Yesterday evening, I attended the Blockchain & Quantum Computing Meetup in York University. Since I'm not familiar with the area, I got a little lost. But in so doing, I met and talked with someone who had heard about Steemit.
She saw my license plate and asked me about it; that led to us hitting it off and conversing for more than fifteen minutes. In so doing, I learned that censorship resistance is a big feature.
The hope that folks would ask about Steemit is precisely why I got the vanity plate. I hope that the people seeing it will get curious and Google "STEEMIT" or ask me about it. She was the first one. Funny enough, we met at random - or perhaps not-so-random.
Serendipitous Entangement
Funny enough, the meeting stage was set by the rough trip in. After experiencing "crush hour" traffic on Highway 401 and a crowded trip up Keele, I turned off at the right street to get me into York's campus. But then, I got lost.
There were several parking lots, but none of them seemed to be for the public; they all seemed to be reserved for faculty or certain students. After some driving around and trying two lots fruitlessly, I drove into a small one that looked like it was reserved for the public. Not coincidentally, it was also chock-full. It not only had cars driving around, it also had cars parked in no-parking strips. I parallel-parked in one, a spot where there was a small car behind me. I got out to check to see if the car behind had enough room to get out (i.e., if I had parallel-parked okay.)
Then we met.
I don't remember her name and did not take her photograph, but she was a memorable character. After asking me about Steemit, her first question was: "Is it censorship-free?" As we continued to talk, I found out that she had good reason to ask.
This woman, who was waiting for her daughter to finish an exam, was a real fan of QAnon and had avidly followed Pedogate. It turns out that she had personal cause for the latter. Not unlike a lot of anti-pedophilia activists, she herself had been (shall we say) bothered when a child. She hadn't been raped, but she had had good cause to be wary. Naturally, when she became a mom to her two daughters she was extra-watchful and protective of them. She was no helicopter mother: she was a momma bear. For very good reason.
Since censorship resistance is integral to Steemit, I urged her to join when the moment seemed right. I also showed her the Information War tag and an article from it that explains what information war is. It was the best I had on hand. Luckily, she seemed interested.
She also told me something crucial to onboarding. When she talks about Q et. al face to face, the people she talks to just laugh at her. Then it hit me: Steemit offers a friendly community for people pegged as oddballs. A home away from home for people whose ideas and beliefs are far from the norm. A place where you can get support and encouragement rather than mockery.
That was a revelation, or at least it made a hunch crystal-clear. Steemit offers a real haven for cast-outs! This is a powerful selling point for Steemit in the First World.
Late in our conversation, before I took off to find the meetup, she said she also believes in aliens. I listened sympathetically, and actively.
The entire conversation was heartening, and shows that a lot of good can come from a random entanglement. Or one that's not-so-random. ;)
The Meetup
I arrived near the end of the main presentation, by the moderator Henning Dekant, which gave an intro to quantum computing. Shortly afterwards, Dave Macdonald, he, and Yanbo Xue formed a panel and opened up the floor for questions:
To be honest, the subject was over my head. The relevance to cryptocurrency was focused on vulnerability to encryption-cracking (future) quantum computers, which could either crack Schnorr signatures or be configured into a super-ASIC that would hijack the mining process and possibly lead to a 51% attack. Macdonald gave an estimate of five years for the former and two years for the latter.
He also spent some time plugging NEO, which he said had taken steps towards quantum resistance. He also talked up lattice cryptography, which NEO has implemented, and said that it was a stage towards homomorphic encryption, which he averred would be quantum-safe.
Some time later, Yanbo Xue said that you have to learn quantum mechanics and gain a good understanding of it before designing quantum-safe encryption algos. Over my head as I was, I still recognized common sense. :)
When Macdonald discussed "distributed Byzantine tolerance" in the framework of a "consensus" system, I saw an opportunity to ask what he thought about Bitshares. His response indicated that he had just looked it over and moved on; he didn't say anything about DPOS quantum resistance. In part of his answer, he said that the guy behind Bitshares was @stan and that @dan was behind EOS. Hrm...
Conclusion
It was a good presentation. But the main reason I'm glad I went, was meeting that woman who was fighting a private information war of her own. Meeting and talking to her made me realize how important censorship resistance - and a supportive community - is for people whose ideas the locals just laugh at. Steemit offers a real haven for people like her, and in a lot of respects people like me. From the evangelizing standpoint, this means that censorship resistance is a huge selling point.
But from the human standpoint, Steemit offers an online home for folks who would otherwise be stifled or cast out. That's a huge boon, which for some can be a lifesaver.