Only Knowing the Past You Can Look to the Future
For an understanding of the future, await to the past.
The past is a funny thing. Humans love to reverberate and study the past as a way of trying to make sense of our globe today. Equally Carl Sagan once famously put it "You have to know the past to understand the nowadays." But the by is also complex and frustrating. The more we endeavor to sympathise information technology and learn from it, the more than it confounds us. This concept tin use every bit at the macro / societal level and at the micro / personal level. Human nature, it seems, is to constantly question and wonder "what if?" This is absolutely true at the personal level. As individuals, we constantly enquire ourselves, if I had but done this differently, how would things take changed? Or, what if I said this instead of that, or reacted in this manner as opposed to that manner? While it can be frustrating and resulting in much soul-searching and sleepless nights, I truly believe such introspection is healthy and ultimately helps us in making decisions in the future. Once again, learning from the past to affect the hereafter.
The past and the future are actually not so dissimilar. Every past consequence has a cause or causes that, as we look back at them, typically make sense to us from our vantage point in the present. Likewise, each past event has implications and influences the events that follow it. Information technology can be a very linear sequence that, once more, make sense to usa when we await back at them. To me, the futurity works in the exact same manner. The divergence, of grade, is that we don't know what will happen in the future. Instead, we have a wide range of possible futures. Just, just every bit with a singular issue in the by, the events happening today, will shape the ultimate future.
Advancements in technology is an area where past events can provide a good indicator of how time to come events can transpire. This is particularly true when the technological achievements are driven past or impact social trends. As I reflect dorsum on 2017, the engineering that I think volition make the about hereafter impact is blockchain. The backbone technology backside cryptocurrencies, the distributed nature of blockchain will begin to revolutionize all manner of tape keeping such equally contracts, individual health records and financial ledgers over the next v years. It's much like the early stages of the internet, where the underlying technology creates a foundation for all mode of ideas and business organization opportunites.
Let'south take Bitcoin…the primary cryptocurrency congenital on blockchain…and, using historical examples, try to surmise how this technology and its credence will evolve over the next 5 years. I think it will follow one of a few scenarios:
Scenario 1: Also known as the MySpace scenario, this is where the early leader fades into irrelevance due to newer technologies that basically practise the aforementioned thing, only better. MySpace, which was started in 2003, quickly rose to be the most popular, widely used social network site. Inside in a few brusk years, it was the most pop overall website in the US! As many people volition remember, this would not last. In an effort to tap into users creative side, MySpace allowed all sorts of customization options to individuals profile. Users could add music and videos that automatically started playing when their contour was visited. However, many of these features were buggy, sick designed or optimized to run on but the newest PC'due south. While these boosted features may take appealed to users and in some ways, were ahead of their time, they detracted from overall social networking capabilities people were really after. The end result was that, just as speedily as MySpace rose to the acme, it was succumbed by Facebook, which offered a truer social networking site, built on a cleaner, more user friendly interface. Since then, Facebook has been on a rocket ship to billions in revenue built upon a mountain of billions of users. MySpace, which is still effectually by the mode, flounders as a niche amusement site worth a fraction of the corporeality it peaked at during its heyday.
Scenario ii: Anybody knows Amazon, the eCommerce juggernaut that is now permeating into almost every aspect of our lives. Not anybody knows (or remembers) that Amazon began in the 1990's as an online bookstore. It was 1 of the original dotcoms. It (barely) weathered the dotcom bubble of the late 90's, reinvented itself every bit an online super-store and has now reached into our homes with Alexa, Kindle and entertainment programming. This did not happen overnight for Amazon. It built its strategy over many years of reading the markets and adjusting to consumer needs. When they rolled out the original Kindle in 2007 and Alexa in 2014, Amazon was anticipating customer demand by being at the forefront of technological advances. In the space of about 20 years, Amazon evolved from a one-dimensional concept to one of the most important technological and economical companies around.
Which brings me back to Bitcoin and where information technology'due south headed. Will it follow one of these scenarios or do something completely different? It'due south entirely possible the Bitcoin of the future may forge its ain path from the Bitcoin of the present. As a technology (blockchain) and a concept (cryptocurrency), Bitcoin is nonetheless largely misunderstood by the general public. Considering of this, social acceptance of Bitcoin has not quite manifested itself and, it is my contention, this acceptance is the key chemical element in shaping the future of Bitcoin.
Looking dorsum at the scenarios for comparison, at that place actually is not much fence that greater user acceptance propelled Facebook by MySpace. This acceptance was of both the engineering (Facebook) and the concept (social networking). Facebook was able to deliver the technology in a way that was simple, while users were withal trying to understand the concept and capabilities of social networking. The MySpace approach of providing users with customization bells and whistles, while allowing for open networking, did not brand for a winning combination.
Likewise, Amazon has fed its growth past combining technology and concept into what is now known as ECommerce. Amazon didn't invent ECommerce, but, in the opinion on many, they have perfected information technology. Amazon is, in many means, a true reflection of capitalism, where demand meets supply in a 24 ten 7 orgy of choices and options. They took the aforementioned concept that fabricated Walmart the retail behemoth of the 1980s and 90s, into the modernistic world. This is an eerily similar comparison to Bitcoin in my opinion.
Obviously comparing Bitcoin to Amazon or Facebook is not an apples to apples comparison. There are many differentiating factors, technologies, and principles at play. Bitcoin is a currency and therefore, a store of value that can be used to purchase adept or services. While Amazon and Facebook provide value to their users and stockholders, you typically can't trade share of either for something like a house, without first selling those share for greenbacks. Of course, Bitcoin has already shown a propensity to exceed the analysis of naysayers and chimera predictions that accept been made about it, but I believe information technology's ultimate survival volition depend on whether users can easily use and empathize the value of it. The concepts of exchanges and wallets might make sense to the tech savvy, but they are still foreign and intimidating to many in the general public.
Undoubtedly, blockchain technology is hither to stay. Again, much like the internet and other technological advancements before information technology, it will grow exponentially as information technology becomes easier to develop and more efficient to use. But, for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, simplicity and approachability volition go a long mode in determining which ones survive in the long run and evolve from the esoteric to the familiar.
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Source: https://medium.com/swlh/for-an-understanding-of-the-future-look-to-the-past-6dbb7d79bc4f
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