Wow fantastic, informative post. The vast majority of people don't understand the underlying significance these systems will, and already have, on current and future society.
2018 will be filled with centralized, bureaucratic pushback from large organizations like Facebook, who claim to be "disruptive," but once they went public, it didn't take long for the Wallstreet boys and girls to get to Marky Mark. Enough is enough, it's time for the content creators to be rewarded, not the other way around. Our data should not be 'for profit'.
I'm sure the Fed aren't too happy with the way things are going either. Regardless, this train has already taken off, and it's gaining a lot of 'steem.'
Blockchain gives us the opportunity to transcend geographic, socio economic, and political boundaries. I believe we will be able to scale entire second and third world countries, allowing them to leapfrog centralized systems/processes and immediately start creating value as a global citizen.
As a society, we need to rethink our purpose at a micro and macro level. Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the origin(s) of Blockchain and Bitcoin, apart from Satoshi?
Thanks for this excellent comment..! I will have to ponder what you've said and respond more fully when I get back to my computer. :)