For something to be truly awesome, it must be "web scale" right? The rather excellent video just below shows how hype can blind us to the real values of a technology. It's quite a famous trope in some circles and I think is a useful parallel to the excitement about blockchain. In it an enthusiastic user of a new technology repeats marketing hype despite having no understanding of the technical concerns involved. Watch the video and you'll hear every piece of marketing spin that surrounds NoSQL databases. I usually get very excited about new technologies but I'm quite underwhelmed by blockchain. In the commercial context I see it as a great solution that really just needs to find a problem to solve. Lots of companies are looking for the problem that the blockchain solution will solve. Facebook has a blockchain group that is dedicated to studying blockchain and how it can be used in Facebook. They don't seem to have found a particularly novel use ca...