My First Blockchain

Nimmo’s tech path has become extremely focused, but I’ve got the feeling like when I’ve started too many knitting projects and I’m never going to finish any of them because if you spread all your knitting time over lots of projects, you never feel any momentum with any of them. And also I feel like I keep looking at shiny new lace shawl patterns to start instead of concentrating on finishing the hat, jumper, socks and baby jacket that I already have started [my actual work-in-progress list is much longer than that, but neither of us has time for me to list them all].
I started a new job, so I have 18 months to work out what to do next which feels like ages, but I am feeling perpetually short on time. There have been a bunch of extra things on lately, plus the Melbourne Writers Festival, so I have been feeling like there hasn’t been enough time to write or code or learn or read.
Then I had the opportunity to go to Blockchain APAC on Wednesday and I said YES! but Wednesday is supposed to be a writing day, I flipped out a little bit that I’m never going finish my next book, I’m never going to learn to code, I’m never going to focus on something and finish it and find a job that lasts more than 18 months (ignoring the fact I’ve had those in the past and walked away and everything’s been fine).
Going would mean a whole day where I should/could be working on something I’ve already started! Then Nimmo reassured me that if you’re not sure what you’re looking to do, it’s hard to go for it, so it’s a good idea to check out a lot of things. She notes that for her, day after day of coding has brought back the ‘ease’ for more complex stuff, but if you’re not certain where you want to go, there’s probably not much point in throwing yourself into something you’re not sure about.
And then I went to the blockchain day and it was extraordinary and I learnt so much! I don’t know if I believe blockchain (which [to massively oversimplify] is a ledger (that everyone and no one is the boss of) that records and timestamps interactions) will solve world poverty by 2030 (one of the many claims made), but I am a cautious convert to its usefulness and I’m interested to learn more. I had been resistant to learning about it. I was dating a guy in 2017 (before bitcoin went bugnuts) who was always banging on about how blockchain was a force for social good and for fundamental change in the world. If I’m honest, I tuned him out a lot of the time (sorry, buddy!). I caught up with him after the conference and admitted to the truth. He hadn’t noticed at the time, so at least I hadn’t been totally obnoxious about it, and it was great to catch up with him and learn more.
I took pages of notes and hundreds of photos of slides at the conference and my mind was overflowing by the end of the day. I want to try and share what I learned, but it might end up being a chaotic series of dot points, we’ll see.
A persistent theme through the day was that blockchain will change the world. There was a blockchain in education talk that made me skeptical of this, but one of the first talks of the day persuaded me that it might. Another theme of the day was Cryptokitties, it felt like every talk mentioned them in some way.
Prof Jason Potts from RMIT gave an incredible talk on the history of blockchain.

For all I learned from his talk, the thing he said that struck me the most was almost a throwaway line. He and his team are publishing mostly on Medium because the research is moving too fast to wait for academic journals. I have spent a lot of time over the last 7 years determining whether something is a legit journal and is peer reviewed. It is one of the measures the Australia Research Council and Universities use to determine ‘quality’ research. It affects whether academics are considered to be meeting their job requirements or are eligible for promotion. I am struggling to find the words to express how floored I am that academics are publishing research in places that ‘don’t count’.
There was panel discussion late in the day on the impact of blockchain in education. It was a very interesting, but although mention was made of the current education system being a relic of industrialisation, most of the ideas focused on how blockchain might replace existing mechanisms within the current structure, not how it might ‘disrupt’ education as we know it. There was some talk of how difficult it is to teach code in high schools, let alone blockchain. There are companies now that will come in to your school for a fee to teach blockchain to the students. These two things suggest to me that, in the immediate future, the young people who will learn the most about blockchain (and code) will be either motivated self learners or students from wealthy schools. I spend a lot of time thinking about school/uni and how it could be better for students and teachers alike, so I have spent a lot of time since the conference thinking about blockchain and if it could have fundamental changes to our education system. I am thinking about entering a story (based on changes I could imagine) to a speculative fiction anthology at the end of the month. I’ll see how I go.
Here is were I devolve into a series of dot points from my notes, presented with no attempt at clarity or order:
- blockchain takes away your boundaries
- in bitcoin the implications of buggy code are catastrophic
- blockchain is useful when you can articulate a central point of failure that leads to inefficiency and loss
- it is a trust-less consensus mechanism
- think small, focus on the first actor
- people don’t communicate with words, but with feelings
- happy lives rarely come from shipping earlier or spending more time in the office. It’s about love, relationships, connection and family
- ethereum is optimising on being censorship resistant
- blockchain is most useful for collaboration
There are lots of other things about the day that I want to think/talk more about - like gender representation, the stuff Paul Sin from Deloitte Hong Kong went into about all the ways you can get around blockchain guarantees, something that occurred to me about acknowledgement of country, blockchain and social justice, and so many other things from a very full day. I’m also tempted to just put up all the photos I took in a big glorious mess of info. But it is late and time to take the bread out of the oven before bed. If you are interested in blockchain (and especially how it might work with education at all levels) I’d love to have a chat.
King of KingNimmo
