I think the slock.it idea is bigger than we give it credit for. Many universities already have electronic locks, that are opened and closed with programmable chips. This makes granting people access to certain rooms but not to others incredibly easy, or sometimes even possible, since you would've needed a bunch of keys for different rooms, now you only need one.
In a single Building, slock.it is not really necessary. When you leave the building and you want to use it for AirBnB flats, rental cars, shared storage units and whatnot, the idea of being able to lock and unlock something with a passphrase and/or your phone becomes VERY interesting. It the slock.it guys do it right, this will be technology that is pretty much invisible, because it is nearly in everything. You want to receive a parcel, but you are not home? The delivery guy puts it in a designated box near your home, sends you the passphrase to open the box and you can pick it up using you phone. This is not technology for an end user, this is stuff other companies use to manage access permissions.
Whether or not it needs to be decentralized… Well, I don't know. I have the feeling, at this point it is more a philosophical question, than anything else.
@ttookk,
I also appreciate the idea of building a software to make everything easier regarding such renting operations. What I don't understand is the superiority of a decentralized application over its possible centralized counterparts.
A single keychain suitable for many different keys, that's a great idea. But this would be a revolutionary protocol only if the underlying technology sustains widespread adoption, and this has nothing to do with that technology's being decentralized. A closed-sourced mobile app would achieve the same feasibility if mainstream adoption is sustained.
Best,
Jian
Yeah, that is the million dollar question. And as I said, I think at this point, it is more a philosophical question than anything else. But maybe that is actually enough.
Of course, you have the tinfoil-hat guys ranting about how centralization is bad and you have to trust a single entity that shouldn't be trusted, but if we are honest, the internet a) works great with the "centralized" server infrastructure it is built upon, and b) is not as centralized as people make it out to be, plus the main incentive keeping these "centralized" networks running is the same that is utilized for blockchains: Money. As long as something is profitable, I don't fear them shutting it down. That counts for traditional infrastructure as well as blockchains.
Then again, the idea of having a decentralized Internet/decentralized services intrigues me. The best we can hope for, is that you don't even notice a difference, at least in the beginning. Later on – we will see. At the very least, competition breeds innovation.