Blockchain – The Evolution of the Internet, IoT and Circular Economy, Part 1

When talking about the blockchain revolution, it is essential to contextualise the permanent shifts and challenges that the Internet (and consequently the world) will be facing in a near future. The combination of the blockchain technology and the Internet of Everything allows to create new models of economics, such as the circular economy, and is impacting the world of finance. In this series of articles, I will be reflecting on how these technologies provoke social changes, operating a holistic shift.

Introduction

Undoubtedly, one of the most fascinating things that has happened over the past decades is the intensive digitalisation of society. Twenty-five years of Internet means 25 years of digitalisation, from books and long tail keywords to the IoT and digitalisation of the DNA.

It all started in 1989 whenTim Burns Lee invented the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Tim wrote his proposal at the CERN research institute for a “global hypertext” system, and later went on to develop the technological basis for the Internet, still known as HTTP, HTML and URL.

This consisted of a series of links between university computers, which soon would become the World Wide Web. Its initial minimalist design featured black text with blue links on a white background. Later on, Marc Anderseen created the first browser Netscape, which connected these links together and made searching the web possible for people. It was followed by Yahoo, Wikipedia, Google, Amazon, Baidu and Yandex ,which expanded knowledge, products, and service digitalisation, while creating or replacing communication and business models.

Soon after, MySpace, LinkedIn and then Facebook would follow, helping to create the first real solid global personal identity ledger with the emergence of algorithm-driven bits and bots of the social graph. Visually, the Internet changed drastically from its original display of plain text to the magazine style of the social web, created with photo-and-video-based pages. Mobile devices also gradually took on a simpler look.

The Internet was already operating the full digitalisation of society.

If the initial version of the Internet provided semantic data, resulting from the advanced processing of search engines, its bots evolved afterwards into powerful algorithms that created social graphs. Nowadays, the Internet offers two different and complementary ways to search: on the one hand, the semantic search using Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Yandex, Baidu, and Apple (with IOS, you still search for apps), and on the other hand, the social search on the “social web” via platforms like LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The digitalisation process continued and is now taking bigger proportions with the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything.

The Advent of the Internet of Everything (IoT)

We have moved from the digitalisation of knowledge, identity and services, through search and social graph algorithms, to the digitalisation of objects and virtually everything with the IoT.

Currently, we hear a lot about the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything, but what is the IoT? The IoT began with the digitalisation of books. It has now spread to all the things around us with sensors that create and process data.

The emergence of the IoT has awakened the need for a global technology network that could be a second evolution stage of the present Internet infrastructure. This fast-growing IoT ecosystem footprint increasingly requires the following:

Solid configuration of a Big Analog data pipeline Sound and perpetual system of connectivity between sensors, objects, and data gathering. Real time processing of the coordination of objects, data, and the gathering of information. Solid spectrum of insight and relevant software to clean data and create specific insightful actions. Balance between immediacy and depth. Sophisticated high-end computers and powerful platforms to provide deep insights from data analytics. The “V’s”: Volume, Velocity, Variety, Value, and Visibility. Strategies to manage the risks of cyber security Strategies to cope with issues of privacy, P2P and personal identity, versus society and corporate ownership and identity management. Responses to issues around centralised and decentralised ownership of data, global versus regional, government versus non-government and corporations.

As objects and things start to be all digitalised, the challenge is now twofold: how can we scale the process and extract relevant data from it?

In addition to having to cope with the emergence of big data, we are now faced with the digitalisation of money. Whether we like it or not, with the advent of Bitcoin, the process of money digitalisation has become irreversible, opening a whole new Pandora box of consequences.

Other issues are being addressed, such as the digitalisation of our human DNA, creating other types of disruption, particularly in the health sector.

Also, we are creating new holistic digital identities for everyone and everything around us.

Blockchain The Evolution of the Internet, IoT and Circular Economy Part 2

Reading List about Blockchain:

Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money

Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

The Business Blockchain: Promise, Practice, and Application of the Next Internet Technology

Related articles by Dinis Guarda:

Circular Economy And A Blockchain Driven Sharing Economy?

Blockchain Shift Inception of a Database of Everything

Disruption, Blockchain, Fintech And The Trust Protocol Part 2

Disruption, Blockchain, Fintech And The Trust Protocol Part 1

Blockchain: A Glossary With Key Terms

12 Bitcoin and Blockchain Thoughts and Quotes You Need to Read

Blockchain: 5 Key Concepts

Top Blockchain Possible Applications

Blockchain the Inception of a new Database of Everything?

By other authors:

What is Blockchain Technology? Is it another “Tidal Wave” of Transformation?