Life after Google: It’s blockchain

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You might not have heard of George Gilder, but you should. His 1981 international bestseller Wealth and Poverty advanced a practical and moral case for capitalism and, in the process, Gilder became Ronald Reagan’s most quoted living author.

But it was in 1990 when Gilder came onto many media companies’ radar with his ground-breaking book Life After Television, where many of today’s tech innovations he predicted with uncanny accuracy. As he remarked at the time, “The computer of the future…will be as portable as your watch…and as personal as your wallet. It will recognise speech and navigate streets, collect your mail and news.”

Fast forward to 2018 and Gilder’s latest book, Life After Google, takes aim at the Silicon Valley tech giant and its version of the Internet which, he claims, is cluttered with ads, bots and malware and has “become a porous cloud where all the money and power rise to the top”.

Gilder believes Google’s days are numbered and the Internet of the future will be distinctly different. In the video below, Gilder points to blockchain as the technology of the future, with its ability to prevent corruption and manipulation of transaction data. Importantly, he argues that artificial intelligence can never replace human intelligence and creativity and that in principle, it is impossible for machines to take over.

Photo by Andre Francois on Unsplash