Around a million years ago, the early men discovered something so fascinating that it changed the course of human history forever. It was the discovery of fire. Humans were aware of the existence of fire for a long time, but finding a way to control it, is what made the difference. The discovery of fire led to the discovery of cooking. For the first time in history, humans were able to roast meat, which made it soft and easily chewable, this in turn resulted is shrinking of our jaw bones, which gave more space for the brain to grow and hence made us more intelligent! Although many of us are vegetarians nowadays, but if our distant ancestors had not eaten roasted meat, we might still be living on grasslands today!
After fire the next big discovery was perhaps the discovery of agriculture, which gave rise to villages and ultimately cities. Agriculture was perhaps one of the main reasons which led to the development of the writing system, as it was becoming difficult for humans to manage their stocks of grains. So using symbols to mark stocks of grains was perhaps the first form of writing that humans developed.
The next big discovery has to be the invention of numbers, which gave us the way to measure things, opening up whole new way for us to perceive the world.
Many great inventions followed after that, and after the second world war, humanity saw an exponential rise in new discoveries. The beginning of 1990s saw the rise of the internet, which again changed the course of human history.
With so many new discoveries that have come up in the last decade such as big data, the Internet of Things, machine learning/artficial intelligence and social media, the future looks pretty interesting. But out of all these discoveries, one really stands out and very few people in the world have so far understood it's significance. It is the blockchain technology. Many of you might have heard about this technology because of Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is just one application of Blockchain Technology. Blockchain is basically giving rise to a whole new generation of Internet, "Internet 2.0",which is also called as the " internet of value". Internet 1.0 was the " Internet of information" where you could send and receive information. But there is always a chance of this information getting stolen or get tampered with. Blockchain resolves this issue, by using distributed ledger systems which safely stores the data using cryptography. This simple technique is so revolutionary, that people can do transactions amongst each other without the use of a third party such a bank because this distributed ledger system is temper proof, making it highly trustworthy! But the use of blockchain is not only limited to financial sector. It is being used extensively to develop applications in sectors such as media, transportion, law, governance,etc.
If you are planning to learn something new then blockchain technology would be my recommendation, because all other technology such as the Internet of Things (IOT) and machine learning/artificial intelligence will be working upon some sort of distributed ledger system in the near future.
But how to start learning about blockchain?
Well the best way would be to first read this book - " Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies is Changing the World" this will help you to get an idea about this technology, then you can always go on to do some certification courses or learn from Youtube videos.
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