DailyPost 372
TECHNICAL INSTITUTIONS
The general perception of technical institutions is engineering & other such institutions; research & development et al. Lots of economic institutions also came up to bring down uncertainty in transaction of value. Institutions have facilitated our trade like legal systems, markets & market places. New Age technological institutions are likely to fundamentally change the way we view knowledge; Wikipedia, interact socially – Facebook, potential to change how we exchange value – the Blockchain technology.
Noble economist Douglass North explored the idea of institutions as a tool of economics to lower down uncertainties. He pioneered ”new institutional economics.” These institutions have been the grease that allows our economic wheels to function, he says. Though nascent, Blockchain Technology seems to have the potential to create variety of technical institutions in the economic sphere, to completely change the way we exchange value, ownership, transaction history, trust in transaction et al.
Blockchain Technology; a decentralized database, registry of assets & transactions, is a peer to peer network. Interestingly, it’s a public registry, secured through cryptography. Clear transaction history, being immutable & unforgeable are characteristics that are likely to propel transformation through Blockchain based institutions.
It’s not a app or a company, closest analogy is Wikipedia; a composite view that gets constantly changing & getting updated. The changes can also be tracked. At the end of the day, it is a data infrastructure. Crowd sourced & crowd edited, still having ownership & control.
Distinctly, in its purest form Blockchain created & propelled technical institutions would decimate certification / validation / transactional institutions as intermediaries. Peer to peer institutions would eventually mature & be the final winner. Is it wild romanticism?
NEW AGE TECHNICAL INSTITUTIONS WILL DEFINE OUR ECONOMY & SOCIETY.
Sanjay Sahay