Transcript

Using the blockchain to restore online privacy | Steve Shillingford | TEDxSaltLakeCity

[Applause] I have a good friend named Cindy and she's a marketing specialist she often meets her clients at a coffee shop and during one of these meetings random man came up to her to introduce himself one of those hi I'm mark I couldn't help overhearing introductions mark had a startup he needed some help so Cindy gave him her business card and she forgot all about the encounter mark however did not mark used that business card with her name phone number and email to learn way more about Cindy and she could ever imagine a few clicks online and mark was able to find out how old Cindy was where she lived who she was married to even who her friends were worse mark started to follow her he could see everywhere she went and heard everything she said and Mark shared all this information with his co-workers and his business partners and he let them share on and on and he kept all this detail forever and Cindy had no idea now I know what you might be thinking this is kind of creepy or there's no way this is legal or maybe you're just thinking I really need to change my business card but guess what marks last name is Zuckerberg and we're all Cindy nearly 30 years ago an Englishman named Tim berners-lee created what would become the world wide web to help people easily locate and share information on the Internet not since the advent of the printing press have more people been connected to each other to worlds beyond their own into more opportunities but since that noble beginning the web as we know it has evolved from a decentralized platform for knowledge communication and commerce controlled by no one person or party to a tool some even say a weapon deployed by a select few technology giants political extremists and motivated governments all in an effort to control manage and manipulate the very people it was intended to serve now you might be asking how do I know that because I made technology to help them do it you see I think we can all agree in part thanks to the web that we live in a world where we enjoy instant access to goods services and endless entertainment yet somehow ironically we've never been more miserable more angry and more unhealthy now why is that I want to propose a very simple answer and it's that our digital world does not square with our analog experience now when I say digital I just mean all the things we do with the help of the internet selling on Craigslist grabbing an uber paying a bill online and when I say analogue I just mean the things we don't need the internet for having coffee walking the dog almost everything we do is had our phones unfortunately the way we are naturally in-person and offline simply isn't permitted in the digital space and this oversharing an overexposure conscious on some levels and unconscious on others has left us feeling vulnerable and that vulnerability that loss of control and freedom has left us searching for meaning substance and security in an intrusive and unsafe digital world now don't take my word for it in 2016 Pew Research conducted a study and over 91% of Americans agreed that they had lost control of their personal and private information almost as many expressed grave doubt about the security and privacy of their everyday communications but I think most disturbing is 9 out of 10 people expressed a significant lack of confidence in institutions public or private now I have been concerned about this problem for quite some time in part because I contributed to it but in part because it's not hard to look around read the news and see this anger and distrust everywhere we look but somewhere along the way to this Orwellian future I found an answer and I want to describe it for you a way to bring back the original intent of the Internet you see each of us has a level of control over our private moments looking out I can see your faces in part thanks to the glow of your smartphones but I don't know your names I can see your expressions but I don't know what you're thinking where you live how you voted you're there I'm here and you're listening to me right now at least I hope you are but while we're separate individuals we're also social creatures an evolutionary biology tells us that we're wired our physical and emotional survival is based on the communities and relationships we invest and build and we're wired to constantly filter manage and tailor our behavior our speech even our attire to the various contexts and circumstances in which we find ourselves home school work your church my bar this compartmentalization is a natural normal evolved human behavior and it comes from the fight flight or freeze reflex it served us well for thousands of years and yet it's impossible to do online think about that for a minute the digital world literally contradicts our biology in that world the world of today regardless of the site or service we are constantly compelled to have a single permanent identity whose digits are used to track us forever all these tattoos tell our digital despots way too much about us and worse these bits of digital exhaust are shared with and without our consent by organizations we once trusted to do unknown things things that make tracking profiling and manipulating us easier for those companies and governments in some cases to exert their power and control over us all without our real consent in actual control now history and biology also tell us we were never meant to be watched 24/7 or tracked moment-to-moment certainly never meant to be fed an infinite scroll of images and videos designed to consume and dominate our attention that's why we have curtains in our windows locks on our doors and an off button on the television we use these things to protect ourselves to control our environments and to keep us safe now I have a confession to make I used to run a company that built surveillance software that software was like a digital video recorder and we built it for large companies you know and the three-letter agencies you read about even some you haven't and while we help protect those organizations we also contributed to the public/private partnership of data mining now in some cases to track down bad guys and in other cases to uncover fraud but regrettably in way too many cases simply to support the digital voyeurism of those in power people were humiliated some were even fired or worse and I bet you've read about a few you see unfortunately over time those cameras facing outward looking for hackers and bad actors were turned inward on you and that was a big problem for me now the 2016 election and Facebook's recent scandals have brought these issues front and center fake news countless data breaches and the endless exploitation of our personal information have unfortunately become an everyday occurrence but unlike any time in recent history people are starting to become aware of these dangers and many are taking action in Facebook's case 250 million people or a group the size of the adult population of the United States deleted their accounts and many more have dramatically reduced their use of social media and they're not alone all kinds of people are taking back ownership and control of the things that matter most to them without asking for permission and certainly without accepting the incomprehensible and unfair Terms of Service that we face day in and day out now some say it's a movement maybe even a revolution where the number one goal is cutting out the intermediary the gatekeeper and the central authority Netflix and Amazon or cutting out the cable cartels door - and GrubHub have changed the way we dine with the most important of these movements is Bitcoin now certainly a way to cut out the bank's that's not why you see the engine that drives Bitcoin is powering numerous efforts beyond finance to shift the balance of power back to the individual and that engine is called the blockchain for the first time in human history all of us have equal unfiltered access to a truthful transparent incorruptible platform controlled by no one where we can decide what information is stored accessed and shared no middlemen no toll takers no opinion shapers now before I move on I just want to take a minute and try to explain the concept of blockchain and I'm gonna leave how a lot of technical details in part because they're super technical but mostly because I don't want to put you to sleep I'd like you to think of the blockchain as a book imagine this book being reproduced all over the world so anyone can have access the book has a table of contents words pictures footnotes and the like and each page is sequentially number all of us can be authors of new content and when that content is added to the book it can never be modified or shared without that authors consent when a new entry is made its spell checked and then it's printed to the next new page and then all the books in existence automatically update so that if one is destroyed there's always a record that's it that's all it is yes there's some math involved which folks like the call cartography and there really are significant technical challenges to address but all you need to know is that this blockchain technology this book is taking power and control away from the data miners and putting freedom choice and privacy back to you publish anything in that book you want author it with your legal name your nickname your pseudo name the book gives you the ability to decide which pieces of information you want to publish instead of one big faceless careless author controlling our digital destiny all of us get to be that author it can really be that easy imagine cindy could control the various details mark gets she could even create various business cards each for different facets of her digital life and with that kind of control she can rest assured that any random encounter with a creep like market won't lead to creepy outcomes dangerous stalking or worse congressional hearings in the offline world all of us have control over our personal safety you might for example choose not to walk down a dark alley at night but in the online world you don't even know where those dark alleys are the blockchain shines a spotlight on all of that an open book that by design lends itself to visibility trust and control and that's the problem with today's Internet we've ceded control knowingly or not to powerful companies and big governments we all know and feel this and that feeling that loss of freedom has led us searching for safety in our respective tribes instead of having the difficult conversations and trying to solve the hard problems that we all face we're all left neatly segmented by our identity gender geography and politics by the monopolies that profit from our digital lives the way to fix this starts by living online the way we already do offline the blockchain will give us the power to create curate and control all of our personal information in ways that are natural and instinctive the way we're biologically wired to do so and when we square our digital realities with our analog lives we will not only be taking back control as individuals we will be creating a safer more authentic truly connected world a world where each of us gets to define our terms of service and not the other way around thank you [Applause]