How blockchain will fundamentally change our lives in future
The use of the internet has undergone rapid evolution in a matter of a few decades.
In the 1990s, the internet was described as "a wide-area hypermedia
information retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a
large universe of documents" or simply put, 'The Internet of
Information' which was primarily used to access data resources and
services administered on the web browsers.
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Back then, no one would have thought how it would fundamentally
change our daily lives in the future. It has rapidly evolved from a
platform to gather information to space where we can shop, bank and
communicate. The digital revolution has made the world realize the value
of the internet and its implementations.
So, today we are gradually moving towards what Canadian strategist
Don Tapscott calls 'The Internet of Value'; that is the fountainhead of
digital assets. Blockchain, which allows us to enable the exchange of
any asset across the globe in real-time, ranging from stocks and bonds
to music and art, is the next inevitable step in the global progress
towards 'The Internet of Value'.
Various applications of the internet have been made possible which
are efficient like peer-to-peer money transfer because internet reduces
the transactional and communication cost to a bare minimum. This is the
same force driving the new platforms that have emerged to deliver goods
and services at levels of efficiency previously unimaginable, and
blockchain is leading the revolution in redefining the new-age internet.
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Like a traditional ledger, blockchain is essentially a record of
transactions. These transactions can be any movement of money, goods or
secure data -- for example, a purchase at a supermarket, or the
assignment of an Aadhar number. It works in three basic steps. First, it
gathers data that the user has provided in forms of smart contracts,
transactions IDs. Second, it orders the received data into blocks and
finally chains them together securely using cryptography making it
decentralized and accessible via any computer/mobile device across the
network.
Now the question here is why do we need it? What is it that will
change the way groceries are bought, stocks are purchased, money is
transferred, bills are paid, and land deeds are made? The answer
possibly can be the demand for trust and security emerging from both
people and enterprises alike. Blockchain best serves these purposes as
the trust factor is native to the medium. For example, if you are
transferring money online to your friend, then your medium becomes the
internet and to secure your transfer, a clever programming code is
written. The same concept is applied by blockchain, but the security is
made more secure by cryptography.
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Blockchain has the potential and can be implemented across diverse
sectors such as banking, education, and health. For instance, we keep
our savings, assets, and cash with banks because they are trustworthy
and secure. However, their data is centralized, making them quite prone
to cybercriminals that can bring the entire banking system to a halt.
Now consider a person working abroad who wants to send a remittance to
his family back home but has to encounter multiple clearances before his
family receives it. With blockchain technology, the concept of
cryptocurrency comes into the picture, thus resulting in an open-access
registry of monetary flows which makes the intermediation of financial
institutions unnecessary and even costs less.
Second, in the field of healthcare, while big data analytics and
artificial intelligence are simplifying healthcare delivery by smartly
diagnosing the diseases from the patterns of numerous plugged-in
electrocardiograms, blockchain is turning out to be a perfect platform
for recording the medical attention of a patient and identifying a trend
from the data recorded. Consider health card: A database which can be
perceived as your health identity as it carries your entire medical
history. Such technologies can find effective application in reducing
information asymmetries within the healthcare and insurance markets by
providing the most accurate data on patients.
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Finally, blockchain can reorient the education system by delivering
academic transparency. It can build an e-portfolio of academic
credentials which has your test scores since the day you entered school.
Paying for school fee in cryptocurrency -- which is decentralized --
from anywhere around the world on a secured network is commendable.
Hence, this multi-trillion-dollar industry of education is indeed
revolutionizing.
Also, if implemented in government operations, blockchain will help
break down barriers built from bureaucracy and corruption by providing a
means to bypass existing power structures. It could be used to
transform the way charities are created and regulated. By implementing a
transparent system of transactions that include deposits of cash,
transfers of donation and expenses spending will bring about a paradigm
shift on how rules are enforced for these organizations.
Moreover, this technology has the competence to revamp the present
system by automating manual processes, eradicating frauds and
controlling the issues for authorization. Its implementation across
diverse sectors can be a solution to the most foundational problems of
mankind. Hence, blockchain could be the perfect platform to transform a
knowledge-driven economy into a digital-inclusive society.
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