A Pragmatists post on Blockchain
How to get it when you don’t quite get it
Hey.
Are your blocks chained?
All the cool kids are doing it. Chaining them blocks. Seriously chainy .Real blocky.
What? Wall-E? Are my blocks about to get away!? Where are they going?? Why?
<Prepare_Thyself_For_Lots_Of_Brain_Dont_Knows />
This is about when most of us humans usually start to lose the plot.
The math is elegant and brutal. But I don’t wan’t to talk about math right now.
Crypotography is wonderful. But I don’t wan’t to talk about crypotography either.
There’s amazing web technology, and clustered machines, and real important environmental considerations due to power usage. There’s scalability questions. Proof of work. Proof of stake. HODLs and OHMYGODELs. Forked coins and knives out. Miners and GPUs. Algorithms. Rigs. Returns and busts. So much to talk about. All of it worth it. None of which I’m going to cover.
I love to peer deeply into things and really get into it. But I have an insatiable hunger to learn new things, be able to do what I couldn’t before, evolve, adapt. I just can’t help myself but jump to something new.
I’m a curious pragmatist.
I love to learn the cool, but at the end of it, there’s human work to do. I need to build or use something that helps the squishy human out a bit.
Blockchain for a lot of us is a buzzword. But it’s there for a reason. It’s going to be a big part of your future whether you know it or not.
I’m a storyteller. It’s how I communicate.
Here’s how I think of Blockchain.
There’s a clearing in the enchanted woods.
In that clearing is a book. The book is there for everyone to see.
But it’s a special book. It can be in many places at once. But it’s the same book.
My friend and I can exchange information and things by writing in this book. Who wrote what and when is verifiable by all. It’s very hard to tell a lie in the book. The pages of the book, too, once written are indelible. The pages can’t be torn out, can’t be altered. The ink won’t smudge. The pages won’t fray. Like carving your name in the bark of a tree but more permanent.
(don’t do that by the way, it’s involuntary tree tattooing. They make your oxygen. And in a little way light a fire in all of us through oxidation.)
It doesn’t sound like much. But do you know what else is “just pages of paper”
My marriage licence and certificate.
My elementary, high school, University records and transcripts.
The paper that says I learned how to ride a motorcycle and was granted 5 years until expiry.
The paper that lets me get prescriptions or literally saved my guts by diagnosing my Celiac disease.
The paper that lets me buy groceries. Pay taxes. Acquire the glorious caffeine.
All of it. Just pieces of paper in sequence that we trust and can verify as authentic.
Remember I said I was a pragmatist.
Understanding it yourself is great. But application and sharing can benefit more humans.
Let’s get back to that enchanted book in the forest.
If you were to look at the book you’d see “Blockchain, written by Hardmaths Computashun”
You haven’t read their other works. So maybe you’ll like it, but no guarantees though.
What you can see from the inscription is that the pages of the book can be expanded, but new pages can’t just be thrown in by anyone. You can’t sneak a page in that isn’t approved by every other page in the book. Making a new page requires hard maths and time.
It’s like a story that stays the same, so no one can change the meaning from the beginning. If you read the story, and had a perfect memory. You could travel the stars for 100 years, return, and the story would still be the same word for word. You could verify it too. You don’t have to memorize the entire book either. You can just know the pages you care about and can get to the rest of the book by just flipping because of the way the way the book works. Because each page is guaranteed to be in the right order with the right words.
This is pretty powerful and applicable when you really think about it.
I could use this to prove what skills I have. How long I’ve had them. What credentials I hold. What I carry in my wallet. My passport and travel visas.
I should pause as my metaphor is starting to stretch too far for my comfort.
When you think of that book in the clearing of the forest, I want you to know what you write in it wont just be visible to any and all.
Just like the notes you might have passed in class. They’re written in a secret code that only you and your friend you’re writing to know. So even if I peek over your shoulder, or come back later. All I can see is that, yes indeed you wrote something to someone else. And that someone wrote something before you. And that someone wrote something after.
See, Blockchain usually is followed with lots of talk about “crypto” and “secure” and “private/public key”. If you’re not into RSA or ciphertext and plaintext. Man in the middle. NP-HARD. Complexities and Problem Domains.
Don’t worry.
To me, when thinking pragmatically it means: I can trust it.
Disclaimer: don’t blindly trust when you see the buzzwords. Trust requires study. You don’t have to trust me yet either. You will in time once we’ve built enough reliable data between each other. That being said, if you really looked at the risk probability of things of things, there’s a lot of “normal and regular” stuff you’d never do again. Risk analysis is strange. Probability stranger. Universe strangest.
My goal is just to help you find your way to that clearing in the forest. Where the book is waiting for us. Something we can trust. Something we can verify. Something we can use for human things. Like coffees. Like salaries. Like celebrations of love.
There’s so much more to talk about — but I don’t want to just tell you. I hope you go looking. There’s amazing work happening in the public service. There’s amazing work happening in academia and the private sector. From the demos I’ve seen to the talks I’ve watched, we’re entering an exciting time. Some of the changes won’t feel major. But just like changing the filter on your furnace. It’ll make a big difference. It’s it’s just a web search away.
Until next time.
Weasel.out()
