here is a new piece of technology called CRDTs (conflict-free replicated data types) that allow reaching the same state irrespective of the order in which changes are received, so each device can resolve conflicts independently - without relying on a single master copy.

Two pieces of technology look striking, especially if we imagine their combined power. These technologies come under the obscure names of Public Key Cryptography and CRDTs.

the blocklace is a Universal Conflict-free Replicated Data Type

When an AtomSpace inherits from multiple contributors, the contents of that AtomSpace is the set-union of the contributing spaces.

Equivocation and Omission remain as the only optionsfor an attack on CRDT layer

Even the case studies we discussed in training sessions were not abstract; they used Yale examples. I appreciated the focus on keeping the university at the core of our thinking.

Most CRDT research operates in a model where all collaborators immediately apply their edits to a single version of a document. However, practical local-first applications require more flexibility: users must have the freedom to reject edits made by another collaborator, or to make private changes to a version of the document that is not shared with others. A user might want to apply changes speculatively or reformat their change history. These concepts are well understood in the distributed source control world as “branches,” “forks,” “rebasing,” and so on. There is little work to date on understanding the algorithms and programming models for collaboration in situations where multiple document versions and branches exist side-by-side.