As Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been picking up steam, focus has turned to blockchain – the underlying distributed ledger technology (DLT) that powers these digital currencies.Blockchain technology exists as a shared database filled with entries that must be confirmed by peer-to-peer networks and encrypted.It is a strongly encrypted and verified shared Google Document, in which each entry in the sheet depends on a logical relationship to all its predecessors, and is agreed upon by everyone in the network.

Underneath The Crypto Hood

Blockchain technology has many more potential use cases beyond other than just serving as the fuel behind Bitcoin. It changes the game for finance, business, government, and other industries.Blockchain provides a way to securely and efficiently create a tamper-proof log of sensitive activity. This makes it <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/blockchain-banking-report">excellent for international payments and money transfers</a>.We look at the other use cases for Blockchain.

It Started With Finance

Blockchain-based systems also have the potential to improve capital markets. A McKinsey report identifies benefits that blockchain solutions offer capital markets, some of which include: <ul><li>Faster clearing and settlement </li><li>Consolidated audit trail</li><li>Operational improvements</li></ul>For example, Axoni is a startup founded in 2013 and builds blockchain-based solutions specifically for capital market improvement.

Capital Markets

Historic methods of trade financing have been a major pain point for businesses because the slow processes often interrupt business and make liquidity hard to manage. Cross-border trade involves a large number of variables when communicating information – such as country of origin and product details – and transactions generate high volumes of documentation. Blockchain has the ability to streamline trade finance deals and simplify the process across borders. It enables enterprises to more easily transact with each other beyond regional or geographic boundaries.

Trade Finance

The extremely secure nature of blockchain makes it rather useful for accounting and auditing because it significantly decreases the possibility of human error and ensures the integrity of the records. On top of this, no one can alter the account records once they are locked in using blockchain tech, not even the record owners. The trade-off here is that blockchain tech could ultimately eliminate the need for auditors and erase jobs

Regulatory Compliance and Audit

Once again, the encryption that is so integral to blockchain makes it exceedingly helpful in combating money laundering. The underlying technology empowers record keeping, which supports “Know Your Customer (KYC),” the process through which a business identifies and verifies the identities of its clients.

Money Laundering Protection

Arguably the greatest blockchain application for insurance is through smart contracts. These contracts allow customers and insurers to manage claims in a transparent and secure manner. All contracts and claims can be recorded on the blockchain and validated by the network, which would eliminate invalid claims since the blockchain would reject multiple claims on the same accident. For example, openIDL, a network built on the IBM Blockchain Platform with the American Association of Insurance Services, is automating insurance regulatory reporting and streamlining compliance requirements.

Insurance

P2P payment services such as Venmo are convenient, but they have limits. Some services restrict transactions based on geography. Others charge a fee for their use. And many are vulnerable to hackers, which is not appealing to customers who are putting their personal financial information out there. Blockchain technology, with all its aforementioned benefits, could fix these roadblocks.

Peer-to-Peer Transactions

Blockchain’s immutable ledger makes it well suited to tasks such as real-time tracking of goods as they move and change hands throughout the supply chain. Using a blockchain opens up several options for companies transporting these goods. Entries on a blockchain can be used to queue up events with a supply chain — allocating goods newly arrived at a port to different shipping containers, for example. Blockchain provides a new and dynamic means of organizing tracking data and putting it to use.

Blockchain Applications in Business: Supply Chain Management

Health data that is suitable for blockchain includes general information like age, gender, and potentially basic medical history data like immunization history or vital signs. On its own, none of this information would be able to specifically identify any particular patient, which is what allows it to be stored on a shared blockchain that could be accessed by numerous individuals without undue privacy concerns.As specialized connected medical devices become more common and increasingly linked to a person’s health record, blockchain can connect those devices with that record.

Healthcare

The average homeowner sells his or her home every five to seven years, and the average person will move nearly 12 times during their lifetime. With such frequent movement, blockchain could certainly be of use in the real estate market. It would expedite home sales by quickly verifying finances, reducing fraud thanks to its encryption, and offering transparency throughout the entire selling and purchasing process.

Real Estate

Media companies have already started to adopt blockchain technology to eliminate fraud, reduce costs, and even protect Intellectual Property (IP) rights of content – like music records. According to MarketWatch, the global market for blockchain in media and entertainment is estimated to reach $1.54 billion by 2024.Example: Eluvio Content Fabric uses blockchain technology to enable content producers to manage and distribute premium video to consumers and business partners without content delivery networks.

Media

Blockchain technology could be used to execute energy supply transactions, but also to further provide the basis for metering, billing, and clearing processes, according to <a href="https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/assets/pwc-blockchain-opportunity-for-energy-producers-and-consumers.pdf">PWC</a>. Other potential applications include documenting ownership, asset management, origin guarantees, emission allowances, and renewable energy certificates.

Energy

National, state, and local governments are responsible for maintaining individuals’ records such as birth and death dates, marital status, or property transfers. Yet managing this data can be difficult, and to this day some of these records only exist in paper form. And sometimes, citizens have to physically go to their local government offices to make changes, which is time-consuming, unnecessary, and frustrating. Blockchain technology could simplify this recordkeeping and make the data far more secure.

Record Management

Proponents of blockchain tech for identity management claim that with enough information on the blockchain, people would only need to provide the bare minimum (date of birth, for example) to prove their identities.Blockchain technology has the ability to make the voting process more easily accessible while improving security. Hackers would be no match to blockchain technology because even if someone were to access the terminal, they wouldn’t be able to affect other nodes.

Identity Management

The majority of regulatory oversight stems from recordkeeping, but the consequences of not maintaining records are inarguably much worse. Thus, compliance is non-negotiable for companies. Blockchain can make record updates available to regulators and businesses in real-time, in turn reducing time lags and allowing red flags and inconsistencies to be spotted sooner.

Compliance

CybersecurityThe biggest advantage of blockchain in cybersecurity is that it removes the risk of a single point of failure. Blockchain tech also provides end-to-end encryption and privacy.Big DataThe immutable nature of blockchain, and the fact that every computer on the network is continually verifying the information stored on it, makes blockchain an excellent tool for storing big data.

Blockchain Applications in Other Industries

Blockchain is poised to transform practices in a number of IoT sectors, including:The supply chain: Tracking the location of goods as they are shipped, and ensuring that they stay within specified conditions.Asset tracking: Monitoring assets and machinery to record activity and output as an alternative to cloud solutions.Despite these key areas where blockchain can be leveraged, the technology in the IoT is still dependent on startups.

Internet Of Things

This tech is as big as the internet itself.

First there were bitcoins, now the largest banks are investing in blockchain technology. See the various current and future uses the distributed ledger technology is allowing companies to pursue.

crypto

Cryptocurrency

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

The growing list of applications and use cases of blockchain technology in business and life

When you are pressed for time, how can you quickly tell the difference between strong and weak arguments? Some weak arguments are more obvious, but others can be disguised behind seemingly sound statements. The progression from one point to another seems logical, but it breaks down at some point before giving sufficient support for the conclusion.

Spotting weak arguments

A weak argument needs two ingredients. <ul><li>Inductive reasoning: The argument should move from specific observations to broad generalizations.</li><li>Uncertain premise: The specific observations used to build the argument should either have a low probability or be based on personal opinions.</li></ul>Even if the argument sounds logical, the conclusion is not certain nor with high probability. For example, Charlie is a woman. Some women like poetry. Therefore, Charlie likes poetry.

The nature of a weak argument

Three critical thinking tools can help you quickly spot a weak argument.<ol><li>Look for words such as surely, obviously, evidently, etc. These words mark the edge of what the author is sure about.</li><li>Compare the conclusion of the argument to a coin toss. The argument is weak if a coin toss is better at predicting the conclusion. For example, “About 50% of humans I met are female. Charlie is human. Therefore, Charlie is female.” </li><li>Map the argument onto the seven-point pyramid of disagreement. The weakest type of argument is name-calling, followed by Ad Hominem.</li></ol>

How to quickly spot weak arguments

When you are pressed for time, how can you quickly tell the difference between a strong argument and a weak argument, and why does it matter?

philosophy

Philosophy

communication

Communication

Weak arguments and how to spot them

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">People tend to care about something making sense more than they care about something being right.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">It’s why we’re bad at forecasting and easily persuaded and why the economy is driven by stories.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">It’s not your fault. The world is complicated and everyone’s trying to fit what’s going on into the context of their own life experiences.</li></ul>Two factors cause the gap between perception and reality.

Making Sense Is Better Persuasion Than Being Right

The most important events – things that are counterintuitive, disruptive, and swayed by emotion more than calculation – tend to share a few traits that make gathering a good sample of data hard:<ul><li>They’re rare.  </li><li>The data is hard to collect.</li><li>More data intuitively feels better.</li></ul>This is a big problem and there is no solution to it other than giving <a href="http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/surprise/">yourself room for error</a> in not only in your actions but your beliefs.

Factor 1: The Most Important Events Are the Hardest to Sample

History makes clear that the winner isn’t the person who discovers an idea, but the one who sells it most persuasively.Stories are more powerful than statistics because the most believable thing in the world is whatever takes the least amount of effort to contextualize your own life experiences.People go astray when forgetting that storytelling is like exponential fuel, so a great idea told poorly can be a fraction as powerful as a mediocre idea told persuasively.

Factor 2: We Underestimate how Much More Powerful Stories Are than Statistics

People tend to care about something making sense more than they care about something being right. It’s why we’re bad at forecasting and easily persuaded and why the economy is driven by stories. It’s not your fault. The world is complicated and everyone’s trying to fit what’s going on into the context of their own life experiences. Two big things cause the gap between perception and reality. 1. The most important events are the hardest to sample, so extrapolating their lessons can be misleading. There have been two world wars in the last century. But no one would say, “the average world war lasts five years,” or “the average world war kills 60 million people.” No forecaster would say we’re overdue for a world war based on historic trends. A sample size of two can’t tell us what to expect next. The point may be obvious with world wars. But use a slightly more common case and people start drawing all kinds of false conclusions. Studying things with inadequate samples causes more delusion than intentional deceit. That’s because the ease of explaining things based on what’s readily in front of you meets the intellectual cover of using statistics. The most important events – things that are counterintuitive, disruptive, and swayed by emotion more than calculation – tend to share a few traits that make gathering a good sample of data hard: They’re rare. Ask an economist how many recessions they wish they had to study and they’ll say “ten thousand.” But there have only been 11 recessions since we started systematically collecting good data in the 1940s. That is nothing. If we had as much recession data as we wanted we’d likely realize that half of what we think we know about recessions is wrong. The data is hard to collect. Big surveys are expensive to produce. Gathering a classroom of grad students is cheap and easy. So which do you think happens more? And even when you survey people they often either don’t know the answer but give you one anyways (How much red meat did you eat last year?), or they know the answer but won’t tell the truth (Will you vote for this controversial politician?). This is partly why most studies can’t be replicated. More data intuitively feels better but things change over time, so more data can add in past trends that tell you nothing about what to expect in the future. If something is rare, the tendency is to go way back in history to gather as many examples as you can. But the further back you go, the more likely you are to study a world that operated in a different paradigm. We can study the financial crisis of 1873, but the modern banking system lives in a totally different universe than it did then. Daniel Kahneman is one of the best social scientists of our time. Yet he once admitted: Like most research psychologists, I had routinely chosen samples that were too small and had often obtained results that made no sense. I taught statistics and knew how to compute the sample size that would reduce the risk of failure to an acceptable level. But I had never chosen a sample size by computation. Like my colleagues, I had trusted tradition and my intuition in planning my experiments and had never thought seriously about the issue. That is terrifying. Two things happen when we don’t have good samples for important events. One is that we fool ourselves and are surprised when the world works differently than our data suggested it would. The second is that we can easily fool others, because if you look hard enough you can find a flawed set of data that shows whatever you want it to show. This is a big problem and there is no solution to it other than giving yourself room for error in not only in your actions but your beliefs. 2. We underestimate how much more powerful stories are than statistics. A friend once complained that everything Nassim Taleb has written is a rewording of a Philosophy 101. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’m not bothered if it is because Taleb has done a better job explaining concepts than any Philosophy 101 author before him. And history makes clear that the winner isn’t the person who discovers an idea, but the one who sells it most persuasively. Stories are more powerful than statistics because the most believable thing in the world is whatever takes the least amount of effort to contextualize your own life experiences. People go astray when forgetting that storytelling is like exponential fuel, so a great idea told poorly can be a fraction as powerful as an OK idea told persuasively. The CEO who understands everything about their field except the most important thing – rallying employees behind a mission and vision. The financial advisor who aced the CFA exam but can’t maintain clients’ faith during a downturn. The doctor who knows the cure but can’t get patients to stick to a plan. Even contrarians eventually need to be persuasive. James Grant said: “Successful investing is about having people agree with you … later.” A flaw that frustrates many people is not realizing that virtually every job is a sales job, especially as you move up the ladder: Most careers turn into sales jobs when you get senior enough.— Sam Altman (@sama) December 20, 2017 More on this topic: The Full Reset The Theory of Maybes It’s Hard to Predict How You’ll Respond to Risk

productivity

Productivity

problemsolving

Problem Solving

computerscience

Computer Science

Making Sense vs. Being Right

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.”

“Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out.”

Humans can take a small amount of data – a “thin-slice” – and draw conclusions from it using a combination of experience and intuition.Thin-slicing allows us to make smart decisions based on little information with minimal deliberation.

The Theory of Thin-Slicing

“Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend – or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet – understands this implicitly; you can learn as much – or more – from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.”

Only make decisions when you have at least 40% of the relevant information, but never wait until you have more than 70%.This is called the 40-70 rule and it describes the ideal relationship between time and information, ensuring you act fast, but not uninformed, without waiting until making a decision eventually becomes moot.And in most situations, focusing on very few, but crucially important facts, while blocking out all the rest, is enough to do so.

The 40-70 Rule

Your unconscious is the best and fastest information filtering system in the world. When first confronted with new information, it sifts through all of it, instantly tossing out the less important factors, judging the few big ones in a split second, and presenting you with the solution.However, even your unconscious gets it wrong sometimes. Stress can temporarily lead your gut down the wrong path.

The World’s Fastest Filter of Information

It happens when we alter our behavior in measurable ways due to certain stimuli, such as images, words, and culture.We are being subconsciously “primed” in different ways every day. If our brain believes our environment favors this or that type of personality, then we start behaving more like our environment.

Priming

“Often a sign of expertise is noticing what doesn't happen.”

Trying to explain and rationalize decisions prevents us from making good intuitive decisions.This process is called verbal overshadowing.

Verbal Overshadowing

As important as it is to trust our intuition, it’s also important to question it.Snap judgments can often be more accurate than our thought-out ones, but they can also be a result of a subconscious racial, socioeconomic, or appearance-based bias.

When Should We Trust Our Instincts?

From the #1 bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia, the landmark book that has revolutionized the way we understand leadership and decision making. In his breakthrough bestseller The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell redefined how we understand the world around us. Now, in Blink, he revolutionizes the way we understand the world within. Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant--in the blink of an eye--that actually aren't as simple as they seem. Why are some people brilliant decision makers, while others are consistently inept? Why do some people follow their instincts and win, while others end up stumbling into error? How do our brains really work--in the office, in the classroom, in the kitchen, and in the bedroom? And why are the best decisions often those that are impossible to explain to others? In Blink we meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on a few minutes of observing a couple; the tennis coach who knows when a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; the antiquities experts who recognize a fake at a glance. Here, too, are great failures of "blink": the election of Warren Harding; "New Coke"; and the shooting of Amadou Diallo by police. Blink reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of "thin-slicing"--filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

books

Books

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Blink

A system is anything that has interacting and interconnected parts.The human body is an example of a system. It reacts to the environment and is composed of many interdependent parts such as the brain, digestive, and circulatory systems.Systems thinking is the art and science of making reliable inferences about behaviour by developing an increasingly deep understanding of underlying structure.﻿With system thinking, it’s easier to deal with complex problems because system thinking asks that you look at the bigger picture first.

Systems And System Thinking

It is impossible to know the behavior of a system just by knowing the parts that make up that system

Systems are made up of three parts: elements, interconnections, and a function or purpose. 
Elements are the actors in the system.
<ul>
<li>Interconnections are the different relationships between the elements. In our example of the circulatory system, the relationship between the lungs and the heart is that the lungs supply oxygenated blood to the heart.</li>
<li>Function or purpose is what the system delivers. The circulatory system delivers oxygenated blood to the body. That’s its purpose or function. </li>
</ul>
Anything without interconnections or purpose cannot be considered a system.

The Elements of System Thinking

<ul>
<li>Linear Thinking. This involves looking for a cause and effect. It is a one-to-one solution that tells us that there is a beginning and an end to everything</li>
<li>Event Oriented Thinking. This kind of thinking assumes that life is made up of a series of events and that if we change the cause, then we can change the event.</li>
<li>Lateral Thinking. This is creative thinking that trains the brain to subconsciously think in a certain way. </li>
<li>Critical Thinking. In critical thinking, facts are analyzed in an objective way so that judgment can be reached</li>
<li>System Thinking. The study and analysis of systems.</li>
</ul>

Types of Thinking

<ul>
<li>Level 0 – Unawareness. You are completely unaware of the system thinking concept</li>
<li>Level 1 – Shallow Awareness. You are aware of system thinking but do not show any depth of understanding</li>
<li>Level 2 - Deep Awareness. You are aware of the key concepts of system thinking and the potential of system thinking.</li>
<li>Level 3 – Novice. A novice is a person who can create their own system diagrams.</li>
<li>Level 4 – Expert. An expert in system thinking can use system dynamics to create their own simulation models</li>
<li>Level 5 – Guru. Gurus can teach other people to become experts in system thinking.</li>
</ul>

Levels of System Maturity

The first step in shifting from linear thinking to system thinking is to ask if something is actually the problem or a symptom of something deeper. Linear thinking focuses on solving a problem while system thinking digs deeper to see if systematic issues exist.

How To Shift From Linear Thinking Patterns to System Thinking

<ul><li>Check the amount of time and energy devoted to solving it. If you are spending more time and energy than is needed, you are likely dealing with a symptom rather than the real issue</li><li>When people with the power to solve the issue ignore it, and would rather spend their time complaining, chances are you are dealing with a symptom of a larger problem  </li><li>If you have tried to solve the issue repeatedly but are not seeing results, or if it changes to a related issue, you have not uncovered the real problem yet.</li></ul>

Check The Nature Of Issue

<ul><li>Let’s fix it quick.</li><li>Put a band-aid on it.  </li><li>Budgeting. </li><li>Responding right away.</li><li>Who cares? Being apathetic is a sign that the organization is not willing to engage in systematic thinking</li><li>We need more information.</li><li> When you are accused of overthinking, it shows that the other person is not willing to engage your point of view</li><li>Forgetting everything else.</li><li>Avoiding Conflict </li><li>Doing it in one's own way.</li></ul>

Ten Enemies of System Thinking

<ul>
<li>Stocks serve as the base of every system. Stocks are sorts of snapshots in time, showing a current view of the changing flows in the system. The changing nature of stocks keeps the system alive.</li>
<li>Flows are actions that impact the system. Examples of flows include deposits, sales, and inventories. Flows are what get in and out of the system.</li>
<li>Feedback loops keep the stock level at a certain range or allow it to increase or decrease. </li>
<li>A reinforcing loop strengthens existing connections within the system while a balancing loop maintains balance within system subunits.</li>
</ul>

Understanding System Behaviour

<ul><li>When behaviour patterns of a system are stuck in time, change can be difficult and you get policy resistance. </li><li>Policy resistance arises when the goals of the subsystems do not match.</li><li>When the goals are inconsistent, they end up competing with each other. The system ends up being pulled in multiple directions.</li></ul>

Systems Errors 

Systems can be stuck in a negative loop that risks killing off the entire system. This happens when there is an erosion of goals and expectations.One way to fight the negative loop is to maintain absolute standards no matter what happens to performance.  The second way is to set performance standards that mirror the best performances from the past.

Falling Systems

In terms of systems, escalation is a reinforcing loop that is created when actors try to compete to get ahead of one another.Escalation is connected to achieving a positive goal. But when escalation erodes relationships within systems, it is not a good thing.For instance, when businesses try to compete by lowering their price, it can lead to a dangerous escalation where everyone loses.

Escalation

Winning creates a powerful feedback loop that reinforces gains that have already been achieved.For example:	 Teams that win championships receive more TV revenues and showtime. As a result, they get more fans and even more money. This allows them to buy the best players and keep winning.

The Rich Always Get Richer: The Answer To The Riddle

It is impossible to have two species living in the same ecological niche surviving on the same resources. One will be forced out. The competitive exclusion principle explains why governments are required to intervene in markets because, without such interventions, monopolies would dominate the market.

The Competitive Exclusion Principle

The four communications styles that end relationships:
<ul>
<li>Criticism. Criticism will leave your partner feeling attacked and rejected</li>
<li>Contempt. Communicating with contempt leaves the other person feeling unloved and unappreciated</li>
<li>Defensiveness. When we get defensive, the other party sees it as a dismissal of their concerns</li>
<li>Stonewalling. Stonewalling is shutting oneself from the other. It is a refusal to engage.</li>
</ul>

System Thinking in Relationships

Thinking of our relationship as a system and stock mean that both partners are feedback loops. We look for any changes that may have happened recently and analyze whether the system dynamics have changed.By applying system thinking to relationship problems you will be able to take your power back and feel hopeful. One way is to recognize that things run on three different categories: physical, mental, and emotional. Solutions to relationship problems can be found in any of these areas.

The Key To Better Relations Using Systems Thinking

System thinking is being able to examine and analyze ourselves and things around us with the express purpose of being able to improve upon them.

Would you like to have better solutions to your problems? Struggling to understand why things went wrong when you did everything right? The Art Of Thinking In Systems can help you with these problems. You think systems thinking is for politicians, and big company CEO's? Let me tell you this: a small business is a system, your class at school is a system, your family is a system. You are the element of larger systems - your town, your country, the world. These systems have a different dynamic. The more you know about their nature, the more optimal solutions you'll find to problems related to them. Systems thinking helps you see beyond simple connections, and find strategic solutions considering every actor influencing your problem. The Art Of Thinking In Systems presents the fundamental system archetypes, models, and methods with an application to real life. Know how to use systems thinking at work, in your business, in your relationship, friendships. The book also helps you to see through the hidden pathways of contemporary politics, economics, and education changes. Systems thinking opens new and exciting ways to re-invigorate your world view. It enriches your critical thinking skill, analyzing ability, clears your vision, makes you more logical and rational - just to mention a few benefits. Systems thinking's aim is not to overcomplicate your thoughts but to find better solutions to your problems. Some things in life can't be fixed with a simple "you did this so I did that" thinking. By applying conventional thinking to complex problems, we often perpetuate the very problems we try so hard to solve. Learn to think differently to get different results. -Learn about the main elements of systems thinking. -How to apply the best systems thinking ideas, models, and frameworks in your life? -What are the biggest system errors, how to detect and fix them? -How can you improve your romantic relationship with systems thinking? Over the past decades, systems thinking gained an eloquent position in science and research. Complexity, organizational pathways, networks gained more importance in our interconnected world. Just like wars are not fought with two armies standing in opposite of each other on an opened field, the answers to personal problems are more compounded, as well. -Improve your social life understanding the systemic aspects of social networks. -Useful tips how to fix financial fallouts in your business. -See through the systems of health care, education, politics, and global economics. The Art Of Thinking In Systems presents global systems theory with real life examples making it easily understandable and applicable. This book is not for Wall Street analysts but for everyday people who wish to understand their world better and make better decisions in their lives. You will be able to define your problems more accurately, design solutions more correctly, put together strategic plans, and understand the world - and your place in it - in its chaotic complexity.

The Art of Thinking in Systems

Tim O’Reilly has been a conversation starter within the tech industry for more than three decades. The company he founded, O’Reilly Media, launched the first true commercial website in 1993, and remains a tech-industry staple that publishes tech books, offers online education, and holds virtual events.O’Reilly saw firsthand the first wave of big dot-com companies swell, crest, and crash in the late 1990s. He was the one who popularized a collective term for that next wave of early-2000s companies: Web 2.0.

The Background

Web 3.0 companies eschew the centralized power of Big Tech platforms and propose to build apps that store data and transactions via blockchains. The Web3 movement seems to speak to the public’s growing unease with entrusting data and currency to powerful corporate or institutional platforms that may have financial and political interests of their own.But the Web3 wave has a long way to go before proving it can produce technology with the functionality, reliability, security, and scale needed to disrupt the internet we have now.

Web 3.0: The Sequel

It’s great when the economy becomes more efficient. But the curse of efficiency is that it goes to the lowest common denominator. So if we want a diverse economy, we have to value something other than pure economic efficiency.The monopoly of IBM was replaced by the personal computer, which was putting a computer on every desktop in every home. That was decentralization. Hardware became a commodity. Very quickly, Bill Gates figured out how to monopolize the software in the same way that IBM had monopolized hardware. Software became the way that you could aggregate power.

Just Being Economically Efficient Isn't Enough

Even in terms of this decentralized crypto, who did we reward? We rewarded the big, centralized crypto trading platforms. We rewarded the people who initially minted all the crypto currencies and ended up with the pyramid scheme where they were the ones at the top who built the NFT (nonfungible token) marketplaces. There are stories about somebody who sold an entity for a lot of money, but mostly the really big rewards have gone to the people who are able to centralize the new market.

Crypto Is Not Decentralized

Web 2.0 was not a version number, it was the second coming of the web after the dot-com bust. We’re not going to be able to call Web3 “Web3” until after the crypto bust. Because only then will we get to see what’s stuck around.All anybody ever talks about is valuations. And valuation has very little to do with actual economic impacts. There were all these companies that had enormous valuations (for the time—they’d be small valuations today) that weren’t real businesses. And as soon as the capital dried up they went away.

A New Period Of Consolidation

Let us contrast the betting economy and the operating economy. The operating economy is the one that delivers goods and services and people pay for them. And the betting economy is where you guess at what the value might be, or what other people think it might be.

The Betting Economy Vs The Operating Economy

There are way more interesting decentralization stories than cryptocurrency. And the biggest one is the potential for the decentralization of big data and AI. Google used to have this secret sauce. It only came from Google. And now that’s been encapsulated in these models that know a lot of stuff. <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/computers-are-learning-to-read-but-theyre-still-not-so-smart/">BERT</a> [Google’s breakthrough <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90422132/google-just-got-better-at-understanding-your-trickiest-searches">natural language model</a>] was open-sourced. <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90554974/this-extraordinary-ai-has-stunned-computer-scientists-with-its-writing-ability">GPT-3</a> (OpenAI’s even larger natural language model) isn’t open-source, but it’s a big enough model that you can call on it [via] an API.

The Wave Of De-Centralization

The patterns of centralization and decentralization are everywhere. And the idea that it’s just about this blockchain technology is something we could easily do away with.  There’s something really interesting there, but we are not going to know until all the underbrush that’s growing up because of all of that indiscriminate funding. Then we’ll be able to see what’s left. It’s not like we shouldn’t be engaging with these technologies, but we should not believe the hype.

Enter The Blockchain

The open-source movement is quite old. We got the World Wide Web, which is put in the public domain. We got the original TCP/IP implementation that Bill Joy wrote made part of Berkeley Unix so that anybody could do the internet stack. We had the DNS, or Domain Name System. We had Sendmail, which is routing all the email. We had Apache, which has become the dominant web server.

The Origins Of The Web Were Open-Source

There are things that we centralized unnecessarily.  During the centralization phase, bad behaviour happens. A good example of that is your laptop. This is the end game of the personal computer revolution and today your laptop is becoming less and less your laptop and more and more Apple’s laptop or Microsoft’s laptop. Earlier in iTunes software, you used to be able to rip your CDs and you had your music library. And now Apple says no, you don’t: You have to sign in to your Apple account to use your music. You have to sign in to your Apple account to use your PC.

Bad Behaviour Happens At Centralization

So here’s the centralization overreach, because everybody wants to be a subscription service. Everybody wants to have lock-in. The shift towards decentralization is inevitable, but it is part of a cycle that is in its third iteration.

Centralization Is Subscription

Is tech history repeating itself? O’Reilly believes we’re now in the ‘irrational exuberance’ phase of crypto and Web3, and that a reckoning is coming.


technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

Tim O’Reilly helped bring us Web 1.0 and 2.0. Here’s why he’s a Web3 skeptic

The blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that records all transactions conducted by participants in the network.Networks are sustained by a group of computers (called nodes) distributed across the world. Each node can initiate transactions or validate new transactions, which is why blockchain networks are seen as "peer-to-peer" systems.Each new transaction gets added to a block, which is then added to the blockchain. Once other nodes agree to the transaction's validity, the new block is added to other blocks, creating a chain—hence the name.

How Do Blockchains Work?

Blockchains are extremely secure, making them ideal for transactions requiring high levels of data integrity and safety. For example, blockchains can be used to securely transfer money, track charity donations, safeguard records, and conduct voting.Blockchain security is achieved through a mix of cryptography, game theory, consensus mechanisms, and failure-resistant design.

How is Blockchain Security Achieved?

Hashing involves an algorithm (a “hash function”) generating a fixed output (hash) from a data input of any size. In most blockchains, the hash is an alphanumeric string of fixed length.Because a hash is dependent on block data, hashes serve as unique identifiers for blocks on the chain. Running the same data through the hash function will produce the same hash no matter how many times you perform the operation.A change in a block’s data automatically triggers the generation of a new hash. Which is why it’s easy to know if a block containing transactions has been altered.

Cryptographic Hashing

Cryptography is useful for safeguarding blockchain wallets.Wallets are used to store digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or any other items created and transferred on the blockchain.When users create a wallet, they get a public key and a private key. The private key is to your wallet what a password is to your bank account. Every transaction must be signed with a private key to prove ownership of the assets.The existence of a private key means that no one can gain access to your wallet and move funds and other assets without your approval.

Public-Key Cryptography

Consensus algorithms allow participants on the blockchain to agree on the validity of transactions and the true state of the blockchain. In other words, a consensus is what makes the blockchain ledger a reliable and secure record of information.In a blockchain network, every node must confirm the validity of each transaction. This makes it harder for anyone to perform the malicious activity and get away with it. No two versions of a blockchain can exist, making it impossible to alter records without getting noticed.Blockchain networks use different consensus mechanisms.

Consensus Algorithms

Cryptoeconomics is based on game theory, a field of study that attempts to predict the interactions between different participants in a situation with defined rules and outcomes. When applied to blockchain networks, game theory can be used to encourage honest activity by providing adequate incentives. Cryptoeconomics works differently depending on the blockchain. Bitcoin uses a Proof-of-Work system where nodes (called miners) must expend some resource (electricity, in this case) before confirming transactions. Blockchains like Ethereum 2.0, Solana, and Cardano use the Proof-of-Stake system.

Cryptoeconomics (Game Theory)

What is blockchain security? Learn how blockchain security works and common blockchain security vulnerabilities to know.



cybersecurity

Cybersecurity

How Does Blockchain Security Work, Anyway?

<ul><li>NFT's  (non-fungible tokens) are digital tokens that are stored on a blockchain.</li><li>In cryptocurrencies, each coin is the same, whereas, each NFT is unique. NFTs can be sold as a way to prove ownership of a digital file.</li><li>The files are not stored on the blockchain. Instead, a link to the file is stored along with the token that acts as proof of ownership.</li><li>You can have two or more NFTs for the same file. For example, an NFT can be rare because there are only 10 copies or it can be common because there are hundreds of the same NFT that have been "minted."</li></ul>

Quick overview of an NFT

<ul><li>Transaction fees. Some platforms will let you create NFTs for free, but selling them has other demands.</li><li>Most NFTs are sold on the Ethereum blockchain, and every transaction on the Ethereum blockchain costs fees.</li><li>The fees, called "gas", are paid to the miners. Nearly everything you do on the blockchain will cost gas. While most transactions will go through, paying gas does not always guarantee your transfer will go through. </li><li>The most popular NFT marketplaces mostly run on the Ethereum blockchain, which uses an energy-intensive "proof of work" system.</li></ul>

Considerations when deciding to sell an NFT

Many platforms allow you to sell NFTs across a variety of blockchains. Two of the more popular marketplaces are OpenSea and Rarible.  Both allow you to create NFTs on Ethereum without paying fees, using "lazy minting" systems. Lazy minting lets you create an NFT and put it up for sale without writing to the blockchain. When someone buys it, the fees for writing your NFT to the blockchain are added to the sale. Fees are 2.5 % The catch:<ul><li>With OpenSea, you have to initialize your account ($300 to $400 range).</li><li>With Rarible, trying to remove your NFT from sale will cost a fee ($20 to $30).</li></ul>

Choose a platform to sell your NFT on

<ul><li>Rarible lets you sell NFTs using the Flow blockchain if you sign up for it using the Blocto wallet. However, choosing to use Flow on Rarible will limit you to single edition NFTs. You can't sell them with an auction.</li><li>OpenSea will let you sell using the Polygon blockchain.</li></ul>When you use non-Ethereum blockchains like Flow or Polygon, people can't use Ethereum to purchase your NFTs without added gas fees. This may put some collectors off.

Alternatives to Ethereum

Wallets are applications you use to store your cryptocurrencies and any NFTs you end up minting or buying. Use a wallet that is compatible with the blockchain you're using.<ul><li>MetaMask's wallet is widely supported by Ethereum-based applications like OpenSea, Foundation, etc. </li><li>Coinbase has its own wallet you can use as an extension or an app and is supported by most platforms.</li></ul>Once you have the browser extension or app installed, click on "create new wallet", then create a username and password. They will give you a "seed phrase", which is 12 random words. Without it, you can't recover your account.

Set up a wallet

Once you have a wallet set up, connect it with the NFT marketplace you want to use. <ul><li>With OpenSea and Rarible, click the create button in the top left which will ask you to connect your wallet. You will be presented with a list of compatible wallets you can choose from.</li><li>If you installed a Metamark or Coinbase extension, a popup will ask you if you want to connect your wallet.</li></ul> Caution: Think twice if an unknown site asks to connect to your wallet, as many scammers could try to access your funds or NFTs.

Connect your wallet

<ol><li>Click the Create button in the upper right-hand corner.</li><li>Click the box with an image icon in it to upload the file you'll be selling as an NFT.</li><li>Give it a title. Add a URL in the External Link field that points to your website or Twitter account. Use the Description field to explain to potential buyers what your NFT is.</li><li>You can add text that acts as unlockable content, which the buyer of the NFT will be able to see.</li><li>Select which blockchain you're minting your NFT to.</li><li>Click the Create button.</li><li>Click the Sell button and add the amount and other information.</li><li>Click the "Complete listing" button.</li></ol>

Create an NFT on OpenSea

<ol><li>You will be asked whether you want to create a single- or a multiple-edition NFT.</li><li>Next, upload the digital file using the Choose File button. It will eventually end up on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS),  a decentralised way to store media.</li><li>Set your selling options - "fixed price", "open for bids", or "timed auction."</li><li>Add unlockable content (optional).</li><li>Choose your collection.</li><li>Decide if you want the Free Minting option. If you turn it off and use Ethereum, you'll have to pay a gas fee.</li><li>Give your NFT a title and description.</li><li>Click the Create button, and complete the next series of actions.</li></ol>

Listing an NFT on Rarible

This article explains the basics of NFTs and then explores how to create an NFT using two of the most popular marketplaces. It is meant to be a brief guide to help you get started.

NFTs are the latest craze (or fad?) on the internet, and it seems like everyone’s getting into them. Here’s how you can create and sell your own using marketplaces like Rarible or OpenSea.

How to create an NFT — and why you may not want to

Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and embedded search-and-insert tool in the editor) with Medium in February 2018, it seems everybody is using it.Is that good?As a writer, if you do exactly what everyone else is doing, your voice will be lost in the crowd.“It is better to fail in originality than succeed in imitation.”— Herman Melville, novelist

How to Choose the Best Image for Your Medium Story

How do you choose the best image for your story, Unsplash or not?To dig up some data on this, I analyzed the featured photos of the&nbsp;top 100 Medium stories of all time&nbsp;and found that they fall into six categories.TOP 50<ul><li>Unsplash or HD generic: 18</li><li>Custom design/photography: 15</li><li>Famous person: 7</li><li>Screenshot: 4</li><li>Cartoon: 4</li><li>GIF: 2</li></ul>

Next 50–100 Top Stories

<ul><li>Custom design/photography: 35</li><li>Unsplash or HD generic: 35</li><li>Famous: 13</li><li>Screenshot: 7</li><li>Cartoon: 5</li><li>GIF: 3</li><li>None: 1</li><li>Suspended: 1</li></ul>

Totals:

<ul><li>Don’t feel bad using Unsplash . Custom photography and design and generic HD photos were exactly equal and made up 70% of all top 100 stories.</li><li>Ui and design articles were mostly custom designed. News-related stories tended to be Screenshots of events or photos of famous people.</li><li>54% of photos had people in them , that number increases if you include POV photos, as if you’re looking through the eyes of the author.</li><li>Only one story didn’t have photos at all.</li></ul>The featured photo of your medium story plays an important part, but it also shouldn't be used as a crutch.

Takeaways: What does this data actually mean?

This is an excerpted lesson from the Medium Writing Course: 30 Expert Writing Lessons for Writers Who Want to Make It Big on Medium. Unsplash is a great resource. But ever since its partnership (and…

The growing list of applications and use cases of blockchain technology in business and life

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