Earlier this summer, The Telegraph ran a very long and extremely interesting piece by Matthew Sparkes: The coming digital anarchy »
If you didn’t read it, please do. If you did, read it again. It points out a concept that the general public knows practically nothing about, that might change society and our lives in a dramatic way: blockchain.
Already a blockchain based digital currency, Bitcoin, is making payments on the internet (and in the real world) easy, fast and cheap. We might not need banks in the future. And if you think that is a game changer, consider what will happen when governments no longer are in control of money — with no possibility to inflate it and with limited ways to confiscate it or enforce taxation.
Sparkes gives us many other examples on the use of blockhain based processes. To take just a few examples, it might be used for safe cloud services or to distribute the voters democratic mandate to more than just one political candidate. The possibilities seems to be endless.
Now, to get to my point…
Technology solutions such as blockchain will re-distribute and decentralize power in society in a spontaneous and disruptive way.
Big Government and Big Business will not be amused.
The copyright wars, the fight over mass surveillance and the forceful pushing of a square plug into a round hole during the €uro crisis… All of that will be nothing compared to what will take place when the ruling classes realize that they are losing their grip, losing their power over others and that their models for how to do things are to be obsolete.
Some of these dinosaurs will not even understand what’s going to hit them. Or that it is happening right now.
The only way for them to save status quo might be to severely restrict the free flow of information on the Internet.
On top of this we should keep in mind that the ruling classes have their own armed wing with the right to use force to uphold Order–the police.
So finally, we might actually find out what will happen when an unstoppable force meets an gigantic immovable object.
/ HAX