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State of the Arts Tech Talk

My columns for the Montana Arts Council's Bi-monthly newsletter

State of the Arts for April/May/June 2018: Stack Exchange

April 2, 2018 by Mark Ratledge

(One of my Montana Arts Council State of the Arts Newspaper Tech Talk Columns)

The Internet has been full of discussion forums from the very beginning, and in some ways, for better or for worse. Some of us remember the old bulletin boards you could dial into with a modem and chat; nowadays, we are probably all familiar with the discussion sections of online newspapers and media, as well as Facebook and Twitter timelines. The “for better or for worse” part is obvious; obnoxious users and people using fake identities and bad information are common, because on the Internet, it still can be the wild west.

But a paradigm shift of online forums came in 2008, and the result has been changing Internet discussion since. That was the year when two programmers started Stack Overflow, a discussion site for programmers with questions looking for answers. But the two coders had a different idea: Stack Overflow would be free (unlike commercial programming forums of the time), anyone could join and anyone could ask questions and answer anyone else’s questions. A sense of community was encouraged because users could gain reputation – kind of like a computer game keeping score – by the amount of effort they put into their quality questions that had broad appeal and the accurate answers they added to the site. The goal of Stack Overflow was to be a collection of the best programming questions and answers available, for free, for everyone.

“Stack Overflow” is sort of an inside, geeky joke; it refers to an error message that is thrown when too much data is given to a process. But Stack Overflow took off, and after a few stumbles, the company Stack Exchange grew out of the original site. Now Stack Exchange has nearly 200 sites that operate on the same principle, covering more computer programming languages, of course, but there are Stack Exchange sites on cooking, art, music, the bible, Spanish, pets, parenting, literature, vegetarianism, and on and on. See the full list at https://stackexchange.com/sites

Each Stack Exchange site lets users post questions and add and improve answers. Browse the answers, and if you don’t find what you’re looking for, sign up and ask a question. If you do find an answer, but can improve it, you can do that. As a site member, you get to vote on both answers and questions, and this leads to a sense of quality; the good stuff gets voted up, the useless voted down and sometimes deleted. The more you participate – ask questions, add answers and vote – the more points you gain, and this gives you a site “reputation” and can lead to more site privileges. This kind of community leads to the overall Stack Exchange goal of the best questions and answers and information on your topic on the Internet, the same Internet that has so much information and discussion that is sketchy.

State of the Arts for January/February/March 2018: What is Bitcoin?

January 2, 2018 by Mark Ratledge

(One of my Montana Arts Council State of the Arts Newspaper Tech Talk Columns)

The news is rife with Bitcoin stories these days, and it will only get better, or worse, depending on your interest in decentralized digital currencies. If that’ phrase is too much to think about, I understand. But if you’re interested, a good place to start is the Wikipedia page for Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is “the first decentralized digital currency… the system works without a central repository or single administrator.” The Wikipedia article is obviously written by advocates of Bitcoin, but you can learn what Bitcoin mining is (how Bitcoins are created) and that Bitcoin was created by an unknown person or group of people and first released in 2009. Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a vast, publicly available exchange record called the Blockchain.

If Bitcoin is a decentralized currency and works without an administrator or banks, than how does it work? It works on the amount of confidence people have in the technology, and the wavering of that confidence can result in the huge swings in the value of Bitcoin in the last few years..

I’ve used Bitcoin for some purchases online. The best way to use Bitcoin is to use a broker, such as coinbase.com. That way, you can easily buy Bitcoin from your regular US dollar bank account, convert to dollars and transfer bitcoin back to your bank, rather than having to learn how to install and use a “wallet” on your own computer and buy Bitcoin from an individual. Or try to “mine” Bitcoin yourself.

Bitcoin problems are many: bitcoin exchanges get hacked and people lose all their money. Personal wallets get hacked. There are problems with Bitcoin itself: bugs in the software have “disappeared” millions in value. The Blockchain itself is slow and is limited to a small number of transactions each second. Groups of advocates and miners have attempted to make changes, but success is mixed, and several Bitcoin “forks” – duplicates of the system with updates and changes – have fallen flat.

But the concept of the Blockchain as a transaction ledge has many uses, and major banks and countries have been looking at its possibilities. And, of course, a universal and private currency is a major draw for many. But there are many bugs – technical, social, economic and political – to work out. There are now close to 100 cryptocurrency startups that want to compete with Bitcoin; of course, there are probably more by the time you read this.

The only certain thing in Bitcoin right now is volatility. On the day I wrote this, $60 million in Bitcoin was just stolen from an exchange; Bitcoin’s value peaked at a new high and then crashed 20% in a few minutes; coinbase.com crashed and “cash out” conversion to dollars was impossible; and a few banks announced they will offer futures trading in Bitcoin, which will increase volatility. If anything, Bitcoin is a learning experience in new technologies.

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