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Cory Doctorow: The people who tell you ‘AI is changing everything’ are lying
(www.thenerve.news)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Sounds familiar. The proof-of-work blockchain scheme which was the fad a while ago is also often described as a solution in search of a problem.
I feel like block chain as a public ledger has found quite a few purposeful uses, and was a solution to a handful of problems most people rarely if ever encounter. Then fake money got involved
The core issue feels like the dead torrent problem.
Its distributed, so it needs to be hosted, by several locations. Which becomes probitive over time as.it becomes huge. Its also massively inefficient for what its trying to do.
At some point, its basically just one server farm somewhere hosting a glorified MySWL database that doubles as a space heater for the entire planet every time you need to add a row.
I was thinking that with legal backing, blockchain could be a good record of ownership for deeds. Like NFTs but for physical property.
The history of ownership and the public visibility are good features there.
Lack of reliable, authoritative attribution of changes and no rollback or compensatory transactions are all dealbreakers.
Yeah who doesn't want a ledger you cannot change, sounds like a good idea. /s
In the case of deeds, i think it is desirable because it gives you an immutable history of ownership.
There are other problems but i don't believe that is one.
No it doesn't. It only works because 51% doesn't change the ledger.
You already have this with a simple database for ownership. It already exists, and ledgers made out of paper predates that.
But with good legal backing, all you need is a shared database and maybe basic cryptographic signatures to prove ownership in case of malicious actors. So basically, traditional banking.