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    so I'm gonna go back and really try and
    nail this thing down so that you wind up
    with an operational understanding of the
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    blockchain that will allow you to
    correctly interpret its significance in
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    your life right and to do that we have
    to go back really 50 or so years into
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    the early days of computing because what
    what is making this so confusing is that
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    most of the practitioners in the
    blockchain space have 50 years of
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    history parked into their heads which
    forms an implicit matrix in which words
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    like distributed database hang so to
    really get this to hang together we've
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    got to go all the way back and we're
    gonna go through this kind of quickly
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    but I want to try and lay out the
    foundations in the past so that we can
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    meaningfully talk about the future
    so we conveniently have this stage which
    is set out in lumps and I'm gonna make
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    each one of these basically a ten year
    span so right back somewhere over here
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    in the darkness of history we've got the
    Second World War which is where the
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    computer was was originally created
    right the computer as it currently
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    exists was developed as a weapon to
    defeat the Nazis it was used to crack
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    the codes that allowed the Allies to
    paralyze the German war effort and
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    eventually defeat them and the link
    between cryptography and computation
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    goes all the way back to the birth in
    fact if you go even further back the
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    analog computers these monsters brass
    devices which were used way back in the
    day were actually created to calculate
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    gunnery tables for naval ships at war
    they wanted to be able to calculate the
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    trajectory of artillery so you come
    forward into the 1950s and you get this
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    kind of demilitarized computing all
    these machines and all these engineers
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    that have left of services and are
    coming in to you know create a new
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    generation and we're gonna take all this
    former military gear and we're gonna put
    it in the hands of businesses and back
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    in this prehistory the computers are the
    size of this room they weighed tons the
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    guy from IBM famously says that there
    might be a world market for perhaps five
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    computers a year right the data is
    stored on
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    cards and then eventually one inch wide
    magnetic tapes and the complexity of
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    these systems is such that it takes a
    roomful of programmers to get a simple
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    reliable system to do something a
    process an invoice right this is the
    prehistory and this is the mid mid-1960s
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    that were talking about so the game
    really begins to be recognizable in 1970
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    when you get the creation of an
    abstraction called
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    SQL in IBM by a guy called coder Edward
    Cod and it caught so SQL is this
    extremely forceful application of
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    mathematics to bring order to the chaos
    of tape machines back here you've got a
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    whole bunch of data basically just
    spattered across magnetic tape and
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    you've got huge machines that process
    the tape but when you want to retrieve
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    something you have to go and fish for
    the day to yourself move tape number
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    three forward 17 feet find me the record
    and give me back the first name and
    programming these things is glacially
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    slow it's a nightmarish so here is the
    first place where the heavy mouth really
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    enters the picture in this story which
    is the SQL abstraction assumes that you
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    create a multi-dimensional cube one tape
    machine per axis of the cube five tape
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    machines five dimensional cube you can
    imagine it kind of hanging in space you
    then have an abstract algebra which
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    allows you to take a locus a set space
    inside of the five dimensional cube
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    specify in ways which make sense the
    programmers fairly intuitively see where
    there might be a gap there and pull that
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    and that set of data out into something
    that looks like a spreadsheet and that
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    conceptual jump was at the time so
    revolutionary it took people were five
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    years to accept that it had happened and
    that actually worked and what came out
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    of that was the golden age of SQL right
    1970 to 1990 just about all that we did
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    was take every single thing that we
    could fit into a database in business or
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    in the white
    world and we shoved it into a database
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    and right here in 1970 the machines were
    incredibly expensive and incredibly
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    fragile the people working with the
    machines actually wore white coats
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    because if you weren't wearing a white
    coat stray fibers from your clothing
    could interfere with the tapes Jam the
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    tape machines and destroy your customer
    data Ron
    so amount in this very fragile very
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    arcane very expensive system it's only
    just become technically feasible these
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    things are like laboratory artifacts
    right it's like going into you know CERN
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    or something like that when you want to
    inspect one of them and this sets the
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    mindset for databases right the way
    through 70s up until the beginning of
    the 80s that's the psychological
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    condition of the database and the
    organization's become siloed because all
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    the information that makes your
    organization work is stored inside of
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    one of these data temples right right
    around 84 you get the microcomputer
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    revolution the IBM PC the Apple all this
    kind of stuff and these are appliances
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    there are things that you can buy like a
    television and plug into your office
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    they are robust they're reasonably cheap
    as as well as four or five thousand
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    dollars amazing they are fairly easy to
    maintain and repair they are relatively
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    resistant to dust and humidity they're
    pretty much like a television in terms
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    of their operating characteristics one
    per desk seems possible and weirdly
    enough they can absolutely run database
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    software on them you can actually have a
    database kind of sort of like the big
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    thing you had over here but actually
    living on the machine that you have in
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    front of you and the kind of first real
    heavy use of an application that works
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    in that environment is a thing called
    Lotus 1-2-3 which is the first
    spreadsheet and this begins a revolution
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    that goes all the way through accounting
    but we're not gonna talk about
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    accounting too much but if you want to
    think about computers and Ledger's
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    starts here back in the 80s now this is
    15 years from you know enormous with
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    fragile machinery and enormous expanse
    through to its
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    on a desktop can you imagine how
    disoriented the people that live through
    that technological transformation were
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    it was just as weird as what's happening
    now but it was happening somewhere over
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    there because we hadn't invented the
    Internet to bring you the news that
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    something weird it happened with
    computers now we get to kill in 1990 the
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    networking push really starts a long way
    back but it takes a long time to get the
    networking stuff to work 1990 is about
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    where you begin to get networking that's
    practical for real stuff yeah I got my
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    first email account about 91 and at that
    point there was no World Wide Web there
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    was a computer there was email there
    were chat programs but if you wanted a
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    document from another machine you got an
    interface that looked a bit like a file
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    browser and you clicked on the document
    you want then it loaded it onto your
    machine and then you opened it in
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    something to take a look at it and the
    notion that you could build the thing to
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    read the document into the thing that
    got you the document was quite radical
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    that was sort of a big deal and that was
    why the web was a big deal no one were
    bit weird paradigm stuff over here
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    through this period the computing is
    very much centered around data it's
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    structured it's hard it's rigid it's
    formulated it's tabulated the stuff is
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    very rigid the web builds on a different
    model of computing which is called
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    document-centric right document-centric
    computers are paper simulators right
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    they harm do things which look like
    documents you get email it looks like a
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    letter am you open up a graphics program
    it looks like a canvas there are things
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    that look like paintbrushes in term
    model of computing that we're using
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    right now is document-centric computing
    and the connection between databases and
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    that sort of data centric computing and
    document-centric computing is extremely
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    weak there are two completely different
    ways of getting the machine to do stuff
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    for you and getting data into documents
    is tricky as anybody who's ever done in
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    Excel merge knows and seriously right
    it's hard
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    getting documents into data is even
    harder which is the entire mass of
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    content management systems right
    scanning documents all of us these two
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    things don't mix together at all well so
    we come out through the 90s and you kind
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    of get to mid 95 maybe early 96 and
    people suddenly realize that one day in
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    the future you'll be able to make money
    on the internet there's just one problem
    there's no security which means if you
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    type your credit card into an internet
    form it will be bounced all around the
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    internet anybody can read it and they
    can steal money out of your account
    it's another five years until we get a
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    widely deployed solution that allows us
    to have encryption which lets us move
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    credit cards around the internet
    e-commerce doesn't really become a thing
    into hot 1999 2000 so we were already
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    here by the time you've got a computer
    that is capable of taking a payment from
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    you know the the internet again how fast
    is the rate of change does anybody even
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    remember when you couldn't put credit
    cards into the internet but you were all
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    alive pretty much but we forget so
    quickly what was possible or impossible
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    when you technology arrived so we're
    just gonna wash the memory out it's
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    quite hard even to think about what it
    was like before we had cell phones so
    you come forward to 2010 by 2010 I'm
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    gonna suggest that more or less
    everything you could do in a webpage had
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    been done to at least the first
    approximation more or less all the basic
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    stuff was there if you could do it with
    a computer that was basically a paper
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    simulator it had been done more or less
    now this is also roughly when Bitcoin
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    gets started and Bitcoin starts in some
    you know festering little weird
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    counterculture on the internet which I
    spent my entire 1990s and called
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    cyberpunk and the cypherpunks are
    straight out of science fiction they
    can't tell the difference between
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    science fiction and reality they
    generally speaking have an emotional
    intelligence Koecher around 75 to 50 it
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    took me a long time to grow over and one
    of the things which makes that scene
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    work the way that does is the enormous
    prevalence of autism so whenever you
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    hear somebody ragging on the Nerds
    right but ever you hear somebody ragging
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    on the nerds remember what they're doing
    generally speaking is picking on
    autistic people right it's really
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    important to understand that the people
    building the technologies on put your
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    society completely depends the people
    without whom the lights go out and the
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    food stays cold are heavily heavily
    heavily tending towards being on the
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    autistic spectrum so when you hear
    people laughing at the Nerds remember
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    they're often at people that are
    disabled there are also the people that
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    your civilization depends on so don't
    screw with them right so the cypherpunks
    come out and basically say in a very
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    naive way why do we need government and
    they go and they build this thing which
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    is essentially a central bank of the
    internet now you sort of think well that
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    was a bit of a big jump how did we go
    from we can finally take a credit card
    to central bank of the internet that's
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    what all of us spent about five years
    wondering as well what the hell did they
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    do because the technology arrived raw we
    could go to ask what satoshis intent was
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    because Satoshi was a ghost right the
    software was dropped onto the internet
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    there was some early discussion and then
    the guy vanished so we have no idea who
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    Satoshi was we don't know what the
    intent was there is nobody to go to
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    conferences and pitch the technology we
    were left with an artifact that to all
    intents and purposes might have been
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    created by a time-travel or under
    dropped it's about bigger jump um so
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    what did they do what they did was this
    right back over here the databases were
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    singular they existed in an atomic state
    one database per enterprise the network
    existed in some relational sense between
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    enterprises but because the database was
    perceived has been too fragile to let
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    anybody touch the database never
    directly communicated with the network
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    you always had a lots and lots and lots
    of guards and buffers and other stuff in
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    between to prevent the two things
    working properly and if you did actually
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    connect the databases kind of directly
    to each other you got another problem
    which was the database encoded the
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    worldview of the organization to
    organizations to different world views
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    you always needed something in between
    to translate
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    so you never got large-scale
    computer-to-computer connections that
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    allows you to create a shared model of
    reality between lots of different
    organizations and this shows up everyday
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    when you try and do something like
    process a claim on insurance and you
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    have to fill in the name and address
    details seventy four times for different
    organizations often three or four times
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    for the same organization the databases
    are kept separate from each other
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    there's no real connectivity between
    them and when you try and build
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    connections between the systems the
    complexity builds to the point where
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    it's too expensive to do so what they
    say you know mean when they say the word
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    distributed database is a database which
    is both like a database and like a
    network and this is the genius of
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    Bitcoin it fuses together the database
    and the network into a seamless hole
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    called blockchain everywhere there is
    data there is Network and everywhere
    there is Network there is data they're
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    completely fused inside of these systems
    so what that means is rather than having
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    all of these individual kind of ivory
    tower computer systems connected by a
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    network and then all the costs of moving
    things in and out you have a single
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    shared story of reality spread across
    all the machines simultaneously and when
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    it changes in one place it changes
    everywhere and this is such a powerful
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    abstraction it's such a powerful
    technology that the first thing they
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    implemented was the central bank of the
    internet that was the first thing they
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    did can you imagine to write you open by
    creating a single global currency which
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    is the first thing that has worked that
    way since we went off the gold standard
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    and the technology deployed is so
    powerful that it was done by either one
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    individual or a small group that
    remained a secret they basically
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    reinvented gold and that was the first
    move this is unimaginable strangeness to
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    somebody that spent their entire
    lifetime monkeying around with computers
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    oh my god what have we done so you get
    up to kind of where we are now right
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    basically 2015-2016 we're sort of midway
    through the process Bitcoin is well
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    established as a reality everybody is
    comfortable with bitcoins existence to
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    some degree what is it it's a bank
    account that stores magic internet money
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    that comes from the central bank of the
    internet which is a decentralized
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    database which is everywhere anoher
    maintained by a bunch of people you
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    don't understand but the funny thing is
    that if I describe to you how your
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    government works it's even worse right
    so every four years we hold a popularity
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    contest regionally we pick the person
    that is most likeable on television more
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    or less regardless of their values we
    know nothing about them because they're
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    protected by privacy that surrounds most
    individuals so they could be a person
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    playing a role and then we assemble
    these people into a large group that
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    gets to decide who lives and who dies
    every day right so you know don't assume
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    that because the new stuff is weird it's
    any weirder than the old stuff the old
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    stuff is just weird stuff you got used
    to now let me move a little forward to
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    this whole smart contract thing right so
    the smart contract is the third big
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    integrative step first we merge the
    network and the database to make the
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    blockchain then we take computer
    software code and put it into the shared
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    database into the blockchain so we take
    a little program and they can only be
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    little because it's just the beginning
    of the story and we take the little
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    program and we store it in the
    blockchain and that means everybody
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    that's connected to the block chain has
    the copy of exactly the same program and
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    programs when you run the program same
    data same code same result so now
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    everybody's got a copy of the database
    everybody's got a copy the code we all
    run the code at the same time we all put
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    the output back into the blockchain if
    there's a disagreement we find it
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    immediately we sort it out so in that
    sort of environment you have these
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    little programs which are just as
    transactional sending people money it's
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    like a wire transfer you
    go here and my fools across the network
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    it pops up there it's like a Bitcoin
    payment what kind of things the world
    programs do if this job has been done
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    pay bob if the job hasn't been done by
    the 31st of March send the money back to
    ours how you tiny little pieces of
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    business logic pulled out of the
    application stack and put onto the box
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    chain instead and this is the third big
    unification I work for a company called
  • 18:12 - 18:17
    consensus systems that uses aetherium
    which is the first really durable smart
    contract platform to build lots of
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    applications and those little programs
    do things like make sure the artists get
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    paid when their music is listened to
    they do things like streamline
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    transactions between banks through all
    kinds of simple useful things and we're
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    still only at the very beginning of the
    story right now the Bitcoin system
    processes about seven transactions a
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    second the etherium system does
    something like 20 so these are way back
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    in terms of speed they're way back over
    there her computers were in the 1960s on
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    punched cards now brace yourselves right
    now the challenge is to produce a thing
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    called a scaled blockchain and a scaled
    blockchain is watch-chain that doesn't
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    do 20 transactions a second it does
    roughly the same number of transactions
  • 19:08 - 19:13
    a second as Visa or Swift ten thousand
    50 thousand a hundred thousand
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    transactions a second quarter of a
    million transactions a second and the
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    scaled blockchain is something that
    begins to provide us with something that
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    looks like a global computing surface
    onto which things like the internet
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    things could be loaded you could take
    the entire global financial system and
  • 19:30 - 19:34
    push it into a scale box chain you could
    take the entire Internet of Things and
  • 19:34 - 19:38
    push it into a scale blockchain you
    could take all of those machines in the
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    cloud you could put blockchain software
    onto them as Microsoft recently did with
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    a thing called a Dewar and then you
    could have a single global computing
  • 19:47 - 19:51
    surface that took all of our different
    bits and pieces of computing power and
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    turned them into a global knowledge
    resource that basically manages the
  • 19:55 - 19:58
    fundamental infrastructure of our
    society
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    instead of the cobbled-together nonsense
    that you get every time you talk to your
  • 20:02 - 20:09
    bank right and because these computer
    systems don't create new woe curses of
  • 20:09 - 20:13
    political control when they're built
    because they're decentralized what you
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    don't get is a position where the basic
    infrastructure of your society a stock
  • 20:18 - 20:22
    that your society runs on is
    automatically owned by a set of
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    corporations or even a set of
    governments what you have is something
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    which is constituted by the will of the
    people and serves their purposes which
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    is after all the original intention of
    government now this is where we have to
  • 20:35 - 20:39
    go back and separate reality from
    fantasy because this is the mistake
    that's made it almost impossible for
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    people to understand Bitcoin remember I
    mentioned the cypherpunks back here and
    their inability to tell the difference
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    between science fiction and political
    reality the notion that we're simply
  • 20:51 - 20:55
    going to automate away all of the things
    which constitute government makes a ton
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    of sense to people that spend 23 hours a
    day online and I'm really framing this
  • 21:02 - 21:06
    very carefully because this is causing
    enormous trouble but if you're somebody
  • 21:06 - 21:10
    that spends only a little bit of your
    time interacting with computers it's
  • 21:10 - 21:14
    pretty obvious that the computer only
    exists as a rectangle of glowing light
    somewhere in your room or in your hand
  • 21:16 - 21:22
    and and out here from that perspective
    it's pretty clear that if you teach
  • 21:22 - 21:26
    computers governed resources a lot of
    trivial stuff in your life gets a lot
    easier like paying your taxes or making
  • 21:28 - 21:32
    sure that your telephone works or you
    know doing your banking whatever happens
  • 21:32 - 21:36
    to be but it's not obvious that this is
    a replacement for the general edifice of
  • 21:36 - 21:41
    government and the tension between the
    way the world looks to the technologists
  • 21:41 - 21:45
    and the way the world looks to everybody
    else is what's at the heart of the fight
  • 21:45 - 21:49
    with entities like uber because uber
    makes perfect sense to a technologist
  • 21:49 - 21:54
    and it really upsets people that have
    run a taxi monopoly for 150 years and
  • 21:54 - 21:58
    those kind of discussions and tensions
    are as much about the different
  • 21:58 - 22:03
    neurological makeup of the people who
    developed the world view as they are
  • 22:03 - 22:07
    about the technology what we're really
    having here is a discussion about what
  • 22:07 - 22:12
    kinds of minds run our society is our
    society predominantly run by charming
  • 22:12 - 22:17
    glib slightly sociopathic people who are
    good on television or is it
  • 22:17 - 22:20
    predominantly run by people that live in
    front of computers and control the world
  • 22:20 - 22:25
    with numbers and that debate has gone on
    inside of our culture since the two
  • 22:25 - 22:29
    cultures period of British history where
    there was this discussion about whether
  • 22:29 - 22:34
    arts and sciences could ever get along
    well turns out the sciences guys are now
    figuring out how to govern instead of
  • 22:35 - 22:41
    the lawyers and this is creating an
    enormous amount of turbulence but the
  • 22:41 - 22:45
    turbulence is not well described because
    it's happening extremely quickly and the
  • 22:45 - 22:50
    only place that there's a literary canon
    that really describes these processes is
    science fiction right if you want mental
  • 22:53 - 22:56
    models of how to think about the reality
    that we're currently in you have to go
  • 22:56 - 23:00
    back to the science fiction a thirty
    years ago published under a general
  • 23:00 - 23:05
    title of cyberpunk right and cyberpunk
    was the fiction that describes the
    reality that we're now in it's about
  • 23:07 - 23:11
    virtual reality it's about drones it's
    about biotechnology that regrows your
  • 23:11 - 23:15
    nervous system
    it's about virtual currencies and
  • 23:15 - 23:20
    artificial intelligence and we would all
    have a much better grip on the reality
  • 23:20 - 23:23
    that we found ourselves in if science
    fiction hadn't been kicked out of the
  • 23:23 - 23:26
    Witter recon and sometime after World
    War two
  • 23:26 - 23:31
    there's a definite push where science
    fiction is pushed away from the
  • 23:31 - 23:35
    mainstream of literature and into its
    own kind of genre box and as a result
  • 23:35 - 23:39
    the place where most of the thinking and
    analysis has been done about these
    technologies and what they mean to us as
  • 23:40 - 23:45
    a society has been banished from polite
    company it all exists in a place called
  • 23:45 - 23:49
    genre fiction and it's no longer
    considered to be real literature as a
  • 23:49 - 23:53
    result the mainstream can arts
    population have been left without mythic
  • 23:53 - 23:58
    narratives to allow them to interpret
    the reality that the technicians have
  • 23:58 - 24:03
    created and what we've seen this evening
    is a perfect demonstration of that gap
  • 24:03 - 24:07
    because actually getting the message
    across requires a completely different
  • 24:07 - 24:09
    perspective to the one which is natural
    to the technicians
  • 24:09 - 24:14
    you know I'm lucky in that I've managed
    to bridge that gap because I was always
    as much a writer as I was a programmer
  • 24:16 - 24:20
    and I've done about you comments are
    both in my life so the thing that I
  • 24:20 - 24:23
    wanted to leave you with is this the
    dialogue about how these technologies
  • 24:23 - 24:28
    are going to fit into our society
    is going to be a dialogue about class
  • 24:28 - 24:33
    it's going to be about whether the
    society is run by lawyers or technicians
  • 24:33 - 24:39
    both are the wrong answer it has to be
    run by the people but for the people to
  • 24:39 - 24:43
    be able to intelligently make decisions
    in a society where the core technologies
  • 24:43 - 24:47
    that run our society are rapidly
    becoming so complicated we no longer
  • 24:47 - 24:51
    understand them we have to do better the
    guessing which technocrat or which
  • 24:51 - 24:56
    lawyer to put in charge without a
    fundamental reawaken event of
  • 24:56 - 25:00
    reawakening of interest in science and
    technology and without reclaiming
  • 25:00 - 25:03
    science fiction as a fundamental
    literacy for the present that we're in
  • 25:03 - 25:07
    we're going to be left making decisions
    more or less at random depending on what
  • 25:07 - 25:12
    charming person tells us the news story
    so my challenge to all of you is start
  • 25:12 - 25:20
    reading cyberpunk it's painful right
    it's painful right it's much of it is
  • 25:20 - 25:24
    not very well written many of the ideas
    look almost like it's kind of weird
  • 25:24 - 25:29
    potboiler fiction about the present but
    if you sift through carefully and it
  • 25:29 - 25:32
    suggests starting with an anthology
    called mirror shades which is a short
  • 25:32 - 25:37
    will book with short stories nothing to
    challenge you too much if you go back
    and read that stuff what you could begin
  • 25:38 - 25:43
    to flash out is the stories that all of
    the programmers hand in their heads when
    they built these technologies and that's
  • 25:46 - 25:50
    how you get your head around what's
    happening if you share the myths at the
  • 25:50 - 25:54
    technical class half when they create
    these things you can begin to understand
  • 25:54 - 25:58
    the technology in a mythic way which is
    how we understand it you have to learn
  • 25:58 - 26:00
    the ways of our people because you're
    living in the world that we create for
  • 26:00 - 26:02
    you
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Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Sandbox
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koma edited English subtitles for Sandbox
Claude Almansi edited English subtitles for Sandbox
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  • Revision 1 = provided subtitles for Lecture 1.2 of Prof. Scott Plous' Social Psychology course

  • Revision 1 = provided subtitles for Lecture 1.2 of Prof. Scott Plous' Social Psychology course

  • Revision 1 = provided subtitles for Lecture 1.2 of Prof. Scott Plous' Social Psychology course

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