In Yoram Barzel’s Economic Analysis of Property Rights, the great economist argued that property ought to belong to the owner who can do the greatest good with it. In economic terms, this means the owner who understands and is able to utilize the full extent of said property’s value. Until now, consumers have not understood the value of their digital footprints, their avatars. And so, major organizations like Facebook, Google, and Amazon have been exploiting (perhaps rightfully so) that data which should have belonged to us.
Read MoreAnd so this is where humanity now finds itself. As webs of corporate-sponsored AI self-organize user data and build predictive profiles within their ecosystem toward their varying industry agendas (e.g, Facebook for ad targeting, Honda for road mapping, Amazon for goods logistics, etc…), can we use blockchain (as a relational framework) to secure our digital avatars and reclaim our information for our own ends? Or is assimilation into the Google/Facebook/Amazon mainframe inevitable and resistance futile?
Read MoreThe ideal test case would be one where digital tokens were sold as actual access licenses to an existing technology. A technology platform that wasn’t a mere proof of concept, as alleged in the Kik case, but one that a large network of users actually, well, used.
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