Re: Rand, yes. Re: Walden, that makes sense.
Re: Disruptive Uses for Blockchain Technology
"All this to say, we should be prepared to see really boring implementations of blockchain technology.
I heard someone else say this a couple weeks ago in a different context (for the technology as such), but it makes a lot of sense here. Using roads is a great example because it is one of the first things I get thrown in my face when I start bitching about "legacy" constructs.
Of course despite watching videos for kids, reading different explanations over and over, etc. at the end of the day I still have trouble understanding blockchain completely, and even more trouble making it "concrete" in the "real" world. It is frustrating because it will be to me as the Interwebs are to my Dad...something I vaguely understand...unless it finally clicks with me at some point.
I guess just like when the internet was new, there are terms to wrap our head around. E.g.:
There's censorship resistance, which is bigger than the hippy "I can say what I want" kind of censorship resistance. It's a component of blockchain that keeps it from being suppressed by state or private attackers who want to get rid of it.
There's the immutable ledger, which is the notion that messages go onto the blockchain and cannot be removed.
There's cryptographically verifiable, which is the assurance that the person who wrote two or more messages is one in the same. It also relates to consensus data.
There's consensus, which is the idea that data is processed in a deterministic (pre-arranged) manner.
These are many of the primitives that make a blockchain useful. There are others that people think are important like scalability (performance under load) and governance (the ability to adapt).
Now see, censorship resistance just seems optimistic to me. The blockchain itself is almost a "utopia" of technology in a way, and there seems no end to the way man can "govern" itself out of utopia. As creative as any technology can be to avoid the pitfalls of depravity, it will still fail or it would be God...hmm. I think I just accidentally said something philosophically interesting, but maybe it was just dribble.
It might be a false dichotomy: either a thing fails or it's God. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a true statement by itself. But I'm not sure it means that a thing should not be pursued just because it will ultimately fail on some near or far timeline.
In the long run, we're all dead. That doesn't mean life isn't worth living.
What if we say, any technology sufficiently perfect to be altered/used by man in such a way that it can be used for any but moral purposes is God? I do not know, I feel like there has to be a definition there, and then a corresponding proposition that proves this technology cannot exist.
Probably not critically important (although philosophically interesting...and perhaps not without application in Christian apologetics).
Either way, the key takeaway from the entire thread is certainly
We certainly should (and indeed have no choice but to) pursue imperfect solutions to our temporal problems with the direction of natural and special revelation until such time as the consummation of God's plan for redemption arrives.
That is hard for me to do. I would rather go live in the woods and wait it out :)
Or an idol.