What Makes Decentralisation Hard? And How Do We Overcome This?
Room 6 | Wed 15 Jan | 1:30 p.m.–2:15 p.m.
Presented by
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Martin ("madduck") is a Debian and Free Software developer of more than 20 years. He's received a High Honors Bachelor in AI, cognitive psychology, and robotics, and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on tool adoption behaviour in Debian. He's founded several companies, and currently makes a living as self-employed advisor to tech startups, and large multi-national corporations.
Martin is a privacy and decentralization advocate, and an Edmund Hillary Fellow, in part for his work on decentralization. He loves blockchain, but doesn't regard it as the holy grail. He actually finds projects such as Scuttlebutt much more exciting. He's currently working on several projects in the space of decentralized digital identity.
As father of two girls, he hopes they won't (have to) grow up giving up their privacy in return for gratis services.
Abstract
Peer-to-peer technology has been around for decades, and has significantly shaped the file-sharing industry, much to the dismay of the media conglomerates. It wasn't until recent years, however, that the underlying concepts have entered other domains, such as communication tools, and storage. And of course: blockchain. And yet, despite the availability of technically sound and fully functional projects, widespread adoption is nowhere near.
Drawing on his experience from working with digital identity startups, Matrix, Scuttlebutt, microblogging protocols (GNU social, Mastodon), and various blockchain projects, Martin takes a shot at identifying the reasons why the uptake is so slow. Using findings from his PhD research on the adoption behaviour of Debian developers with respect to version control systems and packaging techniques, he furthermore concludes with a number of suggestions that might help in taking projects beyond the early adopter phase.
Linux Australia: http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2020/room_6/Wednesday/What_Makes_Decentralisation_Hard_And_How_Do_We_Overcome_This.webm
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4x5PPwzXkQ
Peer-to-peer technology has been around for decades, and has significantly shaped the file-sharing industry, much to the dismay of the media conglomerates. It wasn't until recent years, however, that the underlying concepts have entered other domains, such as communication tools, and storage. And of course: blockchain. And yet, despite the availability of technically sound and fully functional projects, widespread adoption is nowhere near. Drawing on his experience from working with digital identity startups, Matrix, Scuttlebutt, microblogging protocols (GNU social, Mastodon), and various blockchain projects, Martin takes a shot at identifying the reasons why the uptake is so slow. Using findings from his PhD research on the adoption behaviour of Debian developers with respect to version control systems and packaging techniques, he furthermore concludes with a number of suggestions that might help in taking projects beyond the early adopter phase. Linux Australia: http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2020/room_6/Wednesday/What_Makes_Decentralisation_Hard_And_How_Do_We_Overcome_This.webm YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4x5PPwzXkQ