I’m one of those people that enjoy science very much, to watch documentaries on tv was one of my most beloved games when I was a teenager, even now it continues to be a passion of mine to discover things and get to know about the most recent discoveries from the past and from the present, the difference is that now I watch documentaries and listen to science podcasts on youtube. In fact, youtube got me started on many subjects in which I base my daily life now, including crypto and blockchain technology, maybe you are one of those too.
Youtube nowadays is one of the biggest (high above any other platforms) sources of knowledge, information, education, and entertainment that has ever existed on the internet. It’s amazing how powerful it has become through the years, even more now during the quarantine. People from every place in the world uploading and sharing all kinds of information, every minute people reproducing, clicking, and interacting with it.
Information is a delicate matter
The paragraph above surely sounds nice, we all love the fact that information is so accessible now, but have you noticed that the more information there is the hardest it is to identify trustable sources?
Information is a delicate matter, not many people really look into the background or the original sources of the information they share, whether they are talking about a cooking recipe, and interesting fact or something more delicate: giving health advice, talking about historical facts or science.
You probably have read, at least once, one of those very characteristic posts on social media where someone explains you some astonishing scientific fact. It’s not uncommon for thousands of people to share it just like that, without checking if it is remotely true. We usually ignore how this matter can affect us and our daily living.
There are consequences
Old civilizations didn’t develop as fast as ours in modern times, and there is a reason for it: knowledge. Real knowledge about technology and science is what keep ups going up and not down. You can imagine the scenery to understand this: If All science experts and every source of knowledge were to disappear from the world, would we reach the technological paradise that we see so near us now? Once all of the knowledge is lost we would go back to the process of figuring out all of the intrinsic details and failures we already overcame in the past. Meaning that the base from where we continue to develop and improve would be broken, and we would start over constructing the fundaments we have lost.
Knowledge is important, which is why it is not a light matter when people are convinced with information that isn’t true and live their lives based on facts that weren’t facts, to begin with. We can agree at this point that the development of our society from all points of view is dragged down when pseudoscience takes over instead of real science.
Pseudoscience and youtube
As we said before, youtube is big. There is a compulsive mania to look for answers there. Not long ago I found myself watching a video about vitamins with a Youtuber doctor called Mike. Some sources helped me understand that he was a real doctor, but my reflection came around since I knew he was a very handsome doctor and I didn’t think anyone would stop to think if he really was a doctor or not. Youtube is full of pseudoscience, people who explain quantic physics, others who teach you about “the real reason behind global warming” or conspiracy theories.
Most of the time is really not possible to know how qualified are those who share such information, or who they are since many of them don’t even show their faces, this kind of uncertainty and the awareness makes people like me wonder about new alternatives that can help us overcome information misleading and help us make sure about the identity and the credentials someone has to share important knowledge.
Why Blockchain?
New technologies like blockchain have enabled people to reach a higher level of freedom and self-reliance. Why? Because the blockchain has brought the opportunity to confirm information and time stamp it, official documents are tamper-proof and all transactions are registered without fail.
In a world where we are full of information and in a world where it seems that we cannot be sure of the truth anymore, blockchain comes as a ring to the finger.
Many blockchain projects even include the possibility of saving information about people's credentials: skills, capabilities, degrees, professional certifications, completed learning courses, work experience. Critical information that we could be able to access if we needed to confirm the source of information and make sure they are trustable.
It’s interesting how despite the fact that the world has been transformed by technology many things keep being the same as if we live in an offline paper-based world we seem to be lazier every time since the process of verifying credentials or finding out about a source can require big effort and time. But Blockchain technology brings the change of putting all of that information together, making it completely accessible and giving us the security of knowing that important information hasn’t tampered. Other blockchain initiatives work as a measure to bring the culture to the tokenization world and allow people to have authorship and interact safely.
We are the principal authors who make this happen, we are the eyes behind the blockchain and the long record of blocks. We are the ones who make possible for the blockchain to become an anchor of trust, to ensure that important information is validated and authentic, unchanged, we can even make sure that something is certified by experts, people who we can trust because they have demonstrated to have the capability. Blockchain can create a transparent, trustworthy, and reliable source of truth that is instantly authentic once shared. We as individuals, are the custodians of those official sources and can have the chance of sharing it with others.
Furthermore, tokens can be a tool to enhance productivity for youtubers, whether they create tokens to monetize their content or reward their viewers. This is something that we need, to be able to save information and knowledge and live in a world where things are clear and concise, decentralized, and furthermore: reachable.
Mary Schwartz