A couple of days ago I've written an article to kickstart the discussion as to where we're headed with blockchain. In that article I wildly speculate as to how a given crypto could possibly turn from being just "an alternative monetary system" to THE monetary system. But my underlying concern was not whether some crypto will completely eradicate fiat currency, but how this dominance can fundamentally change the world we live in.
At first thought, one cannot help but to feel excitement about blockchain and its advantages. The tech is amazing and the creativity we're seeing as new ideas and products emerge is uplifting! It's easy to imagine the cool things we can do with it. But what made me concerned was something I cannot yet accurately pinpoint, It's this uneasy feeling lingering in the background that blockchain can be used as an unforgiving strict method of control and manipulation.
Today, I was able to give one more step towards figuring out what this danger might be as I found an audio article titled "Cryptocurrency Might be a Path to Authoritarianism". In it the narrator just scratches the surface on how enslaving this technology can become by exploring various uses for the tech alongside its interconnectedness.
After listening to it and pondering about it for some hours, I'm starting to form the conclusion that:
- If AI can ever become our master, then blockchain would be our cage.
I also would like to highlight the final paragraph of the audio article which is so powerful:
Bitcoin’s triumph hinges mostly on the financial success of speculators who never had any intention of using it as currency, and who appear to have strip-mined it into oblivion in the process. Similarly, blockchain’s future seems tied to the short-term vision of investors and entrepreneurs willing to speculate on a hypothetical, distributed utopia without hedging against the consolidated autocracy it seems equally likely to realise. “This is what happens,” Greenfield says, “when very bright people outsmart themselves.”
One thing that we could expect to see on a society dominated by blockchain tech, is a stretch towards an ever more intense binary method of thought because we'd be adapting to the never-ending conditional statements embedded in the code. We'd start to lose more and more, the ability to improvise and use the grey area to judge situations in daily life. We'd essentially be turning our minds, into a more machine-like mind. And as much as transhumanism is exciting, a machine-like mind doesn't sound nearly as exciting as a cyborg-like body.
Interstellar Docking Scene
Cooper vs CASE | Human Mind Improvisation vs Binary
Cooper: Okay, get ready to match our spin with the retro thrusters.
CASE: It's not possible
Cooper: No, It's Necessary.
And to conclude, I'll emphasize what I mentioned in my previous article. We are here in the crypto space making the most amazing gains, we feel very smart. But it's time we start thinking about what future we're bringing about and start ''hedging'', so we don't end up blindly compromising our own freedoms later down the road, with the very projects that were intended to protect it in the first place.
Do listen to the audio article. It's so relevant: