To Build the Future You Must Know the Past
For an understanding of the future, look to the past.
The past is a funny thing. Humans love to reverberate and study the past as a way of trying to brand sense of our world today. As Carl Sagan once famously put it "You have to know the past to understand the present." But the by is also complex and frustrating. The more we try to sympathise it and learn from it, the more it confounds the states. This concept tin can use equally at the macro / societal level and at the micro / personal level. Homo nature, it seems, is to constantly question and wonder "what if?" This is admittedly true at the personal level. As individuals, we constantly enquire ourselves, if I had only done this differently, how would things accept inverse? Or, what if I said this instead of that, or reacted in this mode equally opposed to that manner? While information technology tin be frustrating and resulting in much soul-searching and sleepless nights, I truly believe such introspection is salubrious and ultimately helps us in making decisions in the time to come. Once once again, learning from the past to affect the future.
The past and the future are actually not and so dissimilar. Every past effect has a cause or causes that, equally we look back at them, typically make sense to us from our vantage signal in the present. Too, each past issue has implications and influences the events that follow it. It tin can be a very linear sequence that, again, make sense to us when nosotros look dorsum at them. To me, the future works in the exact aforementioned way. The divergence, of course, is that we don't know what will happen in the future. Instead, nosotros have a broad range of possible futures. But, merely as with a atypical event in the past, the events happening today, will shape the ultimate future.
Advancements in technology is an area where past events tin can provide a good indicator of how future events can transpire. This is especially true when the technological achievements are driven by or impact social trends. Equally I reflect back on 2017, the applied science that I recall will make the most future bear on is blockchain. The backbone engineering science behind cryptocurrencies, the distributed nature of blockchain will brainstorm to revolutionize all manner of tape keeping such as contracts, private health records and financial ledgers over the next 5 years. Information technology'south much like the early stages of the internet, where the underlying technology creates a foundation for all manner of ideas and business opportunites.
Let'southward take Bitcoin…the chief cryptocurrency congenital on blockchain…and, using historical examples, endeavour to surmise how this technology and its credence volition 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 exercise the aforementioned thing, only ameliorate. MySpace, which was started in 2003, quickly rose to be the most popular, widely used social network site. Within in a few brusque years, it was the about pop overall website in the US! As many people will recollect, this would not last. In an attempt to tap into users creative side, MySpace allowed all sorts of customization options to individuals contour. Users could add together music and videos that automatically started playing when their profile was visited. Still, many of these features were buggy, sick designed or optimized to run on only the newest PC's. While these additional features may have appealed to users and in some means, were ahead of their time, they detracted from overall social networking capabilities people were really later on. The end upshot was that, simply as quickly every bit MySpace rose to the top, it was succumbed by Facebook, which offered a truer social networking site, congenital on a cleaner, more user friendly interface. Since so, Facebook has been on a rocket ship to billions in revenue built upon a mountain of billions of users. MySpace, which is withal around by the mode, flounders as a niche entertainment site worth a fraction of the amount it peaked at during its heyday.
Scenario 2: Anybody knows Amazon, the eCommerce juggernaut that is now permeating into almost every attribute of our lives. Non everyone knows (or remembers) that Amazon began in the 1990's as an online bookstore. It was one of the original dotcoms. Information technology (barely) weathered the dotcom chimera of the late ninety's, reinvented itself as 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 of import technological and economical companies around.
Which brings me back to Bitcoin and where it's headed. Will information technology follow i of these scenarios or do something completely dissimilar? It's entirely possible the Bitcoin of the future may forge its own path from the Bitcoin of the present. As a technology (blockchain) and a concept (cryptocurrency), Bitcoin is yet largely misunderstood past the full general public. Because of this, social credence 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 back at the scenarios for comparing, there really is non much debate that greater user acceptance propelled Facebook past MySpace. This acceptance was of both the engineering science (Facebook) and the concept (social networking). Facebook was able to deliver the engineering science in a way that was uncomplicated, while users were nonetheless trying to empathize the concept and capabilities of social networking. The MySpace approach of providing users with customization bells and whistles, while assuasive for open networking, did non make for a winning combination.
As well, Amazon has fed its growth by combining engineering and concept into what is now known every bit ECommerce. Amazon didn't invent ECommerce, but, in the opinion on many, they have perfected it. Amazon is, in many ways, a true reflection of capitalism, where need meets supply in a 24 ten seven orgy of choices and options. They took the same concept that fabricated Walmart the retail behemoth of the 1980s and 90s, into the modern globe. This is an eerily similar comparison to Bitcoin in my opinion.
Obviously comparing Bitcoin to Amazon or Facebook is not an apples to apples comparing. There are many differentiating factors, technologies, and principles at play. Bitcoin is a currency and therefore, a shop of value that can exist used to purchase skilful or services. While Amazon and Facebook provide value to their users and stockholders, you lot typically can't trade share of either for something like a house, without kickoff selling those share for greenbacks. Of course, Bitcoin has already shown a propensity to exceed the analysis of naysayers and bubble predictions that have been made about it, but I believe it'due south ultimate survival will depend on whether users can easily apply and understand the value of it. The concepts of exchanges and wallets might make sense to the tech savvy, but they are notwithstanding foreign and intimidating to many in the general public.
Undoubtedly, blockchain engineering science is here to stay. Again, much similar the internet and other technological advancements before it, information technology volition grow exponentially every bit it becomes easier to develop and more than efficient to use. But, for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, simplicity and approachability volition become a long way 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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