Hello Blockchain: A Tattoo on the Internet
When approaching any new computer programming language, framework, or methodology, there is the long standing tradition of starting with a ‘Hello World’ program:
Hello Worlds are meant to be quick and trivial, basic examples to orient total newbies and prove that something is up and running correctly. It is accepted that there is no substance to them, nor does there need to be.
Indeed my personal collection of Hello World programs would be vast, probably, if I kept any of them. They are almost instantly deleted and forgotten as one moves on to the next tutorial in that particular language.
Given that blockchain technology has been identified as a high value service innovation opportunity it has the potential to be an integral part of a smart city for people, and it behooves me to get to know it better.
I’m not a programmer by training, far from it, but always like to know enough about a technical subject to have an informed conversation with those who are to know what it can do, and moreover make it more human.
So like any of my technology forays it starts with Hello World, but with blockchain technology it isn’t so simple.
One of the fundamental and unique features of blockchains is immutability and decentralization. Once you go to the effort and expense of writing something to a blockchain it is very very (very) hard to delete.
Said another way, data on a blockchain is resilient.
There’s lots of technical nitty-gritty under that statement, and it got me thinking. If we’re writing something to a blockchain, even if it is just for testing purposes, shouldn’t that something be a little less disposable than Hello World?
Said another way, does a resilient medium lead to more resilient messages?
To explore this I went next door and posed a question to Sheila and a group of Grade 4 students at Calgary’s City Hall School:
“What message would you share with the world if you knew it could never be deleted? What would you say to people in another country or to your future self?”
Sheila clarified that their messages would be like “a tattoo on the internet”.
A tattoo on the internet. Heads nodded while I let that sink in for a second.
The students then got to work on their responses, which were awesome, and seemed to follow a similar theme:
“Hello people in the future if you are still fighting in wars, don’t fight instead Make Peace!”
“Be kind, understanding and loving towards each other.”
“Always be kind. Always choose kindness”
“why do you really wanna fight?”
“Be good people.”
We were kind of blown away. Thank you Sheila and thank you Grade 4!
As promised, all 26 student responses now form our first blockchain dataset, and live in Ethereum Contract 0x5e155edab3772825b99893bA5E6EE076Cd442980. The corresponding contract code resides at Github on the Civic Innovation YYC repository of blockchain experiments.
So, does a resilient medium lead to resilient messages? I’m inclined to think so, and can’t wait to learn more.
Hello Blockchain, welcome to our smart city.
