Why we should nurture curiosity

Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash

“The important thing is to never stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Albert Einstein

Recently I was given the honor of being interviewed by a group of innovative and forward-thinking high school students. I was really pleased with the result so I thought, “why not post the interaction?” Here is some of the best parts of the interview.

If you make it to the end, I’ll tell you what was really the best parts.

Why are you using the blockchain? Is this helpful to your business?

In my area of expertise, technologies based on blockchain removes a number of interruptions that would otherwise introduce inefficiencies in virtual market economics. One is regulatory. It is widely accepted in the technology sector that the government is never a source of efficiency or productivity, and many cases introduces conflict in an otherwise efficient socio-economic models. In many cases government agencies have shown evidence of unethical conflict of interest.

Second is cyber-security. Technologies based on blockchains have a property that is based on private key encryption. This means that content being passed through the protocols are under multiple layers of encryption. We see that this property is increasingly relevant under a regulatory environment where government surveillance, corruption, and manipulation is a common occurrence. The premise being that if intellectual property is inaccessible and immutable from central authorities such as governments, institutions, and corporations then the stakeholders of the content is protected from the reach of military enforcement.

Third is price volatility. Price volatility is dangerous when it affects markets that have real-world implications. An example is when the American housing market was artificially manipulated through mortgage securities which were based on subprime debt collaterals. The result of of this manipulation was an inflation of housing prices that, when it made a correction, affected the welfare of millions on a global scale.

My personal interests involve empowering market systems and the tokenization of reputation without the dependency of third party institutional actors. In the current model this is filled by institutional credit rating agencies such as Moodys and Standard and Poors. In my research they were instrumental accomplices in the 2008 global economic recession.

The blockchain is a solution that is inherent in the design of decentralized technologies and distributed systems as a whole. In prior designs, the need for a hierarchical topology allowed network protocols to circumvent redundancy and inefficiencies in the quality of data. The current form of Internet architecture relies on this hierarchical topology. But we are approaching levels of bandwidth that is showing the limits of this hierarchical design. This is because the early Internet needed to solve quality of data first.

As the Internet matured, not only humans consume data but also intelligent machines, robots if you will, and other mechanical devices. The next iteration of the Internet needs to solve the problem of bandwidth, or Big Data.

What are the issues you are facing when using the blockchain?

Some of the biggest concerns when using peer-to-peer networks instead of trusted third-parties is that the networks have to be robust against something called a 51% attack [5]. Another is something called a Byzantine Generals problem [2]. Popular opinion about the loss of a third-party mediatory system maybe divided because there are tradeoffs that benefit the use of trusted third parties. Chief among them is the reversal of disputed transactions. For example, credit cards companies like Visa can reverse a purchase after it has been submitted into their ledger. By design, this is impossible with blockchain transactions, as demonstrated by the DAO incident of 2016 [1].

And what is your opinion about the usage of blockchain?

The most attractive property of blockchain technology is its ability to empower a network of peers in conducting their designed activities. In the early 2000s Napster [3] demonstrated the potential of uninterrupted peer to peer networks as a media distribution network. Blockchain solved many of the problems that early distributed networks like Napster couldn’t provide. The most popular use case for blockchain is aimed at optimizing inefficiencies in the financial sector. This is the sector where Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 [4]. A more ambitious use case aim to innovate in industries that currently enjoy business models that depend on trusted third parties as mediators or gatekeepers. This is where blockchain protocols, frameworks, and platforms are being designed to solve problems of inefficiency and optimization that are unprecedented.

As a socio-economic vehicle for innovation and disruption we now have the ability to remove inefficiencies found in socio-economic models that rely on third-parties.

As I said above, the best part of the interview was that these students were so outstanding that they used their full potential and curiosity to an extent that instead of dismissing opportunities, they chose to explore it, which is an act of taking a risk.

I’m so impressed to have met these students that my contribution was not as rewarding as the knowledge that innovative kids like them need to be encouraged and cultivated. Curiosity is such a valuable commodity that it is more precious than rare diamonds.

About TasselVR

TasselVR is a decentralized travel marketplace that lets travelers book tourist experiences from locals, instead of full-service tourist companies. TasselVR aims to bring the promise of VR technology to travelers one route at a time.

Chat with us:

https://t.me/joinchat/GyVdqw-nntXXpxP6ns-Opg

References:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault_tolerance#Byzantine_Generals'_Problem
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_file_sharing
4. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
5. A. M. Antonopoulos, S. H. E. Hariry, M. K. Lords, P. Morgan, M. Scothorn, and S. Zolt-Gilburne, The Internet of money: volume two. Middletown, DE: Merkle Bloom LLC, 2017.
6. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/1/51-attack.asp