4 ms·

correct, PGP had 30 years to get broad user-facing adoption and failed outside of a few paranoid folks on email and setting up git or ssh on a new machine once.

correct, PGP had 30 years to get broad user-facing adoption and failed outside of a few paranoid folks on email and setting up git or ssh on a new machine once. blockchains and their addressing namespace have very quickly propelled standardized interfaces for signing key pairs for people that don't even think about it.

tshaddox 4y ago
Neither has anything remotely mistakable for broad user-facing adoption.
- vmception 4y ago
  sure, to clarify, I would say if we had a way to count frequency of key pair signing before wallets, and after wallets, you would see a major adoption curve having occurred and continuing. I think that's a good thing because I think key signing is a good thing that needed better adoption and use cases. its ridiculous to think 'hm my users need a browser extension to use my application' but now since millions already do this, its great. thank you, profit motive.
- swalsh 4y ago
  Metamask has pretty broad adoption. Not quite "my mom" level yet. But it's gone far beyond techies on a fairly large scale, which PGP never really did.
kkfx 4y ago
People do not know GNUPG/PGP simply because they are IT-illiterate and those who can teach them, on scale, do profit of such ignorance. Sorry for being rude, but that's is. The chain of trust concept is the simplest and most powerful concept of trust we have in the real world, it fail because most people still have issue understanding the difference between local and remote and understanding why privacy is a value. Blockchain is "popular" just because it's sold as a tool to make money and people who do not know think "let's try it". Nothing more. It's pushed because IT giants (who are probably those who really invented the concept) feel to be giant enough to kick banking out and replace them in a classic EEE move [1] while locking users even more because we need banks mostly for comfort and by law, but we can use cash "by nature" while we can't use cryptos without computers (full of crapware, down to the hw, produced by very few giants at least for their core components) and connections (again owned by few giants). They are sold as free, and they are in theory, in practice they are very hard prisons, worst than those who they say they want to replace. About web3: just try ZeroNet, is a kind of PopcornTime clone, instead of movies it share text, websites. Under the wood just the classic BitTorrent. Fast enough to be used, but certainly not usable by all on scale. The real decentralization we need is web 1.0 with today an IPv6 global for any device and PUBLIC registars who offer domains for free to Citizens JUST mediating eventual overhands, no third party resale allowed... It's not done like we do not push Usenet again just because those who know do want a surveilled and locked IT, not a really free one. [1] and bankers known that well: https://voxeu.org/content/banking-disrupted-financial-intermediation-era-transformational-technology https://voxeu.org/content/banking-disrupted-financial-interm... and also it's more recent evolution https://voxeu.org/article/digitalisation-and-future-banking https://voxeu.org/article/digitalisation-and-future-banking
- vmception 4y ago
  I don't have any arguments against that, I just don't find the parts about IT-illiterate and blockchains being popular to be controversial. Blockchains standardized an addressing namespace and proliferation of signing tools that are on the path to being ubiquitous. Other niches failed to do that. Speculation drives innovation. Blockchains have tradeoffs, the addressing namespace and signing doesn't actually use the blockchain or any consensus mechanism. (address validation has to be done client side most times! some networks have added consensus level rules to add node level validation).
  - kkfx 4y ago
    It's not a tech reason: how many Ponzi's schemes you have heard on PGP/GNUPG? That's why blockchains "are popular", it's not a matter of what they are technically, they can be even just a mythical entity, a person, a particles, they are popular because someone have advertise them as "a tool to make money" and than countless humans have immediately responded. Try to talk about some crypto-enthusiast: I'm pretty sure 99% of the will prove to have no idea of what technically the blockchain is, BUT they surely tell you many strategies and judgments on this and that investment opportunity with this and that crypto, normally materialized for them in some remote web-services, of course. It's the same model that push "anti-radiation, anti-5G magic stickers&co" on the market. People have no idea on them, they have a fear, a desire, a need, so an emotion and they hear that such tools might satisfy such need/desire/emotion, if the entry barrier is cheap they'll try "just in case". It's nothing about the nature or technicality of the tool. This very business is the old classic Eduard Bernays way to push things to the public: he push cigarettes crafting a new scientific journal who publish easily new real papers, than he spread it a bit in most famous doctors' offices, MDs read real studies on them and like the journal. They also read dummy studies about how healthy is smoking and they blindly trust them. At the same time on the public he manage to get some famous people to smoke in public, he say that smoking was about feminine emancipation etc something that any relevant cohort like to hear. A small summary of his campaigns is here: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer Crypto start in the same way: spread to some FLOSS cohort as a new project by a secret hacker, something to pique interest in those who represent the crème of the IT world, a bit later Ponzi's schemes for the general public, in the middle some spread in the business sector depicting how anything can be solved in a snap with the new exiting tech. A cohort see the interest of the others and global interest grow blind. We do not even know if the legend of some aborigines of I don't know which island have invented large rock to mark they financial transaction on is real or just a fabricated legend. Try another point of view: what's wrong with the web? IMVHO: - dependence on search engines, witch are so far a big&powerful only game, witch means that those big&powerful decide what we see or not on average; - no easy entry barrier for those who want to produce contents, not just consume it. We have had and still have various "free hosted platforms", from the classic Geocities to Substack, but nothing individual and easy to access. We can easily publish on ZeroNet but how many know ZeroNet exists? - lost of focus and software complexity, the web was about valuable contents who do not change much and many ask for, a usenet companion to avoid keep answering same questions all the time; now is mostly a software platform and nothing in the middle clearly define the right place in IT panorama. Does web3 address any of these? IMVHO no. What can solve these? Well, first of all surely on the internet layer IPv6 with a static global per device for all, so we do not have NAT and dynamic IP issues, those who want can get a domain name and being easy to reach, others can still access their devices with pre-recorded static addresses. IP2IP calls are straightforward like filesharing especially with modern connections for those who have them etc. For the web part... A newborn Plan 9, witch means a new universal 9p modern protocol to mount remote resources with proper access level, the same for share files of any kind, so the same to see a streamed video, the same to send messages (just mount the target mailbox and save a file, the email was sent, namespacing ensure you can't read anything) or to read a classic web website, like one with pure CSS3+html5 and no js. Do you want a newspaper? No need for a specific protocol and a specific server, the newspaper offer various access (free or paid) to relevant documents, you can even read them with your visual style easily, just overwrite the default CSS. No need separate feeds, they just grab the html without the CSS. The entire software stack for a modern web 1.0 will became so simple that we do not need modern WebVM no-one-but-some-giants can create/maintain. Internet banking? No need from the bank side a crappy porcal with it's costs, just a common file format to talk to the client, relevant auth is part of the underlying system protocol, transactions are just signed text, like part of an XML stream. Customers can have their own favorite banking app with all their banks in one place, with all their history, notes etc integrated. Again a hyper-simplified software stack for much more results than now. Nothing of the above proposals are in Web3. Nothing else in the end, just a smoky promise of being so powerful without details...

tshaddox 4y ago

Neither has anything remotely mistakable for broad user-facing adoption.

vmception 4y ago
sure, to clarify, I would say if we had a way to count frequency of key pair signing before wallets, and after wallets, you would see a major adoption curve having occurred and continuing. I think that's a good thing because I think key signing is a good thing that needed better adoption and use cases. its ridiculous to think 'hm my users need a browser extension to use my application' but now since millions already do this, its great. thank you, profit motive.
swalsh 4y ago
Metamask has pretty broad adoption. Not quite "my mom" level yet. But it's gone far beyond techies on a fairly large scale, which PGP never really did.

kkfx 4y ago

People do not know GNUPG/PGP simply because they are IT-illiterate and those who can teach them, on scale, do profit of such ignorance. Sorry for being rude, but that's is. The chain of trust concept is the simplest and most powerful concept of trust we have in the real world, it fail because most people still have issue understanding the difference between local and remote and understanding why privacy is a value. Blockchain is "popular" just because it's sold as a tool to make money and people who do not know think "let's try it". Nothing more. It's pushed because IT giants (who are probably those who really invented the concept) feel to be giant enough to kick banking out and replace them in a classic EEE move [1] while locking users even more because we need banks mostly for comfort and by law, but we can use cash "by nature" while we can't use cryptos without computers (full of crapware, down to the hw, produced by very few giants at least for their core components) and connections (again owned by few giants). They are sold as free, and they are in theory, in practice they are very hard prisons, worst than those who they say they want to replace. About web3: just try ZeroNet, is a kind of PopcornTime clone, instead of movies it share text, websites. Under the wood just the classic BitTorrent. Fast enough to be used, but certainly not usable by all on scale. The real decentralization we need is web 1.0 with today an IPv6 global for any device and PUBLIC registars who offer domains for free to Citizens JUST mediating eventual overhands, no third party resale allowed... It's not done like we do not push Usenet again just because those who know do want a surveilled and locked IT, not a really free one. [1] and bankers known that well: https://voxeu.org/content/banking-disrupted-financial-intermediation-era-transformational-technology https://voxeu.org/content/banking-disrupted-financial-interm... and also it's more recent evolution https://voxeu.org/article/digitalisation-and-future-banking https://voxeu.org/article/digitalisation-and-future-banking

vmception 4y ago
I don't have any arguments against that, I just don't find the parts about IT-illiterate and blockchains being popular to be controversial. Blockchains standardized an addressing namespace and proliferation of signing tools that are on the path to being ubiquitous. Other niches failed to do that. Speculation drives innovation. Blockchains have tradeoffs, the addressing namespace and signing doesn't actually use the blockchain or any consensus mechanism. (address validation has to be done client side most times! some networks have added consensus level rules to add node level validation).
- kkfx 4y ago
  It's not a tech reason: how many Ponzi's schemes you have heard on PGP/GNUPG? That's why blockchains "are popular", it's not a matter of what they are technically, they can be even just a mythical entity, a person, a particles, they are popular because someone have advertise them as "a tool to make money" and than countless humans have immediately responded. Try to talk about some crypto-enthusiast: I'm pretty sure 99% of the will prove to have no idea of what technically the blockchain is, BUT they surely tell you many strategies and judgments on this and that investment opportunity with this and that crypto, normally materialized for them in some remote web-services, of course. It's the same model that push "anti-radiation, anti-5G magic stickers&co" on the market. People have no idea on them, they have a fear, a desire, a need, so an emotion and they hear that such tools might satisfy such need/desire/emotion, if the entry barrier is cheap they'll try "just in case". It's nothing about the nature or technicality of the tool. This very business is the old classic Eduard Bernays way to push things to the public: he push cigarettes crafting a new scientific journal who publish easily new real papers, than he spread it a bit in most famous doctors' offices, MDs read real studies on them and like the journal. They also read dummy studies about how healthy is smoking and they blindly trust them. At the same time on the public he manage to get some famous people to smoke in public, he say that smoking was about feminine emancipation etc something that any relevant cohort like to hear. A small summary of his campaigns is here: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer https://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/12/consumer Crypto start in the same way: spread to some FLOSS cohort as a new project by a secret hacker, something to pique interest in those who represent the crème of the IT world, a bit later Ponzi's schemes for the general public, in the middle some spread in the business sector depicting how anything can be solved in a snap with the new exiting tech. A cohort see the interest of the others and global interest grow blind. We do not even know if the legend of some aborigines of I don't know which island have invented large rock to mark they financial transaction on is real or just a fabricated legend. Try another point of view: what's wrong with the web? IMVHO: - dependence on search engines, witch are so far a big&powerful only game, witch means that those big&powerful decide what we see or not on average; - no easy entry barrier for those who want to produce contents, not just consume it. We have had and still have various "free hosted platforms", from the classic Geocities to Substack, but nothing individual and easy to access. We can easily publish on ZeroNet but how many know ZeroNet exists? - lost of focus and software complexity, the web was about valuable contents who do not change much and many ask for, a usenet companion to avoid keep answering same questions all the time; now is mostly a software platform and nothing in the middle clearly define the right place in IT panorama. Does web3 address any of these? IMVHO no. What can solve these? Well, first of all surely on the internet layer IPv6 with a static global per device for all, so we do not have NAT and dynamic IP issues, those who want can get a domain name and being easy to reach, others can still access their devices with pre-recorded static addresses. IP2IP calls are straightforward like filesharing especially with modern connections for those who have them etc. For the web part... A newborn Plan 9, witch means a new universal 9p modern protocol to mount remote resources with proper access level, the same for share files of any kind, so the same to see a streamed video, the same to send messages (just mount the target mailbox and save a file, the email was sent, namespacing ensure you can't read anything) or to read a classic web website, like one with pure CSS3+html5 and no js. Do you want a newspaper? No need for a specific protocol and a specific server, the newspaper offer various access (free or paid) to relevant documents, you can even read them with your visual style easily, just overwrite the default CSS. No need separate feeds, they just grab the html without the CSS. The entire software stack for a modern web 1.0 will became so simple that we do not need modern WebVM no-one-but-some-giants can create/maintain. Internet banking? No need from the bank side a crappy porcal with it's costs, just a common file format to talk to the client, relevant auth is part of the underlying system protocol, transactions are just signed text, like part of an XML stream. Customers can have their own favorite banking app with all their banks in one place, with all their history, notes etc integrated. Again a hyper-simplified software stack for much more results than now. Nothing of the above proposals are in Web3. Nothing else in the end, just a smoky promise of being so powerful without details...