Fat protocol and thin application & network effects — part 2
Obtaining information from the internet has become such an easy task today that mail application and devices have started testing their predictive text functionalities based on millions if not trillions of data points, no small thanks to users who happily award their “expertise” in return of an essentially free service. Not long from now, there will come a time when no texting will be needed as the “fat” applications will reduce our freedom of action into a few options which are designed to make you feel like you are experiencing freedom. Think about recommendation algorithms on pay-for-view services. They are terrific at suggesting shows close to your sensitivities, however they also force you in watching certain content that only belong to that category, as the choice is not being driven by your instincts but by the output of an algorithm which purportedly knows you better than yourself. Not to mention the hardware that these “fat” applications have launched, which are designed to collect even more information based on our mood and the context of our surroundings.
J. Lanier in his book “Who owns the future?” refers to “Siren Servers” which alludes to the power of seduction of Ulysses’ sirens. The parallelism is clear, today’s sirens are those corporations who attract big unformatted personal data in exchange of freebies made functional only thanks to network effects, while the corporations rake in the big dollars. Lanier goes on to distinguish the rewarding and punishing network effects. Where the rewarding effect of our streaming services example made earlier are the recommendations based on previously viewed flicks. The punishing effect is the addiction developed throughout the usage of this service. The interruption of the service will result in a loss of a part of ourselves. Since the service in a perverse way understands our moods and acts as a “yes man” to our whims.
The recently triggered trade war between the two main global economies has sadly exposed what was discussed at length within different governments in recent years: the escalating importance of privacy. Government regulations, with all probability, trail innovation.
For the longest time, applications have ignored the threat of a passive community, as individuals do not stand a chance to take up a well-endowed business, unless it starts desecrating national interests. Privacy has become a subjective matter, in fact the tolerance to personal information exposure in exchange for increased convenience is acceptable in a large part of the world today.
Effectively, corporations are government authority proxies to collect valuable information that could help in better managing potentially risky profiles. And in one way or the other, despite applications owners’ repeated reassurances, the authorities can force their hand leveraging backdoors that corporations have left behind in case of emergencies.
That is the danger of “fat” applications, built on top of “thin” and “fragile” protocols. Blockchain has helped reclaim and shift the importance to protocols on top of which dApps will be developed. Blockchain-based projects today are not only concerned about the potentials profits the venture will rake in. But more importantly the choice of which protocol to build on, can make or break the very mission statement that the project has established for itself. Companies can now focus in building privacy-focused and government compliant protocols by simply codifying including a list of tests to check whether certain parameters are found within the normalcy range set by the government.
This however will not prevent truly decentralized and full-private protocols sprawling within the crypto industry.
Problems will persist in the cryptographic space, as they have in the fiat industry with counterfeit bills or obsolete currencies still used today to settle illegal deals. But the value of “fat” protocols in blockchain is simply too great for the proactive regulators to be ignored. Without fatter cryptographic protocols, several of yesterday’s promises such as the Internet of Things will not materialize, as currently it is cheap and easy to hack into interconnected devices. The truth is that we are not leveraging the benefits that network effects are bringing. We are only informed of the disadvantages that they may bring.
To be continued.
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Published at Thu, 04 Jul 2019 04:16:20 +0000
