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A review by rick2
The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything by Michael J. Casey, Paul Vigna
1.0
Yuck. Authors misconstrue facts to suit their purposes. Most of the examples are really poorly thought out. And what emerges is a sort of echo chamber book that might resemble the conversation you and your friends had about why you all bet on dogecoin circa 2019.
For example, the authors lead into the book with The idea that public trust has eroded in large institutions. Fair enough. But they make the bold statement that it all started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. What? Everyone knows that the erosion of trust started after the failure of Bee Movie. That box office flop was the catalyst for my lack of faith in what been an unshakable faith in the entertainment industry. But really? No discussion of Vietnam, Nixon? Lack of faith in large institutions didn’t start in 2008. If you want to get real patriotic for a second, point to 1776. There’s better examples but the authors lack of effort, or editing, or whatever make it so that this book is basically nonsense.
There’s also this discussion of how people trust the ratings on Uber and that’s how a decentralized system really works. But it totally misses the point that Uber is the central hub that all of these ratings go through. If you have a problem you can call or talk to someone in the customer support wing of that organization. This example is so bad that it actually contradicts the point the author is trying to make.
The rest of the book is a combination of fluff and similarly bad examples. I’m actually increasingly becoming pro blockchain as I see more used cases for the technology, but this book is a terrible advocate and representation for the tech.
For example, the authors lead into the book with The idea that public trust has eroded in large institutions. Fair enough. But they make the bold statement that it all started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. What? Everyone knows that the erosion of trust started after the failure of Bee Movie. That box office flop was the catalyst for my lack of faith in what been an unshakable faith in the entertainment industry. But really? No discussion of Vietnam, Nixon? Lack of faith in large institutions didn’t start in 2008. If you want to get real patriotic for a second, point to 1776. There’s better examples but the authors lack of effort, or editing, or whatever make it so that this book is basically nonsense.
There’s also this discussion of how people trust the ratings on Uber and that’s how a decentralized system really works. But it totally misses the point that Uber is the central hub that all of these ratings go through. If you have a problem you can call or talk to someone in the customer support wing of that organization. This example is so bad that it actually contradicts the point the author is trying to make.
The rest of the book is a combination of fluff and similarly bad examples. I’m actually increasingly becoming pro blockchain as I see more used cases for the technology, but this book is a terrible advocate and representation for the tech.