The late 80s and early 90s were known for a lot of things, but universal adoption of the internet was not one of them. Internet technology was still in its infancy and was expensive and difficult to use. Many mainstream experts criticised it as a fad or accused it of having far less potential than what was being parroted by its early adopters.
Here is a Newsweek article from the 1990s about the various fallacies of the internet and why it was doomed to fail. The article serves as a great example of how predictions can sometimes turn out to be inaccurate in the realm of emerging technologies. In all fairness though, most of the things mentioned in the article about the internet in 1995 were indeed true.
Internet searches were time-consuming, computers were expensive, and not a lot of people saw online bulletins. However, the fatal flaw in the analysis was that the author was looking at the current state of a new and rapidly evolving technology rather than its future potential. What the author missed was that someone somewhere was aware of all the problems and was working hard to solve them. Much of the scepticism around blockchain is likewise the result of people failing to understand the incredible potential of the technology.
Technology Adoption Life Cycle
There is a pretty uniform trend of technology adoption in the modern world. The speed with which technologies are embraced might change, but the general trend remains more or less the same:
First in are the innovators. These are the early pioneers who develop a new technology to better solve an existing problem or even create a new need or want (who knew they wanted an iPod before there was an iPod?).
Next up are the early adopters. These are the forward thinkers that like to try out new ideas. They don’t mind being the guinea pigs or beta testers, and the thrill of being part of a new technology revolution is worth the initial hassle to them.
This is followed by the majority. This is when the mainstream population gets in on the action. The technology is widely adopted, and standards are agreed upon. This is the phase where innovation might start to slow down, and the new technology slowly becomes an infrastructure utility (like the internet or mobile telephony).
Lastly, we have the laggards. These are people who don’t want to adopt a technology due to their personal biases or concerns.
Looking at most of the technological innovations of the last half-century, this cycle seems to hold true. For example, email and the World Wide Web started as research experiments. It took many years for the first versions to be made public and the initial adoption was slow. Most people simply didn’t understand the technology and did not want to invest in the underlying infrastructure. The technology spread through a small group of early adopters “ nerds who were willing to spend thousands of dollars and sink dozens of hours to perform seemingly mundane activities.
These early adopters saw the potential of the technology rather than its current state. It takes a bit of creativity to visualise all the applications of a brand-new technology. A single individual would never have been able to imagine all of the use cases that the internet would be capable of. It took the combined creativity of millions of entrepreneurs to reach the stage where we are today.
Healthy Scepticism and The Next Revolution
The world of blockchain is currently in the same state as the early internet.
Early adopters are excited about it, but the technology has still not reached its full mainstream potential. There are indeed some bugs and optimisations yet to be taken care of “ but the potential is already clear.
Some scepticism and concern about a new technology are certainly warranted. Just like the heady days of the dot-com bubble, there are certain projects which will fail. And this failure is part and parcel of every new technological revolution. In fact, it would be absurd to assume that every new start-up will succeed. The important thing is that the overall industry succeeds.
Failures will contribute as much to the industry as successes. They provide insights into what works and what doesn’t, and eventually, the industry is made better for it.
What matters here the most is that the foundation of the industry is being built and while that will take time, it’s hard to deny how much potential blockchain truly has and will have in the future.
