The Future is Now
Oh 2020… how much promise you had. As we ring in the new year, I can’t help but think back to what our future once promised. I think back to last NYE, and realizing 2050 had become just as close as 1990. Then 3 days into the new year, WW3 was trending on twitter… and, well… you know the rest.
Back when I was a kid in the 90s, the promise of a 2020 was filled with flying cars, cities in the sky, and vacations to space. Technology had so much potential, and there wasn’t a doubt that it would lead to a better outcome for humanity.
So what happened instead? 2020 is over, and was without a doubt the worst year for humanity that I have ever witnessed. Our Society is sick, and not just from the pandemic. We’re isolated, depressed, facing a slew of global economic and environmental problems that can no longer be ignored. Our trusted institutions are failing the majority of the people on the planet, and 99% of peoples futures are looking bleak. But at least Bitcoin is at an all time high! … yay? Wait a minute…
The breakdown of society can be traced back to some decisions, ethical or not, that happened when humanity blindly created technology in pursuit of profits. Social networks should have been made as a public good for the benefit of humanity, funded by tax payer dollars, not venture capitalists. As a result of this decision, we now face the consequences of coupling the collective knowledge of humanity to an optimization function that cares nothing about the actual well being or happiness of humanity. Instead, it will do whatever it takes but to generate profits for capitalists that get exponentially richer as the social networks gather more data on how humanity works, and then uses it to control humanity for its own benefit.
The algorithms and AI behind the social networks are getting so good at knowing us and how we will behave, they can predict our next move better than we probably can ourselves. As it gets better by collecting more data, it will subtlety manipulate us to make decisions that benefit its cause without us even knowing it. It will gives us what (we think) we want based of our human weaknesses, in return for more information from us, and in the long term we won’t get what we want. No amount of human based governance systems or money printing will fix this, because for every $1000 that gets printed, majority of it will go to the technology companies, accelerating the problem, printing money ad infinitum.
Enter Bitcoin. The once again talk of technology town, but why? One shortage of supply from the halving, and two people see it as our alternative. Either we surrender to the centralized systems and invest in the technology companies, effectively giving control of our world to them, or, maybe this decentralized Bitcoin thing is our hope for a different future than what we are living in now.
The old promise of a new technology that will take us to a better world, this time with central banks not existing and decentralized money running on open source code. Similar to how social networks were going to ‘connect us’. It’s definitely a possibility, but if history teaches us anything, unlikely if it’s done out of greed. Bitcoin is at a pivotal moment in history, but the time is now to evolve our thinking about technologies role in society, and leverage this new monetary system to change the incentives of the collective knowledge of humanity towards a better outcome for us in the longer term.
As someone who’s been working as an engineer in the space for 7 years now, I will keep fighting for this future. I experienced dozens of insane price appreciations, a good amount of getting dumped on, scams, frauds, hacking attempts, lost keys, and all the other fun stuff that comes with this space. Unfortunately, I’m swimming against the tide. Bitcoin hyper-incentivizes hoarding and greed, and everywhere i look in the space all I see is the everyone talking about how you should just “Buy Bitcoin”… got it, then what? Watch the world burn? I’m still waiting for our industry to wake up to the fact that if everyone buys Bitcoin, we will collapse society faster than feces hits the streets of San Fransisco.
Life’s insatiable quest for knowledge is moving on top of the technology that humans have created, and whether we like it or not, it will do a better job at it. I believe Bitcoin and digital currencies role in society is much more than just buying it. We must all avoid our greed, and focus instead on using this new technology to focus on what will create a better future for humanity 10 years from now. Bitcoin is a global movement, a chance to build a better global society, and create a future that we all want. So let’s stop thinking about it as a hoarding contest.
If Bitcoin is to be the new global monetary system, it needs to be the solution to our global economic and governance problems, specifically the ones our legacy governments are unable to even grasp. How can we create digital currencies that change the incentives for the algorithms now running our lives, and effectively change the future of humanity as we know it. We need to ask ourselves how digital currencies can be coupled to social networks to make more productive societies, and incentivize the collective knowledge of humanity, whether it’s controlled by AI or not, to build a better future for humanity. One that doesn’t leave us domesticated and miserable.
This is what i’ve been working on quietly for the past 2 years. An entirely new economic, governance, and social system. It’s called Social.Network, and the mission is create an alternative path for global social networks that unites humanity towards achieving its shared goals. To reimagine what the purpose of our collective intelligence could be used for, and change the optimization function of humanity towards something that at can lead to a better outcome for all life on Earth.
That’s what we’re doing at social.network. Right now. We raised $0 in venture capital, because it turns out you don’t need money or greed to create something that benefits everyone. I invite those who have evolved their consciousness to join a brighter future for the human race.
