We're early.
I know everybody says this when they think they're the first to discover something everyone else is going to value someday, but I truly do think it applies here. Never before in history has information been so quickly and readily available all around the world. Because of this, it's possible that we're witnessing the dawn of an age during which the participants may actually see their potential place in history. We're so very aware of our perceived context.
However, this doesn't mean that everyone is going to recognize the value of our favorite technology and all-of-a-sudden mass-adopt it. I'd argue that if they did, we'd break a lot of the systems and cause a whole lot of hubbub. We need to slowly and increasingly stress-test everything in order to ensure that the next group of participants has a reasonably good experience and doesn't run for the hills immediately. It's also worth mentioning that many of the services provided and problems solved won't really resonate with some people, no matter how great we think they are. My favorite example is that no matter how many mediums or iterations of Magic: the Gathering there are, my mother won't play it.
Are we building these systems for ourselves? Who are the intended users and what is stopping their recognition of the value we think we're providing? After all of our obsessive deep-dives, are we using language understood only by our direct peers, and are we speaking only of solving problems that people aren't fully aware they have? Big questions. The systems we tout are not yet perfected, and while some of them actually do help solve the problems they purport, they come with new problems that feel much heavier than the original problem solved.
In other words, we're early.
Blockchain tech is new, and as early adopters, we desperately want to share the gold we think we've found with the rest of the world. This is a laborious endeavor, and humans typically take quite some time to change coarse, as we are a very big ship with very strong opinions. It's good that some or most of us are hesitant to dedicate the time to learning or using new technologies, because if only a few of us wander off into terminally dangerous territory, the population at large remains safe.
While we test and fiddle and congregate around the future possibilities we see, we have to remember that not everyone is going to be as enthusiastic as we are, and that's alright. Some might've been interested if the jargon and concepts were a bit more familiar, and those are the people to whom our energy may best be directed. We're out here meme-ing blockchain and surrounding protocols into existence, and I'm quite certain we'll be able to bring more people along for the ride, even if just a few at a time.
Thanks to Bankless DAO for the ongoing support.
