One of the accounts I follow, @anwenbaumeister posted a great overview on pre-Columbian Mayan and Inca worldviews and technology. One thing stood out from this post to both me and my good friend, @jimitations:
Agricultural technologies are formed from a civilization’s worldview, and on the other hand ideologies are created and reinforced by such agricultural technologies. Behind the functionality of a field and of a hoe lie a civilization’s worldview imposed in its environment.
In fact, @jimitations made this comment:
I'm wondering if this will be true of the blockchain technology. Will it actually make our society's worldview more open and honest?
Technology has had a tendency, over the ages, to provide more ways for people to keep secrets than to reveal those secrets. A few notable exceptions stand out, such as the camera, in helping to keep other people "honest," but until the advent of blockchain, accounting practices were absolutely rife with errors, both accidental and deliberate.
So, will the very existence of blockchain technology alter our society's worldview toward something more open, transparent, and maybe even honest? Are we in the vanguard of a mindset that views the act of deception as less and less viable?
In the case of banks, some people may think this question is moot. Blockchain is less likely to make banks honest as it is to make them obsolete. Mike Gault wrote, in TechCrunch that, "Banks today make huge profits on financial transactions. If transfers suddenly became instantaneous and worry-free, who would pay a bank to facilitate them?" If a system-wide overhaul to blockchain were to happen, banks may simply go the way of the dinosaur.
But what about the rest of us? How will the mere existence of blockchain in our world affect the way our kids mature into adults? I've already made the comment, right here on Steemit, that I wished there was a blockchain record of my conversations with my kids, to prove that yes, they did say their homework would be done by 8. On Steemit, @derekareith is envisioning a world of incentivized education using blockchain technology. How will blockchain affect copyright infringement? Identity fraud? Resumes? If @anwenbaumeister is right, simply living and working in an environment where blockchain exists and affects the behavior of some of us, may influence the behavior of most of us.
It's a huge question that goes to the very nature of good and evil, truth and lie, and the free will that has always seemed necessary. Our ability to choose truth is the one thing that makes our honesty meaningful. But if honesty is now being forced on us, will that change us for the better or for the worse? Ironically, the same question can be asked about the effects of totalitarian, centralized control. So will blockchain make us more honest? Or just more creative in pursuing technologies of rebellion?
