Blockchain: The Ethical Considerations
Channel: FOSDEM
Date: 2019-02-14

by Deb Nicholson

At: FOSDEM 2019
https://video.fosdem.org/2019/Janson/blockchain_ethics.webm


What kind of world do we want to see blockchain make? Upsides like increased transparency, distributed control and the elimination of duplicative administrative work are appealing, but where are the potential downsides? We no longer live in a world where we can put off a conversation about the social impact of our work. Old industries used to call negative effects of their work "externalities" and it would sometimes take decades to discover the negative social effects and environmental destruction that had been wreaked by a new technological process. What kind of world do we want to see blockchain make? Upsides like increased transparency, distributed control and the elimination of duplicative administrative work are appealing, but where are the potential downsides? We no longer live in a world where we can put off a conversation about the social impact of our work. Old industries used to call negative effects of their work "externalities" and it would sometimes take decades to discover the negative social effects and environmental destruction that had been wreaked by a new technological process. 

Software is collaborative and fast which means early technical decisions have a huge impact on the way we grow. Is the heavy amount of computing power required for bitcoin widening the global wealth gap in a way that best resembles a fictional dystopia? Is the decentralization promised only available to certain kinds of players because of certification gate-keeping or network effects that rely on huge amounts of existing capital? 

Given the power and ubiquity of software, nothing is truly "external" to our work. Once we identify the ways that blockchain could potentially be used to build a nightmarish dystopia, what do we do? How can we ensure that the power and potential to improve lives is as evenly distributed as possible? 

Room: Janson
Scheduled start: 2019-02-02 12:00:00+01