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> Prior to the publication of Satoshi's paper we did not have a solution to this problem what was the problem that this solved, exactly?

bllguo 9y ago
there's literally a link in the comment. Show some effort please..
- jeremyjh 9y ago
  Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized time ordered log so that I can ...
  - slededit 9y ago
    Imagine playing that game in the 1950s about computers. IBM thought there was a market for maybe 5.
  - kaistinchcombe 9y ago
    People say that a lot about the internet – that nobody knew what it would be useful for at the time it was invented. It had MORE uses than originally foreseen (same as computers) but one of the internet pioneers chimed in on the comments thread to the first article saying that actually they did know exactly why they built the internet at the time they built it: they wanted a better way to send messages and share files, so they built one, and the day it was built it was the best way in the world to do that. Same with IBM - scope wasn't foreseen, but those machines were the best in the world for the purposes they were designed for. But the myth that people create amazing technology that has no use (TCP/IP, the computer), and then a decade later people discover what it's useful for, is just that: a myth.
  - DINKDINK 9y ago
    Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized method of sending bits to other academic computers across the country so that I can ...
    - gizmo686 9y ago
      I can easily imagine a persona who could complete that sentence: scientists who wanted to share data across the country. The internet was built because it satisfied an actual need at the time, and grew organically. It is even in the name. The "Internet" was not some monolithic project. It was a way of connecting the many different networks that had already been built.
      - scabarott 9y ago
        The internet as we use it today is far beyond what anyone originally envisioned. No one thought we would be using it for e-commerce or social networks or in fact anything other than for a few geeky scientists to occasionally collaborate
  - miles 9y ago
    https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul-krugmans-poor-prediction https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul... > A winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman wrote in 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
    - jeremyjh 9y ago
      This is a complete non-sequitor. The usefulness of blockchain is not assured because people have been skeptical of useful technology in the past. You must actually propose and defend an application of this technology. Otherwise you are offering my skepticism as evidence itself that blockchain will be useful. If that had merit we can go into business together: you propose a technology and patent it, and then I express skepticism and then - profits!
  - specialist 9y ago
    I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. My prescriptions are the real deal. As a better escrow for exchanging goods, services. I can verify if the trog on Fox News is just making shit up. (Verified sources, citations are baked into all content.)
    - spookthesunset 9y ago
      > I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. > My prescriptions are the real deal. How does the blockchain solve any of this? You still need a human to say "this Gucci handbag is not counterfeit". A human still needs to type in "yup, this prescription is real".
      - specialist 9y ago
        How are anti-counterfeiting efforts done today? Accounting. For this use case, think of blockchains as a shared ledger.
        wsy 9y ago
        If you already trust the accountant, he can set up a conventional database, and you can look stuff up there. Much simpler and cheaper. A blockchain-based shared ledger is only useful in case the participants don't trust each other. In which case you cannot do anything with it to help detecting counterfeits.
        specialist 9y ago
        Or when you have a supply chain composed of various participants.
        eridius 9y ago
        And now you're trusting each participant to enter their portion of the ledger accurately. The original articles goes into this very problem. What's to stop your mango provider from spraying pesticides all over their mangoes and then entering "organic" into the ledger?
  - scabarott 9y ago
    I can think of at least 2 promising areas: 1.Micropayments- currently it's very hard to charge for anything on the internet so we get ads, which everyone hates or paywalls which people hate even more. Internet money doesn't need to be decentralized but then who will issue or build it -google, facebook? So far this is the most promising. 2. Data privacy - everyone's complaining about Facebook now. So far public decentralized blockchains have offered the most promising way to build truly decentralized apps (while still providing an incentive/payment to developers). I'm pretty sure even more uses we can't think of now will open up as the technology matures
badloginagain 9y ago
To "establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique"

bllguo 9y ago

there's literally a link in the comment. Show some effort please..

jeremyjh 9y ago
Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized time ordered log so that I can ...
- slededit 9y ago
  Imagine playing that game in the 1950s about computers. IBM thought there was a market for maybe 5.
- kaistinchcombe 9y ago
  People say that a lot about the internet – that nobody knew what it would be useful for at the time it was invented. It had MORE uses than originally foreseen (same as computers) but one of the internet pioneers chimed in on the comments thread to the first article saying that actually they did know exactly why they built the internet at the time they built it: they wanted a better way to send messages and share files, so they built one, and the day it was built it was the best way in the world to do that. Same with IBM - scope wasn't foreseen, but those machines were the best in the world for the purposes they were designed for. But the myth that people create amazing technology that has no use (TCP/IP, the computer), and then a decade later people discover what it's useful for, is just that: a myth.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  Imagine a few different personas, such as investment banker, retail store owner, and soccer mom. Then complete the following sentence: I need a decentralized method of sending bits to other academic computers across the country so that I can ...
  - gizmo686 9y ago
    I can easily imagine a persona who could complete that sentence: scientists who wanted to share data across the country. The internet was built because it satisfied an actual need at the time, and grew organically. It is even in the name. The "Internet" was not some monolithic project. It was a way of connecting the many different networks that had already been built.
    - scabarott 9y ago
      The internet as we use it today is far beyond what anyone originally envisioned. No one thought we would be using it for e-commerce or social networks or in fact anything other than for a few geeky scientists to occasionally collaborate
- miles 9y ago
  https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul-krugmans-poor-prediction https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/revolutions/miscellany/paul... > A winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman wrote in 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.”
  - jeremyjh 9y ago
    This is a complete non-sequitor. The usefulness of blockchain is not assured because people have been skeptical of useful technology in the past. You must actually propose and defend an application of this technology. Otherwise you are offering my skepticism as evidence itself that blockchain will be useful. If that had merit we can go into business together: you propose a technology and patent it, and then I express skepticism and then - profits!
- specialist 9y ago
  I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. My prescriptions are the real deal. As a better escrow for exchanging goods, services. I can verify if the trog on Fox News is just making shit up. (Verified sources, citations are baked into all content.)
  - spookthesunset 9y ago
    > I know this Gucci handbang is not counterfeit. > My prescriptions are the real deal. How does the blockchain solve any of this? You still need a human to say "this Gucci handbag is not counterfeit". A human still needs to type in "yup, this prescription is real".
    - specialist 9y ago
      How are anti-counterfeiting efforts done today? Accounting. For this use case, think of blockchains as a shared ledger.
      - wsy 9y ago
        If you already trust the accountant, he can set up a conventional database, and you can look stuff up there. Much simpler and cheaper. A blockchain-based shared ledger is only useful in case the participants don't trust each other. In which case you cannot do anything with it to help detecting counterfeits.
        specialist 9y ago
        Or when you have a supply chain composed of various participants.
        eridius 9y ago
        And now you're trusting each participant to enter their portion of the ledger accurately. The original articles goes into this very problem. What's to stop your mango provider from spraying pesticides all over their mangoes and then entering "organic" into the ledger?
- scabarott 9y ago
  I can think of at least 2 promising areas: 1.Micropayments- currently it's very hard to charge for anything on the internet so we get ads, which everyone hates or paywalls which people hate even more. Internet money doesn't need to be decentralized but then who will issue or build it -google, facebook? So far this is the most promising. 2. Data privacy - everyone's complaining about Facebook now. So far public decentralized blockchains have offered the most promising way to build truly decentralized apps (while still providing an incentive/payment to developers). I'm pretty sure even more uses we can't think of now will open up as the technology matures

badloginagain 9y ago

To "establish consensus over points in time which are universally unique"