An introduction to Blockchain technology and Design....(among other things).

Photo above: background image of retro american publicity, source: 
https://envisioningtheamericandream.com/2013/12/30/new-years-eve-and-television/

Mr. Vassilis Papakonstantinou, mechanical engineer and chairman of MIT Enterprise Forum Greece, stated in his recent lecture at Eugenides Foundation UTech Lab* that Blockchain technology consists of the 3rd most important innovation the last decades, right after Personal Computers (PCs) and the Internet. Blockchain is the basic technology that will define a new circle of activities, facilities, communities, systems, habits, morals and relationships in the contemporary world, now and tomorrow.
The galloping digitalization of the material world and of Content, together with all diverse Internet transactions and new online liaisons, plus the banking/economic crisis- required a costless technology, whereas trust would be NO condition of successful completion and at the same time  transparency, authentification and audit would be necessarily incorporated. A public, immutable and distributed ledger of transactions of ALL kinds, an overall "packaging" of many technologies, in order to manage crisis: THAT is Blockchain.

The huge databases created and transparently distributed by and to- many PCs, form independent networks in the fields of economy, public administration, education, health and legal infrastructures- provided that every new/last transaction in Blockchain technology does carry the "signatures" ("blocks"), therefore the entire information of all previous transactions in the chain. The applications of Blockchain technology are multiplying, including production, normalization, design and copyright. Some examples: 
1. Peer 2 peer insurance lending 
2. Health & medical records 
3. Supply chain communications 
4. Land rights management (land registries)
5. Crossborder money transfers 
6. Banking fraud detection 
7. Self-executing contracts ("Smart Contracts") 
8. Digital identity security 
9. Distributed cloud storage (documentation, archiving) 
10. Government corruption prevention 
11. Music royalty collections 
12. Serial diamond verification/identification.

Blockchain also implements Artificial Intelligence (AI) a determining fact for many future platforms, including digital currencies or cryptocurrencies, nowadays a key blockchain-based industry, also encountering issues of technical manipulation and energy efficiency,(ex. Bitcoin farms are currently expensive Quantum computers with latest-technology graphic cards that are rapidly heating up during mining- a result that will possibly limit their use in countries primarily affected by global warming and high temperatures in the near future).

If we have to come undone at some point (sooner or later), so to "unstitch" stitch-by-stitch this civilization - will those technologies/ platforms such as Blockchain or UbuWeb be our post-millenial "Black Boxes" to carry on safely a legacy, no longer available? A question, waiting to be answered the following years to come.

(*Huge thanks to UTech Lab and Mr. Papakonstantinou for the dedicated workshop to Blockchain technology!)

Best,
A4D-D4A