Technologically speaking, the blockchain technology is amazing. Maybe not as amazing as the internet itself, because it’s being build on the internet, or as a feature of the internet. As in, without the internet there is no blockchain. So, if this is a dick measuring contest, the internet wins greatly against blockchain. But this is not a blog about dick measuring, nor is it a blog about how great the technology behind blockchain is, because in all honesty, I don’t know that much about technology.
Yes, I personally know most definitely more about technology than the average grandparent, or even parent (from the generation Baby Boomer / X), but comparing with other people from my generation (Millennial/Y) and especially the younger/next generation, my technological knowledge is average to a little above average, so nothing to brag about. And just so I can give you a clear picture, I heard about bitcoin pretty early on. The first time was maybe even in 2010, but back then the technology was so new that I surely wouldn’t have bought any of it, just because I couldn’t even know back then how to get started with it. There was no easy website available where you could have just logged in and buy and store the bitcoins, and most importantly, it was a digital currency that used “satoshi”, a number with that much zeros to get lost in. The only way I’m good with numbers is by using them in budgets, but doing calculations, especially calculations in my head, oh no, that’s a no-go zone for me. I like words in my head, not numbers, eventhough I do have a special relationship with numbers, but that must be a story for another time, because as I was saying I did knew about bitcoin pretty early on, and that means I’ve heard of it, I’ve seen people talk about it on the internet, but I didn’t dig deep into it. Back then I didn’t even think that one bitcoin, which then was something you can get that was a very small portion of a whole, it didn’t click in me what it would (financially) mean if that small portion became one, or 20.000.
Back then, for me at least, it was a novelty that you could buy, but to which I knew so little about that I wouldn’t even dare to put 1 cent in, because that 1 cent I could have used to buy something better. Come 2011, hearing more about bitcoin, I believe back then it was Reddit that was the medium that “bombarded” me with that name, I became curious and went to see where you “can find it” (read: buy it). Don’t ask me the name of the website that I’ve found, but I did buy € 28 of bitcoin in 2011. Now, there are 2 things I’m absolutely sure about what I’m telling you right now, that the amount I paid was € 28 and that it was in 2011. Don’t ask me how big of a portion of bitcoin that was, or even, how many bitcoins that was, because I don’t know. I only remember that I bought that amount, because that was the amount at that time that seemed reasonable enough to me (and what I had to spare) to buy into it to try it out, and most importantly, it was used to buy bitcoin on/for a website that gave you every hour more bitcoins, or a portion of bitcoin, if you bought a quantity.
As you can see, the details I have are very blury, because at that time I just bought them to try them out, never realizing the consequences and/or the implications of what it actually means, because, that I’ve learned years later. Unfortunately, years later too late, where the harddrive I’ve stored the portion and/or total amount of bitcoins, wouldn’t turn on again. I still have that harddrive here, don’t have anybody in my circle that could look at it and see if there’s still some information to be obtained from it, but that doesn’t matter to me anymore, because that harddrive serves now to me as a reminder of how powerfull, both technology and ignorance is. That to me is priceless, even more than the amount that the bitcoins stored on it currently have.
So, you can comfortably say that, because of this experience, of all the technology in the World I know more about blockchain than any other technology, and even then, I know that I know not enough to be saying that I understand the technology, because I don’t. And with that I mean, don’t talk to me about codes, because I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation about that. I still don’t know how those sequences of zero’s and one’s create a visible structure on our screens that we can give value to. Fuck, I still don’t understand how I’m able to type this on a keyboard that gives signal to a screen that shines light and does what my fingers are telling it to do / show. That side of technology is still magic to me. And to tell you the truth, I kind of like it that way, because I know that my brain is not made to work with numbers (and equations) like that. If you do a small research on me, you can easily find out the equations I designed myself and they’re in essence all qualitative, not quantitative. Because I’m a words guy, not a numbers guy.
Technology-wise, I can eventually understand how things work and/or how you get things to work for you, but understanding how to start making it work for you, that part I leave to others to break their brains on, because mine’s useless for that. My brain works best with, in essence, nature. Natural things, behavior, emotion.
Now, you can argue that the technology we use is natural, because it’s made by us, natural beings, made from natural resources. But for this blog, I will put technology in the supernatural category, because there is some man-made assemblee needed for technology, as we know it, to work. We cannot grow computers from trees. It needs to be assembled. And not just from gathering resources, but by gathering resources, processing them and making them into something else. It’s Earthly plus, and I need to stick with just Earthly. Animals, plants, people, organizations, nothing plus about that, just plain Earthly things to work it.
With that said, I can now just say that the most exciting thing about blockchain is that it’s another Earthly plus “object” we made that will help us advance the global society we’re creating together, and I wouldn’t be wrong, because that is exciting. Eventhough there are still many people around the World not even conscious of the fact that blockchain technology exists and/or they are still in the phase that I was back in 2011, still not able to comprehend the magnitude of what this technology can (and I believe, will) do for humanity, is exciting all by itself. Because who could’ve thought that after the invention of the internet, we would get another technology working for us this quick?
Yes, that I guess is a rethorical question, because the one(s) who thought of blockchain/bitcoin were the ones that knew that we found something after the internet that is significant for humanity as whole, just as internet is. But then, I do need to wonder, did they actually think that it could be this significant? Because if you read the Bitcoin whitepaper, you can see that the author(s) thought that it is a new global, decentralized, monetary system, what they’ve created (with full disclosure: I did not read that whitepaper in full, nor extensively). Which again, if that is the only thing they’ve created, would be an immensely exciting thing to cheer for. But as we can already see, that technology didn’t just stay in being just a global payment solution. It grew into something more, it expanded into new territories, it morphed and became the foundation of something even greater, public accountability.
Global Public Accountability.
That. That there, is to me, the single most exciting thing that blockchain has brought to the World. To understand this, don’t just look at where we are at the moment, because the blockchain technology has barely started. Please remember that this is not entirely Earthly, it’s Earthly plus, and history has thought us that no Earthly plus objects/inventions/creations materialize in just a few years, even in just a few decade(s). Earthly plus creations take time, really long time to get engrained in (global) societies.
Just look at the industrial revolution, it still hasn’t matured yet. Tesla and other companies are still trying to make it better, because that technology is, in essence, still in the dark ages. We are still needing human slavery to keep our industrial revolution going, and mentioning Tesla is not an endorsement, because in essence they are still relying on human slavery to make their objects that they want to sell, which is wrong, but it is indicative of how far we still are from reaching the point to which we can put technology work for us. We still need to work as slaves to make the technology we have work for us. Or just to be perfectly clear, that is the modern dogmatic capitalistic way of viewing things, because I personally believe we don’t need to work as slaves to make technology work for us, we need to accept slower growth to make technology work for us, but modern capitalistic scripture doesn’t leave room for slowness, everything needs to go fast and break. Which in my opinion is a fairy tail that makes a lot of money, but in reality only really breaks things. Things we need, like nature or our global society.
But again, that is definitely a topic for another blog (or book), because the point I’m trying to make here is that, we are learning. Yes, collectively, maybe not fast enough, or not as fast as we could. But we are learning. We are creating. We are evolving. Nobody can disagree with that. And I believe that, this “simple” new technology called blockchain can push humanity even further, because it creates a window into the inner workings of societies itself. Blockchain is truly the start of the “digitalization” of the World.
For this you don’t have to take my word for it. If you put more weight on the words of people that are technological wizards and earned a lot of money on this planet, just look at this Twitter thread from Anthony Pompliano;
https://twitter.com/apompliano/status/1022835004903186434?s=21
- apompliano
On there “Pomp” talks about the digitalization of our World, which is something that already started, which only has one significant question to be answered, when will it reach maturity?
If you think that I will dare to give an answer on that, you are wrong, very, very wrong, because I’m not a psychic, I cannot make accurate predictions on actual future events. And I say this as the designer of the 1001 year plan, a plan you’ll be able to read more on in the (near) future, to which let this be the first warning of many, I cannot predict the future, nor do I even ever make the assumption that I can, I take only what is that I see before me and project that the furthest I can, and in those projections an imagine can be made, but it’s totally based on an image that is made with the materials at hand. To which they serve mostly as guidelines than they serve as true predictors.
To make this more clear, take public accountability as an example. I say that the most exciting thing about blockchain is public accountability, because if you strip the technology we have before us, you remain with a public Ledger, which is in essence a “file” that tells everything that happened in a certain period of time. Now, what it describes as happening is what “we” have programmed it to insert in its recordings.
Yes, that in itself is difficult to comprehend, because who decides what goes in its recordings and who decides what action(s) categorizes as an recordable action? We, or in this case, all that will make use of that program. That in itself is very tricky, because do all users have sufficient knowledge and/or comprehension to assert the validity of the parameters given to the program to make records to the ledger? Of course not, hence, this will take time, but eventually I believe that we as a global society can get to the point to which we can come to universal guidelines to give as input to one global/universal program/ledger, but point being that, even if the first public ledger is not perfect, it wouldn’t matter because of the implication that it will have on that (global) society.
To try to make this more practical, picture this;
The parliament of country A decided to implement Blockchain X, which records and categorizes every single communication point/entry with one of it public servants. So, doesn’t matter if an email, telephone call, personal visit, letter, voice message, video call, enters for a public servant, member of parliament, minister, president or King, every single communication contact needs to be recorded on a public ledger. There are no exemptions that can be made, every single communication contact needs to be recorded. So, just to be clear, not the actual conversation, or the actual motive of the contact, but the actual communication entry date, time, maybe even length of the communication medium (in words and/or minutes) needs to be registered in a public ledger, with no exemptions.
So, if you’ve read what mr. Pompliano said about our new digital reality, it is perfectly imaginable that this simple example can become reality sooner than thought, because only thing that is needed is connecting for example the telephonelines with the blockchain, and whenever a call comes in to a public number, both the phone number and time (duration) of call will be registered and submitted to the ledger as soon as the call ends. Or when you come visit your member of congress or senate, you must check in your ID before the doors can open for you and so making everyone being logged into the ledger, even if they’re using the ID of the security guard at the gates, because then their log ins are being recorded into the ledger.
Just this simple example gives you an idea of how profound of a change we can expect from the blockchain technology, combined with the other digital technologies already in existence. I can go on, in essence, for ever about this subject, because the technology is still growing up and the future lies full of surprises that we now can only try to preamble, but truth is, those preambles are only going to be hits or misses, because sure things cannot be given, because there are too many active factors determined of/for future scenarios.
Two things can already be said to be sure things, blockchain technology is here to stay and blockchain will bring the era of public accountabiltiy.