Blockchain is a way if keeping records in a collective fashion, and somehow many say that Blockchain will open up new possibilities, change the world, and affect us all.
Today, we use the internet without giving it a second thought. Explaining how blockchain would impact the world is similar to explaining how the internet would impact the world in its early days, say the early 90s, when few understood its importance.
As an example, the global economy depends on the exchange of goods and services, and the internet has indeed connected more people across cities and borders, and along the way reinvented the way we buy or sell things. Take the example of online-marketplaces or ride-sharing services (like Alibaba, eBay or Uber): Without the internet all these ways of conducting business would not be possible. In a world without the internet, we would have to go the the local traditional market or store if we wanted to get anything. The poor or unemployed would not be able to find alternative means of making a living or to be financially independent by selling stuff online. A person would have to be lucky enough to find a company willing to take them in for that particular month, or go hungry, even if he is a very handy mechanic.
So what exactly did the internet do for the world? It changed the way we communicated and exchanged information, both on a personal level and for businesses. Without regular email, businesses would still be sending costly facsimile or even depending on snail mail to get documents across. It would be amazing just to close a hundred transactions a week for a business in those days. These days, with internet-scale companies, a million transactions a week is not unheard of. So what changed?
The internet did not just improve the infrastructure for communications, it also changed how we behaved as a society. People realised they did not have to be a huge company to have an online presence. They did not have to be a journalist to have their thoughts heard. They did not have to meet someone face-to-face to shop for something or purchase a plane ticket. They could find work online if they are a handy mechanic. They did not need an original paper manual just to understand how a new product works. Heck, they do not even need paper to represent cash in their digital wallets (e.g Paypal).
Even in the midst of these advancements of internet use, international trade today is still conducted with a lot of paper. Before an order can be finalised, many companies still require the original purchase-order document and shipping manifest to be signed and sent via express couriers like DHL. Even though these documents were already sent via email to the other party in a digital format (say a scanned image or PDF), the final documents still need to be received and validated by the accounting department before the transaction can be finalised and payment can be made by the finance department. So what ends up happening is that much people in a company would need to be hired just to print out those documents from the company’s records, and send them across the open sea. The receiving party needs to verify the authenticity of said documents in a laborious process. That is because in the business world, nobody can fully trust each other’s digital records. The same can be said when buying property and many other kinds of sizable transactions.
To address this problem, humanity built a lot of organisations that were simply just intermediaries. Organisations with a presence simply to connect people and other businesses, and tell them to trust the intermediary faithfully. No matter what sort of financial system you look at, there are intermediaries and middlemen. After the advent of the internet, many publishing intermediaries were ousted and everyone became a publisher on Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, and others more. But these solutions still do not work for business trade and transactions with high monetary risks (such as land sales). The many ethical / fraudulent scandals of past inform us that trust can be misplaced. When humanity can finally secure and fully trust each other’s digital records, things are surely about to change.
Allow me to give you another simpler scenario. At some date in time, a man must have shouted Eureka! - and he would have invented the following symbols for mathematics: + - / x
Imagine if you will, this date, that man must be jumping with joy! The four math symbols that will change the world, and yet, what do you think the reaction would have been from the people around him. From his spouse, or coworkers, or friends working in academia, etc.
I’m pretty sure not many people got it. Certainly not the cobbler or the butcher or the stone-mason. Yet in the years to come, all will depend on it. Even the person looking after sheep!
Historical disruptive events and inventions are hardly noticeable in the time when they are happening. Only in hindsight, can historians go back and trace the genesis moment and say, “…that! right there - was when it all started.”
These four seemingly weird symbols changed the world. They are a part of you, me and every person who is born in this era, whether or not they are educated, they will invariably in some manner learn addition and subtraction.
Therefore, when everyone says that Blockchain will change the world and affect us all, what would it mean?
The right answer is - we cannot fathom. Very few of us can actually see or mentally visualise the repercussions of the Blockchain in our daily lives. Just like the math symbols at the time, we will not be able to fully grasp what has been given to us.
But it will surely affect us all in some manner. I think, personally, when humanity can finally trust a collective digital-record because of Blockchain, then at least the way we do accounting, banking, insurance, voting, leasing, trading will change for the better. When transactions become more direct from-peer to-peer because of Blockchain, then it is likely that wealth accumulation and distribution is about to change, shifting away from intermediaries of old. But that’s not all. Will it be able to solve issues like diminish hunger or poverty and hold corrupt people accountable? I don’t know. I hope it will. It depends on how much society believes in collectivism.
Blockchain is but another mathematical methodology (combined with a societal construct) that establishes a way of keeping records honest and accountable among a group of participants. It looks weird today because it forces us to reinvent how we currently do things. Ultimately, just like the four seemingly weird math symbols, what we make of it carries the same promise that can be hoped to radically change the world.
I must give credit, I took inspiration from a Quora post by Ryan Gosling, a professional futurist.