1 WHAT IS THE BLOCKCHAIN?
“If you cannot understand it without an explanation, you cannot understand it with an explanation.”
–HARUKI MURAKAMI
PAY CLOSE ATTENTION. This chapter is probably the most important in the book, because it attempts to offer a foundational explanation of the blockchain. It is the first stage of this book’s promise to give you a holistic view of the blockchain’s potential.
Understanding blockchains is tricky. You need to understand their message before you can appreciate their potential. In addition to their technological capabilities, blockchains carry with them philosophical, cultural, and ideological underpinnings that must also be understood.
Unless you’re a software developer, blockchains are not a product that you just turn on, and use. Blockchains will enable other products that you will use, while you may not know there is a blockchain behind them, just as you do not know the complexities behind what you are currently accessing on the Web.
Once you start to imagine the blockchains’ possibilities on your own, without continuously thinking about trying to understand them at the same time, you will be in a different stage of your maturity for exploiting them.
It is my belief that the knowledge transfer behind understanding the blockchain is easier than the knowledge about knowing where they will fit. It’s like learning how to drive a car. I could teach you how to drive one, but cannot predict where you will take it. Only you know your particular ...
Get The Business Blockchain now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
