According to a study of 4,800 professionals from around the world, 66% of people believe that innovation will be the biggest factor influencing economic growth over the next 30 years.
In order to thrive (or indeed, survive) in this continuously evolving economy, young professionals will need to understand the driving forces behind scientific and technological development, anticipate the new industries they will enable, and predict the extent to which they will change the jobs we take for granted today.
One of the most promising developments is the advent of blockchain technology. Here’s a brief look at what blockchain technology is, why it was developed, the characteristics that make it unique, and the way it could revolutionize the world in the years to come.
What is blockchain technology?
People rely on databases to store and transfer information to one another. But these databases are owned by companies that have access to the sensitive data you save on their systems (like bank details, financial transactions, and private messages)
Because people don’t trust these companies to keep their data secure or private, they’ve invented a platform that stores and transfers data in a new way, and lets you keep it safe. This technology is called blockchain, and people are excited by its potential applications.
Where the need for blockchain technology came from
Computers store and organize information on a database - the most common of which is called a relational database. Relational databases are like fancy Excel spreadsheets - they structure information in different tables that consist of columns and rows. These tables are then stored on hard drives which can be accessed by servers over the internet.
Your phone’s contact book app is a perfect example of technology built around a relational database. It relates specific phone numbers to different people in your address book in a simple, logical manner.
People can add to, edit, remove, or retrieve information from a relational database using a special instruction known as a request. But as more information is added to a database, and an increasing number of people try to retrieve it, computers need to work harder to process the ever growing number of requests directed towards them.
To cope with the growing strain on their hard drives and computer processors, the companies that own the databases need to spend money designing, building, and installing faster, fancier computers - as well as implementing additional software to keep your data safe from hackers.
Given the expense involved in building and maintaining IT infrastructure at this scale, it makes sense that companies would want to monetize the wealth of information they’ve accumulated in their databases. Selling user data to advertisers or organizations looking to maintain a competitive edge is one widely practiced and lucrative way of achieving this, and Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 is a dramatic illustration of how valuable user data is to an organization, and how much they are willing to pay for it.
According to CNN data is now a $300 billion a year industry, and it all stems from the fact that millions of people are willing to sacrifice privacy in order to conveniently use software for free. We’ve resigned ourselves to letting companies do with our data as they please primarily because we rely on their IT infrastructure to power many of our favorite tools.
Blockchain technology challenges this power dynamic. Blockchain is an alternative way to save and transmit data between computers, all while keeping it secure, private, and decentralized - kind of like an extremely safe database that isn’t owned by anybody.