The Coming Flood of Networks of Drones
“Network power, like any new technology, suddenly attacks from ambush, like a guerrilla unit, not in a predictable way like a regular army,” Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy.
From iPhone to iDrone, Chapter 2
Network power surprised and attacked several times:
1, like what social networks did to the Arab dictators in the Arab Spring,
2, like what the Bitcoin and Blockchain are going to do to the old finance empires of banks,
3, like what Amazon is doing to the old empires of retail and malls,
4, like what the artificial neural networks are going to creates not only a Driver-less civilization, but also a Human-less civilization.
5, like what drones are going to create a distributed decentralized new kind of aviation, and new kind of perspective in photography.
The next disruption: Intelligent and Decentralized network of Drones
What is the next thing of network power that will appear unexpectedly like a black swan? Would it be the neural networks of the new type of artificial intelligence that would lead from a car without a driver and a bank without bankers to mass unemployment and disruption of social order? Or will it be the stronger combination of networks of autonomous swarms of drones disrupting existing traffic, agriculture, and our self-image in our own eyes?
Black swans are unpredictable by nature. Therefore, we will examine today the possibility that the next black swan will appear from the direction of drones with artificial intelligence, that will be managed from a business point of view in Blockchain.
In Chapter 1 of our series “From iPhone to idrone”, https://medium.com/@asheridan/from-iphone-to-idrone-chapter-1-1f098e2465f7 we saw that every hardware (smartphone, bookstore or drone) is an opportunity, it is the platform at the base of a new ecosystem with five-layers: hardware, operating system, application store, social network, and Blockchain.
We also saw in chapter 1 that the history of the last fifty years of technology shows that technology giants have not seen the next black swan: IBM which was dominant in hardware, did not see Microsoft as the dominant player in the software. Microsoft did not see the network before Google. Google did not see the social network before Facebook. And Facebook still don’t see the social network of trust (the Blockchain).
The combination of a completely new hardware platform like drones, with artificial intelligence and blockchain, can lead to a double or even triple black swan.
We are building on the power of the networks in two aspects: the network of the decentralized content, and the network of drones as a swarm.
Surfing exemplifies how customizing technology causes big advances in extreme sports, and later even be extended to “extreme economy”
The first stage of the new ecosystem of drones is the hardware, the drone for extreme sports. Surfing exemplifies how customizing technology causes big advances in extreme sports. The first recorded instances of surfing came from Peru when fishermen found a way to rig their boats to withstand large waves. The next innovation came when big wave surfers can catch 50-foot waves and started using custom Jet-Skis to tow them in. The chance to reconfigure always leads to growth. Drones are no different.
Each sport has unique demands. The speed and auto-focus needed to capture the exhilaration longboarding are very different from those needed to visualize a tenuous technical climb. Reconfiguration is an absolute must. So too is the ability to share innovations. This cannot happen when monopolistic companies like DJI ensure that hardware can only be used for a single idea of what drones are used for. For these centralized entities, a drone can only be an instrument of surveillance, and a fishing boat can only be a fishing boat. CamiKaze gives the power back to the garage-tinkers and thrill seekers. Utilizing decentralized blockchain technology, users can share DIY innovations, blueprints, and software freely.
From Zero-Sum Game, to Positive-Sum Game
In a recent interview in Quartz Magazine, Vitalik Buterin argues that because the Blockchain is a “world computer” and a “world bank”, it will lead to a new economy of positive-sum game, that will replace both big banks and big tech companies like Apple and Google.
I argue that because drones are a new kind of hardware, we can imagine what will be Apple 2.0, or “The Blockhained Apple”:
Vitalik says: “Going beyond money, I think the value is that you create a token and you immediately have access to wallets, multi-signature wallets, decentralized exchanges, and just using it as collateral — all of this infrastructure that you wouldn’t have access to if you just created a currency and tried launching it off your own server. I feel like actual utilities in the space are going to start getting closer to things that are more purely digital.”
Drones are for the rest of Us
Steve Jobs understood before everyone that “computers are for the rest of us”. So, in the first stage he began to put an alternative to the centralized Mainframe of IBM, in the form of Apple’s personal computer. A new kind of hardware that was personal, inexpensive, and accessible to anyone. In the second stage, he realized that simple software was needed to help each person interface with the simple hardware. So, he discovered Xerox’s graphic-visual interface, which later was developed into a separate operating system: Microsoft Windows. In Stage III Steve Jobs realized that the Internet is changing the rules of the game of hardware and software development, and built a unique small and simple hardware, the iPod, which is connected to the Internet through the iTune music store. The connection to the network led upgrading the iPod from a specific technology for music download and playback, to general technology, the iPhone, which was the platform for applications using Crowed Sourcing or the App Store. But Steve Jobs died before the rise of the fourth layer, the layer of social and Facebook, so Apple’s development stalled at the network stage and did not appear “Social Apple”. But in the meantime, the fifth stage of the trust layer of the Blockchain has come.
Camikaze builds on all five layers: a hardware platform that learns the methodology of the multi-billion-dollar giant such as Apple and Amazon to start from zero, from the hardware of the drone, to an operating system software, an application network, a social network and a network of trust and sharing of the by Blockchain.
Once upon a time in the age of Dinosaurs printing, we had a huge and ugly printing machines (left picture). We in Camikaze will enable millions of people to design drones on our platform, and to by accessories, in a similar way that people buy accessories for smartphones.
In chapter 3 of our series, we will introduce you to our team in Camikaze
Asher Idan, Ph.D
