Blockchain Revolution

Implications for the Blockchain Economy: To be sure, the blockchain provides

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opportunities to stop the stampede to a surveillance society. Now think about the
problem of corporate big data for each of us. What does it mean for a corporation to
have perfect information about you? We are some twenty years into the global
Internet era, and only at the beginning of corporate access to the most intimate details
of our personal lives. Coming up fast are personal health and fitness data, our daily
comings and goings, the inner lives of our homes, and, well, you name it. Many
people are simply unaware of the many micro-Faustian deals they make online every
day. By simply using Web sites, consumers authorize their owners to convert trails of
digital crumbs into detailed road maps for private commercial benefit.
Unless we shift to the new paradigm, it’s not science fiction to foresee hundreds
of millions of avatars humming away in tomorrow’s data centers. With blockchain
technology, you could own your personal avatars as you do in the Second Life virtual
world, but with real-world implications. The Virtual You could protect your personal
information, giving away only the information required in any social or economic
exchange work under your command and make sure you receive compensation for
any of your data that has value to another party. It’s a shift from big data to private
data. Call it “little data.”