ichthyoid

Watching interviews with people who have had an impact on the world is (in my opinion) one of the greatest things the Internet has brought to the world. So when I happened upon this video from 2007 between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, I was immediately transfixed from beginning to end. I've actually watched this video multiple times across the years, and each time I've seen it, I've learned something new.

This time, as I was watching it, I realized that a lot of what they were talking about—in terms of the evolution of technology and computing in the 20th century—has a lot of parallels in the rise of the Internet in the 2000-2010 decade and the current evolution of decentralized finance and blockchain.

And I believe that, if we can take the lessons they learned to heart, a lot of what's going on the blockchain space can be understood very easily, and used by blockchain companies to forge ahead a clear path into the future.

The World They Created

It's difficult to overstate the impact that these two men (and their respective companies) have had on the world today. Both were instrumental in taking the idea of a computer and making it a personal. As Bill Gates put it, “a computer on every desk, and in every home.” That motto is very nearly a reality, though it has evolved into “a computer in every pocket” in the form of our smartphones. That these two companies (and others besides, of course) were able to do this in less than half a century goes to show just how visionary and perceptive they were.

Even today, listening to the interview, the things they predicted were going to happen in the tech space are happening now, more than a decade after that interview.

But how did they do this? How were they able to maneuver around economic rises and falls across decades, keeping them at the top of the tech sector, and still be the avant-garde of it?

In the interview, around the 17:33 minute mark, they both begin to explain this process. It's pretty well known that, while Apple and Microsoft certainly had a rivalry as the computer industry took shape, they also collaborated frequently as well. Bill Gates here mentions the various paradigm shifts that had taken place in tech, and specifically the bet that graphics user interfaces (GUI) would take over computing.

The idea may seem obvious now, but the navigation of a computer through point-and-click graphics rather than a keyboard paved the way for a vast majority of users to come into the benefits of computer technology. From filmmakers to music producers to photographers to writers (yup, bloggers!), it's safe to say that none of us would be using a computer if we didn't have the rich graphics interface that the Macintosh pioneered.

And the Macintosh wasn't the first machine to use such a simple but brilliant interface. Famously, Jobs and his company had 'stolen' the idea from Xerox during a special debut demo for it. But what both Microsoft and Apple bet on was the use of the GUI paradigm on mass market, general purpose computers.

But it wasn't just the use of a GUI that proved the paradigm. When touchscreen interfaces were first coming to market in the form of Palm Pilots and Newtons, while many businesses and other organizations bought into them, those devices never made it into the hands of consumer masses. It wasn't until the iPhone came out, with its capacitative multi-touch interface that was as natural as using your hands, that the idea of touchscreen became ubiquitous.

It must be mentioned, of course, that both Apple and Microsoft had and still have strong marketing arms. In fact, Steve Jobs is probably the most well-known for his charismatic personality and 'reality distortion field', and Apple's 1984-esque commercial will probably go down in history as one of the greatest ads ever created. The ability to market their products well has had a lasting impact on both companies.

The Evolution of the Internet

A similar evolution from keyboard-based programming to simple graphics-based utility happened for the Internet. The beginnings of the Internet were filled with text-based layouts, horrible primary colors, and gray, boxy buttons. Building a website was a complete chore, and the name of the game was registering your website under a “dot-com” domain name. This, of course, was overtaken eventually by 'Web 2.0', when the likes of social communication and networking became the dominant form of Internet and web interaction. Even today, most websites are created through other websites, such as Wix and Squarespace, where site designers can more easily accommodate their clients' desires because everything is “what you see is what you get”.

But, just as before, simply slapping a GUI onto a website doesn't make its mass adoption inevitable. An example of this could be seen with Myspace and Facebook. While there were many problems with Myspace, one of its problems was its infinite customizability. Here, we can use the idea of choice overload, where having too many options stifles the ability to actually make a choice. A person's Myspace page could be as different as a real website from another's. However, this proved to be detrimental in the end, as the majority of people do not want to code in order to create something that represent themselves to another person.

And Facebook offered this to its users. Rather than requiring them to create something from nothing, it had a standard template from which everyone could concentrate on what they wanted to use the platform for: sharing pictures and posts with their friend and family. This is not to say Myspace died only because of what's been mentioned (I'd say it died also because of deep mismanagement and lack of vision for the platform). But it certainly didn't help that it was easier and faster to get a Facebook page started than a MySpace page.

Similarities could be seen in other web platforms. For example, Youtube became the dominant platform for sharing videos. There are (and were) many other similar platforms. Some of them even had better technology. But none of them offered the same simplicity as Youtube without charge. And when a rising conglomerate like Google stepped in to buy it, it became the de-facto king of video sharing on the Internet.

And so we can see that those who successfully navigated Web 2.0 were the ones who were able to combine simplicity of interface and immediacy of utility to leverage their technology for a bigger consumer base. The Internet, being a communications platform, was the primary use-case for all Web 2.0 companies. But the concept of “communications platform” is so broad, it could encompass almost anything in the human experience. Rather, companies behind Youtube and Facebook were able to create a space where users could do what they wanted to do quickly while interacting with those they wanted to on the Internet.

Furthermore, they did it by introducing platforms and utilities which were far and above their competition. Just as GUI was a revolution in interface design and experience that brought computing to the masses, Web 2.0 platforms were a revolution in simplifying mass communication so that, not only can anyone do it, but most people would rather use those utilities to do so than the old, traditional ways.

What Can Blockchain Learn?

Heading into 2020, the CEO of Celsius Network, a company which allows its clients to borrow and earn interest on cryptocurrencies store on their service, released this statement on the future of decentralized finance (DeFi). In it, he mentions something very similar to the ideas mentioned above:

DeFi needs interfaces that are familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable

This certainly covers the beginning shift in evolution of both personal computing and the Internet as discussed above. But it still falls short of the goal of revolutionizing technology through decentralization.

For example, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” before the Macintosh era meant streamlining code or creating faster shortcuts for various functions (like printing). But it didn't necessarily mean creating an interface that would be useful for the masses. To do that, they needed a completely new paradigm (GUI) to shift the state of tech.

Similarly, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” in early attempts to make touch-interfaces meant having a better screens and a more responsive stylus. But it wasn't until a paradigm shift of capacitative multi-touch screens for our fingers so anyone could use the device that tablets and smartphones became ubiquitous.

And of course, creating an interface that was “familiar, intuitive, and enjoyable” in the early Internet was basically “create better code” or “create a better coding framework”. But it wasn't until companies massively simplified web interfaces to focus on easy communication and sharing that the Internet really took off, as it became the best platform to do so.

If the above examples are correct, then I believe no mass market adoption will happen for blockchain until something comes that makes it both easy to use AND far better than the current options out there. And it doesn't matter if the application of blockchain goes into DeFi or gaming or any other use-case. It doesn't even really matter which blockchain has the better technology (which is probably why Bitcoin has held the top market cap place despite it being the absolute worst in terms of tech).

Just realized how much I've written already. I'll continue my thoughts in a follow-up post. Thanks for reading!

Picture credit to Unsplash (edited).