Coming in From the Cold - Adventures on the Blockchain

I’ve worked online for many years and yes this image is a perfect depiction of me at various times during the day. From the time I jump out of bed in the morning, and begin scanning my email while waiting for that first pot to finish, to the time I drag my poor beaten mind back under the covers, this elixir of the online world has been the staple of my daily life.

You see, I’ve spent the past years of my working life helping clients discover the joys of the internet. It’s a perfect trade off - they get more clients and customers of their own, selling more products and services to people they wouldn’t have reached without the net. I get a wonderful variety of tasks that seems to change everyday.

The net itself changes incredibly fast. We even talk about “real time” and “net time”. Somehow real time seems to move at a glacial pace when compared to the speed of innovation online. And so, my job changes and adapts far more often than it would if I spent my days in a cube.

Some changes are good. Improvements in server hosting and cloud storage mean I no longer have to admin client servers. No more phone alerts at 3 AM when some kid is practicing his hacker moves, or forays into the dark web to be sure my retail clients aren’t on the list of portals for customer id theft. No more Linux or Apache or SQL setups.

Programs like WordPress have made other parts of my job far easier. No longer do I have to spend days writing HTML code and hooks into a database. Now I can have a good looking website up and running in a matter of hours, accessible and fast loading on any device.

But I found that I had traded server admin for Social Media admin. And that task requires entire gallons of the internet elixir - coffee. Admining conventional internet social media groups, the home of the drama llamas, can be a challenging way to spend your day.

So things are great for me right now, right? I just have to delete the 200 messages that are spam that doesn't go instantly into my email trash bin, gently (or not so gently) calm the social media drama queens, and whip together some stunning websites and my day is done - right?

WRONG. Now comes the great disrupter. The blockchain. I have spent over a year on Steem and EOS blockchains - watching, interacting and learning. And that’s what this blog is all about. How the blockchain and cryptocurrency can and will change the world.

I’ve found a home on Steemit that I don’t think I could ever have made in the conventional internet world. I love the global feel, the interaction with people from all walks of life from all over the world. I don’t feel trapped in an echo chamber full of people with the same opinions, the same background, the same stale ideas.
I’ve taken a job working with Oracle-D and it fits like a glove. I get to help clients expand their reach and meet their goals, trade ideas with an exciting, vibrant group of people, and grow in my chosen field. I find myself looking at the clock and realizing that 12 hours have gone by and I didn’t even know it, because every minute of those hours was packed with the excitement of new ideas, and shared with a vibrant group of innovators from around the world.
If you thought the advent of PC’s changed society - it did. By fulfilling Steve Jobs vision of a computer in every home, and going far beyond that to multiple computing devices in every home, PC’s launched a revolution that has been every bit as far reaching and society changing as the Industrial Revolution.

If you thought the global adoption of the Internet changed almost everything about how we conduct our daily lives - well it did.

But the decentralized blockchain is changing our world in ways that I don’t think even Steve Jobs, or Sergei Brin or even Jeff Bezos saw coming down the “information highway”. In future articles I will toss out my thoughts on some of those changes, recaps of some of the daily crypto and blockchain news, and maybe dust off my crystal ball and make a couple of predictions about how our society will adapt and handle these incredible changes.

So stock up on that nectar of the gods - coffee - and settle in for the ride. This blockchain adventure is gonna be fun!