Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Is Changing the World: Tapscott, Don, Tapscott, Alex: 9781101980149: Amazon.com: Books

I had already read a few superb books about the Blockchain which sparked my imagination with futuristic perspectives on the revolutionary potential of this breakthrough technological platform on which the (in)famous first digital currency, Bitcoin, is still coasting. So, when Don sent me a copy of his last book, Blockchain Revolution, shortly after my article on the matter in the Top 10 was published – once my enthusiastic gratitude damped off a bit – I thought, ‘Why another one?’ What can this book say more than what my favorite ones (among which top are Vigna and Cassey “The Age of Cryptocurrency” and, Melanie Swan “Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy”) said already so clearly, so inspirationally, so forward looking! To make sure I can quickly grasp the novelty I decided to skip the first part and began reading from the Transformations part. And with every page my state of awe spiked up rocket style!

Awe at the clarity with which the Tapscotts spell out the paradigm shift from the Internet as we know it, to the Blockchain-enabled Internet (we call it ‘B-Internet’ here). No matter what Chapter or even what page you start with, the reading will shed light on many blind spots under which the established systems ruling in sectors which still practice past century recipes cover up their fallacies to continue channeling incredible wealth. This book spares no one, from the archaic practices of the financial monopolies that, supported by politicians have enslaved us in an almost unescapable gridlock, to the fat intermediaries reaping artists of the value they create – the authors ponder about every crucial transformation brought by this ‘prosperity-enabling holy grail’ poised to unleash wealth where before poverty reigned, and deliver trust elixir to dissolve corrupt stagnation from every dark corner.

Current institutional structures are drastically challenged by the rate of change of society, technology and the environment which far outstrips their capacity to adapt. Governments and international organizations are losing their legitimacy to competition from entirely new structures of collective action enabled by the Internet – and Don’s definitive voice on the matter illuminated us in the past decades through numerous articles and over a dozen books. When I first met him on a panel at the United Nations, Don gave me his “Radical Transparency” book – which now sounds like a prologue to the Blockchain Revolution. Since – I have been amazed at the studies his Global Solutions Networks program unraveled to demystify the power of self-organized collective action the Internet can unleash. Embedding the principles of decentralization and sharing (which are spelled out in Chapter two), the Blockchain platform is about to catalyze an even deeper societal transformation.

In the authors’ words: “This book is about something bigger than the asset. It’s about the power and potential of the underlying technological platform” (Chapter one). The Blockchain ledger is not simply for accounting monetary transactions. At its core, it is a platform that allows people to come to agreement on virtually anything without intermediaries. It provides a foundation to make social contracts based on the principle of consensus. Foremost, the Blockchain enables a larger function of accounting; performing checks and balances on the self-interests and the corruptible tendencies that exist in society. Unlike traditional representative models of governance, where systems of checks and balance are exercised through third parties, under bitcoin’s consensus model, accountability is distributed directly and exercised by all in the network. This opens the perspective of increased access to critical financial services for all, creating more transparent democracies, and developing services that dramatically reduce barriers for global commerce. The Tapscotts awaken us to such possibilities with clear steps distilled into powerful prosperity recipes for reinventing the financial system, re-architecting the enterprise, rebuilding government and democracy, deploying a trustworthy Internet of Things, and many more.

With advances in Blockchain technology now removed from the constraints of Bitcoin, it is possible to encode smart contracts as algorithms that will act as a trusted enforcer of agreements. The idea is that, in removing the need to trust central authorities, blockchains become platforms upon which one can build new forms of non-hierarchal cooperation between strangers. Thus the Blockchain is poised to become a social technology for whole new institutional forms of economies sporting new market dynamics.

I’ve worked on this dream in the past 20 years with FIPA – the Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (http://www.fipa.org/), and we made amazing progress in implementing distributed extended enterprise models that break the chain of industrial age command and control practices to unleash creative potential and streamline production within the enterprise. Pioneering applications in the fields of manufacturing production and supply chain management based on those early models of Distributed Autonomous Enterprise did not really take off in other areas due to the burden of the entrenched legal infrastructure which could not be equally streamlined at the time. Now ‘the trust protocol’ – as the Tapscotts nicknamed Satoshi Nakamoto’s spark of Genius – is here and ready to disintermediate cumbersome bureaucracies and free productive capacity entangled in the web of rules stacked on old, creeping foundations. The book presents creative ways of building the 2.0 version of the DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization) – together with how such platforms can innovate business models while fostering profound societal transformations.

So yeah – you may say – there are already out there a few superb books about the Blockchain that captivated the imagination of disruptive leaders in recent years – so, why read another one?… Because, besides interesting fictional scenarios touching the limits of the impossible, this one spells out the practical steps you can take right now to unleash the potential of this technology to rectify the flaws of current infrastructures which kept us captive in the command-and-control ‘industrial mindset’ of the past Century, and will continue to do so until we finally take action. It offers simple – yet extremely effective, powerful design principles as well as step by step practical recipes which you can apply at once to unleash this latent power to transform entire sectors, from global financial webs to social innovation networks. It gives real-life examples of fallacies of the current practices in almost all industries that can benefit from the blockchain technology, pointing with clarity to why you should care and how to succeed at riding this revolution waves to take your business to new heights, while witnessing the peril of those complacent with the status quo.

Yet, to me, the major contribution of this work stems from the definitive clarification of the paradigm shift from an Internet that enables coordination while monetizing the transactions information for the benefit of the enabling platforms owners – to the B-Internet, which breaks down those very platforms to enforce trustworthy collaboration and the creation and fair distribution of value through social and commercial agreements inherently validated on the blockchain-embedded transaction platform itself. As such, you, the social innovators out there – take notice! This book is one significant leap towards answering the hard questions that we culd not answer in the pre B-Internet era: How to enable large scale, free and systematic cooperation in a self-organizing manner that will produce constructive social and economic dynamics?; How can social interactions be aligned with macro-level goals and how policies steering action towards goal achievement can emerge from such interactions?

So, set aside a chunk of time every day in your calendar for this journey, as I do to revisit the various chapters as they relate to the various challenges I face – and join the Tapscotts on the Blockchian ride to break the gridlock in which we have been chained for too long – in an ultimate call on the digital economy to unleash its true power for creating a prosperous and fair future – paradoxically, through a technology involving chains!…