I wrote this late last night, and I want to amend it a bit, because I don't think it fully captures what I meant. Let me try to use an analogy. 1/
Let's look at ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft. Do they have technical innovations? Definitely! They probably have really awesome algorithms for routing, choosing which driver gets notified, choosing which passengers share a car, etc. 2/
But their real innovation is that they used tech to lower "transaction costs," which you can think of as the friction of making deals. Imagine what it would have been like to try to hail a random stranger, ask if they're interested in taking you, both of you assess the dangers 3/
Now imagine that someone was arguing that Lyft does not actually make better cars and their cars are not actually technically faster than cabs. Well yes. Of course. But that's not the innovation! 4/
For ride-sharing, the innovation is rightly measured in the field of microeconomics, even though Lyft and Uber are tech companies. They're lowering transaction costs and breaking state-enforced monopolies. The same is true of blockchain tech. 5/
Bitcoin put together a lot of CS innovations (queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=…), but we need econ to see the real revolution. I think the interdisciplinary nature of blockchain tech makes it nearly impossible to be fully appreciated in our society. 6/
So we end up with a lot of hype. But what's the hype about? We don't know. It's like the blind man and the elephant - the practitioners of each subject only see one part of the whole, and discount the rest. 7/
I think it's really important to be interdisciplinary. It feels weird to try on hats you don't have credentials for. I'm not an economist, political philosopher, legal scholar, but I think it's worth trying to learn a broader perspective that includes all of those things. 8/
That's how progress is made. Other disciplines bring new perspectives and new tools. Bitcoin made excellent use of this, joining CS and economic incentives in a revolutionary way. Let's continue that. End
