Welcome problems of hardforks

I have come out for a walk to the local shopping center about a kilometer away, in order to get a little exercise and change my surroundings a bit. It was a bit strange as while everything is familiar, it also feels a little alien, like I am not quite aligned with the world around me. It makes for an interesting experience.

While I was walking here I was listening to a podcast for a few minutes and noticed that it was difficult for me to visualize what was going on adequately to be able to parse the information well. Visualization is vital for me (and most people) when it comes to comprehension, which is what makes it such a valuable skill to be able to perform well. Previously, I was decent at it and it enabled me to perform quickly on-the-fly across multiple domains.

There is the famous rendering of an Einstein quote when asked about how to make a child intelligent, where he says, "read them fairytales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairytales".

It is because of the encouragement to use the imagination, to visualize the impossible, strange and weird, that this is such good advice. It isn't the story that is important, it is the activity it elicits. People sit their kids in front of Disney movies and think they are doing their children a service.

Because of the recent stroke, I am revisiting bits and pieces I know have helped in my mental development in the past and, the things that haven't. For me, it isn't "knowing stuff" that is important, it is the ability to process the environment and produce a solution, a way forward from that point that is important and it is in this area that I am employed.

The ability to "think on the feet" is valuable and over the last decade or so, I have observed a degradation in the general ability. I have put this down to technological reliance, where people use the crutch of services and the internet to be their Solution provider. Rather than looking at the problem, doing an inventory of available resources and then seeing what they can do to close a gap to a solution, we Google the answer and then go and buy the necessary materials to do the job.

While this gets the job done, it takes out the very human skill of imagination and lowers our ability to problem-solve, as when the answer is at our fingertips, there is no problem. This in turn takes away our creative abilities and in so doing, reduces our ability to create to own, making the only way to have ownership through purchasing, a consumptive habit, not a generative one.

We want everything to be complete, ready, polished, assembled, on-demand, always available and cheap. When we don't get what we want, we feel hard-done-by and targeted, discriminated against and victimized. Society is a clear reflection of this move, where people act as if they are entitled to outcomes, even though they add very little into the value of society.

In a few hours from now, Equilibrium, Hardfork 25 will drop onto the Hive blockchain and in all likelihood, there will be some issues, some breakages, some things won't work, there will be unexpected outcomes and if the past is anything to go by, there will be outrage.

But, Hardforks are exciting for me. I am not a coder, I don't run an app, I have very little I can do technically - but each one brings me into my element again, at least the element I used to thrive within - disruption. Every change to the blockchain code is going to have an effect on every single part of the community, however slight that may be. Because of this, there are new problems to face, new tools to use, new resources available, some items taken away.

It is a thinkers paradise, where a community made up of many communities is forced into dealing with environmental changes that affect the things that are important to them across the same areas that the entire world is affected. There are social aspects, business components, ownership questions, property rights, privacy issues, security concerns, dealing with technological changes and an increasingly complex economy that ties all these things together with the analogue world too. It is brilliant!

As I have said many times before, Hive is the best game on the internet, because it incorporates so much of what is important to us and encourages the development of valuable skills that are valuable across domains. This isn't about hand-eye coordination, it is about hand-mind alignment, as there is the potential to use brain and activity in combination to solve the problems we face, some of them personal, some of them in the community, some of them potentially global.

We each get the opportunity on Hive to take an active ownership role in our society and use the skills we have to participate and add value. Just like the real world, there are going to be people who are more or less suited, willing and successful at this - but no one is excluded, unless they exclude themselves through their own behavior. For many people, it is their low-imagination that holds them back on Hive, as they can't find a way to get the system to work for them, whereas there are some who are able to get it to work, no matter what changes on the platform. Strange isn't it?

Hive is a fairytale with many authors, many plots, many storylines, undercurrents and a continual flow of dynamic characters. It is as living and breathing as a single digital platform can get and it is advancing, maturing, developing and evolving daily.

One of the traits of humanity we have grown to possess is our ability to guide or own evolution, for better and worse. If you want to have a say in what we are later, it means taking part in the now.

The future is all opt-in.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]