What are the tools we’re using to build the future? Session 3 speakers go deep on what’s next in finance, energy, business and the structures we live in.
The next generation of trust on the Internet. For many online transactions, we rely on middlemen like banks and government to establish trust — but these systems face growing issues like hacking, exclusion and data privacy. Blockchain, “a vast distributed ledger run on millions of computers,” promises to upend all that, establishing trust not through big institutions but through “cryptography and clever code,” says technology communicator Don Tapscott. When blockchain technology matures, Tapscott believes, “For the first time in human history, people can trust each other and interact peer-to-peer,” and the power of that changing interaction could help us address the social inequality that’s at the heart of today’s anger, extremism and protectionism, not by redistributing wealth but by predistributing it.
Read the full article on TEDBlog.
Photo: Bret Hartman / TED