Distributed Architectures in Systems and Society

TCP/IP, the original core protocols of the internet, were designed from the start for distributed systems and all that entails. Originally inspired by defense research under DARPA, the most important aspect of this architectural choice was resillience in the face of attacks that might distable or interfere with connections and nodes in the network. For systems design and architecture there are many desirable aspects of distributed vs. centrallazed, but complexities as well. So while we may prefer to be maximally distributed, pragmatics dictate some centrallization and good enough solutions that don't perfectly meet definitions.

Such is the case in emerging blockchain/crypto-currency (BC/CC) systems architectures. To achieve purity in having no central authorities at all, may be achievable but unnecessary for the larger goals. It isn't technical decentrallization that is the big prize that draws so much enthusiasm about BC. In the early days of the internet, pre-web if you can imagine it, many thought that the distributed nature of the technology would somehow lead to more social and economic equity. Some of the enthusiasm for the decentrallization of power represented by BC seems a lot like that early enthusiasm.

It isn't that the new technology doesn't potentially make a real difference; that difference is largely pragmatic, the difference that really makes important changes possible. It's just that a distributed systems architecture can serve both decentrallized and centrallized social architectures, it doesn't produce the outcomes we want by magic. What de Tocqueville saw that was great about the United States in the beginning was the very local participative democracy of small eastern towns. The important thing about a healthy, egalitarian social architecture is to have this bottom-up, decentrallized structure. The exact ways and means of making local decisions are not critical, only that everyone has a voice in matters of vital importance to them. Humans are social animals who are actually built to thrive in local social networks, and the evidence is a million cultural adaptations wide varieties of material cultures over a few millinia up to the present inconceivably complex network of global econimies and cultures.

Economies, money and finance are no more or less than any other cultural artifact, which is to say we are not stuck with the one we have forever. The reason for the BC enthusiam is that this technology can and will have a big impact in these areas, but if it is to be effective in the social domain it must be effective in shifting economic and social power.