It's funny because I am a sci-fi dystopia writer, but I don't believe technology will be our problem, it is the people that use it. You can't blame a hammer for being what it is, a person can either use it to knock in a nail or knock someone's brains out.

We could use DNA databases to find cures for incurable ailments and diseases, or someone could come along and use it to genetically profile us to work out who gets the cheapest insurance, again you can't blame the database for how it is used.

As far as decentralisation is concerned, again it depends how the actors behave. A lot of people say its the answer to all of our problems, but I'm not so sure. In a lot of ways decentralisation adds a whole tonne of problems.

For instance, the Hive blog itself is a terrible website, it's very slow and seems to be getting slower, and the search function doesn't work. There is no way these two things would carry on being ignored in a centralised organisation.

Anyway, nice article. Thanks.

Cg