Blockchain: let’s not repeat the mistakes we made with Internet
Like internet before, now Blockchain is poised to bring about profound changes in society
A quarter of a century ago the internet, through the World Wide Web, unleashed a tremendous revolution that still reverberates in our society. Compared to that, the Blockchain revolution with its birth through Bitcoin in 2009 is still in its infancy. Yet, we can see already the writing on the wall with the major benefits the distributed ledger technology brings: disruptive disintermediation, inherent trust, drastic simplification through smart contracts, consensus based collaborative decision making and business process efficiency on steroids. Ginny Rometty framed it well by stating: “Blockchain will do for transactions, what the internet did for information. “
Looking back at the start of the World Wide Web
Let us reflect for a moment on the state of the internet and its development up to now. It has brought about enormous changes and we cannot imagine going about our daily routines without it. But is it what we envisioned, at its inception, the internet would evolve into? A quarter of a century ago the World Wide Web was nascent and in a fragile state of development. Mass adoption of this technology was anything but certain.
Imagine that a time traveler from 2018 had arrived at that point in time and informed people what the internet would become: the upside of this traveler’s story would be about a world where billions of people live with pocket devices that combine computer, telephone, mail, TV, radio, media recorders, camera, remote controls, calendar and calculators, all in one. The traveler would narrate that these devices also give instant access to libraries, dictionaries, shops, banking facilities, navigation etc. Listening to all these marvels, the audience would respond in chorus: “Yes, bring it on!”
But then the downside would be revealed: the internet has created a virtual world dominating every aspect of life, where people are glued to their devices and human interaction gets replaced by online, human-to-machine and even machine-to-machine interaction. A world dominated by one search engine, one book store, one online supermarket and basically one social media platform.
A world where a person’s every move made, every email sent, every message exchanged is monitored, followed, stored and analyzed by international corporations. Corporations, that are in no way infallible as shown in the recent breach of security at Facebook, in which 50 million accounts were compromised.
Through sophisticated technology such as Artificial Intelligence, these corporations amass powers, funds and knowledge that dwarf democratically elected governments that experience increasing difficulty in protecting citizens’ rights. A world where cyber bullying thrives, pornography and violence is pushed to screens of adults and kids alike and where terrorists and extreme ideology can recruit followers and enable them to organize and commit heinous crimes and broadcast these crimes to millions.
This inconvenient truth about internet would make the time travelers’ audience uncomfortable and make them say: “Thanks, but no thanks — that’s not the future we want”.
If we had pre-lived the future of internet
However, in spite of all the incredible possibilities, good and bad, that the internet has brought, time travel is not one of them. We were not warned about things to come. But does that mean we could not have anticipated at all the many undesirable aspects the internet has brought? Yes, we could have. As described in “The Living Company” healthy people, businesses and societies develop “a Memory of the Future”. This does not depend on some sixth sense or crystal sphere but is based on continually making short, medium and long term plans to deal with potential future scenarios. None of these scenarios is likely to play out in reality, but parts of them do. And when they do, it becomes easier to assess if a certain development is one we deem desirable or one we would rather nip in the bud.
If a quarter of a century ago Think Tanks of internet engineers, social scientists, futurologists, business people and politicians would have actively engaged in Internet Technology Assessments and have developed a Memory of the Future for internet, they would have come up with potential future scenarios. We would have been able to foresee and rate the probability that some of the excesses we currently face would emerge. Such an Internet Technology Assessment would not have completely prevented these developments from taking place nor would they have foreseen every eventuality. But at least we would have pre-lived potential future scenarios, and could have detected such developments before they would emerge and have taken effective preventive action, rather than relying solely on reactive measures, as we are doing now. The current internet would still not have been perfect, but without a doubt much better than it currently is and society would be better off.
Creating a memory of the future for Blockchain with ongoing Technology Assessment
Now let’s move from internet onto Blockchain, a technological development rooted in and with many parallels to internet. Whilst we will one day be witnesses of today’s historical developments, we are now the agents of change that make these developments happen. Already we can foresee some Blockchain developments that we might want to avoid: one of them is the excessive, unsustainable energy usage that cryptocurrency Blockchains require. Another is the diminished role of human decision making when consensus is achieved through smart contracts running on Blockchains. The human scale should not be lost where decision making is concerned. Another issue, more of a technical nature, concerns the use of cryptography in Blockchain. This technology could one day be compromised by technologies such as quantum computing that might break current cryptographic code. Assessing that risk and anticipating consequences, we could design architectures for Blockchain that can cope with such future developments.
If we subject Blockchain to ongoing, thorough Technology Assessment, other issues will definitely surface. Doing this iteratively, we can create an ever evolving Memory of the Future for Blockchain. Now is the time to learn from the erratic way the internet has developed and take action to do better with Blockchain.
Big developments come with big responsibilities
We should not be blinded by the wonderful opportunities it promises, but be critical in its development and deployment and continually and consciously assess how this technology may develop. That includes keeping an open eye on potential unwanted developments and take action to prevent them from taking shape. At the same time, Technology Assessment should never become a rigid exercise that stifles creativity, but instead serve as a horizon broadening tool, enabling us to see future consequences of today’s possibilities. At the same time, it is not easy to assess developments whilst they are happening and we will certainly not prevent every negative development from taking place. The current state of the World Wide Web should serve as a lesson that we should act with the responsibility that comes with such a major development. If we take our role as actors of change seriously, we should act accordingly in the development of Blockchain. If we succeed in that, someone’s musings about Blockchain, in a quarter of a century, should be much more positive than today’s about the internet.