Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful response.
With regard to salvation: I think on these pages at least GABI has been considered a potential saviour of price.
I recall in the nineties when html was the new thing and 'everyone will have their own website'. But simply wrapping text in tags proved to be beyond 'everyone' and thus was born CMS and then Facebook and the rest -- the democratic idealism of the internet became a controlled and structured monolith. I see the same thing happening with BTC.
It seems hypocritical to reintroduce images to this discussion but this is one of my favourite BTC cartoons.
How far we have come in 18 short months.
EDIT: Em, if you haven't already, you should read this post by AnonyMint --
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8649126 -- I think this provides some more substantial reasoning as to why getting fund managers involved in the BTC eco-system will eventually lead to disaster.
Thanks for the link will check it out.
Regarding your comparison to the internet, I do remember the promise that the net was going to change the world, and yes I remember people thinking it would happen straight away, which for some users it did, it did for me for example, within hours of using it I knew it would play a major part in my world, but the world as a whole thought it would do much more, and much quicker... I believe some guys got quite upset as a scan back at the charts shows..
However, 25+ years later and the internet IS/HAS changed the world, and is really starting to notch that change up a gear... and now there are more and more script kiddies and no doubt there will be more and more in the next decades. Technology and the rate at which it reaches the masses, is becoming faster and faster, what took the internet 25+ years, could take the wave of tools built on top of the internet (Cryptocurrency for example) 10 years to achieve... (much like mobile phones when they first came out took x amount of time to reach ubiquity, however smart phones and ipads only took x/4 amount of time, even shorter maybe) Fact is cryptocurrency could not really have existed until the internet had matured more... and yes while there are powers that seek to control the net, there are other very smart people that are working ways to keep it free. The internet of money, or money for the internet, digital money, is something that the internet has been SCREAMING out for, in fact it is without doubt the next logical step, it has been on the minds of many for the past 25 years.... and with the advent of the internet of things I believe even more so... couple that with decentralised autonomous corporations/service providing drones and robots, and other decentralised technologies (power, water etc) the advent of a decentralised digital currency makes more than sense... it is a reality... and the rapid rate of development that is going to occur in the developing world over the coming decades, coupled with the advancements in technology are also going to play into this. Will there still be players seeking to monetise and control and profit from the structure... you bet... big data and automation are going to be even bigger business than today... AI and enhanced human intelligence and the never ending exponential evolution of technology and therefore humans evolution, is awe inspiring, and the implications of all of these changes, are immense, for society and individuals.... but the crux of this is that changes are going to become more pronounced, and come to us more rapidly... yes the promise of the internet has taken over quarter of a century to get to where it is today... but I truly believe that the changes over the next 25-50 years are going to equal hundreds of years , if not more of "progress".. I say "progress" because actually in a way we already are starting to fall victims to the rapid onslaught of technological advancements, technology has already started to outpace legislation, outpace the speed at which we can measure and access the impact of the technology on society and individuals, the environment etc... and so there is a bit of a double edge sword there. People are going to look back in 50 years (probably sooner) and wonder what we were doing walking around with folded bits of pulped dead tree, in folded bits of cowhide and think "how quaint/barbaric"
Changes probably will take/is taking longer than
some people think...and progress sometimes can be subtle, but they are happening, and the ideals that were enshrined in both the early internet, and now in early Bitcoiners minds, have not died... if you think about it the "original ideals of the internet" you speak of
are now being pushed forward
again inpart by the Cryptocurrency/BTC movement and all that comes with it (in terms of democratisation, privacy,decentralisation etc)
First people have got to figure the how.. then they can move onto the why, where and for what, the tech can be used to hack/change/make/disrupt.
Are we there yet?
http://youtu.be/woBWZpMiR70Looking forward to your vending machine and or operating system chatting to you?
Also ... this is a nice video...
THE POWER OF NETWORKS -
http://youtu.be/nJmGrNdJ5Gw
