Blockchain and Sanity
First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. Nicholas Klein (1914) David Gerard, the author of Attack of the Fifty Foot Blockchain (2017), declares that if “you were silly enough to put personal data into an append-only ledger which is a proof-of-work blockchain — that’d…
Protecting data with Policies
Information about your lifestyle and preferences is hard to control across many websites. The way we do this today is functional but cumbersome because the underlying databases are being synchronized. Synchronizing means that data is being copied and keeping the copies up to date is the responsibility of the data vendors. The technical staffs work…
Applying Your Terms of Use
Terms of Use for internet-based data are enforced with written legal agreements today. This approach works well when data is centralized but can break down when copies of data are involved. Policing these policies can be expensive for the company responsible for the data. It is difficult to ensure that those who handle your data…
Reflect on history, move forward
I started my career during the mainframe era of the early 80s and have worked with many of the innovations that were introduced as businesses embraced the internet age. The consumer demand for speed and simplicity were the drivers behind the move from mainframes to internet-based portals. Internet consumers look for choices when shopping and…