Not here to talk about IBM Blockchain in particular, but to just offer a "meta" take on the difference between blockchain and other technological innovations.

Not here to talk about IBM Blockchain in particular, but to just offer a "meta" take on the difference between blockchain and other technological innovations. In our world, we have problems and solutions. Most technologies are created to provide new solutions to existing problems. The problem? It's dark. The solution? Fire, and then the light bulb, and now LEDs and so on. As we've gone digital, we've found that many of the problems of the physical world found their way into the digital world, and needed a "digital equivalent" solution, so those solutions were "ported over". The problem? Pictures needed to be touched up for publication. The physical solution? Retouching kits, gelatin, paintbrushes, patience. The digital solution? Photo editing tools with (at a minimum) the same capabilities and results. If you go back and read Satoshi's original paper, he does something relatively novel - it may even be a first - in that he: * proposes a solution * to a digital problem * where no such solution exists in the physical world, and * no one is even sure it's a problem in the physical world And by doing so, he set off a firestorm, because now the wrangling isn't "is his solution better than other solutions for this problem" but "is this really a problem at all?" It is (for once!) a genuine example of begging the question. It says "remove these premises and this is the only mechanism that makes sense." Two of the key premises being removed are "trust in others" and "adjudication of transactional disputes" - here's from the original whitepaper: > Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for nonreversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party. If you see trust and mediation only as costs and with no benefits, the worldview of blockchain is appealing. But clearly some of the benefits of the existing system are transparency (or at least, the ability to have your day in court) and stability - being able to prevent bank runs is a good thing. And of course, for the wider applications of blockchain, again, you have to consider the premises under which you're operating to define a "problem" such that blockchain is a solution. We joke that blockchain is a "solution in search of a problem", but that's not the case - it just declares a broad swath of social norms to be "the problem" it's solving, and makes no attempt at a countercase ("Why you shouldn't use Blockchain") I think we are all largely better served by spending our efforts creating solutions to problems everyone agrees we have and need solving.