I am not a person who is not interested in current affairs and politics, but I never talk about it here because I believe in professionalism. In the 20 years since I left school, I have worked in several industries and I can’t speak of any achievements, but I know a truth. In any practical (not purely academic) field, more than 80% of "true knowledge" is never seen in words. , Can only come from practice. Therefore, it is not easy for a person to understand a little thing and say something clearly in his professional field. For those things that you may be very interested in, and have spent a lot of time watching the media and reading the literature, but have not been professionally engaged for a long time, often even the basic information is fragmented, or even wrong, let alone what can be there Reliable opinions, so you should stay humble and keep your distance.
Hallucination
In the chaos of the US presidential election, there are already many people at home and abroad who understand, do not understand, and pretend to understand. I didn’t understand it at first. It’s not the turn of those of us who are immersed in doing things to interrupt. The unified actions of the US Internet technology giants not only banned the Trump family, but also "hurry to kill" their party members, so that the EU countries that have been stricken by Trump in the past few years are also surprised by friends. Perhaps the most shocking thing is the strangulation of Parler. In my opinion, the seriousness of this matter even exceeds the ban on any personal account. Some comments have pointed out the irony of this matter: what the government cannot do under the provisions of 230, the Internet giants under the protection of 230 can easily do it to other platforms. The so-called do not do to others what you do not want, this double standard is really pretty. People finally asked the question that should have been asked long ago: Who is ruling this world? Where is the world heading?
Of course, there is coordination behind the unified actions of the Internet technology giants. There will be some "world peace" activists who will tell you that the so-called rise of the new hegemony and the transfer of power are purely unfounded. What happened only reflects the will of the deep government of the United States. Without unified command, the technology giants would not be like this. Coordinated. Therefore, everything has not deviated from the track of political struggle, the track that has been known to us since the era of Yao, Shunyu and the death of the ancient Roman Gragu brothers in "The Year of the Bamboo Secretary".
However, most discerning people still see the difference: the key is not whether it will, but whether it can. This time, the international technology giants have clearly shown us their abilities: they usually pose as desperately competing and jumping, seeming to never urinate in a pot, let everyone put one. Ten thousand hearts. But at the critical moment, when we join hands, people block and kill people, and Buddhas block and kill Buddhas, there is so much power! What is more critical is not the issue of capacity, but the issue of efficiency. People in the past described the low cost of coups or revolutions, and they often used "soldiers without blood" to measure them. No killing or bleeding is the most comfortable way that predecessors can think of. Today, technology giants can use their mobile phones to issue a command. Within a few minutes, a few engineers type a few characters on the keyboard and click a few mouse buttons on the screen. If you are the president of the United States, you will die in an instant. , The cost is almost zero. The revolution succeeded in an instant, and comrades did not need to work hard. So, one-fifth of the 21st century has passed, and some people laugh at the "Keyboard Man". In fact, these outdated brains just don't understand the power of the keyboard. This time they understood that a $10 parallel membrane keyboard connected to a key node is more powerful than a thousand horses.
The joint ban on Parler announced the disillusionment of liberalism on the centralized Internet. This is an illusion that has long been absurd in the eyes of insiders. It's just that most people will only smile with contempt if you call and sign. Unexpectedly, I didn't expect that the big alligators in the Washington swamp would uncover the lid in this way and release the monsters at this time. People don't expect the reptiles of the digital age to control these monsters. They can lose their laptops, and they may be too old to say their third wish. How can they understand the power of digital power? People should not expect Wall Street to control these monsters. If we follow the current model, 20 years later, Wall Street will be just an APP on the cloud servers of these technology giants. Among the hundreds of thousands of people on Wall Street today, only a small part of them will be lucky enough to marry and form an alliance with the technology giants and the chickens and dogs ascend to heaven. The fate of most people is known by Parler today.
In other parts of the world, we hear gloating cheers, as if this matter has nothing to do with ourselves. This is indeed the pattern Tucson is broken. Digital technology is a new worldwide force, it is rising so fast, and it is still accelerating. Most people do not have a clear understanding of this. Even if they do, the coping methods are often outdated, and the effects can only be partial. We are no stranger to this. When the Renaissance and the Great Maritime era entrusted the industrial and commercial civilization as a new world force, East Asian countries generally adopted the countermeasures of shutting down the country and focusing on the original and suppressing the end. Rise, but the overall collapse after a few hundred years.
The general trend of silicon-based civilization is unstoppable
As far as digital technology itself is concerned, it is still in a very early stage, which is about two hundred years after the discovery of the New World, that is, about 1700 years: wealth has already surged, but the king is still the king. Historically, the computing power density of today's era is still too low, the energy supply is too low, the connection speed is too slow, the algorithm is too weak, and there are too many low-level interventions by carbon-based primates. However, thanks to Moore's Law, the impact and subversion brought by digital technology to society cannot be waited for hundreds of years. Of the two goals of "10 billion people" and "10 trillion smart devices," the latter may be achieved faster. Over time, the world’s resources are mainly consumed by smart machines. Production and consumption are mainly done by smart machines. Fighting and law enforcement are mainly carried out by smart machines. Tens of millions of them, capable of brain-computer interconnection, have been genetically modified. , A new species that can live a healthy life for two hundred years and is called "Homo Deus" by Yuval Harari. At that time, people's social status mainly depends on their closeness with intelligent machines. This kind of change, no matter how conservative we are, it is impossible to imagine that it will only affect the economy and will not spill over to other fields, will not reconstruct the relationship between people, will not transform the order and structure of society, and will not redefine. Global geopolitics. So, since the Mayflower landed in New England, the result was not just a clone of England. Then, no matter what his original intentions, Musk will only clone a new habitat for humans? A middle-aged person my age, as long as he pays a little attention to his body, he has a good chance to witness the birth of the new Roman Empire in the solar system. The three bodies may not be science fiction, but a slightly metaphorical prediction.
What I want to say is that no matter what you think of these brain holes I opened, and whether you personally support or oppose such a trend, the trend of the world towards a digital silicon-based civilization is unstoppable, the Trump Group’s Internet society Sexual death is just a pile of dazzling roadside bones left behind after this general trend crushes.
Oligopoly of digital public power is not a good thing
The trend is immutable, but there is more than one path. What we have to consider is whether we have a better path choice under this general trend.
What is the current path? It is the few global digital technology oligarchs that have won market-oriented competition. Without authorization and effective supervision, they have mastered huge public power and used this power in the way of operating private enterprises. Following the current path, the new digital technology oligarchs will become the true rulers of the world sooner or later, either through conflicts or through subtle changes. Some countries, through traditional methods, may be able to suppress the growth of this force within a few decades, but this suppression cannot be long-term. It can only be temporary, partial, and accumulate over time, because it inhibits innovation. This leads to overall backwardness and even overturning.
Should we cheer for the rise of the new hegemony? Since human beings have been living under a pyramid system since ancient times, the vast majority of people are either under this hegemony or under that hegemony. Perhaps the replacement of the spire can take a stand-by attitude, and it should even be welcomed. And praise this change? Or, to be more serious, is it a better way of social governance to transfer part or even most of the public power to an oligarch who masters advanced digital technology?
As an ordinary person, I question this for three reasons.
The first is distrust of the source of this new public power. The source of public power in modern society is a set of concepts and institutional systems, which are different from the market system. Although there are some precedents of excellent entrepreneurs transforming into excellent politicians, on the whole, market competition is not an effective mechanism for selecting excellent civil servants, nor is it a reasonable authorization mechanism. In other words, a private technology business owner, because he has won the market competition, has obtained huge public affairs power. The source of this power is unreasonable and unhealthy.
The second is distrust of the operation of this new public power. The high efficiency, low cost, and strong effects of digital technology oligarchs, combined with the arbitrary, opaque, and unsupervised decision-making implementation, not only are ordinary people powerless to fight back, even the strong in the traditional order can only Be willing to go down. As shown in the banning of Trump and Parler, when these oligarchs use power, their efficiency is so high, the effect is so good, and the resistance they encounter is so weak and weak. The oligarchs don’t care about the inherent contradictions between their different behaviors and opinions, and they don’t even bother to explain it to the outside world. The political leaders who usually talk about it can only mumble a few words "problem" across the Atlantic, all on this side or the other side. The mechanism basically cannot produce any supervision and restraint effects on them. If you doubt whether absolute power must produce absolute corruption, then the 21st century will give you a new opportunity for verification. It’s just that the cost of the test failure will be extremely heavy, because soon, with the natural development of artificial intelligence, new generation wireless communications, the Internet of things and robots, the ability of technological oligarchs to eliminate opponents will not be limited to the virtual space of the Internet. . At that time, the best life most of us could think of was probably to temporarily settle down as a digital slave.
The third is the conflict between the new power and the old power in the process of rising, which will inevitably involve a large number of ordinary people and change the destiny of many people. This problem is extremely real, and it is happening in different ways in several places. Because of this reality, it is omitted here.
Please don't get me wrong, I am not unwelcoming the rise of silicon-based digital civilization. If we must divide the left, middle and right among the crowd, I must belong to the "Adventist". However, as I said before, I think the trend is inevitable, but the path can still be chosen. There is indeed another way. The "other road" referred to here is not a road that makes some people complacent and confident. "Recent events show that only we can effectively respond to and prevent effectively in the world." Frankly speaking, I don't appreciate this second way. As the Democratic Party comes to power, we will wait and see what rewards and indulgences the digital technology oligarchs with merit will receive. But an ominous premonition is that if they and us each go along the current path, the past 2018 may be the closest point in time between China and the global digital technology peak, and the gap in the future may increase.
Maybe there is a third route.
Blockchain: the third option
After Parler was blocked this time, some friends who heard me introduce the blockchain and decentralized Internet sent me messages, saying that they understood the meaning of decentralized Internet at once. But in fact, I don't think they really understand.
At present, the global blockchain technology community is building a decentralized Internet technology stack, in which blockchain plays a core role. This new Internet technology is based on the blockchain paradigm in the storage layer, computing layer, interconnection layer, and application layer, or simply directly use the blockchain to develop. People call this new Internet decentralized Internet, or open Internet, or Web 3.0. In this new Internet technology stack is still very immature. How tender is it? Low performance, unreliable storage, expensive, and very troublesome to use. But it has its power. The applications developed on it cannot be deleted, sealed, hidden, or changed. They will only be handled in a proper manner and in accordance with the established guidelines. If Parler is built on this technology, there is no risk of being turned off and unplugged.
Digital assets and decentralized finance (DeFi) are the first demonstrations of this power. In the past year, the scale of global digital assets has more than tripled, while the scale of DeFi has increased by more than 30 times. However, these applications have deepened people's misunderstanding of the blockchain in a sense, such as treating the blockchain as an absolute liberalism that resists all supervision.
But in fact, the true essence of blockchain is only one thing, that is, "do things according to the rules."
In 2016, IBM observed the rise of a new blockchain project called " Ethereum ", so it sent a liaison called Henning Diedrich to contact the core team of Ethereum to understand the characteristics of Ethereum. At that time, IBM's internal understanding of the blockchain was mainly focused on two points. One was sharing data and processes between institutions, creating trust to reduce transaction friction, and the other was device democracy. These views are not unprofound, but after this liaison went to study Ethereum, he came back with a different conclusion. He described Ethereum as a public computer that "Once the program is deployed, ensure accurate execution", "Deterministic "It is the biggest feature of Ethereum. Later, his report was slightly polished and published publicly. It was read just before I left IBM. It was one of the two or three books that had a decisive effect on my understanding of blockchain in the early days.
I would like to express Henning Diedrich's conclusion in another way: Blockchain is currently the only computing network that can ensure rigid enforcement of rules. After understanding this, the "third route" I said will become clear.
It is indeed possible to construct a new Internet based on the idea and technology of the blockchain. It is safe, strong, reliable, and most importantly, rigid in rules. Blockchain can further stimulate entrepreneurship while effectively restricting the private use and black box operation of digital technology oligarchs. As the only human organization with legislative power, the government can implement more efficient social governance through the blockchain. Such infrastructure should be welcomed and actively promoted, rather than as a daunting one. People can be protected by rules and enjoy freedom from the fear of being hit by favoritism. As for true entrepreneurs and innovators, what they lose is the vicious temptation to seize and abuse their power, but what they get is a light and bright market and a healthy competitive environment that does not need to break the rules and kill each other. Perhaps more importantly, the rigidity of blockchain rules will force the government, the public, and enterprises to sit together and seriously discuss what kind of meta-rules humans must establish for the coming silicon-based era, thereby promoting the development of new governance mechanisms. Produce and mature. Perhaps only when such things happen can humanity as a whole avoid the fate foretold by "The Matrix" and "Terminator."
At the moment, I do not see the possibility that the world may turn to the third route. In general, humans still nodded and rushed along the first route. Only a few of us who are heterogeneous, do not know what to do on the road of blockchain and DeFi, and are not understood by people. But I hope this incident can remind people of this problem and the existence of this third way. Especially those with influential and decision-making resources, you still have a few years to think and make different choices before the arrival of space-based Internet of Things, fully automatic weapons and armed robots. After that, it may only be the same as ordinary people, considering when and how to surrender to the hegemony of science and technology. Learn about the blockchain. Don't be frightened by the "decentralized" word game. After all, the biggest threat to the center is not the decentralization, but the next center.