I've always been a big fan of science fiction and history, constantly traveling between the past and the future in my inner ramblings. Throughout my teenage years, one phrase constantly echoed in my head: "I was born too late to explore the Earth and too early to explore the Universe". But is this view that the present is boring, decadent and doomed true?
Analyzing history is more difficult than it seems. We tend to have relatively heterogeneous interpretations of the past, because one specific line of thought always stands out, often because it validates a current political orientation. That's why, in this short letter to the remnants, I'd like to simplify our interpretation and focus on just two phenomena, one of centralization and the other of decentralization.
What guaranteed the decentralization of states in the past, from the beginning of the Roman Empire to the middle of the first Industrial Revolution, was precisely logistical and communications limitations, since any attempt to make centralized decisions in real time was impossible. With the advance of technologies in the areas of logistics and communications, the ability to centralize power has increased, and we are currently at the peak of this historical trend.
A few moments in recent history mark the beginning of an unprecedented movement in the history of our species: the invention of the telegraph in 1838; the telephone in 1875; radio in the second half of the 1890s; and finally, the date of operation of ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) in 1971, which we now know as the internet. These 133 years mark the embryonic stage of P2P communications, which for us today is as trivial as running water and electricity.
In the 20th century, totalitarian states tried to use the Internet for central control. The first attempt was made by the then Soviet Union in 1962 with the OGAS project (National Automated System for Computation and Information Processing) proposed by Soviet engineer Victor Glushkov. The proposal consisted of linking all the collective farms, metallurgic and industries to Moscow's political command, which at the time applied the five-year economic planning model. The project was later abandoned due to the high cost and also due to disagreements among the Soviet top brass, as such a model would diminish power and hinder the communist leadership's corruption schemes.
The great successor in the totalitarian use of the internet is China, which in the early 1980’s took the first steps towards what we now know as the Social Credit System. Today, in addition to apps like WeChat and more than 560 million surveillance cameras, China pioneered the use of sanitary passports during Covid-19. These actions have groups of supporters in the West among the left and the cantillionaires elite, who are concerned about the control of tax-paying slaves.
There is a centralizing tendency in the West today, but an article published on 31 October 2008 with only eight references would mark the beginning of a battle between two opposing and very powerful forces, centralization and decentralization. You, my dear remnant, are here with me at this historic moment, and now that you have read this letter up to the present paragraph, you can no longer plead ignorance.
What can we expect from the next chapters of this book? Well, just as in the past, states have adapted to technological developments and sought more power, we now have to be the first explorers of this new world that has opened up before us. Building on bitcoin is the way forward, because the last barrier to individual freedom imposed by centralizing forces has fallen, and we now have the complete financial sovereignty that no human being has had for the last 6,000 years.
You, the remnant, are alive and a pioneer in the exploration of this new world, which, unlike the explorers of the 16th century, is facing an infinite and virgin continent. The decentralized nations that will be born in this century will fight giants, but if they succeed, they will be the engines of innovation and the expansion of humanity's frontiers on a scale never before imagined. So no, I wasn't born too late for the exploration of the Earth, nor too early for the exploration of the Universe, I was born at exactly the right moment to be part of the new chapter in human history.
Wilhelm von Freiheitsberg, Block Height 833,626.