In December 2017, IoTUK travelled to Edinburgh to take part in a workshop on blockchain, The Block Exchange. This was run by Chris Speed and Ella Tallyn at Design Informatics, who are exploring the notions of value and design in blockchain as part of PETRAS.
The world has changed. The push economy where advertisers sell us products and services that has long dominated the way we consume has been disrupted by a new pull economy, characterised by platforms such as Uber and Airbnb, where consumers take part in providing and shaping the services provided.
Alongside this, the rise of the digital currency Bitcoin, along with its supporting technology Blockchain, offers a radical new model of peer-to-peer trading, which raises questions about our existing economic models, and threatens to undermine long accepted financial power structures. This has precipitated an explosion of new products and thinking around decentralised trading of goods and services.