1-Sentence-Summary: Life After Google explains why Silicon Valley is suffering a nervous breakdown as big data and machine intelligence comes to an end and the post-Google era dawns.
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The process I am using to write this summary in Google Docs is somewhat ironic. That’s because this particular summary focuses largely on the age of Google coming to an end as the architecture of the cryptocosm blockchain model and its derivatives usher in a new era.
Google’s amazing ability to “search and sort” attracts the entire world to its search engine and countless other tools, such as videos, maps, email, and calendars. And all of these goodies appear to be free to the world. But are they really?
What’s actually going on is rather than paying directly for all of these goodies, users submit to advertising. This system of “aggregate and advertise” works for only so long. And then there’s the whole security threat as the Internet firewalls protecting all these passwords and personal data prove more inadequate by the day.
You’ll discover all of these ideas and more in George Gilder‘s Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy.
Here are 3 lessons I’ve learned about the rise of blockchain and bitcoin:
- Google’s system revolves around big data and advertising revenues.
- Bitcoin and blockchain technology mark a new era of online security.
- A gold standard of wealth allows stable currency, but bitcoin’s attempt to become an alternative is flawed.
Are you curious to discover what Life After Google might be like? Let’s dive right in and find out!
Lesson 1: With massive servers to support it all. Google’s mechanism relies on big data and advertising.
Googe’s broad scope of knowledge centers around big data.
They gather all the information into one central place, which they call the cloud. Once the information is all together, their system analyzes it using sophisticated algorithms to extract new information.
Google constructed an enormous database of information – a digital rendering of the real world. beginning with the internet and expanding to include books, languages, maps and even faces. The problem is since Google wants access to all information, any privacy runs contrary to its model.
The company makes 95 percent of its revenue through advertising. So in essence, you’re actually paying them with your time and attention. Nobody wants a barrage of annoying ads. Google has become remarkably subtle, placing sponsored links at the top of searches where they blend in unobtrusively.
Google has an enormous data center housing seventy-five thousand computer servers. These servers have enabled them to expand web services like Gmail and Google Docs. The thinking is the more – the better!
Some in the tech world refer to these huge centers as “Siren Servers”. This harkens back to the Greek myths where sailors are drawn to their death on the rocks by the alluring song of beautiful bird-women. Could it be these same Sirens pulling Google to an early grave?
Lesson 2: We can realize a new age of online security with technologies such as bitcoin and blockchain.
In 2008 a mysterious man known as Satoshi Nakamoto revealed the first cryptocurrency. We all know the name well now-bitcoin. To fully understand it, we need to dive into an emerging online realm that author, George Gilder calls the cryptocosm.
This is where personal data is decentralized from any universal and targetable central hub. Instead, every individual holds it. Each online account user has two keys – a public and a private key.
Whenever a message is sent to a user it is encrypted using a public key. It can only be deciphered by using their private key, so only they can read it. Their response once again uses their private key, leaving a unique digital signature, proving their identity.
This creates what’s known in the crypto world as a “block” which logs all the information about the most recent bitcoin activities. It also includes a timestamp, showing when the block was made.
Every creation and transfer is registered in the next block created. All of these blocks are connected in a chronological chain. This is called a blockchain. Anyone can track a bitcoin’s trajectory to when it was created – it’s completely unhackable and very secure.
It’s no wonder so many businesses are looking seriously at this technology.
Lesson 3: In a bid to ensure economic stability with currency, is bitcoin a volatile token for exchange?
For almost two hundred years governments worldwide guaranteed their currencies against the value of gold.
In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Satoshi Nakamoto worked to change this by hoping to make bitcoin the new and improved gold standard. He created a mining algorithm, making it harder to solve the algorithmic problem required to create blocks and their resulting bitcoin.
Nakamoto hoped to offset the improvement of computer processing power. He also capped the total supply of bitcoin at 21 million, halving the mineable amount every year. He hoped to create a stable supply of bitcoins over time, allowing it to become a new gold standard.
According to economic blogger, Mike Kendall, bitcoin can’t become a standard because it’s already a token of exchange. Due to its fixed supply it doesn’t have the ability to react to demand changes, except for wild fluctuation in its value. The predictability of bitcoin is too unstable.
Satoshi’s amazing advances in blockchain and cryptocurrency technology are astounding, though his understanding of real-world economics appears to be flawed. It’s now up to other cryptocurrencies to fix these errors and build a cryptocosm fit enough to pave a way out of the cluttered system known as Google.
Life After Google Review
This author of Life After Google really seems to grasp how the future of technology can unfold over the next few years. Whatever is going to happen with Silicon giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon is going to be profound and it’s going to change the way of the world. What seems to drive economics today is information, and the way we harness that information will determine our future.
Who would I recommend the Life After Google summary to?
The 22-year-old economics major, the 34-year-old rig builder and bitcoin miner, and anyone else who’s paranoid about their Google history being used in the worst possible ways.
Last Updated on September 8, 2022
