The second day of the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Bitcoin Expo in Cambridge, Mass. featured speakers on a variety of topics ranging from technical issues like the size of the blockchain to social concerns like social inequities that technology perpetuates, according to Nasdaq . Hosted by the MIT Bitcoin Club, the third annual MIT Bitcoin Expo brought together students, developers and business founders to discuss both technical issues and potential solutions in today’s bitcoin climate. Technology Reinforces Social Inequities
Latanya Sweeney, chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission and director of the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard University talked about social inequities in some technologies such as the Internet and urged attendees to consider these inequities in developing new products. On Google , according to her recent paper, a black-identified name was 25% more likely to get an ad suggestive of an arrest record. The Princeton Review, which provides standardized testing preparation, raised prices by 180% on average for people residing in mostly Asian neighborhoods. She also said Asian Arbnb hosts earn 20% less than Caucasian hosts when listing homes.
Latanya urged listeners to be aware of these types of discrimination when creating new infrastructures using digital currencies. Enigma Computes Encrypted Data
Guy Zyskind, co-founder of Enigma, a blockchain-based technology that allows computing on encrypted data, explained his technology. Enigma utilizes a decentralized computer network that allows users to query and compute using data that stays encrypted throughout the whole process. In splitting a big, encrypted data set into smaller packets and only compiling the final decrypted query on the client’s computer, Enigma moves theoretical distributed computing to reality using blockchain as the backend.
Alex Zinder, Nasdaq’s director of global software development, reviewed the development of Nasdaq Linq, a blockchain-supported platform for managing unregistered securities. He talked about areas where […]
