For closing out Virtual Blockchain Week, Don Tapscott, the best-selling technology author and Co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI), has delivered a presentation and argued that DLT is the foundational technology of “the second digital era.”
It has been reported that in his presentation titled ‘Blockchain Revolution: The State of The Union,’ Tapscott argued that blockchain comprises the foundational technology, which will underpin “the second era of the digital age.”
However, in writing the 25th-anniversary edition of his 1994 best-selling book ‘Digital Economy,’ Tapscott noted that he “came to the conclusion that we’ve been through the first era of the digital age.”
Don Tapscott argued that solving the double-spend problem was the catalyst for a shift to the internet of value https://t.co/SZ8ESyFQ5j — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) May 3, 2020
He characterizes the first digital age as “the internet of information,” spanning technologies from “mainframes, mini-computers, PCs, the internet, the mobile web, social media, the cloud, [and] big data.”
Tapscott states:
“We are now transitioning into the second digital era, “where we have these extraordinary technologies infusing themselves into everything — into our physical world, into our processes, into our bodies.”
Tapscott also argued that blockchain comprises “the foundational technology” of the second digital era, by saying:
“For 40 years … we have this internet of information,” stated Tapscot, adding: “But if I send you […] some information […], I’m actually not sending you the information, I’m sending you a copy.”
He added:
“But when it comes to assets, things that really matter in the economy, like money, and securities, contracts, deeds, and intellectual property, and the data on our identities, and the cultural assets — like art, or music, or votes, […] sending a copy of those or copying those is a bad idea. You don’t want someone copying your vote, or your identity, and if I send you one-thousand dollars it’s really important that I don’t still have the money.”
Also, he said:
“So cryptographers have called this the ‘double-spend’ problem for a long time, and the way that we manage this problem in our economy is through middlemen. Banks, stock exchanges, transfer agents, escrow agents, credit card companies, sometimes governments, now big technology companies — and overall they have done a pretty good job, but there are growing problems […] we need a new approach.”
According to Tapscott, Satoshi’s cracking of the double-spend problem is “the biggest innovation in human history” by creating the possibility of a societal and economic reorganization away from middle-men toward trusted peer-to-peer networks.
By describing DLT as “a native digital medium for trust,” Tapscott stated that blockchain allows anonymous individuals to trust one another without intermediaries for the first time.
Likewise, he said:
“For the first time ever, people could trust each other peer-to-peer, and trust is not achieved by an intermediary, but by cryptography, collaboration, and some clever code.”
In spite of his hope for blockchain technologies, Tapscott noted that blockchain still faces significant barriers to widespread use and acceptance.
However, he highlighted that DLT challenges “very deep structures” and multi-trillion dollar industries, which will not disappear overnight.
He argued that DLT is driving the creative destruction of the industrial age corporation and an intense shift toward distributed value creation.
Moreover, Tapscott highlighted the challenges of scalability and interoperability for blockchain platforms and noted the image problem that crypto may exhibit too many segments of mainstream society.
Thus, Tapscott noted that blockchain is still facing significant challenges in developing efficient and effective governance processes, by mentioning Pindar Wong:
“Just because it’s decentralized, doesn’t mean it has to be disorganized.”
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: Bitcoin News
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