How Bitcoin's Blockchain Could Power An Alternate Internet

[Commentary] It’s beginning to feel like we might be at a similar liminal moment to when the Web exploded back in 1994. Our new contender for the Next Big Thing is the blockchain  --  the baffling yet alluring innovation that underlies the Bitcoin digital currency. Think of blockchain as a way of transferring a digital message from one party to another, where both parties can count on the integrity of the message, even when they don’t trust, or even know, each other.

There is a contingent on today’s Internet -- a minority, perhaps, but influential -- who believe that the industry took a wrong turn over the past decade. That an Internet dominated by a few big companies is an unhealthy one. That the centralized-computing paradigm -- of privately owned data silos housed in giant server farms that harvest our personal data in order to sell ads -- is one that needs to change. The entrepreneurs, coders and crypto experts leading the blockchain charge see this new technology as an antidote to the Inter being dominated by a few big companies, and they are hopped up on dizzying visions of a disrupted future.

[Scott Rosenberg is the author of "Dreaming in Code"]