Decentralization and Federation Aren't Enough Anymore

These last few decades have been rather unique in human history. The Personal Computer and the Internet have created a communications network that just a few hundred years ago the masses would have proclaimed to be magic. Think about it, today we can have a conversation with others from around the globe, without blinking. We can purchase goods from china and have them arrive at our doorstep not even a month later. We can transfer monetary funds to our family while living in another nation, on a separate continent, just a day before they need it, and have it arrive within hours, if not minutes.

Thanks to the internet, we have assembled the largest collection of knowledge since the library of Alexandria , and made it freely available to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. It takes mere seconds to look up a topic on Wikipedia and gain a basic knowledge of any particular topic.

Unfortunately, this is increasingly being controlled by corporations, whom use this data, this wondrous miracle humanity has achieved, for monetary gain and power. Greed is winning. But why? How did it get like this? Was it always this way? Actually no. The internet was designed from the get go to be decentralized, however it failed to take the human condition into account.

Let's use email as an example; almost everyone has an email account, but you probably only use Gmail, Hotmail, or maybe Yahoo as your email provider? Why? Are they your only options? Nope. Do they prevent you from emailing people who use, ProtonMail instead? Not really. So why is it that only a few services seem to dominate? Email is federated, so surely it shouldn't nearly this centralized? It should be much more evenly distributed, right?

Well that's the thing, branding, and brand trust are extremely powerful things. As are the network effect, and peer pressure. A confluence of various social norms and expectations all come together and discourage the usage of other services. People trust Google, so they use Gmail. They don't understand how it works, nor do they need to because they get their messages and they trust Google to get them there and keep them safe.

This same story repeats itself across the internet, People are used to Chrome, and they Trust Google. People are used to Windows, and they trust Microsoft, they like Google's search results so they use their search engine. PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard are accepted almost everywhere, and so people use them even though they dislike the companies that provide these services. Here in the US, many people love iMessage, and across the rest of the world, WhatsApp is popular. These services do just as well as email to most people and therein lies the crux of the issue.

Steemit and the block-chain have a long fight ahead, for while they benefit humanity by removing corporations and democratizing everything, those are not the key to becoming a success. Yes, people want Freedom, and many hate having these corporations rule their lives, but they continue to use their services anyways. Not because they like being abused, but rather because, to them, there is no immediate benefit to switching. No gain of features, no added ease of use, and in fact, many of these services would be seen as a downgrade to them. You cannot recover a Steemit account, you lose your key and that is that. Many people would see that as unacceptable. Bitcoin? If someone steals it you are done. No way to recover it, meanwhile if they stick to using Visa it is no big deal, they can always issue a chargeback and be fine.

The blockchain and federation have potential to change the world, but first they need to change themselves so the world will let them.