The End Of The Beginning

One of the reasons I love Steem and blockchain, in general, is because it is the next phase of Internet evolution. The last 30 years was just the beginning. Now we are onto bigger and better things.

The Internet was an incredible creation. It formed the online world which enabled us to move a vast portion of our economy to the digital realm. This sprung a number of companies that are now highly valued because of the amount of impact they have. The likes of Google and Facebook, for better or worse, affect billions.

This, however, is minor league stuff. As the ole saying goes, "you ain't seen nothing yet".

We are now moving onto the next stage. The Internet as we know it is about to die. It will be no more. Instead, there will just be information transacting all around us.

The days of "logging on" are almost gone. With smartphones, people are always online. The next phase is where there will be little distinction between the Internet and life. Over the next decade, the two will merge together.

For example, augmented reality will be commonplace in about 5 years. It will be normal to see the road conditions, temperature, and route at the bottom of your windshield. There will not be a separate device used to find all that out.

Autonomous cars will be connected to the Internet. That is how they are going to be able to interact with each other. It is also the medium to get them to "talk" to the infrastructure around it. We will not be stopping at lights or stop signs. Instead, the system will navigate traffic through the intersection without anyone stopping.

With a little imagination, one can begin to see how big this all can be. I predict that screens will not be a part of our lives in a decade. Instead, everything will be a screen. Information will be all around us.

We know the retail world took a huge turn because of online shopping. Yet, this only make up 10% of total sales. It also accounts only for a small portion of the total economic output. Consider what it will be like when most of our economic activity is "online". Think of how big it will be.

That is why "tokenizing the Internet" carries a much bigger meaning than most realize. It is a big market when you consider what the Internet is today. However, if we ponder what it will be like in a decade or so, it becomes enormous.

Couple in the progress in machine learning while giving it another decade to move forward and we can only guess what will be available to us. For all the blow back that the social media companies get for using AI to try and sell us stuff, the capabilities are incredible when you think about it.

Cryptocurrency is going to be a part of the future in spite of what the naysayers want you to believe. It is not going away nor is it a scam or farce. It will be a regular part of people's everyday lives in another 5 years (give or take a couple). Using cryptocurrency will be as common as email.

Digital, augmented, virtual, and connected is how our lives will be. Within a few decades, not only will things such as cars be interacting with each other, but so will our minds. We will be able to simply think of what we want someone to receive, it is will be there. The days of typing out a message or speaking it into a voice recognition device will come to an end.

The advancements over the last 30 years in creating a digital world are astounding. Nevertheless, compared to what is ahead of us, it is child's play. It is one thing to rate restaurants online; it is an entirely different manner to get the entire order/production/delivery all tied in that way.

It is hard for people to imagine but a great deal of the physical world around us will be digital. We will get instantaneous answers to everything. Anything that we do today in terms of going to get a "test" will be immediate. Being "connected" all the time means that we are always monitored. Moment by moment, this ecosystem of intelligence will be on top of things. About to have a heart attack, it will tell us.

Which brings me back to blockchain. What I just wrote will get the Orwellians jumping up and down. This system is going to be incredible as long as it is based upon progress and human freedom. As our structures are now, it will not work. We cannot have the same entities in control.

The value of blockchain is just starting. We need a world of decentralization to ensure that nefarious institutions are not the ones constantly monitoring us. Our data needs to be just that, ours!!!! Without this, we have slavery on steroids.

This is why what we do today is so important. We are at the beginning of the next phase which, in comparison, is much harder than what went before. Our actions today have a major impact on what is available in the future.

We are about to see the Internet grow up very quickly.

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