Cross posting from the bird app. Here are some thoughts on the future of protocols for decentralized money and social:

computing, cryptography and consensus | Coinbase, Recurse Center, Waterloo.

The telegraph was more difficult than the semaphore. It required repeaters and circuits rather than simple fire.

The telephone was more difficult than the telegraph. Conveying sound required more control, feedback, and modulation. The overton window had to be convinced to remember phone numbers.

The computer and internet was more difficult than the telephone. You're implementing a reprogrammable Turing Machine via von Neumann architecture, and building a reliable communications network.

*If* decentralized money and social media takes off, and someone in the 30th century studies the 2000's and 2100's, don't you think building protocols which reach the money and human layer would be more complicated than anything prior? Everything is inherently political.

If you concur, realize that cats on browsers happened in 1995, whereas the first analog computers were started in 1930's. Take Vannevar Bush's Differential Analyzer for example.

The epitome is Babbage's Difference Engine which took too long and eventually funding was dropped.

A second line of thinking I enjoy is for one to actually realize how long it took to get the Netscape moment, which is arguably when computing reached PMF.

Harry Nyquist, a physicist at Bell Labs working on transmitting pictures by wire in 1918 called "telephotography" !