The Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said “the only constant is change”. Change in different shapes and forms have always been present in all human civilisations. And yet at every turn there are fierce resistance to change itself. There are many reasons why people tend to resist change. In many cases, people have a misunderstanding about the need for change particularly when the reason for the change is not clear to them. Perhaps it could also be the fear of the unknown, about the uncertainty of what the change may bring. It could also be because people feel inadequate to deal with the demands of the change on the horizon. Some also resist change primarily because they benefit from the status quo and fear they could be worse off with the change.
Every generation get used to things that are the “norm” in their generation and would probably be in shock that there was resistance to what they consider the “norm”. Some of the famous examples about resistance to some changes in the past would sound laughable now. For example the president of the Michigan Saving Bank advised the Lawyer of Henry Ford not to invest in Ford Motor Company in 1903. He advised “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty – a fad” Similarly, Darryl Zanuck who was the Executive of the 20th Century Fox in 1946 remarked “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night” The Chief Engineer of the British Post Office, Sir William Preece in 1876 also said “The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys” Furthermore, Steve Ballmer who was the CEO of Microsoft in 2007 said “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share”
In the 21st Century there has been acceleration in the rate of technological change. There have been waves of technological changes that have had profound impact on how we live, interact, do business and entertain ourselves. Once again, we are living through another wave of technological change fuelled by cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledger Technologies. Since 2009 when the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin emerged, it has sparked a full blown industry that is already completely redefining the way many things are done.
Blockchain Technology Use Cases:
The scope of the potential application of blockchain technology is enormous and far reaching than many people are aware of. Apart from cryptocurrencies being “money for the internet” there is far more going on than what many people tend to focus on. What gets highlighted most often are cryptocurrencies as speculative assets and the unfortunate case of scammers taking advantage of it to dupe many because it is not easy to get your head around how they function. Currently, there are numerous projects in all the use cases of blockchain technology illustrated above and then some. They have opened up opportunities for many to engage and potentially benefit directly in ways that have not been available in many of the technological waves of change in the past.
There is a lot of good that may come to individuals who spend time to really understand what cryptocurrencies are all about and how they can position themselves to benefit from them. A lot of resources are available online for people to search and educate themselves. People can also shorten their learning curve with understanding cryptocurrencies by joining seminars where they can be equipped with the appropriate information to help them to truly understand cryptocurrencies. We are in a flux of technological change, those who are proactive and educate themselves properly could look back a decade from now and be happy they did.