Blockchain — The democratic future
Every once in a while a technology is born that’s so ahead of its time it almost seems like magic. From the invention of the wheel to the modern cell phone, the pace of such technologies has increased by leaps and bounds, and after the invention of the Internet we’ve had the privilege of witnessing these milestones of human achievement almost daily. While the Internet has made our society truly global, the Blockchain has the potential to make our world truly democratic.
The name “blockchain” refers to one very specific concept, yet it has become synonymous (perhaps wrongly so) for a larger ecosystem of technologies based on and inspired by its basic principles: a secure, verifiable, open, distributed, decentralized and permanent way to record transactions and keep state. It’s not surprising that the first successful use case for this technology has been the one most obviously in need of democratization — the transfer of value. However, we now find ourselves in the middle of a next iteration of use cases, where decentralization is not obvious at first glance.
One such use case is my company’s bread and butter: personal data.
For decades advancements in computer technology have enabled companies to stockpile more and more information about their users, customers and even just visitors. And for the longest time, no one really knew what to do with all this data — how to make sense of it. In recent years we’ve seen an explosion of various technologies, from machine learning and predictive analytics to deep neural networks and full-fledged AI, which were finally able to digest all this data and provide meaningful insights into people’s lives. At last, companies were able to build better products that better served the people whose data they collected. Unfortunately, people never really had a choice in the matter — no control over what data was collected, by which company, and where it went after that. Until now.
Under new regulation established by the European Union, personal data ownership becomes as close to a human right as currently possible. GDPR gives people the power to govern their own information. Unfortunately it doesn’t give them secure, open or decentralized tools to do that in a verifiable, permanent and democratic way. If only we had a technology that could….
At Datafy.it, we strongly believe that using Blockchain technologies for personal data rights management is the next “killer app” for the Blockchain. Of course we realize that there is still much work to be done, ranging from data security, person identification and anonymity to storage, discoverability and interoperability.
And yet, we remain both optimistic and excited, empowered by the notion that in contributing to the technology that democratized money we can help democratize your data.
