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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Don Tapscott
Read between
May 12 - June 12, 2018
9. Building and Property Management
10. Industrial Operations—The Factory of Things
11. Home Management
12. Retail Operations and Sales
THE ECONOMIC PAYOFF
Speed (end-to-end automation) Reduced costs (associated with sending nearly infinite amounts of data to giant central processing facilities; elimination of expensive intermediaries) Increased revenue, efficiency, and/or productivity (freeing up excess capacity for reuse) Improved effectiveness (built-in checklists and other protocols reduce impact of human error) Increased security and integrity (person-to-person trust is not required as trust is designed into the network architecture) Reduced likelihood of system failure (elimination of bottlenecks, built-in resiliency) Reduced energy
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Ledger of Things enables “distributed capitalism,”
Networked intelligence, a phrase coined in The Digital Economy, referred to how the network would be smarter than its smartest node in one domain after another.
Financial inequality is an economic condition that can quickly morph into a social crisis.
Blockchain could be the solution. By lowering barriers to financial inclusion and enabling new models of entrepreneurship, the tonic of the market could be brought to bear on the dreams and ideas of billions of
the unbanked.
Blockchain will push many nascent initiatives, such as mobile-money service providers like M-Pesa in Kenya, owned by Safaricom, and microcredit outfits globally, into high gear by making them open, global, and lightning fast.
being “banked” in the traditional sense is no longer a prerequisite.
individuals can create a persistent digital ID and verifiable reputation and deploy it, in whole or in part, in different relationships and transactions.
“Identity is the new money.”
Blockchain can enable every person to have a unique and verifiable reputation-based identity that allows them to participate equally in the economy.
Tools of Abundance: The most basic requirements to participate in an economy are tools like a mobile phone and some kind of Internet access, the portal through which people interact with different value systems.
Persistent Identity: You can use and port identity into different networks to establish reputation in a financial transaction or to plug into different social networks.
Democratized Entrepreneurship: Under the right conditions, entrepreneurs are the engines of economic growth in society.
METERING EXCESS CAPACITY. From the centralized sharing economy to the distributed metering economy, individuals will be able to loan out their spare beds, wheelbarrows, oxen, and other tangible and intangible assets to peers in a network based on reputation scores.
MICROMONETIZING DATA. Parents who work in the home and family caregivers of all kinds who labor tirelessly over young children and aging parents can at last monetize their efforts and be recognized for the value they deliver every hour of the day.
Remittances of funds sent back to their homelands by people living in distant locations connect diasporas globally. Diasporas are global communities formed by people dispersed from their ancestral lands but who share a common culture and strong identity with their homeland.
two main obstacles
First, many of the people sending the money get paid in cash and those on the receiving end live in a predominantly cash-based economy. Second, most people in the developed and developing world alike don’t have the knowledge and tools to use blockchain effectively.
“People are willing to trust each other faster than they’re willing to trust an institution,”
Abra is not a remittance app but instead a new global platform for value exchange that combines in equal measure the distributed, trustless blockchain network, the power of smart phone technology, and the very human inclination to want to trust peers in a network.
blockchain can improve the delivery of foreign aid in two ways. First, by disintermediating the middlemen who act as conduits of large aid transfers, it can reduce the chronic problem of outright misappropriation and theft. Second, as an immutable ledger of the flow of funds, it compels large institutions, from aid groups to governments, to act with integrity and abide by their commitments. If they don’t, people will be able to see their malfeasance and hold them to account.
Foreign aid is the second-largest fund transfer from developed to developing nations, after remittances. Blockchain technology can enable transparency, accountability, and more efficient operations for well-meaning NGOs and better delivery of critical services in times of crisis and in normal circumstances.
First, it will improve administrative accountability.
Second, it can mean better protection of women and children.
Third, it will enable people to source funds and opportunity worldwide, and will attract donors worldwide.
Finally, blockchain payment rails, such as bitcoin, are basically tailor-made for small, disenfranchised borrowers by enabling tiny payments (picopayments, we call them) and by dropping costs close to zero.
Blockchain technology is obviously not a panacea for the world’s economic and financial woes. Technology does not create prosperity; people do.
first is technical.
second is literacy.
third is corruption.
Central to the model of e-Estonia is a digital identity. As of 2012, 90 percent of Estonians had an electronic ID card to access government services and travel within the European Union.4 The chip embedded in the card holds basic information about the cardholder as well as two certificates—one to authenticate identity and one to provide a digital signature—and a personal identification number (PIN) of their choice.
Estonia has an electronic land registry that has transformed the real estate market, reducing land transfers from three months to a little over a week.7 In the last few years, Estonia has launched its e-Residency program, where anyone in the world can apply for a “transnational digital identity” and authentication to access secure services, encrypt, verify, and sign documents digitally. An entrepreneur anywhere in the world can register his or her company online in fewer than twenty minutes and administer the company online. These capabilities contribute to Estonia’s image as a digital
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“Integrity is the number-one problem in cyberspace and this is what Estonia recognized ten years ago. They built this technology so that everything on government networks could be verified without having to trust humans . . . it is impossible for the government to lie to its citizens.”
Abraham Lincoln said that society’s greatest goal was a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” Twelve decades later, President Ronald Reagan said in his 1981 Inaugural Address, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
the first 2016 presidential candidate to endorse bitcoin for campaign payment was Rand Paul.
blockchain comes in.
Integrity. To rebuild the public’s trust in political institutions, elected officials must behave with integrity.
Power. Everyone has a right to take part in the government, directly or by voting.
Value. Votes must have value. The
Privacy and Other Rights Preserved. No spying on citizens, no arbitrary interference with privacy, family, or home, no attacks upon anyone’s honor or reputation.
Security. Everyone must have equal protection of the law without discrimination.
Inclusion. Using the Internet, citizens became more involved, learned from one another.
Blockchain can improve client service, increase efficiency, and improve outcomes while enabling both integrity and transparency of government.
Blockchain-based systems can infuse efficiency and integrity into document registries of all kinds and many other government processes.
