The enterprise blockchain began to take shape in 2016, a time when companies like IBM began to take advantage of private networks for supply chain management. It was also during 2016 that author Don Tapscott wrote and published Blockchain Revolution, a book that examines how blockchain will transform a number of industries.
After the launch of Blockchain Revolution, Tapscott, who is also a co-founder of the Blockchain Research Institute, published Supply chain revolution in August 2020. Given the book's publication schedule, Supply chain revolution He detailed how the COVID-19 pandemic exposed supply chain failures around the world, and explained how blockchain could be used to solve these challenges.
Almost a year after the launch of Supply chain revolution, Tapscott has published his latest book, Platform revolution. Unlike his other two books that explain what blockchain is and how it can be applied to promote certain industries, Platform Revolution goes one step further, taking the thesis that blockchain has reached "platform status".
Specifically speaking, Tapscott told Cointelegraph that blockchain has matured so much over the years that companies and industries are now building new models on top of blockchain as a "platform." Furthermore, Tapscott believes that blockchain has reached a point of "trivergence", making it the best technology of today's digital age:
“There are many new technologies in today's second era of the digital age, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things. However, in the end, the biggest of these technologies is blockchain, which is 'triversing' with all these other technologies. "
Understand the trivergence of blockchain technology
Tapscott explains throughout the eight chapters of Platform Revolution the way companies, supply chains and sectors of the economy rely on blockchain as a platform to keep moving forward.
To describe the trivergence of blockchain with AI, machine learning, and IoT, Chapter 1 of Platform Revolution looks at how blockchain can secure the future of the digital age. In a nutshell, this chapter talks about digital conglomerates like Facebook (now Meta) and Google, noting that these entities act as owners of user data. “We create the data and these companies take it away from them. So we are left with almost nothing, we cannot monetize our data or secure that data as our privacy is being undermined, ”said Tapscott.
To solve this ongoing dilemma, Chapter 1 explains how open access, fair participation, and sovereign identity in a blockchain network can improve access to the web. In particular, the chapter focuses on how blockchain can solve the problem of tampering, promote fairness, protect the rights of content creators, and more. While this may be so, Chapter 1 also details why the trivergence of blockchain, AI, and IoT will eventually lead to Web 3.0. This is described as a network where billions of people, devices, and decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, will be able to transact and analyze data for better decision making.
The second chapter of the book examines the impact of blockchain on big data. "Big data" is characterized here as a new asset class that may outperform all other assets, given the notion that digital conglomerates have been storing user data privately for years. However, through encryption technologies such as those found within blockchain networks, new privacy rights and property rights over data could be achieved.
Related: Review of Don Tapscott's Collaboration Book 'Supply Chain Revolution'
Chapter 3 is an important section of Platform Revolution, as Tapscott and his co-author Anjan Vinod thoroughly examine the relationship between blockchain and AI. According to Tapscott and Vinod, AI is making blockchain one of the broadest technological revolutions in history. This chapter explains how blockchain can provide a decentralized infrastructure for the entire AI ecosystem. For example, it is observed here that a decentralized solution based on blockchain can guarantee a more democratized, but secure, means of transmitting the data necessary for AI models.
Chapter 4 focuses more on blockchain and IoT, noting that connected devices will require a ledger to learn and adapt to new things. "It's where rubber meets the blockchain path," Tapscott writes. While implementation challenges such as quantum computing are also mentioned in Chapter 4, this section ultimately describes that Web 3.0 runs on a distributed cloud, with a mix of decentralized private and public servers with edge computing capabilities. .
The threat of quantum computing
While the impact of blockchain on autonomous vehicles is discussed in Chapters 5 and 6, ensuring that Web 3.0 remains distributed and quantum proof is detailed in Chapters 7 and 8 of Platform Revolution. In particular, the quantum threat to cybersecurity of global IT systems is analyzed.
For example, Chapter 7 notes that "There is a one in seven chance that a quantum computer will be commercially available by 2026." In turn, Chapter 8 highlights the need to govern standards development at three levels: protocol, application, and ecosystem.
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Chapter 8 author Christian Keil details in depth the different layers of the blockchain technology stack, concluding that stakeholder participation and the power of network effects are necessary for standards development. "The blockchain community needs a standard like OSI, with which cataloging, organizing and communicating advances in this new technology could be significantly easier," Keil writes.
How blockchain relates to other technologies
Platform Revolution It concludes with the notion that blockchain is still in its early stages and that its success will depend on how well the current challenges and opportunities are handled for its development. While it is difficult to predict the future, Tapscott mentioned that the goal behind Platform Revolution is to help people understand how blockchain fits in with other technologies:
“This book introduces the concept of trivergence, while explaining the relationship between blockchain, AI, IoT, big data, and quantum computing. These are all issues that people struggle to understand. "
This in mind Platform Revolution is a must-read for those interested in second-age technologies of the digital age. For example, while some may only be familiar with conventional concepts like AI, Platform Revolution explains how blockchain relates to artificial intelligence and other popular technologies.
The book further underscores why blockchain will continue to be the backbone of industries, economies, supply chains, and other aspects of our lives. “These are all great technologies that everyone is talking about. Platform Revolution it explains how they fit together and why blockchain is critical to everything, "added Tapscott.
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