Blockchain: localize sharing; localize identity

Mufta.org

The largest impact of the Blockchain decentralizing news and information may be in how humans culturally and politically self-identify. Fundamentally, culture is the way, manner or behavior in which we satisfy the requirements of the human condition. How we gather and prepare food, communicate, or find inner peace, all stem from tried and partially proven methods our communities teach us. Royals, nobles, and clergy have long held the monopoly on collective problem-solving, resource management, and culture.

Royalty-based governing systems had often bloody inefficiencies when power needed to be transferred, hence the rise of the nation-state. The nation-state construct is a shift from loyalty to the king, to loyalty to the kingdom.

Technology has a notable role in political advancement — the Printing Press led to an increased sharing of ideas and demand for rights. However, the Printing Press also led to a new level of standardization, documentation and bureaucratic form generation; increasing institutional performance. The nation-state has its roots in institutional legitimacy that organizations took from royals, nobles and clergy through the ability to document process and record keep.

The Arab Spring

Social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook proudly accept their roles in 2011 Arab uprisings that brought down super-entrenched power structures across the Middle East and North Africa. Specifically, social media’s facilitation of horizontal communications helped popular movements share revolutionary ideas, procedures, tactics and even makeshift weapons.

Since 2011, state and non-state organizations have become clever in controlling the flow of information on these platforms. As nation-states and intelligence organizations meddle on Facebook and Twitter, the Blockchain offers the people a strong counter-punch. Blockchain transperency is the latest escalation in the arms race against Fake News.

The decentralized zero-trust media environment the Blockchain offers will have the greatest impact on local cooperation. Peer-to-peer idea and news sharing will help solve localized problems with localized solutions. This horizontal information and solution sharing will usher new levels of sustainable collective problem-solving.

The ubiquity of cell phones, cameras and pictorial “emojis” breaks the monopoly on information held by those who can use an alphabet. Providing access to horizontally shared information increases the relevance of news and information to the basic levels of human community.

I’ve had conversations with remote African villagers about US and European politics thanks to the BBC. However interesting and enlightening villagers’ views on foreign current events may be; the news and information these communities desperately need aren’t spawning in London or New York. Centralized news won’t help these villagers overcome their daily challenges.

In most cases, this Blockchain fueled localization will happen gradually as local governance out perform physically and administratively distant centers of political power. As a result, more problems solving at lower levels; less of society’s issues will be pushed to higher centralized sovereigns.

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