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Showing posts from May, 2018

Is blockchain "web scale"?

For something to be truly awesome, it must be "web scale" right? The rather excellent video just below shows how hype can blind us to the real values of a technology. It's quite a famous trope in some circles and I think is a useful parallel to the excitement about blockchain. In it an enthusiastic user of a new technology repeats marketing hype despite having no understanding of the technical concerns involved. Watch the video and you'll hear every piece of marketing spin that surrounds NoSQL databases. I usually get very excited about new technologies but I'm quite underwhelmed by blockchain. In the commercial context I see it as a great solution that really just needs to find a problem to solve. Lots of companies are looking for the problem that the blockchain solution will solve. Facebook has a blockchain group that is dedicated to studying blockchain and how it can be used in Facebook. They don't seem to have found a particularly novel use ca