Smart Brain, Smart Phone…Smart Society?
In the beginning we learned how to communicate, which helped us fight for territory, hunt more effectively, and in essence, give us more time. We learned to grow food. That bought us more time. The industrial revolution came and went; the capitalists beat the communists and fascists (but not the oligarchs) and with the march of economic progress people slowly gained even more space and time. Some unjustifiably more than others, to be sure, but generally speaking we the people have steadily gained bits and bits of time and space relative to those who came before us.
Computers sped up our ability to perform basic computations, again giving us more time. By allowing us to store information in memory we gained complete control over a piece of space and time. We could code a message and store it on a chip that would keep the message for as long as the chip would last. Once we got memory we began working on communication by replicating the functions of sight and sound with monitors, speakers, etc..
Then we moved from the virtualization of brain functions to the virtualization of social functions and learned how to allow individual computers to communicate with other computers. Now, a person can capture and rebroadcast a website or an idea and make sure it can be accessed by anyone on the network anywhere, anytime. We’ve explored the construction of virtual identities and information processing through social media.
The next era of virtualization involves going beyond social functions to target the replication of social institutions. Bitcoin has led to a massive spike of interest in cryptocurrencies and financial technologies capable of duplicating the functions of banks, payment processors, and regulatory agencies in such a way that the institutions themselves — or at least the hoard of capital and administrative bloat that’s propped them up — will no longer be necessary.
Part of the success of bitcoin has to do with its function as a trustless network. By decentralizing the maintenance of a public ledger called a blockchain, bitcoin has made it so that any attack on the network instantly becomes recognizable to other users. The network still has weaknesses but either way it makes sense for currency to be the first major application for a trustless network. Looking toward the next generation of applications, current projects envision secure voting systems to bolster democracy and decentralize business ownership.
The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) model — same, same but different from initial public offerings — offers an interesting glimpse into the possibilities cryptocurrencies can offer on the decentralization front. Companies offer coins or tokens that can act like securities, currencies, or assets depending on their role in the system. Bitcoin’s longevity, reliability, and market cap give it the most currency to be called currency, while Gnosis tokens could be considered more of an asset because it guarantees access to its system. Holding Ether acts like a mutual fund because the Ethereum platform allows you to create other coins on their network so you’re simultaneously investing in the growth of all of the projects in addition to Ethereum itself.
Some, including a handful of influential characters in the crypto-community, have complained that a few savvy individuals can throw together a white paper and raise millions of dollars for a project with only the slightest idea of how it might work, the implication being that they’ll take the money and run when it doesn’t. On the other hand, however, the potential of decentralized autonomous organizations, combined with digital jurisdiction platforms like the Aragon project, point to a future where investors can focus on funding good ideas themselves rather than good ideas that happen to come from the “right” people.
Scientists, engineers, developers, etc., have proven their ability to create systems that solve problems for specific purposes. Some systems affect more people than others but when we start talking about enacting a virtual realm of social institutions we have to remember that social institutions must ultimately serve society. It’s great when a system changes the game for those capable of accessing it but we ultimately face judgment in terms of how we treat the lowest common denominator; in this case, non-participants.
Many individuals, myself included, have already seen benefits from cryptocurrency technology and major companies have begun adopting it to save money and serve their own purposes but in order to truly harness the potential of decentralized services we have to connect them with those who have been disenfranchised. In some cases we can think about the disenfranchised traditionally: women, minorities, LGBTQ, etc., but we can also think about the ways politico-economic forces disenfranchise workers and consumers from playing a greater role in the workplace and markets, respectively.
We’ve come to a fork in the road. One path leads financial technology to the aid of the entrenched, white, bro-y to the point of rapey, mega-Moloch-monolith that the tech sector has unfortunately become. The other path leads financial technology down the road we’ve always romanticized: wild-west tech-xplorers blazing new trails through the mysterious wilderness of technological innovation, bestowing gifts of connectivity to serve the wonderful spirit and well-being of humanity.
Exciting breakthroughs happen each and every day and we can’t have a say in how they’re used if we don’t even know they exist! We have the time; we have the resources; we just have to make it happen. Smart brain, smart phone, smart society.
