Most Blockchain Development is Utterly Wasted on Reinventing the Old… We Need New Ideas
The New vs. The Old
The power of blockchain is not to reinvent the products that currently dominate the market. Whenever a company claims it will be “The Next [Whatever]”, it’s a sign of ignorance.
Blockchain is fundamentally a NEW technology. It is important to understand this, because humans have historically been terrible at predicting the trajectory of new ideas. We always want to map them to the past. We look at what already existed and figure we can do it a little better.
It would be a shame for Steemit to replace Facebook… because that is an incremental improvement. It’s not a realization of the real potential of blockchain. Facebook is the ultimate centralized network… and a decentralized network makes a huge mistake by copying it.
That’s where DTube fails. For one thing, IFPS might be a hugely overvalued, and underperforming, project… LBRY is doing the same thing with less than 1% as much money. When you raise $500,000,000 and can’t reliably host a few thousand hours of video… you are blowing it.
What the Telephone Tells Us About Blockchain
When the telephone was invented, its creators imagined it would enhance the activity of the telegram. Telegram operators could use it to communicate with each other. There was no plan to put telephones in peoples’ homes.
Steemit is similar to reddit, but it won’t replace it. Ditto for Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Steemit is a new kind of network.
Reddit and Facebook are the epitome of centralized networks. They are fueled by memes and cheap entertainment. Steemit has no place for any of the content that you see on the front page of Reddit - if a user earned a spot on the top of the trending page for a meme, they would be largely lambasted.
It’s a different system with different opportunities.
Centralized networks are not evil. They are one useful paradigm. Rather than focus on destroying the structures that exist now, we should be adding to them. When we add something new to the ecosystem, we can create exponential progress rather than incremental progress.
Determinate vs. Indeterminate Optimism
Indeterminate Optimism: The idea that things will get better, but we don’t know how.
This is an unsustainable mindset. As Peter Thiel points out in the above video, it is how we look at death - “Well, I probably won’t die this year. That’s good enough.” - but it does not lead to radical improvement, it only leads to survival.
When you believe that the future will be good and don’t know why, it is natural to copy the current success stories. After all, it worked for them, and why not for you?
Determinate Optimism is when you have a clear vision of why the future shall be better. With blockchain, we have the power to create decentralized networks that value legitimate contribution and collaboration.
Uncensored networks are inherently more collaborative, more creative, than censored ones. There are problems around the edges - hate speech, ignorance, etc - but the vast majority of the creation is positive and pragmatic.
When we attempt to recreate centralized networks… we toss away the potential of blockchain. Instead, let’s focus on a clear vision of a radically better future: A more voluntary, more collaborative, more creative and equal future.
Let the current centralized systems stand. If they are not creating real value, they will fall when their time comes.
Will you join me to create a new kind of world?
This reminds me of what Henry Ford allegedly said: "If I asked people what they wanted, they would say faster horses ."
people often wants the impossible ... but periodically somebody solves the problem at root :-) ... Ford one of "them"
Well, for the time-being anyway! ;-)
Yeah this quote sums up everything I am trying to say, but in 1% of the words, haha. You can draw a similar parallel to the innovations of Steve Jobs and (separately) Satoshi, in both cases we had no idea that such amazing new things were possible.
Steemit actually is not a social network but a blogging platform, so it will not replace Facebook - it's a different kind of software with different functions.
Centralized ? Decentralized ? Good or Bad ?
Actually how can you access steemit software ? Using steemit.com
What do you use for it? A browser. How do you access Facebook ? ...
It's not a game of words, steemit and facebook from a user point of view are centralized systems... the technology used , blockchain, is decentralized but it's a quality related to the power and construction "material".
Steemit can change, it can evolve, and as web software designer and developer I can tell you that estetically Steemit could look like facebook ... So I think it could replace Facebook
(P.s. if you are interested in a SteemIT version that have same functionality as facebook please follow my blog to support the cause)
You seem to be saying two different things... "Steemit [..] will not replace Facebook" and then "I think it could replace Facebook" - which is it?
It could it doesn't mean it will , and I specify a condition which probably is not obvious but I tell it with other words: as it is now will not replace Facebook (absurd btw) but if UI AND UX will evolve and provide real social network functionality ( messages, chat, pages, posts, reactions etc) it could mean even facebook death. Does it make sense now for you ?
This is a great post because it recognizes that it is disruptive technologies - like blockchain - that create new industries, opportunities, and societies. I knew I followed @haymattsokol for good reason! This post is but an example of why I did.
Just moments ago I posted this blog, that discusses how to replace our current notion of currency, debt, and finance altogether. I'd appreciate any criticism and points ya'll could make about how to effect this plan, or make it better, or why it will never work.
Thanks!
At first I was going to disagree, but after reading your arguments, I then thought about AOL. Google didn't KILL AOL, they just swept them under the rug...
GREAT example. Even now, Google co-exists with many of its competitors - it doesn't need to destroy them, it merely outperforms them.
I agree with you.
You are on point in my opinion when you said that Steemit will not be the "next Facebook", but It has a real chance to disrupt Facebook in a major way.
What do you mean when you say it has the chance to disrupt Facebook in a major way?
Look at it this way: People were writing letters to communicate until the telephone was invented. Then "slowly" people started to migrate from the telephone to internet services like skype, viber, messenger etc. Those services took away a part of the market share from phone service providers.
So every product/service seems to have a shell life. Facebook is no exception, although it's a way harder nut to crack. Still, there is a big possibility that Steemit will at least take market share from facebook (the social platform) or other social media platforms, if not completely disrupt them, like was the case for: letters/email, cart/car, candles(as light)/electricity etc.
Well, it's an evolution in the "attention economy" as the steemit people like to say. That leaves the form of the "market share" in a kind of protean state.
Facebook and cheap memes ......yup we want some quality and collaboration on here. Well written.
It takes time for people to adjust to the new. It is also natural to want to put Steem into a box with the other social media outlets out there because that is all people know. I am still getting used to the concept and learning my way around but I can see your point in the potential applications down the line. It seems to me that the best that we can do is offer what we know, put out knowledge and passions out there, connect with others of similar interest and then go from there. Our own personal networks will grow, ideas will pop off of each other and in time you and I will both see where the blockchain ends up. In the mean time, we can do our best to incorporate our own value into the system and lead as an example. Are there certain things that you would like to see done or wish to be implemented?
Hey, whether or not steemit replaces facebook or youtube doesn't matter. I love everything about steemit and have replaced them myself with steemit! I am happy to see dtube on here. Just makes it a one stop operation for me. I still check my facebook from time to time because my family and friends are all on there..Hopefully someday they will all be here.
Doesn't it matter, though? Setting out to "replace Facebook" is a very specific, and arguably insane, goal.
The point of this thread is that we should frame out task differently. The way I think about it now, is: "We must build the world's primary incentivized media platform"
blockchain for me is like home, the only place I'm truly welcomed. Nowhere else valued my contributions and every platform I tried handed me my earnings like they're doing me a favor.
Bitcoin included me in seconds while paypal sees everyone as a criminal.
Steemit welcomed me with open arms while Facebook tried to sell me exposure.
I made money out of my work here while every other platform cut percentages off me.
not to mention without paypal, my money wasn't good for anyone, nobody sold me their software. I never had that problem with crypto currency.
I beg to differ, blockchain is a good replacement, depends on your point of view though.
I don't think Steem is trying to copy facebook, or twiter or reddit, or shut down youtube, and I don't know if it wants to even. Those bastards did it to themselves, they are whores and cheats, fakes, frauds, utter failures in Integrity 101.
For the love of money they have sold their
soulfellow man. All that is to come to them is rightly so, they could always mend their ways and stop censorship, stop ghosting, stop denying access, stop deleting comments/posts/accounts/pages/forums/communities.Steem is a public forum, akin to the concept of Public Forums from antiquity, and it uses a token to rate/rank content. It's function is simply in providing a place free of Admins where anyone can publish their thoughts, experience, stories while rewarding users with Tokens for curating the published content and publishing content as well.
Even with that in mind, Steem is a step back in time in some very Sensible, Sane, Sense, a "turn" of re to an internet which wasn't dominated by Ads and the corporate profits over everything mode, to a web where people would host the websites on their own Home PC, and gather resources through direct donations in order to create servers and pay the bills.
Steem is compared with the others because essentially they all do the same AgeOld Function of providing a Public Forum but none of the others can compare in the intricacy of this simplicity through which the Service is Delivered, which is largely Lost on those who say Curation is Censorship or gripe about "Beavis and butthead memes make $60, and I spend half a week on a POS post and make 3 whole views, this place sucks, even if I'm not in it for the money ya know I'm gonna steem from now on mostly out of spite for the Meme and all who voted for it" who form the Fray.
Transparency provides for Censorship Proof One, and Decentralization provides for Censorship Proof Two, yet while Transparency and Decentralization are what give this place an intrinsic value and that in turn powers and motivates people to share even more in a collaborative, constructive manner and in turn adding value directly into the system, and even one MEME and surprisingly also one POS half week long "Article" at a time create value in Attention Currency, and it's the totality of users, the interactions, the unspoken agreements and Trust, along with the System Integrity of Decentralized and Transparent ledger and the content that make Steem look both like Internet Before Ads, and Fuck You Very Much Cancersip Corpotocracy and Copyright to the Creator of Content that continue to be unsurpassed and each day we only get closer to when a contender will take up the challenge and help collaborate what we know with what they want to do.
I think that the precipice was passed back in March when Dan Left and I doubt that had much to do with it but what had happened was not Hype and cannot be hype anymore, it's a testament that this Ecosystem, this world we are part of right now, here, as you said is Positive and Pragmatic, and each challenge is taken and flipped on it's head, boom Consensus, bottom Up, we are the ones in charge and even those with Zilch to their accounts, the very words they add onto the blockchain give it Value.
Steem is invaluable as it is because this unprecedented wedding of Decentralized Transparent Ledger with Token Rewards for Creating and Curating Content, which is why when you read people whinnying about Beavis and Buthead memes making $60 and their precious work meticulously cobbled together to form the mosaic ultra weave which gets an insulting 3 views (from people that probably don't even read the thing as they rush to close out of it) and which they conclude with ".. but the money is nice." right after they say that "I'm not even here for the money".
Instead of focusing on what they can Create The Fray are focusing on how this place it's not up to their standard (this place sucks, it's not even facebook killer wtf))and how they are going to drop their phenomenal posting because of a freaking MEME making $60, as if they had a scintilla of say over what people chose to post, whilesome other unGreatFOOLS, who aren't screaming WHERE'S-MY-GOD-DAMN-PROMISED-AUDIENCE (as if they didn't earn all those 3 views for their Week Long Grueling Turd Polishing-as if that makes sense at all: I will stop doing my best because others are doing a lot less then me and get much rewards so I will settle for doing shit to match the shit rewards I've been getting because I'm not even here for the rewards anyway) have gripes over the distinctions of the terms Curation and Censorship and in turn whine in effort to sway people that curation is a lesser form of Censorship as if their efforts could amount to any regard from the community or consensus, and usually this whining is also directly because their self esteem comes from what other people think of their work and not what they think of their own work (which usually is that they are Michelangelo with the keybord or truth warrior Beethoven) and depend entirely on people lining up behind their idiocy, and these bunch hardly will grasp all the Benefits of the system and will chose not to adapt (adapt to being shit because people say I'm shit, and where is my private band that is supposed to be in the background on all my engagements enchanting the audience as I recite my prose) to new modes of doing the same things (but facebook doesn't have unlikes!).
Steemulate includes the real life Idiots who won't obdurate, and Ungrateful and Entitled along the visionary and sagacious and while the ecocisteem is in a state of growth, it's in this uncertainty that there is a choice over intriguing curiosity for what tomorrow brings or fear and doubt, giving up or not being grateful and rubbed the wrong way for the 3 views you got or an even poorer choice as to blur the line between censorship and curation and curtail your sense to such bluntness that obtuse is the only word left to describe whatever sense remains and you'll never gather consensus when you cannot distinguish the two but good luck on your epic battle trying to convince people that apples are really not apples and not apples are bad, because Flagging is Censorship is a worthy cause lol!