Bitcoin, Magical Thinking, and Political Ideology:
If Bitcoin’s strength comes from decentralization, why pour millions into a single company? Ah, because Coinbase provides an “accessible interface to the Bitcoin protocol”, we’re told. We must centralize to decentralize, you see; such is the perverse logic of capital co-opting power.
Letter To A Young Programmer Considering A Startup. A wonderful post from Alex Payne about startup jobs. The bit about startup culture being the new corporate culture was particularly interesting.
What Technology Values. The claim that technology is value-neutral overlooks its role as a central component of human society. The reality of technology is that value decisions lie behind every product and it is these values that help form social clusters around technologies.
Alex Payne on Twitter’s need to decentralize:
Some time ago, I circulated a document internally with a straightforward thesis: Twitter needs to decentralize or it will die. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even in a decade, but it was (and, I think, remains) my belief that all communications media will inevitably be decentralized, and that all businesses who build walled gardens will eventually see them torn down.
The entire post, which Alex says are his last words concerning Twitter, is well worth the read.