I first got into bitcoin almost a year ago and about a couple of weeks later I read the bitcoin white paper. Having run my own software company for over 20 years, I was fortunate enough to understand the implications that go beyond finance. Ivan's course should be of interest to anyone who has watched the political stalemate that is now decades in the making and wants to leverage their technical ability to try to make a difference in societal structure.
I'm old enough to remember the protests of the 60's. Mom was a high school drop out back in 1957 and I was born in summer of 1961. She went back to school in 1967 to finish high school and then went on to enroll in SUNY Oswego College in 1969. Four years later she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She was about 10 years older than the rest of the students and I remember all of the tie-dye shirts and hippy colors. Vietnam created a large groundswell of unrest and street protests were common, while there was some success, authority regrouped to take back some of the freedoms that were won by working on your prejudices.
In the mean time from about 1975 until 2008 was a time when protesting was not cool in America. By 2001 fascism was openly evident in American politics and after 911, Bush 43 went from being investigated by the FBI to having all charges dropped a day or so after the towers fell.
I signed up because I believe that there's a way to at least limit corruption through the means of technical disintermediation. In bitcoin, the protocol known as "proof of work" solves the byzantine generals problem without the use of central authority. This is absolutely key. All solutions to this problem before Jan 3, 2009 involved exchanging one trust model for another. Satoshi's solution was to eliminate the need for trust altogether!
This model doesn't just apply to the transfer of wealth or money, but also social contracts. There's something known as a smart contract which is really just a program that runs by any specification agreed to by the parties involved. DApp's (Distributed Applications) are smart contracts or programs that run in a decentralized model without authority "choke points". There are also DAO's (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) that establish balance in the world...
DAO - Decentralized Autonomous Organization
These technologies work by leveraging the borderless properties of the internet to eliminate jurisdictional controls for corrupt political entities. Since authority loves technology, it is forced into a situation where it has to commit suicide to try to remain in control. The internet kill switch will also knock out the Swift and other central banking networks. The other means of leverage is in providing an equity drain from national fiat. This works because currencies with a superior store of value will drain equity from national fiat that tries excessive quantitative easing as a means of stealing from the public.
Unfortunately most of the public doesn't really understand what is going on which is why it cannot free itself. Freedom won't come from protests. Not this time. The only way it will come, is when the parasites who now currently control the host are driven from it through the use of technology to render their positions obsolete.
Sorry if this sounds like I don't have faith in the wisdom of the public, but I've watched the public be manipulated for decades, rendered incapacitated and paralyzed. Once that stranglehold is eliminated, then we can get to work in creating technical fairness that turns control structures inside out, introducing privacy to the public and transparency to government (we currently have that backwards). A model similar to Cicada DDD is but one of many possibilities that can be worked out that will deliver equity to the world.
Donations (public bitcoin address):
3FwxQsa7gmQ7c1GXJyvDTqmT6CM3mMEgcv
