“Life punishes those who come late”
On June 21, 2018, Switzerland Federal Councillor Johann N. Schneider-Ammann, Head of the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER) made an important warning at the Crypto Valley Conference Zug.
He remembered the famous words of Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of USSR, on a visit to East Germany in 1989, ironically to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the State few time before the final collapse of GDR. “Life punishes those who come late.”
Mr. Schneider-Ammann used those words, remembering what happened with the World Wide Web and what doesn’t must happen with blockchain. “The meaning of Mikhail Gorbachev’s words in the context of blockchain is plain: Switzerland is a global leader in terms of this new technology and its economic application. We would do well to continue at pace, instead of laying the right tracks after the moment has passed. History is littered with examples of what happens when the train speeds off in a different direction: The World Wide Web may have been invented in Switzerland, at Cern in Geneva (albeit by a Briton, but we will overlook that…). But the internet and computer Eldorado and its global corporations did not flourish here, but in the United States. Let’s do better this time!”
Almost at same time, The EU’s Legal Affairs Committee voted the Copyright Directive with a very controversial provisions. So much so that the Electronic Frontier Foundation said “Everyone needs to know just how wildly dangerous the European Union’s vote this week could be for the global Internet, and the undecided members of the European Parliament must consider the massive worldwide ramifications of their votes.” (Follow the thread). The provisions: Article 11 (aka #linktax) requires online platforms to pay publishers a fee if they link to their news content; and Article 13 (#CensorshipMachines) could put an end to memes, remixes and other user-generated content. It won’t become official legislation until passed by the entire European Parliament in a plenary vote, sometime between December of this year and the first half of 2019, but is a real retrograde threat.
So when from Switzerland trying to look to the future and affirm that “hardly anyone still doubts that blockchain will penetrate our entire economy,” the European Union disputes… the basis of Internet! Every day it is clearer that old Europe, in all fields, does not know how to locate itself in the emerging new world. Let’s do better! And remember, “life punishes those who come late.”
