Three technologies that will have a profound effect on our daily lives

Technology is advancing and evolving at an exponential rate and while, to some extent, experts believe there are potential risks regarding such rapid change, it will have a profound and positive effect on the lives of people from all around the globe. Blockchain, a disruptive peer to peer network that continuously records a growing list of data (or “blocks”) secured by advanced cryptography, Hashgraph, a distributed ledger technology that uses a so called “Gossip Protocol” to spread messages around the network and Augmented reality, which is a computer-generated, three-dimensional, replica of a real-life across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory, and olfactory, can all categorized by their disruptive and innovative elements with the possibility to modify our everyday experience on planet earth. Throughout this piece of writing, the above-mentioned technologies will be explored from a macro- and micro economic, financial (day to day transactions) and social perspective and how these will help empower individuals all around the world.

First of all, one ought to consider the benefits associated with Blockchain when discussing the everyday life experience of developing economies’ citizens. This technology yields the power to reduce overall, extreme, poverty, which within the context of this essay shall be defined as minimum requirements (food and water) necessary to live. As Blockchain is made up of numerous nodes, which process transactions posted on a public ledger, all accounts or “wallets” are considered to be transparent and anonymous asynchronously. This means that every single operation ever executed on this network is timestamped and recorded in a “block”, making it impossible to falsify or vanish transactions. This can be best summarized by the following. “Blockchain is an especially promising technology because of its record-keeping capacity, its ability to provide access to millions of users, and the fact that it can be constantly updated as property ownership changes hands.”(1)

Especially in developing countries such as Brazil and Venezuela, where lack of transparency and non-state-owned property has socially and economically harmed their hard-working citizens. Blockchain could serve as a valuable instrument to, on an everyday basis, publicly track transactions made by state officials by validating each data “block” on the network, designate and constantly update ownership of land, houses and other valuable assets and help reduce logistical errors made during the export/import of goods and services, which in Brazil accounts for 12.5% of their national GDP.

Another relevant aspect to consider is that a person, technically speaking, has access to a private and public key, one that should be solely used to send and receive information and the other which can be distributed on the platform, ensures that everyone is protected by mal-intended government intervention while independently having access to their account settings. Therefore, the ultimate goal of implementing such disruptive technology would be the following: “If Blockchain can empower public and private efforts to register property rights on a single computer platform, we can share the blessings of private-property registration with the whole world. Instead of destroying private property to promote a Marxist equality in poverty, perhaps we can bring property rights to all mankind. Where property rights are ensured, so are the prosperity, freedom and ownership of wealth that brings real stability and peace.”(2)

Another technology that could potentially improve everyday life and in the long-run have a profound effect on our financial industry as we know it today is Hashgraph. This distributed ledger technology (DLT) is exceptionally disruptive and innovative as it has the capacity to process over 250,000 transactions per second and runs on a special protocol to “spread messages to the network and also performs some optimization of the gossiped messages to reduce the communication overhead.”(3) This would mean that stock-option traders, investment bankers and the average citizen would all have access to the same distributed ledger and could send and receive transactions instantly, while paying no operation-fee. In comparison to the current banking system, where bank transfers are generally processed within 3-5 working days and a relatively high fee (1.95 – 2.5%)(4), this technology is more efficient in every possible way. Another concept that has to be taken into consideration is cyber-security and how sharing personal information, such as credit card numbers, passport numbers and PayPal accounts, could result in hackers by running specific programs on certain databases to extract a citizen’s financial information.

To combat such criminal acitivity, one ought to opt for technology-based solution, as enhanced or additional legislation would be rather ineffective, remembering that such process is of long duration. Therefore, Hashgraph could make every persons’ everyday life more secure as it “has been proven to be fully asynchronous Byzantine. This means that it doesn't make any assumption about how fast messages are passed over the internet and this makes it resilient against DDoS attacks, botnets, and firewalls. While the security in Blockchain was never a challenge, the Byzantine Consensus of Hashgraph makes it stronger.”(5) Another aspect to consider is that it could be supplemented into existing government infrastructure to help reduce everyday bureaucratic confusion, legal documents being misplaced and implement a more effective anti-money laundering (AML) system to drive out criminal activity. In their whitepaper, it is described as: “The Escrowed Identity system allows a user’s real identity (as asserted by an accredited party acting as a Certificate Authority) to be logically bound to their ledger account so that, when using that account to move funds, appropriate KYC checks can be performed and AML protections enforced. The identity is escrowed because only on defined criteria or schedule need the government be informed.”(6) In Hashgraph, both government and individuals can benefit from the innovative elements this technology offers that eventually will improve an entity’s’ everyday experience of managing financial transaction ranging from personal to professional use.

A concept, currently under strong development and testing, that could revolutionize a person’s everyday life is access to augmented reality related products. In this field, Google, a world-renowned technology company is developing glasses with the aim to detect objects and allow user interaction with objects, previously static, in a dynamic way. This could potentially be beneficial when considering a variety of factors. The first is that it allows for more effective multi-tasking where both hands are free at the same time. Moreover, it allows individuals to process information about their environment much faster without needing to look down and retract from focusing on the task that is being executed in the given moment. According to the “Benefits of augmented reality (AR) glasses over cell phone or tablet according to adult consumers in the United States, as of 2017” study 34%(7) of the participants stated that content is received in an entirely different and more exciting way. This could potentially be implemented into numerous fields, where focus shall be maintained and everyday life shall be facilitated.

This will be evident in the field of medicine, where doctors will have the technology to eventually detect malformations and tumors more rapidly and precisely. In a study AI seems to be better than humans at predicting health events. In April, researchers from the University of Nottingham published a study. It showed that, “trained on extensive data from 378,256 patients, a self-taught AI predicted 7.6 percent more cardiovascular events in patients than the current standard of care”. To place that figure in perspective, it was written that: “In the test sample of about 83,000 records, that amounts to 355 additional patients whose lives could have been saved.”(8) This is significant, as the use cases are endless and while AI comes with entertaining and amusing elements, it could be utilized to potentially save numerous lives, every single day.

In conclusion, the above-mentioned technologies, despite having different applications and types of consumers, have similar characteristics. They are all disruptive, innovative and help facilitate individuals everyday economic, financial and social experience. However, the most fascinating aspects are that Blockchain, eventually, will reduce overall extreme poverty, hashgraph will lower transactions fees and grant average, working class people, access to the most rapid transaction per second network and artificial intelligence will help detect tumors and other life-threatening diseases more efficiently. While all these will have profound effects on our everyday life, it lies in the best interest of humanity to pursue more research and development to help individuals around the world and empower them through decentralized, lightning fast and innovative technology.

I hope you found this piece of writing interesting. I'm wondering how fast we will reach the above-mentioned goals...

Now it's your turn, comment on what type of technology you find most disruptive and innovative

Bibliography (APA style)

(1) Lee Kuo Chuen, D. (Ed.). (2015). Handbook of digital currency: Bitcoin, innovation, financial instruments, and big data. Amsterdam: Academic Press is an imprint of Elsevier.

(2) Gramm, P., & De Soto, H. (2018). How blockchain can end poverty. Wall Street Journal, A.15, 15.

(3) Distributed ledger technology to define the future; hashgraph, a fast emerging dLT. (2018). Digital Learning, N/a.

(4) Dwyer, B. (2018, March 28). Average Credit Card Processing Fees - How Much Does Processing Cost?

(5) Distributed ledger technology to define the future; hashgraph, a fast emerging dLT. (2018). Digital Learning, N/a.

(6) https://www.hederahashgraph.com (Whitepapers cannot be cited in APA)

(7) Patel, V. L., Stefanelli, M., & Berthold, M. R. (2008, September 13). The coming of age of artificial intelligence in medicine.

(8) Norman, A. (2018, February 02). Your future doctor may not be human. This is the rise of AI in medicine