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Comment by celdon25 | Hacker News Reader

Definitely not assuming that the average users care about the algorithm, and you missed the point being made there: If that information is a successfully-guarded secret, nobody else is going to create an incremental improvement over that specific type of feature. That point was intended to lead into the greater premise of the post, which is that the conventional wisdom of competing with Google by going toe to toe, is not viable. I apologize that my writing is not as intuitive as Google's user interface.

Especially given the amount of vitriol I see on Hacker News regarding decentralization technologies (not surprising given the heavy ties to Silicon Valley's centralization culture), your condescending comment wasn't helpful to the discussion. But I appreciate you giving it a full read nonetheless.

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I don't know if an open collaborative approach to search is really possible given that there's a whole SEO industry out there. If we could have the equivalent of white hat SEO folks help point out flaws and exploitable bits, then maybe?

Assume X is usually cheaper/simpler than Y to solve the same problem. Most projects use X, right? That's your 'centralisation culture'.

So Linux is centralized?

I think you're missing some important details in your definition of centralization. It's not who uses it, but who controls it.

I'm going to restate because I suspect miscommunication here... my point was that an apparent 'centralisation culture' is a result of building centralised tech being typically simpler/cheaper than building decentralised.

I understand that you used the word "typically" but Wikipedia is relatively simple (by some metrics), and operates on a relatively low budget, and is decentralized (managed by the users, not the Foundation). In fact, a company with Google's resources, working 100% toward building the equivalent of Wikipedia, would not have a guarantee of successfully doing so, with the entirety of their paid staff, let alone figuring out how to make a return on the investment. Perhaps IF they had done so, our Googlepedia would be an Encyclopedia Brittanica, with a search bar, and ads. And everybody would argue that there is no possible way for a competing business to earn more revenue, with a similar product. Completely missing the vision because Wikipedia never existed in that universe.

That is the power of decentralization, regardless of the naysayers and corporate shills who continue to dismiss the whole concept, by citing examples of alpha-quality solidity contracts. Ethereum, despite being itself barely beta-quality, and highly primitive technology of its kind, is still a disruptive technology that threatens the status quo. Creating an app that has the strengths of Wikipedia, but functions like Google, Facebook, or Twitter will be an order of magnitude easier with the help of this technology, and the right team. Maybe not enough to disrupt things outright, but certainly enough to be a large threat, and the next generation of that type of technology will have a near-guarantee to bring that disruption. Obviously there is a lot of vested interest with deep pockets, toward discrediting it. The resulting narrative, combined with the consumer culture/sentiment toward the products by the same companies, is what makes up the centralization culture. I think we need a catchier phrase, maybe even a buzzword to describe it :P

Don't get me wrong, I think many crypto enthusiasts out there are insufferable man-children with criminal records and an axe to grind with "the man". So blockchain's culture might be the problem in the sense that some of the users are giving the technology a bad name.

Sorry, I disagree with your Wikipedia example. If Wikipedia is decentralised then so is literally any other site with user-generated content/moderation. Wikipedia's technology, policies, financing and infrastructure are all controlled centrally. For me that example stretches the word 'decentralised' past the point where it's useful.

Wikipedia is open source content though, which was a big aspect of it being successful at the beginning (as in, many of us wouldn't have bothered to write content for it had it become proprietary).

Open-licensed content cannot be said to be controlled by one party, as anyone is legally entitled to create a fork. Thus, Wikipedia is not controlled by the people who run the servers; the infrastructure may be centralized, but the project (the compilation of knowledge, and the articles produced) is not. This aspect of control is what I said you were missing in your assessment, and it seems I was right.

BTW, the Wikipedia policies are not centralized in any sense; they are set up and enforced by the network of volunteer editors.

The comments you're making are tangential to my point. Not really interested in chasing rabbit-holes today.

Decentralization is not a binary characteristic. It is an architectural pattern that can be applied in varied contexts, varied degrees, toward varied goals. It is also a process. You can't decentralize something that is already decentralized. Wikipedia was a pioneer in Web 2.0. Smart contracts and decentralized apps are being referred to as Web 3.0 (So was the semantic web for a number of years, but the semantic web will likely be part of this).

Ethereum is a platform for creating decentralized applications, and it too has technology and policy that is managed by a central foundation. That doesn't mean that the ecosystem is centralized.

Zooming out, we can see that the Linux Kernel development itself has a centralized development model, even with a dictator in charge. But the Kernel is a platform for which anyone can create and ship a distribution on top of. As a result, I am able to enjoy the use of three or four distros (or more, if I wanted) that are most tailored to my use cases, instead of being forced to choose between Pepsi and Coke (Windows and OS X). And many people can get into operating system development as a hobby, with a much more achievable criteria to do so.

We can zoom out even further: The FOSS movement itself might not have existed without the relentless efforts of a few individuals over a span of many years. But from day one, the ecosystem it spawned was decentralized by design.

Going back even further, we can show that market Capitalism allowed for a rapid and diverse pace of technology and business development. Less barriers to entry. Less red tape. Obviously we have had governments, both big and small, to facilitate the economies of a nation.

What do all of these things have in common other than incorporating applied forms of decentralization? It is not just a buzzword. It is no coincidence that these frameworks have (or will) foster significant societal changes, mostly in good ways. That's not to say that the success rate is high for any given effort, but it is not a concept to be written off, especially not because of a lack of understanding of it.

The problem is that most people, even here, cannot visualize this concept in ways that they have not seen working examples of. Not a problem, not everybody is exactly a visionary in every way. But when people are actively trash talking ideas that they don't understand, without offering constructive opinions toward an understanding of it, then as technologists we ought to be taking a stand against that behavior.

Instead, what I see in many cases is that many engineers, for whatever reason, will write off certain technology ideas, believing that they understand it, when they do not. I was one of those people, for years, so I understand the mindset as good as anybody. Or perhaps they saw too many uninformed comments coming from non-technical crypto enthusiasts, and therefore have written off the idea. Folks, if this describes you, I encourage taking up the study of critical thinking techniques. The world deserves better than to have such a large number of engineers not giving the discussion a fair shake.

Now you've diluted your "centralisation culture" comment to "engineers, for whatever reason, will write off certain technology ideas" I can probably agree with it.

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