I had a conversation with a couple of colleagues today, and I was positing that the world would experience more shared prosperity because with technologies like blockchain, the social inequality created by large middlemen institutions would be mitigated.

Thinking later on that argument, I realized that this also applies to info-centric businesses particularly those that leverage information they have no control over. If you stop using Google’s apps, for instance, they no longer have access to your data. My realization is, with the lots of buzz about privacy and concerns with the selling of information to third parties, among other ‘unethical’ things being done by some info-centric businesses we may see a shift to non-privacy invading services.

And there are many of them out there. See here:

Of course, that means you would have to pay for email at some point. But come to think about it, is the data you’re giving Gmail or Google as it were, more valuable than the email service itself?

If it is, then it may be a win for the consumers in the end! Introducing blockchain. Imagine if you had to pay for email, but the email company had to pay you for the data you’re generating. How cool is that?

I’d recommend learning more about blockchain if you’re not familiar with it. But the idea is if you have an email service based on blockchain there is no central point that stores your emails, and only you have access to that data because the information is stored in the blockchain!

This means you can do anything you want with your data, you can decide what bit of information to give out and what bit to keep for privacy reasons and you can monetize it by selling it to the info-centric businesses!

What do you think about this?

Should info-centric businesses be concerned?

PS: here is an interesting talk on blockchain: http://ift.tt/2bDUDpc

Photo Credit: Visual Content Flickr via Compfight cc

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