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Timandra

My local pub used to take BitCoin. By the time I'd got around to trying to spend any there, they'd stopped. "That's the end of that fad," I thought. But it turns out that the virtual currency beloved of my more tech-loving, computer-savvy friends is only the beginning.

How could we have the benefits of money without a central bank? That was the question that BitCoin was designed to answer, and Blockchain is the technology that makes it possible. But the Blockchain turns out to be much bigger than a way for nerds to buy beer.

A system that's secure without a higher authority, that's distributed across many strangers' computers, and yet tamper-proof, promises a mechanism for trust mediated directly between individuals. If that's possible, won't all forms of authority, from banks to governments, wither away?

Like all challenging ideas, the Blockchain brings contradictions. Supporters claim it offers both anonymity and transparency, an indelible record that you can somehow keep separate from your identity. A technology designed to make authority obsolete could, instead, offer the perfect tool for ubiquitous surveillance, a nightmarish future in which all your actions are forever recorded in a digital Book Of Deeds.

I'm always sceptical of claims that technology alone can transform society. There's more to governments than collecting taxes and enforcing contracts, or we wouldn't need elections. So I don't expect Blockchain to replace politics, the cut and thrust of ideas and clashing values that formed institutions like the state in the first place.

But, having heard from some people who are working with Blockchain already, I'd bet good BitCoin that it's going to make the first few decades of the internet look like the Stone Age.