Virginia Tech is holding a ‘blockchain boot camp’ this weekend. It’s a chance for students to learn more about what some call he most potentially transformative technology of the future.
Blockchain is like a super secure spreadsheet on steroids; A way of documenting all sorts of transactions and interactions that keeps them accurate and tamper proof, by making them transparent to everyone on the chain. Right now, the poster child for the blockchain is crypto currency, but that’s just one application, and since the technology is still in its infancy, no one really knows quite where and how far it can go.
“There’s not a lot of information out there, so this is a way to bring it all together and bring together some really smart people that can help the students understand it,” says Kirk Cameron of Virginia Tech.
Cameron teaches a class on blockchain to about 40 students, but this weekend’s boot camp will take 300 from a variety of disciplines. “People who know things outside of computer science. They could be interested in economics, bio-diversity, all kinds of different subjects that can run, and make use of, the blockchain.”
Blockchain technology is perhaps more the ‘medium’ than the ‘message.’ It’s about how the information gets handled, not what the information is.
“The blockchain itself is just a distributed data base, or distributed ledger, you might think of it as,” says Cameron. “So, it’s a way of recording information securely and at a vast scale. You can apply it to lots of different problems.”
It’s still early days, and while it won’t play a role in everything, the technology looks to be potentially useful in many different ways that we haven’t even thought of yet; ways that we might not have been able to think of, until we had the blockchain.
“Anything where you need to store information in a secure way” could be a candidate for blockchain. “I think the killer app that we all have heard of is crypto currency, because it takes advantage of the fact that it’s distributed and difficult to hack.”
That alone, could be a game changer. But when you add the idea of trust, openness, verification and authentication, things really begin to change. Might this risk fraught, scam filled, robot riven society come together in trust – and yes, verification?
Cameron says blockchain may one day play a role in things like certifying election results. Because it’s a distributed platform, it’s seen by everyone on the chain, where ever they are. No changes can be made to the chain without all of them knowing about it. In that way, it confirms consensus of the group, to determine whether votes are fraudulent, for example.
But, he says, adopting it for elections is probably years away. “People will have to develop trust in the blockchain before they can do something with the system as critical as voting, (using) of this kind of software. I think the technology is there, but as is often the case, the legislature, the people--- since they don’t understand it yet--- are hesitant and rightly so. We have a lot of questions that we have to ask.”
Cameron says, the first step is education. That’s why they’re holding the first Blockchain boot camp at Virginia Tech this weekend. All 300 spots are already taken for this first one, but they’ll be doing more, and sharing videos with everyone at Tech.
Editors Note: Radio IQ is a service of Virginia Tech.
