Most of what we have written about concerns new peer-to-peer paradigms, which are inspired by blockchain and BTC (Bitcoin). If financial networks can be peer-to-peer, what about other things?
Now it’s time to look in the other direction. Is blockchain supporting old paradigms? It is. In terms of how things worked a couple of industrial revolutions ago, it’s a tool like a wrench. A wrench can be used by an artisan in a shop or a worker on an assembly line. Similarly, Blockchain can be used by anyone to build anything. In June, Visa went live with a blockchain powered payments system.
Blockchain can also be viewed in terms of free operating systems, such as Linux and BSD, a variation of Unix, both of which have versions ensconced in the corporate world. Linux powers most big servers, while a fork of BSD was developed by Apple. Many versions of Linux are still free, but Red Hat made a name for itself supporting Linux for businesses before it was bought by IBM in July.
This chain of events is not only open source material being used by the corporate world. Sometimes corporations release open material. Google has a page with many projects.
Blockchain’s progress is more of an explosion in all directions than a definite trajectory. Although it’s been 11 years since the initial paper was published, we’re still at the beginning.
