The Internet pioneer, and creator of STP (Spanning Tree Protocol) Radia PerlmanIt has been pronounced in favor of centralized infrastructure in a talk at the International Symposium on Advances in Blockchain, held this Friday in Singapore. Perlman has recalled the popular belief that centralized systems are good and decentralized ones are bad. However, for her, as reported by The Register, decentralized entities are problematic by nature.
In reference to blockchain, specifically, Perlman noted that “it started to be a buzzword as the technology behind Bitcoin. People made money out of Bitcoin, and the more hype it got, the more startups took advantage of this hype to declare that their product had something to do with Blockchain. If you hear so much hype, you end up assuming that it has to be something very important.«.
On the other hand, she also assures that the purpose of the Bitcoin Blockchain was to evade government organizations, such as countries or banks, which for her, despite the fact that they can sometimes be corrupt, also have their purposes. «The centralized implies that there is an organization in front. This usually means that there are multiple servers so there is not a single point of failure. And also that the data is stored in many points, so that your data is not lost. Especially if your data is stored in a public cloud«.
Perlman added that centralized systems have other benefits, such as knowing who to blame when something goes wrong. Also that most applications require expert supervision, or someone to respond to system problems. But she’s not sure what they’re buying with Bitcoin, and she wonders who to complain to if it doesn’t work out, and how you get the money back.
In addition, he has pointed out that Blockchain is more of a marketing term than an actual technology. He sees it as a fad the way it is now, and believes that it has elements that can evolve in the future, but that it’s basically not much different from a database, and is often more complicated to use than them. He also says that most of his thoughts are against blockchain, and he doesn’t think it’s a fundamental technology to focus on.
The STP protocol algorithm was published in 1985, and it is basic for the operation of network bridges. It has also laid the foundation for Ethernet to become a protocol that can handle large clouds. Perlman, the creator of it, is known as the mother of the Internet, although she does not usually take the name seriously. In fact, she points out that if she hadn’t developed the algorithm, someone else would have done it.
In addition to Bitcoin and Blockchain, Radia Perlman also has her views on today’s Internet, which she thought 10 years ago was transforming society. She currently believes that the Internet is the end of civilization, describing Artificial Intelligence algorithms as content rabbit holes, in addition to seeing them as one of the dystopian characteristics of the Internet. In addition, she believes that they allow anti-social extremists to connect with each other. Perlman sees no way out of the current situation on the Internet, and she believes that fixing it will be a task for the next generation.
