Thoughts about how the Industrial Revolution was just an appetizer
Machines: spark plugs of progress and change
During the Industrial Revolution, we realized that we could improve our lives by building large systems capable of manufacturing products, such as clothing or automobiles, and providing services, such as electricity or sanitation, to large groups of people. We invent industrial machineries and develop the means for mass production.
Before the Industrial Revolution, we could also do things, but the challenge was to make them on a large scale. With ingenuity, luck and dedication we were able to do things faster, cheaper and better.
Our machines, and where we lodged them, formed cities, defined our transportation systems, educational systems and daily routines. The impact machines have had on shaping our lives as we know it is immense.
Historians agree that the Industrial Revolution was the most important event in the history of mankind since the domestication of animals and plants.
All built on the backs of the machines.
Everything has a price
Faster, cheaper and better is perfect. However, machines are whimsical and delicate things. Anyone who has tried to fix one once knows they are picky. They decompose, require permanent service and maintenance, or become obsolete. (Neither touch the issue of "planned obsolescence" nor the strangulation of development when it goes against the bottom-line of companies).
Machines were also the catalysts of the transfer of social asymmetries in our relations: from aristocrats to industrial entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs needed investors, and investors needed profits, and those who invented, optimized, maintained and operated the machines needed to sleep and be duly motivated to move forward. In short, a redefinition of the social structure.
It is not difficult to argue that machines gave rise to many horrible things: the miseries of factory life, the exploitation of workers, class struggles, consumerism, pollution, trade wars. The machines are not perfect.
Bitcoin: the perfect machine
Bitcoin is an indestructible time-stamping machine, data validation, digital value transfer and global coordination. It is the largest, safest and most distributed computer network in the world. It is the first of its kind and unique in every way.
The definition of machine
The definition of the dictionary for the word 'machine' has three premonitory meanings:
1) a computer that uses electricity or an engine to do a particular type of work
2) a large and well-controlled system or organization
3) someone who is so tired or bored that he works without thinking
According to these definitions, Bitcoin is 100% a machine.
The Bitcoin proof-of-work protocol requires electricity. It costs money (in the form of electricity) for miners to create new blocks in the block chain. It is a perfectly balanced risk-reward mechanism.
A great organization It could be said that Bitcoin is the organization and the largest organizational system in the world. Undoubtedly, the largest transnational public service in the world. It is a transparent coordination machine.
And, finally, it is a boring machine that performs only one task: protecting the network and the integrity of its data, autonomously and agnostically. "Without thinking"…
Bitcoin, 100% active
The Bitcoin machine has been operational 99.992464236% of the time since its start on January 3, 2009 at 02:54:25 GMT. Very soon, the bitcoin protocol will have been in service, working as expected, for its first decade.
This in itself is an extraordinary achievement. However, a deeper look reveals an even more exceptional reality: Bitcoin has been operational and functioning for a decade without a boss, without investors, without contracts, without marketing, or rather, despite all those things that appear without invitation .
It keeps working thanks to volunteers and a system of perfectly aligned automatic incentives.
Bitcoin, under construction, is also perfect
It is also remarkable that this machine has been running while it is under construction. In other words, it is never offline, even while it is in development. Proposals for improvements sent by volunteers may or may not be adopted by the community of users, developers, miners, and it is possible that many of the improvements are not even retrocompatible. They are adopted by consensus and do not need to be approved by a committee, representatives or managers. The proposed improvements must be sustained by their own merits, down the premise 'nothing or leave'.
Bitcoin, when attacked, is even more perfect
The Bitcoin machine is valuable. There are billions of dollars at stake. And for that reason, not only is it improving while it is fully operational, but it is also a target for hackers, thieves, luditas and businesses that are threatened by its existence.
It's like replacing propellers to an airplane by turbines in the air while being attacked by a fleet of military helicopters.
How is this possible?
I think it is the first machine in the world capable of existing, and thriving, while under attack. Whenever there has been a machine that needs to be dismantled, repressed, or annihilated there has always been a way through conspiracies, market forces, diplomacy, war.
Bitcoin is nowhere and everywhere. It is autonomous. It is immune to critics and supporters alike. It is anti-fragile, it gets stronger and stronger with each attack. It allows the records of our interactions to be faster, better and cheaper.
If in fact the machines of the Industrial Revolution were the sparks of progress and responsible for shaping our future, imagine what Bitcoin, the perfect machine, will be able to unleash.