Cory Doctorow: The Monopoly Web Is Already Here

Cory Doctorow doesn’t buy the hype. 

While many critics of Big Tech ascribe diabolical genius to the dominant internet firms of today, Doctorow sees a collection of mediocre sociopaths. 

This article is part of CoinDesk’s “Internet 2030” series, an examination at the technologies developed today that will power the economy of tomorrow.

The polymorphous Canadian-British tech blogger and…

The Terminators: A Short Story

My first memory comes from the year 1999. People told me I was going to change the world. I don’t think people realized at the time how much of a child I was. A lot of time, money and faith was put into my abilities. I was told to deliver pet supplies, manage groceries, handle rewards programs and do about a thousand other things that felt completely out of reach.

I couldn’t live up to the…

Identity is one of our most fundamental human rights. Yet, in the age of surveillance, commodification and centralization, it is under threat. Edward Snowden said it best, “The one vulnerability being exploited across all systems is identity.”  

If the “State is the monopoly on violence,” as Max Weber once defined it, then the surveillance state (or surveillance capital) is the monopoly on…

How a Decentralized Internet Can Power Latin America’s Economy

It’s no secret Latin America’s economy is not in great shape compared to other regions.

There isn’t any single reason for this. You could point to a dependence on commodity exports and its booms and bust cycles, government corruption, income inequality or a combination of them all. 

Diego Gutiérrez Zaldívar is the CEO and co-founder of IOVLabs, the blockchain development company responsible…

The World Wide Web has revolutionized human communication, but it’s under threat.

We at Brave think this distributed and interlinked information system is unique among platforms for many reasons: Its design and direction aren’t controlled by any one organization. Its pages and applications are modifiable by users (e.g., extensions, ad/tracker blocking, more general browser configuration, etc).…

What the History of Headphones Says About the Internet’s Future

Predicting the blockchain future is easy. Knowing when to try is hard.

I’m going to talk about the future of the internet and blockchain technology, but first, let’s talk about noise-cancelling headphones.

John Wolpert is the group executive in charge of enterprise mainnet at ConsenSys AG and the chair of the technical steering committee of the Baseline Protocol. This article is part of…

A Day in the Life of the Splinternet

In 2030, at the interminable tail end of another hot, smoky summer in Mexico City, the power went out again and she went down into the basement where it was cooler. Other people from the apartment block were already sitting on the gritty concrete: snacking, vaping, talking, thumbing through their devices and killing time. People shared charging bricks in a neighborly way. She had three phones;…

The Inevitability of ‘Big Blockchain’

The U.S. economy is less dynamic than it was two decades ago, and with this shift has come massive concentration in market power and control.

Industrial concentration has risen. More workers than ever work for very large firms. A handful of major investors own a greater percentage of public companies.Fewer companies (and individuals) decide what we consume, where we work, how much we earn and…