(2016-08-08) Wenger Sign All Things

Albert Wenger: Sign All Things. I have written repeatedly about why I don’t think “encrypt all things” is the right answer for constructing a democratic society going forward. I am, however, a fan of the idea to “sign all things.” 2016-04-08-WengerAgainstTechnologicalDeterminismBlockchainsAndEncryption

Why does this matter? Because with digital tools it is also incredibly easy to pretend that someone wrote something even when they didn’t.

What if the documents were mostly real, but had been surgically doctored?

this possibility of hard or impossible to discover manipulation will be true not just for text but also images and video

This is why when I wrote about a possible new blogging platform last week I included signing of posts and comments as a requirement:

Signing all things is a key reason why I believe that a decentralized identity system is a fundamental building block for the future and am excited that Blockstack is building this. (digital identity)