From mainframes to blockchains. How to look at the future.

Stop talking about blockchain and start talking about trust.

Blockchain is a feature, trust is the benefit.

Not everything needs a blockchain. When trust issues create friction in the users’ experience maybe there is a use case for blockchain.

I’m getting ahead of myself though.

“It was easy to predict mass car ownership but hard to predict Walmart.” — Carl Sagan

I find studying tech history a helpful way to understand the present. So let’s look at the changes that have occurred going from mainframes to blockchains. Examining the technology tradeoff and the opportunities it unlocked.

Technology shifts have occurred when developers get new tools to build with. This is usually accompanied by a change in where computation occurs and data is stored.

Mainframes provided centralised CPU and storage. Users accessed the resources through a terminal.

Mainframes → Personal Computers

Adoption of PCs was made possible by the invention of the integrated circuits and solid state memory.

The adoption of PCs was something I observed growing up. More of my friends had computers at home and retail shops selling computers appeared.

This trend saw the decentralisation of access to computation and storage.