A New Form of ID Allows You to Be a Citizen of the World

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/blockhains-first-citizen-328

by edward • 11 years ago

40 28 11 years ago

vice.com

shiggerino• 11 years ago

e-cig-cafe
death of the nation state

∗tips fedora∗

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

As neat as this idea is, the Nations have a monopoly on violent force and its essentially meaningless unless the honor it :P

tomjen3• 11 years ago

It does have some signalling value. Personally I kinda want one for the geek aspect.

fweespeech2• 11 years ago

Sure, but unless you take over an existing country and essentially rename it...

phrogdriver• 11 years ago

https://github.com/MrChrisJ/World-Citizenship for the curious.

isomorphic• 11 years ago

"it proves concretely that someone existed at a certain time and place, as verified by another certain group of people"

We've had the PGP/GPG web of trust for a while, too. People use that, but it's not exactly popular (mainstream popular).

In order for this to become popular, it needs foolproof-simple UI/UX and great marketing. Concluding with "look up BlockchainID on Github" is neither (well, except for people who are already on the PGP/GPG web of trust).

salibhai• 11 years ago

From January 2015

ars• 11 years ago

Since all computers eventually get hacked (this is the new axiom for this century), how does this system handle someone stealing the private keys securing an identity?

Does it have a way of recovering from that? Because if not it's pretty much useless.

hellbanner• 11 years ago

That's a huge advantage that traditional banks have over cryptocurrencies -- the bank can verify your identity by human trust, regardless of what the computer says, and restore your stolen funds.

MarkPNeyer• 11 years ago

this seems relevant: http://markpneyer.me/2015/01/27/this-robots-dream/

michaelmrose2• 11 years ago

The poem made more sense than Janina

mosquito242• 11 years ago

this is incredibly fascinating to me, but a huge role of Government ID's is it's association with a record of information re: you, i.e. past criminal history, credit, etc, all of which is kept track of by the government.

For this ID to be legitimately viable, it would need to be able to provide similar access to such information on demand.

vinceguidry• 11 years ago

For this ID to be legitimately viable

I imagine that at some point in the future, some local governments, particularly in rural areas, will decide it's cheaper and easier to use blockchain-based government services. If the people creating this system can keep iterating towards the point where it's suitable for such, we could see a slow migration over a period of decades, with certain countries deciding to do a all-at-once rollout.

rwmj• 11 years ago

If it didn't record all that, that's more of a feature than a bug. However in this case I see no reason why governments (and indeed everyone) wouldn't be able to associate criminal records, marketing data and everything else with your blockchain number (or whatever is the unique thing here). Probably even easier than now.

perfTerm• 11 years ago

I'm not sold on her libertarian perspective >>people can only pay for the packages they'll use i just can't think of government as a timewarner package. Well, everyone I know is doing well, so I guess I won't fund programs for the poor. And everyone I know has a degree so no need for me to contribute towards education. It's a viewpoint that seemingly does not take into account the less priviledged at all.

I do wonder if, in an entirely libertarian world, would things work out for the better? I somehow doubt it but you can see that the ideal is that employers will need educated laborers so they'll end up footing for the education bills, etc etc. I think I'll stick to my idealism of a policy based on rational perspectives and compassion in order to ensure the greatest good for the greatest numbers and promote a strong nation and world from the base up.

That being said, the concept is super neat and I do like that.

jarradhope• 11 years ago

They don't take their idea far enough.

You can remove representational democracy and voting from the core. Instead replacing it with independent policymaking and voluntary agreements of smart contracts, you implicitly 'vote' by your use of a contract. Common Law in a real sense becomes the most popular contracts for any given period.

One-size-fits all policies won't be a thing in the future and we will have very different cultures operating under very different laws occupying the same physical space.

It's not about utopia but it certainly makes things far more liquid, transparent and cryptographically secure (unbreakable promises). It opens governance right up for innovation so we can at least iterate faster in a voluntary manner.

codyb2• 11 years ago

Perhaps this is true but when one Buffet, Walton, Gate, or Adelson controls about as much of the pie as a hundred million people I can almost guarantee no one will really like the results.

67 people own as much as 3.5 billion people at this point [0] (and that's Forbes saying that). I think that would be the greatest barrier to pure Libertarianism being a positive contribution towards humanity.

[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesinsights/2014/03/25/the-67...

cortesoft• 11 years ago

And what happens when one party fails to honor the contract? Is it up to everyone to enforce their own contracts?

michaelmrose2• 11 years ago

Point by point

- A private passport service that nobody accepts is no more valuable that the group of people that trust the people doing the verification which as of now is zero. In fact since nations are the arbiters of identity within their border there is not much chance of this changing inside this decade.

- She admits she doesn't understand the technology at all just thinks it fits in with her super unrealistic libertarian ideas

- All governments are bad because they are all in debt! Governments and people budget differently you can't reason about a government as if it were a massive version of your family. This is economics 101.

- The blockchain will help us replace the nation state! The blockchain could provide the basis of a currency, distributed dns, identity etc I'm not seeing how distributed identification has anything to do with replacing centralized government or that that's even a good thing paying for just want you personally use and want is in fact an incredibly stupid idea.

The kinds of things you actually WANT government to take over are exactly the kind of things that the free market is bad at and precisely because it is bad at it. How much national defense do you want this year citizen!

- Getting fake married on the internet is so much safer! Of course because its not real. Real marriage implies legal and moral obligations. Those obligations are complex because peoples lives are complicated and include lots of complicating entanglements like money, shared obligations, houses, kids.

In fact if you acquire all those complicating factors you wont find your fake marriage much easier to extricate yourself from.

The more I read the more embarrassed I am for her.

mratzloff• 11 years ago

I don't know what it is, but for some reason if the technology is sound, many technologists will entertain completely delusional, unworkable ideas because they focus on the technology (or the perceived efficiency gains to society, efficiency being something engineers are partial to) over the fact that in real life people are messy, simple solutions are usually naive, and things are frequently the way they are for a reason.

Of course, the rest of society does this with things that they are partial to, most notably religion (some religious people overlook unworkable social plans by leaders who they perceive as religious).

It's like as long as one part of the plan seems sound, they're willing to believe the rest of the plan, even if it's completely idiotic. There's got to be a psychological term for this.

zo13• 11 years ago

Perhaps the disconnect is simply not visible to you. You say that these individuals jump at the thought of "ideas" because they're simply linked to certain technological solutions/implementations. Yet, completely disregard the possibility that they may have other motives/reasons behind their beliefs, that you may not be privy to or simply deny as relevant.

*Edit, more comments below.

And, judging from the overall theme in the comment you're responding to. One of Libertarianism, I'll add: We don't all have the solutions, or all the perfect answers for a wonderful life and organization of the world. But these ideas are not "idiotic" anymore than what we have now, of which we all complain about incessantly. You'll often find that a lot of Libertarians/Anarcho-Capitalist have their beliefs not because of practicality, or technology, but because they believe in the ethical and moral principles that form part of those ideologies.

darkr• 11 years ago

There's got to be a psychological term for this.

Belief.

zabouti• 11 years ago

Blockchain Girl and the HN commenters go on and on about the end of nation states, apparently imagining that they will be replaced by free individuals, being all libertarian and everything!!??

The word "corporation" is not used even once there or here!!

At least michaelmrose is spot-on.

will_brown• 11 years ago

Its really a shame she missed out on the opportunity to avail herself to a nation state without a government. From 1991-2014 there was a recognized Country without any recognized central Government. On top of that they have a informal economy[1] or an economy that is not taxed or monitored by any Gov, which they still maintain to this day despite gaining a formal and recognized Gov in 2014.

Any guesses to how this Country ripe with more conditions of an idealistic libertarian society (no central Gov, no taxes, customary laws decided by region/peoples/religions, autonomous regions), than any other modern nation, fared?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informal_sector

dTal• 11 years ago

Where?

A New Form of ID Allows You to Be a Citizen of the World

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