Part 1: introduction to an open-ended series
Many years ago I saw an idea online, the internet's version of a parlour game. It said that for any field, there are two things you need to know. I guess it's a form of "tell me about x without telling me you're an expert". The framing I came up with for consulting - my career for the bulk of my working life - was (1) implementation is everything, and (2) at some point the client has to take over. To expand on this for non consultants: analysis and design and great concepts are good, but getting shit done is the only way things ever change. Rather a 100% implementation of a 60% idea than the other way round. But then you, as a consultant, have to hand over to your client in the real world at some point. So from the consultant's perspective, the key to a successful outcome is to create something that can be implemented by your client. This obviously makes the assumption that your definition of success includes delivering a result, rather than just getting paid.
The vast majority of consulting work I did until recently was about the process: problem solving, creating new ways to think about things, and coming up with changes to make. Having been working with, and thinking about, blockchains for 6 or 8 years, I feel like I have a degree of subject matter expertise for the first time in my life. So what are the two things for blockchains? Well, the first thing might be that blockchains enable us to create and track unique digital assets. The second thing is that nobody understands all the implications of the first thing.
The reason that we don't understand the implications of blockchains is the same reason that people in the early 20th century didn't understand all the implications of cars, and people in the early 21st century didn't understand all the implications of what we still call cellphones. The technology is still developing, we are still in the process of working out where it can be applied to create value, and we are still arguing about how to incorporate it into our world. You could argue that the last of those continues to be true of both cars and cellphones. So given that we can't reach definitive answers, and that two things to know is probably too little, I think that the right way to approach this problem is to find concepts that are relevant to blockchains, and that look like they will last. We can then put these tools for thinking into our mental toolbox, and use them as new ideas and new uses for blockchains emerge. Teach a man to fish.
There is way too much content here for a single article, and I think there is a cumulative approach to this that makes sense. I have therefore decided to create a commitment device (also known as a hostage to fortune), and to promise optimistically that I will write about all of these ideas on a semi regular basis. This is therefore part 1 of an open-ended series. I think there are six chapters to this series, but each of them may well take several articles to cover, and I reserve the right to jump around and revisit topics as my own thinking evolves. The six chapters as I see it at the moment are:
Changes: how we as humans think about new concepts, particularly technology, and how we understand it. This chapter needs to cover the elements of human behaviour that are persistent over time, and also how that behaviour aggregates at a corporate level, whether in the shape of companies or nations.
New kid in town: Bitcoin gave us unique digital assets, but also a new form of infrastructure, new types of asset, and through other projects like Ethereum and many others, we now have the ability to manipulate them through linking operations together, or programming their behaviour.
Money, money, money: there are (semi-) famously three functions of money, but to really understand the possibilities of a new form of money, you have to understand some of the history of money, the differences between types of money and the implications of this, and how the use of money could change as we develop the technology behind this universal mechanism of incentives.
Everywhere: beyond money, any asset can potentially be represented as a token on a blockchain, but we need to figure how these connect to the traditional world, and we need to understand the impact of decentralisation on those entities that are currently centralised.
I and I: Identity and money, identity and society, and the potential for new ways of coordinating communities, providing ownership and participation using tokens and their properties, coordinating new solutions to old problems.
Tomorrow never knows: the implications for our online lives, Gall's law, Amara's law and unpredictability; what will the new norms of behaviour be, and how will they evolve?
There is a lot there, and I am probably going to think of more as I write about it. I will aim to start with a summary version of each chapter, then dig in from there as I go.
I had this idea because of the questions I get from clients and friends about blockchains and what they are all about. It struck me that there are a lot of things out there that are written from a technology-heavy perspective, or a specific agenda. I would like to try and work through models that provide a framework to think about this topic, building on my own work in this space. Let me know in the comments if there is anything in particular you'd like me to cover.
...
The first chapter, on thinking about change and innovation, is here.
Comments