Software Has Eaten Everything But Credentials, Why?

1141 years ago the Chinese introduced the imperial examination system, the first system of its kind and one that has persisted to this day. The way we accredit knowledge now directly descends from this ancient method. In ancient China the system came up against all the same critiques then as it does now: it crushes creativity, instills mindless obedience, and doesn’t prioritizing practical skills. These problems are systemic.

Over the past millennium communication and broadcast have gone through revolution after revolution with much evolution in-between. Money has gone from precious metal based to gold backed, to fractional reserve to electronic & decentralized. Yet, hiring credentials have stayed exactly the same. Why? Because the Chinese system made sense in the analog age.

To issue any credential you must complete this formula:

ACTIONS + MEASURMENT + IDENTITY = CREDENTIAL

This is what a credential is at its most fundamental level and in an analog world recording and measuring actions required someone to be in one place at one time, combined with an identity check at the door by a trusted 3rd party and you have a way to issue credentials in a way that can be trusted at scale. In the digital age recording and measuring actions can happen anywhere at anytime, completing two parts of the equation. The third part (identity) is much harder to address in the realm of 1s and 0s.

Software has not eaten credentials for the same reason software had not eaten money pre-bitcoin. There lacks a digital protocol to replace its analog world equivalent, with digital money it was solving the double spend problem, with credentials it is a ‘proof-of-actor’ problem. How do we prove actions were performed by someone in a way that can be trusted at scale?

At the point digital actions can be reliably tied to people in a way that can trusted at scale, measurements applied to any digital actions can act as hiring credentials that can be trusted at scale. Credentials can go from static, expensive, exclusive and vague to being dynamic, cheap, inclusive and granular. Only then will software eat credentials and the ancient analog Chinese method be displaced.

This is why hiring credentials haven’t changed and this is how they can.

Today the Newtrust Foundation launches to build, back and promote technology that will move credentials away from the analog age. Donate Bitcoin:

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