This is a nice long-read article that talks about the blockchain at what I think is the perfect level of abstraction for a smart person who knows nothing about it, an "average" internet user.  Sort of an extension, or perhaps a prequel, to this post from @asymmetryanarch.

Memory and storage are now following that same pattern. With cost per terabyte in free fall, the first response is to accumulate more data—hence, big data. But what can you create if you waste storage? Bitcoin, for one thing. The Bitcoin blockchain provides an inviolable record of each bitcoin’s history at the cost of storing each transaction record 5,700 times over.

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Digital tokens such as bitcoin waste storage in massively duplicative blockchains to create virtual continuity. This is the fundamental breakthrough. Continuity—outside the domain of quantum physics—is a universal property of the physical world. If I pass an object behind my back, you can be reasonably sure that what reappears in my left hand is what disappeared from my right. Continuity permits identity of both things and people; it permits property because a continuously identified thing can be owned by a continuously identifiable person. It therefore permits transactions—transfers of property. It permits trust.

Trust is the fundamental thing that humans require in order to cooperate with one another, which I wrote about for IGMS here.  We call it different things in different contexts, but it always means, "How do I know you will do what you say you will do?"  In evolutionary biology they call it costly signaling.  A peacock can't just lie about its health and strength, because it's carrying this demonstrably long and heavy tail; if it were weak and slow, a tiger would have eaten it already.  This is the principle that biology uses to approximate the continuity of the physical world.

There's a lot of detail in the article that I don't have time to think about before hopping in the car for the Christmas road trip tomorrow.  Vocabulary like Channels and Sidechains and Sharding.  Hopefully it will generate some discussion about these things that I can read when I get back.

Merry X-mas!