Building Systems We Don’t Understand
As much as we love decentralization and technological advancement, where do these aims fail us? Are we creating more problems than solving them?
Jul 24, 2021
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ABOUT
The world’s complexity exponentially increases by the decade. If you landed in medieval times, could you build a phone? Or something even simpler, a pencil?
Join hosts Adam B. Levine, Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy & Jonathan Mohan for a deep dive into the wildly empowering, complex and terrifyingly automated world we live in. This wide ranging, philosophical discussion touches on such topics as the Suez Canal, Douglas Adams, combat drones, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and more.
A gradual systemization has led to the automation of specialized tasks, affording people free time to perform other, even more complex tasks. For example, consider navigation apps reducing the decision-making process from driving, or the rise of autonomous cars that will eventually remove human interaction altogether.
As the world depends more on an unimaginable web of logistics, what happens when something breaks? The evolution of automation from simple, rules-based systems to incredibly complex machine learning algorithms has diminished the ability to understand or predict these structures.
As much as we love decentralization and technological advancement, where do these aims fail us? Are we creating more problems than solving them?
See also: Where Does Bitcoin Fit in the Global Reserve Currency Game?
Today's show featured Andreas M. Antonopoulos, Stephanie Murphy, Jonathan Mohan and Adam B. Levine. This episode was edited by Jonas, with music by Jared Rubens and Gurty Beats.
Image credit: Luca Carrà/Unsplash, modified by Speaking of Bitcoin
Have any questions or comments? Send Adam an email.
HOST
Adam B. Levine
Adam B. Levine joined CoinDesk in 2019 as the editor of its new audio and podcasts division. Previously, Adam founded the long-running Let's Talk Bitcoin! talk show with co-hosts Stephanie Murphy and Andreas M. Antonopoulos.
Finding early success with the show, Adam transformed the podcast's homepage into a full newsdesk and publishing platform, founding the LTB Network in January of 2014 to help broaden the conversation with new and different perspectives. In the Spring of that year, he would go on to launch the first and largest tokenized rewards program for creators and their audience. In what many have called an early influential version of "Steemit"; LTBCOIN, which was awarded to both content creators and members of the audience for participation was distributed until the LTBN was acquired by BTC, Inc. in January of 2017.
With the network launched and growing, in late 2014 Adam turned his attention to the practical challenges of administering the tokenized program and founded Tokenly, Inc. There, he led the development of early tokenized vending machines with Swapbot, tokenized identity solution Tokenpass, e-commerce with TokenMarkets.com and media with Token.fm. Adam owns some BTC, ETH and small positions in a number of other tokens.
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