Blockchain AND OR maths will eat the world

Originally published on LinkedIn.

Honestly I had dismissed Blockchain as another piece of over hyped tech. And yes there is a lot of hype. But tonight I invested some time in getting under the skin of Blockchain and Bitcoin (well to extent of my comprehension of maths!)

Software isn't eating the world - complex mathematical algorithms are

 I've now come to the conclusion that software isn't eating the world - complex mathematical algorithms are. But I guess you could claim they are one of the same thing - code is just executable maths. More on this later - back to Blockchain.

I'd recommend starting with the following TED talk(s) - about the potential business and societal impact (and a high level overview):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl8OlkkwRpc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RplnSVTzvnU

Then for the more curious / technical / engineering minded amongst you go for one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9jOJk30eQs (5 minute version) or https://youtu.be/Lx9zgZCMqXE (More detailed 22 minute version)

 More than just encryption

So it turns out that there is more to Blockchain than just Private / Public key exchange (PKI) and cryptographic functions ("hashing" which is also commonly used to protect stored passwords). There is actually a cleverly linked set of PKI actions and hashing going on which ensures the integrity - preventing things like double spending of currency - and enabling distributed computing. What I found really interesting is that the system is actually pretty inefficient, tolerates failure and corrects itself in quite a primitive way. But it has to in order to work as a distributed system across untrusted nodes.

Energy is to Bitcoin as Gold is to Banknotes

There are of course downsides - there are scalability concerns and I still do struggle with the amount of energy required. All the cryptographic aspects of Blockchain are computationally expensive which means they use a lot of CPU power and that of course uses electricity. I think of energy being to Bitcoin as Gold is to physical currencies. The next really clever person will be the one who figures out a Blockchain 2.0 that doesn't require so much computation but still maintains trust and integrity (probably impossible?).

Maths is eating the world

So back to my earlier remark . Look at many of the tech trends right now - Big Data / Data Science, Blockchain, FinTech, Virtual/Augmented Reality (Graphics rendering), Artificial Intelligence. Often at the heart of these are really complex models, algorithms and equations. Partly makes me wish I paid more attention as a kid (sadly I think the reality is that my brain is not quite wired for hard core maths!). But at the time I didn't see a connection between maths and the real world of work. Has reinforced for me the importance of encouraging STEM subjects in schools - particularly the M!

These are of course my personal views - click this link for the Deloitte view on this topic

p.s. Hopefully some of you noticed the hidden capitalisation related joke in the title of this post? Perhaps I could gone even more geeky with && || instead?

Originally published on LinkedIn.