BlockHeads - Using The Box To Think Outside The Box
My sisters used to call me blockhead when I was a kid.
Perhaps it was because I was hardheaded.
BlockHeads are Headstrong
Maybe it was that I, being the youngest, had it relatively easy with the relatives.
So I texted them both this morning (Sunday, 27-Jan-2019) and asked.
Here is my eldest sister's (nine years older) response:
1- The shape of your head. It really wasn’t a block, but close enough. 2- you never listened to anyone. The word brat was overrated, over used. We should have really called Johnny [a cousin my age] the blockhead because of the shape of his head. Kids are brutal! You also were spoiled because you were the youngest. You got away with murder for that reason and because you were a boy. I think our parents and grandparents tried to overcompensate for whatever they thought you were missing out on.
The second eldest sister (seven years older) responded with:
Charlie Brown was called blockhead by Lucy. He was not a bad kid at all in the cartoon. You on the other hand used to turn off my light when I was doing homework, used to peek through the keyhole while I was in the bathroom and throw your Hot Wheels at me. So I called you blockhead for those reasons. I hated when you would throw stuff at poor Muffins [the cat] too. Well, you were the youngest and had no one to play with. You wanted to get a rise out of me and maybe play. I didn't realize that till years later.
I love my dear sisters.
I know they love me.
It took 'thinking outside the block' to work on resolving past issues and conflicts of the heart.
The box has benefited mankind in a myriad of ways.
The box continues to benefit man.
Homes are still made in a box fashion (square).
Cars are large boxes on wheels. (ancient marriage between square and circle)
The box is a ubiquitous shape, yet not often found throughout nature.
Try looking for it.
What is found in nature are the right angles.
The right angle is the cornerstone of the box / square!
What, then, is the right angle when approaching certain challenges in life?
That 'thinking outside the box' metaphor comes to mind to answer 'the right angle' metaphor.
Some of the most innovative and curious ideas have sprouted from Blockheads.
Blockheads, in the sense, that have utilized the box in new and simple ways.
Vision.
Children easily mimic things they see and hear and feel.
Children are apt to imagine things that adults are unable to... due to an adult's boxed-in thinking.
It is from the imagination that innovation propels mankind forward in previously unimaginable ways.
Perhaps a variety of ways have previously been imagined, yet due to conventional box-theory, they have been pessimistically discouraged.
The power of a word.
The power of an idea.
The working with (and within) the box, yet bravely venturing beyond.
How the box has supported mankind's endeavors.
Count the many blockheads that have contributed to society in immeasurable ways.
Hardheaded, headstrong, and blockheadedly relentless people.
Previously opposed, but now celebrated.
One current blockhead thinking is blockchain.
Using the box basis to think well beyond the box.
A revolutionary idea that seems quite promising.
A revolutionary idea that is reality-bending regarding how the world will function into tomorrow.
A concept I have added to the blockchain innovation regarding currency / exchanges of value:
A blockchain not using a cryptocurrency.
Since cryptocurrency's aim was to decentralize economic powerhouses and move away from monopolized infrastructures, why are people still thinking in the box of a currency?
Why that extra code in the matrix?
Why still the boxed-concept of using a virtual medium of exchange (cryptocurrency) to trade for real things?
Notice that virtual currencies (crypto) can still be manipulated (a negative that supposedly inspired cryptocurrency's invention).
What if the blockchain itself conveyed the transaction?
The blockchain is the manner the concept of 'value' is forwarded.
The contract is the value or that which contains the bit information... what is, in fact, being transferred through the blockchain.
Thinking outside the box sometimes means removing a meddling middleman, or a 3rd party from a two-party transaction.
For true open source, true equitable exchange, the blockchain itself is the medium of exchange.
To continue with cryptocurrencies is adding a 'box' that reveals a bratty blockhead's manners.
To grant a binary example in this world of up/down, left/right, debt/credit, consider this example:
I take a blank sheet of paper and my pen and write out an agreement / contract.
Two parties, signature lines, terms, date(s), and behold... an instrument is born.
Depending on which side of the ledger the terms depict for one of the two parties, I am 'debtor' or 'creditor'.
The paper contains the information, as does a block in the blockchain.
What is of real value is what is mentioned / pointed to in the terms.
Let's say it is for... straw hats... the kind made underwater (like those finely weaved baskets we've heard about).
I tried to make a funny... back to the serious.
The straw hat is what is in vogue and thus in demand at the moment, and I make them by hand (while underwater - but actually in a jacuzzi)... okay no more funnies.
The agreement could say I really like horseback riding and need to get my car fixed (where I direct this particular contract to credit).
Or, instead of such details, I simply want an account of mine to be credited... an account that automatically pays my list of bills every month or I use to buy coffee every day.
That is the usefulness of 'money' today (an instrument for ubiquitous exchange for all goods and services).
But with this scenario, there is no third party exchange of 'monies' because the binary code is already transferring the message of a transaction or the flow of a credit / debt.
The code that draws from a Swiss bank (or Swiss francs) is similar to the code that draws from an American bank (or U.S. dollars).
The code in the 'block' is slightly varied to denominate one currency from the other.
Get in Rhythm with the Algorithms
Maybe I am way off (as one friend said as we had cigars and he looked at me with a confused face).
But I don't think so.
This friend works in blockchain technology but seemed unable to conceptualize the blockchain as the actual medium of exchange.
Maybe you 'get it'.
Maybe the blockchain can finally put an end to inflation and usury, one blockhead brat that causes the existence of the other.
There was a time, before the invention of money, that people traded their goods and services for goods and services.
To suggest an i.o.u. may have been like asking to be slapped in the face... but where trust was existing between two people, their word was their bond.
Can blockchain technology replace the trust mankind has lost?
Can it at least establish a trust that cannot be broken by swindle, hook nor crook?
The blockchain barter.
The issuance of individual blocks originating from whoever is providing actual goods and services (think underwriters).
Since a mortgage is not borrowing from another individual's bank account, but from fractionalized reserved amounts 'made' by the bank, could such a practice be eliminated by blockchain or exacerbated?
Will old concepts be carried over into the innovations?
Will old concepts be carried over into the innovations?
Could fair and honest 'money' be the result of blockchain technology?
Lots of boxes would need to be opened, or broken apart.
Lots of blockhead thinking would need to be corrected.
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