Any idea how it's going to happen? Historical evidence so far suggests technologies tend to centralize. And it's quite obvious why - centralized systems are generally more efficient in terms of energy use, time and (important for market) money. There's a solid incentive gradient pushing things towards further centralization, and very weak one in the opposite direction. I do not see anything on the horizon that would change it (and no, blockchains don't count for now - if anything, cryptocurrencies are a lesson in just how quickly systems centralize).
1. The first computers were huge machines that everyone logged into with thin clients
2. Then the PC era where computing became decentralized and all computing took place on a single machine
3. Then the internet, which went back to the thin clients connecting to large central servers
If you believe that the reason for the shift away from decentralization was to enable coordination of multiple PCs so they had access to the same centralized data (for reading or shopping or whatever) then its really not a stretch that distributed consensus algorithms could be a way back to decentralization.
> and no, blockchains don't count for now - if anything, cryptocurrencies are a lesson in just how quickly systems centralize
Not disagreeing with you on the current state, but I believe that is because the people most engaged right now are the same types who day trade penny stocks and options, i.e., low-information high risk seekers. Many of the structures of the cryptocurrency market seem lifted from a student's textbook about how markets can or should work. I see zero discussion of why different structures like open outcry exchanges and centralized regulatory agencies existed originally and what roles they serve now. Maturity, both in the users and the infrastructure, should help this.
I recently had a discussion with a trader-type about why exchanges should exist at all for cryptocurrencies given the volatility cause by a combination of high volume, few market makers, and lots of friction between exchanges. The responses were about price discovery and how would we trade? I don't think they believed me that, as a stock trader, you have almost certainly never traded a stock on an actual exchange and high volatility means its value for economic price discovery is nearly useless.
But please resist the urge to conclude that what is happening in the cryptocurrency markets has any bearing on the potential of distributed consensus algorithms.
Both of those are harder to do with a decentralised system, and it's hard to do proper UX without money to bring engineers and designers together.
Even just an evolved version of this, a ten thousand centralized internet currency marketplace, would constitute a decentralized internet currency system. And this is probably the weakest system that could result.
That may be true, but why does it matter if there's no adoption? As the guy you replied to pointed out, there's no incentive to use a decentralized system for the average user as it's more inefficient and slower by design.
I'm not saying that I'm not interested in decentralized systems, I'm simply arguing that there's no incentive to use them except for a few people whose interest in privacy is very high.
In this case the resource is attention.
Let's hope the long-term effects of extracting attention for a couple decades is limited :)
Everything about the internet and computer technology is uncharted territory. The most technical human on earth can't predict what will happen even 5 years in the future.
It is safe to predict that Google and Facebook are going to be obsoleted by newer, cheaper, better technology. Google/Facebook operate highly inefficient businesses and that's the weakness that will wipe them both out. No government intervention will be necessary.
Hint: #decentralization
The big internet risk is the last mile, controlled by Comcast/AT&T. We need a campaign to move the whole country to fiber conduit powered by local internet providers.