Rekt in effect: Information management and decentralized distribution

Now, I don't know what is going to be the winner when it comes to what coins or chains but I suspect that there is room for a massive amount of blockchains and tokens out there that will be used for all kinds of purposes. The more I think about it though the more obvious it becomes that we are actually on to something, not just i the industry, but on Steem also as it is just the way the world is heading.

Information is growing exponentially and no longer needs us to even create it as there are so many ways automated systems keep driving it forward. The management of that information is what is increasingly important however and Steem is one of the blockchains that is at the forefront of the issue. It doesn't feel like it does it?

What many people forget to consider on Steem is that once the information has been blockchained, it has been noted in history and then any instance of that information is tied to the original. This is incredibly useful when it comes to information management and something that I know isn't being done in information management industry.

As each piece of information has its own log that can be tracked, it offers a level of copyright protection but, there are other ways to use that pathway. For example, when a post is created on Steem it is written to the blockchain in a specific location but, if that post is edited, it is updated in another location on the blockchain. That means that while the original still exists in blockchain history, the update is what is seen through the various interfaces.

What this means is that through one update, all interfaces change content as they have all been redirected to the new version. Imagine this at the corporate level for Coca-Cola where they are able to update an entire campaign with a few clicks that push all new material to every location simultaneously. Once all the various media points are pulling data like the interfaces do now from blockchains, the content can become highly dynamic without suffering the legacy issue, without requiring deletion but, still held in history as all that happens is that the original pull is told to point to a different location on the blockchain.

All an interface does on Steem is filters what information is seen/ used and excludes the rest that is irrelevant to its purpose. The pool of information however is accessible to be arranged in limitless ways depending on use case. What this means is that content delivery platforms can filter and position data in a million ways that are compelling for their particular audience and, a content contributor can have every instance their work is used paid for through Steem, an SMT or some other form of micro payment. The tracking ability of the spread of content allows for it to be found and the copyrights on a particular piece of work could be a smart contract for licencing.

What this means is that particularly sticky or long-lasting content could deliver years worth of micro payments upon it and an author who can deliver consistently can earn residuals for years to come without having to fear various forms of copyright. What people have to start coming to terms with though is, the free internet is dying.

We can draw parallels to free to air television. When was the last time you watched and, what do you think about the quality of television now compared to 30 years ago? Do you remember when MTV played music? That music requires a licence that they don't want to have to pay for so instead, they push crap content (I haven't watched for years) that drives viewers into a SaaS model for television. Everything is going subscription model and, it is almost only available over the internet.

Netflix, Spotify, Adobe cloud, Office365... the list goes on. Now these are centralized content providers as is Steem. No, Steem is not centralized by owners but, the chain is centralized and protected by decentralization. The chain is identical on all witness servers and can therefore be trusted. It is also available for anyone to leverage the data from and use in any way they choose to show it.

While no one has to pay to show information from Steem, they do have to subscribe in someway to be able to write information to the blockchain. This is done through Resource credits and if an account doesn't have any, they can view only. This means that if a company wanted to use data from the blockchain they can but that same data is available to everyone freely which means there is not much of a competitive advantage to do so.

What does have competitive advantage however is being able to write compelling enough content to the blockchain that people are willing to pay to view in various ways, whether it be a news article or a game, it doesn't matter. In time, what the chain offers is a massive amount of data that can be freely leveraged and what people will be willing to pay for is their ability to interact with it or, have it presented in interesting ways that are useful for them. While people think that no one will pay for what is available for free, remember that Spotify and Netflix are offering content that Pirate Bay also delivers freely.

Now, while the centralized distributors take their subscription fees for themselves, the same kinds of amounts will eventually be taken by the blockchains because the content producers are able to much better control as well as take a higher amount of earnings from their content and, those that consume it are not only buying to view, they are buying to own part of the chain too.

There are so many benefits to have content delivered or at least tracked via blockchains and the use cases and delivery solutions are going to continually grow as time goes on. With so much information flowing backwards and forwards and being created in each moment, the volume of the chains is going to have to be immense and possibly, as chains get too heavy, they might be retired with their old data stored in a slow access database. However, who knows what technology in storage is to come.

What this means though is that there will be a growing trend for smaller and smaller entities to break away from the centralized content delivery platforms and go it alone as they weigh up the value of selling their work or, selling and owning it at the same time to people who will buy and own it at the same time. The subscription fee goes to all users and, supports more and more contributors and consumers over time to create a sharing economy that has a very high value and utility of token.

It is hard to imagine this network being built at such a scale that includes billions of people because it hasn't been done before. There have been various collectives over time and there are still billions of people that are part of collectives now but, they aren't all operating on the one system and, not every transaction is traceable and information transparent and shareable. It is hard to imagine what will happen at scale but, we are on the road of discovery.

What seems destined though is that eventually, the centralized distributors are going to get rekt.
I am not going to predict a time frame.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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