"A blockchain can be thought of as quite a boring technology," writes Doug Belshaw, "a back office solution where an append-only database (i.e. one can be written to, but then is read-only) is stored on multiple machines instead of centrally." True. And it's the mechanics of the decentralization that make it interesting (and the financialization part is the least interesting). Proponents of web3 and ed3, he writes, talk of it "as being disruptive, egalitarian, and a step-change in how society operates."
Belshaw disagrees. "The hard yards when distributing power involve emotions and, well, being human," he says, referencing this article by Austin Robey on the difference between distributed autonomous organizations (DAO) and co-ops. Reading it, it seems to be that the real division is that in co-ops it's one-person one-vote while in a DAO it's (mostly) one-token one-vote. Do people vote, or do dollars vote? That's the age-old tension between democracy and capitalism.
Robey also argues that co-ops are distinct in that they often operate on the basis of shared principles. Perhaps. But you can't base a society on shared principles. Society is a set of laws, protocols, structures, languages and mores. It's a way to allow people with different beliefs to interact, not a way to shape them all into someone's picture of an ideal world. I stepped my way carefully through all this in my E-Learning 3.0 course. But I guess people are more interested in this week's over-the-top proclamations for and against.
My link to the history of web3 and related topics on OLDaily in a previous edition was broken. Here's the correct link.
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