Enterprise Bitcoin and the Brain as a CryptoCurrency Network

If Dell, New Egg, and TigerDirect now accept Bitcoin, and Paypal's CEO contemplates the same, eBay and Amazon might also accept Bitcoin in the not too distant future, and this would start to really push cryptocurrency into the mainstream. Faster still if Google Wallet were to join. Bitcoin seems to be 'going enterprise' (= key step to mainstream) as fast as the Internet-of-things (Enterprise IOT: Microsoft, Ernst & Young, etc. offering connected POS (point of sale) networks and all 'devices' as an IOT service to businesses). However, even though Bitcoin in its entirety is a radically new concept, from a vendor standpoint, accepting Bitcoin is not a big deal - it is analogous to accepting any other kind of payment mechanism. Anyone (individual or enterprise) receiving, or wanting to pay out in Bitcoin can easily convert national currencies via Coinbase, bitpay, or other sites, or now the purported (as of July 2014) 33 worldwide Robocoin Bitcoin ATMs. Conceptually, Bitcoin is a payment mechanism for vendors, but for money businesses like banks, it is much more critical to develop explicit Bitcoin strategies and policies.

However, there is still much risk in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin as a currency is still new and volatile, and it is not clear if it is a faddish or persistent transformation, although the concept may have considerable resiliency even if specific cryptocurrencies do not (i.e.; Baconcoin). Also, there is only about $8 billion USD in Bitcoin now, and it would need to be on the order of $50-100 billion USD to receive more serious financial consideration. The currency does have a number of important features that could propel acceptance including architecture (psuedo-anonymous and trustless), openness, low-cost (eliminates currency exchange costs), and fungible worldwide availability. As Kevin Kelly points out, Bitcoin is not just a payment mechanism, it is a revolutionary way to enable collaboration at an unprecedented scale. Bitcoin is the reinvention of the institution of capital. Further, in the automation economy, Bitcoin is automated and open accounting; a transparent ledger. The concept of Bitcoin and its architecture and operation is a new model which is not unlike the brain, where (at minimum) many functions are handled automatically, and there is a certain modular aspect to function. Bitcoin might be a universal mathematical model of nature that human intelligence is just now discovering.

Neural Data Privacy Rights

A worry that is not yet on the scientific or cultural agenda is neural data privacy rights. Not even biometric data privacy rights (beyond genomics) are in purview yet which is surprising given the personal data streams that are amassing from wearable computing, Internet-of-Things biosensors, and quantified self-tracking activities. Neural data privacy rights is the notion of considering the privacy and security issues regarding personalized data flows that arise from the brain.

There are several reasons why neural data privacy rights could become an important concern. First, personalized health data is already a contentious personal data issue, and anything regarding the mind, and mental performance and potential pathology has even more sensitivity and taboo attached to it.

Second, neural data privacy rights could be an issue because it is not difficult to measure some level of the electrical and other activity of the brain, and ever-ratcheting price-performance technology improvements could make it possible to capture and process the neural activity of vast numbers of people simultaneously in real-time. There are already many consumer-available devices that measure neural activity such as EEGs, PPGs, and tMS systems, augmented headsets like Google Glass, Oculus Rift, and foc.us, and other emotion and cognitive state analysis applications using eye-tracking, mental state identification, and affect analysis. 

Does Google Glass come with a Faraday cage?

Third, at some point, big data machine learning algorithms may be able to establish the validity and utility of neural data with correlation to a variety of human health and physical and mental performance states.

Fourth, despite the sensitivity of neural data streams, like any other form of personal data (where two data elements start to constitute an identification), privacy, security, and anonymity may be practically impossible. At worst, there could be malicious hacking, viruses, and spam targeting neural data streams.

Detailed Essay: "Neural Data Privacy Rights: An Invitation For Progress In The Guise Of An Approaching Worry"

Open science Wikis

Wikis are a great tool for facilitating open science through ease-of-use and transparency in the conduct of research studies. Wikis allow real-time updating, archived recording of changes over time, and the general ease of information flow in the digital era. In the health arena, wikis are being used to empower health-self management. One example is the DIYgenomics wiki which is used to operate crowdsourced health research studies. Two key activities are open deliberation regarding study protocols and data results.

1) Open Study Protocols – wikis can be used to post and continuously update study design protocols. Study advisors, ethicists, potential funders, organizers, participants, press, and any other interested parties may review and give input in an open format. Two current examples of study protocols under development are a Quantified Self-tracking Diabetes study and a Social Genomics study (e.g.; linking personal genomic profiles to empathy, altruism, optimism).

2) Open Data Results – wikis can be used for study participants to log and discuss data results. For example, in one study looking at genomic mutation and Vitamin B deficiency, all data was tracked via wiki. Study participants were asked to post their genomic data and blood test results to the study wiki page as they came arrived. Separate validations were carried out from the underlying PDF copies of the lab test results, but anyone could follow the ongoing study results in real-time from the wiki edits. Later, the data collected in the wiki tables was easy to convert to the form needed for scientific journal publication.

Radical transparency

Social networking and Web 2.0 has made it easy to find out about the friends, resume, activities, and interests of the many people who permission-in and broadcast this information.

Financial privacy disappeared for groups of the population as benefits outweighed costs in peer-to-peer lending, real estate, expense management, and purchasing with Prosper, Zillow, Expensr, Mint, and now Blippy.

Health data is the new frontier as people are starting to publicly post their genome files, and perhaps blood test information with the SNPedia, Personal Genome Project, and DIYgenomics. Some people are tweeting their weight, and could possibly do so with their sleep-tracking Z scores and other quantified self tracking activities.

In the farther future, who will be the first to tweet their neural feed? The unexpurgated feed that would be captured directly from the brain, not medicated by language, typing, consciousness, and culture as now. As with other successful technology roll-out paradigms, truth culture is likely to be opt-in, and the competitive advantage could likely be with those who do decide to disclose.

Social media and Enterprise 2.0

There is a much deeper application of Web 2.0 technologies and concepts possible in the enterprise than is currently being contemplated and implemented. Some companies have an early effort to use some of the tools but have not noticed that the concepts themselves can be applied to generate significant benefit. Worse, misapplication is also occurring such as the creation of Social Media Officers oblivious to the bottom-up rather than top-down property of social media.

Future of social media
The long-term future of social media is lifelogging - the auto-capture and permissioned auto-posting or archiving of every person’s every thought and experience. Feedhavior’s digital footprints continue to drive individual actions. The corporation goes away. Artificial intelligence becomes the most efficient form of outsourcing. People and organizations spend more time in simulation worlds than physical worlds. Entrepreneurs and organizations provide goods and services by making offerings proactively to groups of potential customers aggregated through their web-based interest communities. Marketing must be relevant to avoid being perceived as advertising.


Applying Web 2.0 Technologies to the Enterprise
There is no part of the firm at present that cannot make use of Web 2.0 and social media technologies. There are two dimensions for application:

External and Internal
Externally, a firm can use Web 2.0 and social media technologies for branding, re-inventing and testing business models, product and service sales, customer relationship management (CRM), partner ecosystem management, R&D outsourcing and recruiting. Internally, firms can use Web 2.0 and social media technologies for communication, collaboration, work assignment, task and project management, resource allocation and performance feedback.

Tools, Concepts and Values
Some examples of the direct application of social media and Web 2.0 tools are using blogs to supplement or replace marketing, APIs to supplement or replace business development, and crowdsourcing ideagoras to supplement or replace R&D. Applying concepts is for example not just using Digg for the firm’s industry news feeds but Digg functionality to bid up and down work assignments or performance feedback. Using Web 2.0 in the enterprise is not using mash-ups but mashing up internal applications, putting a virtual world front-end on any data application to represent the information in a high-resolution way. Internal trainings and meetings are conducted as open space unconferences. Everyone can participate in everything.

The values of social media are also applied internally and externally: authenticity, openness, transparency, participation, creativity, perpetual beta, new linkages, asking the wisdom of crowds (web, twitter), acknowledgement that everyone can have good ideas and contribute and using freemium and open-source business models (free + fee-based).

This is a Transparent Society

As with any new technology, there is the useful application and the dark side. Google Street Views, real street-level photographs of places, is no exception.

The benefit of Google Street Views is being able to virtually experience a place without having to go there physically, such as a tour of Times Square. Most of the time, specific people are not yet identifiable, but sometimes they are in varying embarrassing or even possibly illegal situations.

Is it worth it? Too late!
Some debate whether the perceived privacy loss is worth it but it has already happened. Even the usually forward thinking Internet rights watchdog Electronic Frontier Foundation exemplifies the mistaken understanding of the current world, as staff attorney Kevin Bankston remarks that "Everyone expects a certain level of anonymity as they move about their daily lives."

In reality, we have already been a surveillance society for some time. If anything, Google Street Views brings a more explicit realization of this and as David Brin importantly points out, an open availability of the information.

Privacy was already lost in many ways but especially when the cost of audio and video recording equipment dropped, the reach and quality improved and devices became ubiquitous. The technology is small and can used in unnoticed ways. One has to assume that everything one does or says in public or semi-public environments is being recorded and will be increasingly played back. There are opportunities in this as lifecammer TV is showing and also risks but most importantly inevitability. What are creative ways to provide value in a transparent society?