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On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto would change the world forever. On this date, Nakamoto birthed the bitcoin network, after mining the first block on the chain, sometimes referred to as the “genesis” block. For some time after its release Bitcoin was mostly unknown outside the coding community, while coders made minor adjustments to the system. Then in 2013, Bitcoin gained traction after its value jumped from $13.30 on January 1 to a whopping $946.92 by December.  From credit cards to mobile banking, the world of finance already lives in a mostly digital world. Could Bitcoin be the future of digital payments?  

  

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. Not much is known about Bitcoin’s founder, while rumors have linked Nakamoto to various coders and engineers, the identity remains unknown. Theory suggests that Nakamoto may not be an individual, rather a collective of coding experts and computer scientists.   

  

What is blockchain?  

The technology that powers Bitcoin is called Blockchain. A blockchain is a database distributed over a network of computers called nodes. The main purpose of blockchain focuses on peer to peer transmission of data that can pertain to anything, but in this case, it refers to monetary transactions. For a transaction to happen, it must first be verified by people operating nodes in the network, commonly referred to as miners. Once verified, the transaction is recorded on a block and given an identifying code called a hash. While the hash works to identify the verification of the transaction, it is very difficult to recreate the stored data from the code of the dash alone. Once the transaction is complete, the block is added to the blockchain as a record of each step and after it is added to the blockchain it cannot be altered or deleted because the decentralized network of nodes will maintain the record.    

What is special about Bitcoin?  

A financial exchange between two parties is usually accompanied by hidden fees imposed by the middlemen at the institutions carrying out the transaction. However, Bitcoin a crowdsourced type of verification system called Blockchain that cuts these middlemen out of the deal. Cutting out the middlemen eliminate certain transaction fees allowing for a more seamless exchange. Blockchain technology stores all information on a public ledger, in the form of encrypted data sets, called blocks. Once a block is verified and added to the network it can be altered and is accessible by all other computers, generally referred to as nodes in the context of a blockchain, on the network. This ensures security because a hacker cannot hack into an entire network of computers and if the blockchain contains a few faulty nodes the rest of the network can override the falsification with the correct data. Lastly, Bitcoin is completely democratic as there is not central-governing authority that holds more power than the rest. This means that no single group or institution holds the power to issue the currency, manipulates its value, or access your data.   

  

Negatives of Bitcoin?  

All Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, which secures the users’ personal information. However, the ability to remain anonymous allows criminal transactions to go largely under the radar. While the decentralization protects the currency from manipulation by a central authority, the lack of such means that there is no one to intervene during bad situations such as hacks or fraudulent charges and nobody to hold accountable in such situations. Another problem with the use of Bitcoin is the volatility of its market value. The value of bitcoin has experienced aggressive (to say the least) spikes and plummets making it a risky investment. Due to such volatility, there are fewer holders and buyers in the market, which makes Bitcoin have a low liquidity, meaning it is difficult to obtain if you want to invest and difficult to sell if you want to cash in on your investment. The unreliability of investing in Bitcoin makes it inappropriate to use in most long-term investments, such as mortgages, loans, and emergency funds, where reliability and steady growth is more of a concern than total growth potential.   

  

What will the future of digital payments look like?  

Bitcoin could very well be the future of currency but I do not believe that will happen for a few reasons. First is the incumbent-monies problem. The entire financial system is already built around different forms of currency and the cost of uprooting the original system and building a new one around bitcoin would be huge. It would require the retooling of bank telling and vending machines, updating the price for every product, not to mention the fact that the population would have to learn to think in terms of a new currency. A successful network requires many users that Bitcoin currently does not have. For Bitcoin to obtain new users, people must be willing to accept the changes and when faced with this sort of decision people typically resort to old reliable. Another challenge Bitcoin will face is opposition from the government. Since Bitcoin is on a decentralized network, it means that the government cannot control it. The inability to regulate Bitcoin puts it in a legal grey area that may scare some people. Also, the incumbent-monies are government-sponsored, which means that they can be used to pay taxes.  

Even though Bitcoin may not be the future of currency, the share of electronic transactions will continue to rise. Blockchain technology can be integrated into the current system to process transactions for things like online shopping and through apps like Venmo. Bitcoin and other forms of cryptocurrency can maintain relevancy as niche monies in the future. Since they can be divided up into much smaller decimals than incumbent monies, they can be used as tips or as a form of payment for crowdsourcing activities. For example, the Bitcoin miners are paid in small amounts of Bitcoin for performing the service. Due to the anonymity, cryptocurrencies will most likely continue to be used for illicit activities.  Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies will never overtake the incumbent monies already in place, without vast government and civilian support, however, the effects of the introduction of blockchain will long outlive the cryptocurrency from which it originated. 

 

Sources:

Luther, William J. “Bitcoin and the Future of Digital Payments.” The Independent Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 2016, pp. 397–404. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24562161.

Jenkinson, Gareth. “A Brief History of Bitcoin: 10 Years of Highs and Lows.” Cointelegraph, Cointelegraph, 14 Feb. 2019, cointelegraph.com/news/a-brief-history-of-bitcoin-10-years-of-highs-and-lows.

“The Midas Touch of Blockchain: Leveraging It for Data Protection.” Building-Blocks of a Data Protection Revolution: The Uneasy Case for Blockchain Technology to Secure Privacy and Identity, by Shraddha Kulhari, 1st ed., Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft MbH, Baden-Baden, Germany, 2018, pp. 15–22. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv941qz6.6.

Gupta, Vinay. “A Brief History of Blockchain.” Harvard Business Review, 21 Aug. 2019, hbr.org/2017/02/a-brief-history-of-blockchain.

Webster, Ian. “Bitcoin Historical Prices.” Bitcoin Price Chart and Tables | Finance Reference, www.officialdata.org/bitcoin-price.

 

In DCI 180, we cover two topics more than anything else, social media and the behavior of major tech companies. If I could add one piece to include int the curriculum it would be the final episode of Patriot Act’s Volume 1, titled Content Moderation and Free Speech.

The Content Moderation and Free Speech episode features a variety of the topics we have discussed in class such as:

1.) the doxing of Christine Blasey Ford and how white supremacists organize through social media (this would pair well with our discussion about the doxing of the MAGA kid smiling at the Native American)

2.) content moderation of the big four social media companies, Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Snapchat

3.) the impact social media had on the 2016 election and the episode shows clips of high ranking members from each of the big four social media companies dodging their way through interrogations in court and before congress (would pair well with New York Times piece about Zuckerberg’s testimony and the articles about Cambridge Analytica)

4.) the ways social media companies, curate their newsfeed to latch onto the emotions of the consumers (this parallels with the experiment with the readings we had about Facebook running experiments on its users’ emotions)

I believe that this episode would be the perfect way to introduce the central themes of the course to the next group of students. The nature of Minhaj’s humor would put the entire room at ease, while the factual evidence is sure to incite discussion. The best part is that the relevant part of the episode is less than 20 minutes of run time so it would leave 40 minutes left for discussion. This discussion period would provide valuable time for the professors to get an understanding of where the class stands on the topics and to get a scope of their prior knowledge. I think that Patriot Act could be employed similarly to the way Last Week Tonight with John Oliver was worked into the class.

I am not sure if you could tell or not but I am quite a fan of Patriot Act. I have watched almost every episode and I think that there are many options, outside the episode I mentioned today, that could be utilized in DCI 180.

Yours truly, The General

On June 17, 1972, five men, found with rolls of tape, bugging equipment, and thousands of dollars in cash, were arrested after breaking into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. The five men were members of the Committee to Re-Elect The President, aka CREEP, which led to a series of controversies about President Nixon’s connection to/knowledge of the operation. The arrest set off a series of controversy, national headlines, and cover-ups that came to be known as the Watergate Scandal. This scandal occurred pre-social media and had social media been around in the 1970s, public debate. The case was covered by two young reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, from the Washington Post, however, in a world with social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the public perception would have been greatly altered. Social media acts as a detractor from our rational sense by rewarding emotional actions with functions such as the like button. As Hossein Derakhshan described in How Social Media Endangers Knowledge, “Enlightenment’s motto of ‘Dare to know’ has become ‘Dare not to care to know'” (Wired). As the Watergate controversy worked its way out here is what it may have looked like over Twitter.

While the tweets shown here were curated by yours truly, they still get the message across that social media platforms, like Twitter, elicit emotional behavior. I tried to craft the tweets, especially the ones from President Nixon, to illustrate the unfiltered nature we see in today’s presidency. In light of all this, how do you think the Trump presidency would be different if we were in a pre-social media world.

Snapchat, an extremely popular social media platform, boasts about having a more transparent privacy policy than the other big tech corporations, such as Google and Apple. Snapchat claims that their agreement is “blissfully free of the legalese that often clouds these documents” which differs from most companies that want you to carelessly check the box affirming that you have read and agree with the terms and conditions, unknowingly surrendering your privacy rights so this made me quite skeptical. I know this may be shocking to some(see interview at bottom of page), but, in light of my suspicion, I actually decided to read Snapchat’s Privacy Policy and my findings were disturbing.

The document started out by addressing the obvious information any user knowingly provides, like name, age, username/password, before addressing some of the more controversial types of data they collect. Some examples of these are your location, who you communicate with on the app, and the stories you post that are only supposed to exist for 24 hours. However, these were some of the more mild examples, what I found more distressing was how Snapchat assumes the legal right to collect information from sources outside of the app itself. This can include your contact information, device settings, and the other apps on your phone. It seemed unfair to me that your agreement to the policy permits Snapchat to breach the privacy of your contacts who had not agreed to the terms or do not even use the app.

After stating the types of information that Snapchat collects, the document details how they use the information. All the ways that the user benefits from the information collected, such as personalization and security, are addressed first and most clearly. However, when it comes to the more controversial uses, like selling the your information to other businesses and targeted advertising, the descriptions become longer and more complex. The next section of the document outlined how they share information with different people/businesses. This section followed the same outline as the previous and waited until the end to address the more unsettling points. I found it interesting that Snapchat shares the most information with the third parties. It is disturbing to me that the main recipients of your private information are third parties that you have no real connection to. I also found it concerning that Snapchat has complete control over the information they collect. Even if you delete your account or request to have the information removed, Snapchat still reserves the right to do as they please.

The part of the document that concerned me the most just so happened to be squeezed in at the very bottom of the page. This section, titled “Revisions to the Privacy Policy” basically said that when they make changes to their policy that they will notify the users any way they please, be it a direct notification which seems like the ethical thing to do or they will simply change the date on the policy document posted on the website and app. This is problematic because it means that they can change their policy and only have to notify the users by slightly altering a document that they most likely never in the first place and certainly will not go out of their way to constantly check for subtle changes.

Snapchat does everything they can to maintain the happy go lucky reputation from their Casper-like logo to the constant updates introducing fun new features. However, after diving into the Privacy Policy document my perception has completely changed. Snapchat does everything they can to present the benefits of this breach of privacy while ignoring the drawbacks. While reading through this document I was constantly reminded of the ways Circle employees spoke about privacy in The Circle(Dave Eggers, 2o13). They ridiculed privacy as stealing and proclaimed that an ideal world is one where everyone is transparent. The Circle is specifically described as a dystopian novel and I find it very concerning that major tech companies are adopting a similar philosophy as The Circle. I do not know if there is an effective way to combat the ethical deficiencies of the major tech corporations but I do know that we are headed down a slippery slope.

While the internet offers us an amazing platform to share information and communicate with friends, are we paying enough attention to the information we are sharing and how easy it is anyone access this(sometimes private) information?

Today I am going to demonstrate this notion by cyber-stalking one of my professors, Mary Abdoney. So without further ado…

Family Life: Mary Abdoney married Ned Norland on September 29, 2012, who is also a part of the WLU faculty as a member of the IT department so it was only fitting that their wedding was held at the castle house at WLU. Before tying the knot, they take turns commuting to and from Lexington and Chapel Hill to be with each other on weekends. A little over two years after the wedding, Abdoney became pregnant and, 9 months later, gave birth to her son Emmett, who now attends the Woods Creek Montessori.

College Life: Abdoney graduated from the University of Florida in 1999, and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology. During her time in Gainesville, she was a member of the Alpha Xi Delta sorority. Abdoney continued her education at the University of South Florida where she earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science.

Political Views: It didn’t take long, after scrolling over Abdoney’s facebook and twitter feed, to determine that her political views slant on the side of liberal. She has a clear distaste for patriarchy and is a proud supporter of LGBTQ pride. Abdoney is also passionate about gender discrimination in the field of Librarianship. She has first-hand experience with being “mommy tracked” and feels that, since pregnancy and childcare are primarily thrust upon the mothers, women are being held back.

Fun Facts: -Likes drinking sparkling white wine(especially Cava) -knows how to play the violin and cello, but, its been a while so she may be a little rusty -she loves gardening, and dedicated the summer of 2010 to a moderately successful vegetable garden -used to be a ballerina, and performed in three productions with the Tampa Ballet

Based off of Abdoney’s social media presence, I would assume that the algorithmic filters feed her a lot of political content(mostly liberal-leaning). I would also expect there to be a good amount of content related to the world of academia, librarianship specifically.

Would I, after completing this activity, change my online habits?

To put it simply, not really. The reason is that all of the things that I share on the internet are things that I am purposefully trying to share with the world and use to promote myself. While I was creating a twitter account, I did notice that they asked for permission to collect data on you so that you can enjoy a “personalized” experience. This reminded me of “The You Loop” and how they offer you a “personalized experience” to collect data on you that they can turn around and sell to other businesses. So I guess that if I would change anything it would be to pay more attention to the fine print and make sure uncheck the box asking to collect data on me.

Here are timelines for Mary Abdoney(top) and Elizabeth Teaff(bottom) who teaches the DCI 180 course in tandem with Abdoney.