This revised 2014 article veers off into some strange territory at the end:
For the first time in human history, ALL of the philosophical, psychological, and educational frameworks and just about every technology necessary to create and sustain abundant, low-cost access to energy, water, nutritious food, high-quality education, physical and mental health, transportation, and shelter exists at the same time.
Right now, in 2018, we already have everything we need to reduce and possibly eliminate nearly all the waste in our systems. And we can do it all in a way that benefits the planet’s environment instead of harming it and possibly destabilizing it.
The obstacles to the widespread deployment of these ideas and technologies are misaligned incentives and scale.
And thanks to an extraordinary invention by a strange reclusive figure who calls itself Satoshi, humanity may have a path around those obstacles as well
No, that invention is not Bitcoin. It is the blockchain, the much more significant technology that makes Bitcoin possible.
In a much bigger upcoming guide to the blockchain, we’ll explore these things as well.
I've seen all manner of wind-ups to "blockchain," but this one was quite unexpected.
If the author is talking about social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," he can save his breath. This has been done to death.
Nope! While your skepticism is totally reasonable, this is not a lead up to anything basic like a social network on the blockchain or any ICO/Coin pitch at all.
That blockchain wind up was only a foreshadowing of another piece of content..an essay that attempts to actually define what the blockchain is (in historical context) AND how it can be applied over the next generation to solve huge problems in energy, food production, transportation, municipal government, civic engineering, education, etc.
Unrelated..except for the one small fact they they are all large scale social systems built on foundations of technologies and philosophies from the 18-20th centuries.
And yes, crypto hype IS 100% in full effect and there is a plurality of nonsense in and amidst all the hype.
And yet, from the railroads to the automobile to the stock exchange to the internet, groundbreaking technologies seem to develop via a massive wave of speculation that brings with it the full battery of scammers, hypers, and snake oil peddlers but also the funding and expertise that actually builds new infrastructure...
Then all the get-rich-quickers lose their shirts, some of the scammers go to jail, and what's left behind is a completely new way of doing things.
"what's left behind is a completely new way of doing things."
You do realize this hinges on a "hope" that someone figures what to do with blockchain and it's implied by what you say that there is no current use case for blockchain let alone crypto? Just checking.
> social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology,"
I don't get the use case properly. Is it the trust issue? How can a distributed voting system fix it? And also, wouldn't that require a lot of processing power?
Basically, if you have a cryptographic write only log of social activity, and can exchange that with others, you can create social activity/interactions that are only readable by your social graph (as it should be), and not by third parties/providers.
It's a really, really neat concept (in the vein of the awesome stuff happening with distributed cryptographic consensus in general), and simply needs easier entry points for mass adoption.
For the first time in human history, ALL of the philosophical, psychological, and educational frameworks and just about every technology necessary to create and sustain abundant, low-cost access to energy, water, nutritious food, high-quality education, physical and mental health, transportation, and shelter exists at the same time.
Right now, in 2018, we already have everything we need to reduce and possibly eliminate nearly all the waste in our systems. And we can do it all in a way that benefits the planet’s environment instead of harming it and possibly destabilizing it.
The obstacles to the widespread deployment of these ideas and technologies are misaligned incentives and scale.
And thanks to an extraordinary invention by a strange reclusive figure who calls itself Satoshi, humanity may have a path around those obstacles as well
No, that invention is not Bitcoin. It is the blockchain, the much more significant technology that makes Bitcoin possible.
In a much bigger upcoming guide to the blockchain, we’ll explore these things as well.
I've seen all manner of wind-ups to "blockchain," but this one was quite unexpected.
If the author is talking about social networks combined with "Blockchain Technology," he can save his breath. This has been done to death.