The Dream of Decentralization – Mohammed Gumma
This article was inspired by a book that fell into my hands a few months back, The book title was “The Dream of Enlightenment” by Anthony Gottlieb in which he tells the stories of Enlightenment pioneers such as Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke from the early 1640s to the eve of the French Revolution. Gottlieb creates a sweeping account of what they amounted to, and why we are still in their debt.
The Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world with ideas in Europe during the 18th century, the “Century of Philosophy”.
In the last chapter of this book, Gottlieb asks an important question. “What has Enlightenment ever done for us?” — Human rights, democratic government, personal freedom, and separation of church and state. These are all things that Enlightenment has governed for us, and it is no great exaggeration to say that it marked the beginning of a sea change in thought that rejected tyranny, acknowledged the rights of common people, and helped create the intellectual environment that made our modern world possible.
The Philosophies of Enlightenment and Decentralization are a lot alike when you think about it, they’re both fundamentally transitional. The transition from an authoritarian-centered understanding of what forms our reality, knowledge, and technology to a human-centered one that acknowledges and reinforces human rights, personal freedom, and democracy.
The internet is almost three decades years old now, and although we have taken gradual steps towards advancing our technology over time, we’re still facing fundamental challenges concerning the technology itself and our human experience. In order for us to better understand what decentralization is and how it’s capable of revolutionizing our world, let’s reflect on the current status of our centralized internet.
Centralization means that our private communications and personal data must enter and leave through a central node. This central node is controlled by intermediaries such as governments, banks, insurance, internet service providers and tech companies that play the role of a middleman. Although this framework has led to an efficient service it’s fundamentally dependent on users sacrificing their privacy and personal data. These intermediaries have full control and access to our data, they even repackage our data and sell it to third parties. A centralized framework doesn’t serve the consumers first rather than serving authorities and is being used as a mean of controlling people’s lives and choices.
Internet Monopolies
Whether you know it or not, the internet is dominated by five companies from the United States and three companies from China. These companies have control over our private communications and personal data, photos, and videos of billions of people, they wield enormous power over markets, our human-experience of the internet, global public discourse, free speech, and our personal lives. Their business model depends on knowing as much as possible about everyone and analyzing, repackaging and selling our data. Sometimes the risk extends to exposing our social, financial, romantic or political information to third-parties. What makes each one of these companies a monopoly is the very fact that they’re not competing with each other, or really anyone else.
So, what does decentralization do?
A decentralized network differs greatly from a centralized one because instead of one party being in charge and control of all the information, they operate on a peer-to-peer basis where individuals and computers interact directly without the use of an intermediary. By operating on a peer-to-peer basis, personal information is not being misused or shared with third parties as information flow from point A to B and essentially cuts the middleman. The most important thing decentralization can provide is freedom, the freedom to use the internet without having to give up your personal information that could fall into the wrong hands. The benefits of decentralization are numerous. It allows you more privacy and control over your personal information without worrying about what the middleman can do with it and saves the producer and consumer money.
Decentralization is fundamental to the internet’s health and is a digital human right that aims to distribute the power and control of our global internet ecosystem back to the consumers. We need to make sure that the internet grows and evolves in ways that accommodate the diverse needs of people all around the world.
“The future internet will be decentralized. “ — Olaf Carlson Wee
Many are exploring alternatives to an internet that’s driven by the interests of corporate goliaths on their own. New business models are emerging that seek to distribute control among users, including platform cooperativism and collaborative ownership.
Blockchain Technology
All these intermediaries controlling information leads to a lack of power for the individual or consumer. Call for increased tangible decentralization did not gain the esteem until after the 2008 financial crisis when a person(s) under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto published a white paper that introduced the Blockchain technology and encompasses the philosophy of decentralization which the blockchain technology is built upon. The Blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize our world and the use-cases of this technology are quite promising.
The Internet belongs to us all. It is distributed across a decentralized network that no single authority can control. That’s the dream.
The internet has a long way to go before it becomes decentralized and the blockchain technology is still at its early stages but now we know that the future is decentralized and we need to demand open and interoperable services, more ethical business practices, and a market that is favorable to competition, innovation and a diversity of services of all.
(Artwork by Nelly Baksht)
Published at Thu, 15 Aug 2019 15:55:02 +0000
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