The inventor of the cryptographic tool at the heart of all blockchain technology has spent the last decade or so working in the fields of quantum computers and molecular printing to make technology that can fight disease and prolong human life.
Ralph Merkle and his peers in the field of nanotechnology are exploring ways to use viruses and other techniques to build microscopically tiny machines capable of assembling molecules at the atomic level, a process called molecular manufacturing.
In this nascent industry, machines that exist at this tiny scale could theoretically be used to assemble molecules atom by atom with potential applications that include affordable quantum computers, new forms of storing energy and semi-automated medical treatments from tiny implanted machines.
But as Merkle’s work has progressed, the winner of the 1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for theory began to worry that the end result his endeavors might also prove to be an existential threat to humanity.
"As we move forward we find that technology is enhancing the ability of smaller and smaller groups to do more and more damage," Merkle said in a new interview.
He told CoinDesk: "Given that that is the case, we have to pay greater attention to dealing with the governance issues that surround coping with those kinds of change." Coming full circle
In his search for a new form of governance capable of adequately protecting the world, Merkle found himself right back where he started. The ability to reinvent governance could be locked in the very technology his eponymous Merkle’s trees helped empower.
Merkle Trees, or certified digital signatures as the inventor called them in his original 1979 paper, allow for the cheap and reliable encryption of data by converting, or hashing, blocks of information into long strands of unique code.The newest blocks of information, or leaves, are strung together […]
