Translator: Paulo Oliveros
Reviewer: Denise RQ For millions of years,
humans lived together in small decentralized network communities of about 30 to 70 people. Everybody knew everybody, and it was hard to get away
with doing bad things. But then, about 10,000 years ago,
something happened that changed the course of history: the invention of agriculture. Agriculture allowed people to produce food on a scale they hadn't been able to before. It allowed not just a few people, but thousands and even millions of people to live together in large societies. But humans have a memory limit known as Dunbar's number. We can only remember
about 150 people well. So in these large societies, of thousands and even millions of people, we could no longer remember everyone that we interacted with. There was the rise of anonymity and anonymity threatened
the social order. This created an opportunity
for strong men to arise to restore social order. These strong men instituted social systems that were top-down, centralized, command-and-control. This kept the social order, but with great power comes great abuse. So the people that lived
in these centralized societies suffered great abuses,
they paid a big price. But this was the only way
to organize society on a large-scale. So people put up with
these abuses for 10,000 years, the entire span of recorded history. Then about 500 years ago, there was another change that started turning the tide
of human history back to the decentralized society that we'd lived in for millions of years. So when you look at the whole span
of human social evolution, the span of 10,000 years
of centralized society, which is really all that we remember, is actually just a blip in time. It's a short transition phase that takes us from
the decentralized society of our past - which was on a small scale - to a decentralized society of our future, which allows millions
and billions of people to live together in a decentralized way. But what is it that allowed us to, again, live together
in a decentralized way without those centralized structures? What is it that allowed us to bridge and transcend Dunbar's number? People-based trust systems
don't scale beyond Dunbar's number, but technology-based systems
scale virtually without limit. So it's the emergence
of technology-based trust systems that allowed us to organize society
on a large scale without centralization. The first of these technologies
was the printing press. It started with the printing press
about 500 years ago. The printing press has no memory limit, and the economics of printing
allowed ordinary people everywhere to cheaply record and communicate ideas
across the whole world, free from the restrictions
of the centralized state and the centralized church. Communicating these ideas
with people freely, without censorship, inspired the first democracy movements. People started challenging the state, started challenging the church, developed their own ideas
about how they could do things. But the printing press was only the first
of a long series of technologies, the most recent of which
are the Internet and Bitcoin. I refer to all these technologies
put together as the Technology of Trust. Where human-based trust systems
don't scale, technology-based systems
scale virtually without limit beyond Dunbar's number, so we can once again, live together
in a decentralized way but on a large scale. The technology of trust has four pillars. The first of these pillars
is decentralized communications. Before we can do anything, we need to communicate what we want to do. And decentralized communications
has two essential components in the modern world:
the Internet and cryptography. The Internet and peer-to-peer
decentralized technologies such as BitTorrent, are now enabling people
to communicate without censorship. So centralized power structures
can no longer control the flow of information. However, the Internet by itself
is not enough, we need cryptography, because without cryptography, the centralized structures
can still use surveillance and censorship of what we communicate; and this impacts our freedom of speech,
our freedom of thought. To have freedom of thought, freedom of speech, and freedom of action, we need privacy-enabled
communication systems. So the Internet
plus cryptography gives us that. The second pillar
of a decentralized society is decentralized law. So first, we communicate
about what we want to do, and then we come to an agreement
on how we want to cooperate; and for that we need decentralized law. The three essential components
of a decentralized legal system are: choice of law, choice of adjudicator,
and choice of enforcer. Choice of law means
that we can choose the law that applies to our agreements
in our interactions. So for example, we do a contract, and we can choose the law of England, or the law of Switzerland, or we can even make up our own law. Choice of adjudicator means we can choose who hears our disputes,
who resolves our disputes. And, finally, choice of enforcer means we can choose who it is that enforces
our contracts and legal judgments. These three principles
sound like very radical ideas, but it may surprise you to hear that these are actually
not untested theories; this is the original way
that our legal systems operated. These ideas date from prehistory. These were the cornerstones
of the legal system of our past. It's only in the past 10,000 years of increasingly centralized societies, and increasingly
centralized legal systems, that we've gradually forgotten
about these building blocks; and today it's almost
impossible for us to imagine how we could have a legal system
that's decentralized in the way that I've just described. It's time to bring back these ideas and to reintroduce them
into the modern world so that we can really operate
a decentralized society. I and other researchers have developed
a complete legal framework for a decentralized society
that operates on these principles and, in fact, we're already implementing
these principles and these legal systems in our businesses and in so-called startup cities. Following the examples
of Hong Kong and Singapore, there are now entrepreneurs
building so-called startup cities in developing countries, autonomous regions of developing countries that desperately need jobs and we're building these startup cities with these advanced legal systems that allow people to create jobs
and generate wealth on a scale that hasn't been possible
in today's world. Today's world
is suffering from so many laws that it's virtually impossible
to do anything, and these countries
desperately need jobs, they desperately need wealth creation. So these are very exciting developments. The third pillar
of a decentralized society is decentralized production. Just like we've had
with decentralized communications, decentralized production allows us to bypass the censorship
of centralized systems. And there are two essential elements
of decentralized production. The first of all,
decentralized materials production, and, secondly,
decentralized energy production. Decentralized materials production
includes technologies such as 3D printing. With 3D printing, anyone,
anywhere in the world, can download a design from the Internet and print this out at home,
print out their own products. So this bypasses the restrictions
that seek control of the flow of goods
across national boundaries. The second component
is decentralized energy production. We are now starting to see, we are in the early days
of decentralized energy production that will allow people
to produce their energy cheaply at home,
at virtually unlimited quantities. And together these will move us from the systems we've had
like the diet days of the Pharaoh - one guy controlling an army
of thousands of slaves - today we've got Apple
having factories in China with tens of thousands of workers. This will move us to much smaller systems
where people can produce their own goods and services
at home without censorship. The fourth pillar
of a decentralized society is decentralized finance. And the essential components
of a decentralized financial system are first, a decentralized currency, and secondly,
decentralized contracting systems. The invention of Bitcoin is one of the most important
breakthroughs in human history. For the first time,
we have a decentralized currency that cannot be censored, that cannot be controlled
by any entity, by any government. The invention of bitcoin
has sparked the emergence of a whole new digital finance industry that is building an ecosystem
around bitcoin that will develop digital
financial products and services. The most important of these
is decentralized contracting systems. These contracting systems,
for the first time, offer a complete, universal
transaction platform. So on a single integrated platform, you can do literally any kind
of financial or legal transaction. And these two technologies put together, so decentralized currency
with decentralized contracting platforms, give power to ordinary people. Today's financial system
is highly centralized: a few people pull the levers of power, and we are at their mercy. A stark example of that
for example, is Cyprus. One day, people thought they had
money saved up over 30-40 years, and the next day, they heard that the government was going
to confiscate 40% of their assets, and there's nothing
that they can do about it. But with these technologies, you have the power back in your own hands. So those are the four pillars
of a decentralized society, and there's a logical order to them. First, we communicate
about what we want to do, then, we agree
the terms of our cooperation, then we produce
what we've agreed to cooperate on, and finally, we trade the goods
and services that we've produced. Together, these technologies form
what I call the technology of trust. They will enable ordinary people
to communicate, to come to legal agreements, to build products and services, and to trade without interference
from third parties. So what does the world
of the future look like? Imagine a Maasai warrior
on the plains of Africa who has no access to the banks,
the financial services, and the whole infrastructure
that we take for granted in the developed world. He is cut off from the global economy. He has no bank account,
no lawyer, no financial services. This severely limits his ability
to generate wealth. But he has a mobile phone, and soon, using that mobile phone, he can start with a business idea,
and within minutes, with a few clicks on his mobile phone, he can incorporate a legal entity, and he connects
to a global transaction platform that allows him to safely
and securely do business with anyone in the world,
including people that he's never met, people that he cannot trust; and the transactions, the integrity of the transactions
is guaranteed by the technology. This dramatically improves
his ability to generate wealth. Billions of people in Africa, Asia,
and South America and elsewhere are going to be raised out of poverty, dramatically improving
their standard of living. With just a mobile phone, everyone is going to have access
to all the world's knowledge, technologies, and products and services. The combined force of these technologies will force the old, centralized,
coercive monopolists to change. They will have to become
competing service providers that serve the needs of all of us. This is going to lead
to a radical transformation of our communication systems, our financial systems,
our governments and legal systems. The end result is that we will once again live together in a small
and decentralized network community where we'll have the power
in our own hands to live lives of our own choosing, in peace, freedom, and prosperity. A new generation of entrepreneurs
is building society 3.0; Join us! (Applause)
I really feel more has to be done with the first one.
If this submission was flaired inaccurately, click here.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
You know that this guy is a scammer right?