Is it possible to have distributed networks with the convenience of centralized services? Especially when centralized services seem the most practical option? Think of Google, WhatsApp and Facebook, but also institutions like banks and governments. Despite all the data leaks, micro-targeting, surveillance, and privacy intrusions, these services are pretty damn convenient to use. And they’re...
The importance of feeless transactions for decentralization
With Coordicide coming along well, IOTA is progressing into becoming the most decentralized protocol in the crypto space and IoT. This is in part thanks to its feeless transactions, a fundamental feature for a free and fair future for both man and machine. The text below was originally part of How to decentralize – Part II, but felt a bit contrived there. However, these two posts compliment each...
Why decentralization? – Part I
Why is decentralization so important? It's what cryptocurrency seems to be all about. Yet I couldn’t really put my finger on what it means exactly, or why it is important. Neither could anyone I asked.
In three posts, I'm trying to get a grip on why decentralization feels intuitively correct, while at the same time being hard to characterize.
How methane emitting cattle can actually help solve Australian bushfires
The news of Australian bushfires is heartbreaking. And the Australian PM’s response is infuriating. Not just in regards to the direct measures taken, but also as to the cause of the fires and its future mitigation. All the more because there are solutions that not only protect the environment against such disasters, but bring economic benefits as well.The irony is that the solution has...
Cattle herding and biological carbon sequestring with robots
This post is related to the post about Australian bushfires. It dives deeper into the possibilities IOTA offers regarding solutions mentioned there. Over time we’ll develop this into a usecase that can explored in a hackathon. [This post only contains some basic ideas on how to use IOTA, but does not go into the details of how to build it. It would require much more research in order to...
What autonomous machines could mean for sustainable agriculture
If robots can autonomously plant, nurture, and harvest crops, agriculture can become more efficient economically and ecologically.
Availability – not ownership – for items we don’t use much
To have everything our heart desires is a primitive drive in life. But our ecological footprint is problematic as it is already. Our environment cannot sustain ever increasing consumption. And that’s with an existing inequality in material possessions in the world right now. What happens when Southeast Asia and Africa go to western levels of consumption or above? We argue that the solution...
The opportunity cost of gadgets in the fight against climate change
Technology can be our savior in averting extreme climate change. But technology will not do that by default, because in the end it is just another tool that has to be handled properly to be useful. Using the wrong tech, or using the tech wrong will result in opportunity costs that harm its potential. Instead, before solving the tech we must better define what the tech should solve. In this post...