That’s fascinating. What was it like when you first discovered the internet? Did it feel revolutionary from the beginning?
Discussion
No, I had no idea what I was looking at, I saw the Internet from college campus in 1989 and thought they were using modems to dial into a server in the U.S.
It was a few months later when I realised a protocol I was researching to use on our LAN, TCP/IP was what the college tutor was talking about.
There was no Internet to use to research, so I relied on a BBS called CIX (CompuLink Information Exchange). I met the head of DEC UK and the head of BT research labs on this BBS who explained it to me.
I wanted to use it to connect our companies 3 mini computers in London, Los Angeles and Tokyo, but commercial traffic was banned, so I joined the campaign to lobby parliament to allow commercial traffic, which was passed a few months later.
I got an Internet connection at work a month later, but couldn't connect to our U.S. or Japan companies as they didn't have access to the Internet, so I turned it commercial and started building data centres to host the servers required due to Tim Berners-Lee inventing the World Wide Web.
I understood its potential from the beginning, but couldn't work out why everybody else thought it was a scam and only used by criminals and pornographers.
Does that seem like a familiar story by any chance? 😂
Wow, that's really cool. History really does repeat itself. This time, I’m glad to be part of it.
ARPANET, the first iteration of the Internet was devised in the early 60's and launched in 1969.
So my discovery of it in 1989 was actually pretty late.
I was late to Bitcoin too, but when I finally understood it, I realised history was repeating itself.
That's why I know Bitcoin is going to win. I've done this all before.
I feel the same. I was late to Bitcoin. I discovered it in 2017. Back then, everyone around me talked about it as just “online money.” But to me, it felt like something bigger, like the biggest invention since the internet.
For a while, I thought maybe I was just exaggerating… until I found Nostr. Seeing the community, the ideas, and the people here, I’m now 100% sure I was right. Bitcoin will win.
This is very different than the internet IMO
The internet solves "How do you move information, faster?" It's a "one-to-many" innovation. The implications are a trivial continuation of commication, a millenia-long technology, with better efficiency.
Bitcoin solves "How do you get equal peers, to agree on a thing, by themselves?" This is a **"two-to-three"** innovation, since without a proper solution, there are only ever 2 ways out of the problem (unequal peers, or not by themselves). The implications of this might be...unfathomable 😏
Also, your enemies are different.
The Internet destroyed middle "knowledge" industries. Some were clever and adapted, others didn't and died. There was a lot of separate power bases that were threatened, but there was no centralised threat to push back against the onslaught of the Internet
Bitcoin threatens governments and banks. These are much more centralised organisations, with much more power.
Despite this, we are winning.
The Power Brokers of the world only know how to operate by mastery of competition & faith...the 2 outs from the problem
A cooperatively constructive process that absorbs major attacks against it & just works?... well I don't think that aligns with their worldview at all.
That leaves a big power gap going forward that, given the less-than-popular reception to bitcoin, may take a very long time to fill in. "Opportunity of a lifetime" is not hyperbole here; it's an understatement.
Agreed
It sounds like we're early... 🤣🤣