Tim Roughgarden
@tr
Is the following a good analogy? 1. The Internet aspires to be neutral infrastructure for communication. 2. Permissionless blockchains aspire to be neutral infrastructure for computation.
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
So this could be too nitpicky / unsexy for public audience, but I think I would say: " 1. The Internet aspires to be neutral infrastructure for *digital communication* 2. Permissionless blockchains aspire to be neutral infrastructure for *digital records* "
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
Reasoning: Emphasizing *digital* places focus on how much has changed about human life due to technology Saying *record* captures Bitcoin case, which is meaningful. And compute is technically an application of records One strategy I use is asking people to reflect on how much of their life rn is a *digital record*
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Tim Roughgarden
@tr
Thanks for the comments! I was actually already on the fence about "communication" vs. "digital communication," chose the former only to have symmetry with "computation"
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Tim Roughgarden
@tr
Personally, I feel strongly about emphasizing the "blockchain = computer" analogy as opposed to "blockchain = database." (Reaonable people can disagree on this.)
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
I def abree with you that compute is the most powerful application (and therefore prob the piece to communicate). But boy are ledgers important…
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Tim Roughgarden
@tr
They are but personally I've never been able to get a general CS audience excited about them (it's almost like talking about Excel or something)
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tldr (tim reilly)
@tldr
Interesting. I wonder what they would say to the point that they code they are running are actually just digital records of (abstracted) binary. "Imagine if some Permissioning Evil Demon had the ability to move some underlying 1's and 0's of your file around whenever they wished!"
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