The kids need Ethereum (The advantages of growing and learning in a decentralized world)
I’ve talked a lot on why I think education needs Ethereum in the big picture. For its infrastructure, to make it universal, all things on the macro level. But I think Ethereum is also going to be game-changing in the smaller, quieter parts of education. In the small scale, where it will change and inspire students lives for the better.
Imagine being a kid, fresh and curious, asking your teacher how the government works.
“Well, for starters its a democracy”, they say and go on to explain what that word means. “Would you like to see it?”.
They pull up its source code and explain further, highlighting the small parts that are immediately comprehensible. You immediately click around, jumping through function calls and understanding how each part touches your life. You can see how the voting contract is nearly ubiquitous, called in almost all the areas of the government contract, and how there are variables to store the addresses of officials.
(I don’t really want to dream up the details of our future democracy right now, assuming it even is a democracy, so just let your imagination run wild and fill in the blanks)
Anyways here’s the most exciting part.
The teacher asks “Want to try it out?”
And with a few commands you and your peers are playing in a sandboxed world government, arguing over who gets to be the Hegemon.
Imagine this scenario playing out with publishing, a little author in the making seeing how their work goes through a publishing company, or media, or running a company, or the stock market. The previously incomprehensible, gargantuan organizations that run our word can be reduced to code, code that’s open, accessible, usable; pokable and prodable. It’s the open source dream on steroids, empowering a whole new generation to engage with the processes that run their world, to understand them and use them. That’s incredibly powerful.
Imagine the empowerment one would feel when you have the world government at your finger tips, not to control, but to use and extend and engage with. It’ll be the personal computer boom all over again, on a massive new level.
Ethereum has the potential to bring this fairness and empowerment to the next generation of children who will shape this world. I cannot wait to see what they do.