[AUDIENCE] In the latest 'Let's Talk Bitcoin!' episode, you had a great discussion about distributed identifiers.
[ANDREAS] Yes, thank you. [AUDIENCE] It made be curious...
because the guest was working for Microsoft. [ANDREAS] Daniel Buchner.
[AUDIENCE] What is your perspective on this paradigm of tech titans working on open-source solutions,
within their world of zero-sum games?
[ANDREAS] Yeah, that is a great point. You know, the Microsoft of today is not the Microsoft I grew up with.
It is difficult to explain to people how terrifying Microsoft was in the 1980s,
the stranglehold they had on technology when the internet was first growing up.
They put out some of the first browsers, building TCP/IP networks and things like that.
Microsoft had a terrifying monopoly on computing. You could not avoid their operating systems...
or their office productivity suites.
Many of us felt that we needed to crack this monopoly of Microsoft.
[The result of that struggle] gives me hope, because Facebook will be next. [Laughter]
No one survives forever. Even these tech titans that seem unassailable will collapse.
They don't collapse because someone succeeded in breaking them up, but because they failed to adapt...
to a world in which they are not the center of attention, and that is what happened with Microsoft.
They weren't able to understand that the internet would turn everything inside-out.
They were the inside company [in a growing] inside-out world.
They failed to adapt, but now they are adapting faster than almost anybody else.
Microsoft is now a [more] open-source company that supports Linux. If you had told me twenty years ago...
that I would say that sentence on stage, I would be laughing. [Laughter] 'No, not them.'
They are the last people I could have imagined. But now they have a vibrant open-source ecosystem.
They are also doing interesting things with privacy. I am not a huge fan of large corporations like that...
solving our problems, but if they build open-source, well-structured solutions that can be used everywhere,
then it doesn't matter who builds it.
That is the key part of the Creative Commons. Sometimes you need to think about separating...
the ideas from the person who built it.
If the idea itself is pure and doesn't have any hidden hooks that give them an advantage,
or hidden agendas that cause centralization around them, then you could say, "Oh, this is worth using."
Some of the technologies that Daniel was talking about on the show were truly open-source.
[AUDIENCE] Why do you think that bankers, governments, and evil people who love control...
would they show interest in decentralized technology? Are they really that naïve?
[ANDREAS] They are not showing interest in decentralized technologies.
They want to adopt [parts of] it so they can mold it to their own models.
They think it will give them efficiency or [at least] the appearance of innovation.
It is important to understand the motivations behind people who want centralization in all forms,
whether that is centralization of technology or governance, against democracy.
Even the default statist thinking, which is that "government is good," "we need it,"
and "it must happen this way, otherwise there will be chaos."
A lot of this thinking comes from fear, an inability to imagine a world in which...
there isn't someone always there to make sure that everyone behaves.
It comes from a misunderstanding of human nature, assuming that [everyone] is out to get you.
That kind of thinking attracts people who are psychologically damaged.
They rise in the ranks because they project their own internal fears and nastiness on to other people,
to the point where the world is validating that.
"I am cheating because I know that if I didn't, other people would cheat too."
No, that is not how the world works. The vast majority of people are good.
I read this beautiful tweet today: last week, in one day, one million people used Uber and Lyft;
two million people stayed in AirBnbs.
That means, one million people went into the car of a complete stranger,
two million people slept in the house of a stranger, [and the owners of the house] let a stranger sleep there.
Why does that work? The answer is not Uber or AirBnb [as companies]. It is not.
If your Uber driver is a serial killer, what will you do? "Stop! I will give you two stars!" [Laughter]
"Put that knife down! One star! Stop stabbing me!" What will you do? [Reputation systems] are not enough.
Imagine you come back to your home and someone has trashed it. Okay, there is some insurance policy.
But you don't [offer out your home] just on the assumption that insurance will cover [any damage].
You do it on the fundamental true assumption that most people are good and behave well.
Most people will not trash your house or car; you can [ride] in their car without being stabbed.
That is humanity. We need to have that assumption. Centralization operates on the opposite assumption,
that most people are bad and unless you keep them in tracks or control their behaviour and daily lives,
they will devolve into animistic monsters who go around murdering and raping people.
That is not true. These centralized organizations think that they are trying to protect the world.
They often don't implicitly understand this or consciously think, "If you give people wallets...
without Know-Your-Customer (KYC), then..." Visions of zombies in the street. [Laughter]
But that is the thinking, it is just on a more abstract basis. It is from fear.
We need to overcome that. We overcome that by demonstrating that it is incorrect,
by building decentralized systems that work better.
We cannot stop centralizers from trying to centralize. Centralizers gonna be centralizing, people! [Laughter]
We need to build better. Build the decentralized systems. People find them and see they offer a better choice,
a better future, a more human experience.
That is how we move forward. I think that is one of the elements we need to be careful with.
We need to be careful to not give too much of our thought to those who fear what we are trying to do,
or those who want to stop what we are doing; we should focus on what we're doing.
As the fantastic Chinese saying goes, "Those who say 'it cannot be done,' should please stop interrupting...
those doing it." Thank you.
[ORGANISER] When you say "centralization," when we categorize centralization as a bad thing...
It is not necessarily a bad thing. Centralization is a natural aspect of humans, of many things in nature,
which will find a way of to spend less time thinking about things, so they centralize some decisions.
I think what we are building is not to do with problems of centralization, but being able to opt-in and out easily;
it is about whom we give the power to decide for us.
Centralization is not something that will disappear. It is something natural in us, as a more efficient way...
of solving [problems]. [ANDREAS] Absolutely. [ORGANISER] We are building tools to opt-out,
and opt-in to whom we want to give power to represent us.
Would you agree with these concepts? [ANDREAS] The problem isn't centralization itself.
The problem is what centralization does to organizations and the people in them.
Centralized architectures that concentrate power, create the incentives for corruption.
Organizations lose perspective about what their goals are and who they serve.
People become too focused on power. Of course, not all centralization operates like that.
It often operates like that on the greatest scales, and it won't immediately [grow] into that.
It builds to that over time, and is the natural order of things.
Cryptocurrencies will become centralized. We should all be aware of the fact that...
as more people join these cryptocurrencies and they become mainstream, they may become centralized.
People will want to tweak them [for] efficiency, or adopt the ones that are more centralized.
They will forget why we wanted decentralization. Then we will need to build new solutions.
[ORGANISER] As long as we have the tools to opt-out, centralization won't be a problem.
What we are trying to do is build these opt-out tools. [ANDREAS] Opting out is a really important part of life.
If you can't opt-out of a system, it doesn't matter. [ORGANISER] This is a way to remove that precedent...
If I change my vote from you to [someone else], easily, then what you say is not relevant anymore.
Power is no longer something that you have, but something you earn, that you are given.
I think that blockchains can bring ease to having some sort of decentralized identity,
and ways of representing what we support. This will be one of the big tools of blockchains.
We can decide to move on to another. [Inaudible]
[ANDREAS] Historically, when something goes wrong in an environment, the only way people can exit...
is by physically removing themselves from that place, which is why you see a mass exodus of refugees...
from situations they can't fix through any means, situations that they see as hopeless.
So they exit, they leave. One of the [aspects] I like about these virtual tools is, being able to exit...
without [physically] leaving where you are: economically, politically, socially, and technologically.
Exiting traditional systems while staying exactly where you are.
That virtual exit is enormously powerful. I think we are beginning to see that [come into being].