Awakening to our blockchain-powered future

I'm a software engineer who started learning about blockchain on Wednesday. In the "yes-and" spirit I see inherent in the technology, I'm going forward with posting the unformed thoughts from my journal this morning, soon to be transcended and included by the next block in the chain.

5:10am: I've been up all night learning about Bitcoin, blockchain, etc., and I feel great! It's wonderful to have something to be excited about learning.

~9am: I just woke up from this dream:

I'm attending a multi-day corporate, promotional sales presentation for a sought-after, extended learning opportunity.

Perhaps it's about blockchain itself, or how to become rich with it... or about some performance-enhancing drug. In any case, the promise is of a luxurious experience in a tropical environment—assuming I've been paying close enough attention and get accepted into the program (and decide to pay the more-extensive fees associated with this premium opportunity).

It's mine to choose (and purchase) if I pass the test and qualify. The instructions are confusing. I get a little flustered. After completing the test (or so I think), I submit my final answers and wait to see what happens. It turns out that for the most important question, which I otherwise answer perfectly well, I forgot to "give back the bubble"—a way of locking in or registering my answer, kind of like in a Scantron test except that the answer isn't necessarily a multiple-choice selection... but regardless, I did not give back the bubble and am thus silently disqualified from the program.

I am not aware of this at first. I watch other customers being celebrated for their acceptance into the program, and into the room rolls a large, opulent desk with shelves containing the finely-crafted, leather-bound volumes of the course curriculum. It begins to dawn on me that I am not being selected. I have been disqualified due to a trivial human error (of my own)—a technicality.

Upon waking, the phrase "extinction of mercy" came to mind. It had popped into my head yesterday along with a few other phrases, while contemplating the social implications and opportunities of blockchain technology:

the first blockchain suicide
the tyranny of democracy
the loss of authority
the extinction of mercy
the first blockchain execution

If the test in my dream was based on blockchain technology, there would be nothing anyone could do to undo it or override it. There would be no authority to appeal to, and my mistake would be permanently added to the ledger, transparent and immutable, for all to see (though perhaps still preserving my privacy??).

So this morning it occurs to me that, in a society where everything is permanently recorded and no mistakes are ever forgotten, there needs to be a function of mercy. For individual monetary losses, for example, there could be an appeals system based on "voluntary taxes," i.e. donations, which go into a pool of money that can be used to bail people out in certain cases. People voluntarily contribute, because they know it might be them someday.

Try replacing "Father" with "Network" in the following quote:

"For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins." (Matthew 5:14–15)

The entire Sermon on the Mount seems incredibly, powerfully, urgently, crucially relevant right now, as the brave new world of a blockchain-based society descends upon us.

Will humanity survive blockchain? Will we keep a door open to Wisdom? How does wisdom find its way into a smart contract? When we remove all intermediaries—such as judges—how will we make wise choices together? Do we have a critical mass of wisdom and maturity among humanity, such that we can trust the crowd to make sound decisions? Will the system channel isolated, individual self-interest toward the collective good? What percentage of humanity needs to care for the whole before a contract-driven society will itself care for the whole? Do we have enough time to morally prepare ourselves for this technology? Will we do what's needed to morally prepare ourselves for this technology?

"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy^*, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22–23)

^* [Translater's note:] The Greek for unhealthy here implies stingy.

The blockchain is a rapidly growing body. We at the edges are its eyes. There is no stopping this body. It is growing whether we like it or not. Blockchain technology gives us a raw power for accelerated self-determination. We have already made the choice to choose our own fate. The question is: what fate will we choose?