BSV_Archie

One of the most significant human characteristics is our ability to transfer information and knowledge across time and spaces. Information is so important to the survival, growth and evolution of our species that we have an entire field of science, Memetics, dedicated to studying and understanding how cultures transfer it. When explaining his Information Theory of Economics, George Gilder often quotes Thomas Sowell saying “the cavemen had the same natural resources at their disposal as we have today, and the difference between their standard of living and ours is a difference between the knowledge they could bring to bear on those resources and the knowledge used today.” Gilder argues that economic growth is learning, information is value, and wealth is entirely the accumulation of knowledge. The term Information System is relatively new and typically associated with modern technology but, throughout our entire history, humans have instinctually searched for and developed systems to collect, store, and transmit information through time and space. When we look at these systems, we find some common themes that can also be seen in what will SOON be the next generation information system; Bitcoin.

Information Systems are essentially the application of techniques that enable us to superimpose information onto a physical medium in an intelligible manner for storage, transmission, and analysis. They often start out using a simple set of codes and protocols for a specific purpose, e.g., records keeping, and grow to support more applications. Language itself is an information system that codifies distinct sounds into words and then follows a set of grammatical rules to parse those words together in an intelligible manner. Language enables us to verbally transmit and receive information through the air and store it in our memories. The reach of spoken language is fairly limited and our ability to accurately recall information from memory can be unreliable. These limitations in spoken language led humans to develop systems of symbols and scripts to encode information in a manner that could be physically written to and read from different mediums.

Many of these first scripting systems were initially developed to be ledgers of account for commercial purposes and evolved into more sophisticated information systems as more and more applications were identified. Some anthropologists theorize that Cuneiform evolved from ancient Mesopotamians using clay tokens to account for and trade livestock and other commodities. These clay tokens were marked with unique characters and an individual’s private seal to make the tokens nonfungible and signal ownership of a commodity. Mesopotamians began to use the characters to record transactions as ledger entries on clay tablets and then to write legally binding contracts with individuals’ signatures. The coding itself was not law but Hammurabi did eventually use the trusted scripting system to codify his laws in stone statues for the public to reference. What started out as a simple scripting system progressed over hundreds or thousands of years to become capable of writing out the entire Epic of Gilgamesh. The physical mediums used to store and transmit information became more efficient and comprehensive along with the scripts.

Societies around the world developed various ways of using plant fibers and animal skins to make paper like materials and ink that enabled them to record and transmit information more efficiently. In Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire, one of Leonidas’ scouts gave a reconnaissance report passing information collected on Xerxes’ army before the battle of Thermopylae. The scout reported typical information military commanders need: size, activity, locations, weapons and equipment but he put the most emphasis on the “mountain” sized pyramid of paper the Persians had at the center of their camp. Some of Leonidas’ men did not understand the ominous significance of all the paper until it was explained that Xerxes believed he would need that much paper for his scribes to take inventory of all his men, horses, grain, muster rolls and dispatches, courts-martial and decorations along with the countries burned, cities sacked, prisoners taken, slaves in chains and every item of loot he planned to take back.  As the volume of information collected and stored increased; people created books, libraries, and indexing protocols to better sort, organize, reference, and analyze information. Gutenberg’s printing press is widely considered one of history’s most revolutionary invention because it enabled systems of mass publication that empowered the common man with information. The effects of these systems have compounded man’s knowledge over last several millennia and that wealth of knowledge led to the birth of the modern electronic information systems we depend on today.

At the beginning of the 20^th century scientists began using metals and metalloids to build electronic machines capable of storing a small library’s worth of information on handheld devices and networks capable of transmitting that information around the world at nearly the speed of light. Modern scientists were able to turn electricity into a medium for storing and transmitting information the same way humans always have; by designing systems of protocols, codes, scripts, languages and laws. Computer scientists designed binary coder-decoder algorithms like ASCII, JPEG, MP3 and MP4 to digitally format (tokenize) information in a manner that could be microscopically written onto silicon chips. Engineers began sending simple electromagnetic signals using Morse Code and exponentially increased the amount of information that could be electronically transmitted by developing ever more efficient frequency, time, and code division multiplexing techniques. Network routing and security protocols like GSM and IPv6 were designed to enable individuals to communicate and conduct commerce in real time peer-to-peer or in virtual public forums. Scripting/coding languages like JAVA and HTML enabled people to interface with the system more intelligibly. Databases and search engines were built to help users efficiently store, query, and analyze mass amounts of information. Physical infrastructure was built around the world to support the system, professional association like the IEEE were created to standardize applications built on these systems, and regulatory bodies like the FCC were instituted to legally deconflict users of the systems. Our modern Information Systems have exponentially increased the amount of information we can access but they have many limitations (e.g., the double-spending problem explained in the Abstract of the Bitcoin Whitepaper). and Bitcoin was designed to help us get passed some of these limitations.

The design and implementation of Bitcoin once again uses protocols and codes to improve the trust, commoditization, transferability, and accessibility of information in a revolutionary way. Bitcoin applications such as Slictionary, Knovigator, and Veridat are improving daily and demonstrating the usefulness of the system. Infrastructure and innovative new hardware such as ASIC chips have been designed to support the network and new coding languages like sCrypt have been created to facilitate future development. The Bitcoin Association has emerged to standardize the system and legislative bodies around the world are debating how to properly regulate a public blockchain. It is never easy for revolutionary ideas to change the world but when we look at the genuine Bitcoin’s (BSV) progress relative to the emergence of past information systems it appears to be growing rather quickly. This progress is a pure signal in a space full noise. I continue to speculate that Bitcoin will have great value and bring great value to humanity, not because I have been infected by the endemic get-rich mania that surrounds the space but because of George Gilder’s Information Theory of Economics and the pure signal coming from BSV.