At the risk of sounding cliché, I'll say it: We are living in interesting times.
The Pope (paradoxically, or not?) has championed decentralization.
People are sending bitcoins to charitable organizations in the Philippines, aiding recovery from Typhoon Haiyan. Decentralized and open source search, content curation, and operating systems are becoming more popular. And so on.
What to make of this? So that you can get a good understanding of the implications of decentralization in today's world (and why many people have been championing it for so long), below is shown a video in which Andreas Antonopolous, founder of RootEleven (and several other bitcoin-based businesses), explains what decentralization is and why it is beneficial:
"In a way, hierarchical systems are a solution to the problem of direct access to information, direct access to each other, and communication scarcity. When the problem no longer exists, (a) centralization hierarchy is the wrong solution." - A. Antonopolous
