Which leads us to the blockchain. Security in the cloud is a great thing. Speed, transparency, rate of speed of computing from the desktop can increase. Hacking & security issues arise. Blockchain offers a new take on this.
Bitcoin just had a split. Ethereum: offers proof of stake. This idea of peer to peer ability is important, unique transactions online, that duplicate the physical world. Handing a coin physically is duplicated digitally. Throw blockchain into the innovation mix and you have a
secure real world unique transaction, unduplicable, existing on the blockchain, forever, immutable, a permanent record.
This makes way for a revolution in entertainment. Imagine bespoke entertainment, where a performer can create a concert just for you via the blockchain. Just for you, unbreakable, unreproduceable, and unique. Could be singular and not to happen again if one chooses. As gifts this could be a major concept. Private concerts could or other entertainment offerings could occur this way.
Tom Guarriello took the philosophical long view. Suggesting that we are currently in an odd phase, Tom said the role digital devices will play in our lives over the short and long term requires a look at history in order to look forward. The past doesn’t repeat itself, Tom said, but it rhymes. Over the last 150 years, in post-industrial revolution humanity, what’s occurred is a dramatic improvement in the human condition. By every measure human violence has decreased by an order of magnitude. Over millennia, centuries, whatever the time frame, levels of murder, domestic violence, etc., have decreased.
These indicators have improved, it’s the civilizing effect of what we’ve been doing, in effect. That civilizing effect is our connectivity with one another. Behavioral conventions rule the way of life, guided by one’s sphere. As spheres expand (first by the novel – Gutenberg) an alternate way of living was depicted. Perception went from a five-mile radius bubble to elsewhere. Compare that with an emphasis on human rights in the last 150 years; now we have devices that connect us; this contact broadens our worldview and acceptance of different ways of living.
Tom adds that this is not Nirvana, nor a straight line of human progress to the future. But the trend of the last 150 years offers a continuance of a virtuous cycle. Various discriminatory practices against women, people of color or varying sexual orientation, subjecting them to secondary or subservient status of civilized society is over, or lessened to a great degree. The march of history is inexorable. Fellow feeling based relationships (empathy) is now a platform for billions of people, not merely an isolated few. These widely adopted principles become common material for establishments of all size. Idiosyncratic instances of difference occur, but are the rarity, not the norm.
People are born into their prevailing worldview. Prevailing sentiment is the inexorable march of history.