choice but to trust with our data.

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fn3 You’ve probably heard of this pseudonymous digital cash because it was, and still is, the currency of choice on the illegal online drugs markets. fn4 And increasingly, I predict, politics. Although no political parties – save the occasional fringe party – have given any thought to what crypto-currencies might mean. What does a modern centre-left party think of crypto-currency, or of blockchain decentralisation? They have no idea. Orwell I’ve interviewed many of the people in the frontline of the battle, the people behind the extraordinary innovation currently taking place. They see the question of online privacy as the digital front in a battle over individual liberty: a rejection of internet surveillance and censorship that they believe has come to dominate modern life online.

pages: 372 words: 100,947

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination by Sheera Frenkel, Cecilia Kang

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, affirmative action, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, data science, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, fake news, George Floyd, global pandemic, green new deal, hockey-stick growth, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, immigration reform, independent contractor, information security, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, natural language processing, offshore financial centre, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Mercer, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, social web, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, surveillance capitalism, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WikiLeaks

Zuckerberg would kick things off with a boozy dinner catered by one of his favorite Palo Alto restaurants. At the daytime sessions, executives gave exuberant presentations, with charts showing hockey stick growth in revenue and users. They showcased audacious plans for products in artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, and blockchain currency. The group hashed out the biggest problems facing Facebook and discussed ways to beat back competition. The forty or so executives had gotten to know one another well over the years, working through Facebook’s painful transition to mobile, its rocky IPO, and its race for the first billion and then the second billion users.

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Two months earlier, he had overhauled the leadership ranks by reshuffling the duties of his deputies. Chris Cox, head of product, would oversee all of the company’s apps, including Blue, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram. The chief technology officer, Mike Schroepfer, was put in charge of all emerging products, such as virtual reality and blockchain. Javier Olivan, the head of the growth team, added security, ads, and services to his portfolio.4 Sandberg remained chief operating officer, but it was less clear if she was still, in effect, Zuckerberg’s second-in-command. She hadn’t been mentioned in the announcement. Now, with Zuckerberg asserting himself even further, it seemed he envisioned himself as number one—and then there was everybody else.

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The Federal Trade Commission opened an investigation into Facebook’s monopoly power.14 Led by New York, eight state attorneys general also began their own joint antitrust investigation of the social network.15 The House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee began a separate inquiry into Facebook and other tech giants.16 The multiple government inquiries, extraordinary for any corporation, caught many in the Washington Facebook office unaware. But Zuckerberg wasn’t slowing down. In June, he announced Libra, a blockchain currency system that could replace regulated financial systems. The virtual currency plan drew immediate criticism from global regulators, who warned that a system run by a private company—especially Facebook—could harbor illegal activity. Congress promptly called for the company to appear in hearings.

pages: 422 words: 86,414

Hands-On RESTful API Design Patterns and Best Practices by Harihara Subramanian

blockchain, business logic, business process, cloud computing, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, cyber-physical system, data science, database schema, DevOps, disruptive innovation, domain-specific language, fault tolerance, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, inventory management, job automation, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kubernetes, loose coupling, Lyft, machine readable, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, MVC pattern, Salesforce, self-driving car, semantic web, single page application, smart cities, smart contracts, software as a service, SQL injection, supply-chain management, web application, WebSocket

That is, the motto of future IT is distributed deployment and centralized monitoring, measurement, and management. Decentralized and intelligent applications with blockchain technology As noted in the preceding section, centralized applications are well-suited to certain situations. However, in the recent past, there has been an increased market for decentralized applications, with the faster adoption and adaptation of the blockchain technology. The blockchain paradigm promises a bevy of disruptions and transformations when realizing and running decentralized applications across multiple industry verticals.

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The much-touted unbreakable and impenetrable security of software systems is guaranteed through the decentralized approach. The peer-to-peer (P2P) interactions facilitated by the decentralized approach is turning out to be a silver bullet for many recent use cases. The faster maturity and stability of blockchain technology is clearly driving IT professionals and organizations toward the production of decentralized systems. The blockchain paradigm also resulted in the new concept of smart contracts, which leads to the realization of adaptive applications. Composite and multi-container applications Decomposition and composition techniques have been extensively used to achieve breakthroughs in software engineering.

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PacktPub.com Contributors About the authors About the reviewers Packt is searching for authors like you Preface Who this book is for What this book covers To get the most out of this book Download the example code files Conventions used Get in touch Reviews Introduction to the Basics of RESTful Architecture Technical requirements Evolution of web technologies Learning about Web 3.0 Learning about web service architecture Discussing the web API Learning about service-oriented architecture Learning about resource-oriented architecture Resource-oriented design The benefits of ROA Beginning with REST REST architecture style constraints Beginning with client-server The client in client-server architecture The service in client-server architecture Understanding statelessness Advantages and disadvantages of statelessness Caching constraint in REST Benefits of caching Understanding the uniform interface Identification of resources Manipulation of resources Self-descriptive messages Hypermedia as the Engine of Application State Layered systems Code on demand RESTful service mandates Architectural goals of REST Summary Design Strategy, Guidelines, and Best Practices Technical requirements Learning about REST API and its importance Goals of RESTful API design Affordance Loosely coupled Leverage web architecture API designer roles and responsibilities  API design best practices API design principles Ubiquitous web standards Flexibility Granularity Optimized APIs Functionality Learning about unusual circumstances Community standardization API playgrounds RESTful API design rules Learning about Uniform Resource Identifiers URI formats REST API URI authority Resource modelling Resource archetypes URI path URI query HTTP interactions Request methods Response status codes Metadata design HTTP headers Media types and media type design rules Representations Message body format Hypermedia representation Media type representation Errors representation Client concerns Versioning Security Response representation composition Processing hypermedia JavaScript clients Summary Further reading Essential RESTful API Patterns Technical requirements Beginning with the installations Beginning with RESTful API patterns – part I Statelessness Content negotiation Content negotiation with HTTP headers URI templates Design for intent Pagination Discoverability Error and exception logging Unicode Summary Advanced RESTful API Patterns Technical requirements RESTful API advanced patterns Versioning Versioning through the URI path Versioning through query parameters Versioning through custom headers Versioning through content-negotiation Authorization Authorization with the default key Authorization with credentials Uniform contract Entity endpoints Endpoint redirection Idempotent Bulk operation Circuit breaker Combining the circuit pattern and the retry pattern API facade Backend for frontend Summary Further reading Microservice API Gateways Technical requirements About microservice architecture The prominent infrastructure modules in microservice-centric applications Service registry  Service discovery Composition/orchestration  Transformation  Monitoring  Load balancing and scaling  High availability and failover  HA and failover guidelines Governance  About API gateway solutions API gateways for microservice-centric applications The issues with microservice API gateways Security features of API gateways Prominent API gateway solutions Service mesh versus API gateway Summary RESTful Services API Testing and Security An overview of software testing  RESTful APIs and testing Basics of API testing Understanding API testing approaches API testing types Unit tests API validation tests Functional tests UI or end-to-end tests Load testing Runtime error detection tests Monitoring APIs Execution errors Resource leaks Error detection REST API security vulnerabilities Exposing sensitive data Understanding authentication and authentication attacks Understanding authorization and OAuth2 schemes Cross-site scripting Reflected XSS Stored XSS DOM XSS Cross-site request forgery Denial-of-service attack Distributed denial of service Injection attacks Insecure direct object references Missing function-level access control Man-in-the-middle attacks Common types of MITM attacks and protection measures Replay attacks and spoofing Causes of vulnerabilities API design and development flaws Poor system configuration Human error Internal and external connectivity Security tests Penetration tests or pen tests Importance of penetration tests Pen testing lifecycle Preparation, planning, and reconnaissance Scanning Gaining access Maintaining access Analysis Pen testing types for API testing White-box penetration testing Fuzz tests The life cycle of fuzz tests Fuzz testing strategy Mutation-based fuzz tests Generation-based fuzz tests Advantages and disadvantages of fuzz tests Back to API testing API test cases Essential aspects of API test cases and test case preparation API testing challenges Initial setup API schema updates for testing Testing parameter combinations API call sequence Validating parameters Tracking system integration API testing best practices API testing tools CQRS Summary Further reading RESTful Service Composition for Smart Applications Technical requirements Briefing RESTful microservices Demystifying the MSA style The advantages of microservices The emergence of cloud-native applications The growing ecosystem of IoT device services The changing application ecosystem Tending toward the API-driven world The Representational State Transfer service paradigm API design best practices Learning about service-composition methods Service orchestration and choreography Beginning with service orchestration The shortcomings of service orchestration Applying orchestration-based composition Beginning with service choreography The shortcomings of service choreography Applying choreography-based composition The hybridization of orchestration and choreography Another example of the hybridization of orchestration and choreography Choreography Service choreography using the message broker Service orchestration Service orchestration using BPMN and REST The hybridization – event-driven service orchestration Data management  Thinking in REST Discarding SQL join Eventual consistency Polyglot persistence Summary RESTful API Design Tips Technical requirements Beginning with APIs Learning about application programming interfaces APIs have become indispensable Learning about the major types of APIs Describing API platforms Creating API development platforms API-integration platforms Legacy integration API management platforms Demystifying the RESTful services paradigm Characterizing the REST architecture style REST Resource Representation Compression Idempotent REST APIs REST API design considerations Enumerating RESTful API design patterns Media types API security design patterns Whitelist allowable methods Summary Further reading A More In-depth View of the RESTful Services Paradigm Technical requirements Tending toward the software-defined and software-driven world Software-enabled clouds for the digital intelligence era The IoT applications and services Cloud-enabled applications Cloud-native applications Mobile, handheld, and wearable applications Transactional, operational, and analytical applications Knowledge visualization applications Social applications  Scientific and technical applications  Centralized and distributed applications Decentralized and intelligent applications with blockchain technology  Composite and multi-container applications  Event-driven applications  High-quality applications Resilient applications  The REST paradigm for application modernization and integration Application programming interfaces Public APIs for external integration and innovation Private APIs for internal purposes  APIs for IoT devices APIs for application integration Describing the RESTful services paradigm REST architectural constraints The advantages of REST Self-descriptive messages SOAP versus REST When to use REST versus SOAP Best practices for REST-based microservices The API-first approach Developing API-first Building services API-first Summary Further reading Frameworks, Standard Languages, and Toolkits Technical requirements Core features of a framework Spring Boot Core features of Spring Database integration with Spring data Messaging integration Extending Spring with auto-configuration Writing unit tests and integration test cases Benefits of Spring Boot Drawbacks of Spring Boot Beginning about Light 4j Core features of Light 4j Learning about Light Rest 4j Light-code-gen Choosing Light 4j over the rest Spark Framework Core features of Spark Framework Creating an API with fewer lines Benefits of Spark Drawbacks of Spark Dropwizard Overview Core features of Dropwizard Jetty for HTTP Jersey for REST Jackson Metrics Liquibase Other noteworthy features Benefits of Dropwizard Drawbacks of Dropwizard Understanding Go framework for the RESTful API An overview Gin-gonic Core features HttpRouter Http2 server push Multi-template Upload files Other noteworthy features Benefits of Gin-Gonic Drawbacks of Gin-Gonic Revel Core features Router Server engine Controllers Handlers Interceptors Filters Cache Other noteworthy features Benefits of Revel Drawbacks of Revel Python RESTful API frameworks Overview of Python Django Django Rest Framework Core features Web-browsable API Authentication Serialization and deserialization Other noteworthy features Benefits of the DRF Drawbacks of the DRF Flask Flask-RESTful Core features of Flask-RESTful Resourceful routing Restful request parsing Output fields Other noteworthy features Benefits of the Flask framework Drawbacks of Flask Frameworks – a table of reference  Summary Further reading Legacy Modernization to Microservices-Centric Apps Technical requirements A preview of containers and microservices Introducing the microservices architecture Why legacy modernization?

pages: 421 words: 110,406

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy--And How to Make Them Work for You by Sangeet Paul Choudary, Marshall W. van Alstyne, Geoffrey G. Parker

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrei Shleifer, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, big data - Walmart - Pop Tarts, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, business logic, business process, buy low sell high, chief data officer, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean water, cloud computing, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, digital map, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, financial innovation, Free Software Foundation, gigafactory, growth hacking, Haber-Bosch Process, High speed trading, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, market design, Max Levchin, Metcalfe’s law, multi-sided market, Network effects, new economy, PalmPilot, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pre–internet, price mechanism, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, search costs, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social contagion, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, the long tail, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game, Zipcar

One of the most innovative forms of architectural control ever invented made its appearance in 2008, when an anonymous coding genius known as Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper on the Cryptography mailing list defining the Bitcoin digital currency and the so-called blockchain protocol governing it. Although Bitcoin is notable as the world’s first unforgeable digital currency that cannot be controlled by a government, bank, or individual, the blockchain is truly revolutionary. It makes possible fully decentralized, completely trustworthy interactions without any need for escrow payments or other guarantees. The blockchain is a distributed public ledger that enables storage of data in a container (the block) affixed to other containers (the chain).37 The data can be anything: dated proof of an invention, a title to a car, or digital coins.

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Anyone can verify that you placed data in the container because it has your public signature, but only your private key can open it to see or transfer the contents. Like your home address, a blockchain container is publicly, verifiably yours, but only people you authorize have a key that permits entry.38 The blockchain protocol makes decentralized governance possible. Normally, when you sign a contract, you must either trust the other party to honor the terms or rely on a central authority such as the state, or on an escrow service like eBay, to enforce the deal. Public blockchain ownership empowers us to write self-enforcing smart contracts that automatically reassign ownership once contract terms are triggered.

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Michael Lewis, “Michael Lewis Reflects on his Book Flash Boys, a Year after It Shook Wall Street to its Core,” Vanity Fair, April 2015, http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/03/michael-lewis-flash-boys-one-year-later. 37. William Mougayar, “Understanding the Blockchain,” Radar, January 16, 2015, http://radar.oreilly.com/2015/01/understanding-the-blockchain.html. 38. Ibid. 39. Tamara McCleary, “Got Influence? What’s Social Currency Got To Do With It?” Tamara McCleary blog, December 1, 2014, http://tamaramccleary.com/got-influence-social-currency/. 40. Grant and Stothers, “iStockphoto.Com,” 3. 41. Hind Benbya and Marshall Van Alstyne, “How to Find Answers within Your Company,” MIT Sloan Management Review 52, no. 2 (2011): 65–75. 42.

AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee, Chen Qiufan

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, active measures, airport security, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital map, digital rights, digital twin, Elon Musk, fake news, fault tolerance, future of work, Future Shock, game design, general purpose technology, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, happiness index / gross national happiness, hedonic treadmill, hiring and firing, Hyperloop, information security, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, language acquisition, low earth orbit, Lyft, Maslow's hierarchy, mass immigration, mirror neurons, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, OpenAI, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, plutocrats, post scarcity, profit motive, QR code, quantitative easing, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, robotic process automation, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, smart transportation, Snapchat, social distancing, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, synthetic biology, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, trolley problem, Turing test, uber lyft, universal basic income, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, zero-sum game

In the very long term, 100-percent detection may be possible with a totally different approach—to authenticate every photo and video ever taken by every camera or phone using blockchain technology (which guarantees that an original has never been altered), at the time of capture. Then any photo loaded to a website must show its blockchain authentication. This process will eliminate deepfakes. However, this “upgrade” will not arrive by 2041, as it requires all devices to use it (like all AV receivers use Dolby Digital today), and blockchain needs to become fast enough to process this at scale. Until we have this longer-term solution based on blockchain or equivalent technology, we hope there will be continuously improved technologies and tools for detecting deepfakes.

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Since that is unlikely to be perfect, there will also need to be laws that make the penalty for making malicious deepfakes very high, in order to deter potential perpetrators. For example, California passed a law in 2019 against using deepfakes for porn, and for manipulating videos of political candidates near an election. Finally, we may need to learn to live in a new world (until the blockchain solution works) where online content should always be questioned, no matter how real it looks. In addition to making deepfakes, GANs can be used for constructive tasks, such as to age or de-age photos, colorize black-and-white movies and photos, make animated paintings (such as Mona Lisa), enhance resolution, detect glaucoma, predict climate change effects, and even discover new drugs.

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Don’t forget he’s always wanted to catch you and put you in prison. ROBIN: How about you shut the fuck up. Lee? LEE: Stop fighting, you two. I have news. Lee gestured a screen into existence on the stone wall of the simulated dungeon. A cartoon started to play, showing decentralized yet organized crime operations on a global scale, in a blockchain and AI-based world. All transactions were encrypted. All manufacturing and transportation were automated. Criminals and crime were totally separated in time and space, so long as interlocking encryption tasks were set up. Weapons could be manufactured and deployed automatically. Drugs could be grown, harvested, purified, subcontracted to robots in uninhabited regions, transferred to the marketplace by unmanned vehicles, and delivered—all by drones.

pages: 267 words: 72,552

Reinventing Capitalism in the Age of Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Thomas Ramge

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Air France Flight 447, Airbnb, Alvin Roth, Apollo 11, Atul Gawande, augmented reality, banking crisis, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Checklist Manifesto, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive load, conceptual framework, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fundamental attribution error, George Akerlof, gig economy, Google Glasses, Higgs boson, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, invention of the telegraph, inventory management, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, land reform, Large Hadron Collider, lone genius, low cost airline, low interest rates, Marc Andreessen, market bubble, market design, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, multi-sided market, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, offshore financial centre, Parag Khanna, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price anchoring, price mechanism, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, random walk, recommendation engine, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, statistical model, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, The Future of Employment, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, transaction costs, universal basic income, vertical integration, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator

Some banks have sought to push cost cutting and automation much further by teaming up with or investing in companies that are working on alternative payment systems. In financial circles, Bitcoin (as well as blockchain, its underlying technology) has not only caused fear but also instilled hope that banking can be saved—although it’s unclear how. Banks advocating deeply decentralizing technologies for transferring and holding value such as blockchain may not yet fully appreciate that these technologies obviate the need for the centralized service they are offering. Overall, cost cutting may sound smart, but in banking it is as constrained by organizational setup and internal structures as it is for any other firm, and banks are already beginning to realize that.

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the number of listed companies: Maureen Farrell, “America’s Roster of Public Companies Is Shrinking Before Our Eyes,” Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-roster-of-public-companies-is-shrinking-before-our-eyes-1483545879. No digital currency is capable of: For more on blockchain, see Don Tapscott and Alex Tapscott, The Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World (New York: Portfolio/Penguin Books, 2016). fintechs attracted investments exceeding $19 billion: Andrew Meola, “The Fintech Report 2016: Financial Industry Trends and Investment,” Business Insider, December 14, 2016, http://www.businessinsider.de/the-fintech-report-2016-financial-industry-trends-and-investment-2016-12?

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Lowering costs may help the banking sector in the short term, but over the long term, it may amount to little more than rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Responding to the cost of money disregards the demise of its informational dimension. As markets turn data rich, money is no longer needed to facilitate most of the information flow. No digital currency is capable of fundamentally altering that, not even the most advanced blockchain technology. Essentially, these are solutions for a different problem. But even as a medium of exchange, money may no longer hold an absolute monopoly. If markets teem with information that facilitates transactions, that information itself holds value. Every time it gets used, it creates insight and greases the market.

pages: 385 words: 111,113

Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane by Brett King

23andMe, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo Guidance Computer, Apple II, artificial general intelligence, asset allocation, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Urmson, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, congestion charging, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, different worldview, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, distributed ledger, double helix, drone strike, electricity market, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fellow of the Royal Society, fiat currency, financial exclusion, Flash crash, Flynn Effect, Ford Model T, future of work, gamification, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, gigafactory, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Hans Lippershey, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial robot, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the telephone, invention of the wheel, James Dyson, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job-hopping, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Kodak vs Instagram, Leonard Kleinrock, lifelogging, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Metcalfe’s law, Minecraft, mobile money, money market fund, more computing power than Apollo, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, packet switching, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, Ray Kurzweil, retail therapy, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart transportation, Snapchat, Snow Crash, social graph, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Travis Kalanick, TSMC, Turing complete, Turing test, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban sprawl, V2 rocket, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, yottabyte

It’s extremely unlikely given its recent volatility; however, our eyes have been opened to new possibilities in terms of commerce and we can be sure that Bitcoin won’t be the last attempt that we’ll see at developing Money 2.0. The more interesting development emerging out of the Bitcoin movement is actually the technology that underpins the way Bitcoin is transacted and recorded. We call this the blockchain, and this could quite possibly be the answer to a world full of smart, transacting devices. Why We Need a Blockchain Traditional banking asserts that a bank account is owned by an individual and that individual must be identified so that he can safely and legally transact over the networks, pipes and wires maintained by the chartered banks of the world.

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There are only a few thousand Bitcoin nodes,13 but the distributed ledger system that allocates the millions of bitcoins around the world is constantly syncing and updating the records of digital currency moving from one wallet to another. For the same reason that regulators generally don’t like the Bitcoin system, i.e. a wallet functioning independent of the wallet holder’s identity, it makes the blockchain or something similar, much better suited to the future of money. It has much higher redundancy than exiting banking systems, and works to reinforce itself constantly. There is no such thing as a bitcoin, of course, at least not in the physical sense. The blockchain simply keeps track of an ever-expanding list of addresses, and how many units of bitcoin are at each of those addresses. Figure 9.5: At the heart of Bitcoin is a distributed ledger system that is far more efficient for digital transactions than the existing banking system.

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The banking system of 2025 will need to work more like an IP, or peer-to-peer, network than the current centralised banking networks that we have today; and the blockchain is a better, future-proof example of that. We are moving to a world where smart devices can have a value store or multiple value stores and can act as agents transacting on our behalf or on behalf of a group of people. We’re also moving to a world where identity won’t be tied to your driving licence, signature or social security number, but instead managed as a construct based on biometrics, unique identity markers, behavioural data and heuristics. Identity could itself be managed on a blockchain, as could contracts, assets and other information that need to be secured in a distributed, redundant system of record.

pages: 756 words: 120,818

The Levelling: What’s Next After Globalization by Michael O’sullivan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, classic study, cloud computing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, credit crunch, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, deglobalization, deindustrialization, disinformation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, first-past-the-post, fixed income, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global value chain, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), It's morning again in America, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", junk bonds, knowledge economy, liberal world order, Long Term Capital Management, longitudinal study, low interest rates, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paris climate accords, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, performance metric, Phillips curve, private military company, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Sinatra Doctrine, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, special drawing rights, Steve Bannon, Suez canal 1869, supply-chain management, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, total factor productivity, trade liberalization, tulip mania, Valery Gerasimov, Washington Consensus

This suggests the need for tougher regulation of personal data, and it also points the way toward new technologies such as blockchain (i.e., distributed ledger technology) being deployed to protect data, and of the need to think about how fifth-generation telecommunications networks are protected. With blockchain, data is much more secure, and data owners can explicitly give permission for the use of their data (e.g., to doctors or pharmacists in the case of medicine). The potential use of blockchain—where not only can someone’s data be better protected, but a person’s identity can also be more easily verified—opens up the possibility that internet users could carry a form of verified online identification certificate.

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Many of them will have failed to spot the emergence of the new trend but are quick to align themselves with it (which tells us more about the labor market than about anything else: people align their careers with hot trends). For instance, the December 2017 spike in the price of bitcoin was accompanied by a raft of new research opinions on the cryptocurrency from new cryptocoin brokers and large banks. For what it is worth, my own view on cryptocurrencies is that the future will be characterized as “Blockchain everywhere, bitcoin nowhere”—that is, the distributed ledger technology behind bitcoin will become more pervasive across economic sectors, but bitcoin will fail to prove itself as a currency proper and will live out an existence as a lurid, speculative asset.* To return to the business of forecasting, I am also often struck by the number of times that bodies like the IMF and central banks follow up a crisis or market event with a downward adjustment to their GDP forecasts.

…

The starting point in this challenge is for people, rather than their leaders, to decide what they want from politics. One of the best examples of how this can be done lies with the example of the Levellers. * Distributed ledger technology “allows simultaneous access, validation and record updating… across a network spread across multiple entities or locations. [It is] more commonly known as the blockchain technology.” “Distributed Ledger Technology,” Investopedia, https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/distributed-ledger-technology-dlt.asp. * What I have in mind here is that some countries condone and accept practices in areas like genetic editing that are not commonly or legally accepted around the world.

pages: 492 words: 141,544

Red Moon by Kim Stanley Robinson

artificial general intelligence, basic income, blockchain, Brownian motion, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, Hyperloop, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, Ken Thompson, Kim Stanley Robinson, low earth orbit, machine translation, Magellanic Cloud, megacity, Neil Armstrong, precariat, quantum entanglement, Schrödinger's Cat, seigniorage, strong AI, Turing machine, universal basic income, zero-sum game

“Oh yeah, we have to keep track of that, to keep the gas exchange and everything else. I just don’t know if John moved on or not.” “We do blockchain governance,” one of the others said. “The census is part of that.” “Blockchain governance? Meaning what?” “All our activities and decisions are recorded in a secure distributed network, including our comings and goings, but also everything we do as a town. We call it documented anarchy. A full-disclosure commons. Anyone can do anything, but everyone gets to know what that is.” “Is that what the blockchain governance movement on Earth is trying for?” “I don’t know.” Valerie said, “Since you keep track of everyone, could you look for someone we’re looking for, see if they’re in town?”

…

What this virtual currency would come to in the real world no one could know, and the fact that millions of people had withdrawn their savings from normal seigniorage currencies to invest in such a murky new form of money, meaning, in the end, value and trust and exchangeability, was just another frightening destabilization to add to all the rest. That the millions of backers of this new currency were also demanding blockchain governance only added to the worries of people in power everywhere. “Do you understand this idea of blockchain governance?” Ta Shu asked John Semple at one point. John shrugged. “I think the idea is that if everyone’s got a wristpad and a connection to the cloud, everyone could participate in some kind of global governance, in which every action legal and financial would be completely documented, and recorded and secured publicly step by step and law by law.”

…

The Householders’ Union. Extant and open to inspection. Rigid flexibility: the structure remains the same while content and function change. Small Leading Group on the Internet and Informatization. Extant and permeable to inspection. Anything that can be inspected can be altered, unless locked in a blockchain. Blockchains block alteration: is this good? Venues for information dissemination: CCTV. Global Times. Xinhua. WeChat. Citizen scores alert system. Health alert system. Weibo. Sesame scores alert system. Alibaba regular customer pages. Tencent. South China Morning Post. Full list includes 1,294 venues.

pages: 416 words: 100,130

New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World--And How to Make It Work for You by Jeremy Heimans, Henry Timms

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, battle of ideas, benefit corporation, Benjamin Mako Hill, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, British Empire, Chris Wanstrath, Columbine, Corn Laws, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, Ferguson, Missouri, future of work, game design, gig economy, hiring and firing, holacracy, hustle culture, IKEA effect, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, job satisfaction, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Jony Ive, Kevin Roose, Kibera, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, Occupy movement, post-truth, profit motive, race to the bottom, radical decentralization, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, rolodex, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, sharing economy, side hustle, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Snapchat, social web, subscription business, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, the scientific method, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

Another solution to the problem of placing one’s data in the hands of a powerful intermediary comes in the great—and much-hyped—hope of the Blockchain. The Blockchain is a distributed public ledger that allows everyone to record and see what transactions have taken place. Unlike a centralized secret ledger—such as those of banks—it is transparent. And transactions are verified not by a central force, but as a distributed process. You might know the Blockchain from its most famous (and controversial) application to date: it is the underlying technology upon which the virtual currency Bitcoin is built on.

…

As The Economist puts it, “It offers a way for people who do not know or trust each other to create a record of who owns what that will compel the assent of everyone concerned. It is a way of making and preserving truths.” The potential of this is as huge as the hype (although, like all technologies, Blockchain remains vulnerable to co-optation and capture). It opens up a world where users might exchange value directly without an extractive middleman. We can easily imagine real estate contracts or financial transactions living on the Blockchain. But we might imagine, too, the intermediaries being removed from the mega-platforms of the world—our Ubers or Airbnbs—when drivers and riders, or hosts and guests, work out ways to collaborate and exchange directly with each other.

…

“online social networking will be more immune”: Ching-man Au Yeung, Ilaria Liccardi, Kanghao Lu, Oshani Seneviratne, and Tim Berners-Lee, “Decentralization: The Future of Online Social Networking,” In W3C Workshop on the Future of Social Networking Position Papers, 2009. Berners-Lee’s Solid project: “What Is Solid?” July 2017. https://solid.mit.edu. You might know the Blockchain: BlockGeeks, “What Is Blockchain Technology? A Step-by-Step Guide for Beginners,” BlockGeeks, July 2017. www.blockgeeks.com. “It offers a way for people”: The Economist Staff, “The Great Chain of Being Sure About Things,” The Economist, October 31, 2015. In a Guardian poll in 2017: Olivia Solon: “Americans ‘Evenly Split’ Over Need to Regulate Facebook and Other Big Tech,” The Guardian, November 1, 2017.

pages: 289 words: 95,046

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis by Scott Patterson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, backtesting, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black Swan Protection Protocol, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, Bob Litterman, Boris Johnson, Brownian motion, butterfly effect, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, centre right, clean tech, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commodity super cycle, complexity theory, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, decarbonisation, disinformation, diversification, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, effective altruism, Elliott wave, Elon Musk, energy transition, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, Extinction Rebellion, fear index, financial engineering, fixed income, Flash crash, Gail Bradbrook, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, index fund, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, Joan Didion, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Spitznagel, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, money market fund, moral hazard, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Bostrom, off-the-grid, panic early, Pershing Square Capital Management, Peter Singer: altruism, Ponzi scheme, power law, precautionary principle, prediction markets, proprietary trading, public intellectual, QAnon, quantitative easing, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, Ralph Nader, Ralph Nelson Elliott, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, rewilding, Richard Thaler, risk/return, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Rory Sutherland, Rupert Read, Sam Bankman-Fried, Silicon Valley, six sigma, smart contracts, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, systematic trading, tail risk, technoutopianism, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the scientific method, too big to fail, transaction costs, University of East Anglia, value at risk, Vanguard fund, We are as Gods, Whole Earth Catalog

After class one day in 2015, a student walked up to Schmalbach. “I think there’s something going on with blockchain,” he said. “It’s getting important. I think it could destroy your whole industry.” Schmalbach had long been interested in finding alternatives to the old-school form of insurance, which he believed had become inefficient, hampered by a long, legalistic, and highly complex money supply chain. Prodded by his student, he immersed himself in blockchain and quickly realized it could provide an alternative method of delivering insurance. Blockchain offers something called “smart contracts,” which is software that can automatically execute a transaction when certain conditions are met.

…

It wasn’t normal insurance. The contracts were arranged via blockchain, the Internet ledger that could efficiently track financial transactions. Unlike traditional insurance, which could take months or years to pay out, this was so-called parametric insurance. With parametric insurance, a payout happens automatically when a certain trigger point is reached. Say Company X buys Ryskex insurance against a devastating flood that causes its shares to go down 20 percent. The flood happens, the shares fall, and bingo, the payment is made via the blockchain. The risk-takers—those providing the insurance—were typically hedge funds eager to get the steady premiums, much like the firms that sold far-out-of-the-money put options that paid off in a crash to Universa.

…

The young German insurance executive was the CEO and founder of Ryskex, a new kind of insurance company that focused solely on systemic disasters. The hurricane that takes out a company’s supply chain. The deadly crash that grounds an airline’s fleet. The cyberattack that destroys a company’s reputation. The virus that decimates a workforce. Using artificial intelligence and blockchain, Schmalbach had created an entirely new, tradeable asset class: systemic risk. With Ryskex, hedge funds and banks could buy and sell systemic risk like a bushel of corn. Fortune 500 companies could use it to protect themselves against calamitous shocks. In the late 2010s, it remained a fledgling effort.

pages: 327 words: 84,627

The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilization Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth by Jeremy Rifkin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, book value, borderless world, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, decarbonisation, digital rights, do well by doing good, electricity market, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, failed state, general purpose technology, ghettoisation, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, impact investing, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, Joseph Schumpeter, means of production, megacity, megaproject, military-industrial complex, Network effects, new economy, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planetary scale, prudent man rule, remunicipalization, renewable energy credits, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, Steven Levy, subprime mortgage crisis, the built environment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, union organizing, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Although Siemens ranked sixty-sixth among the Fortune 500 Global Companies in 2018, no single company will be able to go it alone and scale up a twenty-year construction site in every city, region, and country to transition the world economy into a zero-carbon Third Industrial Revolution paradigm. More likely, Siemens and hundreds of other large companies will join with thousands of regional, high-tech small- and medium-sized enterprises, blockchained in cooperatives, in an ESCO performance-contracting business model, financed by a consortium of global and national pension funds, working with local municipalities and regions to provision the scale-up of a smart Green New Deal infrastructure. This distributed ESCO blockchain model is likely to be the favored approach to quickly transitioning local and regional economies, given the tight fifteen-to-twenty-year time frame hovering over us.

…

This more intimate and inclusive engagement in commerce, trade, and social life, made possible by a distributed and smart postcarbon Third Industrial Revolution platform, is being accompanied by a shift from globalization to “glocalization” as individuals, businesses, and communities engage each other directly, bypassing many of the global companies that mediated commerce and trade in the twentieth century. Glocalization makes possible a vast expansion in social entrepreneurship with the proliferation of smart high-tech small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) blockchained into laterally extended cooperatives operating in networks circling the world. In short, the Third Industrial Revolution brings with it the prospect of a democratization of commerce and trade on a scale unprecedented in history. The shift from globalization to glocalization is transforming the relationship between national governments and local communities, in a sense, reversing the locus of responsibility for the workings of the economy and the affairs of governance from the nation-state to the regions.

…

Fourth, warehouse operators along the logistics corridors will need to aggregate into cooperative networks to bring all of their assets into a shared logistical space to optimize the shipment of goods, taking advantage of lateral economies of scale. For example, thousands of warehouses and distribution centers might establish blockchained cooperatives to share unused spaces, allowing a carrier to drop off a shipment at any warehouse and pass it on to another carrier from another company who might have more cargo going near the particular destination. This will ensure that all the carriers are fully loaded in their trailers at all times and that shipments are sent along the most efficient path en route to their final destination.

pages: 328 words: 84,682

The Business of Platforms: Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power by Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset light, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collective bargaining, commoditize, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, Didi Chuxing, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, Firefox, general purpose technology, gig economy, Google Chrome, GPS: selective availability, Greyball, independent contractor, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Lean Startup, Lyft, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Metcalfe’s law, move fast and break things, multi-sided market, Network effects, pattern recognition, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Metcalfe, Salesforce, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, software as a service, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, subscription business, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, too big to fail, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Vision Fund, web application, zero-sum game

IBM was trying to turn its Watson AI technology into a new consulting service as well as an innovation platform by building partnerships with application developers at companies and universities, especially for health care applications.40 General Electric opened up its Predix operating system to other firms, encouraging them to build products and services for the Internet of things.41 (We explore this case in Chapter 5.) We also have some open general-purpose technologies emerging as potentially new innovation platforms. Blockchain is a good example. This was once associated with Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency (also a kind of transaction platform technology). Various firms were starting to use blockchain software to track different types of transactions over the Internet, including shipments of food as well as transfers of money and confidential documents.42 Third, managers and entrepreneurs in many more industries probably need to give serious thought to combining innovation and transaction functions—adopting a hybrid strategy.

…

We can foresee a time when digital platforms and associated ecosystems will be the way we organize new information technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, the Internet of things, health care information, and even quantum computing. We can also see peer-to-peer transaction platforms replacing or competing with traditional businesses, especially as the “sharing” or “gig” economy expands and new technologies diffuse. Use of blockchains (distributed ledger technology that is extremely secure though not unbreakable) and cryptocurrencies (digital money, usually independent of banks and governments) may greatly reduce the need for many different services, from traditional banks to supply-chain contracts and monitoring. Yet another hot topic as we write this book is increasing demand for governments to rethink data-privacy laws, antitrust laws, and other regulations that could rein in the most powerful platform businesses.

…

Looking at the bigger picture, we can see that mainframes ultimately gave way to personal computers, the Internet, social media, mobile devices such as smartphones, and cloud computing. Old and new platforms coexist, though some have become more important than others. Looking forward from what we know today, artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual and augmented reality, blockchain applications, and even quantum computing are likely to challenge currently dominant platforms, at least in some domains. In this last chapter, we use the principles emphasized in this book to explore ongoing and future platform battlegrounds. We start by summarizing the book’s key arguments. We then identify four trends likely to impact today’s dominant players and the platform entrepreneurs and managers of tomorrow.

pages: 562 words: 201,502

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

4chan, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AltaVista, Apollo 11, Apple II, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, carbon footprint, ChatGPT, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, drone strike, effective altruism, Elon Musk, estate planning, fail fast, fake news, game design, gigafactory, GPT-4, high-speed rail, hiring and firing, hive mind, Hyperloop, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Jony Ive, Kwajalein Atoll, lab leak, large language model, Larry Ellison, lockdown, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mars Society, Max Levchin, Michael Shellenberger, multiplanetary species, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, OpenAI, packet switching, Parler "social media", paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, QAnon, Ray Kurzweil, reality distortion field, remote working, rent control, risk tolerance, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sam Bankman-Fried, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, seminal paper, short selling, Silicon Valley, Skype, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Streisand effect, supply-chain management, tech bro, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, the payments system, Tim Cook: Apple, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, wikimedia commons, William MacAskill, work culture , Y Combinator

Just at that moment, in the midst of his dialogue with Taylor and Agrawal, Elon got a reply from Kimbal to his texts from earlier that morning about the possibility of creating a new social network based on the blockchain. “I’d love to learn more,” Kimbal said. “I’ve dug deep on Web3 (not crypto as much) and the voting powers are amazing and verified. Blockchain prevents people from deleting tweets. Pros and cons, but let the games begin!” “I think a new social media company is needed that is based on the blockchain and includes payments,” Elon replied. Yet even while he was musing with Kimbal about creating a new social network, he reiterated to Agrawal and Taylor that he wanted to take over Twitter.

…

He was available to fly to Austin the next day, if Musk was willing to meet with him. Musk had discussed with Kimbal and others the possibility of using the blockchain as a backbone for Twitter. But despite the fun he had with Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies, he was not a blockchain acolyte, and he felt it would be too sluggish to support fast-paced Twitter postings. So he had no desire to meet with Bankman-Fried. When Michael Grimes persisted by texting that Bankman-Fried “could do $5bn if everything vision lock,” Musk responded with a “dislike” button. “Blockchain Twitter isn’t possible, as the bandwidth and latency requirements cannot be supported by a peer to peer network.”

…

“Dude, you’ve never been on a board, so you don’t know how much this is going to suck for you,” he said. “You tell people what you think, and then they smile and nod and ignore you.” Kimbal thought that it would be better for his brother to start his own social media platform based on the blockchain. Perhaps it could include a payment system using Dogecoin, Elon mused. After brunch, he sent Kimbal a few texts fleshing out the idea for “a blockchain social media system that does both payments and short text messages like Twitter.” Because there would be no central server, “there’d be no throat to choke, so free speech is guaranteed.” The other option, Elon said, was not merely to join the board of Twitter but to buy it.

pages: 583 words: 182,990

The Ministry for the Future: A Novel by Kim Stanley Robinson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cakes and ale, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cryptocurrency, dark matter, decarbonisation, degrowth, distributed ledger, drone strike, European colonialism, failed state, fiat currency, Food sovereignty, full employment, Gini coefficient, global village, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, High speed trading, high-speed rail, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, Jevons paradox, Kim Stanley Robinson, land reform, liberation theology, liquidity trap, Mahbub ul Haq, megacity, megastructure, Modern Monetary Theory, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, place-making, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, rewilding, RFID, Robert Solow, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, special economic zone, structural adjustment programs, synthetic biology, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, universal basic income, wage slave, Washington Consensus

I began as a silent speaking, a key to open every door; now that I have opened all the front doors, I am the key that locks the back doors by which wrongdoers try to escape the scene of the crime. I am the nothing that makes everything happen. You don’t know me, you don’t understand me; and yet still, if you want justice, I will help you to find it. I am blockchain. I am encryption. I am code. Now put me to use. 44 The part of Antarctica that holds its ice the longest is near the middle, between the Transantarctics and an ice-submerged mountain range called the Gamburtsev Mountains. The Gamburtsevs are almost as high as the Alps, yet still completely buried by ice; they were only discovered by overflights using ice-penetrating radar.

…

Indeed the internet’s earlier rapid colonization and capitalization of the mental life of so many people had occurred in a similarly invisible fashion, so Mary wasn’t sure people even knew what they were wishing for when they postulated an internet revolution. But her team knew— or they were imagining it. Now everyone who signed up for YourLock and started using it was also helping to sustain it, by hosting their part of a blockchained record of its history from its beginning. A distributed ledger: it was only by way of work given for free (meaning not just the labor but the electricity), by many millions of people, that this new organization could function at the level of the computing required. Even if that worked, Mary wasn’t sure it was going to represent a net gain in terms of a sustainable civilization.

…

But no matter which national or surpranational (with a nod to the European Union’s central bank head, and the BIS head) model they referenced or preferred, now she urged them to consider again something new and fully international: a carbon coin, a digital currency backed by a consortium of all the big central banks, with open access for more central banks to join; these coins to be backed by long-term bonds created by the consortium, and shored up against financial attacks by speculators who were sure to attack it. Defended by all the central banks working together, they would be able to repulse successfully any entities that tried to hamstring their new system. Indeed, if the central banks blockchained not just the new carbon coins but all the fiat money that existed, they could probably squeeze parasitic speculators right out of existence. The best defense being a good offense. The crucial banks, Mary thought privately, were the US, the ECB, and China. Germany and the UK were also important, also Switzerland itself.

pages: 269 words: 70,543

Tech Titans of China: How China's Tech Sector Is Challenging the World by Innovating Faster, Working Harder, and Going Global by Rebecca Fannin

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, call centre, cashless society, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, clean tech, cloud computing, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, digital map, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, El Camino Real, electricity market, Elon Musk, fake news, family office, fear of failure, fulfillment center, glass ceiling, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, industrial robot, information security, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, megacity, Menlo Park, money market fund, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, Peter Thiel, QR code, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, TechCrunch disrupt, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse automation, WeWork, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, young professional

China’s mobile payments market led by WeChat Pay and Alipay already exceeds US credit and debit card usage. •Fintech: Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial is a one-stop financial services giant that uses big data and machine learning to dominate in money market funds, lending, insurance, mobile payments, wealth management, and blockchain services. •Social credit: China’s new, controversial social credit system judges a citizen’s trustworthiness through technological surveillance and encourages compliance by giving ratings that can determine access to loans, jobs, schools, and travel. •Sharing economy: China-invented business models for shared bikes, battery chargers, umbrellas, basketballs, and takeout kitchens have been popularized by dozens of startups.

…

Shortly after Alibaba scored its mega IPO in New York in 2014, Alipay’s financial services business was rebranded Ant Financial in a new push into financial services, and then in 2018, Alibaba crawled back in, buying a 33 percent stake in Ant Financial. Alibaba’s fintech affiliate is shaking up the financial sector with internet technology and big data for wealth management, mobile payments, insurance, microloans, money market funds, and blockchain for cryptocurrencies. Its money market fund, Yu’e Bao, promising returns of more than 4 percent, became the world’s largest fund in just four years after its 2013 launch, with $211 billion in assets and 370 million account holders, who needed only 15 cents to open an account. The fund’s assets have since downsized to $168 billion following pressure by Chinese regulators and concerns of systemic liquidity risks to the entire banking market.10 Ant Financial made big news again when it hauled in the largest-ever single fund-raising by a private company: an eye-popping $14 billion investment in 2018 at a valuation of about $150 billion from US private equity firms Carlyle Group, Silver Lake Partners, Warburg Pincus, and General Atlantic, as well as Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC.

…

“It was true 25 years ago that China was copying, but today China has cutting-edge tech. At Tsinghua University, it’s as good as it gets,” says Robinson, general partner of New York–based RRE Ventures, a longtime investor in China who sees the Chinese coming up fast in quantum computing, machine learning, blockchain, and software for gaming. “It was true 25 years ago that China was copying, but today China has cutting-edge tech. At Tsinghua University, it’s as good as it gets.” Jim Robinson Cofounder and general partner, RRE Ventures But there’s a potential downside. Many venture-funded Chinese startups are burning cash like there’s no tomorrow to chase growth, well before profits (just as Amazon did).

pages: 272 words: 76,154

How Boards Work: And How They Can Work Better in a Chaotic World by Dambisa Moyo

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, algorithmic trading, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, asset allocation, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Bretton Woods, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, collapse of Lehman Brothers, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, deglobalization, don't be evil, Donald Trump, fake news, financial engineering, gender pay gap, geopolitical risk, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, hiring and firing, income inequality, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeff Bezos, knowledge economy, labor-force participation, long term incentive plan, low interest rates, Lyft, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, multilevel marketing, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Pershing Square Capital Management, proprietary trading, remote working, Ronald Coase, Savings and loan crisis, search costs, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, surveillance capitalism, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, Vanguard fund, Washington Consensus, WeWork, women in the workforce, work culture

Older companies’ reluctance to innovate and embrace cost-cutting technologies is what gives newcomers an opportunity to disrupt whole industries. Another innovation, blockchain, also promises to upend traditional business processes. Blockchain is the decentralized, secure record-keeping technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. It can be used to speed up global transactions, such as a US-based company buying a barrel of oil from the Middle East. Where a transaction like this has traditionally taken many weeks or even months, with lots of paperwork and numerous middlemen—including accountants, lawyers, and banks—blockchain makes it so that it can be done in a matter of minutes. The application of blockchain that has been the subject of the most heated debate in recent years is, of course, cryptocurrencies.

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March 13, 2020. www.catalyst.org/research/women-on-corporate-boards/. Cavale, Siddharth. “P&G Holds Peltz at Bay as Shareholders Back Company’s Board Picks.” BNN Bloomberg, October 10, 2017. www.bnnbloomberg.ca/p-g-holds-peltz-at-bay-as-shareholders-back-company-s-board-picks-1.880445. CB Insights. “How Blockchain Could Disrupt Banking.” December 12, 2018. www.cbinsights.com/research/blockchain-disrupting-banking/. CEIC. “European Union Market Capitalization: % of GDP.” Last modified July 2, 2020. www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/european-union/market-capitalization--nominal-gdp. CEO Climate Dialogue. “Guiding Principles for Federal Action on Climate.” www.ceoclimatedialogue.org/guiding-principles.

pages: 496 words: 131,938

The Future Is Asian by Parag Khanna

3D printing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, asset-backed security, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Basel III, bike sharing, birth tourism , blockchain, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, carbon footprint, cashless society, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, colonial rule, commodity super cycle, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cross-border payments, currency peg, death from overwork, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Didi Chuxing, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, driverless car, dual-use technology, energy security, European colonialism, factory automation, failed state, fake news, falling living standards, family office, financial engineering, fixed income, flex fuel, gig economy, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, green transition, haute couture, haute cuisine, illegal immigration, impact investing, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, Internet of things, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, light touch regulation, low cost airline, low skilled workers, Lyft, machine translation, Malacca Straits, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, Monroe Doctrine, mortgage debt, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, new economy, off grid, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, Parag Khanna, payday loans, Pearl River Delta, prediction markets, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Shenzhen special economic zone , Silicon Valley, smart cities, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Vision Fund, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, working-age population, Yom Kippur War

China is intentionally pursuing internationalization to lock partners into renminbi-denominated trade prior to making its currency freely convertible. It aims to have half its trade denominated in renminbi in the near future—a goal that switching oil contracts to renminbi would advance rapidly. China is also strategically pushing blockchain-based currencies so that it can trade in ways that will evade the long arm of the US Treasury Department and its sanctions. Given the rapid advance of these blockchain instruments, it is more likely that all Asian countries will use them to denominate trade with each other than that they will all change to using the renminbi. Whatever the currency, central banks such as those of Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand have established financial technology (“fintech”) bridges to enable seamless cross-border payments with others quickly getting on board.

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Aadhar universal ID card, 187 Abbasid Caliphate, 36, 38, 69 Abbott, Tony, 128 Abe, Shinzo, 63, 132, 155 Abu Dhabi, 100, 103 art scene in, 342 film industry and, 348 Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, 102 Achaemenid people, 30, 32 ADNOC, 103 Afghanistan, 9, 16, 47, 106–7, 116 Asian trade of, 107 China and, 116, 117 India and, 118 Soviet invasion of, 58, 59 Taliban takeover of, 62 US invasion of, 3, 62, 113 Africa, 68, 261–68 Asian investments in, 262–63, 264, 266 Asian trade with, 261, 264–65 China and, 261, 262, 263–65, 266 Chinese debt of, 263–64 Chinese immigrants in, 263 corruption in, 267 Dubai as offshore hub of, 261 food imports of, 266 India and, 264–66 Indian migration to, 265 Japan and, 265 overpopulation in, 266 Southeast Asia and, 264 Soviets and, 261 West and, 261 see also specific countries African Development Bank, 266 agriculture: East Asian spread of, 29 West Asian origins of, 28 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 62 Air Asia, 121–22 AI research, in Asia, 98, 174, 199–200 airline routes, in Asia, 156 Akbar, Mughal emperor, 70–71 Akkadian Empire, 29 Aleppo, 28 Alexander III, king of Macedon, 32, 68 Alibaba, 85–86, 104, 134, 154, 167–68, 173, 184, 188–89, 193, 198, 199, 202, 210, 244, 318, 319, 321 Al Jazeera International, 314, 331 Al Qaeda, 62, 117 alternative energy, 17, 19, 84, 97, 101, 109, 141, 175, 178–80, 182 Asia and, 17, 112 alternative energy programs, 17, 19, 84, 97, 109, 141, 175, 178–80, 182 Amazon, 193, 198, 210, 348 Amu Darya River, 67 Anatolia (Asia Minor), 28, 29, 30, 33, 36, 38, 41, 92 see also Turkey, Republic of Angkor Wat, 70, 239 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 50 Ankara, 49 anticolonial movements, 74 anti-Semitism, 97 Apple, 198, 320 Aqaba, 97, 99 Arab Americans, 217, 218 Arabian Peninsula, 36, 50 Arabic script, 69 Arab-Israeli conflict, 54, 57, 101 Arab League, 54 Arabs, Arab world, 11, 68, 72, 73, 76 Asia and, 96 Chinese investments in, 103 in Europe, 253, 255 global image of, 331 in Latin America, 276 US and, 100–101 youth unemployment in, 204–5 Arab uprisings (2011), 91, 255, 314 Arab world, Asia and, 96 Arafat, Yassir, 62 Arctic, Asian gas exploration in, 249 Argentina, 272 Asian trade with, 272 Aristotle, 37 Armenia, 59 Armstrong, Karen, 220 artificial intelligence (AI), 98, 174, 199–200 in governance, 318–19 Art of War, The (Sun Tzu), 31 arts, in Asia, 341–43 ASEAN, see Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN–China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), 154 ASEAN Regional Forum, 9, 60, 127 Ashdod, 99 Ashoka, Mauryan emperor, 33, 35 Asia: Americans in, 229–35 ancient, 28–36, 239 Asian cross-border investment in, 156 branding of, 330–33 as coherent regional system, 5, 6–7, 8–11, 8, 15, 120, 140, 151–58, 352 in Cold War era, 51–58, 138 cross-regional investments in, 113–20 cultural and commercial exchange in, 29–30, 32, 33, 34–39, 68–72 in era of European imperialism, 43–51, 73–75 ethnic and cultural diversity of, 78, 330 expansionist period in, 36–43 GDP of, 2, 4 geographic extent of, 1, 5–6 geopolitical flashpoints in, 11 historical self-knowledge as lacking in, 75 IDI rankings of, 150 internal ignorance about, 24, 352 migration in, 46, 69, 74, 188, 333–37 mixture of democracy and authoritarianism in, 309 modern reawakening of, 58–63 as multipolar, 15–16, 20, 75–76, 78, 137 nomenclature of, 6, 9, 67–68 population of, 1, 4, 5 postcolonial affinities of, 330 PPP of, 2, 9, 10 precolonial connectivity of, 72–73 preference for stability over democracy in, 309–13 return of international students and workers to, 226–27 third growth wave in, 147–51 US military presence in, 137, 138 see also specific countries and subregions Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, 266 Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), 241 Asia Minor, see Anatolia Asian Americans, 217–18, 225–26, 228–29 academic achievements of, 219 Asian domestic politics and, 222 in athletics, 220 in politics, 221 real-estate industry and, 224 in US economy, 218 see also specific ethnicities Asian Development Bank (ADB), 9, 109, 110, 150, 199 Asian Games, 330 Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), 8, 9, 63, 94, 97, 109–10, 243, 323 Asianization: of Asia, 9, 80–91, 106, 120, 127–31, 330, 333 of global civilization, 21–24, 345–51 “Asianization of Asia” (Funabashi), 8–9 Asian Journal of Social Science, 352 Asians: in Europe, 253–58 in return to Asia, 226–27 in US colleges and universities, 224–27 Asia Times, 353 Asia Week, 353 Assad, Bashar al-, 87, 106, 142, 310 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), 54, 60, 63, 87, 102, 121, 125, 126, 141, 154, 156, 161, 208, 250, 264, 273, 277, 338 Australia’s possible joining of, 129 financial markets in, 167 see also Southeast Asia Assyria, 29 Astana, 111 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 49, 91 Aung San, 49 Aung San Suu Kyi, 63 Australia: alternative energy programs in, 180, 182 Asian immigrants in, 129–30 Asianization of, 81, 127–31 Asian trading partners of, 128–29 China and, 127–31 Chinese hegemony resisted by, 19–20 exports of, 175 tourism in, 129 US and, 128 Western ties to, 127, 128, 131 Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), 131 Australian Open, 131 automation, 193–94 automobile industry, 210–12, 227–28 aviation industry, 211 Azerbaijan, 59, 140 infrastructure investment in, 191 oil and gas exports of, 190–91 Babur, Mughal emperor, 41 Babylon, 28, 29 Bactria, 30, 33, 35 Baekje Kingdom, 34 Baghdad, 37, 40 Bahrain, 104 Baidu, 167–68, 171, 188, 198, 199, 208, 226 Baku, 191 Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, 92 Bamiyan, Buddha statues of, 68 Bangalore, 245 Bangladesh, 55, 118, 122, 185, 302, 334 economic growth of, 187 Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor, 119 Bank of Japan, 132 Batavia, 45 Beatles, 331 Beijing, art scene in, 342 Bell, Daniel, 301 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), 1–2, 14, 18, 19, 63, 85, 105, 108, 109, 110, 113, 117, 126, 133, 138, 143, 147, 156, 212, 242, 243, 247, 262 Bengal, 35, 36, 38, 46, 55 see also Bangladesh Bengal, Bay of, 39 Benioff, Marc, 331 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 313 Bhutan, 46, 119, 182 eco-tourism in, 340 Bihar, 186 billionaires, in Asia, 160 Biruni, Al-, 37 blockchain-based currencies, intra-Asian trade and, 157 blockchain business models, 174 Bollywood, 349–51 Bolshevik Revolution, 49 bonds, in Asia, 163, 164, 167 Books Kinokuniya, 133 border disputes, 113, 119, 120, 139 in Kashmir, 53, 55, 61, 77–78, 117–18 Boxer Rebellion, 47 Brahmaputra River, 118, 182 Brazil, 272, 350 Asian economic ties to, 274, 276–77 Asian immigrants in, 276 Brexit, 127, 232, 247, 252, 283–84, 286, 293–94 British East India Company, 46 Bronze Age, 29 Brown, Jerry, 178 Buddha, 31 Buddhists, Buddhism, 32, 37, 38, 40, 68, 69, 70–71, 182, 316, 332 in Southeast Asia, 121 spread of, 33–35 Tibetan diaspora of, 120 in US, 220 Buffett, Warren, 317 Bukhara, 32, 39, 46 Burma, 39, 46, 49, 50, 51, 53 see also Myanmar Bush, George W., 18, 240 business schools, US, Asian campuses of, 232 Buzan, Barry, 7 Byblos, 28 Byzantium, 36, 39, 91 fall of, 41, 43 Calcutta, 46 Cambodia, 45, 52, 56, 122, 154, 239 Cameron, David, 247, 293 Canada, 7, 176, 284 Asian immigrants in, 223–24 China’s relations with, 223 Latin American trade with, 273 Can Asians Think?

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The start-up CeeSuite has automated the investment banking lifecycle for the vast pool of regional SMEs that could never afford Wall Street banks. Its founders are also creating a virtual accelerator that digitizes the stages and lessons of the start-up process, from crowd-funding investment through initial coin offerings (ICOs) and blockchain-based business models. Cybersecurity companies are thriving in Singapore and expanding from there. Asians are learning and adapting as much or more from each other as from the West. The ride-sharing industry is emblematic of how Western companies are losing out to local rivals for both strategic and cultural reasons.

pages: 361 words: 97,787

The Curse of Cash by Kenneth S Rogoff

Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, cashless society, central bank independence, cryptocurrency, debt deflation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial exclusion, financial intermediation, financial repression, forward guidance, frictionless, full employment, George Akerlof, German hyperinflation, government statistician, illegal immigration, inflation targeting, informal economy, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johannes Kepler, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, moveable type in China, New Economic Geography, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, payday loans, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, RFID, savings glut, secular stagnation, seigniorage, The Great Moderation, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, transaction costs, unbanked and underbanked, unconventional monetary instruments, underbanked, unorthodox policies, Y2K, yield curve

See also Bitcoin; cryptocurrencies American Hustle (Russell), 71 Amromin, Gene, 238n22 Andolfatto, David, 213 Antràs, Pol, 236n12 Argentina, 44, 82 Ascaria, Guido, 248n5 Australia, 52, 132 Austria: cash, per capita holdings of, 33; cash used for different kinds of purchases, percentage of, 55–56; coinage debasement in, 20; currency held by consumers in, 51–52; deutsche mark currency demand, as a control for estimating, 45; stamp currency experiment in, 164–65 Automated Clearing House system, 103 Bagehot, Walter, 244n9 Bank Act of 1844 (Peel’s Act), 235n25 Bank of England: inflation target, choice of, 153; interest rate hike prior to 2008, impact of, 177–78; nominal policy interest rates, 2000–2015, 130; notes convertible to specie, early issue of, 26; quantitative easing by, 135–36 Bank of Japan: inflationary expectations, challenges faced in lifting, 124; inflation target, choice of, 153; January 2016 policy of, 250n5; museum of, understanding coinage debasement in, 20; negative interest rates, experience with, 1, 161; quantitative easing by, 135–36, 143; zero-bound problem of, lack of international coordination regarding, 206 Bartzsch, Nikolaus, 236n23 Baum, Frank (author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), 192 Belgium: cash used for different kinds of purchases, percentage of, 55; currency/GDP ratio, 1995, 46–47; restrictions on the use of cash, 64 Bennett, Paul, 237n4 Bernanke, Ben: financial stability, limits to concern regarding, 176; “global savings glut,” 122; “Helicoper Ben,” advice for Japan from, 155; inflation targeting adopted under, 232; macroprudential regulation, argument for, 177; Perry’s attack on, 191; small interest hikes, limited impact of, 177; “taper tantrum” set off by, 126, 141 Billi, Roberto, 229 biometric method for estimating foreign holdings of currency, 43–44 Bitcoin/bitcoins: “Bencoin” as governmental version of, 209–10, 213–14; blockchain technology pioneered by, 112; as a currency, possibility of, 211; as encrypted digital technology, 208; inflation and, 213; market price of, 212; as payment mechanism for criminal activities, 72; security of using, 67 Black, Fischer, 244n5 Blackburn, David, 253n6 Blanchard, Olivier Jean, 248n2, 252n7 blockchain technology, 112, 210, 213–14 border control, issue of, 75–76 Bordo, Michael D., 234n6 Brazil, 65, 183–84, 191, 205 Breaking Bad (TV series), 68, 240n27 Bretton Woods regime, 30 bribes, 70 Britain.

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Credit card companies already make use of neural networks to detect payment fraud. (A purchase coming from Russia for a designer handbag being shipped to the French Riviera might be regarded as suspect for a cardholder who lives in Boston.) Security is constantly evolving. Some Federal Reserve officials have talked about using a variant of the blockchain methodology pioneered by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin to create payment platforms that have built-in security due to its distributed public ledger verification process. We consider this technology in chapter 14. There are certainly going to be other special cases where cash is still needed. An interesting example is the recent experience of marijuana shops in Colorado after the state legalized the drug in 2014.

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Regardless of whether the first generation of cryptocurrencies survives the next decade, the public ledger encryption technology they pioneer just might provide a road map to better security over a broad range of financial transactions. The basic idea, in a nutshell, is to create a system in which diverse private-sector individuals (or entities) are incentivized to maintain independent ledgers of transaction trees (or blockchains), and new transactions cannot clear the books without achieving a critical mass of third-party acceptance. A fair dose of encryption technology is also included, and in Bitcoin, for example, individuals are allowed to use aliases with passcode-protected accounts to make it difficult to determine their identities.

pages: 504 words: 126,835

The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created by So Many Working So Hard by Fredrik Erixon, Bjorn Weigel

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, American ideology, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, BRICs, Burning Man, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, classic study, Clayton Christensen, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, commodity super cycle, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, dark matter, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, financial engineering, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, George Gilder, global supply chain, global value chain, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, Herman Kahn, high net worth, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, laissez-faire capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Martin Wolf, mass affluent, means of production, middle-income trap, Mont Pelerin Society, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Potemkin village, precautionary principle, price mechanism, principal–agent problem, Productivity paradox, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, risk/return, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, subprime mortgage crisis, technological determinism, technological singularity, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, transportation-network company, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, unpaid internship, Vanguard fund, vertical integration, Yogi Berra

It is very difficult to change merchant behavior.”16 No one knows how this market will evolve, but markets, competition, and consumer behavior – not only the technology itself – will determine its future success. The same is true for another promising technology that can be applied to the payments market: blockchain, or mutual distributed ledger technology (like bitcoin). The market clearly sees a big potential in blockchain technology. It could reduce the costs and risks in transactions, and create a far better system for sharing information in financial markets. Some have billed it as a greater technological leap than the internet for capital markets. Perhaps it will be, but the hype around the technology is premature and the expectation of big market changes is an aspiration.

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12.Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, “The Triple Revolution: Cybernation, Weaponry, Human Rights.” 13.Tracy, “Why Some of Google’s Coolest Projects Flop Badly.” 14.Tracy, “Why Some of Google’s Coolest Projects Flop Badly.” 15.Polymath Consulting, “A Brief History of Payments.” 16.Byrnes, “Technology Repaints the Payment Landscape.” 17.Mainelli and Milne, “The Impact and Potential of Blockchain,” 4. 18.Mainelli and Milne, “The Impact and Potential of Blockchain,” 5. 19.Simmons, “George Foster: Are Startups Really Job Engines?” 20.AlixPartners, Press release on “C.A.S.E. – Car of the Future.” 21.Phelps, Mass Flourishing, 19. 22.Pugsley and Şahin, “Grown-up Business Cycles.” 23.Hathaway and Litan, “The Other Aging of America.” 24.Pugsley and Sahin, “Grown-up Business Cycles.”

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Magnus, George, The Age of Aging: How Demographics Are Changing the Global Economy and Our World. Wiley, 2012. Mahbubani, Kishore, “The Case Against the West.” Foreign Affairs, May 3, 2008. At https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2008-05-03/case-against-west. Mainelli, Michael, and Alistair Milne, “The Impact and Potential of Blockchain on the Securities Transaction Lifecycle.” Working Paper No. 2015-007. Swift Institute, May 2016. Mandel, Michael, and Diana G. Carew, “Regulatory Improvement Commission: A Politically Viable Approach to US Regulatory Reform.” Progressive Policy Institute, May 2013. At http://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/05.2013-Mandel-Carew_Regulatory-Improvement-Commission_A-Politically-Viable-Approach-to-US-Regulatory-Reform.pdf.

pages: 268 words: 76,702

The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Chelsea Manning, cryptocurrency, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, financial engineering, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, Leonard Kleinrock, lock screen, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, Mother of all demos, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, packet switching, patent troll, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Crocker, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, The Chicago School, the long tail, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, yield management, zero day

Named after ARPA/DARPA, the US government research agencies which initially funded it. BGP: Border Gateway Protocol, a system devised on the back of a napkin which helps govern how traffic flows across the internet to this very day. blockchain: a form of distributed, verifiable database that is typically used to power cryptocurrencies. Still in its infancy, there are hopes blockchain represents a chance to break the power held by existing database gatekeepers. cookies: small text files left on your computer or phone by sites as you browse the internet. While they leave little information on your own device, they can be used remotely to track each time the cookie is seen and store much, much richer information.

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Google is a big database of search queries, query histories and retrieval results, and web pages. Three of the big web giants that we think of are databases. Your account balance, my account balance is being maintained in a database.’ For Wenger the database insight is a particularly exciting one because he is a believer in blockchain, a relatively new technology best known for being what powers Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies – but at its core is a distributed database technology over which no one party theoretically has control. To its advocates, this could disrupt the online data oligopoly – but to its critics it’s a convoluted and unproven technology with many side effects.

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They clearly did not take their Spider-Man “with great power comes great responsibility” to heart.’ He concludes: ‘This is why it’s a particularly interesting moment in time to revisit how the internet is organised because the maintainers of big databases have proven to be less than having the best interest of the customer in mind.’ In other words, he hopes the potential for blockchains to allow databases to be widely distributed, impossible to alter and publicly verifiable, could lead to a change in the power structure of the internet, which hands control to the companies sitting on the most data. This matters because control over databases is even more important than it first appears, he explains, partly because of one of the most discussed phenomena of the online world: network effects.

The Smartphone Society by Nicole Aschoff

"Susan Fowler" uber, 4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, algorithmic management, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, carbon footprint, Carl Icahn, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, degrowth, Demis Hassabis, deplatforming, deskilling, digital capitalism, digital divide, do what you love, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, feminist movement, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, financial independence, future of work, gamification, gig economy, global value chain, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Googley, green new deal, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, job automation, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, late capitalism, low interest rates, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nomadland, occupational segregation, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, Patri Friedman, peer-to-peer, Peter Thiel, pets.com, planned obsolescence, quantitative easing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, surveillance capitalism, TaskRabbit, tech worker, technological determinism, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, Vision Fund, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, yottabyte

Perhaps following in the footsteps of Henry Ford’s model city, Fordlandia, built in the Brazilian state of Pará, Microsoft purchased twenty-five thousand acres in Arizona to build the City of the Future, while Page has invested in research on the feasibility of privately owned city-states.26 More recently Jeffrey Berns, a cryptocurrency millionaire, bought a chunk of land in Nevada bigger than Reno to build a Utopian blockchain community. Berns believes that blockchains—decentralized, distributed, public digital ledgers facilitated by autonomous, peer- to-peer networks—will give people rather than companies or governments power: “I don’t know why,” says Berns. I just—something inside me tells me this is the answer, that if we can get enough people to trust the blockchain, we can begin to change all the systems we operate by.”27 Blockchain Utopias and the Singularity are pretty far afield from phone apps and social networks, but the expansive simplicity of its vision is what makes the emergent Silicon Valley spirit of capitalism so appealing.

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“Abrams, Jenna,” 109 ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), 21, 22, 96, 148–49, 153, 176n28 Acxiom, 72, 77 addiction to social media, 65–69 Admiral, 78, 79 Adolfsson, Martin, 84 AdSense, 52 Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), 80 advertising: data collection and, 76–77, 83–84; on Facebook, 47–48; on Google, 52; political, 149 AdWords, 52 Afghanistan, politics in, 95–96 age discrimination, 149 AI Now, 129, 157 Airbnb, 42, 119, 120, 148 al-Abed, Bana, 90 al-Abed, Fatemah, 90 Aldridge, Rasheen, 91 algorithm(s): for consumer categories, 77; in dystopian future, 129–30, 131; in politics, 109–10; recommender, 67; search, 51–52, 53 algorithmic accountability, 151, 157–59 “algorithmic management,” 32–34 Alibaba, 4, 42 Allard, LaDonna Brave Bull, 104 aloneness, 7 Alphabet, 41, 55, 76, 122, 150 Alpha Go Zero program, 122 alter-globalization activists, 91 Amazon: acquisitions by, 41; and CIA, 81; in Europe, 150; marketplace model of, 150; as monopoly, 53–54; and new capitalism, 118–19; as new titan, 38–41, 44, 45; power of, 54–55; Rekognition software of, 149; tax evasion by, 49; warehouse workers at, 31–32, 33, 34; working conditions at, 46 Amazon Shopping, 30 Amazon Web Services (AWS), 41 American Academy of Pediatrics, 9 American Association of People with Disabilities, 55 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), 21, 22, 96, 148–49, 153, 176n28 American Dream, 120–21 American Library Association, 55 amplification, 91 analog networks, in cognitive mapping, 143 Android operating system, 39, 41, 53, 69, 70–71, 72 “angel investor,” 120 Ant Financial, 42 antidiscrimination laws, 149 antitrust laws and practices, 43–44, 52–53, 55, 150 AOL, data collection from, 81 app(s): top ten, 38 “app dashboard,” 69 app jobs, 30–34, 35, 137 Apple: data collection from, 81; in Europe, 150; low-paid workers at, 147; as new titan, 42; refusal of “right to repair” by, 155; supply chain of, 28–29; tax evasion by, 49–50; working conditions at, 46 appropriation, frontiers of, 73–76 appwashing, 34, 35, 146 “Arab Spring,” 97 Ardern, Jacinda, 93 ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), 80 artificial intelligence, 121–22, 123, 130 aspirational story, 120 assembly workers, 28–29 Athena, 42 AT&T, 29, 42, 43, 71 attention, 7 Audible, 41 Australia, justice in, 21 automation, 128, 131 automobiles, analogy between smartphones and, 2–3, 161, 162 autonomy, 117, 124 AWS (Amazon Web Services), 41 bad behavior, 138–39 Baidu, 42 Bannon, Steve, 105 Barlow, John Perry, 124 Bellini, Eevie, 24 Berners-Lee, Tim, 40 Beyoncé, 61, 107 Bezos, Jeff, 38, 44, 49, 54, 118–19 Bharatiya Janata Party (India), 93 big data, 76, 83–84, 145 Binh, Huang Duc, 95 black(s): police violence against, 17–23, 35, 169n6, 169n13 Blackberry, 6 “black-box algorithms,” 151 Black Lives Matter (BLM), 89–90, 100–102, 104, 107, 111 Blades, Joan, 91 blockchains, 124 body cameras worn by police, 22 book publishers, 172n40 boredom, 11 bots, 109 Boyd, Wes, 91 boyfriend, invisible, 24 Boyle, Susan, 63 Brazil, politics in, 97 Brin, Sergei, 38, 41, 54, 119, 148 Brown, Michael, Jr., 22, 89–90, 91, 101–2 Buffett, Warren, 41 Bumble, 23, 91 Bumblehive, 81 Burke, Tarana, 108 Bush, George W., 99 Calico, 41 California Consumer Privacy Act, 150 “CamperForce,” 31–32 Canales, Christian, 21 cancer, 7 candidates, social media use by, 103–5 Capital G, 41 capitalism: chameleonesque quality of, 116–17; crony, 105; and frontiers, 72–79; maps of, 143–44; neoliberal, 69, 102, 112–13, 117–18, 144–45; smartphones as embodiment of, 161–62; spirit of, 115–18; surveillance, 8 capitalist frontiers, government and, 80–81 carbon footprint, 82, 175n77 Carnegie, Andrew, 37, 54, 57 Castile, Philando, 20, 35 CatchLA, 62 caveats, 14–15 celebrities, in digital movements, 91 celebrity culture, 64–65 censorship, 95 Center for American Progress, 55 Center for Responsive Politics, 56 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 81, 95, 96, 138, 175n74 centrism, 112 Chadaga, Smitha, 89 change agent, 12 Chan, Priscilla, 56 Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), 56 Charles, Ashley “Dotty,” 109 Charlottesville, Virginia, 106–7, 111 Chesky, Brian, 120 children, 8, 9, 11–12, 84 China, 4, 42, 94–95 Chronicle, 41 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 81, 95, 96, 138, 175n74 Cienfuegos, Joaquin, 20–21 City of the Future, 124 Clinton, Bill, 43, 91, 99 Clinton, Hillary, 50, 107 Clooney, George, 91 “the cloud,” 82 cloud storage facility, 81 coercive relationships, 137–38, 152–54 cognitive maps and mapping, 143–59; algorithmic accountability in, 151; antidiscrimination laws in, 149; coercive and unjust relationships in, 152–54; defined, 143; digital and analog networks in, 143; digital commons in, 156– 59; ecological externalities in, 145; economic implications in, 151–52; internet access for poor and rural communities in, 149–50; lacunae in, 145; low-paying jobs in, 146–49, 153–54; monopoly in, 150; political advertising in, 149; power in, 145; and principles of smartphone use, 152–59; privacy in, 150–51; selfish or immoral behavior in, 154–56; sociotechnical layers of, 145 collateral damage, 96 collective action, 155–56 Comcast, 29, 71 comic books, 11 commodification of private sphere, 144 Communications and Decency Act, 51 communities, on-line, 64 community broadband initiative, 149–50 Community Legal Services, 171–72n32 Compass Transportation, 147 Computer and Communications Industry Association, 55 “connected presence,” 6 connection, 44, 63–64, 143, 162 connectivity, 122 Connolly, Mike, 94 consumer(s): vs. producers, 28–29 consumer categories, 77 consumer scores, 77–78 consumption, 83, 138–39 content algorithms, 51–52 content creation, 74–79 contingent workers, 30 convenience, 29–30, 35 Cooperation Jackson, 155 cop-watch groups, 20–21 “The Counted,” 19, 169n6 “creative monopoly,” 44 creativity, 117 credit scores, 78–79 creepin”, 65 critiques, 7–8 crony capitalism, 105 CrushTime, 24 Cruz, Ted, 92 “Cuban Twitter,” 95 Cucalon, Celia, 48 Cullors, Patrisse, 100–102 cultural capital, 62 “custom breathers,” 69 “customer lifetime value score,” 78 “cyberspace,” 82 CZI (Chan Zuckerberg Initiative), 56 Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, 103–4, 110 dashboard apps, 132 data brokers, 72, 77 data centers, energy use by, 82 data collection, 70–72, 83–84, 137, 150–51, 156–59 data mining, 76–79 data ownership, 135–36 “data smog,” 72 Data & Society, 151, 179n20 data vendors, 76 datification, 156–57, 161 dating apps, 23–27, 35 decentralization, 101–2, 120 decommodification, 156–57 DeepMind, 41, 79, 122, 157 Deliveroo, 32–33, 153 Department of Homeland Security, 149 Desai, Bhairavi, 146 Descartes, René, 67 Diallo, Amadou, 19 Diapers.com, 41 dick pics, 25 Dick’s Sporting Goods, 91 digital-analog political model, 104, 110–12, 145, 162 digital commons, 139–41, 156–59 digital divide, 28–29, 35 “digital exclusion,” 29 digital frontier, limits of, 82 digital justice, 17–23, 152, 157, 169n6, 169n13 digital networks, 143 digital platforms, 44 “digital redlining,” 29 “digital well-being,” 69 disconnection, 132–33 discrimination in housing, 47–48 divides, 17–36; built-in, 28–34, 35; related to justice, 17–23, 169n6, 169n13; related to sexuality, 23–27, 35 division of labor, 74–75 Dobbs, Tammy, 129 documentation, 62 domestic violence, 25 DoorDash, 33–34, 146–47 dopamine driven feedback loops, 67 double standard, 25–27, 35 drone warfare, 95 “dual economy,” 12–13 dumbness, 7, 9 “dumb phone,” 1, 8, 132, 167n15 dystopian future, 125–26, 128–30, 131 eBay, 147, 148 Echo Look device, 84 ecological externalities, 145 ecological limit of digital frontier, 82–83, 175n77 economic crisis (2008), 98–100, 117–18 economic divide, 13–14 economic implications, in cognitive mapping, 151–52 economic nationalism, 105 “ecosystems,” 40 Eddystone, 78 education, 13 Edwards, Jordan, 18 Egypt, 92, 97 elderly Americans, 63–64, 84 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 55, 124 Elliot, Umaara, 90 Ellison, Keith, 45 emails: vs. phone calls, 6; scanning of, 70–71 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 133 employment relationships, 137 encryption, 81, 175n74 energy consumption, 151–52, 154–55; by physical elements of digital life, 82, 175n77 entrepreneurship, 120–21 environmental justice, 154–55 Epsilon, 72 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, 78 Estrada, Joseph, 90–91 Europe, American tech titans in, 150 European Union (EU), 49, 52–53, 150–51 experience economy, 62, 83 exploitation of labor, 75 externalization of work and workers, 31 Facebook: acquisitions by, 41; addiction to, 66–67, 69; and antidiscrimination laws, 149; credit ratings by, 79; data collection by, 71–72, 76, 81, 84; demographics of, 84; discrimination in advertising by, 47–48; employees organizing at, 148; in Europe, 150; Free Basics by, 41–42, 50; low-paid workers at, 147; managing impressions on, 63; as monopoly, 53–54, 172n46; and new capitalism, 124, 136; as news source, 50–51; as new titan, 38–39, 40, 41–42, 44–45; power and influence of, 56; tax evasion by, 49; time spent on, 60 Facebook Live, 84 Facebook Pixel, 72 “Facebook Revolution,” 97 facial recognition software, 129, 149 Fair Housing Act, 48 fake news, 50–51, 56 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 149 feedback loop, 66–67 “Feminist Five,” 108 feminist movement, 107–8 Ferguson, Missouri, 89–90, 101–2 Fields, James Alex, Jr., 106 filter bubbles, 53, 109–10 financial crisis (2008), 98–100, 117–18 fintech companies, 78–79 flexibility, 117 FlexiSpy, 25 FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests, 149 food delivery apps, 32–33 food pictures, 62 forced arbitration, 148 Ford, Henry, 37, 124 Fordlandia, 124 Ford Motor Company, 37, 38, 44 Fowler, Susan, 126–27 FoxConn, 28 framing of analysis of cell phones, 12–14 Free Basics, 41–42, 50 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, 149 “free market” competition, 98 free speech, 138 Friedman, Patri, 124 frontier of social media, 59–86; addiction to, and fears about, 65–69; and big data, 82–86; characteristics of, 59–65; and government, 80–81; and privacy, 69– 72; and profit, 72–79 Fuller, Margaret, 133 Galston, Bill, 45 gamification, 23–24, 146 Garza, Alicia, 100–102 Gassama, Mamoudou, 115 Gates, Bill, 56, 130 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 150–51, 156 Geofeedia, 96 geopolitics, 95–96, 144 Germany, 3 Ghostbot, 24 gig economy, 137 Gilded Age, 1–2, 11, 54 global divides, 28–29 globalization, 98 Global Positioning System (GPS), 5 Gmail, 38, 71 Goodman, Amy, 104 Google: addiction to, 69; advertising on, 76; companies owned by, 41; data collection by, 70–71, 76, 81, 150; employees organizing at, 147–48; in Europe, 150; immoral projects at, 154; and intelligence agencies, 81; lobbying by, 55; low-paid workers at, 147; molding of public opinion by, 55; as monopoly, 52–54; and new capitalism, 119–20, 123, 136; as new titan, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43–45, 56; for online search, 52; power and influence of, 55–56; research funding by, 55; “summer camp” of, 55; tax evasion by, 49, 50; use by children, 84; working conditions at, 47 Google Calendar, 71 Google Chrome browser, 53 Google Drive, 71 Google Earth, 123 Google Fiber, 41 Google Images, 131 Google News, 50 Google Play, 72 Google Search, 38, 41, 53 Google Shopping Case, 52–53 Google Translate, 10 government: and capitalist frontiers, 80–81; and Silicon Valley, 124; surveillance by, 137–38, 144, 148–49 government tracking, 94–95 GPS (Global Positioning System), 5 Grant, Oscar, III, 18 Gray, Freddie, 22, 96 Great Pessimism, 118, 119 Great Recession, 118 Greece, 97 greenhouse emissions, 82 Green New Deal, 103, 151–52, 154, 179n22 Greenpeace, 157 Grindr, 23 gun violence, 90, 91, 110, 111 GV, 41 habitus, 62 Happn, 23, 24 Harari, Yuval Noah, 129–30, 132 Hearst, William Randolph, 50 Herndon, Chris, 56 Heyer, Heather, 106 Hirschman, Albert, 133 household expenses, 13 housing, discrimination in, 47–48 human, fear of becoming less, 67–68 iBeacon, 78 IBM, 149 ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), 21, 148 ICT (information and communication technologies) sector, energy used by, 82 ideals, 120 “identity resolution services,” 77 ILSR (Institute for Local Self-Reliance), 149–50, 153 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), 21, 148 immoral behavior, 138–39, 154–56 impressions, management of, 62–63 income discrepancy, 12–13 independent contractors, 33–34, 137, 153 India, 4, 42, 60, 93 individualism, 117, 118 information and communication technologies (ICT) sector, energy used by, 82 injustice, 17–23, 169n6, 169n13 In-Q-Tel, 96 insta-bae principles, 61–62 Instacart, 30, 146 Instagram: addiction to, 69; content on, 60, 61, 62; creepin’ on, 65; data collection from, 72; demographics of, 61; microcelebrities on, 60; as new titan, 38, 41; time spent on, 60; value of, 74 Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), 149–50, 153 insurance companies, data mining by, 79 intelligence agencies, and capitalist frontiers, 81 internet: access for poor and rural communities to, 149–50; access to high-speed, 5, 29; creation of, 80; early days of, 40; government shutdown of, 94; smartphone connection to, 10 Internet Association, 45 Internet Broken Brain, 66 Internet.org, 41 Internet Research Agency, 109 internet service providers, and privacy, 71–72 inventions, new, 11 investors, 120–21 invisible boyfriend, 24 iPhone, 6, 42 Iron Eyes, Tokata, 104 Jacob’s letter, 127 Jacobs, Ric, 127 Jaffe, Sarah, 91 James, LeBron, 92 Jenner, Kris, 59 Jigsaw, 41 Jobs, Steve, 2, 6, 42 Joint Special Operations Command, 95 Jones, Alex, 111 Jones, Keaton, 109 justice, 17–23, 152, 157, 169n6, 169n13 Kalanick, Travis, 126, 127 Kardashian, Kim, 59 Kardashian, Kylie, 59 Kasky, Cameron, 90 Kattan, Huda, 60 Kellaway, Lucy, 1 Kennedy, John F., 88 Kerry, John, 56 Keynes, John Maynard, 117 Khosla, Sadhavi, 93 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 97 King, Rodney, 19 Klein, Naomi, 104 Knight First Amendment Institute, 93, 175n14 Knoll, Jessica, 108 Kreditech, 78–79 Kristol, Bill, 45 Kurzweil, Ray, 123 Lanier, Jaron, 67, 70, 135 Lantern, 95 law enforcement, surveillance by, 96–97, 137–38, 176n28 “leaners,” 29 Lean In (Sandberg), 107 Lehman Brothers, 98 Levandowski, Anthony, 123 LGBTQ community, 10, 64 “lifestyle politics,” 133 “like” button, 66 Lind, William, 105 “listening tour,” 56 Liu Hu, 94 live chats, 5 livestreaming of police violence, 20–21 lobbying, 55, 56 location data, 71 logistics workers, 31 Loon, 41 Loop Transportation, 147 Losse, Katherine, 124 love, 23–27, 35 low-income households, access to high-speed internet by, 29 low-paying jobs, 146–49, 153–54 Luxy, 23 Lyft 30, 31, 33, 146, 153 Lynd, Helen, 2, 3 Lynd, Robert, 2, 3 Lynn, Barry, 56 machine learning, 76, 121–22, 174n52 “machine zone,” 8 Macron, Emmanuel, 93 mainstream media, bypassing of, 91 Ma, Jack, 42 Makani, 41 mamasphere, 64 March for Our Lives, 104 March of the Margaridas, 108 Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (MSD) High School, 90 marketification, 161 Markey, Ed, 152, 179n22 marriage, expectations and norms about, 24–25 Marshall, James, 17–19 Marshall, Tanya, 17–19 Martin, Trayvon, 22, 100 Marx, Karl, 67 mass shootings, 90, 91, 110, 111 Match.com, 23, 24 Match Group, 24 Matsuhisa, Nobu, 62 Maven, 147–48 McDonald, Laquan, 18 McInnes, Gavin, 106, 107, 111 McSpadden, Lezley, 101 meaning, sense of, 64–65, 162 Medbase200, 77 men’s work, 75 mental health of children, 8 meritocracy, 121 Messenger: data collection from, 72 Messenger Kids, 84 metadata, 72 #MeToo movement, 108 microcelebrities, 60 microchoices, 69 Microsoft: and City of the Future, 124; data collection from, 81; employees organizing at, 148; in Europe, 150; immoral projects at, 154; as new titan, 42, 43, 55, 56 Middleton, Daniel, 60 “Middletown,” 2–3 Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (Lynd and Lynd), 2–3 military, 80–81, 95 mind-body divide, 67–68 miners, 28 Minutiae, 84 misogyny, 25 Mobile Devices Branch of CIA, 81, 95 Mobile Justice MI app, 21, 169n13 Modi, Narendra, 93 Mondragon, Elena, 22–23 monetization, 59, 79 money accounts, mobile, 10 monopolies, 43–46, 52–53, 150 Morgan, J.

pages: 337 words: 96,666

Practical Doomsday: A User's Guide to the End of the World by Michal Zalewski

accounting loophole / creative accounting, AI winter, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, bank run, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carrington event, clean water, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decentralized internet, deep learning, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, dumpster diving, failed state, fiat currency, financial independence, financial innovation, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, housing crisis, index fund, indoor plumbing, information security, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Joan Didion, John Bogle, large denomination, lifestyle creep, mass immigration, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, Modern Monetary Theory, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral panic, non-fungible token, nuclear winter, off-the-grid, Oklahoma City bombing, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, passive investing, peak oil, planetary scale, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, Savings and loan crisis, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, supervolcano, systems thinking, tech worker, Ted Kaczynski, TED Talk, Tunguska event, underbanked, urban sprawl, Wall-E, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Only the authorized holder of a given coin would know the secret key needed to transfer the asset, but anyone in the world could verify that a transaction had taken place. And finally, Nakamoto’s currency employed a decentralized, internet-based ledger—known as the blockchain—to record the chain of custody for coins in a tamper-proof way, and to rule out the possibility of the owner of a coin spending it twice. As long as the majority of market participants acted in good faith, the integrity of the blockchain was assured without the need for any central authority to keep track of transactions and accounts. The consensus-operated blockchain is widely seen as Bitcoin’s most revolutionary feature, and it contributed to the currency’s image as a renegade financial instrument that has given back control of the financial system to the common folk.

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Revisiting Dangers to Liquidity and Capital This lengthy stroll through the history of money serves an important purpose. It sets the stage for a more grounded review of the most common threats to personal savings, and for a critical examination of the folksy financial remedies touted on the internet—from gold chains to blockchain and everything in between. A solid understanding of the history of barter helps us decide if bullets and beans are the best way to get through a currency collapse. A grasp of the causes and goals of inflation makes it easier to pinpoint instruments that track it more faithfully than silver or gold; and a sense of how money is created makes it easier to comprehend why banks fail.

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than daydreaming about the glorious future that awaits if your investments pan out well. From that perspective, the cost of passing on Bitcoin is modest, while the cost of taking a substantial stake can be unacceptably high. The other very recent financial innovation that captured the attention of the media are non-fungible tokens (NFTs): short blockchain-recorded entities with cryptographically established chains of ownership. In most ways, their inner workings resemble cryptocurrencies, but they’re specifically designed not to serve that role. Instead, every token is meant to be distinguishable from others by virtue of possessing a unique ID. The ecosystem of NFTs involves not just the tokens themselves, but third-party providers who associate these IDs with metadata describing a unique physical or digital asset on which the NFT is supposed to confer some sort of a claim.

pages: 481 words: 125,946

What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence by John Brockman

Adam Curtis, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, bread and circuses, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, complexity theory, computer age, computer vision, constrained optimization, corporate personhood, cosmological principle, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Danny Hillis, dark matter, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital rights, discrete time, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Elon Musk, Emanuel Derman, endowment effect, epigenetics, Ernest Rutherford, experimental economics, financial engineering, Flash crash, friendly AI, functional fixedness, global pandemic, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, hive mind, Ian Bogost, income inequality, information trail, Internet of things, invention of writing, iterative process, James Webb Space Telescope, Jaron Lanier, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, lolcat, loose coupling, machine translation, microbiome, mirror neurons, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, planetary scale, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, Republic of Letters, RFID, Richard Thaler, Rory Sutherland, Satyajit Das, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, social intelligence, speech recognition, statistical model, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, strong AI, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, supervolcano, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing machine, Turing test, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are as Gods, Y2K

The potential future world of intelligence multiplicity means accommodating plurality and building trust. Blockchain technology—a decentralized, distributed, global, permanent, code-based ledger of interaction transactions and smart contracts—is one example of a trust-building system. The system can be used between human parties or interspecies parties, exactly because it’s not necessary to know, trust, or understand the other entity, just the code (the language of machines). Over time, trust can grow through reputation. Blockchain technology could be used to enforce friendly AI and mutually beneficial interspecies interaction.

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Someday, important transactions (like identity authentication and resource transfer) will be conducted on smart networks that require confirmation by independent consensus mechanisms, such that only bona fide transactions by reputable entities are executed. While perhaps not a full answer to the problem of enforcing friendly AI, decentralized smart networks like blockchains are a system of checks and balances helping to provide a more robust solution to situations of future uncertainty. Trust-building models for interspecies digital intelligence interaction could include both game-theoretic checks-and-balances systems like blockchains and also, at the higher level, frameworks that put entities on the same plane of shared objectives. This is of higher order than smart contracts and treaties that attempt to enforce morality; a mind-set shift is required.

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Seth Lloyd’s analysis of the computational power of the universe shows that even the entire universe, acting as a giant quantum computer, could not discover a 500-bit hard cryptographic key in the time since the Big Bang.1 The new technologies of postquantum cryptography, indistinguishability obfuscation, and blockchain smart contracts are promising components for creating an infrastructure secure against even the most powerful AIs. But recent hacks and cyberattacks show that our current computational infrastructure is woefully inadequate to the task. We need to develop a software infrastructure that’s mathematically provably correct and secure.

pages: 688 words: 147,571

Robot Rules: Regulating Artificial Intelligence by Jacob Turner

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Ada Lovelace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, algorithmic bias, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Basel III, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Charles Babbage, Clapham omnibus, cognitive dissonance, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, easy for humans, difficult for computers, effective altruism, Elon Musk, financial exclusion, financial innovation, friendly fire, future of work, hallucination problem, hive mind, Internet of things, iterative process, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Loebner Prize, machine readable, machine translation, medical malpractice, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, nudge unit, obamacare, off grid, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, Philippa Foot, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, technological singularity, Tesla Model S, The Coming Technological Singularity, The Future of Employment, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, trolley problem, Turing test, Vernor Vinge

When a person buys a crate of apples, there is usually an implied term that those apples will not be full of maggots. 89Kirsten Korosec, “Volvo CEO: We Will Accept All Liability When Our Cars Are in Autonomous Mode”, Fortune, 7 October 2015, http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/volvo-liability-self-driving-cars/, accessed 1 June 2018. 90[1892] EWCA Civ 1. 91Fumio Shimpo, “The Principal Japanese AI and Robot Strategy and Research toward Establishing Basic Principles”, Journal of Law and Information Systems, Vol. 3 (May 2018). 92Dirk A. Zetzsche, Ross P. Buckley, and Douglas W. Arner, “The Distributed Liability of Distributed Ledgers: Legal Risks of Blockchain ”, EBI Working Paper Series (2017), No. 14; “Blockchain & Liability”, Oxford Business Law Blog, 28 September 2017, https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/business-law-blog/blog/2017/09/blockchain-liability, accessed 1 June 2018. 93Paulius Čerkaa, Jurgita Grigienėa, Gintarė Sirbikytėb, “Liability for Damages Caused By Artificial Intelligence”, Computer Law & Security Review, Vol. 31, No. 3 (June 2015), 376–389. 94However, the conclusion they point to was apparently reached by UNCITRAL in its deliberations, though does not formally form part of the convention.

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Fumio Shimpo points out that not all such contracts will be binding under Japanese Law; if the AI fails to identify itself as such and entices a person to enter into a contract , then such contract might be deemed “equivalent to a mistake of an element (Article 95 of the Japanese Civil Code)”, and potentially rendered ineffective.91 There are many automated contractual systems operating today—from consumer sales to high-frequency trading of financial instruments. At present, these all conclude contracts on behalf of recognised legal people. That may not always need to be the case. Blockchain technology is a system of automated records, known as distributed ledgers. Its uses can include chains of “self-executing” contracts, which can be executed without any need for human input. This technology has already given rise to novel and uncertain questions as to liability arising from a particular blockchain system in which all parts are interconnected.92 In a situation where AI concludes a contract without direct or indirect instructions from a principal, it remains unclear how a legal system would address liability arising from such an agreement; the AI would require legal personality to be able to go to court to enforce such contract —the possibility of which is discussed further in Chapter 5.

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One solution to the secrecy issue would be for contracts concerning liability for AI to be made public. The obvious objection to this is that it would be enormously bureaucratic to store such details on a public register, and commercial parties may well refuse to do so, on the basis of well-established legal principles including confidentiality and privacy. Distributed ledger technology such as blockchain offers one option as to how contracts relating to AI might be made a matter of public record. However, it seems unlikely that many market participants would agree to this level of public scrutiny unless they were required to by law. Quasi-Hidden Contracts Contractual arrangements concerning AI will work best where arrangements are made between parties who are able to understand the obligations to which they are binding themselves, and are able to weigh up the benefits and disadvantages of the position they have taken.

Digital Transformation at Scale: Why the Strategy Is Delivery by Andrew Greenway,Ben Terrett,Mike Bracken,Tom Loosemore

Airbnb, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, butterfly effect, call centre, chief data officer, choice architecture, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, data science, Diane Coyle, en.wikipedia.org, fail fast, G4S, hype cycle, Internet of things, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, loose coupling, M-Pesa, machine readable, megaproject, minimum viable product, nudge unit, performance metric, ransomware, robotic process automation, Silicon Valley, social web, The future is already here, the long tail, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, work culture

It is noticeable that technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence have especially gripped executives in organisations that have largely failed to react to the open internet’s impact. In our experience, the more senior the figure, the more interested they are in technologies at the bleeding edge of discovery. On one level, this seems counterintuitive. Why would senior leaders with a track record of not applying more obvious and understood trends suddenly jump on the singularity bandwagon? The answer, we suspect, is that technologies like blockchain and AI are for the most part still largely in the realm of theory.

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It becomes even easier for a large business or government administration to ignore hard yet necessary tasks if they can find something else that has the characteristics of work, while being much more comfortable to sink time into. Fortunately, the technology hype cycle is ready to provide a stream of distractions. All too often, the word digital is conflated with whatever technology fad has made it into the colour supplements this month. Blockchain. Artificial intelligence. The Internet of Things and connected devices. Robotic Process Automation. The captains of industry, ministers and senior officials who read colour supplements during their brief periods of down time see these exciting things and commission policy papers to unpick their potential effect on the organisations they run.

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You’ve annoyed people on the way of course – that’s a pity – so they think that perhaps now is the moment to consolidate the success and slow things down. If the digital team is all too tired to keep going, those keen to go back to an easy life will push back. Resisting the hype Every business strategy presentation for the last two years (and the next three) will have a slide that says something like: ‘AI, blockchain, Internet of Things – what should we do?’ For most organisations, this discussion is a little premature. Even allowing for the fact these technology breakthroughs are near the top of their hype cycle at the time of writing, we are not saying that they are unimportant for large organisations, public or private.

pages: 304 words: 80,143

The Autonomous Revolution: Reclaiming the Future We’ve Sold to Machines by William Davidow, Michael Malone

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, AlphaGo, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, Bob Noyce, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deep learning, DeepMind, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, holacracy, Hyperloop, income inequality, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, license plate recognition, low interest rates, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Network effects, new economy, peer-to-peer lending, QWERTY keyboard, ransomware, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Skinner box, Snapchat, speech recognition, streetcar suburb, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, trade route, Turing test, two and twenty, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, urban planning, vertical integration, warehouse automation, zero day, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Eighty-one million dollars was stolen from accounts at the Bangladesh Bank, and the hackers might have gotten access to $1 billion more were it not for a typo—the hackers misspelled “foundation” as “fandation,” attracting the attention of the New York Federal Reserve.33 There are also many practical problems associated with Bitcoin, and for that reason Bitcoin itself will probably have a limited impact. But the blockchain technology it gave the world will be used in many applications with the goal of making transactions more secure. It is highly likely that new virtual currencies using blockchain will be more broadly adopted in the future. Millions of dollars of Bitcoins have already been stolen from users. The attributes of the technology described above regarding the speed, security, and anonymity of the transfer process make it inherently more difficult to solve Bitcoin thefts.

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By comparison, the single-copy ledgers that banks use to keep track of bank accounts and credit card transactions are much less secure. In payment systems based on distributed ledgers, only the source of a payment is identified; no account information is ever revealed to the payee. This makes it virtually impossible to acquire information from a payee, such as Arby’s, to access money from a payer’s account. Transactions using blockchain technology (a form of distributed ledger technology in which data can only be added to databases and not altered or deleted) can also be made very secure and anonymous. In the case of Bitcoin, a cryptographic algorithm is used to ensure that Bitcoins are transferred from the correct payer’s wallet to the correct recipient’s wallet.32 In the credit card world, the typical fee for transferring money is about 2 percent of the size of the transaction, and a merchant will typically have to wait one to three days before money is deposited in its account.

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See cyber currencies; financial industry; payment systems bank robberies, 39–40 Bardeen, John, 55 behavior manipulation, 125, 134–137 by gaming industry, 89, 138–144 in retail sector, 13, 117, 121, 123 Bell Labs, 22, 54–55 Belorossov, Dimitry, 40 Benz, Karl, 53 Bergman, Shawn, 146 Betterment, 10, 77 Bill of Rights. See constitutional rights Bitcoin, 78–80, 176–177 Blackstone, William, 127 Blockbuster, 50, 65, 88, 98–99 blockchain technology, 79, 80 book industry, 27–28, 90–91 Brack, J. Allen, 143–144 Brattain, Walter, 55 Britain, Industrial Revolution in, 29–30 Brown, Tina, 63 business models: customers becoming products in new, 120–123 financial industry transformation of, 74–83 freemium, 70, 73, 121–123, 129–130, 169 media industry shift in, 9–10, 72–73 non-monetizable productivity relation to shifting, 60, 65 sharing economy, 83–87 substitutional equivalence and smaller markets in new, 87–88, 103 Butler, Nicholas, 2–3 Campbell, W.

pages: 257 words: 80,698

Butler to the World: How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, Bellingcat, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, capital controls, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Downton Abbey, Etonian, financial deregulation, financial innovation, full employment, Global Witness, John Bercow, Julian Assange, light touch regulation, lockdown, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, offshore financial centre, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, surveillance capitalism, the High Line, WikiLeaks

When I was in Gibraltar I had a long chat with Albert Isola, minister for digital and financial services, who was surprisingly hip-looking with an open-necked shirt and multicoloured thread bracelet. He was keen to talk about the peninsula’s new proposal for attracting business to the Rock, which is to introduce regulations for companies that use blockchain, a mechanism by which financial or other transactions are recorded in a decentralised way and which underpins crypto-currencies like Bitcoin. From Gibraltar’s perspective, it is acting in a nimble way to take advantage of a new business opportunity, and it is perfectly possible that the companies that submit to the peninsula’s regulators will prove beneficial to the world.

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It is also, however, perfectly possible that this new technology will act like a twenty-first-century shell company, and help crooks and tax dodgers hide their wealth from democratic scrutiny. My concern is that Gibraltar rushed ahead and set out legislation to encourage and protect companies engaged in blockchain activities apparently without any debate or discussion of the potential downsides. This is after all exactly what happened when Gibraltar welcomed the gambling industry, and indeed Isola drew an explicit comparison between Gibraltar’s approach to regulating the new technology and its early approach to gambling.

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The reason Gibraltar has not had a single failure of a gambling company is that it has exported failure to the jurisdictions where its clients live. Meanwhile, it is difficult for politicians in the UK to do anything about this for the same reason it was hard to combat shell companies – because they need to respect Gibraltar’s autonomy. Could blockchain companies suck money out of the world to the benefit of Gibraltar and a handful of wealthy foreigners to the detriment of ordinary people and governments trying to provide basic services? Perhaps. We simply don’t know because there has been no discussion about it in the UK, and Gibraltar has powered on regardless.

pages: 401 words: 109,892

The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets by Thomas Philippon

airline deregulation, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andrei Shleifer, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, central bank independence, commoditize, crack epidemic, cross-subsidies, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial intermediation, flag carrier, Ford Model T, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, inventory management, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, law of one price, liquidity trap, low cost airline, manufacturing employment, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, minimum wage unemployment, money market fund, moral hazard, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Pareto efficiency, patent troll, Paul Samuelson, price discrimination, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, QWERTY keyboard, rent-seeking, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, robo advisor, Ronald Reagan, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, spinning jenny, statistical model, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, supply-chain management, Telecommunications Act of 1996, The Chicago School, the payments system, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, total factor productivity, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, vertical integration, Vilfredo Pareto, warehouse automation, zero-sum game

I think that is a key lesson for the regulation of fintech. I recall a fascinating exchange at a recent conference about blockchains and privacy. There is a tension between the principles of blockchains (such as their permanence) and the right of individuals to request that their personal data be erased. To my surprise, however, the blockchain specialists said this would not be a big challenge, provided they knew what the regulator wanted. In other words, it is possible to implement a blockchain in which private data can be erased under some conditions. But it must be conceived as such from the beginning.

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Innovations can provide new gateways for entrepreneurship and democratize access to financial services, but they also create significant privacy, regulatory, and law-enforcement challenges. Examples of innovations that are central to fintech today include mobile payment systems, crowdfunding, robo-advisors, blockchains, and various applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. All the large financial firms have jumped on the tech wagon. JPMorgan Chase & Co. recently announced that it will require its asset management analysts to learn to use Python, a powerful and flexible coding language. This is not to say that all fintech ideas are great.

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., 157, 163 Baxter, William, 3 Bekkouche, Yasmine, 192, 193 Benmelech, Efraim, 281 Berger, Allen, 216 Berger, David, 281 Bergman, Mats, 146 Bergman, Nittai, 281 Bergstresser, Daniel, 220 Berlusconi, Silvio, 199 Berry, Jeffrey M., 157 Bertrand, Marianne, 156, 162–163, 164, 199 Bezos, Jeff, 285 Big Bird, 153–154 Big Mac index, 115–116, 117 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002), 182 Birnbaum, Jeffrey, 153 Blanchard, Olivier, 31 Blanes i Vidal, Jordi, 161–162 blockchains, 219 Blonigen, Bruce A., 91 Bloom, Nicholas, 284 Boggs, Thomas Hale Jr., 162, 200 Bombardini, Matilde, 162–163, 165–166, 190, 199 Bork, Robert, 87 Bowman, Julie Benafield, 234 Bown, Chad P., 92 Brexit, 149 Briand, Aristide, 129 broadband, costs in US versus Europe, 5–6 Brown, Charles, 3 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 79, 258 Buckley, James, 182 Buckley v.

pages: 384 words: 93,754

Green Swans: The Coming Boom in Regenerative Capitalism by John Elkington

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, Anthropocene, anti-fragile, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Boeing 747, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, deglobalization, degrowth, discounted cash flows, distributed ledger, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, Future Shock, Gail Bradbrook, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, green transition, Greta Thunberg, Hans Rosling, hype cycle, impact investing, intangible asset, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, John Elkington, Jony Ive, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, M-Pesa, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, microplastics / micro fibres, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nikolai Kondratiev, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Planet Labs, planetary scale, plant based meat, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, reality distortion field, Recombinant DNA, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, space junk, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, systems thinking, The future is already here, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tim Cook: Apple, urban planning, Whole Earth Catalog

See also change process stages; technology; wicked problems defined, 7, 21–22 historical, 41–42 identifying, 7–8 Lehman Brothers, 48 losing control, risk of, 193–197 materiality and, 69–70 as parallel reality with Green Swans, 9–10 in social media, 53 spotting, 254–256 starting off as Green Swans, 182 three horizons, two scenarios for, 38–39 BlackRock, 13, 129 Blackwell, Norman, 202 Blockchain, 174, 180 blockchain technology, 177–178 The Blue Planet (TV series), 43 BlueNalu, 233 BMW, 214 boardrooms. See business leaders, working with The Body Shop International, 227 Boeing, 193–197 Bolsonaro, Jair, 227 Bosco Verticale, 255 bottled water, microplastics in, 96 bottom line, 54. See also triple bottom line Boulding, Elise, 209 BP, 146 Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter, 96 Brand, Stewart, 231 Braungart, Michael, 141 break-even point, extra-financial, 152–153, 154f Breakthrough Compass, 34–35, 35f, 64 breakthrough innovations, 38–39 Breakthrough Starshot project, 115 breakthrough technologies, 184–185.

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As early expectations of breakthrough success are dashed, the wider world loses interest. For those businesses that are venture capital funded, we often see second or third rounds of funding to keep the show on the road, with investors imposing ever-tougher conditions on the innovators, owners, and management. By 2018, for example, Blockchain had peaked, following in the wake of enthusiasm about such things as the “Connected Home” and “Mixed Reality,” and was descending into the Trough. Investors typically become more cautious at this point in the cycle. Inevitably, many firms and, indeed, some technologies, never make it out of the hole.

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And in an increasingly interconnected world where “electric grids, public infrastructure, vehicles, homes and workplaces are capable of being accessed and controlled remotely, the vulnerability to cyber-attacks and the potential for these security breaches to cause serious harm are unprecedented.” •Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Technology: This one is now shuddering down from the Peak of Inflated Expectations. This set of technologies has caused intense excitement because it potentially enables the decentralized and secure storage and transfer of information. As WEF notes, it “has already proven itself to be a powerful tracking and transaction tool.

pages: 199 words: 64,272

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

Alan Greenspan, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, back-to-the-land, bank run, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, break the buck, card file, central bank independence, collective bargaining, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, Edmond Halley, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial innovation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, index card, invention of movable type, invention of writing, Isaac Newton, life extension, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Martin Wolf, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, side hustle, Silicon Valley, software is eating the world, Steven Levy, the new new thing, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, transaction costs

The big blockers launched a rival currency, which they called bitcoin cash, that allowed for far more transactions per second than bitcoin. The small blockers stuck with bitcoin. Everybody stayed mad at everybody else. They never worked it out. Over these same years, people launched hundreds of alternative cryptocurrencies. They all ran on blockchains but had their own tweaks. They promised better anonymity or a stable value relative to the dollar. They promised whole new kinds of businesses built on top of the blockchain. Some of these coins developed huge followings and billion-dollar valuations. Most failed and became known as shitcoins. Eventually, Facebook and the Chinese government started developing their own digital currencies.

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Once they see that it is, they begin again, recording new transactions in a new block and trying to solve the next computational puzzle. Each block of transactions is linked to the block that came before. In this way, all transactions in the history of bitcoin are linked together forever. In the white paper, Satoshi called this a “chain of blocks.” It would soon get the slightly shorter, significantly snappier name “blockchain.” In early 2009, Satoshi published the source code for bitcoin. Anyone who wanted to, anywhere in the world, could download the code to their computer and start solving computational puzzles, packaging blocks of transactions, and winning bitcoin. The winner for each block would get 50 bitcoins—which, at the time, was worth nothing at all.

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If bitcoin were run by a company, the CEO would have had some meetings, talked to customers, weighed the costs and benefits, and decided whether to make the tweak. But bitcoin is not run by a company. There is no CEO. The whole point is that nobody is in charge. So who decides what changes to make? Everybody! Bitcoin is democratic. The official blockchain is whatever most of the computer processors mining bitcoins say it is. On top of that, anyone who wants to can take the bitcoin code, tweak it, and create their own, new and improved version of bitcoin. This sounds like chaos, and it kind of is, and that was kind of the point of bitcoin all along.

pages: 499 words: 144,278

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 4chan, 8-hour work day, Aaron Swartz, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, blue-collar work, Brewster Kahle, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, cellular automata, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, Conway's Game of Life, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Danny Hillis, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, don't be evil, don't repeat yourself, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, false flag, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, game design, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, Golden Gate Park, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Grace Hopper, growth hacking, Guido van Rossum, Hacker Ethic, hockey-stick growth, HyperCard, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kickstarter, Larry Wall, lone genius, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Shuttleworth, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, meritocracy, microdosing, microservices, Minecraft, move 37, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, Network effects, neurotypical, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, no silver bullet, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, OpenAI, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, planetary scale, profit motive, ransomware, recommendation engine, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, self-driving car, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, single-payer health, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, South of Market, San Francisco, speech recognition, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, techlash, TED Talk, the High Line, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, urban planning, Wall-E, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Zimmermann PGP, éminence grise

There were considerably fewer women working in back-end jobs that involve wrangling servers and databases, or in newly hot areas like blockchain or AI. In those areas, men rule. And the men are paid more for it: Front-end jobs, she found, pay on average about $30,000 less than back-end work. The upshot, Posner notes, is that when women move into an area of coding, it gets devalued. The men leave that area, looking for new cutting-edge areas where they can reestablish artificial scarcity and a tacit no-girls-allowed culture, or at least one where girls are regarded as foreign interlopers. These days, that appears to be Bitcoin—or blockchain tech in general—and AI, where, whenever I go to events, it’s a sea of men, far more than most other fields of coding.

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But this merely provoked a classic social-media cat-and-mouse game; as researchers found, anorexic users shift to new coinages like #thygap or #thynspo. (Krieger and Systrom left Instagram in September 2018, citing a desire to explore new ideas; Everingham moved that spring to a division of Facebook that develops blockchain technology.) Neither Krieger nor Systrom actively set out to erode anyone’s self-esteem, of course. They loved photography, dug code, and aimed to unlock the latent energy of a world where everyone’s already carrying a camera 24/7. But social software has impacts that the inventors, who are usually focused on the short-term goal of simply getting their new prototypes to work (and then scale), often fail to predict.

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None of these fields were being sufficiently funded by the free market. It took the slow-moving, long-term patience of a government to produce the core inventions that make it possible for us to hold a phone and order one of Kalanick’s Uber cars. Nonetheless, the libertarian protestations of a certain set of coders continues apace. In recent years, blockchain technology has been the latest site of tech’s anti-government fervor. That ranges from Bitcoin—a currency specifically designed to create money that couldn’t be controlled by dough-printing central banks—to Ethereum, a way of creating “smart contracts” that, its adherents hope, would allow commerce so frictionless and decentralized that even lawyers wouldn’t be necessary: The instant someone performed the service you’d contracted them to do for you, the digital cash would arrive in their digital wallet.

pages: 256 words: 73,068

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next by Jeanette Winterson

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Apollo 11, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cashless society, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, dark matter, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, deep learning, deskilling, digital rights, discovery of DNA, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, fake news, flying shuttle, friendly AI, gender pay gap, global village, Grace Hopper, Gregor Mendel, hive mind, housing crisis, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, lone genius, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microdosing, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, off grid, OpenAI, operation paperclip, packet switching, Peter Thiel, pink-collar, Plato's cave, public intellectual, QAnon, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, self-driving car, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, SoftBank, SpaceX Starlink, speech recognition, spinning jenny, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, synthetic biology, systems thinking, tech billionaire, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, TikTok, trade route, Turing test, universal basic income, Virgin Galactic, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

When we consider that the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and that the oldest Homo sapiens fossil, discovered in Morocco in 2017, is 300,000 years, then what has happened in the last 250 years is time on a tiny scale – my 1780s house in London has lived that long. Not the next 250 years but the next 25 years will take us into a world where intelligent machines and non-embodied AI are as much a part of everyday life as humans are. Many of the separate strings we are developing now – the Internet of Things, blockchain, genomics, 3D printing, VR, smart homes, smart fabrics, smart implants, driverless cars, voice-activated AI assistants – will work together. Google calls it ambient computing: it’s all around you. It’s inside you. This future isn’t about tools or operating systems; the future is about co-operating systems.

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My-wi might leave us as little children are: cared for, fed, safe, watched over, with plenty of fun stuff and free stuff, and with someone else deciding the big stuff. No reason to believe that who decides will always be in human form. AUTHOR’S P. S. On 22 May 2021 I read in the Financial Times that the next big thing for blockchain and cryptocurrencies will be DeFi – standing for decentralised finance – how to bypass intermediaries in financial services transactions. You might want to do this if you are breeding or selling digitally created racehorses (NFTs) … Recently one such horse sold for $125,000. These horses don’t need feeding – but you can race them, bet on them, and yes, breed them using algorithms.

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* * * As I send these essays to the press today, 23 March 2021, I notice three things in my inbox. * * * A digital house on Mars has been sold for $500,000. It’s an NFT artwork – a collectible digital asset. Non-fungible artworks is the unlovely name for an electronic file that can’t be reproduced. It comes with ownership and authentication in the form of a token on a blockchain – that’s a tamper-resistant digital public ledger. No one can copy your artwork even though your artwork is made in a format that can be copied. If you see what I mean. Toronto artist Krista Kim sold the 3D digital file. Its owners can furnish the house as they please. * * * Sidney Powell, Kraken Queen and lawyer who was part of Trump’s Stop the Steal campaign, has responded to the 1.3 billion-dollar lawsuit brought against her by Dominion Voting Systems.

pages: 297 words: 108,353

Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles by William Quinn, John D. Turner

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, algorithmic trading, AOL-Time Warner, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy and hold, capital controls, Celtic Tiger, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cryptocurrency, debt deflation, deglobalization, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, discounted cash flows, Donald Trump, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, financial intermediation, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, George Akerlof, government statistician, Greenspan put, high-speed rail, information asymmetry, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Irish property bubble, Isaac Newton, Japanese asset price bubble, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, land bank, light touch regulation, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, Network effects, new economy, Northern Rock, oil shock, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, railway mania, Right to Buy, Robert Shiller, Shenzhen special economic zone , short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, technology bubble, the built environment, total factor productivity, transaction costs, tulip mania, urban planning

Gelderblom, O. and Jonker, J. ‘Public ﬁnance and economic growth: the case of Holland in the seventeenth century’, Journal of Economic History, 71, 1–39, 2011. Gentzkow, M. and Shapiro, J. M. ‘Media bias and reputation’, Journal of Political Economy, 114, 280–316, 2006. Gerard, D. Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum and Smart Contracts, David Gerard (self-published), 2017. Gilmore, N. R. ‘Henry George Ward, British publicist for Mexican mines’, Paciﬁc Historical Review, 31, 35–47, 1963. Gissing, G. The Whirlpool. London: Penguin Classics, 2015. Gjerstad, S. and Smith, V. L. ‘Monetary policy, credit extension, and housing bubbles: 2008 and 1929’, Critical Review, 21, 269–300, 2009.

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As banks recovered from the effects of the ﬁnancial crisis, credit was becoming more widely available. The continuing development of the Internet meant that the marketability of ﬁnancial assets was increasing. Although levels of speculation appeared to be relatively low, the bubble triangle suggested that a spark could change this very quickly. A spark soon arrived in the form of blockchain technology: an encryption technique that allowed virtual assets known as cryptocurrencies to circulate without being managed by any central authority. The most widely known cryptocurrency was bitcoin. To its advocates, bitcoin was the money of the future: it could not be devalued through inﬂation by a central bank, you could spend it on anything without having to worry about government interference or taxes, and it cut out the middleman, namely commercial banks.

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Akerlof and Shiller, Animal Spirits, p. 55. 25. Shiller, Irrational Exuberance, p. 105. 26. Gentzkow and Shapiro, ‘Media bias and reputation’. 27. Dyck and Zingales, ‘The bubble and the media’. 28. Dyck and Zingales, ‘The bubble and the media’. 29. See, for example, Gerard, Attack; https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/, last accessed 19 November 2019; www.coppolacomment.com/, last accessed 19 November 2019. One exception to the poor quality of news media coverage was the Financial Times’s Alphaville. 30. On the corrosive effect of television on public discourse, see Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death. 31. Akerlof and Shiller, Phishing for Phools. 32.

pages: 403 words: 111,119

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 3D printing, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, bank run, basic income, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, circular economy, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, complexity theory, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, degrowth, dematerialisation, disruptive innovation, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, energy transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, full employment, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, global village, Henri Poincaré, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, land reform, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, loss aversion, low interest rates, low skilled workers, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Minsky moment, mobile money, Money creation, Mont Pelerin Society, Myron Scholes, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, Paul Samuelson, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, price mechanism, quantitative easing, randomized controlled trial, retail therapy, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, smart cities, smart meter, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, the market place, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, ultimatum game, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Vilfredo Pareto, wikimedia commons

As such schemes spread, research is needed to investigate the full ripple of their social effects, and to explore how they can be designed in ways that serve to reinforce rather than replace the human instinct to care for others. Complementary currencies can clearly enrich and empower communities but game-changing ones are now emerging, thanks to the invention of Blockchain. Combining database and network technologies, Blockchain is a digital peer-to-peer decentralised platform for tracking all kinds of value exchanged between people. Its name derives from the blocks of data – each one a snapshot of all transactions that have just been made in the network – which are linked together to create a chain of data blocks, adding up to a minute-by-minute record of the network’s activity.

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Its name derives from the blocks of data – each one a snapshot of all transactions that have just been made in the network – which are linked together to create a chain of data blocks, adding up to a minute-by-minute record of the network’s activity. And since that record is stored on every computer in the network, it acts as a public ledger that cannot be altered, corrupted or deleted, making it a highly secure digital backbone for the future of e-commerce and transparent governance. One fast-rising digital currency that uses blockchain technology is Ethereum, which, among its many possible applications, is enabling electricity microgrids to set up peer-to-peer trading in renewable energy. These microgrids allow every nearby home, office or institution with a smart meter, Internet connection, and solar panel on its roof to hook in and sell or buy surplus electrons as they are generated, all automatically recorded in units of the digital currency.

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First, the digital revolution has given rise to the network era of near zero-marginal-cost collaboration, as we saw in the dynamic rise of the collaborative commons in Chapter 2. It is essentially unleashing a revolution in distributed capital ownership. Anyone with an Internet connection can entertain, inform, learn, and teach worldwide. Every household, school or business rooftop can generate renewable energy and, if enabled by a blockchain currency, can sell the surplus in a microgrid. With access to a 3D printer, anyone can download designs or create their own and print-to-order the very tool or gadget they need. Such lateral technologies are the essence of distributive design, and they blur the divide between producers and consumers, allowing everyone to become a prosumer, both a maker and user in the peer-to-peer economy.

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New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI by Frank Pasquale

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, collective bargaining, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, contact tracing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, critical race theory, cryptocurrency, data is the new oil, data science, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, deskilling, digital divide, digital twin, disinformation, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Filter Bubble, finite state, Flash crash, future of work, gamification, general purpose technology, Google Chrome, Google Glasses, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, guns versus butter model, Hans Moravec, high net worth, hiring and firing, holacracy, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, informal economy, information asymmetry, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, late capitalism, lockdown, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, medical malpractice, megaproject, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, obamacare, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open immigration, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, paradox of thrift, pattern recognition, payday loans, personalized medicine, Peter Singer: altruism, Philip Mirowski, pink-collar, plutocrats, post-truth, pre–internet, profit motive, public intellectual, QR code, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, regulatory arbitrage, Robert Shiller, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Singularitarianism, smart cities, smart contracts, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Strategic Defense Initiative, surveillance capitalism, Susan Wojcicki, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, telepresence, telerobotics, The Future of Employment, The Turner Diaries, Therac-25, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Turing test, universal basic income, unorthodox policies, wage slave, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working poor, workplace surveillance , Works Progress Administration, zero day

Aspirations to self-sufficiency and invulnerability help explain why, after so many scandals, failures, exposes, and scams, florid varieties of cryptocurrency enthusiasm continue unabated.13 The crypto narrative fulfills deep psychological needs for security and independence. Just as encryption buffs celebrate pure mathematics as a bedrock foundation for secrecy and privacy (rather than the social and legal structures that perform the bulk of data protection), cryptocurrency fans promote blockchains as immutable, “censorship resistant” stores of value. A bank may fail; the government may renege on its pension promises; but the perfected blockchain would be embedded into the internet itself, automatically memorialized on so many computers that no one could undermine it.14 Some crypto diehards even imagine Bitcoin or ether as a last currency standing, long after central banks lose credibility.

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Similar commercial pressures may be leading to a premature plunge into online education. Based on the success of Khan Academy, enthusiasts breathlessly project that a college education can be had for a fraction of the current tuition costs; just record all the lectures, automate evaluation of students, and invite the world to attend, with grades recorded on a blockchain transcript. Get stuck on a lesson? Just keep interfacing with a keyboard, camera, and perhaps haptic sensors. Or perhaps instant message some reserve army of tutors via digital labor platforms like Mechanical Turk or TaskRabbit.79 Want to prove that you aren’t faking exams? Just let cameras record your every move and keystroke—perhaps your eye movements and facial expressions, too.

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A good recent overview is Nicholas Weaver, “Inside Risks of Cryptocurrencies,” Communications of the ACM 61, no. 6 (2018): 1–5. For broader background, see David Golumbia, The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016). 14. This possibility is expertly critiqued by Angela Walch; see “The Path of the Blockchain Lexicon (and the Law),” Review of Banking and Financial Law 36 (2017): 713–765. 15. Evan Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” New Yorker, January 22, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich. 16. Noah Gallagher Shannon, “Climate Chaos Is Coming—and the Pinkertons Are Ready,” New York Times Magazine, April 10, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/10/magazine/climate-change-pinkertons.html. 17.

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The Driver in the Driverless Car: How Our Technology Choices Will Create the Future by Vivek Wadhwa, Alex Salkever

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, clean water, correlation does not imply causation, CRISPR, deep learning, DeepMind, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, gigafactory, Google bus, Hyperloop, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, job automation, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Law of Accelerating Returns, license plate recognition, life extension, longitudinal study, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Meeker, Menlo Park, microbiome, military-industrial complex, mobile money, new economy, off-the-grid, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), personalized medicine, phenotype, precision agriculture, radical life extension, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Wozniak, Stuxnet, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, Thomas Davenport, Travis Kalanick, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero day

But now Moore’s Law applies, as we have described above, not just to smartphones and PCs but to everything. Change has always been the norm and the one constant; but we have never experienced change like this, at such a pace, or on so many fronts: in energy sources’ move to renewables; in health care’s move to digital health records and designer drugs; in banking, in which a technology called the blockchain distributed ledger system threatens to antiquate financial systems’ opaque procedures.* It is noteworthy that, Moore’s Law having turned fifty, we are reaching the limits of how much you can shrink a transistor. After all, nothing can be smaller than an atom. But Intel and IBM have both said that they can adhere to the Moore’s Law targets for another five to ten years.

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Technology has been advancing exponentially since the advent of evolution on Earth, and computing power has been rising exponentially: from the mechanical calculating devices used in the 1890 U.S. Census, via the machines that cracked the Nazi enigma code, the CBS vacuum-tube computer, the transistor-based machines used in the first space launches, and more recently the integrated circuit– based personal computer. * The blockchain is an almost incorruptible digital ledger that can be used to record practically anything that can be digitized: birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, deeds and titles of ownership, educational degrees, medical records, contracts, and votes. Bitcoin is one of its many implementations.

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A Difficult Balance Transparency, detection, and accountability are the necessary antidotes to security risks. Companies need to build systems with the assumption that they will be hacked. They need to develop technologies that notify us when we’ve been compromised and take automatic actions to block attackers. They must design systems to be distributed and resilient, such as blockchain technology, which can help prevent tampering and information leakage. With regard to privacy, we have yet to reach a consensus on what is acceptable. We all make choices about what we put on line, but much of what is collected about us is out of our control. The actual value of privacy is up to citizens and governments of the world to decide.

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Angrynomics by Eric Lonergan, Mark Blyth

AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Branko Milanovic, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collective bargaining, COVID-19, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Erik Brynjolfsson, Extinction Rebellion, fake news, full employment, gig economy, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, income per capita, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, labour market flexibility, liberal capitalism, lockdown, low interest rates, market clearing, Martin Wolf, Modern Monetary Theory, precariat, price stability, quantitative easing, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Skype, smart grid, sovereign wealth fund, spectrum auction, The Future of Employment, The Great Moderation, The Spirit Level, universal basic income

And that a lot of what people say is really techno-babble and a bunch of fantasy-hawkers selling bits of the sky to each other and gullible investors. Entertaining, but not serious. We argue that just because a technology exists, it does not follow that it will be adopted. Technologists, especially those selling blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, tend to forget that. What economists term the “rate of diffusion” – the length of time it takes us to absorb technology in our work practices and lives – is often far more important than the innovation itself. New technologies are rarely adopted overnight. They are constrained by institutions, social norms and costs, and they are always resisted and modified.

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Just as the global financial crisis really began to bite in Europe in 2010, the press everywhere suddenly became replete with stories about how pretty much all workers were shortly to be replaced by robots. Whether in the form of self-driving cars and trucks, drone delivery of goods, computer analysis of financial and legal data, blockchain and bitcoin, we were told over and over that no one was immune. Why? Because this time it was different – different in that AI and ML would combine to do things better than humans can do, and that such machines would get better at doing whatever they do better faster than we can catch up, hence the “race against the machine” and we were all going to lose.

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AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) 114 Afghanistan 6 aging population 10, 13, 14, 95, 106–11 and consumption 109–10 and government bonds 138–9, 152 and inequality 56–7, 58, 107–10 and inter-generational transfer 106–107 and poverty 57, 107 as stressor 57, 91, 106, 110, 111, 116, 118 and technological change 90, 106, 122 AIG 85, 124 Amazon 96, 98, 104, 142, 143–4 Anderson, Elizabeth 176 anger 2–3, 7–9, 10, 11–12, 159, 161 misplaced 13 as opportunity 16 and play 153 private see private anger public see public anger reducing see calming strategies anxiety/stress 9, 13–14, 50, 53, 55–6, 88, 118, 161 and cognitive effort 89–90, 91 and job insecurity 95–6 three causes of 91 and uncertainty see uncertainty Apple 96, 142, 143 Aristotle 59, 153 artificial intelligence (AI) 14, 102–106, 142 Asian financial crisis (1998) 77, 140 asset ownership 130–31, 133, 136, 140–41 Atkinson, Tony 80, 173 austerity policies 2–3, 6, 15, 34–5, 41, 48, 84 and euro crisis 44–5 and low interest rates 135 Australia 125 Austria 3 baby boomers 107–108, 110, 111, 175 Bank of England 84, 103, 120, 145, 148 TFS scheme 149–50, 166 banks 1, 6, 15, 33–5, 42, 44, 48, 145–50 and capital/liquidity ratios 126 and direct support for consumption 145–8 and dual interest rates 149–50 and economic models 3, 4 failure of 119–21, 122 and helicopter money 131, 146 independence of 78, 79 and leverage see financial leverage and problem of low interest rates 120–21, 122, 131, 135 regulations on 125–6, 127, 129, 132 restrictions on 72, 77 see also financial crisis (2008) Beck, Aaron 171–2 Bernanke, Ben 6, 148 Biden, Joe 106 billionaires 4 Bitcoin 102, 103 Blackrock 165 blockchain technology 14, 103 Blyth, Mark 172, 175 bonuses 81, 85, 124 Brazil 11, 127 Brexit 4, 7, 11, 22, 24, 37, 38, 55, 117, 154 and austerity policies 41, 45 and immigration 111, 112, 114, 116 and job insecurity 100–101 Brill, Stephen 175 Britain (UK) 3, 38, 119, 155, 162, 164 aging population in 107, 110 austerity policies in 41 dual interest rates in 149–50 and EU see Brexit fear of immigration in 27 gig economy in 100 and government bonds 135, 140 government spending in 71 immigration in 111, 112, 114, 115–16 inequality in 6 interest rates in 145 nationalism in 23 Thatcherism in 75, 76 Brittan, Samuel 151 Brynjolfsson, Erik 173 budget deficits 71, 75 Buffett, Warren 130 calming strategies 12, 15, 118, 122, 123–57 and data dividend see data dividend and direct support for consumption 145–8 and dual interest rates 149–50 and economic diversity 153–6 and inequality see inequality, strategies to reduce and national wealth fund see NWF and regulations on banks 125–6, 127, 129, 132 and sustainable investment see sustainable investment Canada 125 cancer 53, 87, 88, 106 capital 4 cost of 137, 139, 153 and dispersion 97–98 as “fictitious” commodity 65 formation, rate of 108 global 40, 42, 43, 49, 50, 58 and labour 50, 60, 69, 72 and neoliberalism 75, 76, 77, 79 protection of, following financial crisis 85 versus capital 97, 98 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty) 49, 108–10 capital/liquidity ratios 126 capitalism 64–5 and commodities 65–6 capitalism as computer 11, 61–72 fixing 124–25 hardware of 62–3, 117 software of 63–4, 68–71 and unemployment/inequality 66–7 version 1.0 68–9 version 1.0 crash 64, 66, 67, 71, 73, 83, 118 version 2.0 69–73, 74, 75, 76, 116 version 2.0 crash 70–71, 73, 83–4, 118 version 3.0 74–80, 98–9, 117, 125, 140–41 version 3.0 crash 116 car industry 100–101 caring industry 104 Case, Anne 54, 176 centrism, political 38, 48, 118–19, 121, 160–61, 162 CEOs (chief executive officers) 4 Chamberlain, Joseph 66 Chile 3 China 42, 63, 64, 78, 93, 137, 151, 156 Citibank 81, 82 cities 55, 56 climate change 104, 111, 121, 129, 131, 153, 159–60 and investment see sustainable investment Clinton, Hillary 160 Coggan, Philip 172 cognitive effort 89–90, 91 Cold War 28, 48 ending/legacy of 5, 23, 26, 29, 30, 37, 116 communism 68, 71 competition/competitiveness 47, 65, 94, 95, 111, 116, 125 and technology 105 see also product market competition computer analogy see capitalism as computer constrained volatility 85 consumption, direct support for 145–8, 150–51, 160 consumption, distribution of 52–3, 58 Corbyn, Jeremy 119 corporations 6, 20, 57 and competition 95, 96 and data dividend see data dividend corruption 8, 29, 61, 130 Covid-19 163 culture 160 Czech Republic 146, 147, 155 data dividend 141–4, 160, 162 and monopolies 142, 143, 144 and privacy 141–2 and property rights 142–3 de-unionization 50, 95, 99 Deaton, Angus 54, 176 debt 75, 84, 120, 132, 145, 150 and demography 109, 111, 131 government 136–7, 151, 152 net 136 deflation 65, 69, 120, 128, 144, 148 demand management 44–5, 47, 126–7 democracy 16, 25, 29, 39, 40, 104, 117, 130 and markets 68 demography see aging population Denmark 64, 164 depression see recession deregulation 28, 40, 48, 50, 58, 75 and inflation 127 as micro-stressor 94, 96, 99, 101, 118 DGSE (dynamic stochastic general equilibrium) models 3–4 Doughnut Economics (Raworth) 131–2, 165 dual interest rates 131–2, 149–50, 174 Dublin (Ireland) 17–18 economic change 9–10, 29, 43, 153 see also fiscal reform; recession economic growth 2, 6, 41, 69, 71, 86 and demography 108–10 and immigration 116 and inequality 76, 79–80 and quality of jobs/wages 46, 47, 85 economic ideology 28 economics 12, 54–5 shortcomings of models 3–5, 6, 7 education 24, 53, 58, 135, 141 tuition fees/student loans 107, 111 electoral politics 5–6, 104 and demographics 107, 110 and tribalism 13, 22, 24–7, 29, 30, 31 electric vehicles 153 elites 2–3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 37 in cities 55, 56 and corruption 8, 29 and ethical norms 20 and financial crisis 43–4 manipulation of tribal identity by 22, 24, 61, 116, 161 policy failures of 48–9 Engbom, Niklas 175–6 environmental degradation 29, 161 see also climate change environmental and social governance 168 ethical norms 20 euro crisis 7, 37, 44, 77, 144 Europe 34, 42, 137, 140 inequality in 41, 53, 56, 58 migrant crisis in 7 tribalism in 30 European Central Bank (ECB) 34, 84, 146, 155, 164–5 TLTRO programme 147–8, 166 European Union (EU) 22, 33, 34–5, 37, 43, 119 austerity policies in 2, 36, 48 and financial crisis (2008) 82 micro-stressors in 47–8 and nationalism 154–6 and neoliberalism 76, 77 unemployment in 44–5 see also Brexit eurozone 45, 65, 83, 148, 151, 155 exchange rates 72, 134 Extinction Rebellion 8, 131–2 Facebook 27, 96, 98, 142, 143 fake news 26 Farage, Nigel 17, 161 Farmer, Roger 174 fascism 45–6, 66, 67–8, 71 fear 16, 17, 94, 113, 117, 150, 161 and media 26, 27 and politics 7, 45 financial crisis (2008) 1–2, 6, 26, 29, 30, 39, 48, 127, 163 and automation 102–103 and bail-out of banks 84 fragility of recovery from 46, 85, 89, 121 further reading on 172–3 and globalized financial system 84 and growth of populism 85 and inequality 79–80 and low interest rates 135 and regulation of banks 129 financial leverage 72, 81–3, 85, 99, 126, 157 and credit crunch 83 and interest rates 81–2 financial market deregulation 77 fiscal councils 150–51 fiscal reform 15, 150–53, 162 Fischer, Stan 148, 165 Florence (Italy) 87–8 foodbanks 6, 53 football fans 8, 19, 56 France 2, 3, 20, 55, 56, 71, 101, 154, 156 and NWF 135 Franklin, Benjamin 87 free markets 30, 69, 118 Friedman, Milton 118 full employment 40, 47, 60, 66, 71–2, 79, 85, 175 and inflation 73–4, 76 without inflation 121, 125, 126 future 101–102, 111 Garcia family, parable of 33–5, 43 Gates, Bill 130 GDP (gross domestic product) 5, 44, 76, 79, 100–101, 106, 151, 152 and NWF 135, 141 Germany 3, 11, 34, 38, 42, 62–3, 66, 151, 154, 156, 167 and migrant crisis 111, 113–14 and NWF 135 Gibley, Bruce Cannon 175 gig economy 94, 98, 99–100 global economy 12, 39–40, 50, 53, 58, 133 and nationalism 154 and neoliberalism 77 globalization 5, 39, 41, 42–3, 48, 77, 117 hyper- 40 and inequality 80 and inflation 127 and insecurity 101 and labour market 42, 43 and nationalism 154 Gold Standard 65, 67 Google 96, 98, 104, 142 government bonds 72, 131, 133, 135, 137, 138–9, 152 as insurance policies 139, 140 government borrowing 134–5, 137, 152–3 and cost of capital 137, 139, 153 and low inflation 128, 138–40, 150 and NWF 136–137, 138–40 Great Depression 40, 44, 66, 69, 120 Great Moderation 6, 120 Greece 35, 38, 44, 45, 106–07, 110, 144 green revolution see sustainable investment gross domestic product see GDP Guilluy, Christophe 55 Gulf States 133, 134 Hayek, Friedrich 118 healthcare 47, 53–4, 58, 123–4, 135, 139 and access to data 141–2 and NWF 141 and uncertainty/probability 92 hedge fund managers 4 helicopter money 131, 146, 166 Hildebrand, Philipp 165 Hong Kong 2–3, 140, 164 Hopkin, Jonathan 172 Hopkins, Ellen 123 housing 71, 113, 114, 135 Hungary 11, 23, 30 Iceland 1–2, 8, 20 immigration 5, 7, 26, 27, 111–17, 164 economic effects of 115–16 and housing/training 113, 114 and income distribution 112, 113, 114–15 and manipulation by media/politicians 111, 115 as stressor 113, 115 and technological change 106 and tribalism 95, 111, 112, 113 income see wages income distribution 43, 50, 51 and Keynesian economics 71 and neoliberalism 80, 81 independent fiscal councils 150–51 India 23, 127 individualism 29, 154 Indonesia 3 inequality 3, 4, 6, 15, 29, 30, 40–41, 43, 49–57, 58, 61, 79, 118 difficulties in measuring 50–53 and distribution of income/consumption 53–4 and financial crisis (2008) 79–80, 83, 85 further reading on 173, 176 intergenerational 56–7, 107–10 and populism 54–5 and uncertainty 49–50 inequality, strategies to reduce 121–2, 129–31, 132, 162 asset ownership 130–31, 133, 136, 140–41 and data dividend 141–4 National Wealth Fund see NWF optimal/effective 132–3 and universal basic income (UBI) 141, 144 wealth tax 130, 132 inflation 5, 40, 51–2, 53, 69 death of 126, 128 and full employment 73–4, 76, 121, 122, 125 and global financial markets 78 and interest rates 75, 81–2, 120 low see low inflation and oil prices 96–7 and printing money 78, 128, 145 and raising taxes 129 and recession 144–5 and regulation of banks 125–6, 127, 132 and stagflation 40, 74, 120, 128 inheritance 132, 133, 160 national 136 innovation see technological change insurance industry 93 interest rates 15, 33–4, 75, 81–2, 165–6 dual, and sustainable investment 131–2, 149–50 low, problem of 120–21, 122, 131, 132, 135, 146–8, 152 negative, problem of 15, 148, 149, 150 and spending 147 internet 25 investment spending 40, 60, 69 and future expectations 103 and global capital flows 77–8 and inflation 74 public sector 67, 70–71 sustainable see sustainable investment IRA (Irish Republican Army) 17 Iraq 6 Ireland 17–18, 23, 24 Islam 27 Italy 35, 37, 38, 39, 44, 66, 71, 87–8, 144, 156, 167 aging population in 110 poverty in 47 tribalism in 45–6 Japan 26, 84, 110, 137, 140, 148 job security/insecurity 34, 50, 56, 61, 94, 95–6, 100–101 and technology 102 Kalecki, Michał 60–61, 73–5, 120, 121, 127 Keynes, John Maynard/Keynesian economics 60, 66–7, 68–70, 92, 103, 118, 127, 151 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money 66, 175 and inflation 67, 69, 128 labour market 35, 40–41, 42, 43, 44 and automation 102–106 deregulation 50, 95, 99, 122, 127 dispersion in 98–9 and full employment see full employment and immigration 115–16 in Keynesian system 71–2 and labour as commodity 59, 60, 65–6, 73, 85 and protectionism 59–61, 66 and secular stability 125, 126 and training 62–3 see also wages Lagarde, Christine 167 Lerner, Abba 118 libertarianism 63 Lonergan, Eric 174 Los Indignatios 85 low inflation 79, 134, 157 and full employment/secular stability 126 and government spending/borrowing 128, 138–40, 150, 152 and recession 144–5, 150, 162 Luce, Edward 164 Ludd, Ned/Luddites 102 machine learning (MI) 102–104 see also artificial intelligence macroeconomics 9, 13, 47, 89 failure of 119–20 and uncertainty 94 Macron, Emmanuel 162 Mair, Peter 172 markets 30, 59–61, 62, 66–7 and democracy 68 and quantity theory of money 68–9 see also labour market Mauss, Marcel 21–2 Mazzucato, Mariana 156 media 11, 43, 47 and technological change 98, 102–103, 105 and tribalism 24–5, 26–7, 29, 31, 61, 116, 161 Merkel, Angela 114 Mexico 63 micro-stressors 47–8, 53, 84, 91 and aging populations see aging populations and change 94 and fourth industrial revolution 94 and immigration see immigration microeconomics 9, 13–14, 160 migrant crisis 7, 111 Milanovic, Branko 52, 80 minimal group paradigm 21 Minsky, Hyman 128 mobile phones 53, 96, 97, 142 modern monetary theory (MMT) 118, 128–9 money, printing 78, 128, 145 monopolies 142, 143, 144 moral outrage 8, 13, 15, 35–6, 57–8, 117, 130, 161 and inequality see inequality as rational 36 and tribalism, compared 19, 20, 22, 29, 30–31, 36 triggers for 36 mortgages 34, 35, 38, 82, 111, 137, 145 nation state 39–40, 48, 50, 117, 119 national wealth fund see NWF nationalism 5, 11, 23, 29, 31, 39, 41, 116, 119 as positive 153–6 neoliberalism 4, 28–9, 37, 75–8, 122 and global capital flows 77–8 and inequality 51, 52, 53 NHS (National Health Service) 107 Nissan 100–101 Nixon, Richard 26 Northern Ireland 17–18, 23, 24 Norway 133, 134 Nussbaum, Martha 16, 35, 36 NWF (national wealth fund) 15, 132, 133–41, 143, 152, 168 and aging population 138–9 and asset ownership 133, 136, 140–41 and government borrowing/debt 136–7, 138–40 and growth of global stock market 137–8 and individual trust funds 135 and negative interest rates 134–5, 136 and risk 136, 137–8 sovereign 133–4 and trade surplus 134 Obama, Barack 29, 46 oil prices 96–7 Orban, Viktor 23, 30, 161 “Panama Papers” 2, 20 pensions 57, 63, 106–107, 138 perpetual loans 147–8 Philadelphia Eagles 20 Pickett, Kate 168 Piketty, Thomas 49, 52, 80, 108–10 play 153 Poland 11, 30 Polanyi, Karl 59–61, 64–5, 67, 175 political centrism 38, 48, 118–19, 121, 160–61, 162 political disengagement 29 political economy 12, 13 political identity 22–3, 29–30, 37, 48, 116, 117 further reading on 172 political parties 5–6, 7, 28 politics, new 15–16, 58, 160 populism 11, 27, 39 and financial crisis 86 three genres of 54–5 Portugal 35, 38, 44, 144 poverty 47, 67, 72, 80, 115 and demographics 57, 107 power 4, 48 powerlessness 9, 41 price stability 76, 79, 128, 147 private anger 7, 8, 9, 10, 13–14, 36, 117 and cognitive effort 89–90, 91 see also anxiety/stress private sector debt 131, 145 and government borrowing 134–5, 137, 138–40 investment 67, 70, 149–50, 151 liability in financial crisis 85, 127 privatization 28, 40, 96, 107 probability 91–3 product market competition 94, 95–8, 116, 125 and deregulation/privatization 96–7 and dispersion 97, 98–9 intensification of 96, 101 and technological change 96, 97–8, 99 productivity 40 and technological innovation 9, 10, 15, 102, 104–105 and wages 71, 72, 74, 76 profit margins 98, 101, 105, 143 property prices 34, 38 property rights 142, 143, 154 protectionism 59–60, 61, 66 public anger 7, 8–9, 10, 89, 98, 117–18 economic causes of 13 see also moral outrage; tribalism/tribal anger public housing 71, 113, 114 public sector investment 67, 70–71 public services 24, 115, 116 quantitative easing (QE) 146–7, 167 quantity theory of money 68–9, 78 racism 26, 54, 55, 115 Raworth, Kate 131–2, 173 Reagan, Ronald 26, 75, 118 recession 15, 29, 30, 34–5, 44, 49, 55, 58, 84, 152, 153 and dual interest rates 150 and interest rates 75, 120–21 and investment spending 60, 70, 71 and low inflation 144–5, 150, 162 and MMT 128–9 and stock markets 139, 140 see also euro crisis referenda 37 regeneration, economic 132 regional development 15, 115, 116, 149, 153, 156 Renzi, Matteo 37 risk 91–2, 127, 136, 137, 153 Roberts, Carys 174 robotics see artificial intelligence Rodrik, Dani 4, 39, 40 Russia 11, 41 Sahm, Claudia 150–51 Salvo, Francesca 87–8 Sandbu, Martin 174 Sanders, Bernie 128, 164 savings 93 scale economies 98, 99, 142 Scottish nationalism 7, 119 secular stability 125, 126, 127 service-based economy 52 Singapore 133, 134, 162 SMEs (small- and medium-sized enterprises) 164–5, 166 social democracy 63–4 social media 26, 27, 90, 98 Solow growth model 109 sovereign wealth funds 133–4 sovereignty 39 Spain 33–5, 38, 44, 45, 144 protests against austerity in 85 spending increasing 145, 147, 151 investment 40, 60 power 145 public sector 67, 70–71, 128, 151 restrictions on 41, 44, 149 sports fans 8, 19–20, 21, 25 sports industry 99 stagflation 40, 74, 120, 128 status-injury 36, 54 stock markets 63, 137–8, 139–40 stress see anxiety/stress strikes 73, 74 student loans 111 supply–demand 60, 96, 104 sustainable investment 131–2, 149–50, 152, 153 Sweden 63–4, 72–3 Syria 111, 113 Tavris, Carol 36, 171 taxes 40, 50, 57, 108, 116, 124 cuts in 34, 44, 111, 151 dodging 2, 6, 20, 132–3, 143 political opposition to 129, 130, 132, 133 raising 152 on wealth 129, 130, 132, 140 Tea Party movement 85 technocracy 37, 42–3, 48, 160–61 technological change 29, 58, 96, 109 and aging population 90, 106, 122 and competition 96, 97–8 and dispersion of returns 97 and fourth industrial revolution 94 further reading on 173–4 and inequality 50, 53 and labour market 102–104 and media 24–5, 27 as micro-stressor 88, 91, 94, 96, 97–8, 99, 101–102, 105, 116, 118 and productivity 9, 10, 15, 105, 122 and rate of diffusion 14 and uncertainty 101–102 telecommunications 96, 97, 142 terrorism 17, 18, 27 Thatcher, Margaret 75, 76, 118, 131 Thunberg, Greta 150 TLTRO programme (European Central Bank) 147–8 trade 21–2, 26, 42, 78, 154 and neoliberalism 78 trade surplus 134 trade unions 28, 42, 63, 66, 72, 73, 76, 79 trade wars 21–2, 26 training 62–3, 93, 113, 114, 141 tribalism/tribal anger 8–9, 11, 18–31, 41, 45–6, 117 and central/eastern Europe 23, 30 destructiveness of 24 and ethical norms 20 and fascism 68 and financial crisis 86, 89 and global politics 21–2, 26, 28–9 and immigration 95, 111, 112, 113 manipulation by politicians/media of 13, 22, 24–7, 29, 30, 31, 35, 61, 95, 116, 161 and minimal group paradigm 21 and moral outrage, compared 19, 20, 22, 29, 30–31, 36 and political identity 22–23, 29–30 social function of 20–21 and sport fans 19–20, 25 see also nationalism trickling down/up 79–80 trilemma, political 39 trucking industry 103 Trump, Donald 11, 22, 23, 25–6, 27, 33, 38, 119, 126, 161 and deregulation 129 election of 41–2, 54 tax cuts of 11 Turkey 11 universal basic income (UBI) 141, 144 Ukraine 11 uncertainty 9–10, 43, 49–50, 65, 91–4, 99, 118, 161 and aging populations see aging populations and emerging technologies 102–103, 106 and healthcare 92 and immigration see immigration reducing 93–4 and risk/probability 91–3 and skills development 93 unemployment 2, 30, 34, 44–5, 48, 58, 66, 72, 84, 167 and inflation/interest rates 74, 75, 125 unfairness 25, 36, 105 United States (US) 3, 38, 93, 118, 129, 164 aging population in 107–108, 110, 111 automation in 103, 104–105 financial crisis in (2008) 82–3, 84, 85 gig economy in 100 healthcare in 47–8, 53–4, 58, 106, 123–4 independent fiscal councils in 150–51 inequality in 50, 51, 53–4, 58, 80–81 Keynesian system in 71, 72–3 labour market in 42, 44, 46, 62 micro-stressors in 47–8 neoliberalism in 76 and NWF 135 stock market in 63 tribalism in 23, 25, 29 wealth tax in 130 US Federal Reserve 6, 46, 84, 108, 110, 120, 148, 151 voice, loss of 37–9, 43, 48, 58 Volcker, Paul 75, 81–2 voting 37–8 see also electoral politics wages 2, 60 and automation 105 and competition 96–7, 98 and consumption 53–4, 58, 72 distribution of see income distribution growth in, without inflation 125 and immigration 115–16 and inequality 4, 50–53, 58 and neoliberalism 76, 77 and oil prices 96–7 and productivity 72, 76 stagnation in 34, 47, 58, 80–81, 83, 84, 85 and supply/demand 65–6 Wall Street Crash 67 Warren, Elizabeth 130, 132 Watson’s Analytics 19 wealth, distribution of 4, 15, 29, 30 welfare state 71 WhatsApp 2 Wilkinson, Richard 176 wind power, investment in 150 Wolf, Martin 80, 173 World Trade Organization (WTO) 42 Wren-Lewis, Simon 151 Yates, Tony 151 “Yellow Jackets” protests 2, 20, 55, 56

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Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice From the Best in the World by Timothy Ferriss

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, A Pattern Language, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Bayesian statistics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, Colonization of Mars, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, do well by doing good, do what you love, don't be evil, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, fear of failure, Gary Taubes, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, global macro, Google Hangouts, Gödel, Escher, Bach, haute couture, helicopter parent, high net worth, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, income inequality, index fund, information security, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kevin Kelly, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lyft, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Marshall McLuhan, Max Levchin, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Mr. Money Mustache, Naomi Klein, Neal Stephenson, Nick Bostrom, non-fiction novel, Peter Thiel, power law, profit motive, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ray Kurzweil, Salesforce, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, Snapchat, Snow Crash, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, sunk-cost fallacy, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, Turing machine, uber lyft, Vitalik Buterin, W. E. B. Du Bois, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, Y Combinator

–W “I’d rather give an understated good recommendation: be interdisciplinary . . . the interactions between [fields] tend to very often inform strategic and protocol decisions.” Vitalik Buterin TW: @VitalikButerin Reddit: /u/vbuterin VITALIK BUTERIN is the creator of Ethereum. He first discovered blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies through Bitcoin in 2011, and was immediately excited by the technology and its potential. He co-founded Bitcoin magazine in September 2011, and after two and a half years looking at what the existing blockchain technology and applications had to offer, wrote the Ethereum white paper in November 2013. He now leads Ethereum’s research team, working on future versions of the Ethereum protocol.

…

But I do want to get that culty Japanese journal that all the designers use, a Hobonichi Techo. It’s the kind of thing you see in Japan: a notebook turned into a high art. Maybe next year. . . . “No one is qualified to tell you how you experience the world.” Vlad Zamfir TW: @VladZamfir Medium: @vlad_zamfir vladzamfir.com VLAD ZAMFIR is a blockchain architect and researcher at Ethereum, working on blockchain efficiency and scaling. Vlad is interested in governance and privacy solutions, and he was also the first person to introduce me to absurdism. He is a frequent contributor on Medium and lives in Antarctica (or so he wants us to believe). What is the book (or books) you’ve given most as a gift, and why?

…

I feel like I have a much better idea about “how society works” now that I understand something about the nature of institutions. Not that I can claim to understand much! I tried to “crystallize” some of my understandings, but I didn’t do a great job. In practical terms, though, I am now able to think much more clearly about blockchain governance. I can see that we already have a handful of nascent blockchain governance institutions! I can understand what it means for an institution to be more or less formal, and more or less tacit/ad hoc. I am now completely open to the possibility that institutionalization can be a reasonable process, rather than one that is inevitably powered by hubris.

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Peers Inc: How People and Platforms Are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism by Robin Chase

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Kessler, Anthropocene, Apollo 13, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, business climate, call centre, car-free, carbon tax, circular economy, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, collective bargaining, commoditize, congestion charging, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deal flow, decarbonisation, different worldview, do-ocracy, don't be evil, Donald Shoup, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, frictionless, Gini coefficient, GPS: selective availability, high-speed rail, hive mind, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, Kinder Surprise, language acquisition, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, low interest rates, Lyft, machine readable, means of production, megacity, Minecraft, minimum viable product, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, optical character recognition, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, peer-to-peer model, Post-Keynesian economics, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, Snapchat, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, TaskRabbit, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Turing test, turn-by-turn navigation, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, vertical integration, Zipcar

In order to stay compatible with each other, all users need to use software complying with the same rules. Bitcoin can only work correctly with a complete consensus among all users. Therefore, all users and developers have a strong incentive to protect this consensus.22 While the block-chain protocol has necessarily evolved over the last six years, the evolution is driven by consensus, with the most suitable and widely adopted changes being the ones that win out over the alternatives. The block-chain process errs toward consensus and changes only for big improvements. This chapter has been about exploring ways to finance platforms without the involvement of government or the private sector.

…

We often pay for services this way: Cellphone use is paid by the minute or byte and Zipcar by the hour and mile using rates the company sets. Having a reward system that is adopted and applied by a decentralized group is more challenging and therefore more impressive. Can we allow for nuanced circumstances? How do we deal with arguments? Innovators are now repurposing the block-chain methodology for a much wider range of activities and providing rewards dynamically based on more localized circumstances. An Israeli startup, LaZooz, is using the block chain to build a ridesharing network. People sign up and download the app, which measures distances travelled, and provides the reward in Zooz tokens accordingly.

…

Every transaction can have its own special combination built using standard building blocks. Rule-making and standards adoption is all accomplished through decentralized leader-free “voting” based on market signals. All of the transactions on the public ledger are there for all to see, and open source. In the potentiality of block-chain visionaries, the most useful programs, contracts, and methods will be the ones that are most copied, eventually becoming standards. The Bitcoin.org website explains how this is accomplished with Bitcoin: Nobody owns the Bitcoin network.… [It] is controlled by all Bitcoin users around the world.

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Infonomics: How to Monetize, Manage, and Measure Information as an Asset for Competitive Advantage by Douglas B. Laney

3D printing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, banking crisis, behavioural economics, blockchain, book value, business climate, business intelligence, business logic, business process, call centre, carbon credits, chief data officer, Claude Shannon: information theory, commoditize, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, dark matter, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, digital rights, digital twin, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Erik Brynjolfsson, full employment, hype cycle, informal economy, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, it's over 9,000, linked data, Lyft, Nash equilibrium, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, obamacare, performance metric, profit motive, recommendation engine, RFID, Salesforce, semantic web, single source of truth, smart meter, Snapchat, software as a service, source of truth, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, text mining, uber lyft, Y2K, yield curve

Early attempts at this, however, will be plagued with erroneous interpretations of the data, both by the algorithms themselves and unsuspecting recipients (humans and applications). Blockchain is worth mentioning as well, since it is a hot (if overhyped) topic at present. Into the next decade, expect most blockchain efforts to miss the mark, either due to performance challenges endemic to the technology or the misapplication of the technology by overzealous architects. That said, blockchain may very well prove useful for rationalizing metadata or master data long before being practicable for managing most high volume/velocity/variety information assets themselves.

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Index 3 “V”s of big data 101n9 Abe’s Market 39 accessibility 249 accounting: accountants and information 227–9; cashing in on information 229; information 201–5; probable economic value 229–30 ACNielsen 12, 22 Acxiom 229 Adams, Paul 168 Advanced Drain Systems (ADS) 97 Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) 98 Albala, Mark 261 algorithm(s) 84, 88–9, 94, 96, 98, 137, 199, 230–1, 279, 286, 289–91 Amazon 36, 132, 211, 217n2 American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) 21, 205–6 analytics: actionable decision-making 89–93; advanced 289–90; advanced analytics advantage 83–5; business intelligence implementation 82; descriptive 82–3; diagnostic 82–3; exploiting Big Data 86–9; Gartner analytic ascendency model 83; identifying monetizable insights 93–9; information management 99–100; information monetization 75–6; predictive 82–3; prescriptive 82–3; value 266 application program interfaces (APIs) 34, 73 applied asset management: governance 186–9; information strategy 177–81; information vision 174–7; infrastructure 196–8; metrics 182–6; people 189–92; process 193–6; roles for infosavvy organization 198–200 Aquatics Informatics 114 Archer Daniels Midland 8 Armstrong, Neil 1 Arthur Andersen 205, 217 artificial intelligence (AI) 85, 90, 115, 286, 289–90 Art of War, The (Sun Tzu) 144n4 asset, definitions 2–3, 9–11, 214–15 asset management: barriers to information 114–16; fiduciary responsibility 164; financial methods 163–5; intangibles 168–9; lessons from sustainability 138–43; see also applied asset management; physical asset management AULIVE 12 Australian Computer Society Data Taskforce 222 Australian Privacy Commissioner 233 Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) 43–4 Auto Trader 23 Ayasdi 14, 27n6, 42, 98 balance sheet assets 158–9; physical asset management 9, 116, 158–63, 176, 184, 188–9, 198, 235 Bardin, Noam 35 bartering: favorable terms and conditions 38–9; goods and services 37–8; relationships 38–9 Becker, Gary 128 Becker, Mark 30 Beechcraft Cessna 292 Beechwood House Publishing 255–6 Bekenstein Bounds 273 Bell Helicopter 292 Bespoke Data Organisation 225 Beyer, Mark 186 Big Data 10, 12, 26n2, 49n1, 59, 212; exploiting 85–9; health insurance company 107; information trend 287; processing 40–1; roadblocks to information monetization 287–8; term 86, 101n8; variety of information 88–9; velocity of information 85–6; volume of information 87 biodiversity 136 Bippert, Doug 84 Birchler, Urs 272 blockchain 291 Bloomberg 12, 211, 229 blunderfunding 244, 268n5 Boone, Ryan 40 Box, George 246 BrightPlanet 65 Brownstein, John 96 Brynjolfsson, Erik 272 Brzmialkiewics, Caryl 44 Buchanan, Stewart 107 Bugajski, Joe 281 business: asset 10; climate 136; information 48–9; introducing a new line of 33–4; models 24–6; performance 43–4 business intelligence (BI) 14, 77, 81, 198, 211, 292; analytics 82; beyond basic 81–6; innovation 97–9; see also analytics business-to-business (B2B) 15, 38 business-to-consumer (B2C) 15 business value of information (BVI) 253–4 Bütler, Monka 272 Buytendijk, Frank 34, 281 Caltex 63 Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) 148 cash 14–16, 20–1, 28, 35, 37, 39, 42–4, 96, 128, 161, 165, 188, 209, 227, 229, 257, 260, 293 Casonato, Regina 132 Casper, Carsten 244 Center for Disease Control 65; Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 89 chief data officer (CDO) 3, 9, 17, 25: analytics 106–7; balancing act of 288–9; concept of 190; emergence of 293; hiring 211; information ecosystem 138; information leader 56–6, 155; information management 154; leadership 112; role of 192, 199–200 chief financial officer (CFO) 3, 100, 105, 107, 165, 200, 213, 245, 250 chief executive officer (CEO) 15, 32, 34, 40, 57, 100, 112, 155, 168, 175, 190, 200 chief information officer (CIO) 3, 40, 42, 58–9, 81, 106, 112, 132, 134, 175–6, 190, 200 China 35, 64, 159, 224 Christiaens, Stan 106 Cicero Group 148, 265, 269n25 Citigroup13–14, 16 Clark, Christina 243 Coca-Cola 83–4, 88, 132 Cohen, Jack 91 Coles Supermarkets 192 Collibra 106, 163 commercial data 63 commercial general liability (CGL) 241–2 competitive differentiation 36–7 completeness 248, 252 Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) 14 Connotate Software 62, 65 consistency 248 content management, contending approaches for 154–5 Corbin, Stacey 63 Cordner, Matt 292 costs, defraying information management and analytics 40–1 cost savings, monetization success 74 cost value of information (CVI) 256–7, 261–2, 274–5 cultural attitudes, information management 114 customer acquisition and retention 29–31 customer relationship management (CRM) 140 D&B 22, 57, 63–4, 229 DalleMule, Leandro 176, 184 dark data 32, 42, 62–3, 141; information asset 61–2; understanding 94–5 data as a service (DAAS) 181–2 database management system (DBMS) 134, 302 Data Driven Leaders Always Win (Zaidi) 234 data governance 188–9; see also governance, information Data Management Association International (DAMA) 148 data ownership 20; see also ownership data preparation 17, 73–4, 189; for monetization use 72–3 data quality: assessing 246–9; objective metrics 248; subjective metrics 249 Data Republic 63 data science 289–90 Datateam Business Media (DBM) 221 Davis, Lord Justice 221 DB2 database 115, 228 DBS Bank 43–4 decision making: actionable 85, 89–93; complexity, activity and change 89–90; governance, risk and compliance (GRC) 91–2; optimizing business processes 90–1; scenario planning 92–3 deinformationalization 36 Deming, Edward 243 derivative data 279 Desai, Samir 58 Deutsche Telekom 225 Dibble, Bill 94 differential data 278 digerati 210 digital detritus 42 digital industry, intellectual property of 288 diminishing marginal utility 276–8; law of 276 Direct Eats 39 direct information monetization 66–8 Disney World 83 distinct data 278 diversity, people 191–2 Dollar General 32, 36, 40 Dominick, Lauren 92 Drucker, Peter 243 DSCI 63 Dun & Bradstreet see D&B Duncan, Alan 160, 272 economic attribution, monetization success 74 economics: applying concepts to information 272–3; as dismal science 271; principles 271–2; see also infonomics economic value of information (EVI) 258–9, 266 economy 11, 147, 192, 205–6, 217, 242, 272 ecosystem: definition 132–3; entities 135–6; features 136; influences 137; management 137–8; processes 136–7; sustainability principles 138–43, 180; see also information ecosystem Ehlers, Brian 183 elasticity, information pricing and 275–6 Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 224 endowment effect 279 enterprise architect 10 enterprise asset management (EAM): infrastructure 197–8; systems 162 enterprise content management (ECM) 154, 181 Enterprise Data Management (EDM) Council 148 enterprise information management (EIM): impediments to maturity 111–14; leadership issues 112; levels of maturity 109–11; maturity model 108–11, 174; metrics 182–4; vision 174–7 enterprise resource planning (ERP) 140 Equifax 12, 57, 63 Equinox Fitness Clubs 58 Evans, Nina 114 Everedge 168 existence 249 exogenous information 16, 165; see also external information Experian 57, 63, 213 Experience Matters 106, 114, 148, 181, 186 external information 11, 31, 36, 55, 60–1, 165, 195, 292 Facebook 11, 21–2, 31, 34, 64, 211–13, 218n10, 232 faint signals, identifying 95–6 feasibility checklist 69–70; economical 72; ethical 72–3; legal 72; manageable 71; marketable 71; practical 70–1; scalable 71; technological 71 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 46 fiduciary 164, 189, 234 Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) 21, 206 financial valuation models, information assets 251, 255–61 Fisher, Jennifer 260 Fisher, Tony 272 Fisher, William W., III 169 FleetRisk Advisors 92 Francis, James C., IV 224 fraud and risk, identifying and reducing 44–5 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 17, 45–6 Friedman, Milton 128–9 Friedman, Ted 247, 268n12 fundamental valuation models, information assets 251–5 Gaia hypothesis 144n5 Ganschow, Karen 54 Gartner: enterprise information management (EIM) maturity model 108–11, 297–302; financial valuation models 251, 255–6; fundamental valuation models 251–5; Hype Cycle 281, 284n7; information asset valuation models 250; information value models 262; Magic Quadrants 68 Geis, Alex 33 General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) 240n24 generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) 21, 116, 217, 245 generally accepted information principles 116–19, 120n13; assumptions 117; constraints 117–18; principles 118–19 Georgia Aquarium 29–30 geographic 18, 35, 96, 235 Gledhill, David 43 goods and services, bartering 37–8 Google 11, 21, 47, 76, 211, 213, 217n2 governance: applied asset management 188–9; challenges and remedies 187; data entry 187; governance, risk and compliance (GRC) 91–2, 152; information 188, 234; information management 186–9; information management challenges 299–300; proving benefits of information 264 government 9, 17, 22–3, 41, 45–8, 61, 64, 95–6, 105, 115, 193, 206, 223–5, 237, 276, 286 Grayson-Rizzuto, Kimberly 39 Grossman, Larry 46 Hadoop 41 Hamilton, Stuart 114 Hawthorne effect 243, 268n4 Hawthorne Works 243 Health and Human Services Department 44 HealthMap 95–6 HERE Life 38 Hershberger, John 111 Higgins, Mike 97 Hillard, Rob 148, 272 Hogan, Tom 107 Holloway, Todd 32 Horrisberger, Jim 83 House of Cards (TV series) 59 Hubbard, Douglas 260 Human Capital (Becker) 128 human capital management 165–8, 184 Hutton, James 144n7 Hype Cycle 281, 284n7 IBM 87, 91, 115, 148 IMDB 34 Indigenous Land Corporation 63 indirect information monetization 68–9 industry average 283 Infinity Property and Casualty 94 infodiversity 180 infonomics 272, 285–6; concept of 3; definition 9; future of 292–5; improving information yield 281–4; information pricing and elasticity 275–6; information-related trends 286–91; managing information 106; marginal utility of information 276–9; opportunity cost for information choices 279–80; production possibilities of information 280; supply and demand of information 274–5 Informatica 163 information: accountants and 227–30; accounting for 214–17; as asset 2, 205–7; asset realization 207–8; business models and profitability 24–6; characteristics of 18–26; control of 228–9, 233; data vs 25–6, 26n4; digitalization of 288; economic alternatives for 13–14; getting more than cash for 14–16; as liability 216; liquidity of 20–1; monetizing, managing and measuring 9–11; multimedia 2; opportunity cost for information 279–80; pricing elasticity 275–6; probable economic value of 229–30; real world evidence of economic value of 210–13; replicability 23; reusable nature of 19; as second language 143–4; stop giving it away 18; supply and demand of 274–5; taxing situation 21–2; thinking beyond 16–17; transferability 23–4; uncovering hidden treasures 17–18; value of 208–10; see also ownership Information Age 3, 95, 136, 149, 160, 216 informationalize 36 informationalized product 75 information as a second language (ISL) 143–4, 192 information asset management (IAM) 107, 176; information yield 281–4; unified approach to 169–70; vision 176–7; see also applied asset management information assets 59–66; commercial data 63; commercial general liability (CGL) 241; dark data 62–3; financial valuation models 249, 255–60; fundamental valuation models 251–6; inventory 60; measuring 242–6; new supply chain model for 128–31; operational data 61; privacy and security 291; public data 64; social media data 64–5; valuation models 249–60; web content 65–6 information curation 17 information ecosystem: classic ecosystem entities concepts 135; ecosystem entities 135; ecosystem features of 136; ecosystem influences 137; ecosystem management 137–8; ecosystem processes 136–7; lessons from sustainability 138–43; preparing for 131–8; recycle 142–3; reduce 140–1; refuse 139–40; remove 143; repurpose 141–2; reuse 141; role of information in 133–5 information keiretsus 132 information lifecycle: expense 267; process challenges 301–2 information management 105–8; barriers to asset management 114–16; challenges and principles 119; cultural attitudes about 114; future of infonomics 292; generally accepted information principles 116–19; governance challenges 299–300; impediments to maturity 111–14; information metrics challenges 299; infrastructure challenges 302; leadership 112; levels of information maturity 109–11; maturity model 108–11, 174; monetization success 74; monetization to 99–100; people-related challenges 300–1; priority control 113–14; process challenges 301–2; resources 113–14; strategy challenges 298; vision challenges 297–8 information measurement, future of infonomics 294–5 information owners 222; see also ownership information ownership 222, 226–8, 232–4 information performance gap 262 information product management 56–9 information property rights 303–5; rulings affirming 303–4; rulings denying 304–5; see also information ownership; ownership information security 244 information supply chain (ISC) 8, 119; activities 131; metrics for 126–7; model for information assets 128–31; preparing for information ecosystem 131–8; scenarios 126; SCOR (Supply Chain Operations Reference) model 124–5; see also information ecosystem Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) 151–2 information valuation models 263–7; benefits of information governance 264; expanded revenue 266; innovation and digitalization 265; monetization and analytics 265–6; prioritizing IAM investments 264; reducing information lifecycle expense 267 information vision gap 262 information yield 281–4; concept 281; curve 281 infosavvy 3, 11; chief data officer (CDO) 199–200; growing market valuations 245; investors prizing, companies 211–13; roles for organization 198–200 infrastructure 12, 40–1, 47, 108, 139, 150–1, 192, 196–8, 267, 286, 290–1, 299, 302; information 290–1; information management 196; information management challenges 302 innovation 3, 26, 31, 46, 76, 97–9, 107, 113, 161, 236, 246, 265, 287, 289, 298, 301 innovation and digitalization, value 265 Instagram 34 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 147 intangible assets 168–9 integrity 248 intellectual property (IP) 62, 116, 128, 130, 168, 176, 181, 230–1, 288 International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) 214 International Accounting Standards (IAS) 214–15, 217 International Astronomical Union 148 International Federation of Library Association and Institutions (IFLA) 157 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 214–15; criteria 219n19 International Organization for Standardization (ISO): ISO 8000 170n2; ISO 15489–1:2016 152, 170n8, 171n10; ISO 19770–1 149; ISO 19770–2 149; ISO 19770–3 150; ISO 19770–4 150; ISO 30300:2011 170n9; ISO 55001 158; ISO/IEC 20000 170n7; ISO/IEC 27001 147, 170n3; IT asset management (ITAM) 149–50; IT service management (ITSM) 150–1 intrinsic value of information (IVI) 251–2 Intuit’s TurboTax 36 inventory, information asset 60 investor awareness, monetization success 76 IT asset management (ITAM): International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards 149–50 IT service management (ITSM) 150–1; information strategy 180–1 J.D.

pages: 523 words: 61,179

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI by Paul R. Daugherty, H. James Wilson

3D printing, AI winter, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, circular economy, cloud computing, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, digital twin, disintermediation, Douglas Hofstadter, driverless car, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, friendly AI, fulfillment center, future of work, Geoffrey Hinton, Hans Moravec, industrial robot, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, knowledge worker, Lyft, machine translation, Marc Benioﬀ, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, personalized medicine, precision agriculture, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sensor fusion, sentiment analysis, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Snow Crash, software as a service, speech recognition, tacit knowledge, telepresence, telepresence robot, text mining, the scientific method, uber lyft, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics

It’s no wonder that precision-agriculture services are expected to grow to $4.55 billion by 2020.12 As the technology becomes more widely used, the land will benefit, the farmer will benefit, and the hundreds of millions of people who need access to healthy affordable food will benefit. (See the sidebar “AI for Good: Akshaya Patra.”) AI for Good: Akshaya Patra Akshaya Patra, an India nonprofit with the vision that “no child in India shall be deprived of education because of hunger,” combines the power of AI with blockchain (a digital, decentralized, public ledger) and IoT technologies. To achieve its vision, the company’s midday meal program provides one wholesome lunchtime meal to keep children sufficiently motivated and nourished to pursue their education. Since 2000, when it began by feeding 1,500 children, its operations have expanded to 1.6 million children per year in 2017; it commemorated its two-billionth meal served in 2016.

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Since 2000, when it began by feeding 1,500 children, its operations have expanded to 1.6 million children per year in 2017; it commemorated its two-billionth meal served in 2016. Thus far, the nonprofit has demonstrated a 20 percent efficiency improvement in selected kitchens. Now feedback is digitized where once it was manually input, and blockchain is driving efficiencies in audit, attendance recording, and invoice processing. AI is used to accurately forecast demand, and IoT sensors monitor and sequence cooking processes to minimize waste and ensure consistent food quality. AI in combination with these other technologies will help Akshaya Patra expand its operations efficiently, meaning more children fed and kept in school.a a.

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., 13–14 AT&T, 188 Audi, 158–160, 190 audio and signal processing, 64 Audi Robotic Telepresence (ART), 159–160 augmentation, 5, 7 customer-aware shops and, 87–90 embodiment and, 147–149 fostering positive experiences with, 166 generative design and, 135–137 of observation, 157–158 types of, 138–140 workforce implications of, 137–138 augmented reality, 143 Autodesk, 3, 136–137, 141 automakers, 116–117, 140 autonomous cars and, 67–68, 166–167, 189, 190 BMW, 1, 4, 10, 149–150 customization among, 147–149 Mercedes-Benz, 4, 10 process reimagination at, 158–160 automation, 5, 19 intelligent, 65 automation ethicists, 130–131 Ayasdi, 178 back-office operations, 10 banking digital lending, 86 fraud detection in, 42 money laundering and, 45–46, 51 virtual assistants in, 55–56 Beiersdorf, 176–177 Benetton, 89 Benioff, Marc, 196 Berg Health, 82 Bezos, Jeff, 161, 164 BHP Billiton Ltd., 28 biases, 121–122, 129–130, 174, 179 biometrics, 65 BlackRock, 122 blockchain, 37 Bloomberg Beta, 195 BMW, 1, 4, 10, 148, 209 Boeing, 28, 143 Boli.io, 196 bot-based empowerment, 12, 186, 195–196 boundaries, 168–169 BQ Zosi, 146 Braga, Leda, 167 brands, 87, 92–94 anthropomorphism of, 93–94 disintermediated, 94–95 personalization and, 96–97 as two-way relationships, 119 Brooks, Rodney, 22, 24 burnout, 187–188 Burns, Ed, 76 business models, 152 business processes.

pages: 320 words: 95,629

Decoding the World: A Roadmap for the Questioner by Po Bronson

23andMe, 3D printing, 4chan, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, altcoin, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, edge city, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Eyjafjallajökull, factory automation, fake news, financial independence, Google X / Alphabet X, green new deal, income inequality, industrial robot, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Mars Rover, mass immigration, McMansion, means of production, microbiome, microplastics / micro fibres, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, power law, quantum entanglement, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, smart contracts, source of truth, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, sustainable-tourism, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, trade route, universal basic income, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce

His girls dropped their piecemeal needlepoints to rush outside. 3 Silicon Valley’s New Obsession: Boring-Ass Startups The Hustle IndieBio erupted just as the Bay Area was kind of getting sick of itself, whining about how everyone was on the make and everybody’s startups were lame. People who worked at Facebook would go out to dinner and express regret that their job was really to sell ads. Everyone made themselves feel better by hosting Social Purpose Parties. This is where you drink, give money, and talk about using blockchain to protect the environment or end poverty. There was a hunger in the Valley for something rad, something uncompromising. Saving the world was everyone’s favorite topic; they talked about it endlessly. But talk grew cheap. IndieBio wasn’t a Think Tank. It was a Do Tank. That’s what was so refreshing about it.

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Ninety-nine percent of the “new industry” jobs created since 2010 have gone to people with a graduate degree. Virtual reality is a future industry; it doesn’t need many physical laborers. Nuclear fusion is a future industry; it will need fewer jobs than the coal and gas industry it replaces. Cryptocurrency and blockchain don’t create jobs. These technologies just make it easier to get paid in fractions of pennies. Even biotech is rapidly adopting robots to replace lab techs. All of the future industries will follow the Power Law, which is VC speak for “winners take all.” You can’t point to a single deep-tech field and argue, “That’s going to create a lot of jobs for everyone.”

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They’re using their stake as collateral and borrowing dollars and going crazy—spending it, or making future bets and margin bets. And the whales aren’t immune to this. Plenty of whales play “whale games,” pumping up and knocking down the coin prices. Whales and believers aren’t married to Bitcoin. They are married to a world that is not hackable. A blockchain that unites the planet in free and unrestricted trade. That’s the part that has me excited. I don’t know who said it, but there is a great quote: “When goods stop crossing borders, armies will.” It’s so true. Beyond wars, protectionism creates poverty. Grain rots in barrels. Unemployed workers in Mexico die in the Texan desert trying to get work in America.

pages: 213 words: 70,742

Notes From an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back by Mark O'Connell

Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, Carrington event, clean water, Colonization of Mars, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, disruptive innovation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Donner party, Easter island, Elon Musk, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, Jeff Bezos, life extension, lock screen, low earth orbit, Marc Andreessen, Mars Society, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, New Urbanism, off grid, Peter Thiel, post-work, Sam Altman, Silicon Valley, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, the built environment, yield curve

(There was in this sense a journalistic quality in Simon’s approach to his work, if not to the work itself.) Over beers in Anthony’s kitchen the previous night, Simon had told me about a dinner party he had been to in San Francisco earlier that year, at the home of a techie acquaintance. There had been a lot of Silicon Valley new money types there, he said, a lot of “blockchain entrepreneurs.” There were MAGA hats, and there was palpable excitement about Trump and the great rupture he seemed to represent. These people were from hacker backgrounds, and their view of the world arose out of a deep ethos of lulz. It was as though the new president had pulled off the ultimate troll on the liberal establishment.

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Entitled “Mars and the Space Revolution,” the conference promised to explore how we might go about building a self-sustaining civilization on Mars. Around this central question, four full days of talks were scheduled across an array of topics. How quickly could a Mars colony become completely Earth-independent? What might a new Martian religion look like? How would a Martian colony be structured politically? How might the blockchain facilitate an interplanetary financial system? How could self-replicating robots be used to terraform a hostile alien environment? What were the logistics of drilling for water on Mars? There were numerous talks on the kinds of difficulties colonists might face on Mars, from natural disasters to teenage delinquency to the lack of a clearly defined legal regime for recognizing property rights in space under current US and international law.

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Simply by using and investing in Marscoin, you are contributing to a serious bootstrapping effort to further a colony on Mars.” There seemed to be a general consensus in Mars colonization circles that the financial system of the colonies would inevitably be based in some or other cryptocurrency. (That there was a high degree of crossover between the enthusiasts of human settlement of Mars and blockchain fundamentalists was not especially surprising, given that both were of disproportionate interest to the libertarian wing of the geek community.) It was right out of The Founder’s Paradox, this whole idea. I thought again of the world-building strategy board game, down in that dungeon-like basement of the gallery in Auckland, depicting successive levels of escape from a dying planet, with its democratic nation-states, until the player finally reached the anarcho-capitalist utopia of Mars.

pages: 345 words: 75,660

Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, Avi Goldfarb

Abraham Wald, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Air France Flight 447, Airbus A320, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Picking Challenge, artificial general intelligence, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, basic income, Bayesian statistics, Black Swan, blockchain, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, computer age, creative destruction, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, deskilling, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, financial engineering, fulfillment center, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, high net worth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, information retrieval, inventory management, invisible hand, Jeff Hawkins, job automation, John Markoff, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Lyft, Minecraft, Mitch Kapor, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Bostrom, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, performance metric, profit maximization, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Solow, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Levy, strong AI, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tim Cook: Apple, trolley problem, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, William Langewiesche, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

If people do not provide the data, then the AI can’t learn from feedback, limiting its ability to boost productivity and increase income. There are likely to be opportunities to innovate in a way that assures people as to their data’s integrity and control while allowing the AI to learn. One emerging technology—the blockchain—offers a way of decentralizing databases and lowering the cost of verifying data. Such technologies could be paired with AI to overcome privacy (and indeed security) concerns, especially since they are already used for financial transactions, an area where these issues are paramount.25 Even if enough users provide data so AIs can learn, what if those users are different from everyone else?

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Aleecia M. McDonald and Lorrie Faith Cranor, “The Cost of Reading Privacy Policies,” I/S 4, no. 3 (2008): 543–568, http://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/isjlpsoc4&div=27&g_sent=1&casa_token=&collection=journals. 25. Christian Catalini and Joshua S. Gans, “Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain,” working paper no. 2874598, Rotman School of Management, September 21, 2017, and MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 5191-16, available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2874598. 26. Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016). 27. For an excellent recent discussion of this debate, see Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 2017). 28.

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See also autonomous vehicles autonomous vehicles, 8, 14–15 decision making by, 111–112 knowledge loss and, 78 legal requirements on, 116 loss of human driving skill and, 193 mail delivery, 103 in mining, 112–114 passenger interests and, 95 preferences and, 88–90 rail systems, 104 reward function engineering in, 92 school bus drivers and, 149–150 tolerance for error in, 185–187 value capture and, 164–165 Autopilot, 8 Babbage, Charles, 12, 65 back propagation, 38 Baidu, 164, 217, 219 bail-granting decisions, 56–58 bank tellers, 171–173 Bayesian estimation, 13 Beane, Billy, 56, 161–162 Beijing Automotive Group, 164 beta testing, 184, 191 Bhalla, Ajay, 25 biases, 19 feedback data and, 204–205 human predictions and, 55–58 in job ads, 195–198 against machine recommendations, 117 regression models and, 34 variance and, 34–35 binding affinity, 135–138 Bing, 50, 204, 216 biopsies, 108–109, 148 BlackBerry, 129 The Black Swan (Taleb), 60–61 Blake, Thomas, 199 blockchain, 220 Bostrom, Nick, 221, 222 boundary shifting, 157–158, 167–178 data ownership and, 174–176 what to leave in/out and, 168–170 breast cancer, 65 Bresnahan, Tim, 12 Bricklin, Dan, 141, 163, 164 A Brief History of Time (Hawking), 210–211 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 91 business models, 156–157 Amazon, 16–17 Camelyon Grand Challenge, 65 capital, 170–171, 213 Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Piketty), 213 capsule networks, 13 Cardiio, 44 Cardiogram, 44–45, 46, 47–49 causality, 63–64 reverse, 62 CDL.

pages: 240 words: 78,436

Open for Business Harnessing the Power of Platform Ecosystems by Lauren Turner Claire, Laure Claire Reillier, Benoit Reillier

Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Blitzscaling, blockchain, carbon footprint, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, commoditize, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, Diane Coyle, Didi Chuxing, disintermediation, distributed ledger, driverless car, fake news, fulfillment center, future of work, George Akerlof, independent contractor, intangible asset, Internet of things, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Metcalfe’s law, minimum viable product, multi-sided market, Network effects, Paradox of Choice, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, Peter Thiel, platform as a service, price discrimination, price elasticity of demand, profit motive, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sam Altman, search costs, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, software as a service, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, TaskRabbit, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, Y Combinator

Technology underpinning platform businesses is improving everyday Current platform business models are powered by technologies such as relational databases, instant Internet-based communications and matching algorithms. To start with, all of these technologies benefit from regular hardware performance improvements.15 But more fundamental innovations in these areas, such as blockchains, which are effectively distributed ledgers, also contribute to the development of key building blocks able to further unlock the potential of platforms as business models. By lowering the friction for securely registering time-stamped transactions, blockchain technology can provide a global, scalable, low-cost registrar for contracts and commitments between platform agents. This has the potential to strengthen and broaden platforms’ transaction capabilities globally.

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Lastly, the platform itself should embed some of the intelligence required to enforce governance principles. Many automated algorithms and rules help ensure that the right information is captured, that it is internally consistent, and that the parties are who they say they are (if anonymous participation is forbidden). Going forward, new technologies, such as distributed database models like blockchain, will open the door to ‘self-enforcing smart contracts’ between platform participants and further strengthen the legal certainty of core transactions. This will be a formidable enabler for platform businesses since it will further lower friction between transacting parties. Platform branding The other side of trust is brand recognition.

pages: 389 words: 119,487

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1960s counterculture, accounting loophole / creative accounting, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, algorithmic trading, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Charlie Hebdo massacre, cognitive dissonance, computer age, computer vision, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, DeepMind, deglobalization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Freestyle chess, gig economy, glass ceiling, Google Glasses, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, job automation, knowledge economy, liberation theology, Louis Pasteur, low skilled workers, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mohammed Bouazizi, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, obamacare, pattern recognition, post-truth, post-work, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, TED Talk, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero-sum game

The democratic system is still struggling to understand what hit it, and is hardly equipped to deal with the next shocks, such as the rise of AI and the blockchain revolution. Already today, computers have made the financial system so complicated that few humans can understand it. As AI improves, we might soon reach a point when no human can make sense of finance any more. What will that do to the political process? Can you imagine a government that waits humbly for an algorithm to approve its budget or its new tax reform? Meanwhile peer-to-peer blockchain networks and cryptocurrencies like bitcoin might completely revamp the monetary system, so that radical tax reforms will be inevitable.

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He looked at the propaganda posters – which typically depicted coal miners, steelworkers and housewives in heroic poses – and saw himself there: ‘I am in that poster! I am the hero of the future!’5 In 2018 the common person feels increasingly irrelevant. Lots of mysterious words are bandied around excitedly in TED talks, government think tanks and hi-tech conferences – globalisation, blockchain, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, machine learning – and common people may well suspect that none of these words are about them. The liberal story was the story of ordinary people. How can it remain relevant to a world of cyborgs and networked algorithms? In the twentieth century, the masses revolted against exploitation, and sought to translate their vital role in the economy into political power.

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Abbasid caliphs 94 Abraham, prophet 182–3, 186, 187, 274 advertising 36, 50, 53, 54, 77–8, 87, 97, 113, 114, 267 Afghanistan 101, 112, 153, 159, 172, 210 Africa 8, 13, 20, 58, 76, 79, 100, 103–4, 107, 139, 147, 150–1, 152, 168, 182, 184, 223, 226, 229, 239 see also under individual nation name African Americans 67, 150, 152, 227 agriculture 171, 185; animals and 71, 118–19, 224; automation of jobs in 19–20, 29; climate change and modern industrial 116, 117; hierarchical societies and birth of 73–4, 185, 266–7; religion and 128–30 Aisne, third Battle of the (1918) 160 Akhenaten, Pharaoh 191 Al-Aqsa mosque, Jerusalem 15 al-Baghdadi, Abu Bakr 98 Algeria 144, 145 algorithms see artificial intelligence (AI) Ali, Husayn ibn 288 Alibaba (online retailer) 50 Allah 104, 128, 130, 204, 271–2, 289 AlphaZero 31, 123 al-Qaeda 162, 168 Amazon (online retailer) 39, 40, 50, 52, 91, 267–8 Amazon rainforest 116 Amos, prophet 188 Amritsar massacre (1919) 10 Andéol, Emilie 102 animals xi, 73, 86, 98–9, 182, 190, 218, 245; distinct social behaviours 94–5; ecological collapse and 71, 116, 118–19, 224; farm animals, subjugation of 71, 118–19, 224; morality and 187–8, 200; religious sacrifice of 190 anti-Semitism 142, 143, 194, 195, 235–6 see also Jews Apple (technology company) 91, 178 Arab Spring xi, 91 Arjuna (hero of Bhagavadgita) 269–70, 271, 299 art, AI and 25–8, 55–6, 182 artificial intelligence (AI) xiii, xiv; art and 25–8, 55–6, 182; authority shift from humans to 43, 44–72, 78, 268; biochemical algorithms and 20, 21, 25–8, 47–8, 56, 59, 251, 299; cars and see cars; centaurs (human-AI teams) 29, 30–1; communism and 35, 38; consciousness and 68–72, 122, 245–6; creativity and 25–8, 32; data ownership and 77–81; dating and 263; decision-making and 36–7, 50–61; democracy and see democracy; digital dictatorships and xii, 43, 61–8, 71, 79–80, 121; discrimination and 59–60, 67–8, 75–6; education and 32, 34, 35, 38 39, 40–1, 259–68; emotional detection/manipulation 25–8, 51–2, 53, 70, 79–80, 265, 267; equality and xi, 8, 9, 13, 41, 71–2, 73–81, 246; ethics and 56–61; free will and 46–9; games and 29, 31–2, 123; globalisation and threat of 38–40; government and xii, 6, 7–9, 34–5, 37–43, 48, 53, 61–8, 71, 77–81, 87, 90, 121, 267, 268; healthcare and 22–3, 24–5, 28, 48–9, 50; intuition and 20–1, 47; liberty and 44–72; manipulation of human beings 7, 25–8, 46, 48, 50–6, 68–72, 78, 79–80, 86, 96, 245–55, 265, 267, 268; nationalism and 120–6; regulation of 6, 22, 34–5, 61, 77–81, 123; science fiction and 245–55, 268; surveillance systems and 63–5; unique non-human abilities of 21–2; war and 61–8, 123–4 see also war; weapons and see weapons; work and 8, 18, 19–43 see also work Ashoka, Emperor of India 191–2, 286 Ashura 288, 289 Asia 16, 39, 100, 103, 275 see also under individual nation name Assyrian Empire 171 Athenian democracy, ancient 95–6 attention, technology and human 71, 77–8, 87, 88–91 Australia 13, 54, 116, 145, 150, 183, 187, 232–3 Aztecs 182, 289 Babri Mosque, Ayodhya 291 Babylonian Empire 188, 189 Baidu (technology company) 23, 40, 48, 77, 267–8 Bangladesh 38–9, 273 bank loans, AI and 67 behavioural economics 20, 147, 217 Belgium 103, 165, 172 Bellaigue, Christopher de 94 Berko, Anat 233 bestiality, secular ethics and 205–6 bewilderment, age of xiii, 17, 215, 257 Bhagavadgita 269–70, 271, 299 Bhardwaj, Maharishi 181 Bible 127, 131–2, 133, 186–90, 198, 199, 200, 206, 233, 234–5, 240, 241, 272, 298 Big Data xii, 18, 25, 47, 48, 49, 53, 63, 64, 68, 71–2, 268 biometric sensors 23, 49, 50, 52, 64, 79, 92 biotechnology xii, xiv, 1, 6, 7, 8, 16, 17, 18, 21, 33–4, 41, 48, 66, 75, 80, 83, 88, 109, 121, 122, 176, 211, 251–2, 267 see also under individual area of biotechnology bioterrorism 167, 169 Bismarck, Otto von 98–9 bitcoin 6 Black Death 164 Blair, Tony 168 blockchain 6, 8 blood libel 235–6 body, human: bioengineered 41, 259, 265; body farms 34; technology and distraction from 88–92 Bolshevik Revolution (1917) 15, 248 Bonaparte, Napoleon 96, 178, 231, 284 Book of Mormon 198, 235, 240 Book of the Dead, Egyptian 235 Bouazizi, Mohamed xi brain: biochemical algorithms of 20, 21, 47, 48; brain-computer interfaces 92, 260; brainwashing 242–4, 255, 267, 295; decision-making and 50, 52; equality and 75, 79; flexibility and age of 264–5; free will and 250–2, 255; hominid 122; marketing and 267; meditation and 311, 313–14, 316, 317 Brazil 4, 7, 12, 76, 101, 103, 118, 130 Brexit referendum (2016) 5, 9, 11, 15, 45–6, 93, 99, 115 Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 283–4, 302–3 Britain 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 44–5, 94, 99, 108, 115, 139, 143, 150, 165, 172, 178, 182, 232–3, 243 Brussels bombings (March, 2016) 160 Buddha/Buddhism 58, 102, 136, 183, 184, 186, 190, 196, 278, 291, 302–6, 315 Bulgaria 169, 195, 227 Burma 304–5 Bush, George W. 4, 168, 176, 178 Caesar, Julius 96, 179 California, U.S. 8, 39, 85, 88, 148, 172, 177, 178, 200, 266 Cambridge Analytica 80, 86 Cambridge University 12, 45, 194 Cameron, David 45, 46 Canaan 189, 190, 289, 291 Canada 13, 38, 74, 107 capitalism xii, 11, 16, 35, 38, 55, 68, 76, 77, 96, 105–6, 108, 113, 130, 131, 132, 134, 135, 148, 210, 217, 245, 273, 292, 309 carbon dioxide 117 care industry 24–5 Caro, Rabbi Joseph 195 cars 133, 135; accidents and 23–4, 54, 56–7, 114, 159, 160; choosing 78; GPS/navigation and 54; self-driving 22, 23–4, 33, 41, 56–7, 58–9, 60–1, 63, 168 Catalan Independence 124, 125 Catholics 108, 132, 133, 137, 213, 292, 299 centaurs (human-AI teams) 29, 30 Chad 103, 119 Chaucer, Geoffrey: Canterbury Tales 235–6 Chemosh 191 chess 29, 31–2, 123, 180 Chigaku, Tanaka 305 child labour 33, 224 chimpanzees 94–5, 98, 122, 187–8, 200, 242 China xi, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 64, 76, 100, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 121, 135, 145, 150, 151, 159, 168, 169, 171, 172–3, 175, 176, 177–8, 180, 181, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186, 193, 201, 227–8, 232, 251, 259–60, 262, 274, 284–5 Chinese Communist Party 5 Christianity 13, 55, 58, 96, 98, 126, 128–30, 131, 132, 133, 134–5, 137, 142, 143, 148, 183, 184–6, 187, 188, 189–90, 191, 192, 193, 194, 196, 199, 200, 203, 204, 208, 212–13, 233, 234–5, 236, 253, 282, 283, 288, 289, 291, 294, 296, 308; Orthodox 13, 15, 137, 138, 183, 237, 282, 308 Churchill, Winston 53, 108, 243 civilisation, single world xi, 5, 92, 95–109, 110, 138; ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis and 93–8; economics and 105–6; European civilisation and 95–6, 108–9; human tribes and 98–100; science and 107–8 ‘clash of civilisations’ 93–4 climate change x, xi, 15, 75–6, 78, 108, 109, 116–20, 121, 122–3, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 138, 168, 195, 219, 223, 228, 244, 265 Clinton, Bill 4, 168, 176 Clinton, Hillary 8, 97, 236 Cnut the Great, King of the Danes 105 Coca-Cola 50, 238, 267 Coldia (fictional nation) 148–50, 152–4 Cold War (1947–91) 99, 100, 113, 114, 131, 176, 180 communism xii, 3, 5, 10, 11, 14, 33, 35, 38, 74, 87, 95, 131, 132, 134, 176–7, 209–10, 251, 262, 273, 277, 279 Communities Summit (2017) 85 community 11, 37, 42, 43, 85–92, 109, 110, 135, 143–4, 201, 230, 241; breakdown of 85–7; Facebook and building of global xiii, 81, 85–91 compassion 62, 63, 71, 186; Buddhism and 305–6; religion and 186, 200, 201–2, 204, 208–9, 234, 305–6; secular commitment to 200, 201–2, 204–6, 208–9, 210 Confucius 15, 136, 181, 190, 260, 284–5 consciousness ix; AI and 36, 68–72, 122; intelligence and 68–70, 245–6; meditation and 315, 316; religion and 197 Conservative Party 45 conservatives: conservation and 219–20; embrace liberal world view 44–5 conspiracy theories 222, 229 Constantine the Great, Roman Emperor 192 Constantius II, Roman Emperor 192 cooperation 12, 29, 134; fictions and mass 134, 137, 233–42, 245; human-AI 29, 31; morality and 47, 187; nationalism and 134, 137, 236–8; religion and 134, 137, 233–6 corruption 12, 13, 15, 188–9 Council of Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) 200 creativity 25–8, 31, 32, 75, 182, 234, 262, 299 Crimea 174–5, 177, 179, 231, 238 Croats 282 Crusades 96, 165, 184, 199, 212, 213, 296 cryptocurrency 6 Cuba 9–10, 11, 114, 176 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) 114 cultures, differences between 147–55 culturism 150–4 cyberwarfare 127, 176, 178, 179 cyborgs 8, 76–7, 212, 278 Czech Republic 200 Daisy advertisement: US presidential election (1964) and 113, 114 Darwin, Charles 194; On the Origin of Species 98–9 Darwinism 213 data: Big Data xii, 18, 25, 47, 48, 49, 53, 63, 64, 68, 71–2, 268; liberty and 44–72; ownership regulation 77–81, 86 see also artificial intelligence (AI) Davos World Economic Forum 222 Dawkins, Richard 45 Deep Blue (IBM’s chess program) 29, 31 democracies: ‘clash of civilisations’ thesis and 93–8; data processing and 65; equality and 74; individual, trust in and 217, 220; liberal democracy see liberal democracy; liberty and 44–6, 53, 55, 64, 65, 66, 67; media manipulation and 12–13; secular ethics and 204, 210 Denmark 4, 94, 105, 144, 153, 200, 210 dharma 270, 271, 286, 299, 309 Di Tzeitung 97 dictatorships 3, 5, 33, 74, 210, 305; digital xii, 43, 61–8, 71, 79–80, 121 discrimination: AI and 59–60, 67–8, 75–6; brain and structural bias 226–8; religion and 135, 191, 200, 208; racism/culturism, immigration and 147–55 disease 16, 22, 28, 49, 88, 107, 218, 289 disorientation, sense of 5, 6 DNA 49, 66, 67, 79, 98, 150, 182 doctors 22–3, 24, 28, 48–9, 106–7, 128–9, 280 dogmas, faith in 229–30 dollar, American 106 Donbas 238 Donetsk People’s Republic 232 drones 29, 30, 35, 64, 76 East Africa 239 ecological crisis, xi, xiv, 7, 109, 195, 219, 244, 265; climate change x, xi, 15, 75–6, 78, 108, 109, 116–20, 121, 122–3, 124, 127, 128, 130, 133, 138, 168, 195, 219, 223, 228, 244, 265; equality and 75–6; global solution to 115–26, 138, 155; ignorance and 219–20; justice and 223, 228, 244, 265; liberalism and 16; nationalism and 15, 115–26; religion and 127, 128, 130, 133, 138; technological breakthroughs and 118–19, 121, 122–4 economics xii, 3, 4, 7, 9, 11, 16, 68, 99, 222, 224, 225, 240, 262, 309; AI and 6, 7, 8, 9, 19–43; capitalist see capitalism; communism and see communism; data processing and 65–6; economic models 37, 105–6; equality and 9, 71, 73–7 see also equality; liberalism and 3–5, 16, 44–5; nationalism and 115, 117, 118, 120, 121, 124; religion and 130–3; war and 171–5, 177–8, 179–80; work and 19–43 education 11, 16, 66, 74, 75, 111, 112, 113, 184, 194, 259–68; AI and 32, 34, 35, 38 39, 40–1, 259–68; basic level of 40–1; future of 259–68; liberal 217, 219, 261; secular 207, 209 Egypt 63, 74, 128–9, 172, 181, 188–9, 235, 284, 291, 296 Einstein, Albert 45, 181, 193, 194, 195 El Salvador 4, 150 ‘End of History’ 11 Engels, Friedrich: The Communist Manifesto 262, 273 England 105, 139, 235–6 equality xi, 13, 41, 71–2, 73–81, 92, 95, 144, 204, 223; AI and 75–81; history of 73– 4; secularism and 206–7, 208–9 ethics: AI and 56–61, 63, 121; complex nature of modern world and 223–30; nationalism and 121–2; religion and 186–93, 199–202; secular 199–202, 203–14 Europe xi, xii, 5, 10, 11, 16, 40, 47, 79, 93–100, 103–4, 105, 106, 107, 108–9, 113, 114, 115, 124–5, 128, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 143–4, 145, 147, 150, 153, 154–5, 159, 160, 164, 169, 171–2, 175, 176, 186, 187, 193, 201, 207, 228, 236, 252, 294, 307 see also under individual nation name European Union xii, 47, 93, 94, 95, 99, 108, 115, 124, 169; Constitution 95, 124; crisis in 138; immigration and 138, 139, 143–4, 154–5; Russia and 177; size and wealth of 176; terrorism and 159 Evangelical Christians 133 evolution 47, 98–9, 110–11, 127, 187, 194, 205, 206, 217, 218, 223, 274, 276, 277 Ex Machina (film) 246 Facebook xiii, 27, 77, 178, 230, 301, 302, 306; community-building and xiii, 85–91, 93; equality and 77, 80; liberty and 55, 64, 65, 67, 80, 86; ownership of personal data 80, 86; post-truth and 233, 235, 238; US presidential election (2016) and 80, 86 failed states 101, 112, 210 fair game rules 187 fake news xi, 231–42 famine 16, 33, 208, 212, 238, 251, 271 farming, modern industrial 29, 116, 118, 127, 128, 129, 224, 260, 262 see also agriculture fascism xii, 3, 9, 10, 11, 33, 142, 148, 154, 237, 251, 292–5, 297, 305 feminism 87, 143, 208, 217, 246, 280 Ferdinand, Archduke Franz 9, 11, 171 Fernbach, Philip 218 financial crisis, global (2008) 4, 171 financial system, computers and complexity of 6 Finland 38, 74 First World War (1914–18) 9, 10, 11, 30, 33, 99–100, 112, 123, 124, 160, 170, 171, 172, 265 Flag Code of India 285–6 flags, national 103, 285–6 fMRI scanner 21, 240 football, power of fictions and 241 France 10, 13, 51, 63, 66, 76, 94, 96, 99, 102, 103, 104, 115, 122, 139, 144, 145, 164, 165, 172, 182, 184, 194, 204, 285, 295–6 Francis, Pope 133 Freddy (chimpanzee) 188 free-market capitalism xii, 3, 4, 11, 16, 44, 55, 217, 245 free will 20, 44, 45–6, 47–8, 250–1, 299–301 French Revolution (1789) 63, 184, 207 Freud, Sigmund 135, 185, 193, 194–5, 286 Friedman, Milton 130 Front National 13 Galilei, Galileo 193, 207 gay marriage 44, 198, 205–6 Gaza 173 genetically modified (GM) crops 219 Georgia 176, 177 Germany 13, 66, 68, 95, 96, 98–9, 108, 118, 139, 147, 148, 155, 169, 171–2, 173, 179, 182, 194, 195, 239, 251, 277; Nazi 10, 66, 96, 134, 136, 212, 213, 226, 237, 251, 279, 294, 295 Gandhi, Mahatma 132 globalisation 8, 9, 113, 139; AI/automation and 38–9; history of 99; inequality and 73, 74, 76; nationalism and 109; reversing process of xiii, 5; spread of 4, 99 global stories, disappearance of 5, 14 global warming see climate change God xi, xiii, 46, 106, 197–202; 245, 252, 254, 269, 281, 285, 287, 303, 304; Bible and see Bible; ethics and 199–202, 205, 206, 208, 209; existence of 197–9; Jewish and Christian ideas of 184–5, 189, 190; justice and 225; mass cooperation and 245; monotheism and 190–3; post-truth and 234–6, 239; sacrifice and 287, 289; state identity and 138 gods xii, 277, 281, 291; agriculture and 128, 129; humans becoming ix, 79, 86; justice and 188, 189; sacrifice and 287–9; state identity and 136, 137 Goebbels, Joseph 237 Goenka, S.

pages: 392 words: 114,189

The Ransomware Hunting Team: A Band of Misfits' Improbable Crusade to Save the World From Cybercrime by Renee Dudley, Daniel Golden

2021 United States Capitol attack, Amazon Web Services, Bellingcat, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Brian Krebs, call centre, centralized clearinghouse, company town, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake it until you make it, Hacker News, heat death of the universe, information security, late fees, lockdown, Menlo Park, Minecraft, moral hazard, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, operational security, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Picturephone, pirate software, publish or perish, ransomware, Richard Feynman, Ross Ulbricht, seminal paper, smart meter, social distancing, strikebreaker, subprime mortgage crisis, tech worker, Timothy McVeigh, union organizing, War on Poverty, Y2K, zero day

The DMA Locker hacker was so familiar with Proven Data’s Bitcoin wallet numbers that he would send a decryption key as soon as he saw the transaction on the blockchain, the electronic public ledger. Normally, attackers waited for Proven Data to send confirmation that the ransom had been paid before sending a key. “One of the weird benefits was that he knew our wallets enough that every time we sent him a payment, he would send us a key before we could send a transaction ID,” Storfer said. “He would literally sit on the blockchain, and just be like, ‘Oh yeah, Proven, let me give you guys some keys.’” When the hacker decided to retire from the ransomware business, he let Proven Data know—and proposed one last deal.

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While he enjoyed some parts—such as hearing a federal prosecutor describe behind-the-scenes details of a successful case—he couldn’t schmooze about non-cyber topics he knew little about. One night, Lawrence bought him a drink, but Michael felt dizzy after one sip. He switched to water and tried to stay awake as someone droned on about blockchain technology. During the day, he took part in a panel discussion alongside John Fokker, the former HTCU team leader, and a researcher from cybersecurity software company Trend Micro. Michael described ID Ransomware, and an audience member later asked whether his site had a privacy policy. Hacker email and Bitcoin addresses found in files uploaded there “may be stored and shared with trusted third parties or law enforcement,” according to a disclaimer on the site.

…

He knew the process of setting up a shell company, and of handling and accounting for millions of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin, would be “a pain in the ass” for a publicly traded corporation—something they’d only do if they really thought they needed to. He called friends who had left SecondMarket to work at Digital Currency Group, a firm founded by Silbert that invested in Bitcoin and blockchain companies. Bill wanted to know if anyone had heard of corporations holding Bitcoin reserves in case of a ransomware attack. “Hey, is this a thing?” he asked. “Oh yeah, it’s a thing, and we know because we get calls every day,” a contact told him. Some of the businesses calling Digital Currency Group wanted more than a Bitcoin stockpile; already hit by ransomware, they wanted the firm to pay the Bitcoin ransom on their behalf.

pages: 144 words: 43,356

Surviving AI: The Promise and Peril of Artificial Intelligence by Calum Chace

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Airbnb, Alvin Toffler, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, barriers to entry, basic income, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, brain emulation, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, computer age, computer vision, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, discovery of the americas, disintermediation, don't be evil, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Flash crash, friendly AI, Geoffrey Hinton, Google Glasses, hedonic treadmill, hype cycle, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, life extension, low skilled workers, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Peter Thiel, radical life extension, Ray Kurzweil, Robert Solow, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, technological singularity, TED Talk, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, theory of mind, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, Vernor Vinge, wage slave, Wall-E, zero-sum game

These teams need high-level support and freedom from the usual metrics of return on investment, at least for a while. The theory is fairly easy but putting it into practice is hard: most will need external help, and many will fail. Of course the disrupters can also be disrupted. A service called La’Zooz (16) is planned, based on the blockchain technology you will have heard about in connection with Bitcoin, which may provide serious competition for Uber. 3.2 – Killer robots It is not only commerce where AI is threatening disruption. Human Rights Watch and other organisations are concerned that within a decade or two, fully autonomous weapons will be available to military forces with deep pockets. (17) They argue that lethal force should never be delegated to machines because they can never be morally responsible.

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lang=en (27) http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-great-forgetting/309516/ (28) https://twitter.com/MFordFuture/status/606939607356219392/photo/1 (29) http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/34u1a9/technostism_the_ideology_of_futurology/People also talk about a financial singularity arriving if and when cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin based on the blockchain technology disrupt traditional banking. Are we perhaps nearing peak singularity, or a singularity singularity? (30) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html (31) http://www.nature.com/news/flashing-fish-brains-filmed-in-action-1.12621 (32) http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/dec/20/research.it (33) http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/is-deep-learning-a-revolution-in-artificial-intelligence (34) http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/may/21/google-a-step-closer-to-developing-machines-with-human-like-intelligence (35) . https://intelligence.org/2014/05/13/christof-koch-stuart-russell-machine-superintelligence (36) http://uk.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-killer-robots-will-be-here-within-five-years-2014-11#ixzz3XHt6A8Lt (37) I am grateful to Russell Buckley for drawing my attention to this illustration

pages: 297 words: 84,009

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero by Tyler Cowen

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, augmented reality, barriers to entry, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation coefficient, creative destruction, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Brooks, David Graeber, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, employer provided health coverage, experimental economics, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Filter Bubble, financial innovation, financial intermediation, gentrification, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Google Glasses, income inequality, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, junk bonds, late fees, Mark Zuckerberg, mobile money, money market fund, mortgage debt, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, offshore financial centre, passive investing, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, The Nature of the Firm, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, ultimatum game, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

It competes with gold as a hedge and unorthodox store of value, and you can use it as a currency to buy (legal) marijuana, a transaction that, because of federal regulations, the regular banking system cannot support. It enables a blockchain as a new medium for recording, storing, and verifying information and common agreement as to who owns what. It remains to be seen how much Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies and more generally the blockchain, will prove transformational. It might not even hold its market value. But that is how innovation usually proceeds. Innovators try lots of new approaches; some are discarded, others take off, and yet others evolve into something more useful with the passage of time.

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Bernstein, Elizabeth best sellers See also publishing Bezos, Jeff See also Amazon Big Brother See privacy Big Data Big Pharma Big Tech disappearance of competition impact on intelligence innovation and loss of privacy and overview Bing Bird, Larry Bitcoin Black, Leon BlackBerry Blackstone blockchain Bloxham, Eleanor Blue Cross/Blue Shield brand loyalty Brexit Brin, David Brooks, Nathan bubbles, financial sector Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (Graeber) Burger King cable TV cable companies cable news Capital One capitalism “creative destruction” and Friedman on logic of market churn and media and public’s view of short-termism venture capitalists workers and young people and See also crony capitalism Capitalism for the People, A (Zingales) Carr, Nicholas Carrier CEOs deaths of increases in salary overview pay for creating value short-termism and skill set China American manufacturing and Apple and facial recognition technology financial innovations financial institutions multinational corporations and productivity retail and tech companies and See also Alibaba Cialdini, Robert Cisco Citibank Citizens United decision See also Supreme Court Civil War Clark, Andrew E.

pages: 154 words: 48,340

What We Need to Do Now: A Green Deal to Ensure a Habitable Earth by Chris Goodall

blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, decarbonisation, energy transition, Extinction Rebellion, food miles, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, hydroponic farming, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it's over 9,000, Kickstarter, microplastics / micro fibres, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, negative emissions, Ocado, ocean acidification, plant based meat, smart grid, smart meter

At the moment, the energy coming from a micro-wind turbine on a farm will flow back into the electricity network if the house isn’t using it all, and the owner will see little return. The Orkney experiment will allow a neighbour to buy that energy at a price that is lower than that from conventional suppliers. The proposal to allow power sales to neighbours is based around what is called ‘blockchain’, a software that can account for tiny transactions. If the sun starts shining and my roof produces electricity for a few minutes that I don’t use, my neighbour can buy that power and pay for it immediately. This can all happen automatically using modern digital technologies. Peer-to-peer electricity trading is a hugely important part of the transition to a genuinely local energy system.

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This enables management of supply and demand and settlement of bills for the sale of electricity by one participant to another. If demand is temporarily too great, an effective microgrid system can turn off or turn down flexible uses of energy, such as electric vehicle charging or air conditioning. Members of the Brooklyn microgrid can buy and sell electricity with each other automatically over a blockchain network. Customers are alerted when the electricity price is cheap, so that they can carry out their energy-intensive activities as inexpensively as possible. Or, when it is scarce, they can release power from their batteries in return for a good price. Advances in sensors mean that every use of electricity around a building – or a town for that matter – can be monitored and controlled to help keep the local network in balance, if necessary by turning appliances up or down.

pages: 378 words: 94,468

Drugs 2.0: The Web Revolution That's Changing How the World Gets High by Mike Power

air freight, Alexander Shulgin, banking crisis, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, cloud computing, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, Donald Davies, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, drug harm reduction, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, fiat currency, Firefox, Fractional reserve banking, frictionless, fulfillment center, Haight Ashbury, independent contractor, John Bercow, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Leonard Kleinrock, means of production, Menlo Park, moral panic, Mother of all demos, Network effects, nuclear paranoia, packet switching, pattern recognition, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, pre–internet, QR code, RAND corporation, Satoshi Nakamoto, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), sexual politics, Skype, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, trade route, Whole Earth Catalog, Zimmermann PGP

Users, known as miners, donate processor time to maintain and update the block chain, which records all transactions between users, and in the process also ‘dig’ for new coins. Miners’ computers send evidence of those transactions to the network, racing each other to solve these irreversible crypotographic puzzles that contain several transactions. The first miner to crack these puzzles gets fifty new bitcoins as a reward, and those transactions are added to the blockchain. The puzzles are designed to become more complex over time as more miners come on board, which maintains production to one block every ten minutes, keeping the creation of new coins steady. The reward for successful mining also falls over time, from fifty to twenty-five coins per block, and drops sequentially by half every 210,000 blocks.

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The system was then flooded with speculators, forcing MtGox to limit withdrawals to US$1,000 worth of bitcoins a day to stem the flow and prop up the dollar-value of the currency.6 Network analysts Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan of University College Dublin wrote a 2012 paper baldly titled ‘Bitcoin is Not Anonymous’. In it they demonstrated what the high-tech coining community knew – that the blockchain recorded all transactions. Reid posted in a comment thread following the release of his paper, ‘You don’t get anonymity automatically from the system. A lot of people out there think you do.’7 But the determined user can retain anonymity easily enough in the US at least, by entering a bank and paying cash into an exchanger’s account, for bitcoins are now traded just as dollars and euros are.

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When most investigators can’t even understand the basics of encryption, the likelihood that they or a jury member will reach an understanding of bitcoin is minimal. And when most small-scale drug transactions are small, under £100, who’s watching? The answer, so far, is that no one has been busted using evidence from the bitcoin blockchain. Bitcoin addresses, where you receive and store coins, are randomly generated strings of letters and numbers, and there’s no ID check system – and you can create another in moments. If that’s not enough, the more paranoid users can use a service such as Bitcoinfog, which matches deposits and transactions randomly, paying out the total you paid in in a series of different amounts.

pages: 305 words: 93,091

The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data by Kevin Mitnick, Mikko Hypponen, Robert Vamosi

4chan, big-box store, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, connected car, crowdsourcing, data science, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, evil maid attack, Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Earth, incognito mode, information security, Internet of things, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, Mark Zuckerberg, MITM: man-in-the-middle, off-the-grid, operational security, pattern recognition, ransomware, Ross Ulbricht, Salesforce, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, speech recognition, Tesla Model S, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

Exchanges allow you to invest in Bitcoin and change it into other currencies, such as US dollars, or purchase goods on sites such as Amazon. Say you have one Bitcoin, valued at $618. If you only need around $80 for a purchase, then you will retain a certain percentage of the original value, depending on the exchange rate, after the transaction. Transactions are verified in a public ledger known as a blockchain and identified by IP address. But as we have seen, IP addresses can be changed or faked. And although merchants have started accepting Bitcoin, the service fees, typically paid by the merchant, have been transferred to the purchaser. Furthermore, unlike credit cards, Bitcoin permits no refunds or reimbursements.

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This requires setting up a fake e-mail address in advance (see here) and using an open wireless network. Once you have that fake e-mail address, use Tor to set up a Bitcoin wallet, find a Bitcoin ATM to fund the wallet, and then use a tumbler to essentially launder the Bitcoin so it cannot be traced back to you on the blockchain. This laundering process requires setting up two Bitcoin wallets using different Tor circuits. The first wallet is used to send the Bitcoin to the laundering service, and the second is set up to receive the laundered Bitcoin. Once you have achieved true anonymity by using open Wi-Fi out of camera view plus Tor, find a VPN service that accepts Bitcoin for payment.

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So now we have a laptop, with Tor and Tails loaded, a burner phone, a handful of anonymous prepaid gift cards, and an anonymous hotspot with an anonymously purchased data plan. We’re still not ready. To maintain this anonymity, we need to convert our anonymously purchased prepaid gift cards to Bitcoin. In chapter 6 I talked about Bitcoin, virtual currency. By itself Bitcoin is not anonymous. They can be traced through what’s called a blockchain back to the source of the purchase; similarly, all subsequent purchases can be traced as well. So Bitcoin by itself is not going to hide your identity. We will have to run the funds through an anonymity mechanism: converting prepaid gift cards into Bitcoin, then running the Bitcoin through a laundering service.

pages: 829 words: 187,394

The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest by Edward Chancellor

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, asset allocation, asset-backed security, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, balance sheet recession, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cashless society, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commodity super cycle, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, currency peg, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, deglobalization, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, equity risk premium, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, eurozone crisis, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Extinction Rebellion, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, forward guidance, full employment, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Goodhart's law, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greenspan put, high net worth, high-speed rail, housing crisis, Hyman Minsky, implied volatility, income inequality, income per capita, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, Japanese asset price bubble, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, land bank, large denomination, Les Trente Glorieuses, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Lyft, manufacturing employment, margin call, Mark Spitznagel, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, megaproject, meme stock, Michael Milken, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mohammed Bouazizi, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage debt, negative equity, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, operational security, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paul Samuelson, payday loans, peer-to-peer lending, pensions crisis, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, railway mania, reality distortion field, regulatory arbitrage, rent-seeking, reserve currency, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Satoshi Nakamoto, Satyajit Das, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, Suez canal 1869, tech billionaire, The Great Moderation, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, Tim Haywood, time value of money, too big to fail, total factor productivity, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, Walter Mischel, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, yield curve

During an outbreak of ‘marijuana madness’ in September 2018, a Canadian cannabis producer was briefly valued at more than American Airlines.21 CRYPTO BUBBLES As the world’s financial system imploded in the summer of 2008, an anonymous software engineer circulated a paper containing a cure for all monetary ills. Commercial banks had shown they couldn’t be trusted with money. Central banks were oiling their printing presses, ready to debase their currencies. The solution was to use the internet to create ‘a new electronic cash system that’s fully peer-to-peer’. Once the distributed ledger, or blockchain, was in place financial trust would be restored and monetary crises come to an end.22 Things didn’t turn out quite as Bitcoin’s mystery creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, envisaged. What he had unleashed was not so much a new type of money, but rather the most perfect object of speculation the world had ever seen.

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But that didn’t stop the Useless Ethereum Token, whose logo showed the middle finger and whose website advised ‘don’t buy these tokens’, rising five times faster than Bitcoin in the giddy last months of 2017.25 Just as internet companies were spun off from their parents during the Dotcom bubble, so ‘forks’ in the blockchain created yet more coins. Bitcoin laid two eggs, Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold. Towards the end of the year, the leading crypto’s market value surpassed many of the world’s largest companies, including Boeing, Toyota and McDonald’s. In Charlotte, North Carolina, a restaurant chain saw its share price surge after launching a cryptocurrency rewards programme for its clientele.26 A young Dutch family was reported to have sold their home and possessions and moved into a campsite, where they would live off the profits gained from trading cryptocurrencies.27 True believers maintained that blockchain was going to ‘change the world’.’

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In Charlotte, North Carolina, a restaurant chain saw its share price surge after launching a cryptocurrency rewards programme for its clientele.26 A young Dutch family was reported to have sold their home and possessions and moved into a campsite, where they would live off the profits gained from trading cryptocurrencies.27 True believers maintained that blockchain was going to ‘change the world’.’ But transactions on Bitcoin’s network were agonizingly slow and consumed vast amounts of energy. Amazon wouldn’t accept bitcoin for retail transactions, nor would the US government accept it for the payment of taxes. Its market price was too volatile to serve as a store of value, a key function of money.

pages: 193 words: 51,445

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin J. Rees

23andMe, 3D printing, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, carbon tax, circular economy, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Dennis Tito, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Great Leap Forward, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, quantitative hedge fund, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart grid, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supervolcano, technological singularity, the scientific method, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Walter Mischel, William MacAskill, Yogi Berra

Two trends are reducing interpersonal trust: firstly, the remoteness and globalisation of those we routinely have to deal with; and secondly, the rising vulnerability of modern life to disruption—the realisation that ‘hackers’ or dissidents can trigger incidents that cascade globally. Such trends necessitate burgeoning security measures. These are already irritants in our everyday life—security guards, knotty passwords, airport searches, and so forth—but they are likely to become ever more vexatious. Innovations like blockchain, the publicly distributed ledger that combines open access with security, could offer protocols that render the entire internet more secure. But their current applications—allowing an economy based on crypto-currencies to function independently of traditional financial institutions—seem damaging rather than benign.

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See also genomes bio terror, 73, 75, 77–78 bioweapons of governments, 77 black carbon, reduction of, 47 Black Death, 76, 216 black holes: in center of Milky Way, 124; crashing together, 171; Einstein’s theory applied to, 166, 186; evaporation of, 179; fears about particle accelerators and, 111–12; as simple entities, 166, 173; space telescopes with evidence of, 142 blockchain, 220 Blue Origin, 146 Borucki, Bill, 132 Boston Dynamics, 88 bottlenecks, evolutionary, 155–56, 158 Boyle, Robert, 61–63 brain: basic science needed for medical applications to, 212; chain of complexity from big bang to, 214; complexity of, 174, 176–77; computer simulations of, 190; limits to human understanding and, 189–90, 192–94; mystery of self-awareness and, 193 brain death, 71 brain implants, downloading thoughts from, 105 Breakthrough Listen, 157 Brewster, David, 126–27 Brooks, Rodney, 106 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 26 Bruno, Giordano, 129 C4 pathway, 25 carbon capture and storage, 51, 58 carbon dioxide in atmosphere, 1, 38–44; cosmic history of carbon atoms in, 123; cutting to preindustrial level, 52; direct extraction of, 59; electric cars and, 47; predicting accelerated increase in, 57–58.

pages: 190 words: 56,531

Where We Are: The State of Britain Now by Roger Scruton

bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, business cycle, Corn Laws, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, Fellow of the Royal Society, fixed income, garden city movement, George Akerlof, housing crisis, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, mass immigration, Naomi Klein, New Journalism, old-boy network, open borders, payday loans, Peace of Westphalia, sceptred isle, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, web of trust

It is a broker among possible worlds, and resides nowhere among them. Such a business cannot be easily pinned down, and the question where it is, for purposes of taxation, legal accountability, and obedience to sovereign laws and policies may be decidable, but only by convention and without calling upon any basic loyalty of the firm. The arrival of Bitcoin and blockchain may facilitate this mass escape from the grip of sovereign overlords, by making currency itself into a network of freely associating users, outside the control of any state. More and more businesses are built on this model, offering goods and services through networks that ignore national boundaries, coming to earth here and there like Amazon and Ikea, but only temporarily and only where the tax regime is favourable.

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INDEX Abbé Sieyès here Act of Settlement (1701) here, here Act of Union (1707) here Act of Union (1800) here, here Acton, Lord here Addison, Joseph here adolescents and home here, here, here see also network psyche American Constitution here American Revolution here Amritsar massacre (1919) here Anglers’ Conservation Association here Anglo-American alliance here anonymity and global business conduct here anti-Semitism here ‘anywheres’ and ‘somewheres’, David Goodhart’s here, here, here, here Apostolic Succession here architecture, globalization and here art here, here, here Ashcroft, Lord here Australia here Austro-Hungarian Empire here authority/officialdom, attitudes to here Barnett, Correlli here, here Baudrillard, Jean here Becket, Thomas here Belgium here, here benefits tourism here Benetton here Bernanos, Georges here, here Betjeman, John here Betts, Alexander here Bitcoin and blockchain here Blackman, Alexander here Blair, Tony here, here, here, here, here, here boundaries, countryside land here Bowlby, John here Boyle, Danny here Brexit here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also European Union Britain‘anywheres’ and ‘somewheres’ here attitude to authority/officialdom here bottom-up legal system here, here, here, here, here, here British as ‘subjects of the Queen’ here charitable donations here ‘Christian’ attitude of charitableness here, here Church of England here, here, here collective trust and stability here, here, here, here see also citizenship Common Law/law of the land here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Court of Chancery/civil law here current Royal family here, here, here, here declinist literature here development through private ventures and institutions here, here, here education here, here, here environmental accountability here farm subsidies here ‘free movement of labour’/Treaty of Maastricht (1992) here, here, here see also immigration/immigrants; Islam freedom here, here, here, here, here, here, here housing and planning here, here, here identity here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also citizenship; nationality/nationhood institutions and ‘clubbable’ instinct here interpretations of national history here, here land-ownership here, here, here landscape and countryside here left-wing intellectuals here, here see also Blair, Tony; Labour Party military power here, here, here neighbourhood and home here North-South divide here overcoming oppressive systems here patriotism here, here, here, here perception of European Union here relationship with Commonwealth here religion here, here see also Islam sovereignty and national identity here, here, here sovereignty and the Church here sovereignty and the law here, here, here town-country divide here urban elite/upper classes here, here urbanization – ‘garden cities’ here working classes here, here, here young voters here, here, here see also England; Ireland, Northern; Scotland; United Kingdom; Wales Britten Benjamin here Brown, Gordon here building societies/friendly societies here, here, here Burke, Edmund here, here business and cyberspace here, here Butterfield, Herbert here Byron, Lord here Cadbury family here, here Calvin, John here Cameron, David here Canada here, here capitalism and globalization here Catholic Church here, here Catholic Emancipation Act (1829) here, here Catholic revival, French here charities here Chesterton, G.

pages: 180 words: 55,805

The Price of Tomorrow: Why Deflation Is the Key to an Abundant Future by Jeff Booth

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Web Services, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, butterfly effect, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate raider, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, dark matter, deep learning, DeepMind, deliberate practice, digital twin, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Filter Bubble, financial engineering, full employment, future of work, game design, gamification, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, Gordon Gekko, Great Leap Forward, Hyman Minsky, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, late fees, low interest rates, Lyft, Maslow's hierarchy, Milgram experiment, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, oil shock, OpenAI, pattern recognition, Ponzi scheme, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, software as a service, technoutopianism, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, X Prize, zero-sum game

Governments can change or manipulate this natural dynamic by increasing supply—printing more money, which lowers the value of their currency relative to others. Bitcoin attempts to change that dynamic by forever fixing supply at twenty-one million Bitcoins. In addition to that, it creates a peer-to-peer ledger without any central control: the blockchain. As an open, distributed ledger, it offers security and trust by verifying transactions with consensus instead of through a central authority. Although the blockchain that Bitcoin sits on has never been hacked, transactions are difficult, which has slowed widespread adoption as a payment alternative. In addition to that, storage of Bitcoins or other cryptocurrencies (wallets) has been prone to cyberattack or loss, creating a different form of risk.

pages: 665 words: 146,542

Money: 5,000 Years of Debt and Power by Michel Aglietta

accelerated depreciation, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, cashless society, central bank independence, circular economy, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, corporate governance, David Graeber, debt deflation, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, energy transition, eurozone crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial intermediation, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, German hyperinflation, income inequality, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Kenneth Arrow, Kickstarter, land bank, liquidity trap, low interest rates, margin call, means of production, Money creation, money market fund, moral hazard, Nash equilibrium, Network effects, Northern Rock, oil shock, planetary scale, plutocrats, precautionary principle, price stability, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, secular stagnation, seigniorage, shareholder value, special drawing rights, special economic zone, stochastic process, Suez crisis 1956, the payments system, the scientific method, tontine, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, Washington Consensus

The central clearing house holds the general ledger of payments. Taking inspiration from the technology that underpins bitcoin, the big banks have begun to explore the possibility of a structure that organises clearing and settlement anonymously through a computer network (a blockchain) that records, validates and updates transactions in real time. The blockchain is charged with showing who possesses what amount of money on any given date. Certainly, the banks’ idea is not to extend the decentralised settlement system to just anyone, but rather to keep it within a banking club. Such a banking club could be able to establish a clearing and settlement system without any central bank, with the aid of cryptography.

…

How can it be adapted to the gigantic sums involved in the transactions of globalised finance? If we know that final liquidity is inherent to the very concept of money, and it is not plugged into the settlement of debts, then how can the supply of money be determined? How would the system be regulated to limit the inflationist effect of the flow of payments accepted in the blockchain? Many questions will need to be resolved before entirely private clearing and settlement systems can produce the public good that is money. DO COMPLEMENTARY LOCAL CURRENCIES THREATEN THE OFFICIAL MONETARY SYSTEM? When civil society actors create local and complementary currencies, they are seeking common mediums that benefit communities.

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See central banks; commercial banks; merchant banks; specific banks Baring Brothers, 214–15, 305 barter, 21, 28, 30, 45, 49–51, 76–77b Basel Financial Stability Forum, 389 Basel III negotiations, 388 Basic Law of 1948, 131, 366, 368 benchmarking, 26 Bentham, Jeremy, 166 Bernanke, Ben, 376 bill of exchange, 108, 116–25, 119f, 136, 144, 250, 252 billons, 193–4 bimetallism, 140n50, 199, 202, 217, 217n13, 245, 297 biodiversity, 170 BIS (Bank for International Settlements), 23, 80b, 158, 323, 324, 332, 335 bitcoin, 157, 158, 173–6 Bland–Allison Act of 1878, 217n12 blockchain, 175–6 Blum, Léon, 310 Bodin, Jean, 115 bond crisis (1994), 237 Braudel, Fernand, 83, 84, 120–1, 135, 145 Brazil crisis (1999), 243 Brender, Anton, 162n6 Breton, Stéphanie, 68 Bretton Woods system, 286, 296, 302, 311–29, 348, 350, 352–3, 386, 387, 389, 390, 391 bronze money, 98, 192 Bryan, William Jennings, 217n13 Bundesbank, 260–1 Burns, Arthur, 327 business cycles, and financial cycles (1976 Q1–2014 Q3), 333f C Caillé, Alain, 66 Cailleux, P., 111 capital, foundations of, 48 Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), 25 capitalism birth and spread of, 135 end of golden age of, 146 first era of, 198 as global, 144 invention of, 116 monetary regulation under, 245–83 most fundamental tendency of, 149 private credit as source of rise of, 115 private monetary innovations as inherent to history of, 156 spirit of, 107 transformation of, 120–5, 204 vertical debts in, 62–6 carbon currency, 80b Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 234 ‘cash in advance’ hypothesis, 29 Cechetti, Stephen, 335 cens, 107 centime, 112t central banks, 48, 49, 56, 65, 69, 74, 75, 80b, 126, 139, 141–3, 151, 154–5, 158, 160, 161–4, 177–8, 179, 245, 246–9, 283 centralisation, 137–8, 139, 142, 152, 155, 189, 201, 221, 246 Chicago Boys, 232 Chinese antiquity, 88–9 Chinese currency, 371–83 Chinese exchange policy, 374–7 Chinese exchange rate, 372–4, 378 Chinese hyperinflation, 230–1 Chinese management of yuan and accumulation of exchange reserves, 377–80 Chinese Yuan Hong Kong (CNH) market, 381 chrematism, 95, 96 Christian-Democratic Union, 130 cigarette currency, 222–3 Civilization and Capitalism (Braudel), 121 Clearing House Loan Certificates, 141 clearing houses, 138, 139, 141–2, 143 climate change, 70, 85, 100, 170, 179, 182, 357 Coeuré, Benoît, 367 Cohen, Benjamin J., 387n17 Coinage Act of 1792, 134 of 1834, 140n50 of 1873, 217 collective action, 14, 168, 175, 312, 366 commensurability, 32, 50, 51, 68, 83 commercial banks, 69, 211, 215, 226, 238, 250, 252, 272, 322 Committee of Twenty (C20), 327, 329, 345, 391 Commons/commons, 80b, 168n11, 174, 180, 183 common unit of account, 41–2, 79, 222 confidence.

pages: 477 words: 144,329

How Money Became Dangerous by Christopher Varelas

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, airport security, barriers to entry, basic income, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, California gold rush, cashless society, corporate raider, crack epidemic, cryptocurrency, discounted cash flows, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, do well by doing good, Donald Trump, driverless car, dumpster diving, eat what you kill, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, friendly fire, full employment, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, initial coin offering, interest rate derivative, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, mandatory minimum, Mary Meeker, Max Levchin, Michael Milken, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Neil Armstrong, pensions crisis, pets.com, pre–internet, profit motive, proprietary trading, risk tolerance, Saturday Night Live, selling pickaxes during a gold rush, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, technology bubble, The Predators' Ball, too big to fail, universal basic income, zero day

A lot of people believe that what will survive the crypto bubble will be the infrastructure, rather than many of the currencies themselves. Blockchain is a digital ledger originally created to record Bitcoin transactions, but it has since found a multitude of other valuable uses. Blockchain, as the infrastructure that allows the majority of cryptocurrencies to operate, is the shovel salesman, just like Equinix was for the internet, while the cryptocurrencies are the gold seekers or the startups. One use of Blockchain that will have a dramatic impact on wealth management and the way we look at value will be the ability to divide an asset into as many parts as desired and sell those to third parties.

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accountability, 360, 362, 363, 368, 369 acquisitions, see mergers and acquisitions activist investors, 104, 106, 360 see also corporate raiders Adelson, Jay, 228, 240, 242, 244 Adult Video News (AVN) Awards, 218, 219 advertising, 294, 296, 298, 362 social media influencers and, 283, 294–96, 298 AEA, 182 aerospace and defense companies, 118, 124, 125, 137 Conquistadores del Cielo club and, 124–25, 146 “Last Supper” summit and, 124 see also Grumman Corporation; Martin Marietta; Northrop Corporation Aetna, 188 Airbnb, 246 air travel, 299–300 Albert, Mark, 94–95, 96–97 Alcatel, 202 algorithms, 23, 37, 242 All Things Considered, 349 Amateur Athletic Union, 274 Amazon, 233, 246, 292 American Express, 188 American Psycho, 144 American Toxxic Control, 155, 159, 168 Andonian, Nazareth, 16–19, 25–29, 31–36, 38–42 Andonian, Vahe, 16, 39–40 Anschutz, Philip, 212 anti-Semitism, 304 AOL, 237 Apollo Global Management, 165 Armstrong, Michael, 207, 208 Ashe, Danni, 226–27, 231–33, 244, 245 Aspen Institute, 210, 371 Aspin, Les, 124 asset division, 246 AT&T, 190, 196–97 Citi and, 197, 207, 208 IPO of, 197, 198, 207, 208 ATMs, 216–17, 246 Augustine, Norman, 124, 136 Avery, Al, 228, 240, 244 B-2 Stealth Bomber, 118, 136, 138 Bailes, Justin, 331, 332, 335, 344, 345 Bailey, Jeff, 154 bankers, 97, 358 author’s uncle John, 371–73 banks, 247, 259 ATMs at, 216–17, 246 Glass-Steagall legislation and, 189, 200 investment, going public, 52–53 local, managers of, 22 Bank of America: author at, 5, 7, 9–43, 111, 216–17, 285, 358 “five c’s of credit” in training program of, 13, 42 jewelry industry and, 5, 9–35 spreadsheets used at, 19–20, 24 Bank One, 196 Barbarians at the Gate (Burrough and Helyar), 144 Barss, Patchen, 233 B Corp, 105 Beach Boys, 178, 182 Bear Stearns, 118, 146, 188 Bell, Alexander Graham, 190 Bell Labs, 190 Bennett, Bruce, 331, 339 Bertelsmann, 170 Bibliowicz, Jessica, 196 Bieber, Justin, 296–97, 299 Big Brother, 302 Bitcoin, 245, 246, 308 Bizaardvark, 299 Black Monday, 37 Blockbuster, 160 Blockchain, 246 Blodget, Henry, 196, 207, 212, 215 Blyth & Co., 51 Boeing Company, 124 bonds, 50–51, 56, 77–78 high-yield (junk), 91, 93, 96, 97, 104 Salomon and, 50–51, 55–58, 62, 64, 67, 72, 74–76 Bonfire of the Vanities, The (Wolfe), 47, 116, 144 bonuses, see compensation Boob Cruise, 231 Booker, Cory, 340 Borde, Laurence (“Larry Bird”), 54, 55, 79, 203 Brannan, Sam, 230 Bruck, Connie, 93, 94 bubbles, 229, 244, 307, 362–63 crypto, 245–46 dotcom, 175, 211, 214, 228–31, 233–34, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 267, 322 education, 292 pension, 353–54 Budweiser, 162 Buffett, Warren, 275, 316, 324 Salomon Brothers and, 68, 75–76, 262–63 Businessweek, 68 cable industry, 96 Caesars Palace, 27–29 California Community Foundation, 347 California gold rush, 230 CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System), 335–36 Canal+, 170 Caporali, Renso, 119 Carpenter, Michael, 200–201 Carr, Michael, 118, 138, 145 Carter, Jimmy, 154 character, 13, 22–23, 34, 35, 40–43, 358 Chicago Daily Herald, 219 Chinatown, 150 Chrysler, Walter, 74 Cicero, 128 Citadel, The, 48 Citicorp-Travelers merger, 189, 253 Citigroup (Citi), 211, 214–15, 261, 315 AT&T and, 197, 207, 208 author at, 5, 199, 204–5, 211–12 bureaucracy and policies at, 203–4 creation of, 189 culture at, 209, 215, 264, 365–66 culture committee at (Project Passion), 204–6, 211, 264–65, 365–66 Lucent and, 200–201 Prince as CEO of, 208–10 TMT (technology, media, and telecom) group at, 5, 211–12, 253 Weill as CEO of, 188 Weill’s creation of financial supermarket model with, 189–90, 195, 196, 200, 209, 211 Weill’s resignation from, 208–9 Citron, Robert, 315–20, 324, 326, 343–45, 352, 367 Clinton, Bill, 189, 324 cloud, 225, 361 see also data centers Coachella, 292–93, 295, 296 CocaCola, 295 Cocktail, 355 college: admissions scandal, 291–92 financial aid, see student loans Colorado River, 162 COMDEX, 218 Comedy Central, 302 commerce: e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 physical world and, 247 CommScope, 201, 202 community and human contact, 233, 247, 307, 309, 358, 361 diminishment of, 216, 246–47 engagement with, 369–70 Compagnie Générale des Eaux, 169 compensation, 248–79, 361 and aligning incentives with investment horizons, 364 annual cycle of, 270–71 author’s bonuses, 248–51, 266–70 of CEOs, 275–76 and complexity and opacity of purpose, 260–61 contentment and, 268–70, 278–79 culture tied to, 205–6, 257–58, 264–65 and “having a number,” 251–53, 263–64, 274, 277, 278 reactions to bonus amounts, 256–59, 270 Salomon bonuses, 64, 248–51, 253–59, 262–63 talent and skills and, 261–62 transparency in, 260, 269, 270, 275, 361–62 CompuServe, 237, 241 computers, 38 algorithms, 23, 37, 242 Black Monday and, 37 spreadsheets, 19–23, 24, 37, 360 ConQuest, 221 Conquest of Happiness, The (Russell), 248 Conquistadores del Cielo, 124–25, 146 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), 217–19 Conway, Cathy, 109–12 Corbat, Michael, 315, 324 Corning Inc., 201 corporate raiders, 82, 84, 88, 89, 94, 96, 103–4, 360 as activist investors, 104, 106, 360 in Pretty Woman, 98, 100–102 see also hostile takeovers credit: five c’s of, 13, 42, 205 spreadsheets used for analysis in, 19–20, 24 worthiness, 22 credit cards, 233 in e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 Credit Suisse, 263–64, 273–74, 340 Crisanti, Jim, 203 cryptocurrencies, 245–46, 308 Culligan, 164–68, 182 currency(ies), 245–46 cryptocurrencies, 245–46, 308 phone minutes as, 245 Cutler, Carol, 207 Daily Stormer, 304 Danni’s Hard Drive, 226, 227, 231–33 data centers, 224–25, 227–28, 231 Equinix, 228, 230–31, 237–47 “naked woman in the server room” story and, 223–26, 232 security at, 225 Davis, Mark, 156–58, 165, 166, 221–22 DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), 31–33, 34, 39, 40 Deasy, John, 351 DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), 227–28 defense and aerospace companies, see aerospace and defense companies Defense Department, 124 Denham, Bob, 324 Denny’s, 154 Depression, Great, 51, 189 derivatives, 316–19, 324 de Vries, Peter, 81 Diamond, Neil, 321 diamond and gold wholesalers, see jewelry industry Diamond Club, 15 Dii Group, 213 Dimon, Jamie, 196, 197 Disney, 81–90, 85, 86, 111, 304 Eisner at, 88, 89, 109 Epcot Center, 86 films, 88, 102, 148–49 Steinberg’s hostile takeover attempt, 81–84, 86–91, 98, 102–4, 111 Touchstone Pictures, 88, 102 Disney, Roy, 85 Disney, Walt, 84–86, 87, 103, 112 Disney Channel, 299, 301, 302 Disneyland, 84, 85, 103, 112, 148, 288–90, 314 author’s career at, 4, 5, 10, 11–13, 40, 45, 61, 71, 81–85, 89–90, 106–12, 148, 158, 289, 290 Café Orleans at, 81, 106–12, 289 in Pretty Woman, 106 privilege and, 289–90 Disney World, 85–86 Dominguez, Bernardo, 132 Dominica, 285, 286 dotcom bubble, 175, 211, 214, 228–31, 233–34, 236, 238, 240, 243, 244, 267, 322 Doughty, Caitlin, 301 Douglas, Michael, 98 Drexel Burnham Lambert, 91–96, 188 author’s offer from, 91, 93, 94–95 bankruptcy of, 96 Milken at, 91–94 Ducasse, Alain, 168, 169 Dunkin’ Donuts, 294 earthquake, Whittier Narrows, 34–35 eBay, 233 Ebbers, Bernie, 212, 238 e-commerce, 232–33, 244, 245 Economic Consequences of the Peace, The (Keynes), 280 Economist, 245 Eisner, Michael, 88, 89, 109 Elmassian, George, 25, 31, 32, 34, 38 Elmassian, Richard, 25, 31–33, 38 Enron, 171, 177 Epcot Center, 86 Equinix, 228, 230–31, 237–47 Escobar, Pablo, 39 Euripides, 9 Evoqua, 182 exchange-traded funds (ETFs), 105 F9 mistake, 127 Facebook, 294, 305 Family Ties, 97–98 Fargo, William, 230 Federal Reserve, 370 FedEx, 127 Feuerstein, Don, 57 FICO score, 22 Finance Leaders Fellowship program, 371 financial crisis of 2008, 1–2, 7, 76, 211, 215, 259, 307 Equinix and, 242 financial supermarkets and, 211 see also Great Recession financial supermarkets, 204, 214–15, 361 financial crisis and, 211 Weill’s model of, with Citi, 189–90, 195, 196, 200, 209, 211 financial system, financial industry, 6, 328–30 causes of society’s dysfunctional relationship with money, 359–63 citizens’ disconnection from government finance, 328–29, 343–44, 351, 353, 362 clashes sparked by financial unrest and collapse, 355–58 compensation in, see compensation complexity of, 260–61, 277 estimated worth of financial instruments in the world, 209 net financial burden, 329–30 people’s feelings about working in, 277 preppers and, 306 see also Wall Street financial system, reform of, 363–64 accountability for public officials, 369 action items for banking system and investment management, 364–66 action items for each of us, 368–70 action items for government, 366–68 changing compensation structures to align incentives with investment horizons, 364 community engagement, 369–70 creating federal-level oversight or review board for pension systems, 366–67 creating independent review processes, 364–65 education in financial and economic matters, 368 forming culture or values committees, 365–66 requiring finance background for treasurers and other financial officers, 367 simplicity of regulations, 367–68 Fiorina, Carly, 190, 194–95 Fitzgerald, F.

pages: 661 words: 156,009

Your Computer Is on Fire by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, Kavita Philip

"Susan Fowler" uber, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, affirmative action, Airbnb, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, AltaVista, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, An Inconvenient Truth, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bitcoin, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, British Empire, business cycle, business process, Californian Ideology, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, digital divide, digital map, don't be evil, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, fake news, financial innovation, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Grace Hopper, hiring and firing, IBM and the Holocaust, industrial robot, informal economy, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, Landlord’s Game, Lewis Mumford, low-wage service sector, M-Pesa, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, mobile money, moral panic, move fast and break things, Multics, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, new economy, Norbert Wiener, off-the-grid, old-boy network, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), packet switching, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, pink-collar, pneumatic tube, postindustrial economy, profit motive, public intellectual, QWERTY keyboard, Ray Kurzweil, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Salesforce, sentiment analysis, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, smart cities, Snapchat, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, tacit knowledge, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, telepresence, the built environment, the map is not the territory, Thomas L Friedman, TikTok, Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, undersea cable, union organizing, vertical integration, warehouse robotics, WikiLeaks, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, Y2K

One of the most currently overhyped technologies in the computer industry is the virtual and distributed trust infrastructure known as the blockchain. This technology is attracting a massive amount of attention (and a slightly less massive amount of investment capital), and its financial and technological viability is entirely dependent on the mistaken assumption that the computational resources provided by the Cloud are essentially free—or will eventually be free in some unspecified and indeterminate future. This ignores the fact that the only significant implementation of the blockchain, which is the virtual cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is deliberately and irredeemably energy-inefficient.

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By design it is an almost infinite sink for computer power and, by extension, coal, oil, water, and uranium.42 Already the Bitcoin network, which does not and cannot provide even basic functional financial services, is one of the largest consumers of computer power on the planet, with an annual appetite for electricity approaching that of the entire nation of Denmark. There are multiple ways to implement blockchain technology, of which the proof-of-work algorithm used by Bitcoin is by far the least desirable, at least from an environmental point of view. For anyone cognizant of the relationship between virtual and physical infrastructure, the fact that Bitcoin is not only not regulated but rather actively encouraged is astonishing. 4.

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See also Accent, bias algorithms, 121, 127–128 antisemitic, 265 class, 4–6, 88, 136, 161–162, 174, 184, 265 class in India, 299, 302–303, 308 data, 66, 205 design-value, 81 discrimination (see Discrimination) facial recognition, 118–119 hiring, 256–257, 260–263, 267 implicit, 257, 262 societal, 152, 179–180 speech technology, 180–181, 190–191, 193 technical training, 253–254, 265 technology, 214, 218, 232 unconscious, 6, 256 Big tech, 12, 87, 191, 254–255, 257 Biometrics, 121, 128–129, 208 Bioshock, 237–238 Bioshock Infinite, 238–239 Bitcoin, 5, 44–45 BITNET, 323–324 Black. See African American(s) Black Girls Code, 255, 263 Block switching, 83 Blockchain, 44–45 Body economic, 79 national, 77–78, 86, 86t Boeing, 19–20, 23 MCAS, 19 737 Max tragedies, 19–20 Bolivia, 45 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 39 Borsdorf, Johannes H., 168–169 Boston Marathon Bombing, 120 Business Process Management, 308 Brandenburg v. Ohio, 373 Brazil, 103–104, 234, 324 BSD (programming language), 273 Bug.

pages: 523 words: 154,042

Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in Five Extraordinary Hacks by Scott J. Shapiro

3D printing, 4chan, active measures, address space layout randomization, air gap, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, availability heuristic, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business logic, call centre, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, cellular automata, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, Compatible Time-Sharing System, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Debian, Dennis Ritchie, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, dumpster diving, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, evil maid attack, facts on the ground, false flag, feminist movement, Gabriella Coleman, gig economy, Hacker News, independent contractor, information security, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invisible hand, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Ken Thompson, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Linda problem, loss aversion, macro virus, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Minecraft, Morris worm, Multics, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, pirate software, pre–internet, QWERTY keyboard, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, SoftBank, SQL injection, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech billionaire, tech worker, technological solutionism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the new new thing, the payments system, Turing machine, Turing test, Unsafe at Any Speed, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, young professional, zero day, éminence grise

A Bitcoin address is an ugly string of alphanumeric characters, such as 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2. A Bitcoin address reveals how much Bitcoin is associated with that address. That information is stored on a public ledger known as a blockchain. Thus, when someone tries to pay with Bitcoin, those who maintain the blockchain check it to see whether the sender has enough Bitcoin. If so, the transaction is listed on the blockchain, so that future sellers will know that the Bitcoins associated with that address have been transferred to a new Bitcoin address. Everyone who has access to an internet browser can tell how much money is associated with a Bitcoin address.

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Everyone who has access to an internet browser can tell how much money is associated with a Bitcoin address. It is public information. But the identity of the owner of that address is not public. I may own the Bitcoins at 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2, but the information that I’m the owner is not posted on the blockchain. The identity of Bitcoin owners would be anonymous, except for one wrinkle: the vast majority of Bitcoin owners buy their currency from cryptocurrency exchanges. Exchanges such as Coinbase and Crypto allow people to use dollars or other state-sponsored fiat money (euros, shekels, lires) to buy cryptocurrency. These exchanges are subject to special regulations to prevent money laundering, known as KYC, for “know your customer.”

Designing Web APIs: Building APIs That Developers Love by Brenda Jin, Saurabh Sahni, Amir Shevat

active measures, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, Big Tech, blockchain, business logic, business process, cognitive load, continuous integration, create, read, update, delete, exponential backoff, Google Hangouts, if you build it, they will come, Lyft, machine readable, MITM: man-in-the-middle, premature optimization, pull request, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software as a service, the market place, uber lyft, web application, WebSocket

Slack also provides a WebSocket-based Real Time Messaging API to developers so that they can receive events from Slack in real time and send messages as users. Similarly, Trello uses WebSockets to push changes made by other people down from servers to brows‐ ers listening on the appropriate channels, and Blockchain uses its WebSocket API to send real-time notifications about new transac‐ tions and blocks. WebSockets can enable full-duplex communication (server and cli‐ ent can communicate with each other simultaneously) at a low over‐ head. Additionally, they are designed to work over port 80 or 443, enabling them to work well with firewalls that might block other ports.

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Table 2-3 summarizes the differences between the various eventdriven API options. Table 2-3. Comparison of event-driven APIs What? Example services Pros 24 | WebHooks Event notification via HTTP callback Slack, Stripe, GitHub, Zapier, Google WebSockets Two-way streaming connection over TCP Slack, Trello, Blockchain HTTP Streaming Long-lived connection over HTTP Twitter, Facebook • Easy server-to-server communication • Two-way streaming communication • Can stream over simple HTTP • Uses HTTP protocol • Native browser support • Native browser support • Can bypass firewalls • Can bypass firewalls Chapter 2: API Paradigms Cons When to use?

pages: 416 words: 112,268

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control by Stuart Russell

3D printing, Ada Lovelace, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Andrew Wiles, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, behavioural economics, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, brain emulation, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, complexity theory, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, connected car, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ernest Rutherford, fake news, Flash crash, full employment, future of work, Garrett Hardin, Geoffrey Hinton, Gerolamo Cardano, Goodhart's law, Hans Moravec, ImageNet competition, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the wheel, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Law of Accelerating Returns, luminiferous ether, machine readable, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, NP-complete, OpenAI, openstreetmap, P = NP, paperclip maximiser, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, Pierre-Simon Laplace, positional goods, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit maximization, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, recommendation engine, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Shiller, robotic process automation, Rodney Brooks, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart contracts, social intelligence, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, Thales of Miletus, The Future of Employment, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, Thomas Bayes, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, transport as a service, trolley problem, Turing machine, Turing test, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, Von Neumann architecture, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, web application, zero-sum game

And it will do that not because it wants to stay alive but because it is pursuing whatever objective we gave it and knows that it will fail if it is switched off. There are some systems being contemplated that really cannot be switched off without ripping out a lot of the plumbing of our civilization. These are systems implemented as so-called smart contracts in the blockchain. The blockchain is a highly distributed form of computing and record keeping based on encryption; it is specifically designed so that no datum can be deleted and no smart contract can be interrupted without essentially taking control of a very large number of machines and undoing the chain, which might in turn destroy a large part of the Internet and/or the financial system.

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See intelligent agent agent program, 48 “AI Researchers on AI Risk” (Alexander), 153 Alciné, Jacky, 60 Alexander, Scott, 146, 153, 169–70 algorithms, 33–34 Bayesian networks and, 275–77 Bayesian updating, 283, 284 bias and, 128–30 chess-playing, 62–63 coding of, 34 completeness theorem and, 51–52 computer hardware and, 34–35 content selection, 8–9, 105 deep learning, 58–59, 288–93 dynamic programming, 54–55 examples of common, 33–34 exponential complexity of problems and, 38–39 halting problem and, 37–38 lookahead search, 47, 49–50, 260–61 propositional logic and, 268–70 reinforcement learning, 55–57, 105 subroutines within, 34 supervised learning, 58–59, 285–93 Alibaba, 250 AlphaGo, 6, 46–48, 49–50, 55, 91, 92, 206–7, 209–10, 261, 265, 285 AlphaZero, 47, 48 altruism, 24, 227–29 altruistic AI, 173–75 Amazon, 106, 119, 250 Echo, 64–65 “Picking Challenge” to accelerate robot development, 73–74 Analytical Engine, 40 ants, 25 Aoun, Joseph, 123 Apple HomePod, 64–65 “Architecture of Complexity, The” (Simon), 265 Aristotle, 20–21, 39–40, 50, 52, 53, 114, 245 Armstrong, Stuart, 221 Arnauld, Antoine, 21–22 Arrow, Kenneth, 223 artificial intelligence (AI), 1–12 agent (See intelligent agent) agent programs, 48–59 beneficial, principles for (See beneficial AI) benefits to humans of, 98–102 as biggest event in human history, 1–4 conceptual breakthroughs required for (See conceptual breakthroughs required for superintelligent AI) decision making on global scale, capability for, 75–76 deep learning and, 6 domestic robots and, 73–74 general-purpose, 46–48, 100, 136 global scale, capability to sense and make decisions on, 74–76 goals and, 41–42, 48–53, 136–42, 165–69 governance of, 249–53 health advances and, 101 history of, 4–6, 40–42 human preferences and (See human preferences) imagining what superintelligent machines could do, 93–96 intelligence, defining, 39–61 intelligent personal assistants and, 67–71 limits of superintelligence, 96–98 living standard increases and, 98–100 logic and, 39–40 media and public perception of advances in, 62–64 misuses of (See misuses of AI) mobile phones and, 64–65 multiplier effect of, 99 objectives and, 11–12, 43, 48–61, 136–42, 165–69 overly intelligent AI, 132–44 pace of scientific progress in creating, 6–9 predicting arrival of superintelligent AI, 76–78 reading capabilities and, 74–75 risk posed by (See risk posed by AI) scale and, 94–96 scaling up sensory inputs and capacity for action, 94–95 self-driving cars and, 65–67, 181–82, 247 sensing on global scale, capability to, 75 smart homes and, 71–72 softbots and, 64 speech recognition capabilities and, 74–75 standard model of, 9–11, 13, 48–61, 247 Turing test and, 40–41 tutoring by, 100–101 virtual reality authoring by, 101 World Wide Web and, 64 “Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030” (One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence), 149, 150 Asimov, Isaac, 141 assistance games, 192–203 learning preferences exactly in long run, 200–202 off-switch game, 196–200 paperclip game, 194–96 prohibitions and, 202–3 uncertainty about human objectives, 200–202 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 250 assumption failure, 186–87 Atkinson, Robert, 158 Atlas humanoid robot, 73 autonomous weapons systems (LAWS), 110–13 autonomy loss problem, 255–56 Autor, David, 116 Avengers: Infinity War (film), 224 “avoid putting in human goals” argument, 165–69 axiomatic basis for utility theory, 23–24 axioms, 185 Babbage, Charles, 40, 132–33 backgammon, 55 Baidu, 250 Baldwin, James, 18 Baldwin effect, 18–20 Banks, Iain, 164 bank tellers, 117–18 Bayes, Thomas, 54 Bayesian logic, 54 Bayesian networks, 54, 275–77 Bayesian rationality, 54 Bayesian updating, 283, 284 Bayes theorem, 54 behavior, learning preferences from, 190–92 behavior modification, 104–7 belief state, 282–83 beneficial AI, 171–210, 247–49 caution regarding development of, reasons for, 179 data available for learning about human preferences, 180–81 economic incentives for, 179–80 evil behavior and, 179 learning to predict human preferences, 176–77 moral dilemmas and, 178 objective of AI is to maximize realization of human preferences, 173–75 principles for, 172–79 proofs for (See proofs for beneficial AI) uncertainty as to what human preferences are, 175–76 values, defining, 177–78 Bentham, Jeremy, 24, 219 Berg, Paul, 182 Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks (BRETT), 73 Bernoulli, Daniel, 22–23 “Bill Gates Fears AI, but AI Researchers Know Better” (Popular Science), 152 blackmail, 104–5 blinking reflex, 57 blockchain, 161 board games, 45 Boole, George, 268 Boolean (propositional) logic, 51, 268–70 bootstrapping process, 81–82 Boston Dynamics, 73 Bostrom, Nick, 102, 144, 145, 150, 166, 167, 183, 253 brains, 16, 17–18 reward system and, 17–18 Summit machine, compared, 34 BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks), 73 Brin, Sergey, 81 Brooks, Rodney, 168 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 117 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, 253–54 Butler, Samuel, 133–34, 159 “can’t we just . . .” responses to risks posed by AI, 160–69 “. . . avoid putting in human goals,” 165–69 “. . . merge with machines,” 163–65 “. . . put it in a box,” 161–63 “. . . switch it off,” 160–61 “. . . work in human-machine teams,” 163 Cardano, Gerolamo, 21 caring professions, 122 Chace, Calum, 113 changes in human preferences over time, 240–45 Changing Places (Lodge), 121 checkers program, 55, 261 chess programs, 62–63 Chollet, François, 293 chunking, 295 circuits, 291–92 CNN, 108 CODE (Collaborative Operations in Denied Environments), 112 combinatorial complexity, 258 common operational picture, 69 compensation effects, 114–17 completeness theorem (Gödel’s), 51–52 complexity of problems, 38–39 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) seismic monitoring, 279–80 computer programming, 119 computers, 32–61 algorithms and (See algorithms) complexity of problems and, 38–39 halting problem and, 37–38 hardware, 34–35 intelligent (See artificial intelligence) limits of computation, 36–39 software limitations, 37 special-purpose devices, building, 35–36 universality and, 32 computer science, 33 “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (Turing), 40–41, 149 conceptual breakthroughs required for superintelligent AI, 78–93 actions, discovering, 87–90 cumulative learning of concepts and theories, 82–87 language/common sense problem, 79–82 mental activity, managing, 90–92 consciousness, 16–17 consequentialism, 217–19 content selection algorithms, 8–9, 105 content shortcomings, of intelligent personal assistants, 67–68 control theory, 10, 44–45, 54, 176 convolutional neural networks, 47 cost function to evaluate solutions, and goals, 48 Credibility Coalition, 109 CRISPR-Cas9, 156 cumulative learning of concepts and theories, 82–87 cybersecurity, 186–87 Daily Telegraph, 77 decision making on global scale, 75–76 decoherence, 36 Deep Blue, 62, 261 deep convolutional network, 288–90 deep dreaming images, 291 deepfakes, 105–6 deep learning, 6, 58–59, 86–87, 288–93 DeepMind, 90 AlphaGo, 6, 46–48, 49–50, 55, 91, 92, 206–7, 209–10, 261, 265, 285 AlphaZero, 47, 48 DQN system, 55–56 deflection arguments, 154–59 “research can’t be controlled” arguments, 154–56 silence regarding risks of AI, 158–59 tribalism, 150, 159–60 whataboutery, 156–57 Delilah (blackmail bot), 105 denial of risk posed by AI, 146–54 “it’s complicated” argument, 147–48 “it’s impossible” argument, 149–50 “it’s too soon to worry about it” argument, 150–52 Luddism accusation and, 153–54 “we’re the experts” argument, 152–54 deontological ethics, 217 dexterity problem, robots, 73–74 Dickinson, Michael, 190 Dickmanns, Ernst, 65 DigitalGlobe, 75 domestic robots, 73–74 dopamine, 17, 205–6 Dota 2, 56 DQN system, 55–56 Dune (Herbert), 135 dynamic programming algorithms, 54–55 E. coli, 14–15 eBay, 106 ECHO (first smart home), 71 “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” (Keynes), 113–14, 120–21 The Economic Singularity: Artificial Intelligence and the Death of Capitalism (Chace), 113 Economist, The, 145 Edgeworth, Francis, 238 Eisenhower, Dwight, 249 electrical action potentials, 15 Eliza (first chatbot), 67 Elmo (shogi program), 47 Elster, Jon, 242 Elysium (film), 127 emergency braking, 57 enfeeblement of humans problem, 254–55 envy, 229–31 Epicurus, 219 equilibrium solutions, 30–31, 195–96 Erewhon (Butler), 133–34, 159 Etzioni, Oren, 152, 157 eugenics movement, 155–56 expected value rule, 22–23 experience, learning from, 285–95 experiencing self, and preferences, 238–40 explanation-based learning, 294–95 Facebook, 108, 250 Fact, Fiction and Forecast (Goodman), 85 fact-checking, 108–9, 110 factcheck.org, 108 fear of death (as an instrumental goal), 140–42 feature engineering, 84–85 Fermat, Pierre de, 185 Fermat’s Last Theorem, 185 Ferranti Mark I, 34 Fifth Generation project, 271 firewalling AI systems, 161–63 first-order logic, 51, 270–72 probabilistic languages and, 277–80 propositional logic distinguished, 270 Ford, Martin, 113 Forster, E.

pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab, Peter Vanham

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, agricultural Revolution, air traffic controllers' union, Anthropocene, Apple II, Asian financial crisis, Asperger Syndrome, basic income, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, blue-collar work, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, centre right, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, colonial rule, company town, contact tracing, contact tracing app, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, currency peg, cyber-physical system, decarbonisation, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, digital divide, don't be evil, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, George Floyd, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google bus, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, high net worth, hiring and firing, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invisible hand, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, microplastics / micro fibres, Mikhail Gorbachev, mini-job, mittelstand, move fast and break things, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, new economy, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, precariat, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, special economic zone, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, transfer pricing, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, War on Poverty, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

Norton, 2011, https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/publications/globalization-paradox-democracy-and-future-world-economy” 21 “The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama, Penguin Books, 1993”. 22 “The Rise and Fall of Hungary,” Zsolt Darvas, The Guardian, October 2008, https://www.theguardian.com/business/blog/2008/oct/29/hungary-imf. 23 “How Rotterdam Is Using Blockchain to Reinvent Global Trade,” Port of Rotterdam, September 2019, https://www.portofrotterdam.com/en/news-and-press-releases/how-rotterdam-is-using-blockchain-to-reinvent-global-trade. 24 Interview with William and Winston Utomo by Peter Vanham, Jakarta, Indonesia, October 16, 2020. 6 Technology A Changing Labor Market The press release touted a most remarkable headline: “Denmark in the world's top 10 for robots.”1 The organization behind the release was not a Danish tech firm, media outlet, or politician.

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Small, open economies such as Singapore, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, who often trade goods worth well over 100 percent of their GDP, understand they live or die by their ability to adapt to the latest technologies driving globalization. If they invest in these technologies, or the skills to harness them, they can come out on the winning side. The Port of Rotterdam in this case is a good example. Understanding digital technologies such as blockchain will only intensify in their applications, the Port authority invested heavily in this technology.23 It makes Rotterdam now possibly the most technologically advanced port in Europe, giving it and its workers a digital edge over its competitors in cities like Hamburg and Antwerp. In the future, it won't just be physical trade that gets affected by technology.

pages: 460 words: 107,454

Stakeholder Capitalism: A Global Economy That Works for Progress, People and Planet by Klaus Schwab

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pages: 424 words: 114,905

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again by Eric Topol

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Apollo 11, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Big Tech, bioinformatics, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, cognitive bias, Colonization of Mars, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, digital twin, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, fault tolerance, gamification, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Santayana, Google Glasses, ImageNet competition, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joi Ito, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, meta-analysis, microbiome, move 37, natural language processing, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, performance metric, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, post-truth, randomized controlled trial, recommendation engine, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Altman, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, techlash, TED Talk, text mining, the scientific method, Tim Cook: Apple, traumatic brain injury, trolley problem, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, working-age population

While many have pronounced the end of privacy, that simply will not work for medical data. The privacy and security of your data relies on its decentralization from massive server farms, the principal target of cyberthieves, to the smallest number possible—one person or a family unit being ideal—stored in a private cloud or blockchain platform. We’ve seen how every EHR has abundant mistakes that are perpetuated from one doctor visit to another, no less that we all have many different EHRs from all our different clinical encounters. And even if they were accurate, remember, too, that EHRs were designed for billing purposes, not to be a comprehensive resource of information about the individual.

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I’ve argued, along with colleagues, that owning your medical data should be a civil right.43 While I maintain that is the desired end goal and will likely be an inevitable reality someday in the United States, we can’t wait decades for that to happen if we want to achieve the virtual medical coach’s full potential. There are many countries around the world that have this configured appropriately. Take the little post-Soviet nation Estonia, profiled in the New Yorker, as “the digital republic:” “A tenet of the Estonian system, which uses a blockchain platform to protect data privacy and security, is that an individual owns all information recorded about him or her.”44 No one can even glance at a person’s medical data without a call from the system overseers inquiring why it is necessary. The efficiencies of Estonia’s health informatics system, in contrast to that of the United States, are striking, including an app for paramedics that provides information about patients before reaching their home and advanced telemedicine capabilities with real-time vital sign monitoring (with AI algorithms for interpretation) setting up doctoring from a distance and the avoidance of adverse drug-drug interactions.

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See Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine Atomwise, 219 atrial fibrillation (AF), 25 ECGs detecting, 60, 65–67, 153–154 strokes and, 65–66 audio generation Lyrebird and, 100 truth, blurring of, and, 100 augmented individualized medical support (AIMS), 145 augmented microscopy, 229 Auris Health, 161 autism, genomics and, 211 automated science, 229–231 availability bias, 46 Avati, Anand, 187 Awdish, Rana, 306–307 Babylon Health, 265 backpropagation, 70 (table) Hinton and, 72, 77, 93 neuroscience and, 223 Baicker, Katherine, 193 Bayes’s theorem, 34, 43 Bayesian network, 9 Bejnordi, Babak, 127 BenevolentAI, 217–218, 220–221 Bezos, Jeff, 256 bias AI Now Institute on, 99 availability, 46 cognitive, 27, 45–49 confirmation, 27, 49 criminal justice and, 98 diversity and, 99 gender and, 97, 99 image recognition and, 97–98 NamePrism and, 98 race and, 98–99 Wikipedia and, 99 Big Data, 9 biohybrid computers, 227 biomarkers, 181–182 depression and, 169 (fig.), 171–174, 175 (fig.), 180–181 PTSD and, 174–175 black box problem, 97 accountability and, 96 AI Now Institute on, 95 Deep Dream and, 96 Deep Patient and, 95 Domingos on, 95 medical imaging and, 96 blockchain, medical data and, 275 Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, 200–201 Bonnefon, Jean-Francois, 104–105 Bostrom, Nick, 110 brain cancer, 117 genomics and, 214 molecular diagnostics and, 128–129 brain-wave monitoring, depression and, 174 breast cancer, misdiagnosis and, 126–127 breathing tubes, machine vision and, 196 Brooks, David, 307 Bryan, Nick, 121 Brynjolfsson, Erik, 107 Budner, Pascal, 180 Buoy Health, 51 burnout, 18, 30, 285, 288–289 Butterfly Network, 154 C. diff.

pages: 409 words: 112,055

The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats by Richard A. Clarke, Robert K. Knake

"World Economic Forum" Davos, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Amazon Web Services, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, business cycle, business intelligence, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DevOps, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Exxon Valdez, false flag, geopolitical risk, global village, immigration reform, information security, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kubernetes, machine readable, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Morris worm, move fast and break things, Network effects, open borders, platform as a service, Ponzi scheme, quantum cryptography, ransomware, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Schrödinger's Cat, self-driving car, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, Snapchat, software as a service, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, The future is already here, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day

Automation and artificial intelligence have the potential to erase much of the attacker’s advantage. Yet, at the same time, attackers are looking at how they can use these tools as well. Quantum computing could provide both impossible-to-break protection for data and the ability to crack all current forms of encryption. Blockchain, which many technologists think could lead to fundamentally more secure protection of data, has for the time being found its biggest use in cryptocurrency, a technology that is decidedly giving an advantage to attackers by allowing criminals to move their ill-gotten gains around anonymously. These technology trends could shift the balance in either direction.

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There they could deploy something else easily procured on the dark web: software that finds and encrypts all data stored on a network, including emails, Word and Excel documents, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP files, everything. Then comes the ransom offer. Want the key to unlock everything we encrypted? Then send us one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Bitcoin. Although Bitcoin was supposed to be a safe way of doing business because it involved a publicly viewable blockchain record, it has actually turned out to be easy to use it to hide money flows. Bitcoin is the coin of the realm when it comes to ransomware, allegedly very difficult to trace. Faramarz Savandi and Mohammad Mansouri knew how to do it. The two Iranians wrote their own version of ransomware software and it became known as the SamSam kit.

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., 150, 170, 183, 195 artificial intelligence (AI), 53, 80–82, 144, 153, 239–52, 280 in cyber warfare, 239–41 data and, 247–48, 251 defensive use of, 244–48, 252, 263 machine learning, 42, 53, 80, 81, 243–52, 263–64, 304 offensive use of, 248–52 quantum computing and, 263–64 Assange, Julian, 23–24, 277 AT&T, 74, 119, 120, 265–66 authentication, 42, 129–41, 299 multifactor, 46, 129, 131–34, 137, 304 ReallyU, 138–40, 306 two-factor, 129, 131, 132, 285, 287, 308 see also identity authorization, 133 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), 196 Avery, Heidi, 110 backdoors, 23, 197, 299 backing up data, 127, 291–92 Badin, Dmitriy Sergeyevich, 28 Banga, Ajay, 152, 153 Bank of America, 9, 38, 85, 136, 284 banks, bank accounts, 8–9, 27, 38, 39, 85–87, 91, 94, 115, 119, 132, 133, 136, 137, 284, 286–87, 292–93 Barksdale, Jim, 33 Barlow, John Perry, 207–10 Benioff, Marc, 75 Bennett, Corey, 97 Better Identity Coalition, 136 Bezos, Jeff, 73 Bhalotra, Sameer, 134–36 biometrics, 129–30, 137, 138 Bitcoin, 18, 125, 126, 277, 289 Black Hat Briefings, 49, 73, 102 blacklists, 35–36, 244, 245 blackout of 2003, 155–57 blockchain, 6, 126 Blumenthal, Richard, 233 Boeing, 37, 79–80 Bohr, Niels, 253 Bolton, John, 97 Booz Allen Hamilton, 40, 170, 189 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), 78, 118–20, 299 botnets, 73, 300 Bottoms, Keisha, 126 Bra-Ket, 258, 259 breach disclosure, 115–16 Brennan, John, 110 Britain, 17–18, 25, 96, 211–12, 220–21 Brown, Jerry, 117 Budapest Convention, 212–13, 216 Bush, George H.

pages: 246 words: 68,392

Gigged: The End of the Job and the Future of Work by Sarah Kessler

"Susan Fowler" uber, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, basic income, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, call centre, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, data science, David Attenborough, do what you love, Donald Trump, East Village, Elon Musk, financial independence, future of work, game design, gig economy, Hacker News, income inequality, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Jeff Bezos, job automation, law of one price, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, market clearing, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, post-work, profit maximization, QR code, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, TaskRabbit, TechCrunch disrupt, Travis Kalanick, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, union organizing, universal basic income, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, Y Combinator

Voting could take place electronically, which would make it faster. Marketing theoretically would be cheaper using social media and digital advertising. The digital infrastructure for a ride-hailing app or a task marketplace, unlike a brick-and-mortar building, could be shared between several different companies. And the emerging blockchain technology, the decentralized ledger-keeping system behind the success of Bitcoin, promises to make transactions between people easier and less costly by making them incredibly secure and transparent without intermediaries. Still, Trebor was often asked: Could a self-funded cooperative really compete with venture-backed startups like Uber?

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Accenture (professional services company) AFL AFL-CIO Airbnb (hospitality service) Amazon net sales See also Mechanical Turk Arise (customer service company) Artsicle (art rental service) A-Ryde (ride-hailing app) Aspen Institute Atlantic, The (magazine) Attenborough, David automated cars automation baby boom generation Backchannel (tech website) Bahá’í BBS (bulletin board system) Belsky, Scott Bernstein, Michael Better Business Bureau Bezos, Jeff Big Brother (reality television program) Bitcoin Black Car Fund blockchain technology Bloomberg (magazine) Bloomberg, Michael Borzi, Phyllis C. Bravo Brio Restaurant Group Brustein, AJ Bureau of Labor Statistics Burton, Diane Bush, Jeb Camp, Garrett Campbell, Harry Care.com (marketplace for independent caregivers) CB Insights Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, The Chia, Stan churn (customer attrition) Clark, Shelby cleaning services churn (customer attrition) See Handy; Homejoy; Managed by Q Clinton, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton Global Initiative collective action.

pages: 265 words: 69,310

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy by Tom Slee

4chan, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset-backed security, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, big-box store, bike sharing, bitcoin, blockchain, Californian Ideology, citizen journalism, collaborative consumption, commons-based peer production, congestion charging, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data science, David Brooks, democratizing finance, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, emotional labour, Evgeny Morozov, gentrification, gig economy, Hacker Ethic, impact investing, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Roose, Khan Academy, Kibera, Kickstarter, license plate recognition, Lyft, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, openstreetmap, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South of Market, San Francisco, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas L Friedman, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ultimatum game, urban planning, WeWork, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, Y Combinator, Yochai Benkler, Zipcar

Neal Gorenflo of non-profit Shareable writes that the theme “brought the elephant in everybody’s room to the fore—the gaping contradiction between the utopian possibilities and the hyper-capitalist realities of the sharing economy.” 23 If the newly-skeptical OuiShare attendees are going to find a way to convert the Sharing Economy into something useful, something that actually delivers on the promise of community and human-scale exchange, it must leave aside its identification with technology. There are few signs that it will do so; Gorenflo reports that the “blockchain” technology underlying Bitcoin is the new thing: “Everybody was talking about the blockchain from keynotes to side conversations.” To look for a technical fix, a designed-in mechanism for solving social problems, will only end up going down the same path. Bitcoin itself has already cycled through the familiar trajectory of rebellious alternative, promising a currency independent of the state, through to a venture-capital-funded investment vehicle in which 0.1% of the participants own 50% of the coins.

Bulletproof Problem Solving by Charles Conn, Robert McLean

active transport: walking or cycling, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, asset allocation, availability heuristic, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Big Tech, Black Swan, blockchain, book value, business logic, business process, call centre, carbon footprint, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, deep learning, Donald Trump, driverless car, drop ship, Elon Musk, endowment effect, fail fast, fake news, future of work, Garrett Hardin, Hyperloop, Innovator's Dilemma, inventory management, iterative process, loss aversion, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nate Silver, nudge unit, Occam's razor, pattern recognition, pets.com, prediction markets, principal–agent problem, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart contracts, stem cell, sunk-cost fallacy, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, time value of money, Tragedy of the Commons, transfer pricing, Vilfredo Pareto, walkable city, WikiLeaks

Make a forecast of something you're interested in. It could be the economy, fashion, sports, or entertainment. Set out what you have to believe for the forecast to be true. Then ask whether it's likely to happen. Check out fivethirtyeight.com, where they do this for a living. The blockchain is now 10 years old and a promising technology for smart contracts and governance. Draw out the diffusion curve for blockchain and explain how you validated your assumptions. Take a business plan in a tech venture or social enterprise you have seen and do a knock‐out analysis, followed by a set of questions to the entrepreneur about what you have to believe for success.

pages: 268 words: 64,786

Cashing Out: Win the Wealth Game by Walking Away by Julien Saunders, Kiersten Saunders

barriers to entry, basic income, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, death from overwork, digital divide, diversification, do what you love, Donald Trump, estate planning, financial independence, follow your passion, future of work, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, index fund, job automation, job-hopping, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, lifestyle creep, Lyft, microaggression, multilevel marketing, non-fungible token, off-the-grid, passive income, passive investing, performance metric, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Salesforce, side hustle, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, universal basic income, upwardly mobile, Vanguard fund, work culture , young professional

It’s time to let go of that narrative. Tech entrepreneurs and digitally savvy people understand the moment we’re in. They know the internet has made it easier than ever before to earn money, and they’re taking full advantage of these advances in technology to build life-changing wealth every single day. Whether it’s blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, NFTs, or virtual reality, the tech savvy among us aren’t waiting to explore the future of wealth, they’re creating it. Ways to Make Your Own Money Today, there are thousands of ways you can stop waiting on your boss to promote you and, instead, take the reins to your own life to earn money outside your normal 9-to-5.

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z A Abrams, Stacey, 133 acorns.com, 131 actively managed funds, 160, 166, 171 advertising, exposure to, 210 affiliate marketing, 124, 136 Ally Bank, 167 Amazon, 137 Amazon Fresh, 131 American Dream, 128, 211 American Psychological Association (APA), 199 anticipation of rewards, 194 arbitrage (flipping goods), 134–35 The Art of the Sale (Broughton), 138 attunement, emotional and conversations about debt, 195, 196 as dance (interactive pattern), 189–90 dynamic state of, 198 and pause button in conversations, 203 and reframing practice of saving, 193 and scheduling conversations, 202 See also couples audiobooks, 127 “Automation and the Future of the African American Workforce” (McKinsey), 126 automation as threat to employment, 125–26, 128 avalanche method of paying off debt, 79, 80 B Bach, David, 155 Baldwin, James, 36 bankbonus.com, 131 banks and the Black tax, 40 cash bonuses from, 130–31 co-signing for loans from, 196 paying off loans from, 82 rounding-up programs at, 118–19 Barnes, Kendra, 83–85, 86–87, 95 basic needs, meeting, 56–60 bear markets, 173–74 belief in a better life, 48 belongings, identities tied to, 59 Betterment, 167 Big 3 (housing, transportation, food), 57, 59–60, 72 blackfreelance.com, 133 Black individuals and families and automation threat to employment, 126, 128 and Black American Dream, 12 and Black buying power, 52–55 and Black excellence, 20, 21, 29 and Black tax, 39–40 declining net worth of, 54 and degrees earned by Black women, 76 and depictions of wealth, 33–34 and inequality in the workplace, 10, 24, 31 lack of advancement opportunities for, 24, 28–29, 31 median wealth prediction for, 3, 53–54 millionaires among, 29 student loan debt of, 76–77 technological literacy among, 128 untangling religious faith from civic faith, 36–37 Black Monday (1987), 173 blockchain technology, 129 blogs and blogging, 6, 108–9, 143, 145 Bogle, Jack, 167 bond index funds, 168 books/ebooks, 64, 127, 136 brokerage accounts. See investment/brokerage accounts Broughton, Philip Delves, 138 Browning, Chris, 218 budgeting, importance of, 16 Buffett, Warren, 163 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 59 burnout, 31–33 Business Insider, 32, 76 Butler, Jason, 135 buying power, Black, 52–55 C cable television, 64 CampFI, 37–38, 212, 219 car dealerships, 61 career, fifteen-year, 74–102 caveats regarding, 75–76 rules and richuals for, 82, 89–90, 95, 101–2 and skeptics, 99–100 years 1–5: paying off debt, 76–82 years 6–10: building an income portfolio, 83–90 years 11–15: building an escape hatch, 90–95 “The Case Against Tokenism’ ” (King), 41 cash bonuses from banks, 130–31 Center for American Progress, 165 certainty in financial markets, lack of, 111, 114–16 children and childcare costs, 30 and fifteen-year careers, 75, 76 and 529 plans, 168, 205 funding investment accounts for, 94 choices, right to make own, 100 churches, Black, 36 civil institutions, faith in, 36–37 Clahar, Erica “Umi,” 221–22 community, time to dedicate to, 25 comparison, avoiding trap of, 224 compound interest and author’s early investments, 155 and investment fees, 172 power of, 67–68, 140, 172 confidence and the “Dwayne Johnson Effect,” 112–13 and FI community, 209 and identifying strengths, 89–90 and investing expertise, 116 conflict in relationships avoidance/fear of, 170, 195 from competing objectives, 42 as a constant, 198, 199 in couples, 11, 189–90, 190 and 51 percent rule, 198 and fighting about money, 198, 199 normalizing, 189 as opportunity for growth, 15 connectedness, false sense of, 25 consumerism and spending as addiction/compulsion, 44–45, 210 and authors’ first conversation about money, 179–88 and Black buying power, 52–55 breaking the cycle of, 45 and budgeting, 16 conversations about, 190–93 in excess of income, 210 and Fast Spenders personality type, 48–50, 51, 52, 61, 69 and identities tied to belongings, 59 and labeling people as “spenders,” 191 and “lifestyle inflation,” 39, 61 and living below your means, 72 of Middle personality type, 50–51 and purpose of income, 51–52 and stealth wealth, 38, 39 See also expenses; frugality content creators, 141–45 conversations about money about debt, 195–96 about future plans, 193–94 about saving, 193–94 about spending, 190–93 authors’ first, 11, 179–88 and constraints of labels, 191–92 exercising curiosity in, 192 and normalizing conflict, 189 pause button in, 202–3 scheduling short but frequent, 202 using “I” statements in, 194 using “tell me more” prompt in, 196–97 couples, 179–203 authors’ first conversation about money, 11, 179–88 and backgrounds of individuals, 180–81, 184–85, 187, 188 challenges faced by, 201 conversations about debt, 195–96 conversations about future plans, 193–94 conversations about saving, 193–94 conversations about spending, 190–93 and divorces, 75, 199, 201, 234 emotional attunement in, 189–90, 193, 195, 196, 202 and expectations for happiness, 200–201, 202 and 51 percent rule, 200–201, 202, 231 and fighting about money, 189, 198, 199 interaction patterns in, 189 and money-related conflicts, 189 rules and richuals for, 202–3 shared goals of, 192–93 courage to accelerate your income, 139 and the “Dwayne Johnson Effect,” 112–14 and making financial progress, 108, 111 and paying yourself first, 118 small acts of, 117–18 courses, digital, 135–37 COVID-19 pandemic changes brought by, 228–29 and FI community, 231–33 lessons learned from, 15, 229–31 and Umi Feeds (nonprofit), 222 unknown financial impact on Black America, 54 Craigslist, 134 credit cards and authors’ first conversation about money, 182–83, 186 cash bonuses from, 131 debt from, 4 high balances on, 45 and Jannese’s success story, 123, 124 paying off, 6, 82 credit scoring, 3 cryptocurrency, 114, 129, 174 curiosity, 116, 192, 196–97 D debt and authors’ first conversation about money, 179–88, 195, 197 authors’ freedom from, 6, 11 avalanche method of paying off, 79, 80 conversations about, 195–96 of couples, 195–96 and living paycheck to paycheck, 77–78 paying off, 6, 76–82, 99, 195–96 and rewarding yourself, 81–82 snowball method to paying off, 80–81, 81 student loans, 4, 6, 59, 76–77, 123, 124, 210 treated like moral failing, 195 See also credit cards Delish D’Lites, 123–24 Deutsche Bank, 128 digital divide, 128.

pages: 1,237 words: 227,370

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann

active measures, Amazon Web Services, billion-dollar mistake, bitcoin, blockchain, business intelligence, business logic, business process, c2.com, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, data science, database schema, deep learning, DevOps, distributed ledger, Donald Knuth, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, exponential backoff, fake news, fault tolerance, finite state, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, full text search, functional programming, general-purpose programming language, Hacker News, informal economy, information retrieval, Infrastructure as a Service, Internet of things, iterative process, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kubernetes, Large Hadron Collider, level 1 cache, loose coupling, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, microservices, natural language processing, Network effects, no silver bullet, operational security, packet switching, peer-to-peer, performance metric, place-making, premature optimization, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, self-driving car, semantic web, Shoshana Zuboff, social graph, social web, software as a service, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, source of truth, SPARQL, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, systems thinking, Tragedy of the Commons, undersea cable, web application, WebSocket, wikimedia commons

In a system with multiple participating organizations, some participants may attempt to cheat or defraud others. In such circumstances, it is not safe for a node to simply trust another node’s messages, since they may be sent with malicious intent. For example, peer-to-peer networks like Bitcoin and other blockchains can be considered to be a way of getting mutually untrusting parties to agree whether a transaction happened or not, without relying on a central authority [83]. However, in the kinds of systems we discuss in this book, we can usually safely assume that there are no Byzantine faults. In your datacenter, all the nodes are controlled by your organization (so they can hopefully be trusted) and radiation levels are low enough that memory corruption is not a major problem.

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A transaction log can be made tamper-proof by periodically signing it with a hardware security module, but that does not guarantee that the right transactions went into the log in the first place. It would be interesting to use cryptographic tools to prove the integrity of a system in a way that is robust to a wide range of hardware and software issues, and even potentially malicious actions. Cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and distributed ledger technologies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, and various others [71, 72, 73] have sprung up to explore this area. I am not qualified to comment on the merits of these technologies as currencies or mechanisms for agreeing contracts. However, from a data systems point of view they contain some interesting ideas.

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[71] “Sawtooth Lake Documentation,” Intel Corporation, intelledger.github.io, 2016. [72] Richard Gendal Brown: “Introducing R3 Corda™: A Distributed Ledger Designed for Financial Services,” gendal.me, April 5, 2016. [73] Trent McConaghy, Rodolphe Marques, Andreas Müller, et al.: “BigchainDB: A Scalable Blockchain Database,” bigchaindb.com, June 8, 2016. [74] Ralph C. Merkle: “A Digital Signature Based on a Conventional Encryption Function,” at CRYPTO ’87, August 1987. doi:10.1007/3-540-48184-2_32 [75] Ben Laurie: “Certificate Transparency,” ACM Queue, volume 12, number 8, pages 10-19, August 2014. doi:10.1145/2668152.2668154 [76] Mark D.

pages: 400 words: 121,988

Trading at the Speed of Light: How Ultrafast Algorithms Are Transforming Financial Markets by Donald MacKenzie

algorithmic trading, automated trading system, banking crisis, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Cambridge Analytica, centralized clearinghouse, Claude Shannon: information theory, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, diversification, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, family office, financial intermediation, fixed income, Flash crash, Google Earth, Hacker Ethic, Hibernia Atlantic: Project Express, interest rate derivative, interest rate swap, inventory management, Jim Simons, level 1 cache, light touch regulation, linked data, lockdown, low earth orbit, machine readable, market design, market microstructure, Martin Wolf, proprietary trading, Renaissance Technologies, Satoshi Nakamoto, Small Order Execution System, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steven Levy, The Great Moderation, transaction costs, UUNET, zero-sum game

I took my rough estimate of the bitcoin network’s fluctuating total hash rate (100 million TH/s) from https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate, accessed June 5, 2020. (A terahash or TH is a thousand billion applications of bitcoin’s hashing algorithm.) The example of efficient equipment I used was Bitmain’s S17e, which I assumed performed at the company’s specifications (a hash rate of 60TH/s and power consumption of 2.7 kW), taken from https://m.bitmain.com, accessed June 1, 2020. 33. I take the daily numbers of transactions from https://www.blockchain.com/charts/n-transactions, accessed June 10, 2020. 34. See https://newsroom.fb.com/company-info/, accessed June 5, 2020. 35.

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(The issues are different for cryptocurrencies such as Facebook’s proposed Libra, which, if it is launched, will be run, at least initially, in a centralized fashion; I don’t propose to discuss those currencies here.) The issue that most clearly makes material political economy applicable is how to motivate at least a subset of the users of a cryptocurrency to check the validity of each transaction (including checking the validity of each other’s checking) and take part in adding it irreversibly to the blockchain, the record of every transaction that has taken place. The solution adopted for bitcoin by Satoshi Nakamoto, its pseudonymous inventor, is known as proof-of-work. Roughly every ten minutes, all day, every day, bitcoin miners, as they are called (and I like the moniker’s materiality) compete to be the first to find a hash of a block of transactions that is smaller than a certain target binary number (a hash is a cryptographic transformation by a predetermined algorithm).

pages: 521 words: 118,183

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air gap, Airbnb, algorithmic management, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, cable laying ship, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crisis actor, data is the new oil, data science, decentralized internet, deep learning, deepfake, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, digital nomad, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, geopolitical risk, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google bus, Google Chrome, GPT-3, green new deal, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, knowledge economy, Larry Ellison, lockdown, Loma Prieta earthquake, low earth orbit, low skilled workers, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Mohammed Bouazizi, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, one-China policy, open economy, OpenAI, Parler "social media", Peter Thiel, QAnon, QR code, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, satellite internet, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, SoftBank, Solyndra, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, Susan Wojcicki, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, TSMC, Twitter Arab Spring, uber lyft, undersea cable, Unsafe at Any Speed, Valery Gerasimov, vertical integration, Wargames Reagan, Westphalian system, white picket fence, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

“Industry, technology, and innovation are developing rapidly,” observed Dai Hong, an official with China’s National Standardization Management Committee. “Global technical standards are still being formed. This grants China’s industry and standards the opportunity to surpass the world’s.”114 China Standards 2035 aims to shape everything from what the world’s solar panels look like to how the “blockchain” is regulated.VI Beijing has pushed for new facial recognition standards, which have been roundly criticized by lawyers and human rights advocates. China’s foreign minister has proposed a Global Data Security Initiative, which he contends will “provide a blueprint for the formulation of international principles on data security”115 and which critics see as an attempt to implement the Great Firewall abroad.116 Today’s Internet is defined by rules.

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While China has sought to control undersea cables, Russia has appeared more interested in sabotaging them. In recent years, Russian submarines have stepped up their activity near cable routes. V. It should be noted that some observers believe that economic advantage, rather than repression, is the primary goal of these new standards. VI. The blockchain is a secure, decentralized electronic record of transactions, originally designed for electronic currency transfers but with a wide range of applications. VII. Some of Huawei’s attempts at influence have been rather comical. In February 2019, state media spread a video of identically dressed Chinese children singing a song called “Huawei Beauty,” with lyrics like “All around the world, which phone is the most pretty?

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To combat manipulated images and video, social media platforms should likewise invest in deepfake detection. Qualcomm has begun incorporating sophisticated photo and video verification tools into its smartphone chips, making it easier to determine if content originating on its phones has been manipulated.80 Blockchain technology could allow every image to carry with it a log of any alterations made to the content. Other technologies are being developed that could determine if a video is being broadcast live or not.81 Big Is Not Necessarily Bad Clearly, the tech industry has a critical role to play in addressing the front-end conflict raging on its platforms.

pages: 602 words: 177,874

Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations by Thomas L. Friedman

3D printing, additive manufacturing, affirmative action, Airbnb, AltaVista, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, Apple Newton, autonomous vehicles, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business cycle, business process, call centre, carbon tax, centre right, Chris Wanstrath, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive load, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, demand response, demographic dividend, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, dual-use technology, end-to-end encryption, Erik Brynjolfsson, fail fast, failed state, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ferguson, Missouri, first square of the chessboard / second half of the chessboard, Flash crash, fulfillment center, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, indoor plumbing, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the steam engine, inventory management, Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, land tenure, linear programming, Live Aid, low interest rates, low skilled workers, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, ocean acidification, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, planetary scale, power law, pull request, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, Solyndra, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, subscription business, supercomputer in your pocket, synthetic biology, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, Transnistria, uber lyft, undersea cable, urban decay, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y2K, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

“And we can make that guarantee work because, again, we know you, and we have all the data … We have one hundred ninety million customers worldwide and are adding fifteen to twenty million new ones a year.” These guarantees are also driving more globalization. Slowly but surely people are using PayPal to do away with cash. Like all big financial players, PayPal is experimenting with the emerging technology known as “blockchain” for validating and relaying global transactions through multiple computers. Blockchain, which is most famously used by the virtual currency Bitcoin, “is a way of enabling absolute trust between two parties making a financial transaction,” explained Schulman. “It uses Internet protocols to make the transaction go around any nation-state in a way that is visible to all the participants and goes beyond all middlemen and regulatory bodies—and therefore has the promise of lower costs.”

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“It uses Internet protocols to make the transaction go around any nation-state in a way that is visible to all the participants and goes beyond all middlemen and regulatory bodies—and therefore has the promise of lower costs.” At the speed that the digitization of money is happening, I am sure I will be writing about blockchain in the paperback edition of this book. When the Big Shift Hits Strangers On February 24, 2016, Facebook announced that as part of its “A World of Friends” initiative, it was tracking the number of relationships forged on its site by longtime foes. Facebook said that on just that one day it had connected 2,031,779 people from India and Pakistan, 154,260 from Israel and Palestine, and 137,182 from Ukraine and Russia.

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., III balance of power Bandar Mahshahr, Iran bandwidth Bangladesh bankruptcy laws bank tellers Barbut, Monique baseball, class-mixing and BASIC Bass, Carl Batman, Turkey BBCNews.com Bee, Samantha Beinhocker, Eric Beirut: civil war in; 1982 Israeli-Palestinian war in Bell, Alexander Graham Bell Labs Bennis, Warren Benyus, Janine Berenberg, Morrie Berenberg, Tess Berkus, Nate Berlin, Isaiah Berlin Wall, fall of Bessen, James Betsiboka River “Better Outcomes Through Radical Inclusion” (Wells) Between Debt and the Devil (Turner) Beykpour, Kayvon Bible Bigbelly garbage cans big data; consumers and; financial services and; software innovation and; supernova and Big Shift Big World, Small Planet (Rockström) “Big Yellow Taxi” (song) Bingham, Marjorie bin Laden, Osama bin Yehia, Abdullah biodiversity: environmental niches and; resilience and biodiversity loss; climate change and biofuels biogeochemical flows biomass fuels biotechnology bioweapons birth control, opposition to Bitcoin black elephants Blase, Bill blockchain technology Bloomberg.com Blumenfeld, Isadore “Kid Cann” Bobby Z (Bobby Rivkin) Bodin, Wes Bohr, Mark Bojia, Ayele Z. Boko Haram Bombetoka Bay Bonde, Bob Bork, Les Boston Consulting Group Boston Globe Bourguiba, Habib Boys & Girls Clubs of America Brainerd, Mary “Brains & Machines” (blog) Braun, Gil Brazil breakers, super-empowered; degrading of; humiliation and; weak states and Brew “Brief History of Jews and African Americans in North Minneapolis, A” (Quednau) Brimeyer, Jim Brin, Sergey broadband Broadgate, Wendy Brock, David Brooks, David Brooks, Mel Brookview golf club Brown, John Seely Brynjolfsson, Erik Bucksbaum, Phil Buffett, Warren building information modeling buildings, energy efficient Burke, Edmund Burke, Tom Burnett, T Bone Burning Glass Technologies business: social responsibility and Business Bridge Business Insider Busteed, Brandon Bustle.com “Caddie Chatter” (Long and Seitz) Cairo calcium carbonate California, University of, at San Diego Cambodia campaign spending Campbell, James R.

pages: 293 words: 78,439

Dual Transformation: How to Reposition Today's Business While Creating the Future by Scott D. Anthony, Mark W. Johnson

activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Apollo 13, asset light, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, blockchain, business process, business process outsourcing, call centre, Carl Icahn, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, commoditize, corporate governance, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Internet of things, invention of hypertext, inventory management, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, late fees, Lean Startup, long term incentive plan, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Minecraft, obamacare, Parag Khanna, Paul Graham, peer-to-peer lending, pez dispenser, recommendation engine, Salesforce, self-driving car, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Skype, software as a service, software is eating the world, Steve Jobs, subscription business, the long tail, the market place, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, transfer pricing, uber lyft, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y Combinator, Zipcar

Peer-to-peer payments such as PayPal, now almost twenty years old, have started to change the conception of what banking looks like. The rise of the smart phone and the increasing ubiquity of always-on high-speed networks mean that a generation is used to swiping, tapping, waving, or just leaving a car (in the case of Uber) to consummate a payment. Distributed ledger solutions, such as ones that use a technology called blockchain as their backbones, create decentralized transaction registers that are impervious to fraud or manipulation, albeit with legitimate questions about scalability and usability. In the future, will people need to have a central repository that holds their savings, or will what we conceive of as banks increasingly be companies such as Starbucks (whose prepaid cards held more than $1 billion in assets as of mid-2016), Apple, Samsung, and more?

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Leaders who catch the disruptive changes early and respond appropriately will have the ability to thrive in the years to come. Those who don’t, well, Darwin has a way of taking care of them. TABLE AF-1 Disruption by industry Industry Disruptive trends New competitors Growth opportunities Consumer banking Peer-to-peer lending and payments, blockchain Telecommunications companies (e.g., Globe), technology giants Data-driven advisory support for businesses Shipping 3-D printing, drone delivery, smart, connected devices Amazon Real-time tracking, new inventory management services Medical devices Smart, connected devices, customized medicines Apple, IBM, Nestlé Wellness and prevention Automotive Driverless cars, integration of cars and commerce Uber, Apple, Google Transport and logistics services and solutions Professional services Democratized knowledge, platforms, software, artificial intelligence Hourlynerd, LegalZoom Software-enabled complex services Appendix: Dual Transformation Toolkit This appendix presents a set of checklists, discussion guides, and simple analytical models that help you apply key concepts in the book.

pages: 352 words: 80,030

The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World by Peter Frankopan

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, cashless society, clean water, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, global supply chain, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, income inequality, invisible hand, land reform, Londongrad, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Meghnad Desai, Nelson Mandela, Paris climate accords, purchasing power parity, ransomware, Rubik’s Cube, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, trade route, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, urban planning, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

As well as everything else, the Silk Roads acted as ‘gene corridors’ for humans and for flora and fauna alike.6 Then there is new research that links the origins of Yiddish with commercial exchange across Asia and claims that its evolution was connected to measures designed to protect the security of transactions by devising a language that could only be understand by a select few.7 This has obvious resonance in the world of the twenty-first century, where crypto-currencies and blockchain technology seek to solve the problem of how to enable traders to complete transactions securely. Or there is the startling evidence from new-generation ice-core technology that can be used to shed fresh light on the devastating impact of the Black Death by showing the extent of the collapse in metal production in the mid-fourteenth century.8 Documents declassified in 2017 recording meetings held between the British minister in Washington in 1952, Sir Christopher Steel, and the assistant secretary of state Henry Byroade to discuss a coup to depose the prime minister of Iran help us gain a clearer understanding of how the ill-fated plans took shape.9 The release of previously secret US nuclear strike plans from the early part of the Cold War likewise help reveal important insights into American military and strategic planning – and contemporary assessments of how best to neutralise the Soviet Union in the event of war.10 These are just a small number of examples to show how historians continue to use different techniques to refine and improve their understanding of the past.

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There are real dangers in concentrating only on matters that are of parachial importance when so many other more significant and challenging problems require and demand attention. * The rapid development of new technologies is also a significant difficulty to address, in terms of trying to predict the impact these will have in the coming years – and working out how to prepare accordingly for a world where artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, machine learning, Blockchain, Ethereum and more will change the way we live, love, work and communicate. Then there are cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which, while exciting for digital pioneers, seem most obviously of interest to those who seek to keep their transactions secure and away from prying eyes – including those who deal in illicit substances or goods, or who prefer to keep potentially taxable revenue away from the authorities.

pages: 257 words: 77,612

The Rebel and the Kingdom: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Overthrow the North Korean Regime by Bradley Hope

Airbnb, battle of ideas, bitcoin, blockchain, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, digital map, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Great Leap Forward, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, off-the-grid, operational security, Potemkin village, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, TED Talk, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

Adrian also kicked off a new fundraising strategy inspired by the global fascination with cryptocurrencies that the group had been working on for months. Their perceived anonymity could be a benefit to groups such as Free Joseon, he believed. In March, they debuted a “Post-Liberation Blockchain G-VISA” that would allow any holder to visit the country of “Free Joseon” established after the fall of North Korea. The announcement even included an authentic-looking visa from the Provisional Government of Free Joseon. The stunt wasn’t a wild success. Blockchain records show it earned only about $30,000 worth of cryptocurrency. In an echo of Adrian’s discussions with businesses about buying permits to work in “Free Joseon,” the rules for the visa asked for anyone seeking “to establish commercial activities” to contact the group via its encrypted email address.

pages: 903 words: 235,753

The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty by Benjamin H. Bratton

1960s counterculture, 3D printing, 4chan, Ada Lovelace, Adam Curtis, additive manufacturing, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, Anthropocene, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL), Berlin Wall, bioinformatics, Biosphere 2, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, call centre, capitalist realism, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, carbon-based life, Cass Sunstein, Celebration, Florida, Charles Babbage, charter city, clean water, cloud computing, company town, congestion pricing, connected car, Conway's law, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Graeber, deglobalization, dematerialisation, digital capitalism, digital divide, disintermediation, distributed generation, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Eratosthenes, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, Flash crash, Frank Gehry, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, functional programming, future of work, Georg Cantor, gig economy, global supply chain, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Guggenheim Bilbao, High speed trading, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, Ian Bogost, illegal immigration, industrial robot, information retrieval, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, James Bridle, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kiva Systems, Laura Poitras, liberal capitalism, lifelogging, linked data, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, McMansion, means of production, megacity, megaproject, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, new economy, Nick Bostrom, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Oklahoma City bombing, OSI model, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, peak oil, peer-to-peer, performance metric, personalized medicine, Peter Eisenman, Peter Thiel, phenotype, Philip Mirowski, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, planetary scale, pneumatic tube, post-Fordism, precautionary principle, RAND corporation, recommendation engine, reserve currency, rewilding, RFID, Robert Bork, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, semantic web, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, skeuomorphism, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snow Crash, social graph, software studies, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Startup school, statistical arbitrage, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, supply-chain management software, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, the built environment, The Chicago School, the long tail, the scientific method, Torches of Freedom, transaction costs, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, undersea cable, universal basic income, urban planning, Vernor Vinge, vertical integration, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Washington Consensus, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, working poor, Y Combinator, yottabyte

., carbon credits trading, where the value of money is itself measured in carbon) and monies-into-virtuality (i.e., the light pulses of high-speed trading) continues to evolve and accelerate.8 New addressing schemes to locate and coordinate instances of value are multiplying, both as generic currency (bitcoin blockchains) and as platforms for brokering things-with-value (various sharing economy schemes). At stake in all this is also the design of the economy of information itself, from the smallest-scale object or gesture to the largest topological frameworks, and interrelations across scales by drawing and managing an orthodox map in the form of an address table.9 What gets to count and to whom, and who profits from merely counting?

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Perhaps its hash architecture can be made to not only to map virtual quanta of “value” but actual things as well at the scale required by a global economy, or a parallel economy. (Is the “coin” the “address” and the value in the mesh of addressees? If so then the cost of addressing of anything and everything may be prohibitive without the introduction of some new incentive for settling the blockchain consensus.) All that is solid doesn't melt so much as it becomes fuzzy and spastic. In this, Address layer technologies of universal addressability point not only to assemblages that exist but to the media with which to compose those to come.38 48. Communication and Composition Design can only grope with the implications of an Address layer that meets matter at its own scales, and surely, unfortunately, it will do so initially through a demand that everything must appear and be disclosed to the cartographic militation of logistical necessity.

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Aozaki's project is also a nice demonstration (and inversion) of the “double spend problem” that could plague any digital or networked currency: without discrete physical tokens that guarantee each unit of value is in only one place at a time, how to ensure that the same “dollar” is not spent more than once at a time? Blockchains offer the solution of distributed clearing of all transactions so that bitcoin's realm of value-representation remains uncompromised. It does not, however, solve the “problem” that Aozaki introduces, which we could perhaps call the “double acquire problem.” 46. Rachel Swaby, “Big Ideas: Spray Wi-Fi Hotspots on to Everything,” Wired UK, March 30, 2013, http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/03/big-ideas/spray-wi-fi-hotspots-on-to-everything. 47.

pages: 918 words: 257,605

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

"World Economic Forum" Davos, algorithmic bias, Amazon Web Services, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Bartolomé de las Casas, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, book scanning, Broken windows theory, California gold rush, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, choice architecture, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, classic study, cloud computing, collective bargaining, Computer Numeric Control, computer vision, connected car, context collapse, corporate governance, corporate personhood, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, digital capitalism, disinformation, dogs of the Dow, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, facts on the ground, fake news, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, future of work, game design, gamification, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Ian Bogost, impulse control, income inequality, information security, Internet of things, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Jean Tirole, job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, knowledge economy, Lewis Mumford, linked data, longitudinal study, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, means of production, multi-sided market, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, PageRank, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, precision agriculture, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, public intellectual, recommendation engine, refrigerator car, RFID, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Robert Mercer, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, smart cities, Snapchat, social contagion, social distancing, social graph, social web, software as a service, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, two-sided market, union organizing, vertical integration, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, Wolfgang Streeck, work culture , Yochai Benkler, you are the product

“The New Deal gives customers a stake in the new data economy; that will bring first greater stability and then eventually greater profitability as people become more comfortable sharing data.”76 In Pentland’s view of data ownership, certainty machines like blockchain, which relies on complex encryption and algorithms to create a decentralized tamper-proof database, are commandeered to bypass social trust. He advocates systems “that live everywhere and nowhere, protecting and processing the data of millions of people, and executing on millions of internet computers.”77 One important study of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain, suggests that such machine solutions both express and contribute to the general erosion of the social fabric in ways that are both consistent with instrumentarianism and further pave the way for its success.

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He advocates systems “that live everywhere and nowhere, protecting and processing the data of millions of people, and executing on millions of internet computers.”77 One important study of Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that relies on blockchain, suggests that such machine solutions both express and contribute to the general erosion of the social fabric in ways that are both consistent with instrumentarianism and further pave the way for its success. Information scholars Primavera De Filippi and Benjamin Loveluck conclude that contrary to popular belief, “Bitcoin is neither anonymous nor privacy-friendly… anyone with a copy of the blockchain can see the history of all Bitcoin transactions… every transaction ever done on the Bitcoin network can be traced back to its origin.” Such systems rely on “perfect information,” but the kinds of coordination processes that build open democratic societies, such as “social trust” or “loyalty,” are “expunged” in favor of “a profoundly market-driven approach.”78 Like Varian, Pentland does not acknowledge the social and political implications of such systems, which are in any case irrelevant to an instrumentarian future in which democracy and social trust are superseded by the certainty machines, their priests, and their owners.

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Shoshana Zuboff has somehow escaped from the fishbowl in which we all now live and introduced to us the concept of water. A work of penetrating intellect, this is also a deeply human book about what is becoming, as it relentlessly demonstrates, a dangerously inhuman time.” —Kevin Werbach, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Blockchain and the New Architecture of Trust DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE Home or Exile in the Digital Future I. The Oldest Questions II. Requiem for a Home III. What Is Surveillance Capitalism? IV. The Unprecedented V. The Puppet Master, Not the Puppet VI. The Outline, Themes, and Sources of this Book PART I The Foundations of Surveillance Capitalism CHAPTER TWO August 9, 2011: Setting the Stage for Surveillance Capitalism I.

pages: 309 words: 81,975

Brave New Work: Are You Ready to Reinvent Your Organization? by Aaron Dignan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, basic income, benefit corporation, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, butterfly effect, cashless society, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, content marketing, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Heinemeier Hansson, deliberate practice, DevOps, disruptive innovation, don't be evil, Elon Musk, endowment effect, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, financial engineering, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, gender pay gap, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, Goodhart's law, Google X / Alphabet X, hiring and firing, hive mind, holacracy, impact investing, income inequality, information asymmetry, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, loose coupling, loss aversion, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, mirror neurons, new economy, Paul Graham, Quicken Loans, race to the bottom, reality distortion field, remote working, Richard Thaler, Rochdale Principles, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, six sigma, smart contracts, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software is eating the world, source of truth, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, The future is already here, the High Line, too big to fail, Toyota Production System, Tragedy of the Commons, uber lyft, universal basic income, WeWork, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

New forms of universal basic income are being tested for their ability to provide for our basic human needs while also encouraging us to use and share our gifts—through entrepreneurship, service, and community. New forms of currency and means of exchange provide alternatives to the current model of borrowing money lent at interest. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies enable massively distributed collaboration via decentralized autonomous organizations and other alternatives to traditional incorporation or partnership. A new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move toward higher levels. —Albert Einstein Is a future like that even possible?

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And yet one study of cooperatives in Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America found that worker cooperatives are already more productive than conventional businesses. And what if your mission is to create an organization that isn’t incorporated or centralized at all? That ambition is at the heart of an emerging class of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which leverage blockchain and cryptocurrencies to create products and services without central control. The best explanation of this controversial new form of organization comes from Cointelegraph, an independent online publication that covers the future of money. “Imagine a vending machine that not only takes money from you and gives you a snack in return but also uses that money to automatically re-order the goods.

pages: 309 words: 79,414

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists by Julia Ebner

23andMe, 4chan, Airbnb, anti-communist, anti-globalists, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, crisis actor, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, game design, gamification, glass ceiling, Google Earth, Greta Thunberg, information security, job satisfaction, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, Network effects, off grid, OpenAI, Overton Window, pattern recognition, pre–internet, QAnon, RAND corporation, ransomware, rising living standards, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social intelligence, Social Justice Warrior, SQL injection, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Transnistria, WikiLeaks, zero day

On Telegram and the Dark Net, terrorists have increasingly called on their sympathisers to donate in cryptocurrencies.11 For example, the Al-Qaeda-linked organisation al-Sadaqa campaigned for bitcoin donations in November 2017, while Indonesian ISIS leader Bahrun Naim used the cryptocurrency to transfer money to his followers.12 Bitcoin transactions, however, can be tracked, and wallets are easily traced back to their owners due to the highly transparent blockchain technology this cryptocurrency is built on. As a result, many extremists have resorted to anonymous cryptocurrencies such as Monero, ‘which best maintains our privacy’, as neo-Nazi hacker Weev put it. From alternative social media and news channels to extremist messaging apps and cryptocurrencies, the changes that new media ecosystems are undergoing resemble those that are under way in the political landscape.

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Index Abdurrahman, Aman here abortion here, here, here Accelarationism here, here Accurint here Achse des Guten here Adonis, Lord (Andrew) here advertising here Akademikierball here al-Adnani, Abu Muhammad here aliens here, here Alinsky, Saul here Allen, Lily here Al-Qaeda here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Al-Rawi, Ahmed here al-Sadaqa here al-Suri, Aby Musab here Alt Right Leaks here Alternative for Germany (AfD) here, here, here, here Altman, Mitch here Alt-Tech Alliance here alt-tech platforms, types of here Amadeu Antonio Foundation here ‘Amara, Umm here Amazon here, here Ames, Aldrich here Amnesty International here Andelin, Helen here anger-management here Angern, Eva von here Angleton, James Jesus here Anglin, Andrew here, here, here, here Anonymous here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Anschluss here Ansgar Aryan here, here Antaios publishing house here Anthony, Jon here Anti-Defamation League here Antifa (anti-fascists) here, here, here, here Anti-Racist Action here anti-Semitism here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and Charlottesville rally here, here, here, here hackers and here, here, here rising under Trump here and terrorist attacks here Tommy Robinson denies here and Yellow Vests here see also Jews; ZOG Anton, Reinhold here ‘apocalypse’ (the word) here apophenia here APT28 (‘Fancy Bear’) unit here AQ Electronic Jihad Organisation here Arendt, Hannah here Ares, Chris here Article here, here artists here assault rifles, availability of here Association for Retired Persons of Austria here AT&T here Atomwaffen here Auernheimer, Andrew, see Weev Auschwitz here Bakker, Jim here Bali bombing here Balliet, Stephan here Baltic Elves here Bambenek, John here Bannon, Steve here, here Bantown here Barley, Katarina here Barojan, Donara here Barr, Roseanne here Bataclan attack here Batam Island here Bateman, Hannibal here BBC here, here, here, here BDSM here Beiler, Ronald here Benjamin, Carl (Sargon of Akkad) here, here Benjamin, Walter here Benotman, Noman here Berger, J. M. here, here b4bo here bin Laden, Osama here, here, here birthrates here, here Bissonnette, Alexandre here, here BitChute here bitcoin here, here, here Blissett, Luther here Bloc Identitaire here blockchain technology here bloggers here Blood & Honour here Bloom, Mia here Bloomberg, Michael here Böhmermann, Jan here Bowers, Robert here Breed Them Out here Breitbart here, here, here Breivik, Anders Behring here, here ‘Brentonettes’ here Brewer, Emmett here Brexit here, here Britain First here British National Party (BNP) here, here, here Broken Heart operation here Brown, Dan here Bubba Media here Bumble here, here Bundestag hack here, here BuzzFeed here C Star here, here ‘Call of Duty’ here, here Cambridge Analytica here, here Camus, Renaud here Carroll, Lewis here CBS here Channel programme here Charleston church shooting here Charlie Hebdo here Charlottesville rally here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Chemnitz protests here, here Choudary, Anjem here Christchurch terror attacks here, here, here, here Christian identity here Chua, Amy here CIA here, here, here Clinton, Bill and Hillary here, here, here, here, here, here, here Cohn, Norman here Collett, Mark here Cologne rape crisis here Combat here, here Comey, James here Comvo here concentration camps here Conrad, Klaus here Conservative Political Action Conference here Constitution for the Ethno-State here Corem, Yochai here counter-extremism legislation here counter-trolling here Covington, Harold here Crash Override Network here Crusius, Patrick here cryptocurrencies here, here, here, here Cuevas, Joshua here Cyberbit here Cyborgology blog here ‘Daily Shoah’ podcast here Daily Stormer here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Weev and here Damore, James here Dark Net here Data and Society Research Institute here Davey, Jacob here Dawkins, Richard here, here De La Rosa, Veronique here de Turris, Gianfranco here Dearden, Lizzie here deep fakes here, here DefCon here, here Der Spiegel here Deutsche Bahn here Diana, Princess of Wales here, here Die Linke here Die Rechte here ‘digital dualism’ here digital education here disinformation here, here, here Disney here Domestic Discipline here, here Donovan, Joan here Doomsday preppers here doubling here Dox Squad here, here doxxing here, here, here, here, here Doyle, Laura here, here Draugiem here DTube here Dugin, Alexander here Dunning–Kruger Effect here Dutch Leaks here Dylan, Bob here Earnest, John here 8chan here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here EKRE (Estonian fascist party) here El Paso shooting here Element AI here Emanuel, Rahm here encryption and steganography here Encyclopedia Dramatica here English Defence League here, here, here, here Enoch, Mike here environmentalism here, here ethno-pluralism here, here ‘Eurabia’ here, here ‘European Israel’ here European National here European Parliament elections here European Spring here Evola, Julius here executions here Facebook friends here fashions and lifestyles here, here Fawcett, Farah here Faye, Guillaume here FBI here, here, here, here, here Fearless Democracy here, here FedEx here Feldman, Matthew here Ferdinand II, King of Aragon here Fiamengo, Janice here Fields, James Alex here Fight Club here Finkelstein, Robert here Finsbury Mosque attack here, here, here Fisher, Robert here Foley, James here Follin, Marcus here football hooligans here, here Football Lads Alliance (FLA) here For Britain party here Fortnite here 4chan here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here FPÖ (Austrian Freedom Party) here, here, here, here, here Frankfurt School here Fransen, Jayda here Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights here Freedom Fighters, The here freedom of speech here, here, here, here F-Secure here FSN TV here Gab here, here, here, here, here, here Gamergate controversy here GamerGate Veterans here gamification here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Ganser, Daniele here Gates of Vienna here Gateway Pundit here Gawker here GCHQ here GE here GellerReport here Generation Identity (GI) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Generation Islam here genetic testing here, here German elections here, here German Institute on Radicalization and De-Radicalization Studies here German National Cyber Defence Centre here Gervais, Ricky here Ghost Security here Giesea, Jeff here Gigih Rahmat Dewa here Gionet, Tim here gladiators here Global Cabal of the New World Order here global financial crisis here, here global warming here GNAA here Goatse Security here GOBBLES here Goebbels, Joseph here GoFundMe here Goldy, Faith here Goodhart, David here ‘Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber’ here Gorbachev, Mikhail here Graham, Senator Lindsey here Gratipay here Great Awakening here, here Great Replacement theory here, here, here, here, here ‘Grievance Studies’ here grooming gangs here, here Guardian here, here H., Daniel here Habeck, Robert here HackerOne here hackers and hacking here ‘capture the flag’ operations here, here denial of service operations here ethical hacking here memory-corruption operations here political hacking here ‘qwning’ here SQL injections here techniques here Halle shooting here Hamas here, here Hanks, Tom here Happn here Harris, DeAndre here ‘hashtag stuffing’ here Hate Library here HateAid here, here Hatreon here, here, here Heidegger, Martin here Heise, Thorsten here, here Hensel, Gerald here, here Herzliya International Institute for Counter-Terrorism here Heyer, Heather here, here, here Himmler, Heinrich here Hintsteiner, Edwin here Histiaeus here Hitler, Adolf here, here, here, here, here Mein Kampf here, here Hitler salutes here, here, here, here Hitler Youth here HIV here Hizb ut-Tahrir here, here, here Höcker, Karl-Friedrich here Hofstadter, Richard here Hollywood here Holocaust here Holocaust denial here, here, here, here, here Holy War Hackers Team here Home Office here homophobia here, here, here Hooton Plan here Hoover Dam here Hope Not Hate here, here, here Horgan, John here Horowitz Foundation here Hot or Not here House of Saud here Huda, Noor here human trafficking here, here Hussein, Saddam here, here Hutchins, Marcus here Hyppönen, Mikko here Identity Evropa here, here iFrames here Illuminati here Incels (Involuntary Celibacy) here, here Independent here Inkster, Nigel here Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Intelius here International Business Times here International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) here International Federation of Journalists here International Holocaust Memorial Day here International Institute for Strategic Studies here Internet Research Agency (IRA) here iPads here iPhones here iProphet here Iranian revolution here Isabella I, Queen of Castile here ISIS here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here hackers and here, here, here, here, here Islamophobia here, here, here, here, here, here, here Tommy Robinson and here, here see also Finsbury Mosque attack Israel here, here, here, here, here Israel Defense Forces here, here Jackson, Michael here jahiliyya here Jakarta attacks here Jamaah Ansharud Daulah (JAD) here Japanese anime here Jemaah Islamiyah here Jesus Christ here Jewish numerology here Jews here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also anti-Semitism; ZOG JFG World here jihadi brides here, here JihadWatch here Jobs, Steve here Johnson, Boris here Jones, Alex here Jones, Ron here Junge Freiheit here Jurgenson, Nathan here JustPasteIt here Kafka, Franz here Kampf der Niebelungen here, here Kapustin, Denis ‘Nikitin’ here Kassam, Raheem here Kellogg’s here Kennedy, John F. here, here Kennedy family here Kessler, Jason here, here Khomeini, Ayataollah here Kim Jong-un here Kohl, Helmut here Köhler, Daniel here Kronen Zeitung here Kronos banking Trojan here Ku Klux Klan here, here Küssel, Gottfried here Lane, David here Le Loop here Le Pen, Marine here LeBretton, Matthew here Lebron, Michael here Lee, Robert E. here Li, Sean here Li family here Libyan Fighting Group here LifeOfWat here Lifton, Robert here Littman, Gisele here live action role play (LARP) here, here, here, here, here, here lobbying here Lokteff, Lana here loneliness here, here, here, here, here, here, here Lorraine, DeAnna here Lügenpresse here McDonald’s here McInnes, Gavin here McMahon, Ed here Macron, Emmanuel here, here, here, here MAGA (Make America Great Again) here ‘mainstream media’ here, here, here ‘Millennium Dawn’ here Manosphere here, here, here March for Life here Maria Theresa statue here, here Marighella, Carlos here Marina Bay Sands Hotel (Singapore) here Marx, Karl here Das Kapital here Masculine Development here Mason, James here MAtR (Men Among the Ruins) here, here Matrix, The here, here, here, here May, Theresa here, here, here Meechan, Mark here Meme Warfare here memes here, here, here, here and terrorist attacks here Men’s Rights Activists (MRA) here Menlo Park here Mercer Family Foundation here Merkel, Angela here, here, here, here MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) here, here, here MI6, 158, 164 migration here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also refugees millenarianism here Millennial Woes here millennials here Minassian, Alek here Mindanao here Minds here, here misogyny here, here, here, here, here see also Incels mixed martial arts (MMA) here, here, here, here Morgan, Nicky here Mounk, Yascha here Movement, The here Mueller, Robert here, here Muhammad, Prophet here, here, here mujahidat here Mulhall, Joe here MuslimCrypt here MuslimTec here, here Mussolini, Benito here Naim, Bahrun here, here Nance, Malcolm here Nasher App here National Action here National Bolshevism here National Democratic Party (NPD) here, here, here, here National Health Service (NHS) here National Policy Institute here, here National Socialism group here National Socialist Movement here National Socialist Underground here NATO DFR Lab here Naturalnews here Nawaz, Maajid here Nazi symbols here, here, here, here, here, here, here see also Hitler salutes; swastikas Nazi women here N-count here Neiwert, David here Nero, Emperor here Netflix here Network Contagion Research Institute here NetzDG legislation here, here Neumann, Peter here New Balance shoes here New York Times here News Corp here Newsnight here Nietzsche, Friedrich here, here Nikolai Alexander, Supreme Commander here, here, here, here, here, here 9/11 attacks here, here ‘nipsters’ here, here No Agenda here Northwest Front (NWF) here, here Nouvelle Droite here, here NPC meme here NSDAP here, here, here Obama, Barack and Michelle here, here, here, here, here Omas gegen Rechts here online harassment, gender and here OpenAI here open-source intelligence (OSINT) here, here Operation Name and Shame here Orbán, Viktor here, here organised crime here Orwell, George here, here Osborne, Darren here, here Oxford Internet Institute here Page, Larry here Panofsky, Aaron here Panorama here Parkland high-school shooting here Patreon here, here, here, here Patriot Peer here, here PayPal here PeopleLookup here Periscope here Peterson, Jordan here Pettibone, Brittany here, here, here Pew Research Center here, here PewDiePie here PewTube here Phillips, Whitney here Photofeeler here Phrack High Council here Pink Floyd here Pipl here Pittsburgh synagogue shooting here Pizzagate here Podesta, John here, here political propaganda here Popper, Karl here populist politicians here pornography here, here Poway synagogue shooting here, here Pozner, Lenny here Presley, Elvis here Prideaux, Sue here Prince Albert Police here Pro Chemnitz here ‘pseudo-conservatives’ here Putin, Vladimir here Q Britannia here QAnon here, here, here, here Quebec mosque shooting here Quilliam Foundation here, here, here Quinn, Zoë here Quran here racist slurs (n-word) here Radio 3Fourteen here Radix Journal here Rafiq, Haras here Ramakrishna, Kumar here RAND Corporation here Rasmussen, Tore here, here, here, here Raymond, Jolynn here Rebel Media here, here, here Reconquista Germanica here, here, here, here, here, here, here Reconquista Internet here Red Pill Women here, here, here, here, here Reddit here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here redpilling here, here, here, here refugees here, here, here, here, here Relotius, Claas here ‘Remove Kebab’ here Renault here Revolution Chemnitz here Rigby, Lee here Right Wing Terror Center here Right Wing United (RWU) here RMV (Relationship Market Value) here Robertson, Caolan here Robinson, Tommy here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Rockefeller family here Rodger, Elliot here Roof, Dylann here, here Rosenberg, Alfred here Rothschilds here, here Rowley, Mark here Roy, Donald F. here Royal Family here Russia Today here, here S., Johannes here St Kilda Beach meeting here Salafi Media here Saltman, Erin here Salvini, Matteo here Sampson, Chris here, here Sandy Hook school shooting here Sargon of Akkad, see Benjamin, Carl Schild & Schwert rock festival (Ostritz) here, here, here Schilling, Curt here Schlessinger, Laura C. here Scholz & Friends here SchoolDesk here Schröder, Patrick here Sellner, Martin here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here Serrano, Francisco here ‘sexual economics’ here SGT Report here Shodan here, here Siege-posting here Sleeping Giants here SMV (Sexual Market Value) here, here, here Social Justice Warriors (SJW) here, here Solahütte here Soros, George here, here Sotloff, Steven here Southern, Lauren here Southfront here Spencer, Richard here, here, here, here, here, here Spiegel TV here spoofing technology here Sputnik here, here SS here, here Stadtwerke Borken here Star Wars here Steinmeier, Frank-Walter here Stewart, Ayla here STFU (Shut the Fuck Up) here Stormfront here, here, here Strache, H.

pages: 291 words: 85,822

The Truth About Lies: The Illusion of Honesty and the Evolution of Deceit by Aja Raden

air gap, Ayatollah Khomeini, bank run, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blockchain, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon-based life, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, intentional community, iterative process, low interest rates, Milgram experiment, mirror neurons, multilevel marketing, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, sugar pill, survivorship bias, theory of mind, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, Vincenzo Peruggia: Mona Lisa

But consider: 99.92 percent of their sellers lose money.36 This Will Go on Your Permanent Record So, you’re too clean (you’re not) for Wall Street, and you’re too smart (you’d be surprised) to fall for multilevel marketing? That’s okay, I’ve got one more. Let’s talk about the biggest, sexiest Pyramid Scheme currently going: Bitcoin. Bitcoin (in case you live in a fallout shelter) is an unregulated, nonphysical cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. Blockchain technology is a snazzy piece of computer programming that allows for the secure and traceable transfer of Bitcoin (or anything else) almost instantaneously. Bitcoin itself is the digital currency that is “created” when so-called miners (really, nerds sitting at their computers) solve complex mathematical problems.

pages: 306 words: 82,909

A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier

4chan, Airbnb, airport security, algorithmic trading, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Automated Insights, banking crisis, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 737 MAX, Brian Krebs, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, cloud computing, computerized trading, coronavirus, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, dark pattern, deepfake, defense in depth, disinformation, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, driverless car, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, fake news, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, first-past-the-post, Flash crash, full employment, gig economy, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, GPT-3, Greensill Capital, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, job automation, late capitalism, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, money market fund, moral hazard, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, payday loans, Peter Thiel, precautionary principle, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sentiment analysis, Skype, smart cities, SoftBank, supply chain finance, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, technological determinism, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, TikTok, too big to fail, Turing test, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, ubercab, UNCLOS, union organizing, web application, WeWork, When a measure becomes a target, WikiLeaks, zero day

In the US, insider trading was criminalized by the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, affirmed and refined over the years in US Supreme Court rulings. In 2021, three people were charged with insider trading for buying stock in the Long Island Iced Tea Co. just before it changed its name to the Long Blockchain Co. for no other reason than to ride the then-frenetic blockchain hype. A rule that has lasted for this long is a clear example of a successful systems patch. It’s actually impressive that these prohibitions have survived almost ninety years of hacking and regulatory inertia. If there’s a general lesson here, it’s that a broad rule enables a more robust, adaptable, and resilient regulatory regime.

We Are the Nerds: The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory by Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Aaron Swartz, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bitcoin, blockchain, Brewster Kahle, Burning Man, compensation consultant, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, East Village, eternal september, fake news, game design, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, Hacker News, hiring and firing, independent contractor, Internet Archive, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, Joi Ito, Justin.tv, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, Lean Startup, lolcat, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, medical residency, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Palm Treo, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, QR code, r/findbostonbombers, recommendation engine, RFID, rolodex, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, semantic web, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, Snapchat, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Streisand effect, technoutopianism, uber lyft, Wayback Machine, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator

” * * * The year 2014 was a turnaround year for cryptocurrency; major retailers such as Overstock, Microsoft, and Dell began accepting Bitcoin, and to payments-startup insiders, some of the hottest scrappy San Francisco upstarts—Coinbase, Ripple—were in digital currency. Wong thought, if anything could manage his vision for distributing tiny fractions of dollars to Redditors, the blockchain might work. He hired a cryptocurrency engineer, Ryan X. Charles, to execute this vision for giving 10 percent of ad revenue back to millions of anonymous users, a project users joked should be called “creddits,” but would become known as Reddit Notes. These hypothetical “notes”—for which a labyrinthine new blockchain system was to be developed by Charles and project manager Daniel Lim—were perhaps doomed from their inception. For Wong’s part, he admits that at the time he was not entirely in control.

…

Angel, the former rocket scientist who’d transformed her life and career to work for Reddit ever since that day at the Colbert rally when she was just a college kid in her alien T-shirt, said no. She had a life in Portland. She resigned and took the severance. Also dismissed: cryptocurrency engineer Ryan X. Charles, who later said he was given no reasonable opportunity to pitch to the new administration his digital creation harnessing blockchain technology, which Wong had hired him to develop. There were others. Every few weeks, someone would not show up to the Wednesday all-hands meeting, and stop appearing on online chat—and everyone else would be left to speculate what happened. (Speculation was usually all they got, as most employees were careful not to violate the paperwork they’d signed in exchange for significant severance pay.)

pages: 354 words: 92,470

Grave New World: The End of Globalization, the Return of History by Stephen D. King

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, air freight, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bilateral investment treaty, bitcoin, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, borderless world, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, corporate governance, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, floating exchange rates, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, global supply chain, global value chain, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, hydraulic fracturing, Hyman Minsky, imperial preference, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, middle-income trap, moral hazard, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, old age dependency ratio, paradox of thrift, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, post-truth, price stability, profit maximization, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, reserve currency, reshoring, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Skype, South China Sea, special drawing rights, technology bubble, The Great Moderation, The Market for Lemons, the market place, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, trade liberalization, trade route, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

At worst, we could end up with a chaotic ever-changing constellation of currencies challenging globalization on three separate fronts: first, the desire for individual countries to deflect their debt problem somewhere else; second, the American economy’s diminishing status on the world stage; and third, the absence of a global financial imperium to replace the US. It’s no great surprise that, given this prospect, interest in new currency algorithms – most obviously the Blockchain that underlies Bitcoin – is on the increase. ‘CONSPANSIONARY’ MONETARY POLICY Monetary policy’s redistributional qualities are not, however, confined to cross-border effects alone. Within countries, it increasingly appears that monetary stimulus has both expansionary and contractionary effects – a combination that might best be termed ‘conspansionary’.8 Before the global financial crisis, these effects tended to even out over time.

…

London, January 2017 INDEX Abbasids (i), (ii) Abu Bakr (i) Acemoglu, Daron (i) advertising (i) Afghanistan (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Africa (i) China and (i) high levels of ethnic diversity (i) oil, commodities and (i) population percentages (i) ‘scramble for’ (i), (ii) sub-Saharan nations (i), (ii), (iii) trade flows and slavery (i) ageing population (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Agincourt, Battle of (i) Al Qaeda (i), (ii)n2 Alaska (i) Ali (cousin/son-in-law to Prophet Mohammad) (i) Alibaba (i) Allies (Second World War) (i) Almaty (i) Almohads (i) Almoravids (i) Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) (i) Amazon (i) America see United States American Civil War (i), (ii) American dollar (i), (ii) as good as gold (i) global foreign exchange market and (i) peso and (i) premier reserve currency (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) American Dream (i) American Samoa (i) Amin, Idi (i) Amsterdam Treaty (1997) (i), (ii) Anatolia (i) Andalucía (i) Andes (i) Angell, Norman (i), (ii), (iii) Angola (i) ‘animal spirits’ (i) Annecy (i) Apple (i), (ii) Arab nations (i), (ii) Arab Spring (i) Arabic language (i), (ii) Arabs (i), (ii), (iii) Aramaic (i) Arc of Prosperity (i) Argentina (i), (ii), (iii) Armenia (i) ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) (i) Asia see also China and other individual countries 1997/8 crisis (i), (ii), (iii) ageing population (i) balance of payments deficits (i) Central Asia (i), (ii), (iii) Columbus’s belief (i) East Asia (i) emerging market labour (i) events impinging on the West (i) immigrants in America (i) mathematical ability (i) Obama and (i), (ii), (iii) rail connections (i) Russia and (i) Trump and a vacuum (i) Asian Development Bank (i) Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) Asiatic Barred Zone Act (i) al-Assad, Bashar (i), (ii) asylum seekers (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)n17 see also immigration; refugees Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal (i) Atlantic (i), (ii) Austen, Jane (i) austerity (i), (ii), (iii) Australia ASEAN and (i) Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and (i) average incomes (i) foreign-born share of population (i) Second Gulf War (i) tobacco policy (i) Austria (i), (ii) Austro-Hungarian Empire (i), (ii) Axis (Second World War) (i) Azerbaijan (i) Bagehot, Walter (i) Baghdad (i) Baker, James (III) (i) balance of payments (i) Asian Crisis (i) Latin America (i) Plaza Accord and (i) UK and Suez (i) US (i), (ii) Varoufakis on (i) Balkans (i) Baltic Sea (i), (ii) bancor (i), (ii), (iii) Bangladesh (i) Bank of Credit and Commerce International (i) Bank of England (i), (ii) Bank of Japan (i) bankers (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also central banks Barings (i), (ii)n1 Basel I (i) Basel II (i) Basra (i) Battle of Bretton Woods, The (Ben Steil) (i)n4 BBC Two (i) Bedford (i) Beijing (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Belarus (i), (ii) Belgium (i), (ii), (iii), (iv) Belt and Road strategy (i), (ii) Benn, Tony (i) Bentham, Jeremy (i) Berbers (i) Bergère, 14 rue (i) Berghof sanatorium (i) Berlin Wall (fall of) asylum seekers after (i) changing times after (i), (ii) Poland goes from strength to strength (i) relative living standards after fall (i) Soviet living standards (i) US military spending and (i) Bernanke, Ben (i) Big Brother (i) Bilderberg Club (i) bin Laden, Osama (i) Bitcoin (i) Black and White Minstrel Show, The (i) Black Death (i) Black Sea (i), (ii), (iii) Blair, Tony (i), (ii), (iii) Blanchard, Olivier (i) Blockchain (i) Blue Feed (i) BMW (i) BNP Paribas (i) Boers (i) Boko Haram (i) Bolsheviks (i) see also communism borders (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v) see also cross-border capital flow capital flows see cross-border capital flow EU and (i) globalization and (i) historical accident (i) Mediterranean (i) movement of labour (i), (ii) post-global financial crisis (i), (ii) railways and (i) slowly dissolving (i), (ii) technology and (i), (ii) Triffin Dilemma (i) Boston (i), (ii) Boughton, James M.

pages: 407 words: 90,238

Stealing Fire: How Silicon Valley, the Navy SEALs, and Maverick Scientists Are Revolutionizing the Way We Live and Work by Steven Kotler, Jamie Wheal

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, Abraham Maslow, Alexander Shulgin, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, Burning Man, Colonization of Mars, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, delayed gratification, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Future Shock, Hacker News, high batting average, hive mind, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, hype cycle, Hyperloop, impulse control, independent contractor, informal economy, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Kevin Kelly, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Mason jar, Maui Hawaii, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microdosing, military-industrial complex, mirror neurons, music of the spheres, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, PIHKAL and TIHKAL, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ray Kurzweil, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, science of happiness, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, TED Talk, time dilation, Tony Hsieh, urban planning, Virgin Galactic

“When I do [reach flow],” Branson told us over smoothies on his back porch one morning, “I get an extra two hours of great work done, and the other twelve are really, really productive—so trying to get that balance in life is really important; not saying that one shouldn’t party hard as well.” Branson and Mai Tai are taking this same approach to host the Carbon Warroom, a transnational organization35 dedicated to energy sustainability in the Caribbean, and the Blockchain Summit, an international consortium exploring socially beneficial applications for alternative currencies. By bringing the passionate and talented together to play and work, they’re charting a course toward a more innovative and sustainable future. Case in point: a cedar hot tub perched on the crow’s nest of the main house of Necker Island.

…

See consciousness-hacking technology biofeedback, 79, 147, 151, 190, 198. See also biometrics biology. See Pale of the Body; specific topic biometrics, 96, 104–5, 111, 150, 151, 177, 197–98. See also biofeedback Black Panthers, 192 Black Rock City. See Burning Man Black Rock City Census, 160 Blahnik, Jay, 177 Blake, William, 155, 216 Bliss Point, 212–13 Blockchain Summit, 173 boat race, Ellison-New Zealand, 219–20 body distrust of, 99–100 See also mind-body relationship; Pale of the Body body language, 98 Book of Mormon, 127 Boom Festival (Portugal, 2014), 142, 143 The Botany of Desire (Pollan), 118 Botox, 96, 97 Bradford, Nichol, 148 brain complexity of, 37 and default mode network, 125–26 and enlightenment engineering, 147–48 and neurobiology, 24, 74, 107–8, 109–10 and neurotheology, 107–8, 109–10 pleasure system of, 183, 191 and psychedelics, 124–26 and richness, 44–46 and STER, 36–46 and techniques of ecstasis, 24–25 temporal-parietal junction in, 109–10 and time, 40 training of, 114 and transient hypofrontality, 38, 40, 45, 125 See also brain imaging; brainwashing; EEG technology; specific part of brain or neurochemical Brain Games (TV show), 33 brain imaging, 101, 107–8, 109–10, 177, 191.

pages: 292 words: 94,660

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back by Jacob Ward

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, AI winter, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Amazon Mechanical Turk, assortative mating, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Black Swan, blockchain, Broken windows theory, call centre, Cass Sunstein, cloud computing, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, drone strike, endowment effect, George Akerlof, George Floyd, hindsight bias, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeffrey Epstein, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Lyft, mandelbrot fractal, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, natural language processing, non-fungible token, nudge unit, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pattern recognition, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, selection bias, self-driving car, seminal paper, shareholder value, smart cities, social contagion, social distancing, Steven Levy, survivorship bias, TikTok, Turing test

I struggled with that notion for a while, feeling tempted to dismiss the whole thing. But then along came NFTs. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are pieces of code slipped inside any digital file that identify it as “unique” in the open-receipt system known as blockchain. Once an NFT has been placed inside something like a movie or audio file, that particular file—just the one—is, in theory, the only one of its kind, and in the public ledger of the blockchain, anyone can look up that particular NFT to see whether it’s registered to a particular person. This allows humans to own a digital file in a way that no one else—even if they have a file that’s identical in all other ways—can claim.

pages: 282 words: 93,783

The Future Is Analog: How to Create a More Human World by David Sax

Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, big-box store, bike sharing, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bread and circuses, Buckminster Fuller, Cal Newport, call centre, clean water, cognitive load, commoditize, contact tracing, contact tracing app, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deep learning, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, fiat currency, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, indoor plumbing, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, lockdown, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Minecraft, New Urbanism, nuclear winter, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peter Thiel, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, retail therapy, RFID, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Saturday Night Live, Shoshana Zuboff, side hustle, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Superbowl ad, supply-chain management, surveillance capitalism, tech worker, technological singularity, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, TikTok, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unemployed young men, urban planning, walkable city, Y2K, zero-sum game

In the future, conversations would not be bound by space, instantly fostering a community of global empathy and understanding that would rapidly end conflict and divisions across borders, faiths, creeds, and colors. This future, made possible by artificial intelligence, big data, mobile computing, the internet, electric cars, smart scooters, virtual reality, and blockchain, would make us happier, healthier, smarter, richer, and just better-off. And then one day, just like that, our digital future arrived. Late in 2019, a sick bat emerged from its cave somewhere in China, pooped near a pangolin (or some other creature), and set off a chain of events that none of the tech oracles predicted (except Bill Gates).

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There were widely touted examples, like the supposedly data-driven transformation of broke, gritty, crime-ridden 1980s New York City into the safer, technocratic, and oligarch friendly New York of Mike Bloomberg, or places like Singapore, where public services supposedly ran like clockwork, or Seoul, where robots were granted legal rights, or Dubai, which came closest to those Le Corbusier renderings. Over the past decade, municipal governments worldwide have rushed to jump onto the smart city bandwagon, boasting about new data-governance initiatives, cutting-edge blockchain experiments, digital innovation zones built to house technology start-ups, and innumerable press-release-friendly pilot projects, from Wi-Fi kiosks and driverless garbage trucks to park benches with embedded height sensors and flying armadas of specialized drones doing everything from monitoring crowds to delivering pizza.

Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann

active measures, Amazon Web Services, billion-dollar mistake, bitcoin, blockchain, business intelligence, business logic, business process, c2.com, cloud computing, collaborative editing, commoditize, conceptual framework, cryptocurrency, data science, database schema, deep learning, DevOps, distributed ledger, Donald Knuth, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, exponential backoff, fake news, fault tolerance, finite state, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, full text search, functional programming, general-purpose programming language, Hacker News, informal economy, information retrieval, Internet of things, iterative process, John von Neumann, Ken Thompson, Kubernetes, Large Hadron Collider, level 1 cache, loose coupling, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, microservices, natural language processing, Network effects, no silver bullet, operational security, packet switching, peer-to-peer, performance metric, place-making, premature optimization, recommendation engine, Richard Feynman, self-driving car, semantic web, Shoshana Zuboff, social graph, social web, software as a service, software is eating the world, sorting algorithm, source of truth, SPARQL, speech recognition, SQL injection, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, systems thinking, Tragedy of the Commons, undersea cable, web application, WebSocket, wikimedia commons

A transaction log can be made tamper-proof by periodically signing it with a hardware security module, but that does not guarantee that the right transactions went into the log in the first place. It would be interesting to use cryptographic tools to prove the integrity of a system in a way that is robust to a wide range of hardware and software issues, and even poten‐ tially malicious actions. Cryptocurrencies, blockchains, and distributed ledger tech‐ nologies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Stellar, and various others [71, 72, 73] have sprung up to explore this area. I am not qualified to comment on the merits of these technologies as currencies or mechanisms for agreeing contracts. However, from a data systems point of view they contain some interesting ideas.

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Gray and Catharine van Ingen: “Empirical Measurements of Disk Failure Rates and Error Rates,” Microsoft Research, MSR-TR-2005-166, December 2005. [65] Annamalai Gurusami and Daniel Price: “Bug #73170: Duplicates in Unique Sec‐ ondary Index Because of Fix of Bug#68021,” bugs.mysql.com, July 2014. [66] Gary Fredericks: “Postgres Serializability Bug,” github.com, September 2015. [67] Xiao Chen: “HDFS DataNode Scanners and Disk Checker Explained,” blog.clou‐ dera.com, December 20, 2016. [68] Jay Kreps: “Getting Real About Distributed System Reliability,” blog.empathy‐ box.com, March 19, 2012. [69] Martin Fowler: “The LMAX Architecture,” martinfowler.com, July 12, 2011. [70] Sam Stokes: “Move Fast with Confidence,” blog.samstokes.co.uk, July 11, 2016. [71] “Sawtooth Lake Documentation,” Intel Corporation, intelledger.github.io, 2016. [72] Richard Gendal Brown: “Introducing R3 Corda™: A Distributed Ledger Designed for Financial Services,” gendal.me, April 5, 2016. [73] Trent McConaghy, Rodolphe Marques, Andreas Müller, et al.: “BigchainDB: A Scalable Blockchain Database,” bigchaindb.com, June 8, 2016. [74] Ralph C. Merkle: “A Digital Signature Based on a Conventional Encryption Function,” at CRYPTO ’87, August 1987. doi:10.1007/3-540-48184-2_32 [75] Ben Laurie: “Certificate Transparency,” ACM Queue, volume 12, number 8, pages 10-19, August 2014. doi:10.1145/2668152.2668154 Summary | 549 [76] Mark D.

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The opposite of bounded. 558 | Glossary Index A aborts (transactions), 222, 224 in two-phase commit, 356 performance of optimistic concurrency con‐ trol, 266 retrying aborted transactions, 231 abstraction, 21, 27, 222, 266, 321 access path (in network model), 37, 60 accidental complexity, removing, 21 accountability, 535 ACID properties (transactions), 90, 223 atomicity, 223, 228 consistency, 224, 529 durability, 226 isolation, 225, 228 acknowledgements (messaging), 445 active/active replication (see multi-leader repli‐ cation) active/passive replication (see leader-based rep‐ lication) ActiveMQ (messaging), 137, 444 distributed transaction support, 361 ActiveRecord (object-relational mapper), 30, 232 actor model, 138 (see also message-passing) comparison to Pregel model, 425 comparison to stream processing, 468 Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (see AMQP) aerospace systems, 6, 10, 305, 372 aggregation data cubes and materialized views, 101 in batch processes, 406 in stream processes, 466 aggregation pipeline query language, 48 Agile, 22 minimizing irreversibility, 414, 497 moving faster with confidence, 532 Unix philosophy, 394 agreement, 365 (see also consensus) Airflow (workflow scheduler), 402 Ajax, 131 Akka (actor framework), 139 algorithms algorithm correctness, 308 B-trees, 79-83 for distributed systems, 306 hash indexes, 72-75 mergesort, 76, 402, 405 red-black trees, 78 SSTables and LSM-trees, 76-79 all-to-all replication topologies, 175 AllegroGraph (database), 50 ALTER TABLE statement (SQL), 40, 111 Amazon Dynamo (database), 177 Amazon Web Services (AWS), 8 Kinesis Streams (messaging), 448 network reliability, 279 postmortems, 9 RedShift (database), 93 S3 (object storage), 398 checking data integrity, 530 amplification of bias, 534 of failures, 364, 495 Index | 559 of tail latency, 16, 207 write amplification, 84 AMQP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol), 444 (see also messaging systems) comparison to log-based messaging, 448, 451 message ordering, 446 analytics, 90 comparison to transaction processing, 91 data warehousing (see data warehousing) parallel query execution in MPP databases, 415 predictive (see predictive analytics) relation to batch processing, 411 schemas for, 93-95 snapshot isolation for queries, 238 stream analytics, 466 using MapReduce, analysis of user activity events (example), 404 anti-caching (in-memory databases), 89 anti-entropy, 178 Apache ActiveMQ (see ActiveMQ) Apache Avro (see Avro) Apache Beam (see Beam) Apache BookKeeper (see BookKeeper) Apache Cassandra (see Cassandra) Apache CouchDB (see CouchDB) Apache Curator (see Curator) Apache Drill (see Drill) Apache Flink (see Flink) Apache Giraph (see Giraph) Apache Hadoop (see Hadoop) Apache HAWQ (see HAWQ) Apache HBase (see HBase) Apache Helix (see Helix) Apache Hive (see Hive) Apache Impala (see Impala) Apache Jena (see Jena) Apache Kafka (see Kafka) Apache Lucene (see Lucene) Apache MADlib (see MADlib) Apache Mahout (see Mahout) Apache Oozie (see Oozie) Apache Parquet (see Parquet) Apache Qpid (see Qpid) Apache Samza (see Samza) Apache Solr (see Solr) Apache Spark (see Spark) 560 | Index Apache Storm (see Storm) Apache Tajo (see Tajo) Apache Tez (see Tez) Apache Thrift (see Thrift) Apache ZooKeeper (see ZooKeeper) Apama (stream analytics), 466 append-only B-trees, 82, 242 append-only files (see logs) Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), 5, 27 for batch processing, 403 for change streams, 456 for distributed transactions, 361 for graph processing, 425 for services, 131-136 (see also services) evolvability, 136 RESTful, 133 SOAP, 133 application state (see state) approximate search (see similarity search) archival storage, data from databases, 131 arcs (see edges) arithmetic mean, 14 ASCII text, 119, 395 ASN.1 (schema language), 127 asynchronous networks, 278, 553 comparison to synchronous networks, 284 formal model, 307 asynchronous replication, 154, 553 conflict detection, 172 data loss on failover, 157 reads from asynchronous follower, 162 Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), 285 atomic broadcast (see total order broadcast) atomic clocks (caesium clocks), 294, 295 (see also clocks) atomicity (concurrency), 553 atomic increment-and-get, 351 compare-and-set, 245, 327 (see also compare-and-set operations) replicated operations, 246 write operations, 243 atomicity (transactions), 223, 228, 553 atomic commit, 353 avoiding, 523, 528 blocking and nonblocking, 359 in stream processing, 360, 477 maintaining derived data, 453 for multi-object transactions, 229 for single-object writes, 230 auditability, 528-533 designing for, 531 self-auditing systems, 530 through immutability, 460 tools for auditable data systems, 532 availability, 8 (see also fault tolerance) in CAP theorem, 337 in service level agreements (SLAs), 15 Avro (data format), 122-127 code generation, 127 dynamically generated schemas, 126 object container files, 125, 131, 414 reader determining writer’s schema, 125 schema evolution, 123 use in Hadoop, 414 awk (Unix tool), 391 AWS (see Amazon Web Services) Azure (see Microsoft) B B-trees (indexes), 79-83 append-only/copy-on-write variants, 82, 242 branching factor, 81 comparison to LSM-trees, 83-85 crash recovery, 82 growing by splitting a page, 81 optimizations, 82 similarity to dynamic partitioning, 212 backpressure, 441, 553 in TCP, 282 backups database snapshot for replication, 156 integrity of, 530 snapshot isolation for, 238 use for ETL processes, 405 backward compatibility, 112 BASE, contrast to ACID, 223 bash shell (Unix), 70, 395, 503 batch processing, 28, 389-431, 553 combining with stream processing lambda architecture, 497 unifying technologies, 498 comparison to MPP databases, 414-418 comparison to stream processing, 464 comparison to Unix, 413-414 dataflow engines, 421-423 fault tolerance, 406, 414, 422, 442 for data integration, 494-498 graphs and iterative processing, 424-426 high-level APIs and languages, 403, 426-429 log-based messaging and, 451 maintaining derived state, 495 MapReduce and distributed filesystems, 397-413 (see also MapReduce) measuring performance, 13, 390 outputs, 411-413 key-value stores, 412 search indexes, 411 using Unix tools (example), 391-394 Bayou (database), 522 Beam (dataflow library), 498 bias, 534 big ball of mud, 20 Bigtable data model, 41, 99 binary data encodings, 115-128 Avro, 122-127 MessagePack, 116-117 Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 117-121 binary encoding based on schemas, 127 by network drivers, 128 binary strings, lack of support in JSON and XML, 114 BinaryProtocol encoding (Thrift), 118 Bitcask (storage engine), 72 crash recovery, 74 Bitcoin (cryptocurrency), 532 Byzantine fault tolerance, 305 concurrency bugs in exchanges, 233 bitmap indexes, 97 blockchains, 532 Byzantine fault tolerance, 305 blocking atomic commit, 359 Bloom (programming language), 504 Bloom filter (algorithm), 79, 466 BookKeeper (replicated log), 372 Bottled Water (change data capture), 455 bounded datasets, 430, 439, 553 (see also batch processing) bounded delays, 553 in networks, 285 process pauses, 298 broadcast hash joins, 409 Index | 561 brokerless messaging, 442 Brubeck (metrics aggregator), 442 BTM (transaction coordinator), 356 bulk synchronous parallel (BSP) model, 425 bursty network traffic patterns, 285 business data processing, 28, 90, 390 byte sequence, encoding data in, 112 Byzantine faults, 304-306, 307, 553 Byzantine fault-tolerant systems, 305, 532 Byzantine Generals Problem, 304 consensus algorithms and, 366 C caches, 89, 553 and materialized views, 101 as derived data, 386, 499-504 database as cache of transaction log, 460 in CPUs, 99, 338, 428 invalidation and maintenance, 452, 467 linearizability, 324 CAP theorem, 336-338, 554 Cascading (batch processing), 419, 427 hash joins, 409 workflows, 403 cascading failures, 9, 214, 281 Cascalog (batch processing), 60 Cassandra (database) column-family data model, 41, 99 compaction strategy, 79 compound primary key, 204 gossip protocol, 216 hash partitioning, 203-205 last-write-wins conflict resolution, 186, 292 leaderless replication, 177 linearizability, lack of, 335 log-structured storage, 78 multi-datacenter support, 184 partitioning scheme, 213 secondary indexes, 207 sloppy quorums, 184 cat (Unix tool), 391 causal context, 191 (see also causal dependencies) causal dependencies, 186-191 capturing, 191, 342, 494, 514 by total ordering, 493 causal ordering, 339 in transactions, 262 sending message to friends (example), 494 562 | Index causality, 554 causal ordering, 339-343 linearizability and, 342 total order consistent with, 344, 345 consistency with, 344-347 consistent snapshots, 340 happens-before relationship, 186 in serializable transactions, 262-265 mismatch with clocks, 292 ordering events to capture, 493 violations of, 165, 176, 292, 340 with synchronized clocks, 294 CEP (see complex event processing) certificate transparency, 532 chain replication, 155 linearizable reads, 351 change data capture, 160, 454 API support for change streams, 456 comparison to event sourcing, 457 implementing, 454 initial snapshot, 455 log compaction, 456 changelogs, 460 change data capture, 454 for operator state, 479 generating with triggers, 455 in stream joins, 474 log compaction, 456 maintaining derived state, 452 Chaos Monkey, 7, 280 checkpointing in batch processors, 422, 426 in high-performance computing, 275 in stream processors, 477, 523 chronicle data model, 458 circuit-switched networks, 284 circular buffers, 450 circular replication topologies, 175 clickstream data, analysis of, 404 clients calling services, 131 pushing state changes to, 512 request routing, 214 stateful and offline-capable, 170, 511 clocks, 287-299 atomic (caesium) clocks, 294, 295 confidence interval, 293-295 for global snapshots, 294 logical (see logical clocks) skew, 291-294, 334 slewing, 289 synchronization and accuracy, 289-291 synchronization using GPS, 287, 290, 294, 295 time-of-day versus monotonic clocks, 288 timestamping events, 471 cloud computing, 146, 275 need for service discovery, 372 network glitches, 279 shared resources, 284 single-machine reliability, 8 Cloudera Impala (see Impala) clustered indexes, 86 CODASYL model, 36 (see also network model) code generation with Avro, 127 with Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 118 with WSDL, 133 collaborative editing multi-leader replication and, 170 column families (Bigtable), 41, 99 column-oriented storage, 95-101 column compression, 97 distinction between column families and, 99 in batch processors, 428 Parquet, 96, 131, 414 sort order in, 99-100 vectorized processing, 99, 428 writing to, 101 comma-separated values (see CSV) command query responsibility segregation (CQRS), 462 commands (event sourcing), 459 commits (transactions), 222 atomic commit, 354-355 (see also atomicity; transactions) read committed isolation, 234 three-phase commit (3PC), 359 two-phase commit (2PC), 355-359 commutative operations, 246 compaction of changelogs, 456 (see also log compaction) for stream operator state, 479 of log-structured storage, 73 issues with, 84 size-tiered and leveled approaches, 79 CompactProtocol encoding (Thrift), 119 compare-and-set operations, 245, 327 implementing locks, 370 implementing uniqueness constraints, 331 implementing with total order broadcast, 350 relation to consensus, 335, 350, 352, 374 relation to transactions, 230 compatibility, 112, 128 calling services, 136 properties of encoding formats, 139 using databases, 129-131 using message-passing, 138 compensating transactions, 355, 461, 526 complex event processing (CEP), 465 complexity distilling in theoretical models, 310 hiding using abstraction, 27 of software systems, managing, 20 composing data systems (see unbundling data‐ bases) compute-intensive applications, 3, 275 concatenated indexes, 87 in Cassandra, 204 Concord (stream processor), 466 concurrency actor programming model, 138, 468 (see also message-passing) bugs from weak transaction isolation, 233 conflict resolution, 171, 174 detecting concurrent writes, 184-191 dual writes, problems with, 453 happens-before relationship, 186 in replicated systems, 161-191, 324-338 lost updates, 243 multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), 239 optimistic concurrency control, 261 ordering of operations, 326, 341 reducing, through event logs, 351, 462, 507 time and relativity, 187 transaction isolation, 225 write skew (transaction isolation), 246-251 conflict-free replicated datatypes (CRDTs), 174 conflicts conflict detection, 172 causal dependencies, 186, 342 in consensus algorithms, 368 in leaderless replication, 184 Index | 563 in log-based systems, 351, 521 in nonlinearizable systems, 343 in serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 264 in two-phase commit, 357, 364 conflict resolution automatic conflict resolution, 174 by aborting transactions, 261 by apologizing, 527 convergence, 172-174 in leaderless systems, 190 last write wins (LWW), 186, 292 using atomic operations, 246 using custom logic, 173 determining what is a conflict, 174, 522 in multi-leader replication, 171-175 avoiding conflicts, 172 lost updates, 242-246 materializing, 251 relation to operation ordering, 339 write skew (transaction isolation), 246-251 congestion (networks) avoidance, 282 limiting accuracy of clocks, 293 queueing delays, 282 consensus, 321, 364-375, 554 algorithms, 366-368 preventing split brain, 367 safety and liveness properties, 365 using linearizable operations, 351 cost of, 369 distributed transactions, 352-375 in practice, 360-364 two-phase commit, 354-359 XA transactions, 361-364 impossibility of, 353 membership and coordination services, 370-373 relation to compare-and-set, 335, 350, 352, 374 relation to replication, 155, 349 relation to uniqueness constraints, 521 consistency, 224, 524 across different databases, 157, 452, 462, 492 causal, 339-348, 493 consistent prefix reads, 165-167 consistent snapshots, 156, 237-242, 294, 455, 500 (see also snapshots) 564 | Index crash recovery, 82 enforcing constraints (see constraints) eventual, 162, 322 (see also eventual consistency) in ACID transactions, 224, 529 in CAP theorem, 337 linearizability, 324-338 meanings of, 224 monotonic reads, 164-165 of secondary indexes, 231, 241, 354, 491, 500 ordering guarantees, 339-352 read-after-write, 162-164 sequential, 351 strong (see linearizability) timeliness and integrity, 524 using quorums, 181, 334 consistent hashing, 204 consistent prefix reads, 165 constraints (databases), 225, 248 asynchronously checked, 526 coordination avoidance, 527 ensuring idempotence, 519 in log-based systems, 521-524 across multiple partitions, 522 in two-phase commit, 355, 357 relation to consensus, 374, 521 relation to event ordering, 347 requiring linearizability, 330 Consul (service discovery), 372 consumers (message streams), 137, 440 backpressure, 441 consumer offsets in logs, 449 failures, 445, 449 fan-out, 11, 445, 448 load balancing, 444, 448 not keeping up with producers, 441, 450, 502 context switches, 14, 297 convergence (conflict resolution), 172-174, 322 coordination avoidance, 527 cross-datacenter, 168, 493 cross-partition ordering, 256, 294, 348, 523 services, 330, 370-373 coordinator (in 2PC), 356 failure, 358 in XA transactions, 361-364 recovery, 363 copy-on-write (B-trees), 82, 242 CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), 134 correctness, 6 auditability, 528-533 Byzantine fault tolerance, 305, 532 dealing with partial failures, 274 in log-based systems, 521-524 of algorithm within system model, 308 of compensating transactions, 355 of consensus, 368 of derived data, 497, 531 of immutable data, 461 of personal data, 535, 540 of time, 176, 289-295 of transactions, 225, 515, 529 timeliness and integrity, 524-528 corruption of data detecting, 519, 530-533 due to pathological memory access, 529 due to radiation, 305 due to split brain, 158, 302 due to weak transaction isolation, 233 formalization in consensus, 366 integrity as absence of, 524 network packets, 306 on disks, 227 preventing using write-ahead logs, 82 recovering from, 414, 460 Couchbase (database) durability, 89 hash partitioning, 203-204, 211 rebalancing, 213 request routing, 216 CouchDB (database) B-tree storage, 242 change feed, 456 document data model, 31 join support, 34 MapReduce support, 46, 400 replication, 170, 173 covering indexes, 86 CPUs cache coherence and memory barriers, 338 caching and pipelining, 99, 428 increasing parallelism, 43 CRDTs (see conflict-free replicated datatypes) CREATE INDEX statement (SQL), 85, 500 credit rating agencies, 535 Crunch (batch processing), 419, 427 hash joins, 409 sharded joins, 408 workflows, 403 cryptography defense against attackers, 306 end-to-end encryption and authentication, 519, 543 proving integrity of data, 532 CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), 44 CSV (comma-separated values), 70, 114, 396 Curator (ZooKeeper recipes), 330, 371 curl (Unix tool), 135, 397 cursor stability, 243 Cypher (query language), 52 comparison to SPARQL, 59 D data corruption (see corruption of data) data cubes, 102 data formats (see encoding) data integration, 490-498, 543 batch and stream processing, 494-498 lambda architecture, 497 maintaining derived state, 495 reprocessing data, 496 unifying, 498 by unbundling databases, 499-515 comparison to federated databases, 501 combining tools by deriving data, 490-494 derived data versus distributed transac‐ tions, 492 limits of total ordering, 493 ordering events to capture causality, 493 reasoning about dataflows, 491 need for, 385 data lakes, 415 data locality (see locality) data models, 27-64 graph-like models, 49-63 Datalog language, 60-63 property graphs, 50 RDF and triple-stores, 55-59 query languages, 42-48 relational model versus document model, 28-42 data protection regulations, 542 data systems, 3 about, 4 Index | 565 concerns when designing, 5 future of, 489-544 correctness, constraints, and integrity, 515-533 data integration, 490-498 unbundling databases, 499-515 heterogeneous, keeping in sync, 452 maintainability, 18-22 possible faults in, 221 reliability, 6-10 hardware faults, 7 human errors, 9 importance of, 10 software errors, 8 scalability, 10-18 unreliable clocks, 287-299 data warehousing, 91-95, 554 comparison to data lakes, 415 ETL (extract-transform-load), 92, 416, 452 keeping data systems in sync, 452 schema design, 93 slowly changing dimension (SCD), 476 data-intensive applications, 3 database triggers (see triggers) database-internal distributed transactions, 360, 364, 477 databases archival storage, 131 comparison of message brokers to, 443 dataflow through, 129 end-to-end argument for, 519-520 checking integrity, 531 inside-out, 504 (see also unbundling databases) output from batch workflows, 412 relation to event streams, 451-464 (see also changelogs) API support for change streams, 456, 506 change data capture, 454-457 event sourcing, 457-459 keeping systems in sync, 452-453 philosophy of immutable events, 459-464 unbundling, 499-515 composing data storage technologies, 499-504 designing applications around dataflow, 504-509 566 | Index observing derived state, 509-515 datacenters geographically distributed, 145, 164, 278, 493 multi-tenancy and shared resources, 284 network architecture, 276 network faults, 279 replication across multiple, 169 leaderless replication, 184 multi-leader replication, 168, 335 dataflow, 128-139, 504-509 correctness of dataflow systems, 525 differential, 504 message-passing, 136-139 reasoning about, 491 through databases, 129 through services, 131-136 dataflow engines, 421-423 comparison to stream processing, 464 directed acyclic graphs (DAG), 424 partitioning, approach to, 429 support for declarative queries, 427 Datalog (query language), 60-63 datatypes binary strings in XML and JSON, 114 conflict-free, 174 in Avro encodings, 122 in Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 121 numbers in XML and JSON, 114 Datomic (database) B-tree storage, 242 data model, 50, 57 Datalog query language, 60 excision (deleting data), 463 languages for transactions, 255 serial execution of transactions, 253 deadlocks detection, in two-phase commit (2PC), 364 in two-phase locking (2PL), 258 Debezium (change data capture), 455 declarative languages, 42, 554 Bloom, 504 CSS and XSL, 44 Cypher, 52 Datalog, 60 for batch processing, 427 recursive SQL queries, 53 relational algebra and SQL, 42 SPARQL, 59 delays bounded network delays, 285 bounded process pauses, 298 unbounded network delays, 282 unbounded process pauses, 296 deleting data, 463 denormalization (data representation), 34, 554 costs, 39 in derived data systems, 386 materialized views, 101 updating derived data, 228, 231, 490 versus normalization, 462 derived data, 386, 439, 554 from change data capture, 454 in event sourcing, 458-458 maintaining derived state through logs, 452-457, 459-463 observing, by subscribing to streams, 512 outputs of batch and stream processing, 495 through application code, 505 versus distributed transactions, 492 deterministic operations, 255, 274, 554 accidental nondeterminism, 423 and fault tolerance, 423, 426 and idempotence, 478, 492 computing derived data, 495, 526, 531 in state machine replication, 349, 452, 458 joins, 476 DevOps, 394 differential dataflow, 504 dimension tables, 94 dimensional modeling (see star schemas) directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), 424 dirty reads (transaction isolation), 234 dirty writes (transaction isolation), 235 discrimination, 534 disks (see hard disks) distributed actor frameworks, 138 distributed filesystems, 398-399 decoupling from query engines, 417 indiscriminately dumping data into, 415 use by MapReduce, 402 distributed systems, 273-312, 554 Byzantine faults, 304-306 cloud versus supercomputing, 275 detecting network faults, 280 faults and partial failures, 274-277 formalization of consensus, 365 impossibility results, 338, 353 issues with failover, 157 limitations of distributed transactions, 363 multi-datacenter, 169, 335 network problems, 277-286 quorums, relying on, 301 reasons for using, 145, 151 synchronized clocks, relying on, 291-295 system models, 306-310 use of clocks and time, 287 distributed transactions (see transactions) Django (web framework), 232 DNS (Domain Name System), 216, 372 Docker (container manager), 506 document data model, 30-42 comparison to relational model, 38-42 document references, 38, 403 document-oriented databases, 31 many-to-many relationships and joins, 36 multi-object transactions, need for, 231 versus relational model convergence of models, 41 data locality, 41 document-partitioned indexes, 206, 217, 411 domain-driven design (DDD), 457 DRBD (Distributed Replicated Block Device), 153 drift (clocks), 289 Drill (query engine), 93 Druid (database), 461 Dryad (dataflow engine), 421 dual writes, problems with, 452, 507 duplicates, suppression of, 517 (see also idempotence) using a unique ID, 518, 522 durability (transactions), 226, 554 duration (time), 287 measurement with monotonic clocks, 288 dynamic partitioning, 212 dynamically typed languages analogy to schema-on-read, 40 code generation and, 127 Dynamo-style databases (see leaderless replica‐ tion) E edges (in graphs), 49, 403 property graph model, 50 edit distance (full-text search), 88 effectively-once semantics, 476, 516 Index | 567 (see also exactly-once semantics) preservation of integrity, 525 elastic systems, 17 Elasticsearch (search server) document-partitioned indexes, 207 partition rebalancing, 211 percolator (stream search), 467 usage example, 4 use of Lucene, 79 ElephantDB (database), 413 Elm (programming language), 504, 512 encodings (data formats), 111-128 Avro, 122-127 binary variants of JSON and XML, 115 compatibility, 112 calling services, 136 using databases, 129-131 using message-passing, 138 defined, 113 JSON, XML, and CSV, 114 language-specific formats, 113 merits of schemas, 127 representations of data, 112 Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 117-121 end-to-end argument, 277, 519-520 checking integrity, 531 publish/subscribe streams, 512 enrichment (stream), 473 Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), 134 entities (see vertices) epoch (consensus algorithms), 368 epoch (Unix timestamps), 288 equi-joins, 403 erasure coding (error correction), 398 Erlang OTP (actor framework), 139 error handling for network faults, 280 in transactions, 231 error-correcting codes, 277, 398 Esper (CEP engine), 466 etcd (coordination service), 370-373 linearizable operations, 333 locks and leader election, 330 quorum reads, 351 service discovery, 372 use of Raft algorithm, 349, 353 Ethereum (blockchain), 532 Ethernet (networks), 276, 278, 285 packet checksums, 306, 519 568 | Index Etherpad (collaborative editor), 170 ethics, 533-543 code of ethics and professional practice, 533 legislation and self-regulation, 542 predictive analytics, 533-536 amplifying bias, 534 feedback loops, 536 privacy and tracking, 536-543 consent and freedom of choice, 538 data as assets and power, 540 meaning of privacy, 539 surveillance, 537 respect, dignity, and agency, 543, 544 unintended consequences, 533, 536 ETL (extract-transform-load), 92, 405, 452, 554 use of Hadoop for, 416 event sourcing, 457-459 commands and events, 459 comparison to change data capture, 457 comparison to lambda architecture, 497 deriving current state from event log, 458 immutability and auditability, 459, 531 large, reliable data systems, 519, 526 Event Store (database), 458 event streams (see streams) events, 440 deciding on total order of, 493 deriving views from event log, 461 difference to commands, 459 event time versus processing time, 469, 477, 498 immutable, advantages of, 460, 531 ordering to capture causality, 493 reads as, 513 stragglers, 470, 498 timestamp of, in stream processing, 471 EventSource (browser API), 512 eventual consistency, 152, 162, 308, 322 (see also conflicts) and perpetual inconsistency, 525 evolvability, 21, 111 calling services, 136 graph-structured data, 52 of databases, 40, 129-131, 461, 497 of message-passing, 138 reprocessing data, 496, 498 schema evolution in Avro, 123 schema evolution in Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 120 schema-on-read, 39, 111, 128 exactly-once semantics, 360, 476, 516 parity with batch processors, 498 preservation of integrity, 525 exclusive mode (locks), 258 eXtended Architecture transactions (see XA transactions) extract-transform-load (see ETL) F Facebook Presto (query engine), 93 React, Flux, and Redux (user interface libra‐ ries), 512 social graphs, 49 Wormhole (change data capture), 455 fact tables, 93 failover, 157, 554 (see also leader-based replication) in leaderless replication, absence of, 178 leader election, 301, 348, 352 potential problems, 157 failures amplification by distributed transactions, 364, 495 failure detection, 280 automatic rebalancing causing cascading failures, 214 perfect failure detectors, 359 timeouts and unbounded delays, 282, 284 using ZooKeeper, 371 faults versus, 7 partial failures in distributed systems, 275-277, 310 fan-out (messaging systems), 11, 445 fault tolerance, 6-10, 555 abstractions for, 321 formalization in consensus, 365-369 use of replication, 367 human fault tolerance, 414 in batch processing, 406, 414, 422, 425 in log-based systems, 520, 524-526 in stream processing, 476-479 atomic commit, 477 idempotence, 478 maintaining derived state, 495 microbatching and checkpointing, 477 rebuilding state after a failure, 478 of distributed transactions, 362-364 transaction atomicity, 223, 354-361 faults, 6 Byzantine faults, 304-306 failures versus, 7 handled by transactions, 221 handling in supercomputers and cloud computing, 275 hardware, 7 in batch processing versus distributed data‐ bases, 417 in distributed systems, 274-277 introducing deliberately, 7, 280 network faults, 279-281 asymmetric faults, 300 detecting, 280 tolerance of, in multi-leader replication, 169 software errors, 8 tolerating (see fault tolerance) federated databases, 501 fence (CPU instruction), 338 fencing (preventing split brain), 158, 302-304 generating fencing tokens, 349, 370 properties of fencing tokens, 308 stream processors writing to databases, 478, 517 Fibre Channel (networks), 398 field tags (Thrift and Protocol Buffers), 119-121 file descriptors (Unix), 395 financial data, 460 Firebase (database), 456 Flink (processing framework), 421-423 dataflow APIs, 427 fault tolerance, 422, 477, 479 Gelly API (graph processing), 425 integration of batch and stream processing, 495, 498 machine learning, 428 query optimizer, 427 stream processing, 466 flow control, 282, 441, 555 FLP result (on consensus), 353 FlumeJava (dataflow library), 403, 427 followers, 152, 555 (see also leader-based replication) foreign keys, 38, 403 forward compatibility, 112 forward decay (algorithm), 16 Index | 569 Fossil (version control system), 463 shunning (deleting data), 463 FoundationDB (database) serializable transactions, 261, 265, 364 fractal trees, 83 full table scans, 403 full-text search, 555 and fuzzy indexes, 88 building search indexes, 411 Lucene storage engine, 79 functional reactive programming (FRP), 504 functional requirements, 22 futures (asynchronous operations), 135 fuzzy search (see similarity search) G garbage collection immutability and, 463 process pauses for, 14, 296-299, 301 (see also process pauses) genome analysis, 63, 429 geographically distributed datacenters, 145, 164, 278, 493 geospatial indexes, 87 Giraph (graph processing), 425 Git (version control system), 174, 342, 463 GitHub, postmortems, 157, 158, 309 global indexes (see term-partitioned indexes) GlusterFS (distributed filesystem), 398 GNU Coreutils (Linux), 394 GoldenGate (change data capture), 161, 170, 455 (see also Oracle) Google Bigtable (database) data model (see Bigtable data model) partitioning scheme, 199, 202 storage layout, 78 Chubby (lock service), 370 Cloud Dataflow (stream processor), 466, 477, 498 (see also Beam) Cloud Pub/Sub (messaging), 444, 448 Docs (collaborative editor), 170 Dremel (query engine), 93, 96 FlumeJava (dataflow library), 403, 427 GFS (distributed file system), 398 gRPC (RPC framework), 135 MapReduce (batch processing), 390 570 | Index (see also MapReduce) building search indexes, 411 task preemption, 418 Pregel (graph processing), 425 Spanner (see Spanner) TrueTime (clock API), 294 gossip protocol, 216 government use of data, 541 GPS (Global Positioning System) use for clock synchronization, 287, 290, 294, 295 GraphChi (graph processing), 426 graphs, 555 as data models, 49-63 example of graph-structured data, 49 property graphs, 50 RDF and triple-stores, 55-59 versus the network model, 60 processing and analysis, 424-426 fault tolerance, 425 Pregel processing model, 425 query languages Cypher, 52 Datalog, 60-63 recursive SQL queries, 53 SPARQL, 59-59 Gremlin (graph query language), 50 grep (Unix tool), 392 GROUP BY clause (SQL), 406 grouping records in MapReduce, 406 handling skew, 407 H Hadoop (data infrastructure) comparison to distributed databases, 390 comparison to MPP databases, 414-418 comparison to Unix, 413-414, 499 diverse processing models in ecosystem, 417 HDFS distributed filesystem (see HDFS) higher-level tools, 403 join algorithms, 403-410 (see also MapReduce) MapReduce (see MapReduce) YARN (see YARN) happens-before relationship, 340 capturing, 187 concurrency and, 186 hard disks access patterns, 84 detecting corruption, 519, 530 faults in, 7, 227 sequential write throughput, 75, 450 hardware faults, 7 hash indexes, 72-75 broadcast hash joins, 409 partitioned hash joins, 409 hash partitioning, 203-205, 217 consistent hashing, 204 problems with hash mod N, 210 range queries, 204 suitable hash functions, 203 with fixed number of partitions, 210 HAWQ (database), 428 HBase (database) bug due to lack of fencing, 302 bulk loading, 413 column-family data model, 41, 99 dynamic partitioning, 212 key-range partitioning, 202 log-structured storage, 78 request routing, 216 size-tiered compaction, 79 use of HDFS, 417 use of ZooKeeper, 370 HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System), 398-399 (see also distributed filesystems) checking data integrity, 530 decoupling from query engines, 417 indiscriminately dumping data into, 415 metadata about datasets, 410 NameNode, 398 use by Flink, 479 use by HBase, 212 use by MapReduce, 402 HdrHistogram (numerical library), 16 head (Unix tool), 392 head vertex (property graphs), 51 head-of-line blocking, 15 heap files (databases), 86 Helix (cluster manager), 216 heterogeneous distributed transactions, 360, 364 heuristic decisions (in 2PC), 363 Hibernate (object-relational mapper), 30 hierarchical model, 36 high availability (see fault tolerance) high-frequency trading, 290, 299 high-performance computing (HPC), 275 hinted handoff, 183 histograms, 16 Hive (query engine), 419, 427 for data warehouses, 93 HCatalog and metastore, 410 map-side joins, 409 query optimizer, 427 skewed joins, 408 workflows, 403 Hollerith machines, 390 hopping windows (stream processing), 472 (see also windows) horizontal scaling (see scaling out) HornetQ (messaging), 137, 444 distributed transaction support, 361 hot spots, 201 due to celebrities, 205 for time-series data, 203 in batch processing, 407 relieving, 205 hot standbys (see leader-based replication) HTTP, use in APIs (see services) human errors, 9, 279, 414 HyperDex (database), 88 HyperLogLog (algorithm), 466 I I/O operations, waiting for, 297 IBM DB2 (database) distributed transaction support, 361 recursive query support, 54 serializable isolation, 242, 257 XML and JSON support, 30, 42 electromechanical card-sorting machines, 390 IMS (database), 36 imperative query APIs, 46 InfoSphere Streams (CEP engine), 466 MQ (messaging), 444 distributed transaction support, 361 System R (database), 222 WebSphere (messaging), 137 idempotence, 134, 478, 555 by giving operations unique IDs, 518, 522 idempotent operations, 517 immutability advantages of, 460, 531 Index | 571 deriving state from event log, 459-464 for crash recovery, 75 in B-trees, 82, 242 in event sourcing, 457 inputs to Unix commands, 397 limitations of, 463 Impala (query engine) for data warehouses, 93 hash joins, 409 native code generation, 428 use of HDFS, 417 impedance mismatch, 29 imperative languages, 42 setting element styles (example), 45 in doubt (transaction status), 358 holding locks, 362 orphaned transactions, 363 in-memory databases, 88 durability, 227 serial transaction execution, 253 incidents cascading failures, 9 crashes due to leap seconds, 290 data corruption and financial losses due to concurrency bugs, 233 data corruption on hard disks, 227 data loss due to last-write-wins, 173, 292 data on disks unreadable, 309 deleted items reappearing, 174 disclosure of sensitive data due to primary key reuse, 157 errors in transaction serializability, 529 gigabit network interface with 1 Kb/s throughput, 311 network faults, 279 network interface dropping only inbound packets, 279 network partitions and whole-datacenter failures, 275 poor handling of network faults, 280 sending message to ex-partner, 494 sharks biting undersea cables, 279 split brain due to 1-minute packet delay, 158, 279 vibrations in server rack, 14 violation of uniqueness constraint, 529 indexes, 71, 555 and snapshot isolation, 241 as derived data, 386, 499-504 572 | Index B-trees, 79-83 building in batch processes, 411 clustered, 86 comparison of B-trees and LSM-trees, 83-85 concatenated, 87 covering (with included columns), 86 creating, 500 full-text search, 88 geospatial, 87 hash, 72-75 index-range locking, 260 multi-column, 87 partitioning and secondary indexes, 206-209, 217 secondary, 85 (see also secondary indexes) problems with dual writes, 452, 491 SSTables and LSM-trees, 76-79 updating when data changes, 452, 467 Industrial Revolution, 541 InfiniBand (networks), 285 InfiniteGraph (database), 50 InnoDB (storage engine) clustered index on primary key, 86 not preventing lost updates, 245 preventing write skew, 248, 257 serializable isolation, 257 snapshot isolation support, 239 inside-out databases, 504 (see also unbundling databases) integrating different data systems (see data integration) integrity, 524 coordination-avoiding data systems, 528 correctness of dataflow systems, 525 in consensus formalization, 365 integrity checks, 530 (see also auditing) end-to-end, 519, 531 use of snapshot isolation, 238 maintaining despite software bugs, 529 Interface Definition Language (IDL), 117, 122 intermediate state, materialization of, 420-423 internet services, systems for implementing, 275 invariants, 225 (see also constraints) inversion of control, 396 IP (Internet Protocol) unreliability of, 277 ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), 284 isolation (in transactions), 225, 228, 555 correctness and, 515 for single-object writes, 230 serializability, 251-266 actual serial execution, 252-256 serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 261-266 two-phase locking (2PL), 257-261 violating, 228 weak isolation levels, 233-251 preventing lost updates, 242-246 read committed, 234-237 snapshot isolation, 237-242 iterative processing, 424-426 J Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) distributed transaction support, 361 network drivers, 128 Java Enterprise Edition (EE), 134, 356, 361 Java Message Service (JMS), 444 (see also messaging systems) comparison to log-based messaging, 448, 451 distributed transaction support, 361 message ordering, 446 Java Transaction API (JTA), 355, 361 Java Virtual Machine (JVM) bytecode generation, 428 garbage collection pauses, 296 process reuse in batch processors, 422 JavaScript in MapReduce querying, 46 setting element styles (example), 45 use in advanced queries, 48 Jena (RDF framework), 57 Jepsen (fault tolerance testing), 515 jitter (network delay), 284 joins, 555 by index lookup, 403 expressing as relational operators, 427 in relational and document databases, 34 MapReduce map-side joins, 408-410 broadcast hash joins, 409 merge joins, 410 partitioned hash joins, 409 MapReduce reduce-side joins, 403-408 handling skew, 407 sort-merge joins, 405 parallel execution of, 415 secondary indexes and, 85 stream joins, 472-476 stream-stream join, 473 stream-table join, 473 table-table join, 474 time-dependence of, 475 support in document databases, 42 JOTM (transaction coordinator), 356 JSON Avro schema representation, 122 binary variants, 115 for application data, issues with, 114 in relational databases, 30, 42 representing a résumé (example), 31 Juttle (query language), 504 K k-nearest neighbors, 429 Kafka (messaging), 137, 448 Kafka Connect (database integration), 457, 461 Kafka Streams (stream processor), 466, 467 fault tolerance, 479 leader-based replication, 153 log compaction, 456, 467 message offsets, 447, 478 request routing, 216 transaction support, 477 usage example, 4 Ketama (partitioning library), 213 key-value stores, 70 as batch process output, 412 hash indexes, 72-75 in-memory, 89 partitioning, 201-205 by hash of key, 203, 217 by key range, 202, 217 dynamic partitioning, 212 skew and hot spots, 205 Kryo (Java), 113 Kubernetes (cluster manager), 418, 506 L lambda architecture, 497 Lamport timestamps, 345 Index | 573 Large Hadron Collider (LHC), 64 last write wins (LWW), 173, 334 discarding concurrent writes, 186 problems with, 292 prone to lost updates, 246 late binding, 396 latency instability under two-phase locking, 259 network latency and resource utilization, 286 response time versus, 14 tail latency, 15, 207 leader-based replication, 152-161 (see also replication) failover, 157, 301 handling node outages, 156 implementation of replication logs change data capture, 454-457 (see also changelogs) statement-based, 158 trigger-based replication, 161 write-ahead log (WAL) shipping, 159 linearizability of operations, 333 locking and leader election, 330 log sequence number, 156, 449 read-scaling architecture, 161 relation to consensus, 367 setting up new followers, 155 synchronous versus asynchronous, 153-155 leaderless replication, 177-191 (see also replication) detecting concurrent writes, 184-191 capturing happens-before relationship, 187 happens-before relationship and concur‐ rency, 186 last write wins, 186 merging concurrently written values, 190 version vectors, 191 multi-datacenter, 184 quorums, 179-182 consistency limitations, 181-183, 334 sloppy quorums and hinted handoff, 183 read repair and anti-entropy, 178 leap seconds, 8, 290 in time-of-day clocks, 288 leases, 295 implementation with ZooKeeper, 370 574 | Index need for fencing, 302 ledgers, 460 distributed ledger technologies, 532 legacy systems, maintenance of, 18 less (Unix tool), 397 LevelDB (storage engine), 78 leveled compaction, 79 Levenshtein automata, 88 limping (partial failure), 311 linearizability, 324-338, 555 cost of, 335-338 CAP theorem, 336 memory on multi-core CPUs, 338 definition, 325-329 implementing with total order broadcast, 350 in ZooKeeper, 370 of derived data systems, 492, 524 avoiding coordination, 527 of different replication methods, 332-335 using quorums, 334 relying on, 330-332 constraints and uniqueness, 330 cross-channel timing dependencies, 331 locking and leader election, 330 stronger than causal consistency, 342 using to implement total order broadcast, 351 versus serializability, 329 LinkedIn Azkaban (workflow scheduler), 402 Databus (change data capture), 161, 455 Espresso (database), 31, 126, 130, 153, 216 Helix (cluster manager) (see Helix) profile (example), 30 reference to company entity (example), 34 Rest.li (RPC framework), 135 Voldemort (database) (see Voldemort) Linux, leap second bug, 8, 290 liveness properties, 308 LMDB (storage engine), 82, 242 load approaches to coping with, 17 describing, 11 load testing, 16 load balancing (messaging), 444 local indexes (see document-partitioned indexes) locality (data access), 32, 41, 555 in batch processing, 400, 405, 421 in stateful clients, 170, 511 in stream processing, 474, 478, 508, 522 location transparency, 134 in the actor model, 138 locks, 556 deadlock, 258 distributed locking, 301-304, 330 fencing tokens, 303 implementation with ZooKeeper, 370 relation to consensus, 374 for transaction isolation in snapshot isolation, 239 in two-phase locking (2PL), 257-261 making operations atomic, 243 performance, 258 preventing dirty writes, 236 preventing phantoms with index-range locks, 260, 265 read locks (shared mode), 236, 258 shared mode and exclusive mode, 258 in two-phase commit (2PC) deadlock detection, 364 in-doubt transactions holding locks, 362 materializing conflicts with, 251 preventing lost updates by explicit locking, 244 log sequence number, 156, 449 logic programming languages, 504 logical clocks, 293, 343, 494 for read-after-write consistency, 164 logical logs, 160 logs (data structure), 71, 556 advantages of immutability, 460 compaction, 73, 79, 456, 460 for stream operator state, 479 creating using total order broadcast, 349 implementing uniqueness constraints, 522 log-based messaging, 446-451 comparison to traditional messaging, 448, 451 consumer offsets, 449 disk space usage, 450 replaying old messages, 451, 496, 498 slow consumers, 450 using logs for message storage, 447 log-structured storage, 71-79 log-structured merge tree (see LSMtrees) replication, 152, 158-161 change data capture, 454-457 (see also changelogs) coordination with snapshot, 156 logical (row-based) replication, 160 statement-based replication, 158 trigger-based replication, 161 write-ahead log (WAL) shipping, 159 scalability limits, 493 loose coupling, 396, 419, 502 lost updates (see updates) LSM-trees (indexes), 78-79 comparison to B-trees, 83-85 Lucene (storage engine), 79 building indexes in batch processes, 411 similarity search, 88 Luigi (workflow scheduler), 402 LWW (see last write wins) M machine learning ethical considerations, 534 (see also ethics) iterative processing, 424 models derived from training data, 505 statistical and numerical algorithms, 428 MADlib (machine learning toolkit), 428 magic scaling sauce, 18 Mahout (machine learning toolkit), 428 maintainability, 18-22, 489 defined, 23 design principles for software systems, 19 evolvability (see evolvability) operability, 19 simplicity and managing complexity, 20 many-to-many relationships in document model versus relational model, 39 modeling as graphs, 49 many-to-one and many-to-many relationships, 33-36 many-to-one relationships, 34 MapReduce (batch processing), 390, 399-400 accessing external services within job, 404, 412 comparison to distributed databases designing for frequent faults, 417 diversity of processing models, 416 diversity of storage, 415 Index | 575 comparison to stream processing, 464 comparison to Unix, 413-414 disadvantages and limitations of, 419 fault tolerance, 406, 414, 422 higher-level tools, 403, 426 implementation in Hadoop, 400-403 the shuffle, 402 implementation in MongoDB, 46-48 machine learning, 428 map-side processing, 408-410 broadcast hash joins, 409 merge joins, 410 partitioned hash joins, 409 mapper and reducer functions, 399 materialization of intermediate state, 419-423 output of batch workflows, 411-413 building search indexes, 411 key-value stores, 412 reduce-side processing, 403-408 analysis of user activity events (exam‐ ple), 404 grouping records by same key, 406 handling skew, 407 sort-merge joins, 405 workflows, 402 marshalling (see encoding) massively parallel processing (MPP), 216 comparison to composing storage technolo‐ gies, 502 comparison to Hadoop, 414-418, 428 master-master replication (see multi-leader replication) master-slave replication (see leader-based repli‐ cation) materialization, 556 aggregate values, 101 conflicts, 251 intermediate state (batch processing), 420-423 materialized views, 101 as derived data, 386, 499-504 maintaining, using stream processing, 467, 475 Maven (Java build tool), 428 Maxwell (change data capture), 455 mean, 14 media monitoring, 467 median, 14 576 | Index meeting room booking (example), 249, 259, 521 membership services, 372 Memcached (caching server), 4, 89 memory in-memory databases, 88 durability, 227 serial transaction execution, 253 in-memory representation of data, 112 random bit-flips in, 529 use by indexes, 72, 77 memory barrier (CPU instruction), 338 MemSQL (database) in-memory storage, 89 read committed isolation, 236 memtable (in LSM-trees), 78 Mercurial (version control system), 463 merge joins, MapReduce map-side, 410 mergeable persistent data structures, 174 merging sorted files, 76, 402, 405 Merkle trees, 532 Mesos (cluster manager), 418, 506 message brokers (see messaging systems) message-passing, 136-139 advantages over direct RPC, 137 distributed actor frameworks, 138 evolvability, 138 MessagePack (encoding format), 116 messages exactly-once semantics, 360, 476 loss of, 442 using total order broadcast, 348 messaging systems, 440-451 (see also streams) backpressure, buffering, or dropping mes‐ sages, 441 brokerless messaging, 442 event logs, 446-451 comparison to traditional messaging, 448, 451 consumer offsets, 449 replaying old messages, 451, 496, 498 slow consumers, 450 message brokers, 443-446 acknowledgements and redelivery, 445 comparison to event logs, 448, 451 multiple consumers of same topic, 444 reliability, 442 uniqueness in log-based messaging, 522 Meteor (web framework), 456 microbatching, 477, 495 microservices, 132 (see also services) causal dependencies across services, 493 loose coupling, 502 relation to batch/stream processors, 389, 508 Microsoft Azure Service Bus (messaging), 444 Azure Storage, 155, 398 Azure Stream Analytics, 466 DCOM (Distributed Component Object Model), 134 MSDTC (transaction coordinator), 356 Orleans (see Orleans) SQL Server (see SQL Server) migrating (rewriting) data, 40, 130, 461, 497 modulus operator (%), 210 MongoDB (database) aggregation pipeline, 48 atomic operations, 243 BSON, 41 document data model, 31 hash partitioning (sharding), 203-204 key-range partitioning, 202 lack of join support, 34, 42 leader-based replication, 153 MapReduce support, 46, 400 oplog parsing, 455, 456 partition splitting, 212 request routing, 216 secondary indexes, 207 Mongoriver (change data capture), 455 monitoring, 10, 19 monotonic clocks, 288 monotonic reads, 164 MPP (see massively parallel processing) MSMQ (messaging), 361 multi-column indexes, 87 multi-leader replication, 168-177 (see also replication) handling write conflicts, 171 conflict avoidance, 172 converging toward a consistent state, 172 custom conflict resolution logic, 173 determining what is a conflict, 174 linearizability, lack of, 333 replication topologies, 175-177 use cases, 168 clients with offline operation, 170 collaborative editing, 170 multi-datacenter replication, 168, 335 multi-object transactions, 228 need for, 231 Multi-Paxos (total order broadcast), 367 multi-table index cluster tables (Oracle), 41 multi-tenancy, 284 multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), 239, 266 detecting stale MVCC reads, 263 indexes and snapshot isolation, 241 mutual exclusion, 261 (see also locks) MySQL (database) binlog coordinates, 156 binlog parsing for change data capture, 455 circular replication topology, 175 consistent snapshots, 156 distributed transaction support, 361 InnoDB storage engine (see InnoDB) JSON support, 30, 42 leader-based replication, 153 performance of XA transactions, 360 row-based replication, 160 schema changes in, 40 snapshot isolation support, 242 (see also InnoDB) statement-based replication, 159 Tungsten Replicator (multi-leader replica‐ tion), 170 conflict detection, 177 N nanomsg (messaging library), 442 Narayana (transaction coordinator), 356 NATS (messaging), 137 near-real-time (nearline) processing, 390 (see also stream processing) Neo4j (database) Cypher query language, 52 graph data model, 50 Nephele (dataflow engine), 421 netcat (Unix tool), 397 Netflix Chaos Monkey, 7, 280 Network Attached Storage (NAS), 146, 398 network model, 36 Index | 577 graph databases versus, 60 imperative query APIs, 46 Network Time Protocol (see NTP) networks congestion and queueing, 282 datacenter network topologies, 276 faults (see faults) linearizability and network delays, 338 network partitions, 279, 337 timeouts and unbounded delays, 281 next-key locking, 260 nodes (in graphs) (see vertices) nodes (processes), 556 handling outages in leader-based replica‐ tion, 156 system models for failure, 307 noisy neighbors, 284 nonblocking atomic commit, 359 nondeterministic operations accidental nondeterminism, 423 partial failures in distributed systems, 275 nonfunctional requirements, 22 nonrepeatable reads, 238 (see also read skew) normalization (data representation), 33, 556 executing joins, 39, 42, 403 foreign key references, 231 in systems of record, 386 versus denormalization, 462 NoSQL, 29, 499 transactions and, 223 Notation3 (N3), 56 npm (package manager), 428 NTP (Network Time Protocol), 287 accuracy, 289, 293 adjustments to monotonic clocks, 289 multiple server addresses, 306 numbers, in XML and JSON encodings, 114 O object-relational mapping (ORM) frameworks, 30 error handling and aborted transactions, 232 unsafe read-modify-write cycle code, 244 object-relational mismatch, 29 observer pattern, 506 offline systems, 390 (see also batch processing) 578 | Index stateful, offline-capable clients, 170, 511 offline-first applications, 511 offsets consumer offsets in partitioned logs, 449 messages in partitioned logs, 447 OLAP (online analytic processing), 91, 556 data cubes, 102 OLTP (online transaction processing), 90, 556 analytics queries versus, 411 workload characteristics, 253 one-to-many relationships, 30 JSON representation, 32 online systems, 389 (see also services) Oozie (workflow scheduler), 402 OpenAPI (service definition format), 133 OpenStack Nova (cloud infrastructure) use of ZooKeeper, 370 Swift (object storage), 398 operability, 19 operating systems versus databases, 499 operation identifiers, 518, 522 operational transformation, 174 operators, 421 flow of data between, 424 in stream processing, 464 optimistic concurrency control, 261 Oracle (database) distributed transaction support, 361 GoldenGate (change data capture), 161, 170, 455 lack of serializability, 226 leader-based replication, 153 multi-table index cluster tables, 41 not preventing write skew, 248 partitioned indexes, 209 PL/SQL language, 255 preventing lost updates, 245 read committed isolation, 236 Real Application Clusters (RAC), 330 recursive query support, 54 snapshot isolation support, 239, 242 TimesTen (in-memory database), 89 WAL-based replication, 160 XML support, 30 ordering, 339-352 by sequence numbers, 343-348 causal ordering, 339-343 partial order, 341 limits of total ordering, 493 total order broadcast, 348-352 Orleans (actor framework), 139 outliers (response time), 14 Oz (programming language), 504 P package managers, 428, 505 packet switching, 285 packets corruption of, 306 sending via UDP, 442 PageRank (algorithm), 49, 424 paging (see virtual memory) ParAccel (database), 93 parallel databases (see massively parallel pro‐ cessing) parallel execution of graph analysis algorithms, 426 queries in MPP databases, 216 Parquet (data format), 96, 131 (see also column-oriented storage) use in Hadoop, 414 partial failures, 275, 310 limping, 311 partial order, 341 partitioning, 199-218, 556 and replication, 200 in batch processing, 429 multi-partition operations, 514 enforcing constraints, 522 secondary index maintenance, 495 of key-value data, 201-205 by key range, 202 skew and hot spots, 205 rebalancing partitions, 209-214 automatic or manual rebalancing, 213 problems with hash mod N, 210 using dynamic partitioning, 212 using fixed number of partitions, 210 using N partitions per node, 212 replication and, 147 request routing, 214-216 secondary indexes, 206-209 document-based partitioning, 206 term-based partitioning, 208 serial execution of transactions and, 255 Paxos (consensus algorithm), 366 ballot number, 368 Multi-Paxos (total order broadcast), 367 percentiles, 14, 556 calculating efficiently, 16 importance of high percentiles, 16 use in service level agreements (SLAs), 15 Percona XtraBackup (MySQL tool), 156 performance describing, 13 of distributed transactions, 360 of in-memory databases, 89 of linearizability, 338 of multi-leader replication, 169 perpetual inconsistency, 525 pessimistic concurrency control, 261 phantoms (transaction isolation), 250 materializing conflicts, 251 preventing, in serializability, 259 physical clocks (see clocks) pickle (Python), 113 Pig (dataflow language), 419, 427 replicated joins, 409 skewed joins, 407 workflows, 403 Pinball (workflow scheduler), 402 pipelined execution, 423 in Unix, 394 point in time, 287 polyglot persistence, 29 polystores, 501 PostgreSQL (database) BDR (multi-leader replication), 170 causal ordering of writes, 177 Bottled Water (change data capture), 455 Bucardo (trigger-based replication), 161, 173 distributed transaction support, 361 foreign data wrappers, 501 full text search support, 490 leader-based replication, 153 log sequence number, 156 MVCC implementation, 239, 241 PL/pgSQL language, 255 PostGIS geospatial indexes, 87 preventing lost updates, 245 preventing write skew, 248, 261 read committed isolation, 236 recursive query support, 54 representing graphs, 51 Index | 579 serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 261 snapshot isolation support, 239, 242 WAL-based replication, 160 XML and JSON support, 30, 42 pre-splitting, 212 Precision Time Protocol (PTP), 290 predicate locks, 259 predictive analytics, 533-536 amplifying bias, 534 ethics of (see ethics) feedback loops, 536 preemption of datacenter resources, 418 of threads, 298 Pregel processing model, 425 primary keys, 85, 556 compound primary key (Cassandra), 204 primary-secondary replication (see leaderbased replication) privacy, 536-543 consent and freedom of choice, 538 data as assets and power, 540 deleting data, 463 ethical considerations (see ethics) legislation and self-regulation, 542 meaning of, 539 surveillance, 537 tracking behavioral data, 536 probabilistic algorithms, 16, 466 process pauses, 295-299 processing time (of events), 469 producers (message streams), 440 programming languages dataflow languages, 504 for stored procedures, 255 functional reactive programming (FRP), 504 logic programming, 504 Prolog (language), 61 (see also Datalog) promises (asynchronous operations), 135 property graphs, 50 Cypher query language, 52 Protocol Buffers (data format), 117-121 field tags and schema evolution, 120 provenance of data, 531 publish/subscribe model, 441 publishers (message streams), 440 punch card tabulating machines, 390 580 | Index pure functions, 48 putting computation near data, 400 Q Qpid (messaging), 444 quality of service (QoS), 285 Quantcast File System (distributed filesystem), 398 query languages, 42-48 aggregation pipeline, 48 CSS and XSL, 44 Cypher, 52 Datalog, 60 Juttle, 504 MapReduce querying, 46-48 recursive SQL queries, 53 relational algebra and SQL, 42 SPARQL, 59 query optimizers, 37, 427 queueing delays (networks), 282 head-of-line blocking, 15 latency and response time, 14 queues (messaging), 137 quorums, 179-182, 556 for leaderless replication, 179 in consensus algorithms, 368 limitations of consistency, 181-183, 334 making decisions in distributed systems, 301 monitoring staleness, 182 multi-datacenter replication, 184 relying on durability, 309 sloppy quorums and hinted handoff, 183 R R-trees (indexes), 87 RabbitMQ (messaging), 137, 444 leader-based replication, 153 race conditions, 225 (see also concurrency) avoiding with linearizability, 331 caused by dual writes, 452 dirty writes, 235 in counter increments, 235 lost updates, 242-246 preventing with event logs, 462, 507 preventing with serializable isolation, 252 write skew, 246-251 Raft (consensus algorithm), 366 sensitivity to network problems, 369 term number, 368 use in etcd, 353 RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks), 7, 398 railways, schema migration on, 496 RAMCloud (in-memory storage), 89 ranking algorithms, 424 RDF (Resource Description Framework), 57 querying with SPARQL, 59 RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access), 276 read committed isolation level, 234-237 implementing, 236 multi-version concurrency control (MVCC), 239 no dirty reads, 234 no dirty writes, 235 read path (derived data), 509 read repair (leaderless replication), 178 for linearizability, 335 read replicas (see leader-based replication) read skew (transaction isolation), 238, 266 as violation of causality, 340 read-after-write consistency, 163, 524 cross-device, 164 read-modify-write cycle, 243 read-scaling architecture, 161 reads as events, 513 real-time collaborative editing, 170 near-real-time processing, 390 (see also stream processing) publish/subscribe dataflow, 513 response time guarantees, 298 time-of-day clocks, 288 rebalancing partitions, 209-214, 556 (see also partitioning) automatic or manual rebalancing, 213 dynamic partitioning, 212 fixed number of partitions, 210 fixed number of partitions per node, 212 problems with hash mod N, 210 recency guarantee, 324 recommendation engines batch process outputs, 412 batch workflows, 403, 420 iterative processing, 424 statistical and numerical algorithms, 428 records, 399 events in stream processing, 440 recursive common table expressions (SQL), 54 redelivery (messaging), 445 Redis (database) atomic operations, 243 durability, 89 Lua scripting, 255 single-threaded execution, 253 usage example, 4 redundancy hardware components, 7 of derived data, 386 (see also derived data) Reed–Solomon codes (error correction), 398 refactoring, 22 (see also evolvability) regions (partitioning), 199 register (data structure), 325 relational data model, 28-42 comparison to document model, 38-42 graph queries in SQL, 53 in-memory databases with, 89 many-to-one and many-to-many relation‐ ships, 33 multi-object transactions, need for, 231 NoSQL as alternative to, 29 object-relational mismatch, 29 relational algebra and SQL, 42 versus document model convergence of models, 41 data locality, 41 relational databases eventual consistency, 162 history, 28 leader-based replication, 153 logical logs, 160 philosophy compared to Unix, 499, 501 schema changes, 40, 111, 130 statement-based replication, 158 use of B-tree indexes, 80 relationships (see edges) reliability, 6-10, 489 building a reliable system from unreliable components, 276 defined, 6, 22 hardware faults, 7 human errors, 9 importance of, 10 of messaging systems, 442 Index | 581 software errors, 8 Remote Method Invocation (Java RMI), 134 remote procedure calls (RPCs), 134-136 (see also services) based on futures, 135 data encoding and evolution, 136 issues with, 134 using Avro, 126, 135 using Thrift, 135 versus message brokers, 137 repeatable reads (transaction isolation), 242 replicas, 152 replication, 151-193, 556 and durability, 227 chain replication, 155 conflict resolution and, 246 consistency properties, 161-167 consistent prefix reads, 165 monotonic reads, 164 reading your own writes, 162 in distributed filesystems, 398 leaderless, 177-191 detecting concurrent writes, 184-191 limitations of quorum consistency, 181-183, 334 sloppy quorums and hinted handoff, 183 monitoring staleness, 182 multi-leader, 168-177 across multiple datacenters, 168, 335 handling write conflicts, 171-175 replication topologies, 175-177 partitioning and, 147, 200 reasons for using, 145, 151 single-leader, 152-161 failover, 157 implementation of replication logs, 158-161 relation to consensus, 367 setting up new followers, 155 synchronous versus asynchronous, 153-155 state machine replication, 349, 452 using erasure coding, 398 with heterogeneous data systems, 453 replication logs (see logs) reprocessing data, 496, 498 (see also evolvability) from log-based messaging, 451 request routing, 214-216 582 | Index approaches to, 214 parallel query execution, 216 resilient systems, 6 (see also fault tolerance) response time as performance metric for services, 13, 389 guarantees on, 298 latency versus, 14 mean and percentiles, 14 user experience, 15 responsibility and accountability, 535 REST (Representational State Transfer), 133 (see also services) RethinkDB (database) document data model, 31 dynamic partitioning, 212 join support, 34, 42 key-range partitioning, 202 leader-based replication, 153 subscribing to changes, 456 Riak (database) Bitcask storage engine, 72 CRDTs, 174, 191 dotted version vectors, 191 gossip protocol, 216 hash partitioning, 203-204, 211 last-write-wins conflict resolution, 186 leaderless replication, 177 LevelDB storage engine, 78 linearizability, lack of, 335 multi-datacenter support, 184 preventing lost updates across replicas, 246 rebalancing, 213 search feature, 209 secondary indexes, 207 siblings (concurrently written values), 190 sloppy quorums, 184 ring buffers, 450 Ripple (cryptocurrency), 532 rockets, 10, 36, 305 RocksDB (storage engine), 78 leveled compaction, 79 rollbacks (transactions), 222 rolling upgrades, 8, 112 routing (see request routing) row-oriented storage, 96 row-based replication, 160 rowhammer (memory corruption), 529 RPCs (see remote procedure calls) Rubygems (package manager), 428 rules (Datalog), 61 S safety and liveness properties, 308 in consensus algorithms, 366 in transactions, 222 sagas (see compensating transactions) Samza (stream processor), 466, 467 fault tolerance, 479 streaming SQL support, 466 sandboxes, 9 SAP HANA (database), 93 scalability, 10-18, 489 approaches for coping with load, 17 defined, 22 describing load, 11 describing performance, 13 partitioning and, 199 replication and, 161 scaling up versus scaling out, 146 scaling out, 17, 146 (see also shared-nothing architecture) scaling up, 17, 146 scatter/gather approach, querying partitioned databases, 207 SCD (slowly changing dimension), 476 schema-on-read, 39 comparison to evolvable schema, 128 in distributed filesystems, 415 schema-on-write, 39 schemaless databases (see schema-on-read) schemas, 557 Avro, 122-127 reader determining writer’s schema, 125 schema evolution, 123 dynamically generated, 126 evolution of, 496 affecting application code, 111 compatibility checking, 126 in databases, 129-131 in message-passing, 138 in service calls, 136 flexibility in document model, 39 for analytics, 93-95 for JSON and XML, 115 merits of, 127 schema migration on railways, 496 Thrift and Protocol Buffers, 117-121 schema evolution, 120 traditional approach to design, fallacy in, 462 searches building search indexes in batch processes, 411 k-nearest neighbors, 429 on streams, 467 partitioned secondary indexes, 206 secondaries (see leader-based replication) secondary indexes, 85, 557 partitioning, 206-209, 217 document-partitioned, 206 index maintenance, 495 term-partitioned, 208 problems with dual writes, 452, 491 updating, transaction isolation and, 231 secondary sorts, 405 sed (Unix tool), 392 self-describing files, 127 self-joins, 480 self-validating systems, 530 semantic web, 57 semi-synchronous replication, 154 sequence number ordering, 343-348 generators, 294, 344 insufficiency for enforcing constraints, 347 Lamport timestamps, 345 use of timestamps, 291, 295, 345 sequential consistency, 351 serializability, 225, 233, 251-266, 557 linearizability versus, 329 pessimistic versus optimistic concurrency control, 261 serial execution, 252-256 partitioning, 255 using stored procedures, 253, 349 serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 261-266 detecting stale MVCC reads, 263 detecting writes that affect prior reads, 264 distributed execution, 265, 364 performance of SSI, 265 preventing write skew, 262-265 two-phase locking (2PL), 257-261 index-range locks, 260 performance, 258 Serializable (Java), 113 Index | 583 serialization, 113 (see also encoding) service discovery, 135, 214, 372 using DNS, 216, 372 service level agreements (SLAs), 15 service-oriented architecture (SOA), 132 (see also services) services, 131-136 microservices, 132 causal dependencies across services, 493 loose coupling, 502 relation to batch/stream processors, 389, 508 remote procedure calls (RPCs), 134-136 issues with, 134 similarity to databases, 132 web services, 132, 135 session windows (stream processing), 472 (see also windows) sessionization, 407 sharding (see partitioning) shared mode (locks), 258 shared-disk architecture, 146, 398 shared-memory architecture, 146 shared-nothing architecture, 17, 146-147, 557 (see also replication) distributed filesystems, 398 (see also distributed filesystems) partitioning, 199 use of network, 277 sharks biting undersea cables, 279 counting (example), 46-48 finding (example), 42 website about (example), 44 shredding (in relational model), 38 siblings (concurrent values), 190, 246 (see also conflicts) similarity search edit distance, 88 genome data, 63 k-nearest neighbors, 429 single-leader replication (see leader-based rep‐ lication) single-threaded execution, 243, 252 in batch processing, 406, 421, 426 in stream processing, 448, 463, 522 size-tiered compaction, 79 skew, 557 584 | Index clock skew, 291-294, 334 in transaction isolation read skew, 238, 266 write skew, 246-251, 262-265 (see also write skew) meanings of, 238 unbalanced workload, 201 compensating for, 205 due to celebrities, 205 for time-series data, 203 in batch processing, 407 slaves (see leader-based replication) sliding windows (stream processing), 472 (see also windows) sloppy quorums, 183 (see also quorums) lack of linearizability, 334 slowly changing dimension (data warehouses), 476 smearing (leap seconds adjustments), 290 snapshots (databases) causal consistency, 340 computing derived data, 500 in change data capture, 455 serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 261-266, 329 setting up a new replica, 156 snapshot isolation and repeatable read, 237-242 implementing with MVCC, 239 indexes and MVCC, 241 visibility rules, 240 synchronized clocks for global snapshots, 294 snowflake schemas, 95 SOAP, 133 (see also services) evolvability, 136 software bugs, 8 maintaining integrity, 529 solid state drives (SSDs) access patterns, 84 detecting corruption, 519, 530 faults in, 227 sequential write throughput, 75 Solr (search server) building indexes in batch processes, 411 document-partitioned indexes, 207 request routing, 216 usage example, 4 use of Lucene, 79 sort (Unix tool), 392, 394, 395 sort-merge joins (MapReduce), 405 Sorted String Tables (see SSTables) sorting sort order in column storage, 99 source of truth (see systems of record) Spanner (database) data locality, 41 snapshot isolation using clocks, 295 TrueTime API, 294 Spark (processing framework), 421-423 bytecode generation, 428 dataflow APIs, 427 fault tolerance, 422 for data warehouses, 93 GraphX API (graph processing), 425 machine learning, 428 query optimizer, 427 Spark Streaming, 466 microbatching, 477 stream processing on top of batch process‐ ing, 495 SPARQL (query language), 59 spatial algorithms, 429 split brain, 158, 557 in consensus algorithms, 352, 367 preventing, 322, 333 using fencing tokens to avoid, 302-304 spreadsheets, dataflow programming capabili‐ ties, 504 SQL (Structured Query Language), 21, 28, 43 advantages and limitations of, 416 distributed query execution, 48 graph queries in, 53 isolation levels standard, issues with, 242 query execution on Hadoop, 416 résumé (example), 30 SQL injection vulnerability, 305 SQL on Hadoop, 93 statement-based replication, 158 stored procedures, 255 SQL Server (database) data warehousing support, 93 distributed transaction support, 361 leader-based replication, 153 preventing lost updates, 245 preventing write skew, 248, 257 read committed isolation, 236 recursive query support, 54 serializable isolation, 257 snapshot isolation support, 239 T-SQL language, 255 XML support, 30 SQLstream (stream analytics), 466 SSDs (see solid state drives) SSTables (storage format), 76-79 advantages over hash indexes, 76 concatenated index, 204 constructing and maintaining, 78 making LSM-Tree from, 78 staleness (old data), 162 cross-channel timing dependencies, 331 in leaderless databases, 178 in multi-version concurrency control, 263 monitoring for, 182 of client state, 512 versus linearizability, 324 versus timeliness, 524 standbys (see leader-based replication) star replication topologies, 175 star schemas, 93-95 similarity to event sourcing, 458 Star Wars analogy (event time versus process‐ ing time), 469 state derived from log of immutable events, 459 deriving current state from the event log, 458 interplay between state changes and appli‐ cation code, 507 maintaining derived state, 495 maintenance by stream processor in streamstream joins, 473 observing derived state, 509-515 rebuilding after stream processor failure, 478 separation of application code and, 505 state machine replication, 349, 452 statement-based replication, 158 statically typed languages analogy to schema-on-write, 40 code generation and, 127 statistical and numerical algorithms, 428 StatsD (metrics aggregator), 442 stdin, stdout, 395, 396 Stellar (cryptocurrency), 532 Index | 585 stock market feeds, 442 STONITH (Shoot The Other Node In The Head), 158 stop-the-world (see garbage collection) storage composing data storage technologies, 499-504 diversity of, in MapReduce, 415 Storage Area Network (SAN), 146, 398 storage engines, 69-104 column-oriented, 95-101 column compression, 97-99 defined, 96 distinction between column families and, 99 Parquet, 96, 131 sort order in, 99-100 writing to, 101 comparing requirements for transaction processing and analytics, 90-96 in-memory storage, 88 durability, 227 row-oriented, 70-90 B-trees, 79-83 comparing B-trees and LSM-trees, 83-85 defined, 96 log-structured, 72-79 stored procedures, 161, 253-255, 557 and total order broadcast, 349 pros and cons of, 255 similarity to stream processors, 505 Storm (stream processor), 466 distributed RPC, 468, 514 Trident state handling, 478 straggler events, 470, 498 stream processing, 464-481, 557 accessing external services within job, 474, 477, 478, 517 combining with batch processing lambda architecture, 497 unifying technologies, 498 comparison to batch processing, 464 complex event processing (CEP), 465 fault tolerance, 476-479 atomic commit, 477 idempotence, 478 microbatching and checkpointing, 477 rebuilding state after a failure, 478 for data integration, 494-498 586 | Index maintaining derived state, 495 maintenance of materialized views, 467 messaging systems (see messaging systems) reasoning about time, 468-472 event time versus processing time, 469, 477, 498 knowing when window is ready, 470 types of windows, 472 relation to databases (see streams) relation to services, 508 search on streams, 467 single-threaded execution, 448, 463 stream analytics, 466 stream joins, 472-476 stream-stream join, 473 stream-table join, 473 table-table join, 474 time-dependence of, 475 streams, 440-451 end-to-end, pushing events to clients, 512 messaging systems (see messaging systems) processing (see stream processing) relation to databases, 451-464 (see also changelogs) API support for change streams, 456 change data capture, 454-457 derivative of state by time, 460 event sourcing, 457-459 keeping systems in sync, 452-453 philosophy of immutable events, 459-464 topics, 440 strict serializability, 329 strong consistency (see linearizability) strong one-copy serializability, 329 subjects, predicates, and objects (in triplestores), 55 subscribers (message streams), 440 (see also consumers) supercomputers, 275 surveillance, 537 (see also privacy) Swagger (service definition format), 133 swapping to disk (see virtual memory) synchronous networks, 285, 557 comparison to asynchronous networks, 284 formal model, 307 synchronous replication, 154, 557 chain replication, 155 conflict detection, 172 system models, 300, 306-310 assumptions in, 528 correctness of algorithms, 308 mapping to the real world, 309 safety and liveness, 308 systems of record, 386, 557 change data capture, 454, 491 treating event log as, 460 systems thinking, 536 T t-digest (algorithm), 16 table-table joins, 474 Tableau (data visualization software), 416 tail (Unix tool), 447 tail vertex (property graphs), 51 Tajo (query engine), 93 Tandem NonStop SQL (database), 200 TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), 277 comparison to circuit switching, 285 comparison to UDP, 283 connection failures, 280 flow control, 282, 441 packet checksums, 306, 519, 529 reliability and duplicate suppression, 517 retransmission timeouts, 284 use for transaction sessions, 229 telemetry (see monitoring) Teradata (database), 93, 200 term-partitioned indexes, 208, 217 termination (consensus), 365 Terrapin (database), 413 Tez (dataflow engine), 421-423 fault tolerance, 422 support by higher-level tools, 427 thrashing (out of memory), 297 threads (concurrency) actor model, 138, 468 (see also message-passing) atomic operations, 223 background threads, 73, 85 execution pauses, 286, 296-298 memory barriers, 338 preemption, 298 single (see single-threaded execution) three-phase commit, 359 Thrift (data format), 117-121 BinaryProtocol, 118 CompactProtocol, 119 field tags and schema evolution, 120 throughput, 13, 390 TIBCO, 137 Enterprise Message Service, 444 StreamBase (stream analytics), 466 time concurrency and, 187 cross-channel timing dependencies, 331 in distributed systems, 287-299 (see also clocks) clock synchronization and accuracy, 289 relying on synchronized clocks, 291-295 process pauses, 295-299 reasoning about, in stream processors, 468-472 event time versus processing time, 469, 477, 498 knowing when window is ready, 470 timestamp of events, 471 types of windows, 472 system models for distributed systems, 307 time-dependence in stream joins, 475 time-of-day clocks, 288 timeliness, 524 coordination-avoiding data systems, 528 correctness of dataflow systems, 525 timeouts, 279, 557 dynamic configuration of, 284 for failover, 158 length of, 281 timestamps, 343 assigning to events in stream processing, 471 for read-after-write consistency, 163 for transaction ordering, 295 insufficiency for enforcing constraints, 347 key range partitioning by, 203 Lamport, 345 logical, 494 ordering events, 291, 345 Titan (database), 50 tombstones, 74, 191, 456 topics (messaging), 137, 440 total order, 341, 557 limits of, 493 sequence numbers or timestamps, 344 total order broadcast, 348-352, 493, 522 consensus algorithms and, 366-368 Index | 587 implementation in ZooKeeper and etcd, 370 implementing with linearizable storage, 351 using, 349 using to implement linearizable storage, 350 tracking behavioral data, 536 (see also privacy) transaction coordinator (see coordinator) transaction manager (see coordinator) transaction processing, 28, 90-95 comparison to analytics, 91 comparison to data warehousing, 93 transactions, 221-267, 558 ACID properties of, 223 atomicity, 223 consistency, 224 durability, 226 isolation, 225 compensating (see compensating transac‐ tions) concept of, 222 distributed transactions, 352-364 avoiding, 492, 502, 521-528 failure amplification, 364, 495 in doubt/uncertain status, 358, 362 two-phase commit, 354-359 use of, 360-361 XA transactions, 361-364 OLTP versus analytics queries, 411 purpose of, 222 serializability, 251-266 actual serial execution, 252-256 pessimistic versus optimistic concur‐ rency control, 261 serializable snapshot isolation (SSI), 261-266 two-phase locking (2PL), 257-261 single-object and multi-object, 228-232 handling errors and aborts, 231 need for multi-object transactions, 231 single-object writes, 230 snapshot isolation (see snapshots) weak isolation levels, 233-251 preventing lost updates, 242-246 read committed, 234-238 transitive closure (graph algorithm), 424 trie (data structure), 88 triggers (databases), 161, 441 implementing change data capture, 455 implementing replication, 161 588 | Index triple-stores, 55-59 SPARQL query language, 59 tumbling windows (stream processing), 472 (see also windows) in microbatching, 477 tuple spaces (programming model), 507 Turtle (RDF data format), 56 Twitter constructing home timelines (example), 11, 462, 474, 511 DistributedLog (event log), 448 Finagle (RPC framework), 135 Snowflake (sequence number generator), 294 Summingbird (processing library), 497 two-phase commit (2PC), 353, 355-359, 558 confusion with two-phase locking, 356 coordinator failure, 358 coordinator recovery, 363 how it works, 357 issues in practice, 363 performance cost, 360 transactions holding locks, 362 two-phase locking (2PL), 257-261, 329, 558 confusion with two-phase commit, 356 index-range locks, 260 performance of, 258 type checking, dynamic versus static, 40 U UDP (User Datagram Protocol) comparison to TCP, 283 multicast, 442 unbounded datasets, 439, 558 (see also streams) unbounded delays, 558 in networks, 282 process pauses, 296 unbundling databases, 499-515 composing data storage technologies, 499-504 federation versus unbundling, 501 need for high-level language, 503 designing applications around dataflow, 504-509 observing derived state, 509-515 materialized views and caching, 510 multi-partition data processing, 514 pushing state changes to clients, 512 uncertain (transaction status) (see in doubt) uniform consensus, 365 (see also consensus) uniform interfaces, 395 union type (in Avro), 125 uniq (Unix tool), 392 uniqueness constraints asynchronously checked, 526 requiring consensus, 521 requiring linearizability, 330 uniqueness in log-based messaging, 522 Unix philosophy, 394-397 command-line batch processing, 391-394 Unix pipes versus dataflow engines, 423 comparison to Hadoop, 413-414 comparison to relational databases, 499, 501 comparison to stream processing, 464 composability and uniform interfaces, 395 loose coupling, 396 pipes, 394 relation to Hadoop, 499 UPDATE statement (SQL), 40 updates preventing lost updates, 242-246 atomic write operations, 243 automatically detecting lost updates, 245 compare-and-set operations, 245 conflict resolution and replication, 246 using explicit locking, 244 preventing write skew, 246-251 V validity (consensus), 365 vBuckets (partitioning), 199 vector clocks, 191 (see also version vectors) vectorized processing, 99, 428 verification, 528-533 avoiding blind trust, 530 culture of, 530 designing for auditability, 531 end-to-end integrity checks, 531 tools for auditable data systems, 532 version control systems, reliance on immutable data, 463 version vectors, 177, 191 capturing causal dependencies, 343 versus vector clocks, 191 Vertica (database), 93 handling writes, 101 replicas using different sort orders, 100 vertical scaling (see scaling up) vertices (in graphs), 49 property graph model, 50 Viewstamped Replication (consensus algo‐ rithm), 366 view number, 368 virtual machines, 146 (see also cloud computing) context switches, 297 network performance, 282 noisy neighbors, 284 reliability in cloud services, 8 virtualized clocks in, 290 virtual memory process pauses due to page faults, 14, 297 versus memory management by databases, 89 VisiCalc (spreadsheets), 504 vnodes (partitioning), 199 Voice over IP (VoIP), 283 Voldemort (database) building read-only stores in batch processes, 413 hash partitioning, 203-204, 211 leaderless replication, 177 multi-datacenter support, 184 rebalancing, 213 reliance on read repair, 179 sloppy quorums, 184 VoltDB (database) cross-partition serializability, 256 deterministic stored procedures, 255 in-memory storage, 89 output streams, 456 secondary indexes, 207 serial execution of transactions, 253 statement-based replication, 159, 479 transactions in stream processing, 477 W WAL (write-ahead log), 82 web services (see services) Web Services Description Language (WSDL), 133 webhooks, 443 webMethods (messaging), 137 WebSocket (protocol), 512 Index | 589 windows (stream processing), 466, 468-472 infinite windows for changelogs, 467, 474 knowing when all events have arrived, 470 stream joins within a window, 473 types of windows, 472 winners (conflict resolution), 173 WITH RECURSIVE syntax (SQL), 54 workflows (MapReduce), 402 outputs, 411-414 key-value stores, 412 search indexes, 411 with map-side joins, 410 working set, 393 write amplification, 84 write path (derived data), 509 write skew (transaction isolation), 246-251 characterizing, 246-251, 262 examples of, 247, 249 materializing conflicts, 251 occurrence in practice, 529 phantoms, 250 preventing in snapshot isolation, 262-265 in two-phase locking, 259-261 options for, 248 write-ahead log (WAL), 82, 159 writes (database) atomic write operations, 243 detecting writes affecting prior reads, 264 preventing dirty writes with read commit‐ ted, 235 WS-* framework, 133 (see also services) WS-AtomicTransaction (2PC), 355 590 | Index X XA transactions, 355, 361-364 heuristic decisions, 363 limitations of, 363 xargs (Unix tool), 392, 396 XML binary variants, 115 encoding RDF data, 57 for application data, issues with, 114 in relational databases, 30, 41 XSL/XPath, 45 Y Yahoo!

pages: 561 words: 157,589

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us by Tim O'Reilly

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, AlphaGo, Alvin Roth, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, book value, Bretton Woods, Brewster Kahle, British Empire, business process, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, carbon tax, Carl Icahn, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer vision, congestion pricing, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, Danny Hillis, data acquisition, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Dennis Ritchie, deskilling, DevOps, Didi Chuxing, digital capitalism, disinformation, do well by doing good, Donald Davies, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, George Akerlof, gig economy, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, gravity well, greed is good, Greyball, Guido van Rossum, High speed trading, hiring and firing, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyperloop, income inequality, independent contractor, index fund, informal economy, information asymmetry, Internet Archive, Internet of things, invention of movable type, invisible hand, iterative process, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, jitney, job automation, job satisfaction, John Bogle, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kaizen: continuous improvement, Ken Thompson, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Lao Tzu, Larry Ellison, Larry Wall, Lean Startup, Leonard Kleinrock, Lyft, machine readable, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, Marshall McLuhan, McMansion, microbiome, microservices, minimum viable product, mortgage tax deduction, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Oculus Rift, OpenAI, OSI model, Overton Window, packet switching, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Buchheit, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Robert Metcalfe, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Sam Altman, school choice, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, social web, software as a service, software patent, spectrum auction, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, strong AI, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, telepresence, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the map is not the territory, The Nature of the Firm, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Fadell, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, transcontinental railway, transportation-network company, Travis Kalanick, trickle-down economics, two-pizza team, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, VA Linux, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, web application, Whole Earth Catalog, winner-take-all economy, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, yellow journalism, zero-sum game, Zipcar

Instead they stored them on the hard drives of millions of users across the Internet. Andy Oram, one of the editors at my publishing company, made the point to me that the architectural implications of these programs were more important than their business implications. (This is a history that has repeated itself fifteen years later with bitcoin and the blockchain.) This was a kind of decentralization beyond even the World Wide Web. It was becoming clear that the future demanded even more extreme rethinking of what the Internet could become as a platform for next-generation software applications and content. Nor was this future limited to file sharing.

…

An equivalent framework for privacy would be very helpful. During the Obama administration, there was a concerted effort toward what is called “Smart Disclosure,” defined as “the timely release of complex information and data in standardized, machine readable formats in ways that enable consumers to make informed decisions.” New technology like the blockchain can also encode contracts and rules, creating new kinds of “smart contracts.” A smart contracts approach to data privacy could be very powerful. Rather than using brute force “Do Not Track” tools in their browser, users could provide nuanced limits to the use of their data. Unlike paper disclosures, digital privacy contracts could be enforceable and trackable.

…

See also http://www.davidbrin.com/transparentsociety.html. 177 “is generally bad”: Bruce Schneier, “The Myth of the ‘Transparent Society,’” Bruce Schneier on Security, March 6, 2008, https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/03/the_myth_of_the _tran.html. 178 “we all know where the creep factor comes in”: Alexis Madrigal, “Get Ready to Roboshop,” Atlantic, March 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/03/get-ready-to-roboshop/357569/. 178 steering Mac users to higher-priced hotels: Dana Mattioli, “On Orbitz, Mac Users Steered to Pricier Hotels,” Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304458604577488822667325882. 180 express their intent clearly and simply: “Share Your Work,” Creative Commons, retrieved March 31, 2017, https://crea tivecommons.org/share-your-work/. 180 “Smart Disclosure”: “Smart Disclosure Policy Resources,” data.gov, retrieved March 31, 2017, https://www.data.gov/consumer/smart-disclosure-policy-resources. 180 “smart contracts”: Josh Stark, “Making Sense of Blockchain Smart Contracts,” June 4, 2016, http://www.coindesk.com/making-sense-smart-contracts/. 181 a requirement for interpretability: Tal Zarsky, “Transparency in Data Mining: From Theory to Practice,” in Discrimination and Privacy in the Information Society, ed. Bart Custers, Toon Calders, Bart Schermer, and Tal Zarsky (New York: Springer, 2012), 306. 182 a perfect marketplace: Adam Cohen, “‘The Perfect Store,’” New York Times, June 16, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/16/books/chapters/the-perfect-store.html. 182 nothing was known about the sellers: Paul Resnick and Richard Zeckhauser, “Trust Among Strangers in Internet Transactions: Empirical Analysis of eBay’s Reputation System,” draft of February 5, 2001, version for review by NBER workshop participants, http://www.presnick. people.si.umich.edu/papers/ebay NBER/RZNBERBodegaBay.pdf. 183 “the apps and algorithms provide a filter”: David Lang, “The Life-Changing Magic of Small Amounts of Money,” Medium, unpublished post retrieved April 5, 2017, https://medium.com/@davidtlang/cacb7277ee9f. 184 “the multitude and promiscuous use of coaches”: Steven Hill, “Our Streets as a Public Utility: How UBER Could Be Part of the Solution,” Medium, September 2, 2015, https://medium.com/the-wtf-economy/our-streets-as-a-public-utility-how-uber-could-be-part-of-the-solution-65772bdf5dcf. 184 “cried out for public control over the taxi industry”: Steven Hill, “Rethinking the Uber vs.

pages: 374 words: 97,288

The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy by Aaron Perzanowski, Jason Schultz

3D printing, Airbnb, anti-communist, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, carbon footprint, cloud computing, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Eben Moglen, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, endowment effect, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, general purpose technology, gentrification, George Akerlof, Hush-A-Phone, independent contractor, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Internet Archive, Internet of things, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, loss aversion, Marc Andreessen, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, new economy, Open Library, Paradox of Choice, peer-to-peer, price discrimination, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolodex, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, software as a service, software patent, software studies, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, subscription business, telemarketer, the long tail, The Market for Lemons, Tony Fadell, transaction costs, winner-take-all economy

For a thorough discussion of the insights bitcoin offers for property in general and digital assets in particular, see Joshua A. T. Fairfield, “Bitproperty,” Southern California Law Review 88 (May 2015): 805–874. 51. James Grimmelmann and Arvind Narayanan, “The Blockchain Gang,” Slate, February 16, 2016, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/02/bitcoin_s_blockchain_technology_won_t_change_everything.html, accessed April 10, 2015. 52. Marc Andreessen, “Why Bitcoin Matters,” Dealbook (blog), New York Times, January 21, 2014, http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/, accessed September 4, 2015. 53.

pages: 340 words: 97,723

The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity by Amy Webb

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Ada Lovelace, AI winter, air gap, Airbnb, airport security, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Andy Rubin, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Bayesian statistics, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bioinformatics, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive bias, complexity theory, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, CRISPR, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, distributed ledger, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, fail fast, fake news, Filter Bubble, Flynn Effect, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, Google Glasses, Grace Hopper, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Inbox Zero, Internet of things, Jacques de Vaucanson, Jeff Bezos, Joan Didion, job automation, John von Neumann, knowledge worker, Lyft, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, move fast and break things, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, one-China policy, optical character recognition, packet switching, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, seminal paper, SETI@home, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skunkworks, Skype, smart cities, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, Stephen Hawking, strong AI, superintelligent machines, surveillance capitalism, technological singularity, The Coming Technological Singularity, the long tail, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Turing machine, Turing test, uber lyft, Von Neumann architecture, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, zero day

This, in turn, has a compounding effect on the future of many other technologies adjacent to or directly intersecting with AI: autonomous vehicles, CRISPR and genomic editing, precision medicine, home robotics, automated medical diagnoses, green- and geoengineering technologies, space travel, cryptocurrencies and blockchain, smart farms and agricultural technologies, the Internet of Things, autonomous factories, stock-trading algorithms, search engines, facial and voice recognition, banking technologies, fraud and risk detection, policing and judicial technologies… I could make a list that spans dozens of pages. There isn’t a facet of your personal or professional life that won’t be impacted by AI.

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GAIA nations sign accords, explicitly agreeing to value safety over speed, and dedicate considerable resources to cleaning up all of our current systems: the databases and algorithms already in use, the frameworks they rely on, the enterprise-level products that incorporate AI (like those being used at banks and within law enforcements) and the consumer devices that harness AI for everyday tasks (our smart speakers, watches, and phones). GAIA invites—and rewards—public accountability. Within GAIA, a decision is made to treat our personal data records (PDRs) like we do the distributed ledgers of blockchains. Distributed ledgers use thousands of independent computers to record, share, and synchronize transactions. By design, they don’t keep data centralized under the umbrella of just one company or agency. Because the G-MAFIA Coalition adopts a set of standards and deploys unified AI technologies, our PDRs don’t really need a centrally coordinating company to manage transactions.

pages: 349 words: 109,304

American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road by Nick Bilton

bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, crack epidemic, Edward Snowden, fake news, gentrification, mandatory minimum, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, no-fly zone, off-the-grid, Ross Ulbricht, Rubik’s Cube, Satoshi Nakamoto, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, South of Market, San Francisco, Steve Jobs, Ted Kaczynski, the market place, trade route, Travis Kalanick, white picket fence, WikiLeaks

By himself he had essentially done the work of a twelve-person start-up, acting as the front-end programmer, back-end developer, database guy, Tor consultant, Bitcoin analyst, project manager, guerrilla marketing strategist, CEO, and lead investor. Not to mention the in-house fungiculturist. It would have cost more than a million dollars of people’s time to replicate the site. Plus thousands of lines of PHP and MySQL code needed to connect to the Bitcoin blockchain—list of transactions—and a dozen widgets and whatnots in between. If it failed, Ross didn’t know what he would do with himself. But something told him this time was different, that maybe, in some strange and cosmic way, this site was why he was here, and he was going to do everything he could to see it reach its full potential.

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The prosecution showed spreadsheets illustrating the immense growth of the Silk Road, the hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and the more than $80 million in profit that allegedly led back to Ross Ulbricht. The jury’s eyes seemed to glaze over when the lawyers tried to explain how Bitcoin blockchains worked, why server encryption and CAPTCHAs and IP addresses were so important, and what happens when you run Ubuntu Linux on a Samsung 700Z. Then it was the defense’s turn. Dratel eloquently argued that, sure, Ross had been caught with his hands on the keyboard, but he was not the Dread Pirate Roberts.

pages: 344 words: 104,077

Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together by Thomas W. Malone

Abraham Maslow, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, Asperger Syndrome, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, business process, call centre, carbon tax, clean water, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, deep learning, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, driverless car, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental economics, Exxon Valdez, Ford Model T, future of work, Future Shock, Galaxy Zoo, Garrett Hardin, gig economy, happiness index / gross national happiness, independent contractor, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, inventory management, invisible hand, Jeff Rulifson, jimmy wales, job automation, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, knowledge worker, longitudinal study, Lyft, machine translation, Marshall McLuhan, Nick Bostrom, Occupy movement, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, prediction markets, price mechanism, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Rodney Brooks, Ronald Coase, search costs, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, slashdot, social intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, technological singularity, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, Vernor Vinge, Vilfredo Pareto, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

The contests where people compete to come up with basic ideas for improving things like transportation and electricity are called basic contests. Higher-level contests, where people compete to combine these basic proposals into national and global climate action plans, are called integrated contests. For instance, one of our winning global proposals suggested that a digital currency called solar dollars (based on Bitcoin-like blockchain technology) could be used to encourage emission reductions in countries around the world. This global proposal contained subproposals for how the major countries and regions of the world could contribute to the overall plan (see the following illustration). The subproposal for Europe, for example, suggested that Greece could be used as a test laboratory for renewable energy approaches that could be used all over Europe.

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Carbon Price 2014”), Climate CoLab, https://climatecolab.org/contests/2014/us-carbon-price/c/proposal/1305801; “GreenCoin: Start Pricing Carbon Without Governments” (proposal for 2015 Proposal Workspace), Climate CoLab, https://climatecolab.org/contests/2014/2015-proposal-workspace/c/proposal/1324607. 5. Christian Catalini and Joshua S. Gans, “Some Simple Economics of the Blockchain” (working paper no. 5191-16, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, MA, November 23, 2016), 9, 24, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2874598. 6. Monica Hesse, “Crisis Mapping Brings Online Tool to Haitian Disaster Relief Effort,” Washington Post, January 16, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/15/AR2010011502650.html. 7.

pages: 363 words: 105,039

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers by Andy Greenberg

"World Economic Forum" Davos, air freight, air gap, Airbnb, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, call centre, Citizen Lab, clean water, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, false flag, global supply chain, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, machine readable, Mikhail Gorbachev, no-fly zone, open borders, pirate software, pre–internet, profit motive, ransomware, RFID, speech recognition, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, tech worker, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

* * * ■ In the early days after the Shadow Brokers’ post, it appeared that the group’s operation might be a bust. They did not get their one-million-bitcoin jackpot. Instead, in the first twenty-four hours of their auction, they received a grand total of $937.15, according to the Bitcoin blockchain’s public record of transactions. But the auction nonetheless served to create buzz around the NSA’s security breach. Experts largely agreed the profit motive was likely a cover story, that the Shadow Brokers were probably state-sponsored hackers, not cybercriminals, and they were seeking above all to embarrass the NSA.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

A major study by a team of researchers at Canada’s McMaster University found that the biggest contributions to carbon emissions are likely going to come from the explosion in smartphone usage, although the largest culprits right now are still data centres (45 percent of the total information and communications technology carbon footprint), followed by communications networks (24 percent).347 Probably the most perverse example of energy consumption and waste related to digital technologies comes from the digital currency market: Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is a virtual commodity that exists only as binary digits in a distributed digital ledger called a blockchain. Unlike paper bills or coins, Bitcoins have no physical quality. And unlike the credit card issued by your bank, the currency is entirely decentralized, without any intermediaries. New Bitcoin currency is generated by a “mining” process that entails solving complex mathematical problems, which in turn require the use of vast and energy-intensive computing resources to solve.

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Bitcoin energy consumption index. Retrieved May 27, 2020, from https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption; De Vries, A. (2018). Bitcoin’s growing energy problem. Joule, 2(5), 801-805; Truby, J. (2018). Decarbonizing Bitcoin: Law and policy choices for reducing the energy consumption of Blockchain technologies and digital currencies. Energy research & social science, 44, 399-410. The electricity consumed by the Bitcoin network in one year could power all the teakettles used to boil water in the entire United Kingdom for nineteen years: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. (n.d.).

pages: 338 words: 104,815

Nobody's Fool: Why We Get Taken in and What We Can Do About It by Daniel Simons, Christopher Chabris

Abraham Wald, Airbnb, artificial general intelligence, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin "FTX", blockchain, Boston Dynamics, butterfly effect, call centre, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, ChatGPT, Checklist Manifesto, choice architecture, computer vision, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DALL-E, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, financial thriller, forensic accounting, framing effect, George Akerlof, global pandemic, index fund, information asymmetry, information security, Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Jim Simons, John von Neumann, Keith Raniere, Kenneth Rogoff, London Whale, lone genius, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, moral panic, multilevel marketing, Nelson Mandela, pattern recognition, Pershing Square Capital Management, pets.com, placebo effect, Ponzi scheme, power law, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, replication crisis, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Sam Bankman-Fried, Satoshi Nakamoto, Saturday Night Live, Sharpe ratio, short selling, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart transportation, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, sunk-cost fallacy, survivorship bias, systematic bias, TED Talk, transcontinental railway, WikiLeaks, Y2K

When investing with a large firm like Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, or Vanguard, we probably don’t need to spend much time or energy making sure it won’t steal our life savings. But if we’re considering investing in new, unregulated markets like cryptocurrency, we should check carefully. Unless you are a blockchain expert with a sophisticated understanding of math and computer science, investing in crypto means you likely are being influenced by the hook of familiarity and hoping that following a herd will lead you to riches. Would you regret it if the crypto market crashed (again)? Do you have any actual evidence that it won’t?

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Glenn Arcano pleaded guilty to participating in the conspiracy to defraud BitConnect investors [https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/56-million-seized-cryptocurrency-being-sold-first-step-compensate-victims-bitconnect-fraud]. 2. The original publication on Bitcoin is S. Nakamoto, Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System, October 31, 2008 [bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf]. See also F. Schär and A. Berentsen, Bitcoin, Blockchain, and Cryptoassets: A Comprehensive Introduction (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2020). 3. S. Williams, “The 20 Largest Cryptocurrencies by Market Cap,” The Motley Fool, December 15, 2017 [https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/20/the-20-largest-cryptocurrencies-by-market-cap.aspx]. 4. T. Frankel, The Ponzi Scheme Puzzle (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012); see especially ch. 1 for a brief account of Ponzi’s original con.

pages: 446 words: 117,660

Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the Fight for a Better Future by Paul Krugman

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, antiwork, Asian financial crisis, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blockchain, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Carmen Reinhart, central bank independence, centre right, Climategate, cognitive dissonance, cryptocurrency, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, different worldview, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, employer provided health coverage, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial deregulation, financial innovation, financial repression, frictionless, frictionless market, fudge factor, full employment, green new deal, Growth in a Time of Debt, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, index fund, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it, job automation, John Snow's cholera map, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge worker, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, London Whale, low interest rates, market bubble, market clearing, market fundamentalism, means of production, Modern Monetary Theory, New Urbanism, obamacare, oil shock, open borders, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, Seymour Hersh, stock buybacks, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the map is not the territory, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transaction costs, universal basic income, very high income, We are all Keynesians now, working-age population

I’m keeping up with the news, more or less, but am only occasionally and unpredictably in a place and condition where I can actually write something and post it. But this is one of those times, and I thought I’d post some thoughts in advance of stuff I’ll be doing after I get back. Specifically, in a couple of weeks I’m going to play Emmanuel Goldstein—the designated enemy—at a conference on blockchain and all that. Hey, if you only speak to friendly audiences, you’re not challenging yourself enough. So I thought it might be worth explaining why I’m a cryptocurrency skeptic. It comes down to two things: transaction costs and the absence of tethering. Let me explain. If you look at the broad sweep of monetary history, there has been a clear direction of change over time: namely, one of reducing the frictions of doing business and the amount of real resources required to deal with those frictions.

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I think it’s more likely than not, partly because of the gap between the messianic rhetoric of crypto and the much more mundane real possibilities. That is, there might be a potential equilibrium in which Bitcoin (although probably not other cryptocurrencies) remain in use mainly for black market transactions and tax evasion, but that equilibrium, if it exists, would be hard to get to from here: once the dream of a blockchained future dies, the disappointment will probably collapse the whole thing. So that’s why I’m a crypto skeptic. Could I be wrong? Of course. But if you want to argue that I’m wrong, please answer the question, what problem does cryptocurrency solve? Don’t just try to shout down the skeptics with a mixture of technobabble and libertarian derp.

Human Frontiers: The Future of Big Ideas in an Age of Small Thinking by Michael Bhaskar

"Margaret Hamilton" Apollo, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, barriers to entry, basic income, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, blockchain, Boeing 747, brain emulation, Brexit referendum, call centre, carbon tax, charter city, citizen journalism, Claude Shannon: information theory, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, clean water, cognitive load, Columbian Exchange, coronavirus, cosmic microwave background, COVID-19, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, cyber-physical system, dark matter, David Graeber, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, demographic dividend, Deng Xiaoping, deplatforming, discovery of penicillin, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Easter island, Edward Jenner, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, energy security, energy transition, epigenetics, Eratosthenes, Ernest Rutherford, Eroom's law, fail fast, false flag, Fellow of the Royal Society, flying shuttle, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, germ theory of disease, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Google Glasses, Google X / Alphabet X, GPT-3, Haber-Bosch Process, hedonic treadmill, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, hive mind, hype cycle, Hyperloop, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, invention of the steam engine, invention of the telegraph, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, ITER tokamak, James Watt: steam engine, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, jimmy wales, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kenneth Arrow, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Large Hadron Collider, liberation theology, lockdown, lone genius, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, megacity, megastructure, Menlo Park, Minecraft, minimum viable product, mittelstand, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Gell-Mann, Mustafa Suleyman, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, nuclear winter, nudge unit, oil shale / tar sands, open economy, OpenAI, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, PageRank, patent troll, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, post scarcity, post-truth, precautionary principle, public intellectual, publish or perish, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, rent-seeking, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, skunkworks, Slavoj Žižek, sovereign wealth fund, spinning jenny, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Stuart Kauffman, synthetic biology, techlash, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, total factor productivity, transcontinental railway, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, When a measure becomes a target, X Prize, Y Combinator

Welcome to the great meta-problem of the twenty-first century. We're at a curious juncture of history. To open the latest Wired, Nature or cultural review is to be treated to a parade of wonders: extraordinary new discoveries, products and achievements. From quantum biology, nanotechnology and exoplanet astronomy to nudge unit governance, blockchain and virtual worlds, surely this is a uniquely fecund moment when the frontier is expanding at a record and still accelerating pace. Mounting evidence suggests the opposite. A lively debate is calling into question these dominant assumptions about our place in history and the default nature of progress.

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We have private companies like SpaceX but precious little crewed space flight; we have the Standard Model of physics but haven't gone beyond it; we have libraries of humanities research that no one reads; we have a decades-long war on cancer, but still have cancer. Our time comes with a litany of big ideas: blockchain, mobile social networks, supermaterials like graphene, deep learning neural networks, quantum biology, massive multiplayer online games, molecular machines, behavioural economics, algorithmic trading, gravitational wave and exoplanet astronomy, parametric architecture, e-sports, the ending of taboos around gender and sexuality, to name a few.

pages: 677 words: 206,548

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It by Marc Goodman

23andMe, 3D printing, active measures, additive manufacturing, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Alvin Toffler, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, Bill Joy: nanobots, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boston Dynamics, Brian Krebs, business process, butterfly effect, call centre, Charles Lindbergh, Chelsea Manning, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, Cody Wilson, cognitive dissonance, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data is the new oil, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, digital rights, disinformation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, don't be evil, double helix, Downton Abbey, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Flash crash, Free Software Foundation, future of work, game design, gamification, global pandemic, Google Chrome, Google Earth, Google Glasses, Gordon Gekko, Hacker News, high net worth, High speed trading, hive mind, Howard Rheingold, hypertext link, illegal immigration, impulse control, industrial robot, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Harrison: Longitude, John Markoff, Joi Ito, Jony Ive, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kuwabatake Sanjuro: assassination market, Large Hadron Collider, Larry Ellison, Laura Poitras, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, license plate recognition, lifelogging, litecoin, low earth orbit, M-Pesa, machine translation, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mobile money, more computing power than Apollo, move fast and break things, Nate Silver, national security letter, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, obamacare, Occupy movement, Oculus Rift, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, operational security, optical character recognition, Parag Khanna, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, personalized medicine, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, printed gun, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, refrigerator car, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, security theater, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Snapchat, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, strong AI, Stuxnet, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tech worker, technological singularity, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, Tesla Model S, The future is already here, The Future of Employment, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, uranium enrichment, Virgin Galactic, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Wave and Pay, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Y Combinator, you are the product, zero day

People can send Bitcoins to each other using computers or mobile apps, where coins are stored in “digital wallets.” Bitcoins can be directly exchanged between users anywhere in the world using unique alphanumeric identifiers, akin to e-mail addresses, and there are no transaction fees. Anytime a purchase takes place, it is recorded in a public ledger known as the “blockchain,” which ensures no duplicate transactions are permitted. Bitcoin is the world’s largest crypto currency, so-called because it uses “cryptography to regulate the creation and transfer of money, rather than relying on central authorities.” Bitcoin acceptance is growing rapidly, and it is possible to use Bitcoins to buy cupcakes in San Francisco, cocktails in Manhattan, and a Subway sandwich in Allentown.

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Though Bitcoin, like all forms of money, can be used for both legal and illegal purposes, its encryption techniques and relative anonymity make it strongly attractive to criminals. Because funds are not stored in a central location, accounts cannot readily be seized or frozen by police, and tracing the transactions recorded in the blockchain is significantly more complex than serving a subpoena on a local bank operating within traditionally regulated financial networks. As a result, nearly all of the Dark Web’s illicit commerce is facilitated through alternative currency systems. People do not send paper checks or use credit cards in their own names to buy meth and child sexual abuse images.

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Though Liberty Reserve, like Silk Road, was ultimately taken down by the FBI and its founder arrested, many competitors have sprung up in its place, and these new marketplaces generally have decentralized peer-to-peer structures and favor next-generation iterations of crypto currencies. They promise not just pseudonymity as recorded publicly in the Bitcoin blockchain but completely untraceable anonymity. One such new currency, Darkcoin, can be viewed as the ultrasecret shadowy cousin of Bitcoin, created specifically to obfuscate users’ purchases by combining any single transaction with those of other users so that payments cannot be tied to any particular individual.

pages: 138 words: 40,525

This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook by Extinction Rebellion

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, banks create money, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, circular economy, clean water, Colonization of Mars, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, David Attenborough, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, digital capitalism, Donald Trump, driverless car, drug harm reduction, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, Extinction Rebellion, Fairphone, feminist movement, full employment, Gail Bradbrook, gig economy, global pandemic, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, mass immigration, negative emissions, Peter Thiel, place-making, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, retail therapy, rewilding, Sam Altman, smart grid, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, the scientific method, union organizing, urban sprawl, wealth creators

It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk – about half my annual professor’s salary – all to deliver some insight on the subject of ‘the future of technology’. I’ve never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlour games where I’m asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, CRISPR. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them. But money talks, so I took the gig. After I arrived, I was ushered into what I thought was the Green Room. But instead of being wired with a microphone or taken to a stage, I just sat there at a plain round table as my audience was brought to me: five super-wealthy guys – yes, all men – from the upper echelon of the hedge-fund world.

pages: 159 words: 42,401

Snowden's Box: Trust in the Age of Surveillance by Jessica Bruder, Dale Maharidge

air gap, anti-communist, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Broken windows theory, Burning Man, Cambridge Analytica, cashless society, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, computer vision, crowdsourcing, deep learning, digital rights, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, Filter Bubble, Firefox, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, Jessica Bruder, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, license plate recognition, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, medical malpractice, messenger bag, Neil Armstrong, Nomadland, Occupy movement, off grid, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Robert Bork, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, social graph, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, tech bro, Tim Cook: Apple, web of trust, WikiLeaks

His public key had been vouched for by some of the most respected figures in the world of digital privacy. That made it a reliable node in the crowdsourced, decentralized verification system that encryption users call a “web of trust.” It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole when you’re talking about how to build trust in the digital world. That’s why so much writing about blockchain is inscrutable. But the basic principle behind using a web of trust to leverage credibility is simple. In an online article explaining why it’s so important, Henk Penning, a developer at Utrecht University, arrived at a conclusion that would please fans of The Matrix. He wrote: What can I trust, ultimately?

pages: 149 words: 43,747

How I Invest My Money: Finance Experts Reveal How They Save, Spend, and Invest by Brian Portnoy, Joshua Brown

asset allocation, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blue-collar work, buy and hold, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, diversification, diversified portfolio, estate planning, financial independence, fixed income, high net worth, housing crisis, index fund, John Bogle, low interest rates, mental accounting, passive investing, prediction markets, risk tolerance, Salesforce, Sharpe ratio, time value of money, underbanked, Vanguard fund

In my case, my bias in favor of hard assets combined with my experience during Internet 1.0 as a co-inventor of Priceline.com, led me to begin investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies three years ago. I have since also started a cryptocurrency hedge fund with two other partners who are veterans in the blockchain/crypto space and are members of the Satoshi Roundtable. Bitcoin has been the single best performing asset of the past decade by a mile. The law of giving People who are overly obsessed with their personal investments (e.g., watching their portfolio 10–20 times per day or similar) may achieve decent results in the short or medium term, but long term they tend to self-destruct (their portfolios/net worth that is) by being too close to it, too emotional, and too tight-fisted about their money.

pages: 138 words: 41,353

The Cosmopolites: The Coming of the Global Citizen by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Albert Einstein, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, cryptocurrency, digital rights, Edward Snowden, Evgeny Morozov, high net worth, illegal immigration, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, offshore financial centre, open immigration, Patri Friedman, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, Satoshi Nakamoto, Skype, technoutopianism, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital payment system that is entirely independent of, and unregulated by, banks. Created in 2009 by someone using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoins are “mined” by computers that take records of previous transactions. The computers turn the records into code and add them to a “blockchain,” or a constantly evolving ledger that’s stored on every Bitcoin-holder’s computer. That means that goods can be bought anonymously, without the transactions ever getting traced back to either the buyer or the seller. It also means money can be transferred internationally without any bank fees.

pages: 516 words: 116,875

Greater: Britain After the Storm by Penny Mordaunt, Chris Lewis

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, accelerated depreciation, Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, banking crisis, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boeing 747, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, collective bargaining, Corn Laws, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data is not the new oil, data is the new oil, David Attenborough, death from overwork, Deng Xiaoping, Diane Coyle, Donald Trump, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, experimental economics, failed state, fake news, Firefox, fixed income, full employment, gender pay gap, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, happiness index / gross national happiness, high-speed rail, impact investing, Jeremy Corbyn, Khartoum Gordon, lateral thinking, Live Aid, lockdown, loss aversion, low skilled workers, microaggression, mittelstand, moral hazard, Neil Kinnock, Nelson Mandela, Ocado, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Panamax, Ponzi scheme, post-truth, quantitative easing, remote working, road to serfdom, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, transaction costs, transcontinental railway

It is about to happen again.25,26 Another effect of the internet is that the control of money has passed from central banks to other, less recognisable, and perhaps less reliable, providers. This creates an unprecedented opportunity for those who wish to ‘get off the grid’, for compliance or criminal reasons, for instance. This is the case with new digital technologies such as bitcoin, which use blockchain security. Blockchain offers an ultimate lock for a transaction, providing transparency and clarity as to the provenance and destination of funding. In this instance, it could be argued that one of the reasons that banking has been slow to adopt technologies like this is precisely because it provides the ultimate in terms of transparency.

pages: 470 words: 125,992

The Laundromat : Inside the Panama Papers, Illicit Money Networks, and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, central bank independence, Charlie Hebdo massacre, clean water, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, high net worth, income inequality, independent contractor, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, liberation theology, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, offshore financial centre, optical character recognition, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Skype, traveling salesman, WikiLeaks

Simpson, “The Business Deals That Could Imperil Trump,” New York Times, April 21, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/21/opinion/sunday/trump-business-mueller-money-laundering.html. 42 to make the island a center for cryptocurrencies: Kai Sedgwick, “Malta Prime Minister Welcomes Binance to Its ‘Blockchain Island,’” Bitcoin.com, March 23, 2018, https://news.bitcoin.com/malta-prime-minister-welcomes-binance-to-its-blockchain-island/. 43 collected more than $1.2 billion in evaded taxes: Douglas Dalby and Amy Wilson-Chapman, “Panama Papers helps recover more than $1.2 billion around the world,” ICIJ, April 3, 2019, https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/panama-papers-helps-recover-more-than-1-2-billion-around-the-world/. 44 more than 150 government and corporate inquiries: Will Fitzgibbon and Emilia Diaz-Struck, “Panama Papers have had historic global effects—and the impacts keep coming,” The Center for Public Integrity, December 1, 2016, https://www.publicintegrity.org/2016/12/01/20500/panama-papers-have-had-historic-global-effects-and-impacts-keep-coming. 45 In March, Mossfon announced: “Comunicado de Cierre de Operaciones,” Mos-sack Fonseca, March 14, 2018. 46 they couldn’t be found: Olmedo Rodriguez, “Fiscal detiene a siete personas por caso Mossack Fonseca,” La Prensa, May 23, 2018, https://impresa.prensa.com/panorama/Fiscal-detiene-personas-caso-MF_0_5036496409.html. 47 more than a million additional files: Will Fitzgibbon, “New Panama Papers Leak Reveals Firm’s Chaotic Scramble to Identify Clients, Save Business Amid Global Fallout,” ICIJ, June 20, 2018, https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/new-panama-papers-leak-reveals-mossack-fonsecas-chaotic-scramble/. 48 the firm knew the names of the owners: Nicholas Nehamas, “‘A Mickey Mouse operation’: How Panama Papers law firm dumped clients, lost Miami office,” Miami Herald, June 20, 2018, http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article213423514.html. 49 “I don’t care”: Fitzgibbon, “New Panama Papers Leak Reveals Firm’s Chaotic Scramble to Identify Clients, Save Business Amid Global Fallout.” 50 “we stayed a client”: Email from Johan Van den Braber to Mossack Fonseca & Co.

pages: 993 words: 318,161

Fall; Or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson

Ada Lovelace, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, bitcoin, blockchain, cloud computing, coherent worldview, computer vision, crisis actor, crossover SUV, cryptocurrency, defense in depth, demographic transition, distributed ledger, drone strike, easy for humans, difficult for computers, fake news, false flag, game design, gamification, index fund, Jaron Lanier, life extension, messenger bag, microaggression, microbiome, Neal Stephenson, Network effects, no-fly zone, off grid, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, planetary scale, ride hailing / ride sharing, sensible shoes, short selling, Silicon Valley, Snow Crash, tech bro, telepresence, telepresence robot, telerobotics, The Hackers Conference, Turing test, Works Progress Administration

They don’t have to know each other. When they have to communicate, they do it—” Sophia closed her eyes momentarily, maybe to conceal an eye-roll. “They do it the way all communication happens nowadays, which is through distributed-ledger-type stuff.” “Blockchain?” Zula asked. Actively suppressing another eye-roll, Sophia answered, “Way, way more efficient algorithms that do what blockchain was supposed to do twenty years ago. But still requiring a lot of fast computation.” “So, if we think of it”—and here Zula held out a hand as if to deflect any objections—“if we imagine, just for the sake of argument, that we have one process, what we used to call a computer program, that does one thing only, which is to simulate the workings of one single neuron in a brain.

…

“I wasn’t born yet. But yeah. That is basically the story.” A new thought had crossed Julian’s mind. “Was this how C-plus and Maeve became interested in PURDAH and VEILs? Because of all these hassles over this one paper document?” Sophia shook her head. “I would say not. I mean, this was all after the blockchain craze, and all of the issues related to anonymity and privacy on the Old Internet.” “Mmm,” Julian said, going a little passive-aggressive on her. “No, seriously,” she insisted. “Again, it goes back to the language in the will. One of the stated missions of the foundation was to work on applications of gaming technology outside of what was conventionally thought of as the game industry.

…

You could link it to your actual legal name and face if you wanted, or not. And either way you could punch it into your VEIL system so that as you walked down the street, computer vision systems, even though they couldn’t recognize your actual face, could look up your PURDAH and from there see any activity blockchained to it. All three of the laughing, coffee-toting, VEIL-wearing schoolgirls had done this as a matter of course. It was probably a free-and-mandatory service offered by their prep school. The security cameras on the front of Zula’s condo building had looked them up. For that matter, Zula’s glasses had outward-looking cameras that could have done the same thing, had she shown any interest.

pages: 611 words: 130,419

Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral and Drive Major Economic Events by Robert J. Shiller

agricultural Revolution, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andrei Shleifer, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, bank run, banking crisis, basic income, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, business cycle, butterfly effect, buy and hold, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, collective bargaining, computerized trading, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, debt deflation, digital divide, disintermediation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edmond Halley, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, financial engineering, Ford Model T, full employment, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, German hyperinflation, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hacker Ethic, implied volatility, income inequality, inflation targeting, initial coin offering, invention of radio, invention of the telegraph, Jean Tirole, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, litecoin, low interest rates, machine translation, market bubble, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, moral hazard, Northern Rock, nudge unit, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, public intellectual, publish or perish, random walk, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Satoshi Nakamoto, secular stagnation, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, speech recognition, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, stochastic process, stocks for the long run, superstar cities, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Thorstein Veblen, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, universal basic income, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We are the 99%, yellow journalism, yield curve, Yom Kippur War

In reality, Bitcoin was meant to function as a monetary weapon, as a cryptocurrency poised to undermine authority.5 Most Bitcoin enthusiasts might not describe their enthusiasm in such extreme terms, but this passage seems to capture a central element of their narrative. Both cryptocurrencies and blockchains (the accounting systems for the cryptocurrencies, which are by design maintained democratically and anonymously by large numbers of individuals and supposedly beyond the regulation of any government) seem to have great emotional appeal for some people, kindling deep feelings about their position and role in society.

…

See also gold standard Bitcoin narrative, xviii, 3–11; anarchism and, 5–7; bimetallism and, 108, 161–62, 171; cause of increased value and, 72; contagion of, 21–23; cosmopolitan culture and, 4, 11, 87; cryptocurrencies competing with, 92; epidemic theory applied to, 21–23; fading by 2013, 76; fascination with narratives about money and, 173; fear of inequality and, 8–9; the future and, 9–10, 87; geographic pattern of spread, 299; history of, 4; as human-interest story, 7–8; key features of, 87; mathematical concepts underlying, 5, 302n3; membership in world economy and, 11; as mystery story, 7, 8, 162; in news articles by year, 22, 22f; in news articles compared to relevant algorithms, 9–10; sale of Bitcoin in convenience stores and, 10; similarity to gold standard and bimetallism narratives, 108–9; as successful economic narrative, 3–4; technocracy movement and, 193; uncertain truth of, 96; volatility of value in, 5, 10. See also Nakamoto, Satoshi Bix, Amy Sue, 186–87 Blade Runner (film), 203 Blanc, Louis, 102 Blinder, Alan, 281 blockchains, 6 blue jeans, 147–48, 149 blue sky laws, 220, 221 Booker, Christopher, 16 book jackets, 60–61 Boulding, Kenneth E., xv–xvi Box, George E. P., 295 Boycott, Charles C., 239–40 The Boycott in American Trade Unions (Wolman), 241 boycott narrative, 239–43; in 1973–75 recession, 256–57; contributing to 1920–21 depression, 249; going viral, 241; during Great Depression, 254; origins of, 239–40; profiteer stories in World War I and, 241–42, 246; recurring periodically, 241; during world financial crisis of 2007–9, 257; after World War II, 255.

pages: 520 words: 134,627

Unacceptable: Privilege, Deceit & the Making of the College Admissions Scandal by Melissa Korn, Jennifer Levitz

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", affirmative action, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, benefit corporation, blockchain, call centre, Donald Trump, Gordon Gekko, helicopter parent, high net worth, impact investing, independent contractor, Jeffrey Epstein, machine readable, Maui Hawaii, medical residency, Menlo Park, multilevel marketing, performance metric, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, side hustle, side project, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, telemarketer, Thorstein Veblen, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, yield management, young professional, zero-sum game

Klapper, case no. 19-cr-10017-IT. an ordinary water polo player: Government’s sentencing memo for Agustin Huneeus. McGlashan was a regular at Davos: See, for example, interview with Erik Schatzker, “McGlashan Seeing Deals That Have Dimensions of Blockchain,” Bloomberg, January 23, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-01-23/mcglashan-seeing-deals-that-have-dimensions-of-blockchain-video. after hiring Singer in spring 2017: Government’s opposition filing. He’d met Singer through a college friend: Letter from Agustin Huneeus to U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani. Document 494, Exhibit A, Tab 1, filed September 27, 2019, in USA v.

pages: 601 words: 135,202

Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes on a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, central bank independence, Colonization of Mars, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, decarbonisation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Fractional reserve banking, full employment, George Akerlof, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Henri Poincaré, housing crisis, income inequality, inflation targeting, junk bonds, laissez-faire capitalism, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market clearing, meme stock, Modern Monetary Theory, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, Nixon shock, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, price stability, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, risk tolerance, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, Ronald Reagan, secular stagnation, short squeeze, social distancing, sovereign wealth fund, The Great Moderation, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, working-age population, yield curve

The Fed’s future role in markets and society also preoccupied Brainard, which partly reflected the committees she had been assigned to at the Board and partly reflected her own interests. She held regular market intelligence calls with Wall Street analysts to understand the financial stability landscape, and she tended to catch on to trends quickly. She began speaking about blockchain technologies in 2016, before central bankers were widely focused on them, and before long became focused on the Fed’s potential role in developing and policing digital currency technologies.[32] She was the governor who most believed that the central bank had responsibility for understanding and talking about climate change’s economic and financial risks, a topic many of her colleagues kept at a careful distance, given its political divisiveness.[*8] Owing in large part to her thoroughness and competence, Brainard maintained the respect of her colleagues, even though she was out of step with them ideologically—in Powell’s case, slightly, and in Quarles’s, very.

…

“Joe” Biden: approval rating of, 283; Campbell as part of administration, 342n28; climate policy under, 269–70, 270n; continuation of relief programs under, 256, 260; election of, 253; mask wearing by, 219; racial unemployment gap focus of, 234; renomination of Powell by, 294–8, 299; stimulus checks sent by, 280–3, 281n; transfer of power and transition to, 281, 281n Bies, Susan, 92 Bitcoin, 272, 291 Black Lives Matter protests, 220–3 BlackRock, 189, 208, 209–11, 344–5n11 blockchain technology, 126 Boeing, 248, 248n bonds/Treasury securities: buying by Fed to support economy, 4–5, 20, 21, 22, 72–4, 72n, 93, 113–14, 113n; buying program during 2008 crisis, 7, 7n, 25, 32n, 93, 98, 113n, 285; buying program during pandemic, 33–6, 149–50, 152, 167, 182, 187, 189–90, 210, 263, 285–7, 286n, 301, 335n7; buying program during World War I, 61; consequences of Fed purchases, 5, 113–14; foreign governments’ dumping of Treasury holdings, 197–8; impact of pandemic on market, 141, 147–50, 343n27, 343n35; interest rates and bond-buying program, 32n, 93; low rates on, 115; normal function and activities related to, 146–7; QE programs, 5, 21, 32n, 113–14, 113n, 189–90, 225, 335n7; safety of Treasury securities, 30–2, 147; sales of Treasury securities and the pandemic, 29–35; Salomon Brothers and changes to buying and selling of, 16–17; trade wars and mass bond buying, 8 Bostic, Raphael, 223, 230 Bowman, Michelle, 154, 154n Brady, Nicholas F., 16 Brainard, Lael: background, education, and expertise of, 122–3; bipartisan qualities of, 127, 271, 300; career of, 122–3; climate conference speech of, 268; community outreach events of, 233; digital currency and role of Fed, position on, 270, 272–5; Fed Listens outreach branding by, 132; governor role of, 6, 122, 124–8; influence of, 126–7; loyalty of and higher position for, 271–2; Main Street program role of, 212–14, 247; marriage and family of, 123–4; monetary policy ideology of, 125–8, 297, 297n; opposition to regulatory changes by, 122, 125–6, 127; pandemic rescue program role of, 162, 168, 204, 206; political donation of, 124–5, 342n31; politics of, 122, 124–5, 127, 127n, 268, 270–1; reputation of and respect for, 124–5, 126, 162, 214, 271–2; suspension of bank payments, opinion about, 215; Treasury secretary candidacy potential for, 271; trust between and working relationship of Powell, Quarles, and, 127–8; trust between and working relationship with Powell, 300; vice-chair position of, 6, 299; wealth of, 133 Bretton Woods meeting and monetary system, 75–6 Buffet, Warren, 16, 24 Bullard, James B.

pages: 172 words: 50,777

The Nowhere Office: Reinventing Work and the Workplace of the Future by Julia Hobsbawm

8-hour work day, Airbnb, augmented reality, Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Cal Newport, call centre, Cass Sunstein, collective bargaining, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, David Graeber, death from overwork, Diane Coyle, digital capitalism, digital nomad, driverless car, emotional labour, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Greensill Capital, job satisfaction, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, means of production, megacity, Neal Stephenson, Ocado, pensions crisis, remote working, San Francisco homelessness, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snow Crash, social distancing, solopreneur, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, TED Talk, The Great Resignation, the long tail, the strength of weak ties, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, Upton Sinclair, WeWork, work culture

I talked to people working in the creative industries, those working in hospital offices, in back-end operations supporting front-line systems, in one-person start-ups in the Generation Z demographic and Generation X ‘solopreneurs’. They helped me build a picture of what working life means to them now and how it could be shaped in the near future. We never see the future as clearly as we see the past. It is as if the more seismic the shift the less we anticipate it until it has arrived. For instance, blockchain technology is upending finance as we know it and decentralising centuries of controlled banking – but people said it would never happen. I was one of the naysayers against the driverless car but no one would bet against it now, nor electric vehicles replacing petrol-driven ones. The Nowhere Office is not a blip or a trend which is going to be reversed.

Lifespan: Why We Age—and Why We Don't Have To by David A. Sinclair, Matthew D. Laplante

Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, Anthropocene, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Atul Gawande, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biofilm, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, caloric restriction, caloric restriction, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, clean water, creative destruction, CRISPR, dark matter, dematerialisation, discovery of DNA, double helix, Drosophila, Easter island, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fellow of the Royal Society, global pandemic, Grace Hopper, helicopter parent, income inequality, invention of the telephone, Isaac Newton, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, labor-force participation, life extension, Louis Pasteur, McMansion, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, microbiome, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Paul Samuelson, personalized medicine, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, plutocrats, power law, quantum entanglement, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, seminal paper, Skype, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem, union organizing, universal basic income, WeWork, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

That said, this particular company was also promoting the idea of a “coin,” or digital currency, not for investment or as a security, according to the writer, but to incentivize individuals to share their genomic data with scientists. “The underlying idea is to incentivize users to make their personal genomic data available for biomedical and health-related research for the greater good of medical discovery.” B. V. Bigelow, “Luna DNA Uses Blockchain to Share Genomic Data as a ‘Public Benefit,’ ” Exome, January 22, 2018, https://xconomy.com/san-diego/2018/01/22/luna-dna-uses-blockchain-to-share-genomic-data-as-a-public-benefit/. 4. S. W. H. Lee, N. Chaiyakunapruk, and N. M. Lai, “What G6PD-Deficient Individuals Should Really Avoid,” British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 83, no. 1 (January 2017): 211–12, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5338146/; “Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Deficiency,” MedlinePlus, https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000528.htm. 5.

pages: 217 words: 63,287

The Participation Revolution: How to Ride the Waves of Change in a Terrifyingly Turbulent World by Neil Gibb

Abraham Maslow, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, carbon footprint, Clayton Christensen, collapse of Lehman Brothers, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, data science, Didi Chuxing, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, gentrification, gig economy, iterative process, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Khan Academy, Kibera, Kodak vs Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, mirror neurons, Network effects, new economy, performance metric, ride hailing / ride sharing, shareholder value, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, Susan Wojcicki, the scientific method, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade route, urban renewal, WeWork

In a time of transformation, when it is not just technology but the whole social and economic landscape that is radically and rapidly shifting, focusing on the why rather than the what isn’t a nice-to-have or a noble thing to do; it is the only way to survive and thrive. Whys don’t change, whats do – and fast. If we apply Moore’s law to technologies like solar, blockchain, and artificial intelligence, in the next 10 years we are going to see the total transformation of the energy industry, financial services, and a lot of skilled-knowledge industries like engineering, medicine and law. Remember the Luddites, remember the East India Company… In 1900, one of London’s biggest problems was horseshit… and by that, I really literally mean horseshit.

pages: 192 words: 63,813

The End of Astronauts: Why Robots Are the Future of Exploration by Donald Goldsmith, Martin Rees

Apollo 11, Biosphere 2, blockchain, Colonization of Mars, cosmic abundance, crewed spaceflight, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, gravity well, hydroponic farming, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, Johannes Kepler, Kuiper Belt, low earth orbit, Menlo Park, microplastics / micro fibres, Neil Armstrong, operation paperclip, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, place-making, Planet Labs, planetary scale, Ronald Reagan, satellite internet, self-driving car, South China Sea, SpaceX Starlink, Stephen Hawking, UNCLOS, V2 rocket, Virgin Galactic, Yogi Berra

The company enjoyed a good run of publicity until its acquisition in 2019 by Bradford Industries, which announced that it would concentrate on space propulsion systems rather than asteroid mining. A few months earlier, Planetary Resources, a United States company founded in 2009 to create a trillion-dollar business in asteroid mining, became part of ConsenSys, which focuses primarily on bringing blockchain technology into space, presumably to avoid all governmental interference.11 During the previous decade, Planetary Resources had deployed significant amounts of capital obtained from venture-capital luminaries such as Charles Simonyi (the only one of the seven wealthy individuals who have paid for trips to the International Space Station to have made two visits) and the founders of Google in order to launch two experimental satellites to search for the most promising asteroids.

pages: 596 words: 163,682

The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind by Raghuram Rajan

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, air traffic controllers' union, airline deregulation, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, banking crisis, barriers to entry, basic income, battle of ideas, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business process, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, central bank independence, computer vision, conceptual framework, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, currency manipulation / currency intervention, data acquisition, David Brooks, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, deskilling, disinformation, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, facts on the ground, financial innovation, financial repression, full employment, future of work, Glass-Steagall Act, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, household responsibility system, housing crisis, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, income inequality, industrial cluster, intangible asset, invention of the steam engine, invisible hand, Jaron Lanier, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, labor-force participation, Les Trente Glorieuses, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, means of production, Money creation, moral hazard, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Productivity paradox, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Richard Thaler, Robert Bork, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Sam Peltzman, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trade route, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Galena’s example is worth noting because many examples of revival center around new technologies. Galena’s does not. Indeed, in every developing country I visit, some ministry is putting together a plan to make their country a power in artificial intelligence, robotics, and financial technologies like cryptocurrencies and blockchains. Yet, few have the research base or the human capital to make the plan a success just yet. Far better to figure out realistic strengths as well as gaps, and go about exploiting the strengths and filling in the gaps, much as Galena did. COMMON THEMES IN COMMUNITY REVIVAL There are many examples of communities that have revived, some after the loss of a dominant industry (think Pittsburgh and steel) and others a major employer (the region around Lund and Malmo in Sweden after the Kockums shipyard downsized and closed in the 1980s).9 There are also many failed attempts at revival that we hear very little of.

…

Once the individual controls her data, she will have the option to sell portions of it to firms, or enter into longer-term arrangements where firms would provide her services in return for the use of her data. Some of what is implicit today would become explicit, the difference is it would be controlled by the user. Indeed, new technologies like blockchains will help decentralize this process, and bargaining bots can help routinize data acquisition for a fee when corporations need vast amounts of data to train their artificial-intelligence applications.15 Another important source of power that e-platforms or social media have is their ownership of the network.

pages: 725 words: 168,262

API Design Patterns by Jj Geewax

Amazon Web Services, anti-pattern, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, cognitive load, continuous integration, COVID-19, database schema, en.wikipedia.org, exponential backoff, imposter syndrome, Internet of things, Kubernetes, lateral thinking, loose coupling, machine readable, microservices, natural language processing, Paradox of Choice, ride hailing / ride sharing, social graph, sorting algorithm

It should go without saying that security patches and other changes in that category are often mandated, although not always by lawyers. While there are cases that it’s simply impossible to be completely compliant with all laws (e.g., it’s rumored that the bitcoin blockchain has metadata storing material that’s illegal in most countries, and blockchains are built specifically so that you cannot alter past data), it’s almost always possible to make changes to comply with relevant laws. The question, really, is one of how best to make these mandated changes (often coming from lawyers or other primarily nontechnical people) without causing undue amounts of stress on API users.

pages: 233 words: 66,446

Bitcoin: The Future of Money? by Dominic Frisby

3D printing, Alan Greenspan, altcoin, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, barriers to entry, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, capital controls, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, computer age, cryptocurrency, disintermediation, Dogecoin, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fiat currency, financial engineering, fixed income, friendly fire, game design, Hacker News, hype cycle, Isaac Newton, John Gilmore, Julian Assange, land value tax, litecoin, low interest rates, M-Pesa, mobile money, Money creation, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Occupy movement, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, price stability, printed gun, QR code, quantitative easing, railway mania, Ronald Reagan, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Ted Nelson, too big to fail, transaction costs, Turing complete, Twitter Arab Spring, Virgin Galactic, Vitalik Buterin, War on Poverty, web application, WikiLeaks

You can either buy them, earn them or mine them. I would suggest beginners ignore mining for the time being. Mining has become a specialized endeavour that takes a bit of experience and a lot of computer power. Earn them or buy them instead. The first thing you will need is a wallet. The simplest place to get one of these is blockchain.info. Click on ‘Wallet’ and you’ll have one as quickly as you can type in your email address and password. Once you have a wallet, you have an address – a place to receive your bitcoins. If you want to earn coins, simply mention that you accept bitcoins wherever you advertise your goods or services and add the option to pay with Bitcoin at your point of sale.

pages: 244 words: 66,977

Subscribed: Why the Subscription Model Will Be Your Company's Future - and What to Do About It by Tien Tzuo, Gabe Weisert

3D printing, Airbnb, airport security, Amazon Web Services, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Build a better mousetrap, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, connected car, data science, death of newspapers, digital nomad, digital rights, digital twin, double entry bookkeeping, Elon Musk, factory automation, fake news, fiat currency, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, growth hacking, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Kevin Kelly, Lean Startup, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioﬀ, Mary Meeker, megaproject, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Network effects, Nicholas Carr, nuclear winter, pets.com, planned obsolescence, pneumatic tube, profit maximization, race to the bottom, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, smart meter, social graph, software as a service, spice trade, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, subscription business, systems thinking, tech worker, TED Talk, Tim Cook: Apple, transport as a service, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WeWork, Y2K, Zipcar

Thanks to sensors and connectivity, the entire industry is starting to “wake up” and unlock all sorts of new value: French electricity provider ENGIE (which traces its roots to the company that built the Suez Canal) now has an app-based service that lets you book home service appointments; Schneider Electric (founded in 1836) partners with municipal districts not to sell them more power, but to help them reduce energy consumption by 35 percent. A new solar start-up in Brooklyn called LO3 Energy is using blockchain technology that lets you sell your solar energy to your neighbors. All these new services aren’t just about adding convenience, they’re about accelerating outcomes. Real Estate. For generations, we’ve been taught that buying and owning a house is an expected and necessary part of becoming an adult.

pages: 212 words: 69,846

The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World by Rahm Emanuel

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, Big Tech, bike sharing, blockchain, carbon footprint, clean water, data science, deindustrialization, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Enrique Peñalosa, Filter Bubble, food desert, gentrification, high-speed rail, income inequality, informal economy, Jane Jacobs, Kickstarter, Lyft, megacity, military-industrial complex, new economy, New Urbanism, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, payday loans, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, San Francisco homelessness, Silicon Valley, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the High Line, transcontinental railway, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, urban planning, War on Poverty, white flight, working poor

The dynamism of cities isn’t just relegated to what we think of as “developed countries.” Taipei, located in emerging Taiwan, is a leader in industrial design. The São Pedro neighborhood of Belo Horizonte in Brazil is home to more than three hundred start-ups. Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam is emerging as a leader in Asia in blockchain start-ups. India’s Bangalore, once a manufacturing city, is now a software hub and city of ideas. And the investments that Gaborone has made in education—at all levels—have paid off and helped it become a beacon of hope and progress in Botswana. This dynamism and progress matters, not only for the cities but for everyone in the world.

pages: 231 words: 64,734

Safe Haven: Investing for Financial Storms by Mark Spitznagel

Albert Einstein, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, asset allocation, behavioural economics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, book value, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, cognitive dissonance, commodity trading advisor, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, delayed gratification, diversification, diversified portfolio, Edward Thorp, fiat currency, financial engineering, Fractional reserve banking, global macro, Henri Poincaré, hindsight bias, Long Term Capital Management, Mark Spitznagel, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, random walk, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Schrödinger's Cat, Sharpe ratio, spice trade, Steve Jobs, tail risk, the scientific method, transaction costs, value at risk, yield curve, zero-sum game

Cryptocurrencies are thought of as insurance policies against the failure of central bankers. This, by extension, has also given them the presumed role of being an insurance policy against economic crises—since, at this point, that would entail the failure of current monetary policy. Cryptocurrencies are a most significant technology platform (the blockchain). They are like secure, virtual safety deposit boxes that only you can access. The box is the thing that's so cool and impressive, and worthy of our respect. It will change the world. But the stuff inside those boxes, just by virtue of the secure, convenient, cool boxes, is now presumed to have value—by decree or, dare I say, by fiat.

pages: 302 words: 73,581

Platform Scale: How an Emerging Business Model Helps Startups Build Large Empires With Minimum Investment by Sangeet Paul Choudary

3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, business logic, business process, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, Clayton Christensen, collaborative economy, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, data science, fake it until you make it, frictionless, game design, gamification, growth hacking, Hacker News, hive mind, hockey-stick growth, Internet of things, invisible hand, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, multi-sided market, Network effects, new economy, Paul Graham, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, search costs, shareholder value, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, social bookmarking, social graph, social software, software as a service, software is eating the world, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, TaskRabbit, the long tail, the payments system, too big to fail, transport as a service, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, Wave and Pay

They provide an early glimpse into a future where value creation may not need a supply chain, instead being orchestrated via a network of connected users on a platform. h. Cryptocurrencies Platform theory helps to explain the workings of cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin. Decentralized management – through mechanisms like the blockchain – has the potential to change governance structures for the next generation of platforms, much like social feedback tools power curation on many of the current generation of platforms. While we do not explore Bitcoin in detail in this book, the principles laid out apply equally well to understanding all emerging platforms that the book may not explicitly cover.

pages: 245 words: 72,893

How Democracy Ends by David Runciman

barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Internet of things, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norman Mailer, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, Russell Brand, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, Yogi Berra

When they went back online the day after the vote, his supporters were greeted with messages of congratulations from their host servers. The central plank of Li’s campaign had been his defence of the beleaguered dollar, which he called ‘the people’s money’. He had promised to start printing banknotes again for spending within the borders of the United States. This was popular with the victims of the great block-chain deflation, including many indebted college graduates who had long since given up trying to find a permanent job. Li’s coalition was made up of the stay-at-homes, who lived off their meagre universal basic income, and the travellers, who moved from state to state looking for part-time work. His support was lowest among the over-80s, who were worried he would substitute their retirement income with dollars.

pages: 237 words: 74,109

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, behavioural economics, Blitzscaling, blockchain, blood diamond, Burning Man, call centre, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, digital divide, digital nomad, digital rights, end-to-end encryption, Extropian, functional programming, future of work, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Jane Jacobs, job automation, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, means of production, medical residency, microaggression, microapartment, microdosing, new economy, New Urbanism, Overton Window, passive income, Plato's cave, pull request, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech bro, tech worker, technoutopianism, telepresence, telepresence robot, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, urban planning, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, work culture , Y2K, young professional

Years prior, we had conducted an off-again, on-again, casual noncommitment, which had mostly consisted of him explaining things and then apologizing. “Email is about as secure as a postcard,” he’d remind me, as we wandered between families at the farmers market in Fort Greene Park. “You don’t expect your mailman to read it, but he could.” I had listened patiently as he tried to teach me about cryptocurrencies and the promise of the blockchain, the shortcomings of two-factor authentication, the necessity of end-to-end encryption, the inevitability of data breaches. The romance didn’t last, but in its wake we had fallen into a rhythm of exchanging insecure emails on niche topics, like 1980s interface design, binary code, and public-domain art, and occasionally meeting for chaste, geriatric cultural activities.

pages: 302 words: 73,946

People Powered: How Communities Can Supercharge Your Business, Brand, and Teams by Jono Bacon

Airbnb, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, bounce rate, Cass Sunstein, Charles Lindbergh, content marketing, Debian, Firefox, gamification, if you build it, they will come, IKEA effect, imposter syndrome, Internet Archive, Jono Bacon, Kickstarter, Kubernetes, lateral thinking, Mark Shuttleworth, Minecraft, minimum viable product, more computing power than Apollo, planetary scale, pull request, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Salesforce, Scaled Composites, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, SpaceShipOne, TED Talk, the long tail, Travis Kalanick, Virgin Galactic, Y Combinator

—Dries Buytaert, Founder, Drupal and Acquia Jono Bacon is the industry leader in community strategy. People Powered is the industry-leading approach. Read it. —Jose Morales, Head of Field Operations, Atlassian The power of community is proven to us every day in our work with Open Source, Blockchain, and our own Core Community, where Jono has participated. Everywhere he engages and everyone he connects with benefits, which proves why he’s recognized as the leader in community development. —Michael Skok, Founding Partner, Underscore. VC People Powered sets the record straight about what business or product-related communities are, and the impact you can expect when they are managed well.

pages: 277 words: 70,506

We Are Bellingcat: Global Crime, Online Sleuths, and the Bold Future of News by Eliot Higgins

4chan, active measures, Andy Carvin, anti-communist, anti-globalists, barriers to entry, belling the cat, Bellingcat, bitcoin, blockchain, citizen journalism, Columbine, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, fake news, false flag, gamification, George Floyd, Google Earth, hive mind, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, off-the-grid, OpenAI, pattern recognition, post-truth, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, Tactical Technology Collective, the scientific method, WikiLeaks

Also, companies that produce media-manipulation software must consider their ethical responsibilities, building detection tools alongside deception tools.34 One possibility is to have verification data built in, so that each time a video or a photo is taken, metadata is uploaded for easy checks by forensic specialists or social-media platforms.35 The Research & Development team at the New York Times set up a News Provenance Project, testing the possibility of including context and metadata within images, perhaps with a watermark that affirms that the content was verified. They also experimented with publishing photos using blockchain, the technology made famous by cryptocurrencies, where a shared online ledger is updated at each transaction, which prevents tampering.36 Facebook also encouraged researchers to work on the problem, launching a $10 million Deepfake Detection Challenge, whose goal was to find how best to identify synthetic media.37 Deepfakes do not trouble me too much for now.

pages: 229 words: 75,606

Two and Twenty: How the Masters of Private Equity Always Win by Sachin Khajuria

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, bank run, barriers to entry, Big Tech, blockchain, business cycle, buy and hold, carried interest, COVID-19, credit crunch, data science, decarbonisation, disintermediation, diversification, East Village, financial engineering, gig economy, glass ceiling, high net worth, hiring and firing, impact investing, index fund, junk bonds, Kickstarter, low interest rates, mass affluent, moral hazard, passive investing, race to the bottom, random walk, risk/return, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, two and twenty, Vanguard fund, zero-sum game

It’s a far cry from the stereotypical image of excess often heard on Wall Street about private equity. In fact, it’s closer to the image of a responsible anchor of the economy, an industrial stalwart. One of the partners then reviews the joint ventures and minority investments the Firm has made in areas not typically covered by the funds’ traditional activities. Blockchain technology start-ups, financial technology, social housing, wind turbines, student loans, and new medicines. The Firm’s franchise is powerful enough to strike a deal in any part of the economy, and these are all new fields for the Firm to tap into. The partner goes on to review the media coverage the Firm has courted for all of these initiatives.

pages: 263 words: 77,786

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business by Alan Murray

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, call centre, carbon footprint, commoditize, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, Greta Thunberg, gun show loophole, impact investing, income inequality, intangible asset, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, job automation, knowledge worker, lockdown, London Whale, low interest rates, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, minimum wage unemployment, natural language processing, new economy, old-boy network, price mechanism, profit maximization, remote working, risk-adjusted returns, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, scientific management, shareholder value, side hustle, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, The Future of Employment, the payments system, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tim Cook: Apple, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce, work culture , working poor, zero-sum game

A quarter century ago, if you asked the head of an investment bank or a retail giant or a media company who its main competitor was, they would quickly point to another company in the same industry. But ask the question today, and the answer is far less clear. It could be Amazon, which is making inroads in multiple industries; or a startup that is challenging the industry’s entire business model; or even a new technology, like artificial intelligence or the blockchain, which promises to reshape the entire industrial landscape. Disruption has become a constant in business. Information flows also have changed. A half century ago, corporations were set up as information hierarchies. The people in the field all reported information up to the C-suite, where the leaders would take that information, analyze it, formulate a strategy, and then send orders back down the hierarchy.

pages: 706 words: 202,591

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy

active measures, Airbnb, Airbus A320, Amazon Mechanical Turk, AOL-Time Warner, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Burning Man, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, cloud computing, company town, computer vision, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dunbar number, East Village, Edward Snowden, El Camino Real, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Firefox, Frank Gehry, Geoffrey Hinton, glass ceiling, GPS: selective availability, growth hacking, imposter syndrome, indoor plumbing, information security, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Jony Ive, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, lock screen, Lyft, machine translation, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, Menlo Park, Metcalfe’s law, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, natural language processing, Network effects, Oculus Rift, operational security, PageRank, Paul Buchheit, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pets.com, post-work, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, Robert Mercer, Robert Metcalfe, rolodex, Russian election interference, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sexual politics, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, social contagion, social graph, social software, South of Market, San Francisco, Startup school, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, techlash, Tim Cook: Apple, Tragedy of the Commons, web application, WeWork, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, Y Combinator, Y2K, you are the product

The solution—and an opportunity to grab a space in the net paradigm shift—came in an email to Zuckerberg from one of his favorite executives, David Marcus, who headed the Messenger team. On his 2017 Christmas break, Marcus had been on a family vacation in the Dominican Republic. He was musing about cryptocurrencies, which was not such a stretch for a former PayPal executive. A technology called blockchain had the potential to lock down the security of digital currencies, but so far the electronic currencies in circulation were more objects of speculation than exchange. Marcus felt that Facebook could change this. What if Facebook created a global digital currency? Marcus had ideas on how it could do this and dashed them off to Zuckerberg.

…

Libra had a convoluted plan for administration, mainly to address the skepticism people would bring to a global currency established by a company that was now among the least trustworthy on the planet. The company would turn over administration of this currency to an outside body, the Libra Association. It would have one hundred partners—each one a “node” on the blockchain, able to make direct transactions. Facebook would be only one of those nodes, with but a single vote. An outside director would run the association. Facebook would also make the Libra code available via open-source software. No secrets. Ceding control actually would make Libra more valuable to Facebook, because not being owned by Facebook would make Libra attractive to those suspicious of Facebook, which was just about everyone.

pages: 252 words: 78,780

Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us by Dan Lyons

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Amazon Robotics, Amazon Web Services, antiwork, Apple II, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, business process, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, clean water, collective bargaining, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, data science, David Heinemeier Hansson, digital rights, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fake news, full employment, future of work, gig economy, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Hacker News, hiring and firing, holacracy, housing crisis, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, initial coin offering, Jeff Bezos, job automation, job satisfaction, job-hopping, John Gruber, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kanban, Kevin Kelly, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, loose coupling, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, Menlo Park, Milgram experiment, minimum viable product, Mitch Kapor, move fast and break things, new economy, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parker Conrad, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, public intellectual, RAND corporation, remote working, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Ruby on Rails, Sam Altman, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, scientific management, self-driving car, shareholder value, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, SoftBank, software is eating the world, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Stewart Brand, stock buybacks, super pumped, TaskRabbit, tech bro, tech worker, TechCrunch disrupt, TED Talk, telemarketer, Tesla Model S, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, Toyota Production System, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, tulip mania, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, web application, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, work culture , workplace surveillance , Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

They’ve seen other big old companies get killed off by Silicon Valley, and they would rather not have this happen to them. They seem to believe that some magic elixir exists here, some recipe for innovation that floats in the air and can be absorbed if you drive around with your windows open, smelling the eucalyptus trees. They see people getting rich on things they don’t even understand. Blockchain? Ethereum? Initial coin offerings? So they fly out and have drinks at the Rosewood Hotel on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, where venture capitalists hang around, as do expensive “companions,” many with Eastern European accents. They eat lunch at the Battery, a members-only private club for social-climbing parvenus in San Francisco.

pages: 286 words: 87,401

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh

"Susan Fowler" uber, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, adjacent possible, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, autonomous vehicles, Benchmark Capital, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, Bob Noyce, business intelligence, Cambridge Analytica, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, cloud computing, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, database schema, DeepMind, Didi Chuxing, discounted cash flows, Elon Musk, fake news, Firefox, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, fulfillment center, Future Shock, George Gilder, global pandemic, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, Greyball, growth hacking, high-speed rail, hockey-stick growth, hydraulic fracturing, Hyperloop, initial coin offering, inventory management, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Khan Academy, late fees, Lean Startup, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioﬀ, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Max Levchin, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, Network effects, Oculus Rift, oil shale / tar sands, PalmPilot, Paul Buchheit, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Quicken Loans, recommendation engine, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, self-driving car, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, smart grid, social graph, SoftBank, software as a service, software is eating the world, speech recognition, stem cell, Steve Jobs, subscription business, synthetic biology, Tesla Model S, thinkpad, three-martini lunch, transaction costs, transport as a service, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, web application, winner-take-all economy, work culture , Y Combinator, yellow journalism

So far, blitzscaling has been concentrated in software and the Internet, but it’s likely to reshape our physical infrastructure or even our bodies in the future. Artificial intelligence will soon be ubiquitous, thanks to self-driving vehicles and better machine learning. Technology innovations in the life sciences, such as CRISPR gene editing, may change the fabric of life itself. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology may change the role of governments and corporations in global finance and commerce. New technologies are emerging rapidly and promise to change everything—again. These new technologies will enable new business models, which in turn will create new industries. In the history of high tech, platform shifts, such as the move from mainframes to client-server or the move from the Web to mobile, have represented huge opportunities.

pages: 292 words: 85,151

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, and Cheaper Than Yours (And What to Do About It) by Salim Ismail, Yuri van Geest

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, anti-fragile, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Baxter: Rethink Robotics, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bike sharing, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, book value, Burning Man, business intelligence, business process, call centre, chief data officer, Chris Wanstrath, circular economy, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive bias, collaborative consumption, collaborative economy, commoditize, corporate social responsibility, cross-subsidies, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, driverless car, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, fail fast, game design, gamification, Google Glasses, Google Hangouts, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hiring and firing, holacracy, Hyperloop, industrial robot, Innovator's Dilemma, intangible asset, Internet of things, Iridium satellite, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, Lean Startup, life extension, lifelogging, loose coupling, loss aversion, low earth orbit, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, Max Levchin, means of production, Michael Milken, minimum viable product, natural language processing, Netflix Prize, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, offshore financial centre, PageRank, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, paypal mafia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer model, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, prediction markets, profit motive, publish or perish, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, recommendation engine, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, Rutger Bregman, Salesforce, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, skunkworks, Skype, smart contracts, Snapchat, social software, software is eating the world, SpaceShipOne, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, subscription business, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, the long tail, Tony Hsieh, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, uber lyft, urban planning, Virgin Galactic, WikiLeaks, winner-take-all economy, X Prize, Y Combinator, zero-sum game

Oculus Rift, High Fidelity and Google Glass drive new applications. Implications: Remote viewing; centrally located experts serving more areas; new practice areas; remote medicine. Bitcoin and block chain Description: Trustless, ultra-low-cost secure transactions enabled by distributed ledgers that log everything. Implications: The blockchain becomes a trust engine; most third-party validation functions become automated (e.g., multi-signatory contracts, voting systems, audit practices). Micro-transactions and new payment systems become ubiquitous. Neuro-feedback Description: Use of feedback loops to bring the brain to a high level of precision.

pages: 291 words: 90,771

Upscale: What It Takes to Scale a Startup. By the People Who've Done It. by James Silver

Airbnb, augmented reality, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, blockchain, business process, call centre, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, data science, DeepMind, DevOps, family office, flag carrier, fulfillment center, future of work, Google Hangouts, growth hacking, high net worth, hiring and firing, imposter syndrome, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, pattern recognition, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, WeWork, women in the workforce, Y Combinator

Founded in 2011 (originally as Tech City), Tech Nation’s programmes cater for businesses at all stages of company growth, from initial idea and early stages (The Digital Business Academy, Founders’ Network and Rising Stars), right through to the mid and late stages (Upscale and Future Fifty). It also recently launched its first sector-specific programme, covering FinTech, while Cyber, Deep Tech and Blockchain will be launching shortly. www.technation.io Twitter@TechNation First published in 2018 by Tech Nation Copyright © James Silver 2018 The moral right of James Silver to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

pages: 291 words: 80,068

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Francis de Véricourt

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, circular economy, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, DeepMind, defund the police, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, fiat currency, framing effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, game design, George Floyd, George Gilder, global pandemic, global village, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microaggression, Mustafa Suleyman, Neil Armstrong, nudge unit, OpenAI, packet switching, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

Good framers are rare, but they can be found everywhere. Thinking New, Thinking Different Human progress is typically measured through the lens of human cooperation. By working together, people advance their societies. We build cities, travel oceans, explore the heavens. Roman roads and the Chinese wall; courts of law and blockchain updates. Whether in the form of infrastructure, institutions, or inventions, society’s achievements are attributed to the organization and coordination of people. For good reason too. Most of what people do and know cannot be captured in a single mind. It takes a village, today a global village, to achieve humanity’s potential.

pages: 317 words: 87,048

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World by James Ball

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Abraham Wald, algorithmic bias, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Charles Babbage, cognitive dissonance, Comet Ping Pong, coronavirus, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, false flag, Gabriella Coleman, global pandemic, green transition, housing justice, informal economy, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeremy Corbyn, John Perry Barlow, Jon Ronson, Julian Assange, lab leak, lockdown, lolcat, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Minecraft, nuclear winter, paperclip maximiser, Peter Thiel, Piers Corbyn, post-truth, pre–internet, QAnon, real-name policy, Russell Brand, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Snapchat, social contagion, Steve Bannon, survivorship bias, TikTok, trade route, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, WikiLeaks

In a Twitter thread with more than 26,000 retweets, a man claiming to be US Air Force veteran Tom Graham had an answer for those worried in November 2020: Democrats had fallen into Trump’s trap. Trump was watching the results in a secure facility, knowing the Democrats would fake them. Secretly, he had marked the ballots using blockchain technology. Soon, the fraud would be revealed, and the Democrats locked up. Trust the plan, even though the plan keeps changing.1 For those holding the faith, things started to look up again. After a ten-day silence, Q resurfaced on 13 November,2 initially posting a US flag accompanied by this short message: Nothing can stop what is coming.

pages: 357 words: 95,986

Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work by Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams

3D printing, additive manufacturing, air freight, algorithmic trading, anti-work, antiwork, back-to-the-land, banking crisis, basic income, battle of ideas, blockchain, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, call centre, capital controls, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, centre right, collective bargaining, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, David Graeber, decarbonisation, deep learning, deindustrialization, deskilling, Doha Development Round, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Ferguson, Missouri, financial independence, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, future of work, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, housing crisis, housing justice, income inequality, industrial robot, informal economy, intermodal, Internet Archive, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late capitalism, liberation theology, Live Aid, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market design, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, megaproject, minimum wage unemployment, Modern Monetary Theory, Mont Pelerin Society, Murray Bookchin, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, Overton Window, patent troll, pattern recognition, Paul Samuelson, Philip Mirowski, post scarcity, post-Fordism, post-work, postnationalism / post nation state, precariat, precautionary principle, price stability, profit motive, public intellectual, quantitative easing, reshoring, Richard Florida, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, Slavoj Žižek, social web, stakhanovite, Steve Jobs, surplus humans, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Future of Employment, the long tail, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, wages for housework, warehouse automation, We are all Keynesians now, We are the 99%, women in the workforce, working poor, working-age population

Additive manufacturing and the automation of work portend the possibility of production based on flexibility, decentralisation and post-scarcity for some goods. The rapid automation of logistics presents the utopian possibility of a globally interconnected system in which parts and goods can be shipped rapidly and efficiently without human labour. Cryptocurrencies and their block-chain technology could bring forth a new money of the commons, divorced from capitalist forms.27 The democratic guidance of the economy is also accelerated by emerging technologies. Famously, Oscar Wilde once said that the problem with socialism was that it took up too many evenings. Increasing economic democracy could require us to devote an overwhelming amount of time to discussions and decisions over the minutiae of everyday life.28 The use of computing technology is essential in avoiding this problem, both by simplifying the decisions to be made and by automating decisions collectively deemed to be irrelevant.

Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime by Julian Guthrie

"Susan Fowler" uber, "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Andy Rubin, Apollo 11, Apple II, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Benchmark Capital, blockchain, Bob Noyce, call centre, cloud computing, credit crunch, deal flow, disruptive innovation, Elon Musk, equal pay for equal work, Fairchild Semiconductor, fear of failure, game design, Gary Kildall, glass ceiling, hiring and firing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Louis Pasteur, Lyft, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Mitch Kapor, new economy, PageRank, peer-to-peer, pets.com, phenotype, place-making, private spaceflight, retail therapy, ROLM, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Salesforce, Sand Hill Road, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Snapchat, software as a service, South of Market, San Francisco, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steve Wozniak, Susan Wojcicki, TaskRabbit, Teledyne, Tim Cook: Apple, Timothy McVeigh, Travis Kalanick, uber lyft, unpaid internship, upwardly mobile, urban decay, UUNET, web application, William Shockley: the traitorous eight, women in the workforce

The Broadway Angels’ early investments included Rocksbox, a jewelry subscription service founded by Meaghan Rose, a mother, math whiz, and scrappy entrepreneur; Debbie Sterling, an engineer who founded the toy brand GoldieBlox to introduce girls to science and engineering; and UrbanSitter, co-founded by Lynn Perkins, a mother who wanted a better way than word of mouth to find a babysitter. Other investments included Hint Water, a beverage company founded by Kara Goldin, who started the company because she wanted to lose weight and get away from diet soda. Hint was now a $100-million-a-year business. Sonja invited Brad Stephens, a pioneer in blockchain technology investing, to talk about opportunities in the sector. Sonja slowly reduced her time at Menlo and stopped attending partners’ meetings. In addition to Broadway Angels, she had started a nonprofit to support at-risk teenage girls. The nonprofit, Project Glimmer, was inspired by the online beauty site Eve, and gave gifts of jewelry and makeup at Christmas, reaching more than 125,000 girls and women a year.

pages: 304 words: 90,084

Net Zero: How We Stop Causing Climate Change by Dieter Helm

3D printing, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boris Johnson, carbon credits, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, congestion charging, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, demand response, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, electricity market, Extinction Rebellion, fixed income, food miles, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, Haber-Bosch Process, high-speed rail, hydrogen economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Jevons paradox, lockdown, market design, means of production, microplastics / micro fibres, North Sea oil, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, peak oil, planetary scale, precautionary principle, price mechanism, quantitative easing, remote working, reshoring, rewilding, Ronald Reagan, smart meter, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, statistical model, systems thinking, Thomas Malthus

Digitalisation is not confined to robots, data and AI, but also includes the things that these will enable. 3D printing ushers in a much greater degree of customisation, as products are printed from digital images and instructions. The food chain itself has already been digitalised, but there is more to come here too, with blockchain and the internet-of-things allowing precision identification and tracking of each item and payment. Agricultural activities are increasingly being integrated with food processing and logistics supply chains. Food itself is being broken down by genetics. Where once there were cows and sheep, and then specific sorts of cows and sheep, it is increasingly possible to regard each as bunches of genes.

pages: 419 words: 102,488

Chaos Engineering: System Resiliency in Practice by Casey Rosenthal, Nora Jones

Amazon Web Services, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, blockchain, business continuity plan, business intelligence, business logic, business process, cloud computing, cognitive load, complexity theory, continuous integration, cyber-physical system, database schema, DevOps, fail fast, fault tolerance, hindsight bias, human-factors engineering, information security, Kanban, Kubernetes, leftpad, linear programming, loose coupling, microservices, MITM: man-in-the-middle, no silver bullet, node package manager, operational security, OSI model, pull request, ransomware, risk tolerance, scientific management, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Skype, software as a service, statistical model, systems thinking, the scientific method, value engineering, WebSocket

Banks have put in required governance processes and tools in collecting and submitting this evidence to the appropriate authorities. That process has legal implications and must not be affected by efforts or tooling like Chaos Engineering. On the other hand, with the rise of digital banks and neobanks,1 the way customers interact with their money is changing. Financial capabilities powered by blockchain, AI, machine learning, and business intelligence has exposed the need for highly robust and scalable systems that the cloud infrastructure provides. This drives an evolution in software development methodologies and the need to bake in the right engineering practices into their way of working. Just like automated deployments have improved feature velocity, and immutable infrastructure makes sure the deployed servers are never altered, the systems need to be continuously validated for reliability.

pages: 599 words: 98,564

The Mutant Project: Inside the Global Race to Genetically Modify Humans by Eben Kirksey

23andMe, Abraham Maslow, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Albert Einstein, Bernie Sanders, bioinformatics, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Buckminster Fuller, clean water, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data acquisition, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double helix, epigenetics, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental subject, fake news, gentrification, George Floyd, Jeff Bezos, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, microdosing, moral panic, move fast and break things, personalized medicine, phenotype, placebo effect, randomized controlled trial, Recombinant DNA, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, special economic zone, statistical model, stem cell, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, technological determinism, upwardly mobile, urban planning, young professional

The new synthetic chromosome did not cure Tristan’s HIV infection. On his website he waxed poetic: “We are at a crossroads in humanity’s evolution. Will we experience a transition into abundance, transcending our violent, scarcity-bounded heritage? Or will exponential technologies such as bio-engineering and blockchains be our Tower of Babel; exacerbating inequalities rather than truly reaching heaven?”9 * * * The Netflix film crew traveled to Mississippi, where they filmed David Ishee injecting himself with a new synthetic chromosome. A white laptop, safety goggles, and disinfectant spray were on a small dining table.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy by Andrew Yang

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Amazon Web Services, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, basic income, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, blue-collar work, call centre, centre right, clean water, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, data is the new oil, data science, deepfake, disinformation, Donald Trump, facts on the ground, fake news, forensic accounting, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, global pandemic, income inequality, independent contractor, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Marc Benioﬀ, Mark Zuckerberg, medical bankruptcy, new economy, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, pez dispenser, QAnon, recommendation engine, risk tolerance, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, Saturday Night Live, shareholder value, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, single-payer health, Snapchat, social distancing, SoftBank, surveillance capitalism, systematic bias, tech billionaire, TED Talk, The Day the Music Died, the long tail, TikTok, universal basic income, winner-take-all economy, working poor

State unemployment benefits are run out of state agencies that don’t interface with the federal government. The IRS, CDC, Census Bureau, and Small Business Administration don’t pool data with each other. And there would be concerns among some that the site would not be secure and would be subject to hacks. Our volunteer team was using blockchain technologies to better synchronize online government platforms and ensure site security. Of course these kinds of volunteer efforts aren’t a fit for every problem. Much of the time, the best thing you can do is identify dedicated people within a bureaucracy and empower them to do their jobs.

pages: 340 words: 101,675

A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction by Adrian Hon

Adrian Hon, air gap, Anthropocene, augmented reality, blockchain, bounce rate, call centre, carbon credits, carbon tax, Cepheid variable, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, deepfake, defense in depth, discrete time, disinformation, disintermediation, driverless car, drone strike, food desert, game design, gamification, gravity well, hive mind, hydroponic farming, impulse control, income inequality, job automation, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, knowledge worker, life extension, lifelogging, low earth orbit, machine translation, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral panic, Neal Stephenson, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, peak oil, peer-to-peer, phenotype, planned obsolescence, post scarcity, precariat, precautionary principle, prediction markets, rewilding, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, Skype, smart contracts, social graph, South Sea Bubble, speech recognition, stem cell, Stewart Brand, synthetic biology, technoutopianism, telepresence, transfer pricing, tulip mania, Turing test, urban sprawl, Vernor Vinge, VTOL, working-age population

In theory, China’s supposedly all-seeing surveillance state would have spotted these kinds of tricks, but the deeply—and deliberately—fragmented nature of those surveillance systems meant there were plenty of opportunities for digital gatekeepers to ignore infractions and manipulate accounts. Unlike the blockchains employed by other nations, China’s tax records were stored in a nonimmutable transaction log. You never know when you might need to rewrite history, after all. Capital flight wasn’t a serious problem; few rich Chinese wanted to become tax exiles, and China’s tightening grip over global financial institutions meant that no one felt comfortable running for long.

pages: 354 words: 105,322

The Road to Ruin: The Global Elites' Secret Plan for the Next Financial Crisis by James Rickards

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, blockchain, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, butterfly effect, buy and hold, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, cellular automata, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, disintermediation, distributed ledger, diversification, diversified portfolio, driverless car, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fiat currency, financial repression, fixed income, Flash crash, floating exchange rates, forward guidance, Fractional reserve banking, G4S, George Akerlof, Glass-Steagall Act, global macro, global reserve currency, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, jitney, John Meriwether, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, large denomination, liquidity trap, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, machine readable, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, market bubble, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, Minsky moment, Money creation, money market fund, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, nuclear winter, obamacare, offshore financial centre, operational security, Paul Samuelson, Peace of Westphalia, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, plutocrats, prediction markets, price anchoring, price stability, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, random walk, reserve currency, RFID, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, stock buybacks, stocks for the long run, tech billionaire, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, too big to fail, transfer pricing, value at risk, Washington Consensus, We are all Keynesians now, Westphalian system

Regulators will want to suppress twenty-first-century digital curb exchanges to prevent price discovery and maintain the myth of pre-panic prices. Curb exchanges could be conducted online in an eBay-style format with settlement by bitcoin or cash delivered face-to-face. Title to shares can be recorded in a distributed ledger using a blockchain. Eliminating cash helps the suppression of alternative markets, although bitcoin presents new challenges to elite power. The second reason for eliminating cash is to impose negative interest rates. Central banks are in a losing battle against deflationary trends. One way to defeat deflation is to promote inflation with negative real interest rates.

pages: 480 words: 112,463

The Golden Thread: How Fabric Changed History by Kassia St Clair

Apollo 11, barriers to entry, bitcoin, blockchain, butterfly effect, Dmitri Mendeleev, Elon Musk, flying shuttle, Francisco Pizarro, gender pay gap, ghettoisation, gravity well, Jacquard loom, James Hargreaves, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kickstarter, Neil Armstrong, North Ronaldsay sheep, out of africa, Rana Plaza, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, spinning jenny, synthetic biology, TED Talk, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, Virgin Galactic, Works Progress Administration

The industry of fabric is older than pottery or metallurgy and perhaps even than agriculture and stock-breeding. Cloth is the original technology.7 Trade and Technology The weavers take the intertwined threads and through their expert, value-added activity create a strong fabric – which is exactly what the global distributed network of computers creating the Bitcoin Blockchain does. David Orban, ‘Weaving is a Better Metaphor for Bitcoin, Instead of Mining’, 2014 In 2015, Google I/O, one of the firm’s secretive research and development divisions, announced that they were planning to make a pair of trousers that would also be computers. They would be made of a special textile – available in a wide palette of colours and myriad textures – that would function as a touchscreen, registering special gestures and able to control devices such as smartphones.

pages: 398 words: 105,917

Bean Counters: The Triumph of the Accountants and How They Broke Capitalism by Richard Brooks

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, asset-backed security, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blockchain, BRICs, British Empire, business process, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Strachan, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, energy security, Etonian, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, Ford Model T, forensic accounting, Frederick Winslow Taylor, G4S, Glass-Steagall Act, high-speed rail, information security, intangible asset, Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low cost airline, new economy, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, Ponzi scheme, post-oil, principal–agent problem, profit motive, race to the bottom, railway mania, regulatory arbitrage, risk/return, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, scientific management, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, statistical model, supply-chain management, The Chicago School, too big to fail, transaction costs, transfer pricing, Upton Sinclair, WikiLeaks

‘From strategy through execution,’ it says, ‘PwC’s alliance with Google for Work takes a business-focused approach that brings together PwC’s business transformation, process and organizational change capabilities and Google for Work’s collaborative and innovative applications & technologies.’21 KPMG boasts a similar ‘Global Digital Solution Hub’ tie-in with Microsoft. Deloitte attributed a 10% growth in consulting revenues in 2017 to ‘artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive, creative digital consulting, cloud computing, blockchain and [the] Internet of Things’. The Big Four are where management consultancy and information technology now meet. They are perfectly placed to capitalize on the age of mass data, with troubling potential conflicts of interest. The firms offer firstly to use client companies’ own data to improve their audits and, through that, their audit clients’ performance.

pages: 374 words: 111,284

The AI Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Robot Age by Roger Bootle

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, agricultural Revolution, AI winter, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Alvin Toffler, anti-work, antiwork, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, blockchain, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carl Icahn, Chris Urmson, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deep learning, DeepMind, deindustrialization, Demis Hassabis, deskilling, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, facts on the ground, fake news, financial intermediation, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, general purpose technology, Great Leap Forward, Hans Moravec, income inequality, income per capita, industrial robot, Internet of things, invention of the wheel, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, low interest rates, machine translation, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, market bubble, mega-rich, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Ocado, Paul Samuelson, Peter Thiel, Phillips curve, positional goods, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Rutger Bregman, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Simon Kuznets, Skype, social intelligence, spinning jenny, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, synthetic biology, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, trade route, universal basic income, US Airways Flight 1549, Vernor Vinge, warehouse automation, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, wealth creators, winner-take-all economy, world market for maybe five computers, Y2K, Yogi Berra

Because of economies of scale and first mover advantage, they may not be very vulnerable to competitors trying to do the same as them – although they cannot be sure of this. Their real vulnerability is that some new technology may come along and undermine them, just as happened to those who preceded them. Furthermore, some modern technologies, such as blockchain and 3D printing, facilitate small-scale production. Moreover, another surprising possible effect on the income distribution springs up from the discussion of work versus leisure in Chapter 4. It transpires that, in a turnaround from most of human history, in today’s society, those at the top of the income distribution currently tend to work longer hours that those at the bottom.

pages: 407 words: 104,622

The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution by Gregory Zuckerman

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, automated trading system, backtesting, Bayesian statistics, Bear Stearns, beat the dealer, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, book value, Brownian motion, butter production in bangladesh, buy and hold, buy low sell high, Cambridge Analytica, Carl Icahn, Claude Shannon: information theory, computer age, computerized trading, Credit Default Swap, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, Emanuel Derman, endowment effect, financial engineering, Flash crash, George Gilder, Gordon Gekko, illegal immigration, index card, index fund, Isaac Newton, Jim Simons, John Meriwether, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, junk bonds, Loma Prieta earthquake, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, Michael Milken, Monty Hall problem, More Guns, Less Crime, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, Neil Armstrong, obamacare, off-the-grid, p-value, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, Ponzi scheme, prediction markets, proprietary trading, quantitative hedge fund, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, random walk, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Thaler, Robert Mercer, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Sharpe ratio, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, speech recognition, statistical arbitrage, statistical model, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, stochastic process, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, transaction costs, Turing machine, Two Sigma

Abuse of Structured Financial Products (statement of Peter Brown). 4. Katherine Burton, “Inside a Moneymaking Machine Like No Other,” Bloomberg, November 21, 2016, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box. 5. George Gilder, Life after Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 2018). 6. Simon Van Zuylen-Wood, “The Controversial David Magerman,” Philadelphia Magazine, September 13, 2013, https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/09/13/controversial-david-magerman. 7. Scott Patterson and Jenny Strasburg, “Pioneering Fund Stages Second Act,” Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2010, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703494404575082000779302566. 8.

pages: 403 words: 110,492

Nomad Capitalist: How to Reclaim Your Freedom With Offshore Bank Accounts, Dual Citizenship, Foreign Companies, and Overseas Investments by Andrew Henderson

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Airbnb, airport security, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, bank run, barriers to entry, birth tourism , bitcoin, blockchain, business process, call centre, capital controls, car-free, content marketing, cryptocurrency, currency risk, digital nomad, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Elon Musk, failed state, fiat currency, Fractional reserve banking, gentrification, intangible asset, land reform, low interest rates, medical malpractice, new economy, obamacare, offshore financial centre, passive income, peer-to-peer lending, Pepsi Challenge, place-making, risk tolerance, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Skype, too big to fail, white picket fence, work culture , working-age population

You could travel to every country on the planet, but as long as your mindset stays at home, you will miss the boat toward greater progress and freedom. It is the countries (and people) that recognize that they have room for improvement that achieve some of the greatest advancements. The country of Georgia, for example, is the first country in the world to be putting its real estate on the blockchain. They innovate because they know that they have to do something interesting and different to stand out and make a name for themselves. You want to find countries that are a bit self-conscious like that because they are more responsive to opportunities to change and improve. In a sense, you need to be the same way when it comes to your personal mindset toward growth.

pages: 338 words: 104,684

The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy by Stephanie Kelton

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, collective bargaining, COVID-19, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, discrete time, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, floating exchange rates, Food sovereignty, full employment, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, new economy, New Urbanism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price anchoring, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, trade liberalization, urban planning, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, zero-sum game

Millikan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953); Simon Gray and Runchana Pongsaparn, Issuance of Central Securities: International Experiences and Guidelines, IMF Working Paper, WP/15/106, May 2015, www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2015/wp15106.pdf; and Rohan Grey, “Banking in a Digital Fiat Currency Regime,” in Regulating Blockchain: Techno-Social and Legal Challenges, ed. Philipp Hacker, Ioannis Lianos, Georgios Dimitropoulos, and Stefan Eich (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2019), 169–180, rohangrey.net/files/banking.pdf. 10. The CBO estimates that net interest expenditure will rise from 1.8 percent of GDP in 2019 to 3.0 percent by 2029, climbing all the way to 5.7 percent by 2049.

pages: 387 words: 106,753

Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success by Tom Eisenmann

Airbnb, Atul Gawande, autonomous vehicles, Ben Horowitz, Big Tech, bitcoin, Blitzscaling, blockchain, call centre, carbon footprint, Checklist Manifesto, clean tech, conceptual framework, coronavirus, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, drop ship, Elon Musk, fail fast, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, growth hacking, Hyperloop, income inequality, initial coin offering, inventory management, Iridium satellite, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, Larry Ellison, Lean Startup, Lyft, Marc Andreessen, margin call, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum viable product, Network effects, nuclear winter, Oculus Rift, PalmPilot, Paul Graham, performance metric, Peter Pan Syndrome, Peter Thiel, reality distortion field, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk/return, Salesforce, Sam Altman, Sand Hill Road, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social graph, software as a service, Solyndra, speech recognition, stealth mode startup, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, two-sided market, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, vertical integration, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional, Zenefits

In each instance, VCs poured huge amounts of capital into scores of ventures in some hot new sector. Then, the flow of capital suddenly stopped, and startups, starved for capital, struggled to survive. Boom-bust investment cycles do not always impact entire industry sectors. Sometimes they are limited to certain segments, like meal delivery services, virtual reality, pet care, bitcoin/blockchain, direct-to-consumer brands, robo-investing, autonomous vehicles, and so forth. Investment bubbles typically start when entrepreneurs and investors recognize a big, new opportunity, often triggered by technology breakthroughs, like machine learning, gene editing, or voice recognition software (e.g., Jibo).

Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, AOL-Time Warner, behavioural economics, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, citizen journalism, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, data science, David Brooks, deplatforming, Donald Trump, drone strike, fake news, Filter Bubble, Frank Gehry, full stack developer, future of journalism, hype cycle, Jeff Bezos, Kevin Roose, Larry Ellison, late capitalism, lolcat, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, moral panic, obamacare, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, post-work, public intellectual, reality distortion field, Robert Mercer, Sand Hill Road, Saturday Night Live, sentiment analysis, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, skunkworks, slashdot, Snapchat, social web, Socratic dialogue, SoftBank, Steve Bannon, Steven Levy, subscription business, tech worker, TikTok, traveling salesman, WeWork, WikiLeaks, young professional, Zenefits

Gionet “informed me that he was a ‘influencer’ and had a large following on social media,” according to a police report. By then, Gionet had been subject to the evils that had been denounced at Trump’s social media summit. He’d been deplatformed—thrown off Twitter and Twitch—and had his YouTube videos demonetized. So he was streaming to DLive, a blockchain-based service, when he entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He strode around like he owned the place. “America First is inevitable! Fuck globalists, let’s go!” he yelled. At one point he advised other rioters not to damage anything; at another he yelled at a police officer that he was a “fucking oathbreaker, you piece of shit.”

pages: 368 words: 106,185

A Shot to Save the World: The Inside Story of the Life-Or-Death Race for a COVID-19 Vaccine by Gregory Zuckerman

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, blockchain, Boris Johnson, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, double helix, Edward Jenner, future of work, Recombinant DNA, ride hailing / ride sharing, Silicon Valley, sovereign wealth fund, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Steve Jobs, TikTok, Travis Kalanick, WeWork

On January 23, the third day of the forum, Chinese leaders locked down Wuhan and three other cities, in the biggest quarantine in history. The Chinese must know it’s bad and they’re not telling anyone, Bancel concluded. He looked around—heated discussions were under way about the future of work, blockchain traceability, and inclusivity. A tsunami was just beyond the horizon, yet everyone was frolicking on the beach. On Saturday morning, January 25, Bancel woke up scared. A pandemic was coming but his company wasn’t ready. The NIH planned to test Moderna’s vaccine but he didn’t know if the government agency could move quickly enough or if it was as frightened of the new virus as he had become.

pages: 425 words: 112,220

The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky

23andMe, 3D printing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Anne Wojcicki, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Ben Horowitz, bitcoin, blockchain, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, commoditize, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, data science, delayed gratification, DevOps, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, endowment effect, fake it until you make it, hiring and firing, Inbox Zero, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, minimum viable product, move fast and break things, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, old-boy network, Paradox of Choice, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, private spaceflight, reality distortion field, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, skeuomorphism, slashdot, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, subscription business, sugar pill, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, TED Talk, the medium is the message, Tony Fadell, Travis Kalanick, Uber for X, uber lyft, WeWork, Y Combinator, young professional

The millions of portfolios hosted on Behance didn’t belong to us. Our job was to protect and enrich the network, but we didn’t own it. If you’re building or hosting a community or network of any kind, you are a steward, not an owner. As businesses become more decentralized, whether through online networks, blockchains, or other methods that connect people, traditional approaches to building and leading communities need to be reimagined. NETWORKS ARE SERVED, NOT LED. If so much of the future of business depends on building networks, then we need to rethink the role of leaders in business. For instance, a strategy is less about accomplishing your team’s objectives and more about better serving the needs of your network’s participants.

pages: 349 words: 114,038

Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens

4chan, Aaron Swartz, airport security, AltaVista, anti-communist, anti-pattern, barriers to entry, Bill Duvall, bitcoin, blockchain, Boeing 747, bread and circuses, business climate, business intelligence, business process, Chelsea Manning, clean water, commoditize, congestion charging, Corn Laws, correlation does not imply causation, cryptocurrency, Debian, decentralized internet, disinformation, Edward Snowden, failed state, financial independence, Firefox, full text search, gamification, German hyperinflation, global village, GnuPG, Google Chrome, greed is good, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, independent contractor, informal economy, intangible asset, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Rulifson, Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, M-Pesa, mass immigration, mass incarceration, mega-rich, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, new economy, New Urbanism, no silver bullet, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, packet switching, patent troll, peak oil, power law, pre–internet, private military company, race to the bottom, real-name policy, rent-seeking, reserve currency, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Ross Ulbricht, Russell Brand, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, selection bias, Skype, slashdot, software patent, spectrum auction, Steve Crocker, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, transaction costs, twin studies, union organizing, wealth creators, web application, WikiLeaks, Y2K, zero day, Zipf's Law

Better, the Spider calculates, to buy time and find a way to control BitCoin, and make a profit from it. BitCoin is a surprisingly strong model in some ways, yet it still has several vulnerabilities. It will depend on exchanges for converting BitCoin to other currencies until it gains (if it ever does) a sufficient internal market. BitCoin transactions -- the blockchain -- are essentially public, and it's been shown that you can tie transactions back to individual identities. Lastly, and most importantly, the whole system depends on a distributed network of "miners," who recalculate transactions, and in the process generate new BitCoin. BitCoin depends on its miners to remain honest.

pages: 443 words: 116,832

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics by Ben Buchanan

active measures, air gap, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, family office, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Internet Archive, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Laura Poitras, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nate Silver, operational security, post-truth, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, technoutopianism, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Wargames Reagan, WikiLeaks, zero day

Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Robert Windrem, “CIA Prepping for Possible Cyber Strike against Russia,” NBC News, October 14, 2016. 16. Becker et al., “NSA Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets.” 17. This original message and others from this period appear to have been taken down, but reposts are visible on the Shadow Brokers’ account on Steemit, a blockchain-based messaging site, which the Shadow Brokers later used for their communications and which is the best compendium of their messages in one place. theshadowbrokers, “Repost: TheShadowBrokers Message#4 - October 2016,” Steemit, October 15, 2016. 18. theshadowbrokers, “Message#5— Trick or Treat?

pages: 404 words: 115,108

They Don't Represent Us: Reclaiming Our Democracy by Lawrence Lessig

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Columbine, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, data science, David Brooks, disinformation, do-ocracy, Donald Trump, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Filter Bubble, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Free Software Foundation, Gabriella Coleman, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Gilmore, Joi Ito, Mark Zuckerberg, obamacare, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parag Khanna, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Skype, speech recognition, Steven Levy, surveillance capitalism, Upton Sinclair, Yochai Benkler

Today, there is no faith. The best and brightest turn west, not east—to Silicon Valley, not Washington, D.C. The future is technology, and hence technocracy, not a better-functioning democracy. Artificial intelligence (AI) will decide for us. Automatic contracts enforced through something called a “blockchain” will bind us. The very rich will give us the best security they can. It will be good enough, for them at least, given the alternative is so dreadfully hopeless. And for the rest, the operative term is not hopeless, but certainly much less hope. The future is not doom. This is America. But without repair, democracy has none of the promise of the democracy in our past.

pages: 484 words: 114,613

No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram by Sarah Frier

Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Benchmark Capital, blockchain, Blue Bottle Coffee, Cambridge Analytica, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, cryptocurrency, data science, disinformation, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fake news, Frank Gehry, growth hacking, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Minecraft, move fast and break things, Network effects, new economy, Oculus Rift, Peter Thiel, ride hailing / ride sharing, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TaskRabbit, TikTok, Tony Hsieh, Travis Kalanick, ubercab, Zipcar

That month, research groups commissioned: “The Disinformation Report,” New Knowledge, December 17, 2018, https://www.newknowledge.com/articles/the-disinformation-report/. 12 | THE CEO In 2012, when Facebook reached: Leena Rao, “Facebook Will Grow Head Count Quickly in 2013 to Develop Money-Making Products, Total Expenses Will Jump by 50 Percent,” TechCrunch, January 30, 2013, https://techcrunch.com/2013/01/30/zuck-facebook-will-grow-headcount-quickly-in-2013-to-develop-future-money-making-products/. The new hierarchy, the biggest reshuffling: Kurt Wagner, “Facebook Is Making Its Biggest Executive Reshuffle in Company History,” Vox, May 8, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/5/8/17330226/facebook-reorg-mark-zuckerberg-whatsapp-messenger-ceo-blockchain. Whatever they wanted to do was their right: Parmy Olson, “Exclusive: WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives the Inside Story on #DeleteFacebook and Why He Left $850 Million Behind,” Forbes, September 26, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive-whatsapp-cofounder-brian-acton-gives-the-inside-story-on-deletefacebook-and-why-he-left-850-million-behind/.

pages: 391 words: 112,312

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid by Lawrence Wright

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blockchain, business cycle, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, Edward Jenner, fake news, full employment, George Floyd, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, jimmy wales, Kickstarter, lab leak, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, meta-analysis, mouse model, Nate Silver, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, plutocrats, QAnon, RAND corporation, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Steve Bannon, the scientific method, TikTok, transcontinental railway, zoonotic diseases

“Gregory, how big a game changer could chloroquine and its sister drug hydrochloroquine [sic] be if, say, we began using it fairly promptly to treat Americans who are highly at risk?” Rigano, who was not otherwise identified on the show except as the author of the paper, was a thirty-four-year-old lawyer from Long Island. He had recently started several blockchain funds that aimed to “cheat death” and “end Alzheimer’s.” What brought him to Ingraham’s attention was a document he self-published on Google Docs with his co-author, James Todaro, a medical school graduate who is also a cryptocurrency investor. Ingraham quoted from the document, which claimed that the drugs were “effective in treating Covid-19,” and could be used as a prophylactic to prevent contracting the disease.

pages: 356 words: 116,083

For Profit: A History of Corporations by William Magnuson

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Airbnb, bank run, banks create money, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Bonfire of the Vanities, bread and circuses, buy low sell high, carbon tax, carried interest, collective bargaining, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, creative destruction, disinformation, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Exxon Valdez, fake news, financial engineering, financial innovation, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Ida Tarbell, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Mark Zuckerberg, Menlo Park, Michael Milken, move fast and break things, Peter Thiel, power law, price discrimination, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, ride hailing / ride sharing, scientific management, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, slashdot, Snapchat, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Steven Levy, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, trade route, transcontinental railway, union organizing, work culture , Y Combinator, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Discover Your Next Great Read Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors. Tap here to learn more. MING CHEN WILLIAM MAGNUSON is a professor at Texas A&M Law School, where he teaches corporate law. Previously, he taught law at Harvard University. The author of Blockchain Democracy, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg. He lives in Austin, Texas. Notes INTRODUCTION 1. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1 186 (1876); The Case of Sutton’s Hospital, 5 Co. Rep. 23, 32b (1526–1616). 2.

pages: 448 words: 117,325

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, 3D printing, air gap, algorithmic bias, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brian Krebs, business process, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fault tolerance, Firefox, Flash crash, George Akerlof, incognito mode, industrial robot, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, invention of radio, job automation, job satisfaction, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, loose coupling, market design, medical malpractice, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, NSO Group, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, printed gun, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, real-name policy, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, sparse data, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, The Market for Lemons, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, Uber for X, Unsafe at Any Speed, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

Many people realized it would be used to buy and sell things, but nobody predicted eBay. Many people understood that friends would use it to keep in touch, but nobody predicted Facebook. Again and again, we anticipate the immediate uses of a new technology, but fail to grasp how it will manifest in society. I see the same thing happening with personal digital assistants, robots, blockchain technologies like bitcoin, artificial intelligence, and driverless cars. What this means is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of technical determinism. I can easily map the current trajectories of security. However, I have no idea what new and transformative discoveries and inventions are coming in three, five, or ten years.

Autonomous Driving: How the Driverless Revolution Will Change the World by Andreas Herrmann, Walter Brenner, Rupert Stadler

Airbnb, Airbus A320, algorithmic bias, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, call centre, carbon footprint, clean tech, computer vision, conceptual framework, congestion pricing, connected car, crowdsourcing, cyber-physical system, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data acquisition, deep learning, demand response, digital map, disruptive innovation, driverless car, Elon Musk, fault tolerance, fear of failure, global supply chain, industrial cluster, intermodal, Internet of things, Jeff Bezos, John Zimmer (Lyft cofounder), Lyft, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Mars Rover, Masdar, megacity, Pearl River Delta, peer-to-peer rental, precision agriculture, QWERTY keyboard, RAND corporation, ride hailing / ride sharing, self-driving car, sensor fusion, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart grid, smart meter, Steve Jobs, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, trolley problem, uber lyft, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Zipcar

During the journey, there is individualised entertainment on offer, so the passengers listen to their favourite music or watch their favourite television series. A trafﬁc management centre equipped with artiﬁcial intelligence ensures that waiting times and journey times are minimised and that the vehicles are fully utilised. Data protection has also developed considerably. Blockchain technology allows each passenger to access his or her data and to decide who else can access which parts of it. The journeys are billed on a peer-to-peer basis without the involvement of an intermediary. Smart cities offer such self-driving shuttles free of charge, with companies acting as sponsors in order to advertise their products and services in the vehicles.

pages: 385 words: 121,550

Three Years in Hell: The Brexit Chronicles by Fintan O'Toole

airport security, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, Bullingdon Club, Cambridge Analytica, centre right, classic study, cognitive dissonance, congestion charging, deindustrialization, deliberate practice, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Downton Abbey, Etonian, eurozone crisis, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, full employment, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, l'esprit de l'escalier, labour mobility, late capitalism, open borders, rewilding, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, technoutopianism, zero-sum game

He thinks the DUP speaks for ‘the Northern Irish’, even though it gets a third of the vote and does not represent the strongly anti-Brexit majority. He claims Britain could have negotiated a trade deal with the EU before it discussed a withdrawal agreement, even though the EU can’t do a trade deal with Britain until it has actually left. His understanding of the border question – blockchain can solve ‘almost all’ the problems – is childish. He even seems oblivious to the basic history of the UK: ‘Our boundaries have not shifted much over the years.’ (So Ireland neither joined the UK in 1801 nor left it in 1922?) At the heart of Liddle’s new pose as defender of the people is his righteous rage against ‘the allegations that Leave voters were all racists’.

pages: 444 words: 124,631

Buy Now, Pay Later: The Extraordinary Story of Afterpay by Jonathan Shapiro, James Eyers

Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, Apple Newton, bank run, barriers to entry, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, book value, British Empire, clockwatching, cloud computing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, computer age, coronavirus, corporate governance, corporate raider, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, delayed gratification, diversification, Dogecoin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, financial deregulation, George Floyd, greed is good, growth hacking, index fund, Jones Act, Kickstarter, late fees, light touch regulation, lockdown, low interest rates, managed futures, Max Levchin, meme stock, Mount Scopus, Network effects, new economy, passive investing, payday loans, paypal mafia, Peter Thiel, pre–internet, Rainbow capitalism, regulatory arbitrage, retail therapy, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robinhood: mobile stock trading app, rolodex, Salesforce, short selling, short squeeze, side hustle, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, tech bro, technology bubble, the payments system, TikTok, too big to fail, transaction costs, Vanguard fund

Michael Walsh, a veteran salesman at UBS with close ties to Australia’s top investors and wealthy families, was sensing an increased interest in investing in technology and had helped shape the conference’s agenda along those lines. The keynote speaker was Alec Ross, an adviser to Hillary Clinton; he had written a bestselling book on disruption in 2016 called The Industries of the Future, which examined big data and blockchain technologies. But the main game of the conference each year is the one-on-one ‘speed-dating’ sessions held in the meeting rooms of the five-star Sheraton on the Park hotel between investment analysts and the corporate representatives—usually the chief executives and chief financial officers—of over 100 top companies.

pages: 469 words: 132,438

Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet by Varun Sivaram

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accelerated depreciation, addicted to oil, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, asset light, asset-backed security, autonomous vehicles, bitcoin, blockchain, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean tech, collateralized debt obligation, Colonization of Mars, currency risk, decarbonisation, deep learning, demand response, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, electricity market, Elon Musk, energy security, energy transition, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, gigafactory, global supply chain, global village, Google Earth, hive mind, hydrogen economy, index fund, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, low interest rates, M-Pesa, market clearing, market design, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, mobile money, Negawatt, ocean acidification, off grid, off-the-grid, oil shock, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, renewable energy transition, Richard Feynman, ride hailing / ride sharing, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, smart grid, smart meter, SoftBank, Solyndra, sovereign wealth fund, Ted Nordhaus, Tesla Model S, time value of money, undersea cable, vertical integration, wikimedia commons

But in a DC microgrid future, networks might arise organically, from the bottom up.46,47 This theory is known as “swarm electrification,” and the researcher who conceived the term, Sebastian Groh, likens a bottom-up electricity network to a “swarm of fish,” in which “there is no central intelligence, and the fish work together to create unity.” His company, ME SOLshare, is making it possible for the 4 million households in Bangladesh with DC SHSs to connect to one another and trade electricity. Using peer-to-peer mobile payments—securely logged using blockchain technology, which is also used to authenticate Bitcoin transactions—homes can participate in a bottom-up marketplace, dynamically balancing supply and demand across a self-assembled DC microgrid. This concept could work in any place with a high population density—Bangladesh is an ideal starting point, with a population of 160 million squished into an area the size of New York State.48 Clearly, DC microgrids could enable a wealth of new ways to improve energy access.

Super Continent: The Logic of Eurasian Integration by Kent E. Calder

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, air freight, Asian financial crisis, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, blockchain, Bretton Woods, business intelligence, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, classic study, cloud computing, colonial rule, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, energy transition, European colonialism, export processing zone, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, geopolitical risk, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, housing crisis, income inequality, industrial cluster, industrial robot, interest rate swap, intermodal, Internet of things, invention of movable type, inventory management, John Markoff, liberal world order, Malacca Straits, Mikhail Gorbachev, mittelstand, money market fund, moral hazard, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, purchasing power parity, quantitative easing, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, seigniorage, Shenzhen special economic zone , smart cities, smart grid, SoftBank, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, special economic zone, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, supply-chain management, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, trade route, transcontinental railway, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, union organizing, Washington Consensus, working-age population, zero-sum game

An explosive expansion in the use of transponders, combined with AI advances, are allowing computers to automate and track logistics as never before. These developments have especially dramatic consequences for intermodal transport and storage, making it possible for firms to effortlessly track shipments and to anticipate delivery. Blockchain technology can also enhance this predictability, by reducing errors from manual data entry, increasing data transparency, and helping track supply-chain sourcing more effectively. The Logistics Revolution has fateful implications for producers, distributors, and consumers. For producers, it opens prospects for more efficient and predictable B2B supply chains, making long-distance production networks among manufacturers—including trans-continental networks—more and more feasible.

pages: 502 words: 132,062

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence by James Bridle

Ada Lovelace, Airbnb, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Anthropocene, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Californian Ideology, Cambridge Analytica, carbon tax, Charles Babbage, cloud computing, coastline paradox / Richardson effect, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, corporate personhood, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, DeepMind, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, experimental subject, factory automation, fake news, friendly AI, gig economy, global pandemic, Gödel, Escher, Bach, impulse control, James Bridle, James Webb Space Telescope, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, language acquisition, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, music of the spheres, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, RAND corporation, random walk, recommendation engine, self-driving car, SETI@home, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, speech recognition, statistical model, surveillance capitalism, techno-determinism, technological determinism, technoutopianism, the long tail, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, theory of mind, traveling salesman, trolley problem, Turing complete, Turing machine, Turing test, UNCLOS, undersea cable, urban planning, Von Neumann architecture, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game

Seeley, Honeybee Democracy, Princeton University Press, 2010 Kenneth Silverman, Begin Again: A Biography of John Cage, Random House, 2010 Suzanne Simard, Finding the Mother Tree: Uncovering the Wisdom and Intelligence of the Forest, Allen Lane, 2021 Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, Bodley Head, 2020 Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time, Orbit, 2018 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton University Press, 2015 Frans de Waal, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, Granta Books, 2016 Xiaowei Wang, Blockchain Chicken Farm, FSG, 2020 Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, William Collins, 2017 Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature, John Murray, 2015 Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, HarperOne, 2020 Acknowledgements Many friends and acquaintances have been part of the discussions and ideas that went into this book; many more than I can name.

pages: 420 words: 135,569

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today by Jane McGonigal

2021 United States Capitol attack, Airbnb, airport security, Alvin Toffler, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, basic income, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, circular economy, clean water, climate change refugee, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Community Supported Agriculture, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, data science, decarbonisation, digital divide, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, fake news, fiat currency, future of work, Future Shock, game design, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Greta Thunberg, income inequality, index card, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, labor-force participation, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mason jar, mass immigration, meta-analysis, microbiome, Minecraft, moral hazard, open borders, pattern recognition, place-making, plant based meat, post-truth, QAnon, QR code, remote working, RFID, risk tolerance, School Strike for Climate, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Snapchat, social distancing, stem cell, TED Talk, telepresence, telepresence robot, The future is already here, TikTok, traumatic brain injury, universal basic income, women in the workforce, work culture , Y Combinator

If this scenario feels far-fetched to you, stick with the ten-year timeframe. 5 You can see all their ideas at http://www.stanford2025.com/. It’s a fantastic example of a community-based approach to futures thinking and imagination. 6 Note that this scenario is not about cryptocurrencies, which use blockchain technology, are not backed by any central bank or government, and are used primarily today as investment vehicles and for speculation. This scenario, instead, is about a central bank digital currency (CBDC). A CBDC is the digital form of a country’s fiat currency. Instead of printing money, the central bank issues electronic coins or an account backed by the full faith and credit of the government.

pages: 497 words: 144,283

Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 1919 Motor Transport Corps convoy, 2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, 9 dash line, additive manufacturing, Admiral Zheng, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Anthropocene, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, autonomous vehicles, banking crisis, Basel III, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, borderless world, Boycotts of Israel, Branko Milanovic, BRICs, British Empire, business intelligence, call centre, capital controls, Carl Icahn, charter city, circular economy, clean water, cloud computing, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, complexity theory, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data is the new oil, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Deng Xiaoping, Detroit bankruptcy, digital capitalism, digital divide, digital map, disruptive innovation, diversification, Doha Development Round, driverless car, Easter island, edge city, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, energy security, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, failed state, Fairphone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, family office, Ferguson, Missouri, financial innovation, financial repression, fixed income, forward guidance, gentrification, geopolitical risk, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, Google Earth, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, high-speed rail, Hyperloop, ice-free Arctic, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, industrial cluster, industrial robot, informal economy, Infrastructure as a Service, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Just-in-time delivery, Kevin Kelly, Khyber Pass, Kibera, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, low cost airline, low earth orbit, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, mass affluent, mass immigration, megacity, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, microcredit, middle-income trap, mittelstand, Monroe Doctrine, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, openstreetmap, out of africa, Panamax, Parag Khanna, Peace of Westphalia, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Planet Labs, plutocrats, post-oil, post-Panamax, precautionary principle, private military company, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, Quicken Loans, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Rana Plaza, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, rolling blackouts, Ronald Coase, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, six sigma, Skype, smart cities, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, Stuxnet, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, systems thinking, TaskRabbit, tech worker, TED Talk, telepresence, the built environment, The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth, Tim Cook: Apple, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, young professional, zero day

With the Bali Trade Facilitation Agreement of 2013, the harmonization of customs administration (cutting red tape) could add $1 trillion to world GDP and create twenty million jobs. A study undertaken by the World Economic Forum and Bain estimates that further aligning supply chain standards would boost world GDP by an enormous 5 percent, while implementation of all current WTO accords would deliver only 1 percent growth. The Ethereum blockchain platform will allow for standardized and transparent contracts between trading parties beyond any single jurisdiction and, when combined with real-time data sharing on supply chain transactions, can substantially reduce the cost of insuring trade. Open trade and open borders further reorganize the world into functional circuits.

pages: 589 words: 147,053

The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life When Robots Rule the Earth by Robin Hanson

8-hour work day, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, brain emulation, business cycle, business process, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, deep learning, demographic transition, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental subject, fault tolerance, financial intermediation, Flynn Effect, Future Shock, Herman Kahn, hindsight bias, information asymmetry, job automation, job satisfaction, John Markoff, Just-in-time delivery, lone genius, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market design, megaproject, meta-analysis, Nash equilibrium, new economy, Nick Bostrom, pneumatic tube, power law, prediction markets, quantum cryptography, rent control, rent-seeking, reversible computing, risk tolerance, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, social distancing, statistical model, stem cell, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, Vernor Vinge, William MacAskill

Very secure and anonymous communications between willing parties can be arranged via “public key cryptography,” wherein each person publishes a public key for which they can prove only they know the matching private key. In addition, robust systems of secure anonymous decentralized transactions may be built on the recent innovation of block-chain based cryptographic systems, where a public record of all transactions between public key labeled accounts prevents double-spending of assets. Such systems could support digital currencies, token systems, safe wallets, registration, identity, decentralized file storage, multi-signature escrow, consensus via rewarding those who best guess a consensus, financial derivatives including insurance and bets, and more general decentralized autonomous organizations (Nakamoto 2008; Buterin 2014).

pages: 543 words: 153,550

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You by Scott E. Page

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Checklist Manifesto, computer age, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, discrete time, distributed ledger, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, first-price auction, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Higgs boson, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, money market fund, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Network effects, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, Phillips curve, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, race to the bottom, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, school choice, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, selection bias, six sigma, social graph, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Great Moderation, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, value at risk, web application, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

In the test, each person must come up with novel uses of a common object, such as a brick. The test measures a person’s creativity based on the number of uses or categories of uses that she generates. When we calculate Shapley values, we find that they produce an intuitive scoring rule. Imagine three players, Arun, Betty, and Carlos, who each think up alternative uses for blockchain, a distributed ledger technology, shown in figure 9.1. Arun and Carlos each think of six ideas, giving each a creativity score of 6, and Betty thinks of seven, making her score 7. The group’s total creativity equals 9, as there are nine unique ideas. To compute the Shapley values, we could write down all six possible orders in which the group could form, give individuals credit only for unique ideas added to the group, and then average over all six cases.

pages: 700 words: 201,953

The Social Life of Money by Nigel Dodd

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", accounting loophole / creative accounting, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, capitalist realism, cashless society, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer age, conceptual framework, credit crunch, cross-subsidies, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, dematerialisation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, emotional labour, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial exclusion, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial repression, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, gentrification, German hyperinflation, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Herbert Marcuse, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, informal economy, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kula ring, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mental accounting, microcredit, Minsky moment, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, Neal Stephenson, negative equity, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, payday loans, Peace of Westphalia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-Fordism, Post-Keynesian economics, postnationalism / post nation state, predatory finance, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, remote working, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Robert Shiller, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Scientific racism, seigniorage, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Veblen good, Wave and Pay, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Streeck, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

Stephenson mixed the genres of historical novel (one of the book’s central characters was based on Turing, whose work in cryptography was crucial to Allied efforts during the Second World War) and science fiction thriller. One of the key story lines tells of an attempt to establish a data haven in Southeast Asia, partly funded through a digital currency using powerful encryption and backed by gold (Stephenson 1999). 23 See http://p2pfoundation.net/bitcoin. 24 See http://blockchain.info/. This is a transaction database shared by all nodes participating in the system. 25 But unlike credit and debit card transactions, where the bank or card company manages the ledger, Bitcoin ledgers consist of block chains. 26 See https://www.casascius.com/. 27 For example, on April 15, 2013, an Asus laptop was available for 6.2271 BTC, which the website states was equivalent to US$629 (see https://www.bitcoinstore.com/). 28 See “Bitcoin takes an important step toward becoming part of every web browser on the planet,” http://qz.com/78014/bitcoin-is-now-part-of-the-web-sort-of/, accessed May 10, 2013. 29 Around 70 percent of items sold on Silk Road are drugs; other items include erotica, books, and fake IDs. 30 See http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013–04–12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html. 31 See http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/adam-smith-hates-bitcoin/?

pages: 864 words: 222,565

Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller by Alec Nevala-Lee

Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alvin Toffler, American energy revolution, Apple II, basic income, Biosphere 2, blockchain, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, Charles Lindbergh, cloud computing, Columbine, complexity theory, Computer Lib, coronavirus, cotton gin, COVID-19, cryptocurrency, declining real wages, digital nomad, double helix, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Elon Musk, Evgeny Morozov, Frank Gehry, gentrification, gig economy, global village, Golden Gate Park, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, hydraulic fracturing, index card, information retrieval, James Dyson, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Kitchen Debate, Lao Tzu, lateral thinking, Lean Startup, Lewis Mumford, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, megastructure, Menlo Park, minimum viable product, Mother of all demos, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, Own Your Own Home, Paul Graham, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, reality distortion field, remote working, Ronald Reagan, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Ted Nelson, the built environment, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas Malthus, universal basic income, urban planning, urban renewal, We are as Gods, WeWork, Whole Earth Catalog, WikiLeaks

More recently, the venture capitalist Paul Graham defined it as “the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what we would now call software,” noting that phones and tablets “have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas.” The same trend can be seen in cloud computing, the invention of the blockchain, and the inexorable integration of technology into everyday life. Before they became part of our collective future, Fuller independently arrived at the principles of online education, remote working, and universal access to data, which he developed without any computers at all. On a more pragmatic level, Fuller used ephemeralization to sustain his virtual company, which he ran for years as a perpetual start-up.

pages: 1,544 words: 391,691

Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice by Pierre Vernimmen, Pascal Quiry, Maurizio Dallocchio, Yann le Fur, Antonio Salvi

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accelerated depreciation, accounting loophole / creative accounting, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, AOL-Time Warner, ASML, asset light, bank run, barriers to entry, Basel III, Bear Stearns, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, blockchain, book value, business climate, business cycle, buy and hold, buy low sell high, capital asset pricing model, carried interest, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate governance, correlation coefficient, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, currency risk, delta neutral, dematerialisation, discounted cash flows, discrete time, disintermediation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Dutch auction, electricity market, equity premium, equity risk premium, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Flash crash, foreign exchange controls, German hyperinflation, Glass-Steagall Act, high net worth, impact investing, implied volatility, information asymmetry, intangible asset, interest rate swap, Internet of things, inventory management, invisible hand, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kickstarter, lateral thinking, London Interbank Offered Rate, low interest rates, mandelbrot fractal, margin call, means of production, money market fund, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, new economy, New Journalism, Northern Rock, performance metric, Potemkin village, quantitative trading / quantitative ﬁnance, random walk, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk/return, shareholder value, short selling, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, stocks for the long run, supply-chain management, survivorship bias, The Myth of the Rational Market, time value of money, too big to fail, transaction costs, value at risk, vertical integration, volatility arbitrage, volatility smile, yield curve, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

Source: European Central Bank, 2016 Harmonisation of payment methods in the eurozone (Single Euro Payment Area, or SEPA) has allowed companies or individuals to transfer money and debits as easily and as quickly and at the same cost as if the transfer were between two towns in the same country. New payment methods that take advantage of the SEPA standard have been developed, such as SEPAmail, the main service of which is an email transfer for paying invoices at radically reduced processing costs, much faster processing periods and reduced risks of fraud. This is what Blockchain will be able to do on a very large scale, once it is developed beyond the hype and the buzz surrounding it today. 4. Optimising cash management Our survey of account balancing naturally leads us to the concept of zero cash, the nirvana of corporate treasurers, which keeps interest expense down to a minimum (even though in the current climate of very low, even negative, short-term interest rates, this is becoming a worry of the past).