One of the advantages of being on Earth for a lot of time - like more than 45 years, in my case - is that, in time, you get to see some very interesting patterns.
Specifically, I’m talking about internet - and more specifically about blogging.
The "Good Ol' Days Of Blogging"
I think my first blog post was made somewhere around 2008, and boy, a lot of stuff happened since then.
I mean, 10 years ago, blogging was incredibly simple: write some stuff on your blog, wait for Google to index your site, and then cash in big time by Google AdSense. Dead simple. That’s really all you had to do. Yes, those were the days…
But then stuff got complicated. For instance, 5 years ago, blogging meant something like this: write some stuff on your blog, then write something about it on Facebook, send a newsletter to your list, probably with a freebie that will lead to an upsell, then briefly talk about it on Twitter and then do some stuff on reddit too. And then cash in by selling some products on top of it, like ebooks or courses.
And now, with these strange thing called “blockchain”, and services like Steemit built on top of it, blogging is even more complicated. Now, on Steemit, you have to: write a post, wait 3 seconds for a witness to include the transaction in a block, then hope for some bots to see you and upvote you (if not, do some quick bot bidding), secretly pray for a whale to notice you, and then, 7 days after, get your money in the form of 2 crypto currencies, exchange them for other crypto currencies and then for fiat. All this while keeping your social skills sharp, interacting, commenting, mingling and campaigning (if you're a witness, that is).
I don’t know if you realize how complicated this is.
I call this “the over-engineering” of blogging.
Simplifying Our Lives By Over-Complicating Them
Truth is, this over-engineering doesn’t happen only in blogging. This is a rather marginal example, compared with the disruption cryptocurrencies are creating in the financial sector.
Also, the over-engineering of bogging is not good or bad, per se.
But it’s iconic for a trend we’re witnessing in all areas of our life: the technological gap.
We’re living in the middle of a technical revolution, one that, if successful, will create unprecedented wealth and freedom on Earth. If unsuccessful, it will probably create unprecedented inequality and limitation (that’s something we should be prepared for too, I think).
I wrote about it before and I will keep writing about it: the next major disruption in human history - which, in my opinion, already started - won’t be ideological, but technological.
The displacement of people from their current lifestyles (and, sometimes, from their current physical location) and the formation of new social aggregation models won’t follow capitalism, communism, nationalism or totalitarianism.
Society won’t be following a set of theoretical, ideologically correct principles. Nope. Although many of the old ideologies will be revived, repurposed and fed again to people unaware about what’s going on, and they may lead to the aggregation of small, temporary and fragile structures.
But the real gap will be technological, in which anarchy, in the sense of “personal freedom and accountability” (not chaos) will be the primary social aggregation force, subsumed to the technological advance.
The technical support for your news is already changing the world. It’s one thing to get your news from Fox News or CNN (both biased, just in different ways), for instance, and another one to get it from Twitter.
It’s one thing to get it on your TV and another to get it on your phone.
The more tech savvy you are, the better your sources of news. And, obviously, the better the sources of news, the more informed decision you’ll be making.
This is not theoretical, or fictional. This is happening right now. Entire generations are stuck behind, prisoners of the TV stations (as in technically obsolete ways to dispatch information) and their decision-making is heavily impaired.
And the technical gap will continue growing, and we will - very soon - notice others, more advanced ways to get information (intelligent interfaces, IoT, etc).
This gap will be the one deciding who’s gonna thrive and who’s gonna lose. If you’re on the frontend, you’ll adjust faster. If you’re on the other side of it, behind, you’ll helplessly notice your own, fast decay.
And for the first time in modern history, this will happen regardless of your ideology: you’ll burn just as fast if you’re a capitalist as if you're a communist. That won’t matter at all. What will matter will be your adaptation to the technological progress around you.
Why Did I Write All This?
Well, because performing on Steemit is hard. You have to do so much more than you had to do in the “good ol’ days of blogging”.
But it will also pay much more. In 3-5 years the blockchain based social media will be prevalent (wether we’re talking about centralized ledgers, like Facebook or Twitter - because yes, they’ll switch to the blockchain in one form of another, if they want to survive) or decentralized blockchains, like Steemit.
This is the frontend of the technological advance. This is the outer edge of the gap. Yes, for someone who started to blog 10 years ago this looks awfully over-engineered, and it probably is.
But that’s the world we live in. That’s where the needle is right now. And trying to move it back won’t work.
This needle can only be moved forward.
So, one which side of the gap are you right now?
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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