A short story many bitcoiners will recognize :)

So let me tell you a story that really happened.

Since my youth i live in a village in the desert. Life is not bad here, at least for the standards we are used to.  It could be better though if only we had some more water. Water is quite scarce, and in the last years it rained even less on our heads and the wells in the village are slowly drying up.

So one day, years ago, i was walking around the area at a small distance from the village, just over a hill. And there i noticed something.

Oh my, there is water here behind the hill, i noticed. I saw a small drip coming from a stone in the side of the hill.
Water! That is the most precious substance in our village.  Everyone is always very thirsty and some are even desperate to get their hands on some more water ! This is a world changing discovery! I have to go to the village and tell them !

So i ran to the village square, and shouted : Water! i have found Water!
Looking around , i was waiting for the moment people would come and declare me the hero of the village, oh the honor and recognition!

But nobody came. They were all around the campfire watching the shows.
I was astonished.  How is it possible, did they not hear me ? So i shouted again: Water!

There is a lot of water just behind the hill, come look!
Again, nobody came, leaving me in amazement about the situation.  Why does nobody seem to care that i have found a lot of water close by the village ?

So i decided to go to the people themselves, and told them all about the water i had found. Every house, and every shop i came, i told people about the water just over the hill behind the village. I told them how good the water was and how fresh it tasted. But somehow people did not believe me. They said: Yea but we have never seen water over there, how come that you suddenly found water there? it is impossible !

But, but,  did you look ?, i replied. So they said: We do not need to look. we just know there is no water there. Nobody ever found water there so why would you suddenly find water ? It cannot be true.

But, i cried, it is there, i saw it and i drank it ! it is real and i am not a fool ! But i noticed they stopped listening and just went on to do their daily tasks. Strangely enough, most of these tasks involved to try to find water. Water was very scarce in our village after all.

So after thinking for a while, i decided to just show them. So i took my bag and left for the water i had found, When i arrived, i cleaned up the place and made a nice looking well where the water was nice and clear.

And i drank. I drank so much i could not even believe it. I did not see so much water in my entire life. That felt really good!
So i went back to the village with my belly full of water and an extra bag of water with me to show the villagers. I smiled all the way home, knowing they would have no choice than to believe me now.

So i arrived, and went to the village square. Triumphantly, i shouted: Water! i have a lot of water here ! Come look !
Few hours later, there still was nobody. It so happened the games were on, and everyone was only talking about the games.

So i waited until the next day. i knew everyone would be very thirsty after the games so maybe they will see now that i have found more water than they would ever see in their lives.
But the next day, nobody came. So i went to some houses and asked:  Why do you not see my water?  why do you not want to drink some of it ?

So i went to my friends house first, and asked him if he was thirsty.
Of course i am thirsty, he replied.  Everyone is thirsty here all the time, you know that. Water is very precious here.
I know, i replied, but i have found a new source of water. it is fresh looking, drinkable, and the well is just behind the hill. As you see i am not thirsty since i have drank a lot of it before i came here. and i have more in my bag.  You can have some if you want!
Sorry friend, he replied. That in your bag cannot be water because there is no well behind the hill. You should read not too many fantasy books.

But..But.. i cried.  I have water here.  Just give me a cup and i will pour some for you!
I am not interested in your water,  he replied. We do have a little bit of water here, enough to come by.  We do not have plenty, and many times we are thirsty here. But your water we do not need, so there is no need for me to get up and get a cup. That is to much trouble now, i am too busy gathering water during the day and i am too tired now to stand up.

But, i said, but.. i have some water here and...
Shut UP !, he replied. I had enough of you now and your water nonsense! Get out my house now and do not come back until you have found some real water !
I wanted to mutter something but i swallowed it, and left the house. That night i was really confused. Why does nobody even want to look at my water ?

A few months went on, and i showed everyone exactly where the new well was and how to get water from it. It was easy, you just had to throw a bucket in the well and pull it up. But since the people in the village got their water in other ways, they could not conceive how to drop a bucket in a hole in the ground and get some water from it. They just could not imagine that. So they still never believed that there was any water in it.

Meanwhile in the village, no new rains had come, and the water that was scarce already, became even scarcer.

Then one day i decided to go leave the village and go live next to my well. So i build a farm there and started hauling water from the well. i irrigated my fields and made some really nice crops that year.
Sometime, once every few weeks, i visited the village and told them about my huge crops. Of course i took some examples of my crop to show them,  because i learned form experience already.

Jeez, they said.  Sure you have found a lot of water! I can see you have great crops! Unfortunately we can never grow such crops in the village here. We just do not have enough water.

But, i replied, as i said many times before, the water well is just here behind the hill!

Oh you silly boy. Are you starting now again about your water? We know there is no water there, because nobody except you have never seen it. And even if there is some water we are sure your well will dry up very soon, and then your land will be worthless!

But if you will just come look, i cried.  It is just a few minutes walk and i can show you to get more water than you have ever seen in your life!
No my friend, they said. We are too busy today. There is a show tonight, and then all week i have to work to try to find some water.  Maybe next week we will come and look at your water, if it is still there.

Shaking my head, i gave up. I went back to my oasis and lived there for many years.

Occasionally i went back to the village and traded some of my huge crops for some poor constructed furniture or any other things i needed. Then i silently went back to my oasis. 

Nobody ever asked where i got my water from or how could they get some of it too.  They were all too busy watching shows and collecting water during daytime.

One day someone came and visited me in my oasis. Wow, a visitor ! that did not happen for a long time!. So i was happy to see him and welcomed him. After feeding him with many of my crops he asked,  so ... tell me where do you get your water?

Bright flashes went through my head. Finally, after so many years someone finally seemed to be interested in my well! .  So i asked him, come with me outside, so i will show you my well.
So we walked to there, and i showed him the shaft that i dug many years before, and i showed him there was water at the bottom.  I even demonstrated to him how to throw a bucket into it, attached to a rope so you can get it back filled with water.

See? i said. There is water in this bucket.  Now try it yourself.
Naa , he replied, this is too complicated for me. How can you throw a bucket in a well and get it back? i don't get this. Maybe i am not smart enough to do this.
It is not complicated, i said. I felt i was almost there. Just throw your bucket in that well, and then pull it up  again with the rope!
Naaaa, my friend replied. Its too difficult.  besides, i have no time for it now, i have to get back to the village to collect some water for tonight.
And before i knew it, he went.

For many years i lived like this in my oasis. It was hard to keep my sanity. Occasionally, i heard from people in the village who had died from thirst. But that was life, they said. In a world that is so scarce with water it is hard to survive, they said.  So it is only natural, and we cannot help it.

Then one day i got a visitor again.  She told me that a while ago a merchant visited the village.  He promised that they all would receive two bags of water, if they just gave him one bag. a sure deal ! So many villagers did that, they were all smiling and happy that they would receive two bags when the merchant came back... But after waiting many weeks, he never came back.  So the situation was very dire in the village. Many more people died. Of course i showed her how to use my well as i always do when someone visits my oasis, but she also thought it was just too complicated to use the well.

Maybe one day, i keep telling myself, the people in my village will finally understand that there is water in my well and that everyone can use it very easily. But that day still has to come...

The coming Micropayment explosion

It is almost un-noticable yet, but there is an important change coming in our human behavior. In not so many years, we will think back , and wonder how we ever did without micropayments.

So what are micropayments?

Not so long ago, it was impossible to send somebody at he other end of the world, a small amount of money, like 10 cents.  Modern technology is solving that now, right before our eyes. So what am i talking about ?  Of course this story is again a result of the bitcoin revolution.

There are applications coming online which will change the internet forever. Not in its structure
(other apps will do that, but that's for another blog post) but in the content and use of it. In particular 3 of them i am following closely : ChangeTip,  GetGemz, and Synereo.

ChangeTip is a handy way to send any user on the internet a tip. It works in several online messageboards like reddit and facebook, and this list is growing rapidly. You can tip amounts like '1 beer' and the app converts that to a certain bitcoin/us$ amount.  The poster who was tipped can collect the tip then and use it to tip someone else, or send it to a local wallet and do groceries with it. (i live in a place where there actually is a bitcoin supermarket :)

Another interesting app is GetGemz. Many of you will know WhatsApp. Getgemz does the same, but not quite. What is different, is that the users are not milked for their information so they can send ads, but it turns the monetization of advertizing around: the user is getting paid, not some big company that sells your data. So if you are interested in cars, you are likely to -want- advertizements for cars. So you can 'opt-in' and every time a car company sends you an advertizement, you get paid for reading it.

Now connect the dots and look at the bigger picture, and you see Synereo.  This is still in the making, but soon to come out. This could be the next Facebook. Take the idea described above at the GetGemz part, and apply that idea to a Facebook contender. This could become very big, very, very fast.
How many people are looking to earn money online? In Synereo it is possible that friends tip you or pay to spread your creativity. So many people have hoped in the past that if they make a youtube video, they get 100 million hits and get rich on the advertizing.  But the reality is that this pays very, very bad unless you are really famous.
In this new model, you could post a picture you made, and make small money on that. This will attract people like crazy especially since many of them will, by the time Synereo comes out, will be used already to getgemz. And i am sure also some games will start to use bitcoin instead of worthless game points. It is still early, but ordinary people will get to bitcoin for this reason.

There is also another aspect of it: it will be very costly to buy hits, and that is a very good thing. Right now many youtube artists buy hits, so the viewers are constantly fooled thinking that a certain artist is popular.
It is some sort of rape on the natural flow of things when it comes to popularity. Artists should be popular because they are good, not because they bought their popularity. So what this means is that there will be a 'democratization of content' where there is a bigger chance that small, but good artists will win the popularity battle. And by the way, this also goes for online teachers and visionairs and politicians.

So eventually this could disrupt many existing power structures. I believe that bitcoin will spread far and wide over the planet, and this already means a democratization of purchasing power.  Now soon we have to tools to do the same with artists and teachers. The power of billions of small people who vote with their micropayments, could be turning out in the most powerful force in the next decade.

The importance of Bitcoin

Something has been nagging me for a long time. And since you are reading this, i assume it is nagging you too. Why do we have wars, poverty, and pollution? Why cannot we stop the train humanity is in for so many years ? What is wrong?

Over the years i have been thinking about this and learning how the world really works. And the sad truth seems to be, the world is run by bullies. The people who can pay the best lawyers are the richest, not the other way around like it should be. At some point it dawned that the problem is largely in the currency system itself, it enables leeches to suck the blood out the economic system, where the useful organs have to do it with less all the time. One solution could be to create an energy-backed unit, say the 'kilowatt-dollar' where 1 unit is backed by 1 kilowatt of work. It would be impractical though to carry batteries in our wallets.

And then, while i was in occupy wall street protesting, i heard about bitcoin. It took a while before i really understood it, i forced myself to read everything about it although in 2011 it was still hard to find good explanations of this mysterious thing. But when i finally understood, it became clear that this is truly the new currency we need as humanity for our next step. There are several big technological changes coming together soon.

At first, we have the automation of everything. Robots and algorithms will do our jobs in the very near future. Technological unemployment will become the norm, and people need to find a different way to get to their basic needs if there are no jobs anymore. At the moment that the CEO of a company closes the door to make room for yet another automated system, we know that the machines took over completely.
Is this bad? not necessarily, because humans should not be slave to their wages. Also, products that are made by machines, tend to become almost free. We have the opportunity in this era to make machines that bake bread for everybody, for free. i imagine someone dreamed this up already thousands of years ago, but somehow we did not reach the mindset of sharing our technology for the greater good. With micropayments, and machines owning bitcoin wallets, i think we get a big step closer to that now.

Second, we are nearing the 'diamond age' which is a term that means that we will make things that are as strong as diamond. Carbon nanotubes are the prime material of this era. Now if there is a scarce currency, people very well want to buy stuff with it that lasts forever , because when you spend your precious bitcoin, you traded it for something that better lasts for many years.

Third, we are nearing the era of ubiquitous communication for everyone. Communication will be just as common as oxygen. Unlike water, which can be dammed from certain populations, air cannot be stopped even by the most repressive regime.

Bitcoin is the material that binds all these different events together. The world will be forced to shed with the old paradigms, and step into the new era of abundance. Once we have learned that breaking the possessions of our neighbor does not work anymore as means to gain more for ourselves, and once we have learned that the best security cannot be forced by repressing others, but to open the door and trade with them in an honest and respectful way, then we as humanity will be propelled in a very fast transition to a world we could never dream of. There will be problems, there will be bumps in the road forward. But at least we have found the road and are walking it. I am proud to be part of that journey.

Outsource my brain: what if your phone knew everything ?

Imagine your phone knows absolutely everything that is possible to know. So for example, it knows that you are overweight because your bathroom scale told it your weight this morning. also it knows that you didn't walk the dog today because its GPS is on, and it even knows that you have been ordering pizza...again.

We are entering an era where many of your daily routine is already known by your phone.  Granted, it lacks the intelligence yet to act on the information that it is having.  But this is changing fast. Soon the phone will be your personal secretary. I know these systems exist, like Siri, but i mean, soon half of humanity will use these systems. What will happen if your phone becomes your mom, your girlfriend, and the local police officer in one device ?

Right now already people cannot even find the bathroom without consulting their phone first. Imagine your phone will advice you on everything you do ,like 'you should not take a chocolate ice cream because you ate pasta already yesterday, and myBrain2.0 tells me that you wanted to loose weight'. Or 'if you turn left now , you will meet a friend'. Or  'in the shoe store you are now passing, there is a model available in your size that you probably want (and can afford right now)'.
It is only a matter of time before the machine brain takes over the human brain. Probably there will always be people who will never outsource their brain, but it is possible that these people will be marginalized in society simply because they do not follow the herd. If their phone does not see who you are and what skills or interests you have, will people want to talk with you ? or will you be treated as an 'un-scannable' ?

It is very well possible that it is inevitable.

The reason i say that is, because the near future will make extensive use of reputation systems. And if you have a bad (or even no)  reputation, people will avoid you like the plague. Since it is virtually impossible to make every human to use an online name linked to their real-life identities, every online name has to be checked for their reputation. People who are serious about themselves will voluntary join these systems. And if that is becoming the norm, it will mean that people who do not use these systems, will be left out. So in the future, you will want to be 'scannable'.

So if your phone is linked to the person, and it has an AI that is smarter then the human, will the phone *become*  the human ? Will the human be reduced tot he means of transportation for the phone ? Will your dating app automatically chat with the dating app on the other persons' phone?  will these apps fall in love with each other?

Let me pause here a little. Of course this blog post is not only about the phone itself, but the phone in combination with other smart devices to come.  One of them will be a device that biometrically links the phone to yourself. for example, there is a wrist band on the market (the nymi)  that measures your heart pulse ECG, which is unique for every human.  So it lets your phone know that you are alive and near your phone. Another phone extension that is around the corner is augmented reality glasses, like Microsoft is working on, or even contact lenses that display the information inside your eyes. But the idea remains the same, you are making use of an external brain.

Another important aspect here is that this blog post is not about massive data mining persé. It wont be googles fault. The structure of the internet is changing into a model where massive data mining might not even be possible. and i can very well imagine that you can shield certain data from your phone to protect your privacy. The future will be decentralized.  but that's for another blog post.

So, will we become slaves to our external brains? I think we won't.  The phone will act as an extra brain, not as an overlord.  Everything that the phone does, we told it that we like that action from it.  So we will not be slaves, but we will be in a trans-humanist transition into a partially electronic human. It will be by choice that we render our old biological brains obsolete.

My very first blog post ;)

Ok, so i decided to finally make a blog. after 20 years or so on the internet it was about time !
This is my first post so i just hope i can edit this afterwards :)
This blog will be full of stories about future scenarios that humanity is going to face in the next 20 years or so. There are changes around the corner, that will profoundly change the ways we live, and communicate with each other. I hope to be your guide to an adventure that is playing out before our very eyes, if you know where to look. Let me be your guide. Hopefully i can make you think and wonder....