Page 2 - June 2018 Disruption Report Flip Book

THE DISRUPTION REPORT
JAJNUUNAERY20128018
Blockchain is the 4th wave of disruptive change in the digital era.
Wave 1 was the pre-Web Internet. This was invented as a decentralised network for use by the US military by DARPA (the network survives even if one node is destroyed). This was pre- commercial, only used by higher education and military. It was also decentralised, which is why the current Blockchain wave is referred to by some people as redecentralisation - it is a back to the future phase.
Wave 2 was the Web wave, from the Netscape browser and through the Dot Com bubble and burst. This is when the Internet went commercial. It is easy to mock the hype of the Dot Com era, but in hindsight almost all the innovations we now use were started in the Dot Com era. Most failed and many of those ideas were picked up later by entrepreneurs riding the next wave. Even digital cash, which we now call Blockchain & Cryptocurrency, appeared first in the Web wave (and failed in that era).
Wave 3 was the Social Media wave, emerging from the rubble of the Dot Com nuclear winter. The book that inspired me at the time was Wikinomics... Dan Tapscott did an amazing job of describing why social media was not just a fad but something that would change the world...
Waves 2 and 3 are the Centralized Internet. Today centralized looks like the norm, but the verdict of history will be that it is a brief interlude between the original decentralized DARPA and the new decentralized Blockchain Economy.
Wave 4 is the Blockchain wave. This wave is even bigger and rolling even faster because
it builds upon the two earlier waves. The ability to transfer assets over the Internet matters because more than half the 7 billion people on our planet already have access to the Internet. One fundamental thing changes in the Blockchain wave. In earlier waves you could transfer copies of content over the Internet. In this wave you can transfer value over the Internet, because the Blockchain protocol solves the double spend problem (if I give you a $10 bill, I no longer have it, whereas If I send you a digital file, it is only a copy and each digital copy costs virtually nothing).
...The Blockchain Economy is like 1993 - not very useful yet. The key word is yet. The direction of travel is clear.
Blockchain
is the
4th wave of disruptive change in the digital era
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