How our biggest motivator quickly challenged our progress before the roots set in.
I made 800 dollars on an early Steem article. I've been around since about April or May of last year, occasionally writing little-read articles. I argued for incentive changes that would screen out fake-value content by trusting good writers.
I noticed that the early hype was where much of the fun was concentrated and with the loss of security (from the big hack) nothing was ever the same and I (personally) was rarely noticed again. It hurts to have one's trust betrayed and I naively expected a Bitcoin-like security.
Yet overall quality of the highest-voted articles tended to go up.
It's been a good experiement.
I was saddened to lose 'friends' yet maybe they were just there for fun and to make money off Steem's takeoff. Was this friendship fake? How about the content?
If you look at Reddit or Stackoverflow, you see huge stores of awesome information, almost purely for altruistic or indirect benefits. This lack of incentivising actually gave these platforms time to mature without self-interest causing early erosion of content value.
A real DAC is about mutual self-interest, yet Steem is about communication and even friendship. I was suprised and dismayed to see market value jump so quickly and then fall equally fast. Also I didn't like how what began as friends who recognized each other, became overgrown with many faceless accounts. Everyone has a right to join, but a better way of judging identity, even informally, could have been useful.
A facebook approach to inviting users, could have done wonders, with random new-comers saying, "please add me to your vouch list, after judging my stuff as worthwhile and unique."
Although bitcoin is steadily rising, and may continue, there does not seem to be any more hype or visionary accomplishments than usual. It might simply be like silver with a few big investment players.
Therefore, as the moment is only quietly finding niches in the market and not mainstreaming itself, I predict that blockchain itself will continue as is. But that's not what I was going to say, until I wrote the sentence. Lessons in some basic economics I could use. To be fair, I thought blockchain might half in value over a fairly short time.
Viewing everything I know, I must say many many people are quietly working on things, and I cannot become impatient. My imagination and what's possible moves unfairly quickly, compaired with the man who pounds the railroad ties.
Perhaps real vision of 'smart money' or blockchain is to move money to a bigger democratic worldwide scale. To allow all to participate where no one entity or group controls things. Now this might be the worst idea ever, but this world currency idea has potential. (But not replacing national currencies.)
On this, many do not even trust the US, Asia or Europe with money control, but other nations have totatly failed their citizens. Imagine if some type of acceptable money was in no one's control.
Bitcoin is so simple it might remain the only way to accomplish these purposes. Yes, I've designed my own idea for this, called koin, but no need to go there.
I cannot begin to predict the future, but I hope that new technologies will come to the masses, like the model-T did. This car was followed by competitive alternatives for those still desiring such success. But like electricity and the internet, I hope all can participate instead of the privledged few. This includes self-driving technology, smart-money and access to a decent standard of living.
Monopolies, which are also allowed by patents can kill progress. I wish the patent structure was more about percentage of royalties, even over a longer time-period, then temporary monopoly. But I am not an expert on patent law or theory. (By the way, technology now exists for proving prior-knowledge without the prior-publication.)
A degression in technological progress wouldn't distrub me, if the world could become a happier, more-equal place. For example, the invention of TV slowed in its creation because of the second world war. But the US and England became much more united, industrious and happy around the same time period. I'd rather happily use an old tractor and be poorer, then overwraught and overwhelmed, use a newer one that drives itself.
In the end, we must protect the virtue around us. Build walls against loss of real value, family value, happiness/healthiness value. A garden carrot is inefficient but beneficial. A town may be financial average but benefit health.
Real progress may be a slowing of technological output and a resurgence of simple but benefical morals. For the ability to desire good for another person. This is a gift of intelligence unsurpassed anywhere else. Call this ethics, call it religion, call it humanism, call it decency but it is supreme.
I think I better finish this. I like good social and technological movements but little alternations to religious values and documented history. I have a feeling alot of jobs could but may not actually change in the future. Human riders will still be needed to guide the horses of AI.
If being smart is the basis of many technology jobs, there will continue to be need, but I see another kind of intellience being needed. That of common sense. That of farm values. That of human intuition. That of macro thinking, true understanding and self-motivated action. That of invention.
Think about how strength of human labor has given way to machines. Now school-intelligence is the new admired quality. What is the future: the ability to be human, intuitive.
