I got bored with technology about a decade ago, I guess, after living in the absolute core of it for more than two decades. I used to devour new technologies, and I was the one that many people turned to for advice about how to solve particular tech problems, or to find out if there was a tech solution to a problem. But I just got tired. Exhausted. So I ignored technology, and learning new tech, for a long time.
So it was natural for me to play ostrich for the entire Bitcoin/Etherium/Dogecoin/Blockchain conversation.
Until yesterday.
This is the page that changed my mind. They key thing for me, is that this page is not one person describing the technology in their own way for their own audience. It is a number of different people, with different goals and ideas, all describing what blockchain technologies do for them.
The sheer range of applications for this particular method of calculation is really astounding.
And I am on board.
CONTEXT
When I first started in computers, if two machines wanted to talk to each other, they had to be physically connected to each other. Either by a serial cable, a modem (another type of serial connection), or by putting files on a floppy disk and moving it between the two machines.
Basic networking - token ring, AppleTalk, etc. - required the two computers to know each other's specific address (done by polling the network and the destination computer piping up, "That's Me!"), to be able to talk to each other.
Then brain-breaking technology came along (TCP/IP) that would allow ANY machine on the network to be an intermediary, and eliminating the need for two machines to be directly connected to each other. Messages were simply spewed out on the network, and any machine that heard it passed it along, until - via chaos theory, or simple mathematics - the message arrived at the destination computer. The path the message took was not pre-defined. The next message may take a completely different path. Messages could arrive out of sequence, and the communication was still legible. It was baffling that this technology actually WORKED!
TODAY
Now we have this new technology, blockchain. The concept - like TCP/IP networking - is pretty simple, but the variety of applications for that concept are still being understood. Currency. Contracts. Voting. Scientific research.
Basically anything that needs to be verified, can be verified via a blockchain.
Today, few people actually understand how the internet works. But they use it every time they send an SMS message from their phone, get money out of an ATM, send an email, or Google something.
Blockchain is the next technology that will underpin everything we do, and we won't need to understand it, to use it.
But those that do use it, will be in a much stronger position than those who don't. I suggest you read the page I linked to, and get familiar with it.