Gabriel Ortiz’s Reviews > Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread— The Lessons from a New Science > Status Update

In the case of blockchain:Proof of work just consolidates power in the hands of the savy and rich. Proof of stake just consolidates compute in the hands of the rich.

This is a problem which compounds on building a better exchange network as has been proposed to an alternative to open-market mechanisms by Pentland.

“Corporation and Governments have computational capabilities far beyond what is available to individuals, and this imbalance is quickly becoming a major source of inequality.”

Cloud has only consolidated power further. Sure, any user can scale a number of instances on AWS, but in the end it’s Amazon who owns the compute. The same goes for the data brokers like Google and Meta.

Incredible experiments in social engineering at scale. If this was possible years ago with an MIT budget imagine what is possible nowadays. Take the Pokémon go phenomenon for example. A group of game developers at niantic were able to engineer a mass of users to wage territorial battles in real space using social incentives and a mutual love for a franchise.

Think about what could be done with an ideology.