Remember when you were in elementary school and your teachers decided it was time to make a time capsule for some future generation in 100 years to open up?
I vaguely remember this. My bright-idea contribution was to put some mint condition baseball cards in protective cases so the future children (and teachers) could fight over who gets to keep the profits after they sold them.
I hadn't really thought about any of the three time capsules I've done in my life up until now.
"Why are you thinking about time capsules and blockchains dammit!?", I hear the reader muttering in a growing rage, wondering when I'll get to the damn point.
Just breathe, friend. All in good time.
As soon as I understood the structure and basic value proposition of Steem and the Steemit platform, my mind naturally began to look for additional areas where this technology could develop and disrupt...
Eureka! HISTORICAL ARCHIVES!
I think Orwell would agree, being to reference past documents and check historical examples to influence current decisions is extremely valuable.
More so, I think Orwell would agree that being able to KNOW that those historical records haven't been altered or corrupted is even more of an important value proposition.
Imagine a world where you couldn't be sure if your memories of the past are, in fact, REAL memories, or just memories so widely accepted as fact that the truth could have been subjectively edited without anyone noticing?
The Mandella Effect aside, which is a whole different can of noodles, imagine if at this present moment, we could look back 100 years and know precisely what sort of things people were doing, thinking, saying, and believing at any given moment in time?
What about 500 years ago?
1000 years?
You should be seeing my point now.
Assuming we're not all going to be vaporized by fiery balls of pretty lights, thus eliminating the possibility of future generations, it is/should be the collective hope of all humanity, particularly those with children and grandchildren, that the future be bright and better than it is today. This applies equally to generations far beyond when I'm gone... I would have wrote '... when we're gone...' but to prove my point, this may be read in the year 6042 and I want to be accurate.
Bottom Line: I am arguing that a major part of that 'bright and better' future requires the ready access to censorship resistant, open-source, historical records agreed upon by the consensus of the Steem blockchain.
The words we are writing today have the potential to echo into eternity... literally.
Final Note: I unironically use the term 'literally', because it will be eternity... unless the universe implodes on itself and God hits the reset button to play a new game... Pro-Tip: He should blow into the cartridge this time before hitting the power button.
