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Really though? I’m confident there are 100 RFCs alone that were more impactful.
by alex_sf 4y ago
Really though? I’m confident there are 100 RFCs alone that were more impactful.
- woodruffw 4y agoAs am I. The top 100 wouldn’t even scratch the surface of any scientific or non-literary domain.
- pyrale 4y agoI guess some scientific work would make it into the list owing to their profound impact on society through overthrowing established philosophical thinking. Among others: - Copernic's De revolutionibus orbium coelestium enabled the copernician revolution, which had profound impacts on how people thought about their place in the universe. - Darwin's On the Origin of Species had more or less the same kind of impact, and provoked a strong reaction in the society, especially within churches. I'm sure with more research we could find other scientific work that had a profound impact not only on our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings, but also on the way we think about ourselves.
- anthk 4y agoElements, from Euclid.
- alwillis 4y agoWe’ve seen many instances of documents that weren’t highly thought of at the time of their publication, with that changing radically later. Vannevar Bush‘s essay “As We May Think” in 1945 is a visionary document that describes technologies we take for granted today more than 70 years ago. It’s possible the Bitcoin white paper will be looked at in similar ways, especially if Bitcoin ends up being one mankind’s most important inventions in addition to being a critically important financial asset.
- throwaway2190 4y agoWell, you could make the same argument for any document, including the RFCs.
- alex_sf 4y agoYeah, but, it's really not going to be. Like, there is absolutely no chance of that, ever. Even in the very-unlikely world where some sort of decentralized cryptocurrency is used for anything other than scams and drugs, it's not going to be bitcoin, and blockchains existed for decades before bitcoin did.
- doodlesdev 4y ago> blockchains existed for decades before bitcoin did That's absolutely not true. Bitcoin was the first blockchain like the ones we know today, the idea existed before but no one had implemented it in a decentralized way [0][1]. Bitcoin was also the first to solve the double spending problem. [2] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-spending
- alex_sf 4y agoWe had DHTs, we had blockchains, and double spending was solved at least 2 years before the bitcoin white paper. Satoshi combined them together in a novel form, for sure, but it’s still largely useless.
- eru 4y agoAny more background on how double spending was solved 2 years before bitcoin?
- alex_sf 4y agoSure. Whitepaper was released in 2008. Genesis block was in 2009. In 2007 we had Combating Double-Spending Using Cooperative P2P Systems[0]. Prior to both the whitepaper and the genesis block, we had Distributed Double Spending Prevention[1]. These are all particular subsets of distributed consensus problems, which have been studied in the context of CS for at least 30+ years (Consensus in the Presence of Partial Synchrony[2]). [0] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4268195 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4268195 [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0832 https://arxiv.org/abs/0802.0832 [2] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Lynch/jacm88.pdf http://groups.csail.mit.edu/tds/papers/Lynch/jacm88.pdf
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- s1gnp0st 4y agoSilicon Valley tech-bros know that the money-printer drives the malinvestment bubbles that feed them. They're natural enemies of a decentralized, deflationary currency.
- lottin 4y agoBitcoin is neither deflationary nor a currency.
- sMarsIntruder 4y agoHere’s the arguments-less old schooler. Edit: bank worker I see, now makes more sense. Sorry man.
- lottin 4y agoWhere? An asset that loses 70% of its value in a week is hyperinflationary. This is literally what hyperinflation means.
- imtringued 4y agoAh yes, cryptocurrency the harbinger of good investment opportunities. The vast majority of cryptocurrencies are undeniably "malinvestments".
- olalonde 4y agoCan you give some examples?
- vb6sp6 4y agohttps://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1945.txt the thing that lets us communicate like this :)
- olalonde 4y agoThat's not quite right. If I recall correctly, HTTP predates the HTTP RFC by a few years. I agree that HTTP was more impactful than Bitcoin but I'm not sure about the RFC itself. Maybe.
- alex_sf 4y agoThat's the norm for an RFC. It rarely defines something new; it's a formalization of what's starting to occur to ensure interoperability. And really, the RFC comment is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The idea that the bitcoin whitepaper is some holy document, or even anywhere near the "top 100 non-literary" documents created by humans is profoundly stupid. If someone genuinely believes that, I need to talk with them synchronously to try and figure out where, exactly, it ranks. Obviously ahead of the Rosetta Stone and the Treaty of Versailles, but does it beat out the Magna Carta?
- alex_sf 4y ago791, 793, 4271, 8446, 2246, 821, and more, I'm sure.
- euroderf 4y agoKinda surprised I guess that Apple does not include RFCs. Developer resources eh.