A Vision of a HiveMind

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to guide the reader down a set of logical arguments which will prove why blockchain technology and its widespread adoption in the world was predetermined from the beginning of time.

We will begin by examining examples throughout history of humans using technology to lower the economic cost of creating what will be called a “hivemind” among all humans. The hivemind represents the natural desire that humans possess which drives them to connect with other humans. This process will be accepted as a universal force that guides human behavior and increases the survivability of the species.

After we create a model of how the world evolves over time, we will use it to show how recent developments in blockchain technology fit into this model, and we will attempt to foresee the changes that will happen over the next century as they relate to blockchain, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, big data, and quantum computing. The idea of a hivemind between humans will extend to machines as well since they are a manifestation of our own intelligence and created to enhance the hivemind.

The Hivemind

Economists divide transaction costs into three broad categories: Search and information costs which are associated with a person having to acquire and integrate information into their mind, bargaining costs which involve coming to an agreement between the consumer and the provider, and policing and enforcement costs which are the costs required to ensure that all parties follow the agreement that happened at the time of a transaction. We will proceed to examine how behavior or technologies of the past were adopted and the effect they had on these three categories while making an argument that they were adopted because it increased the efficiency of the hivemind.

Benchmark of The Hivemind

The first homo sapiens drew things in caves to communicate ideas with other beings. This transfer of abstract information from the mind of one being to the mind of another is profound and there are no other animals that have achieved it. This represents our baseline benchmark for connectivity in the hivemind and there are several aspects that we want to think about related to the efficiency of the connection.

First of all, it is perceived with the eyes of the user and the meaning of the image is reconstructed through a consistent model of the world that each user has. The user must be physically present in order to perceive the message in the same location as where the image was created. There are limitations on the persistence of the message over time since the cave may erode and the message lost. There are limited ways to let other beings know that you placed a message there since you would be required to draw more images in nearby areas, meaning that the perception of your message is limited to only those that are physically near to the drawing.

It should be clear that the transaction costs of communicating this message are prohibitively high. If the creator wanted to communicate their idea to everyone else in the world they would need to physically travel the world over all the while drawing their image in as many places as possible hoping that others would see it, and if they wanted a specific person to see it they would need to use knowledge of the person’s usual location as a proxy for their address.

This is our starting benchmark and we will look at different examples of technological innovations to see how they progressively reduced transaction costs associated with enhancing the hivemind.

Human Language

Imagine if you needed to have a conversation with someone but you were only allowed to use pictures to express yourself. In fact, many languages started off in exactly that way.

The transaction cost associated with communicating through images is high. It would take incredible amounts of time, and even if you did succeed with one person, the message would need to be unambiguous so that other people could view the images and come to the same conclusion. Languages evolved over time to reduce the transaction costs of communicating and to enhance the hivemind and connectivity between our species.

Relative to our benchmark of drawing on caves this represents a monumental improvement and takes rare intelligence in a species to accomplish.

Printing Press

The printing press was technology that allowed for the broadcasting of ideas through a physical medium. This reduced the transaction costs associated with recording information on the physical medium by mechanical duplication of written language. A physical medium, like paper, was the de facto way to spread information for thousands of years before humans developed the tools to manipulate the fabric of the universe, electromagnetic waves.

Radio

Shortly after humans harnessed the power of electricity in the 1880s, we discovered how to use electromagnetic waves to connect with each other using the radio. The radio is essentially the same thing as cave drawings and the printing press at its core, but using more advanced technology, and it allows the hivemind to transfer ideas from one mind to another with lower transaction costs in the same way the printing press did. A remarkable thing about the radio is that it allowed humans to move away from using a physical medium to transmit ideas. Physical mediums are limited by geographic location, increasing the transaction cost of retrieving the information and thus decreasing inclusivity of people that can access the information because for many the cost is too high. When these transaction costs are reduced, it empowers the hivemind as a whole! The ultimate result is unlocking human potential to increase the survivability of the species.

The Internet

The internet is a manifestation of the same universal force that drove humans to create the printing press or the radio. It is part of the evolution of connecting the hivemind together, to allow the transfer of ideas from one mind to another with progressively lower transaction costs. The result? My own personal experience is a great example of the effect the internet has. I grew up in a smaller province in Canada and felt very isolated from the world. When it came time for me to find my place in society as a young adult I was very lost. Using a search engine on the internet I found a profession that I thought would be suitable for me, and today I am making a living by working in that profession. Having a connection to the rest of the world allowed me to unlock my human potential and find a way to contribute to the world and earn a living. Technology that enables this kind of transfer of information is an equalizer for humanity. It has the power to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor by removing barriers to information to let people change their stars.

Blockchain

Money is a special type of information. Historically it has been regarded as a physical thing which is naturally scarce, like gold. The information was ingrained in the physical world as a perceivable thing that you could touch. Banks started issuing bills and cash as tokens that represent the physical thing, gold, but have less transaction costs to transfer since cash is much smaller than gold and is easier for humans to carry.

Ever since the beginning of the internet there has been a movement to create digital tokens that represent the same thing as cash. The benefit of doing this would follow the same pattern as the printing press and the radio; it would reduce the transaction cost associated with transferring information. The trouble was, that the aspect of scarcity that we have in the physical world was not easy to create in the digital world where images and documents can be duplicated infinitely. That is the problem that Satoshi Nakamoto solved with blockchain.

With blockchain we eliminate the need for having an authority monitor that there is no duplication of a scarce resource in the world. This idea does not only apply to currency, but it can apply to every aspect in our digital life. On social media, one identity is only allowed to “like” any one thing just once, they cannot like it an infinite number of times! If you want to keep track of real estate using digital means, it must map to the real world which naturally has scarce land, thus you cannot create land out of thin air. If you want to track merchandise on a supply chain then the ledger you track it with must be trustworthy and not allow for duplication of any items.

The very fabric of our culture is based on relying on huge organizations for trust. Governments exist to enforce a contract that everyone living under one nation follow a set of rules and guidelines to contribute to the betterment of the country. These ideas are now being successfully digitized and ultimately will allow for a more transparent and efficient form of government in the future.

What will be the net effect on the world after this technology is successfully integrated? Less inequality, more inclusiveness for all humans, and an unlocking of human potential. It follows an abundantly clear pattern that human history has followed. It follows this pattern because of an innate universal force that exists in all human beings. It will enable all humans to achieve greater liberty, freedom, and justice and its widespread adoption in the world is inevitable because of the strength of the universal force that guides its adoption.

An extended vision of the future will be articulated in a future article.