By Sam Weinstein
By James Dale Davidson and William Rees Morg, The Sovereign Individual
One of those books, The Sovereign Individual, alters the way you view the world for all time. You'll get shivers from how well it foresees the effects of blockchain technology despite the fact that it was written in 1997. The transition from the industrial to the information ages marks the beginning of the fourth stage of human society. To comprehend the breadth and depth of the changes that are coming, you must read this book.
We already know that individuals who truly prosper in the new information age will be employees who are not wedded to a single job or vocation and are location independent, as it becomes possible to live comfortably and produce an income anywhere. However, this goes beyond digital nomadism and freelance work; the very foundations of democracy, government, and money are changing. It is already more attractive to pick where to reside based on cost savings.
Here, the authors anticipate that the rise of individual power will coincide with decentralized technology eating away at the power of governments, just as they previously prophesied Black Tuesday and the fall of the Soviet Union. They anticipated with astonishing prescience that private, digital cash would be the death knell for nation states. When that occurs, the dynamic of governments acting as stationary robbers that use taxation to steal from hard-working citizens will alter. You're going to join the new cognitive elite if you've developed the ability to provide solutions to people's problems wherever in the world. Do not skip this.
Choice Quotation: “Governments will no longer be able to charge more for their services than they are worth to the people who pay for them when technology is mobile and transactions occur in cyberspace, as they increasingly will.”
Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
When I wish to convey to someone how excellent this book is, I enquire: “Do you want to know what distinguishes humans from monkeys on a fundamental level? When a monkey sees a threat coming their way, he can screech to his pals, jump up and down on a rock, wave a stick in the air, and wave it around. “Danger! Lion! Danger!” A monkey can tell a falsehood. When there isn't a lion around, it can bounce up and down on the rock, flail a stick around, and screech about one. He is merely playing around. A monkey, however, is unable to leap up and down, throw a stick about, or scream “Danger! Danger! Dragon!””
Why is that so? because dragons do not exist. According to Harari, what has raised the species to interact in huge numbers with strangers is human imagination, or our capacity to think about and speak about things we have never seen or touched. Beyond the realm of human imagination, there are no gods, nations, money, human rights, laws, religions, or systems of justice. We are the ones who create them.
All of this serves as a fairly excellent prologue to our current situation. The Scientific Revolution, which began barely 500 years ago and may usher in something entirely different for humanity, comes after the Cognitive Revolution and the Agricultural Revolution, according to Harari. But money will still be there. Read this book to learn that trust is the foundation from which all forms of money are created and that money is the greatest story ever written.
Suitable Quotation: “In contrast, Sapiens experience a triple-layered reality. The Sapiens world includes tales about money, gods, governments, and businesses in addition to tales about forests, rivers, fears, and wants.”
Written by Andreas M. Antonopoulos, The Internet of Money
If the two books previously mentioned aid in our comprehension of the historical setting in which Bitcoin initially developed, this book enthusiastically expands on the “why.” Perhaps the most listened-to voice in the cryptosphere is Andreas Antonopolous. He has been promoting Bitcoin since 2010, and this book is an edited compilation of presentations he made between 2013 and 2016 while on the speaking circuit.
His first book, Mastering Bitcoin, is a technical deep dive into the subject and is primarily intended for programmers, engineers, and architects of software and systems. The scalability dispute doesn't really matter, and this book explains why Bitcoin needs the assistance of designers to ensure widespread acceptance using some clever metaphors.
“He writes, “When you first drive your brand-new car in a city, you are driving on roads utilized by horses, with infrastructures built and used for horses. There aren't any light indicators. Road regulations don't exist. No paved roads exist. And what took place? Because the cars lacked balance and four feet, they became stuck.” But if you skip a century, the cars that were once laughed at are now the norm. This is a good place to start if you want to explore Bitcoin's philosophical, social, and historical ramifications.
Suitable Quotation: “Bitcoin is more than just digital cash. Yes, it's ideal payment for online transactions. It is immediate, secure, and cost-free. There is money involved with the internet, but there is also much more. Bitcoin is the financial internet. Only the first application is for money. If you understand it, you will be able to see past the cost, the volatility, and the craze. Fundamentally, Bitcoin is a ground-breaking technology that will alter the course of history. Join.”
