Walter Isaacson is CEO of the Aspen Institute. He wrote The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution [Simon & Schuster]

This article was taken from the January 2015 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.

When reporting for my new book, The Innovators, the most frequent lament I heard from web pioneers was that they had failed to provide a platform to enable small digital payments. Ted Nelson, who conceived hypertext, believed the links should be two-way, which would have allowed a system for micropayments and royalties to accrue to content creators. Tim Berners-Lee says that he wanted to embed in a page the information needed to handle a small payment, which would allow electronic-wallet services to be built by banks or entrepreneurs. These payment protocols were never implemented, partly because of the changing complexity of banking regulations, but Berners-Lee hopes that the consortium that oversees web protocols will soon return to that task. And Marc Andreessen, who built the first popular web browser, told me: "If I had a time machine and could go back to 1993, one thing I'd do for sure would be to build in bitcoin or some similar form of cryptocurrency."


Andreessen could still get his wish. With his encouragement, people are starting to use bitcoin to develop micropayment services, such as ChangeTip and Bitwall, that have tiny transaction costs and aren't controlled by the antiquated banking system or middlemen merchants such as Amazon and Apple. They avoid the mental and financial transaction costs of the inelegant PayPal, which so far has failed to invent a frictionless micropayment system of its own.

An easy micropayment system for digital content could help save journalism by allowing people to pay a few pennies for an article or edition of a newspaper rather than having news sites become totally beholden to advertisers. As Ethan Zuckerman, an inventor of the pop-up ad, recently lamented, forcing journalists to cater to advertisers' needs was the "original sin" of the web.

Frictionless micropayments would also help producers of all different types of content, most notably individual artists, writers, bloggers, game makers, musicians and independent entrepreneurs. Ever since the Statute of Anne was passed more than 300 years ago, people who created songs, plays, writing and art have a way to get paid for copies of them. A flourishing culture ensued. Likewise, easy and frictionless coin systems that allow us to buy digital content on impulse would support journalists who want to be under obligation to their readers rather than just to their advertisers -- as well as support anyone else who wants to make a living producing creative things.

Bitcoin platforms are still intimidating to people who don't want to be currency speculators, so the next big innovation will be the creation of truly simple digital coins or easy bitcoin-based systems. Those who succeed in building such services will empower creators and consumers of content and thus wrest some power from the Amazons, Alibabas and Apples. That will make them the next great digital disruptors.