History and Blockchain

It's funny how children think of the time before they were born. Like it all happened at once. As if the week before they were born I was chasing Romans off my farm before going to a Beatles concert and helping out with Stonehenge.

But then sometimes the past and present collide and make something exciting.

I studied computer science at university. One of the modules was on abstract data types. One thing we had to do was implement the list data type. It's a simple sequence of items. The linked list was a great implementation that used memory pointers to reference the previous link in the chain.

So what?

Throw in some cryptography and you have a blockchain. It's a linked list where each element also has a hash of its predecessor. That way, the list can be validated so we know no one has messed with it.

Oh, and the blockchain is append only: no prepend, no delete.

Now It's like it all happened at once.

George Boole never got to see how powerful Boolean Algebra became, but you're looking at them in action now: computers.

The linked list is having its Boolean moment. It's inventors should be justifiably proud.

I suppose that Satoshi guy deserves some credit too.