I still remember quite vividly the talks I used to have with an old uncle of mine some two decades ago when trying to explain to him what a PC with an internet connection is, what at that time one could use it for and how that experience would evolve in time. The man was living in the same old village he lived in for almost his entire life and his only gadget was a radio.

He was still reading paper newspapers and had an old bicycle that was in his possession for over forty years and still running quite smoothly. That isn't necessarily a good thing cuz if every product maker would be fine with its current products there would be no evolution at all.

He made some really interesting forecasts back then that have come true, he told me at that time that the Americans will invade Iraq and that they will kill Saddam Husein at some point. I don't remember many details from these talks but I sure know we had them.

These were the glory days of the so-called third industrial revolution characterized by the development and adoption of digital technologies, including computers, the internet, and other digital communication technologies. These were the times of building data storage and exploiting that data by the ones storing it, e-commerce, and the early stages of social media.

Now basically every peasant in my country has a smartphone and an internet connection at hand. However, when I look around now at how people live, the concepts they believe in, how obedient, poor in valuable knowledge and repetitive in thinking these are I can only be grateful for how lucky I was to be finding out about blockchain technology and crypto in their quite early stages.

What is already called as the fourth industrial revolution will be about developments in areas such as the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing. Interconnectivity and interoperability are two middle names of this so-called revolution. There's much more to it, and part of that is being discussed lately at the Davos WEF meetings but it doesn't all have to be just doom and gloom.

My take is that we(crypto peeps) are part of the fourth industrial revolution as well. Crypto people will somehow scale such a revolution by giving access to decentralized blockchain technology products and services to all sorts of individuals around the world. Little did I know when having those conversations with my long-defunct uncle that at one point in life I will be "selling my thoughts for crypto" and will be hating the fiat system so much while doing that.

The idea of internet money was not even close to my mentality back then. I don't even think I had a bank account 20 years ago. 99% chance are I didn't, and now I came to a point when I no longer need or want one. The past few times I used my account was a few months ago when I bought more crypto. Other than that "I'm clean".

There was a lot of hype regarding the metaverse just one year ago and now you can bearly hear anyone talking about it. The metaverse is not dead yet because frankly it wasn't even born once discussions started popping, the hype around it is pretty much in a coma though.

However, virtual and augmented reality will probably be an integral part of the life of humans a decade or so from now. We're somehow in between revolutions(the third and the fourth) right now and we're still early when it comes to scaling blockchain technology. The man of the year 2023 is more similar to the man of the year 23 than it is to the future one of the year 2123. Think of that for a moment...

We haven't seen yet how A.I., blockchain technology, and quantic computers can impact what we now call the modern man's experience on earth but I bet life on earth in one hundred years from now will be way more different that the current one. In the same way my uncle was having difficulties in comprehending what was to come, the average Joe is also in a bad position right now to at least envision what the man of the year 2123 will be like.

Thanks for your attention,
Adrian