Speaking at BlockShow Asia 2019, Todalarity CEO Toufi Saliba posed a hypothetical question to the audience: “How many people would take a pill that made you smarter, knowing they can be controlled by a social entity?”

No one raised their hand, and he was unsurprised.

“That’s the response that I get, zero percent of you,” he continued. “Now imagine at the same time the pill has autonomous decentralized governance so that no one can control or repurpose that pill but the host – yourself.”

This time hands were raised in abundance. Decentralized governance represents a necessary step for the tech community to build up a trust in digital developments related to securely managing big data.

“Economics and ethics can go together thanks to decentralization,” commented SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel.

But does the decentralized governance represent a step forward from centralization, or it is just an illusion of evolution? Cole Sirucek, co-founder of DocDoc, shared his vision:

“It is when we are at a point of centralizing data that you can begin to think about decentralization. For example, electronic medical records: in five years the data will be centralized. After that, you can decentralize it.”

Goertzal didn’t fully agree: “I don’t think it is intrinsic. The reason centralized systems are simpler to come by is how institutions are built right now. There is nothing natural about centralization of data.” He elaborated on the mutual dependence of two important technologies: