BRI RESEARCH BY DON TAPSCOTT
Publications
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Don Tapscott, Hilary Carter, and Jill Rundle, January 2018
The Networked Hotbeds of Blockchain:
Global Hubs for the Internet’s Second Era
This paper showcases the hotbeds of blockchain activity around the world—those cities and nations that have become hubs for financing and incubation of entrepreneurial initiatives—and explains the conditions under which distributed ledger start-ups are thriving in each jurisdiction.
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Don Tapscott, January 2018
The Nine Disruptions:
A New Social Contract for the Digital Economy
This proposal for change calls for a new social contract, one that redefines the relationship between individuals in society and the institutions they have created to self-govern. It looks at the four drivers of this change—the Fourth Industrial Revolution, globalization of ideas and the economy, climate change, and demographic shifts due to war, drought, and oppression. It identifies such global disruptions as structural unemployment and inequality; failing education, healthcare, and research and development; human rights violations; and a biosphere in crisis. It identifies the four core change makers—the private sector, the state, civil society, and individual citizens in mass collaboration—and it outlines the economic, democratic, social, and scientific elements of this new contract.
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Don Tapscott, May 2018
Blockchain Revolution in Higher Education And Life Long Learning:
Preparing for Disruption, Leading the Transformation
Updated in collaboration with the IBM Institute for Business Value, this project explores how blockchain is transforming education with an emphasis on lifelong learning and the reskilling of the workforce. It covers not just traditional educational institutions but also corporate training and development, where innovators are using blockchain to establish student identity, protect privacy, finance coursework, measure progress, and record badges of achievement and skills mastery. The implementation of microcredentialing capabilities, pay-as-you-learn funding models, and massively open online courses, plus the co-creation of open educational resources, are making the meta-university possible, affordable, and accessible for more students and employees worldwide.
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Don Tapscott and Christian Keil, November 2018
Saving the Web:
How Blockchain Can Secure the Future of the Digital Age
Amid ongoing reports of surveillance, censorship, and massive hacking of data, this research explores how distributed ledger technology can address the challenges of the World Wide Web. The authors argue that blockchain can support the Internet’s founding ideals, decentralize the Internet, and restore the balance of power between individuals and large organizations. They focus on three big issues: open access, fair participation, and the recovery of the individual sovereignty as users. The authors interviewed such experts as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Joseph Lubin of Consensus Systems, Shane Greenstein of Harvard Business School, Rouven Heck of uPort, and Ethan Buchman of Tendermint. It is an important work on the most critical issues facing democracy and free societies everywhere.
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Don Tapscott and Anjan Vinod, March 2019
Distributed Artificial Intelligence:
Blockchain as an Operating Platform for AI
The use of artificial intelligence is diffusing, making it one of the broadest technological revolutions ever. Blockchain technology has the unique ability to improve the reliability of AI training data and secure AI implementations through smart contracts and on-chain governance. This project examines AI, the differences among centralized, decentralized, and distributed AI, the utility of autonomous agents, and current scalability and governance challenges.