Smart Cities, Smart Contracts & Smart Children: Blockchain Coding The Future

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0:01 disruptors and curious minds we are at it again welcome to another episode of thinking on paper we um have some exciting stuff to talk about today and uh I don’t know I’m excited to dig in about learning learning is a big part of what I like to do and you know I I love to learn I love to teach and um just the idea of how we prepare the Next Generation for uh jobs and roles and things that haven’t even necessarily been created yet is just a fascinating

0:31 uh Jazz effort if you will uh Mark Fielding with me as always how are you doing sir what’s happening on the other side over there uh I’m I’m doing great thank you as as yourself very interested to see where we go with this I already we’re into the job market in the future and I I I think that one thing that is particularly dating for children of today is not only how different the job market will be but how different the job

0:59 market will be every five years they’ll have to Pivot every it might be less than that you might learn a skill get a job get do something great and then have to Pivot because it’s been automated or removed or simplified by Tech so I think that’s quite scary but also maybe exciting if you’re the right person I used to be a teacher so I’m very interested in the educational side of it I came into emerging Tech through the

1:23 lens of my daughter like what will the internet be like for her in the future so I’m Our Guest today teaches 10-year-olds about the blockchain I’m very excited about it what did you teach Mark when you were teaching I was an English teacher an English language not even English Lit but that’s what I did in Paris wow the best way to learn grammar actually like forget grammarly and these other apps just be an English teacher for a few years and you’ll

1:53 understand the workings of grammar really helps in your writing oh I can imagine I I’ve grammar is like math the math of writing which I kind of struggle with a little bit um the creative side not so much well um well awesome well I would certainly take a class from you Mark um you know on on some of that stuff um so speaking of speaking of the future right speaking of the job market and that sort of thing I definitely want

2:19 to give a nod to our great sponsor Ripple with a W uh the folks over there are amazing so they’re marketing’s on demand Talent platform so you need to flexx out you need to bring in some marketing superpowers they actually have a lot of Technology based strategy type superpowers related to web 3 and in blockchain and that sort of thing as well but you know if you’re a business uh it’s it’s we’re we’re in we’re the tip of Q4 we’re getting into Q4 right

2:47 there’s probably some budgets out there that you know were left unused maybe or maybe some new priorities some new initiatives give Ripple a try let them Flex out and um and support your team augment the team uh if you’re looking for folks you can contact them at client team ripple.com and the website wri p.com thanks to Ray and Dixie and the team without further Ado let’s dig into it I’m stoked man but why don’t you introduce Our Guest here Mark yeah so

3:17 our guest today is Kevin rle a lot of web3 LinkedIn especially are familiar with him he’s a blockchain engineer he’s a Dap developer he’s the founder of wave act like a web3 software company he writes the no BS around Tech newsletter he’s a podcast host and um a particular interest today with his company wave act he he runs workshops for kids from 10 um about software development about blockchain writing smart contracts and

3:50 well a lot more which we’re going to unpack and oh sorry he’s also a former firefighter father and a handstand fanatic I’m not sure we’ll have time to get into the calisthenic I gotta learn about the handstand stuff first let’s bring him on what’s up let bring him on what’s Happening Kevin welcome to the show sir hey uh wow that that’s an intent I guess I have to brace myself with English Today an English teacher and an us American so that’s going to be

4:15 challenging for me today but yeah thanks for the invite guys since since we’re um you you bring that up your your multilingual that must really help in the tech space it must give you an advantage because there aren’t that many multil linguist is it a help or is it a hindrance how do you how does the language affect your day-to-day work uh that that’s a great question already um if you’re an actual developer right it’s for sure very important to be

4:46 able to effective uh to communicate effectively um but let’s say it’s not a necessity on all instances I would say especially if you’re in a all remote

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5:00 International Organization you often times have different time zones which results in a lot of asyn work and written communication is for sure oftentimes much easier and things can be translated uh more seamless in a more seamless way than if you act actively work in an office or in a smaller company and these kind of things um as an engineer for sure English is super important but not sure if second language is an actual

5:31 Advantage here right except you want to uh work for for example an Austrian or German corporation what about on GitHub when you you want to go read the documentation is that all in English do you do you do you have translations or are you so comfortable with the language of blockchain that it doesn’t matter or is that I don’t know if that’s the right qu I mean do German Engineers or Japanese Engineers have a different

6:02 way to code in solidity or is it all the same well in general uh there’s this not sure if it’s an Unwritten rule but everyone in general codes in English for sure you sometimes find especially when you look uh towards Asia you find or even Spanish uh speaking countries you find code and documentation written in those languages but in general uh I think everyone always tries to keep it in English because that makes it for

6:32 sure easier to use open source software a software that you’re allowed to use for your own project um as a consequence right because you don’t need to then actively learn a second language that regard okay um since we jump that wasn’t the first question I wanted to ask but it was an interesting question I wanted to talk about like your journey first into develop um how did you get into it did you always have a tech background did you

7:04 start in HTML and JavaScript before you moved to cross how did you make the move if that’s the case and what’s maybe the biggest challenge you found in Dap development using these blockchain coding and what’s the biggest success perhaps you had uh a lot of interesting and great questions U let me start from the start without you know over extending uh let’s say I started uh developing U simple websites like most people did at the age of 12 13 and at

7:38 that time I basically had one huge website and I just you know as a young young guy I tried to get everything on there right from mobile apps to uh everything I could imagine it didn’t make sense right but interestingly at that time I had around I think 500 unique visitors per day which is uh you know for 13 14 year old uh I I was quite proud of that and based from that I basically got myself started but the fun thing a little fun fact in that regard

8:17 was when I started out developing those websites I didn’t know what HML CSS and these kind of things were I just used the CMS like WordPress or some other um tool that you that non developers can use to create websites and one day I discovered a button that actually uh transformed the text I’ve written on the website into HTML and I just thought oh well uh what the heck is this I just removed it and was wondering why my website was gone

8:53 what these kind of things so that was I would say the first touch point of myself uh discovering what actually uh software development is and from there on I started developing or optimizing my day-to-day I basically just did a process uh optimization for myself uh developed a lot of let’s say Niche programs that made my own life easier from just you know programs that help me manage my homeworks to countdowns when the uh classes finally over these kind

9:30 of things and uh from there on I then even started developing or looking into uh security basically I was everything in legal uh in the legal area so uh nothing to worry about here but I started developing malware and uh searching for security issues in in companies in schools and these kind of things and uh that that was just something I was really passionate about okay but it was

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10:02 more that’s more that’s more white hat kind of stuff is what they call that right like we’re or I would have been a white hat right if I would have gotten or had a contract right in some instances I just had for example a permission of the school in within a project to distribute malware these kind of things but to be honest I don’t think they knew what they’re actually proving here right let’s put it that way no harm was caused nothing like

10:33 that but for sure there was some you know uncertainty in this school at the school and yeah from there on I basically got really fascinated about a lot of security stuff and that got me then to iot Smart City applications and from there on then to blockchain these kind of things to me this is this is super interesting and and it rings like Rings true with the p that I didn’t discover until I was a little bit old until I was like 30 early

11:02 30s or whatever that where where if you’re driven by your curiosity you have an insatiable amount of energy and drive to do what you want to do and I love the fact because I’ve I I’ve done my own websites on WordPress and all that stuff and I’ve looked at the code I it did it I just my eyes got crossed and I jumped out of it but you look at the code and then you look away it’s like what yeah but but but for that to be your Catalyst

11:26 for getting into this stuff by going oh here are the building blocks like this would be really cool to learn this thing I mean a lot of people kind of train as a coder or developer prior to and then start building stuff and I think that’s such a cool way and it’s probably fed your uh fed your curiosity continuously I would imagine uh absolutely um for better and worse to be honest um because I had a time where I basically just tried to

11:52 learn everything right I guess like many people do um I looked into Quantum computing to be honest no idea uh no expertise in that at all but I just tried to develop some Niche programs uh I tried some so-called esoteric programming languages basically um where you program with white space like basically just space and tabs which is just a fun programming language or I even did my own programming language where I wrote the

12:26 the program that Translate the text from the programmer to actual binary these kind of things so so going back to the one that that is bace and Taps like is it literally like Morse code like is like that’s really interesting I’ve never heard of that before yeah because no one seriously uses it right it’s it’s really just uh well you have tried it you know it’s fun it’s yeah it’s just a blank screen basically no matter how

12:56 much code you have written it’s crazy that sounds sounds like it’d be very easy to become an expert though if it’s just white space um well absolutely they are programming languages where you for example develop in quotes of arold swartzenegger for example that that’s how you code uh B basically uh movie uh quotes that he said like what was it we were just talking about the the Die Hard quote we were talking about Die Hard earlier we

13:29 can’t say the quote on on a but uh yeah can can can you explain how that works because like I I understand what you’re saying okay so it’s a language that uses Arnold Swartz sniger quotes to that’s the input and the output what does the output look like in that instance uh well that that’s uh the output is what the developer has written right that that’s what’s going to happen but uh it’s basically being translated to zeros and ones something

14:03 that the computer actually understands it’s like a coding shortcut is the quote is the coding shortcut so to speak right exactly like when you have a semicolon in one language it’s maybe an exclamation mark for the uh ad Schwartz Neega program language for example these kind of things wow well I so I want I want to kind of I want to I’m feeling like I want to jump into this um because there’s a lot of folks that listen to

14:31 this show that um that want to understand emerging technology but more importantly they want to understand like why they should care about it or what it could mean to their workflow or what they’re doing and that sort of thing and given the fact that you’re teaching things like smart contracts to to kids and that sort of thing let’s talk about a smart contract let’s talk about like how would you explain that to someone

14:53 that’s sitting down that’s heard the word before but doesn’t know the power of what it could do in order to inspire their curiosity how about that one great

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15:01 question um in order to answer this in a in a way that people are actually able to grasp it I think I need to explain what blockchain is first and in general to keep it really really really superficial and simple blockchain is basically nothing else than you have a lot of different computers all over the world in best case like some are in China some are in the US some in Europe and so on and these computers basically

15:32 have a huge Excel sheet basically they just have uh what’s the English word a protocol where everyone of these computers and everyone else as well that is actually using this Can See For example when I send Mark for example one Bitcoin or whatever cryptocurrency or whatever you can imagine or us or something like that that’s public and that protocol basically is being observed by all these computers meaning no one can manipulate it it’s like

16:15 basically I act actually own the cryptocurrency I actually own that asset but in contrast to for example if you have a regular bank account it’s basically when you open your app with your bank account balance it just says you have $100 for example on your on your account sorry and the bank could in theory just remove that to zero or say well you can’t use it they can stop you from uh withdrawing it uh into cash and these kind of things which happen a lot

16:55 and blockchain tried to solve that issue but you act actively owning these assets because these different computers all over the world uh actively contribute to that security that you as an end user act actively own your assets that was a lot but a smart contract as an extension is nothing else than software code rules restrict or whatever you want to call it on that infrastructure which means whatever you say that should happen will happen no

17:37 one can manipulate it no one can control it that’s it basically a smart contract is really from an let’s say ideological perspective it’s nothing else than law that’s written by code it’s not a contract in the legal sense because it’s very specific while real contracts are really rake often times and that’s the difference in that regard but basically you really have a rule set and everyone that engages with that smart contract has to follow it I hope

18:17 that was somewhat understandable yeah you sparked some noise in the uh in the chat too you know couple of folks chiming in about uh you know recalling back in the 90s when people were saying yeah you can buy stuff through e-commerce and people’s minds were blown away like how does that thing happen right so it’s like it’s interesting if whenever a new tech comes around I think that you know we tend to be um dismissive or or just confused by you

18:44 always have to look back and look back it’s all Cycles right so you look back and say all right what was the latest the last new tech that people were initially confused by and they’re now using every day right absolutely absolutely it just takes time often Al most of the time right um when there’s something new there’s a lot of let’s call I hope I’m not getting into trouble by saying this lot of BS uh business cases out there

19:09 and with time companies act actively try to solve things uh make something easier and it’s not Tech first anymore right when we look back in uh 2021 or during the 2000s uh Tech was the dominant fact why investors got into startups and now it’s Ai and that’s usually the wrong approach because it should be what makes a users or a person’s life easier and if it uses blockchain if it uses AI or the internet or whatever awesome if not even

19:51 better because it’s maybe something known right but it um use case for first I think that’s a consequence what’s the what do you think

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20:01 is the the simplest use case for a smart contract that would that is or would help dayto day escro Services basically um we want to exchange uh some cryptocur Al some digital value if it’s an artwork on your side or if it’s a just a cryptocurrency for example a Bitcoin on my side although Bitcoin is a special case I’m just using it to make it easier because most people know Bitcoin um I could send that cryptocurrency to that smart contract

20:38 and you could send your digital artwork for example to that and then it’s being exchanged the same uh is possible for other assets as well or fital uh assets meaning you have a a digital representation of that real world asset that you own for example if it’s a car if it’s whatever that it’s also something that works to some extent to be honest on on the other on the other side of that what’s the most adventurous ambitious

21:12 use of smart contracts today or one of uh something I’m really on a lot of people are really excited about is C knowledge I’m not sure if you have heard of that it’s basically cryptography where you are able to prove in a ma mathematical way that you know something without revealing the actual underlying information for example if I go into I want to go into a bar and I’m just 18 years old but I need to be 21 in uh in America for example then right now

21:53 I need to show my full license right need to show my perfect date I need to show my name my picture everything but instead civil knowledge would allow you to just prove yes or no that you are old enough yes I’m 21 and yes that’s me that’s it identity proof many many things where you don’t really want to give the knowledge you just want to prove something without demon ating perhaps sensitive data or private personal data

22:34 okay wait wait wait so you’re saying I the lamination machine and in printing uh shop that I have back here to make fake IDs is going to be null and void I’m done my business is over looks like it nah um I I think the identity business you know it yourself is something only governance can do in the end especially um actual KC and um if that’s going to happen who knows interesting question Jo in the chat so like is it only binary proofs

23:06 from Kevin Lou in the chat uh not necessarily because um there also let’s say versions of it right you can also for example prove uh that’s not exactly CK it’s a a a larger set of that Fe Al cryptography family basically it’s validity proving where you can verify if a program for example if software that you have written ran the way it is supposed to run and if you think further that could be really interesting for example for all sorts of

23:48 software that’s that involves human lives for example when it comes to airplanes then the pilot or whoever uh that actual company is able to prove in a mathematical way that the software ran in a way that it is supposed to run otherwise they are not able to do that uh that’s also part of that technology stack for example so it’s not always about yes or no I’m old enough it can be also super complex like uh it let’s say

24:24 it’s bleeding I it’s really bleeding edge technology right um goes to Smart City sensors uh that’s something I’m really passionate about right now for example when you have sensors like uh is there a free parking lot for a car in that area for example they’re basically just sensors that know if a car is actually standing there or not then you usually have the challenge as a company when you’re installing these sensors to retrieve the data in a way

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25:00 that it’s not being manipulated it’s uh it’s actually supposed to be decoded or I wouldn’t say decrypted but basically you retrieve it in a way that it’s not broken or invalid or change for whatever reason because of transmission and with that technology you can also prove that the sensor was doing what it is supposed to do right for example and that is all baked by blockchain for example contract the Smart City thing is really interesting

25:37 and and you know I’d be curious to get your take on this that so the value of of a smart city is a lot of things interconnected right a lot of information being interconnected whether it’s parking restaurant availability what what whatever it is um the ease of use for someone on the other side the challenge always is not to have 90 disperate systems one for parking one for a restaurant one for this one for that like how and I don’t think that

26:04 gets solved really easily because it requires people collaborating that are building things individually um for the benefit of what they’re building right because each of these little things are funded by somebody who expects kind of a return on this how do you balance building something as a as a as a you know technology company and then also making the ease of interaction in interconnectivity um easy for the end user I have to be honest I obviously I

26:35 need to be careful here what I’m going to share because uh it’s a large client of ours um basically what I can say is they haven’t figured it out themselves yet right it’s a a huge uh challenge in Channel World to just get the infrastructure going then to make it in a gdpr compliance a data privacy compliant way as well so for example if you have some sensorics in your own home that some company energy provider certainly doesn’t know uh why you need

27:10 that much energy and sells it to some insurance companies for whatever reason and they can make some conclusions based on that these kind of things um that’s another challenge uh there really other most of these smart City uh projects that I know of struggle with and um obviously as you said from a user experience to make it all plug in together because everyone is right now cooking their own soup if that’s the right expression thing right and that’s yeah

27:48 it’s just I I would even say although iot has been a topic for a longer time than blockchain itself in my opinion it’s even earlier stage than blockchain because it’s just a more complex thing it involves Hardware it involves uh Edge Computing like things that actually happen on these sensors um complex infrastructure data privacy issues and these kind of things and who pays for what right who pays for what who’s responsible for what it goes so it it it

28:23 gets me thinking about pointing back to like all right what’s another old technology that had similar challenges like this so I I spent a lot of time in um like networking and and structure cabling and that sort of things so in these industrial sites you had all once the equipment started to become IP based there needed to be like a an aggregation of all that information in the plant so what is this machine doing what is that

28:46 machine doing and then uh SK systems were developed which are these like large monitoring systems but it probably took a really long time for you say Kevin you have a you have a product and a piece and I’m the management layer of the product and a piece that’s a whole different company for you to feel comfortable with giving me access to your stuff knowing that I’m gonna do my job right and then Mark has the same request right he’s building something so

29:12 um it sounds like it’ll get there but it is like it is not an easy path to making cities simple for people that live in them right like absolutely especially if you already have a setup city right because that’s the main Challenge and that’s why merging countries have in that regard even even an advantage right if you look at China and so on they didn’t have to if I’m not wrong here set up landlines for example because they jumped right

29:40 into Wireless these kind of things and that gives you a competitive Advantage same here yeah I mean if you if you look at a city like London you mean you can’t move under the ground because there’s just there’s no space to put anything else now so everything has to be above ground really to advance the city to any reasonable degree I

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30:00 think so well let’s let’s talk about let’s talk about the nobs uh platform and and what you’re doing with that and what sparked you to be like man I’ve got to put this out there like tell me tell me and you can and you can swear yeah I just have to click a button when I post everything no it’s good well uh the the newsletter itself is a a really new thing right we just had one issue insur yet um but in general from a company perspective as an

30:31 agency we just have this slogan itself like no BS guarantee right we we tell you wide away for example when blockchain or some bleeding edge Tech doesn’t make sense for you we are not like we want to extract value out of you that’s that’s the main intent right because a lot of R companies just try to sell you nfts crypto whatever and 80% of the time it was they didn’t even understand it themselves what they’re selling right and that was the main I

31:05 would say I would I wouldn’t say USB but communication that we wanted to put out there and that’s but it’s called no BS so yeah and this is this is big right so like you know large companies have these directives and the directives come down and say hey hey guys you need to you need to do some blockchain stuff we need to get on this blockchain thing and that trickles down and then someone goes out and says hey I need to I need to build

31:30 some blockchain stuff and you would come in and be like well why right I always like asking the why question right because that helps qualify a lot of things and it seems simple but it’s really not uh why not right yeah why not okay cool right um yeah fair enough let’s um yeah can we we we’ve spoken a lot about the tech and it’s fascinating and me and Jeremy personally want to explore the actual technical side of it more more in the

31:57 future but now I want to change tax a little bit and speak about my daughter who is the reason that I came into emerging Tech and I don’t know about you jery or you Kevin but I was one of those parents when my kids were born that I was like right they’re not having a phone until they’re 16 they’re not when they can buy their own router they can have they can go on the internet you know it’s no computers until you know

32:25 they’re 50 how did that work out for you well my daughter’s only seven my son’s four but like my my this is my mindset has changed but let’s Kevin let’s imagine that that is still my mindset okay my daughter seven I don’t want her to experience technology to experience laptops mobile phones coding computers until she’s 6 talk me out of that why is it so important that children why do you spend energy time investment going to schools writing I

32:57 imagine you have to write curriculum for this because it’s not really been done before you have to create a course so to speak like what drives you and why is it so important to you that children learn at such a young age I think I believe you start at 10 maybe a bit younger but what is what is it well there are different reasons for that right first of all I believe in use TCH the right way because you can’t just Al that’s just my own

33:27 personal opinion right um I can’t restrict my daughter from using Tech right from using from wanting a smartphone at some point and these kind of things they see it on in school with their friends and these kind of things and you usually Al I think I would just risk her being bullied or something like that if she hasn’t has no things like that and even worse Maybe in school they need a computer for whatever reason and she

33:59 doesn’t know how to use it so that’s the first thing out of a protective approach why I think at least my my daughter for example should have at least some digital background that’s the first aspect the second one is why am I doing this funly interestingly that also just happened uh a few years ago and when I thought back why I’m doing this I recognized that while uh especially when I talked with my own parents they told me and I remembered then as well

34:36 that I used or that I wanted to become a teacher at in kindergarten for example I always knew that I wanted to be that and um I just forgot about it I became a developer found the startups these kind of things and then it somehow automatically brought me back to this it’s just something that I personally to

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35:00 be fully honest here got a lot of uh I just love it right it gives me a sense of I I don’t want to be like just talking here now purpose and these kind of uh BS again sorry good word no that’s not BS yeah super don’t open overuse it no those things those things that we really want to do no matter how much we tuck them away they’ll always come back and and you know make us want to dig into them so we talked about this in the in

35:33 the in the pre-production chat a little bit that you know there’s a there’s a NASA study back in the day in the 60s they were trying to find kind of the kind of the smartest people or study you know pockets of the smartest people to get the best candidates for NASA it was a study in Divergent thinking it was using what they call the paperclip test you hold up a paperclip how many uses of this paperclip can you can you come up

35:55 with and that’s some measure of kind of this Divergent thinking or essentially like creative thinking right so here’s the good news and the bad news when you’re five years old you’re off the charts like Divergent thinking you can come up with a hundred uses for a paperclip I did it with my son we came up with 60 in the back of a car one day and he was flying off of them right bad news is five years later that capability

36:17 decreases by 50% according to this study five years later another 50% and by the time we’re adults if we don’t cultivate this curiosity this this Divergent thinking we have 2% capability to come up with uses of of a paperclip based on that test so what are some of the cool what are some of the cool interactions you’re getting from these kids when you present this technology mean some of the Nuggets that you get must like blow your

36:45 mind like what are they saying and how are they interacting and how are they responding and how much fun is it that’s I bet they’re amazing um well first of all I have to say that most of these kids are there voluntarily right it’s a very seldom uh Workshop they have to attend so in that sense it’s already those are kids that are generally interested in the topic or at least know after the first day that they don’t want to

37:15 continue that’s that’s the first part but to answer your question I just try to do the same for them as what got me hooked in and that’s to be honest that hacking security these kind of things right and that’s what I see resonates with almost all kids right oh well I know how secure my password is how fast you can hack it these kind of things or how to shut down a PC remotely these kind of things and that usually gets

37:50 them hooked in and in the context of blockchain I mostly refer to control right nobody can take it from them not even their parents not even Austria or some kind of government nobody right their their brother or sister exactly and that that’s something where they start listening a little bit closer and then you go into well if you lose that and security and hacking and um why you can actually use that um where you can

38:23 apply your own creativity for example designing your own nfts um or basically pictures that you then upload to something like the blockchain and that’s basically something that gets them started so basically just uh start with storytelling on the first day as if it’s a five days uh workshop for example and at the end of the day or next day we start looking at smart contracts and what they can do with it and interestingly when

39:00 I do this storytelling I’m often times surprised myself that they come up with use cases that are actually real world use cases for that without me actually listing them as use case parents will hate me for that but for example one thing I would never hate you for sparking my kids creativity man ever yeah well uh maybe you will change your mind in a second well one real world use case for blockchain is

39:41 indeed you know if you think back transparency everything is public nobody can manipulate it and so on it’s a lottery well we don’t want kids to develop lotteries aren’t we but it’s a real world use case and without me listen um showing that as use

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40:02 case I think two project teams last year for example developed a fully working onchain Lottery uh as part of their smart contract project or d project how did one of those things function like what was what was the bit the project that they did tell me like how did people interact with it uh well at the the lottery that I’m thinking about right now for example kids just called a so-called smart contract function basically they just sent some

40:35 cryptocurrency to that smart contract and then there was just a Randomness Factor when you got more back or not so it was really gambling basically and kids kids as well was this using solidity or I I read in your in in the bio about scratch like it a a coding for kids developed by MIT um do you use both of those or uh well there’s an beginners course that’s a scratch that’s what I did uh all the years from the first time I did

41:12 these workshops that’s completely organized managed by coding for kids it’s basically the largest NGO so nonprofit organization in Austria for teaching software development to kids and what did I think two years ago I approached the founder of that organization well let’s offer blockchain workshops right and for now uh we’re still the only company uh the only ones offering these blockchain workshops in collaboration with them and that’s how

41:43 it got started so basically scratch is the beginners Workshop uh we all always did uh basically also this year and blockchain is Advanced Workshop usually too that’s a separate Workshop okay makes sense because blockchain for someone who never saw a single line of code or has any idea about anything is you know um it they’re kids in the end would it that may be a stupid question but for an adult who has zero experience of this would that be a

42:21 better option than would scratch be a better option than just trying to learn or would you recommend just diving in well uh scratch is specifically being engineered for kids um so it’s really you don’t code at all it’s really just building blocks that you drag onto your screen like if that happens this happens and it’s specifically designed to develop games for example so that’s also very appealing for kids obviously and as

42:53 an adult we teach that a lot as well for example this month we are lecturing at the University about blockchain and there obviously you can start right away with that topic um because they understand more complex matters as well right you just should start obviously with things that are not too abstract that give them a rough idea why this is being used why it looks that way what the challenges are what the risks are these kind of things

43:27 um but in general you know I we just need to distinguish between different age groups that’s it awesome okay thank you you look thoughtful Jeremy yeah I’m just it’s it’s really cool um that you know we talked about like one of your catalysts for for this kind of stuff is is is the sparking of creativity not just for you but for for the kids right and storytelling ing storytelling we’ve talked about Mark you and I for a long

43:59 long time is the original technology right um you know beyond that you know language and letters and all of that kind of stuff but you know starting from there I think is super important and you hinted on this Kevin earlier when you talked about you know technology for technology sake right there are a lot of companies and initiatives and even in early web3 and blockchain and even in early AI there’s a lot of money just

44:23 getting chucked at things that just says hey we’re doing this but with AI or we’re doing this on chain here’s 20 million bucks go build your thing and then it’s like wait what is this all for um but starting at the root starting with the application of it uh I think is super important and you know I commend you for what you’re doing it’s a very thoughtful approach that a lot of people don’t consider thank you yeah um in the end it’s you

44:51 know everything falls into place how it should be right um companies that don’t really build something uh of value won’t

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45:00 Prevail in the long term it’s always been that way so um I think it’s just how things are awesome um I’m aware of time and I think it’s we’re gonna have to wrap up in a minute but can I just just change a little bit and speak ask Kevin one more question about something that’s related to language and it’s related to what you’re do and it’s maybe the the the Holy Grail of what you’re doing interoperability and from looking in the

45:37 language or languages seem to be a hurdle a block to that interoperability like how do you think about interoperability personally and how does what’s happening in reality conflict or agree with how you think about interoperability most nft enthusiasts will hate me for that as well um that’s not there’s none of them left anymore it’s okay that’s what Rolling Stone says anyway yeah yeah it it’s not really a use case for blockchain right

46:17 um it may make things in some instance maybe easier to use an nft for ticket for example um because it’s a standard that you can use as a company um that also other companies May understand right there’s nothing that you need to agree on that’s the advantage here and that’s what people usually refer to as interoperability and you see my pronunciation is uh struggling for some words so sorry for that but that’s um in general not a real use

46:55 case because you can all these things solve that problem in a centralized way as well with cheaper developers faster with less risk and that there’s it that’s usually a marketing Play Still most of the time the only Advantage is maybe through all these tools that we have now where you can just click and get an nft that it may be indeed just faster cheaper and easier than the veling a centralized solution so in that regard yes it can make sense but most of

47:32 the time it by itself it’s not a use case well uh yeah interoperability is interesting I’m going to respond to Ninja 1000 on Kick um where’re this is this is a culture and emerging Tech discussion um we’re talking about blockchain and culture and teaching kids uh that kind of stuff um so thanks for thanks for jumping in um yeah interoperability Kevin to me is like it’s like you know oh how can we get so interoperability can mean are we cross

48:03 chain multi-chain like all of that kind of stuff but then it points back to like well hey what what about just a database you know this is a nod to you know blockchain Gandalf right where he’s like you know you don’t need blockchain for that you can a database is better to use right and then we get to talk about the whole quote unquote metaverse interoperability where it’s like if every if if Mark’s building his world

48:26 you’re building your world and I’m building mine it costs five million bucks to each of us our investors are like when are you going to start generating money it’s hard to be like hey I’m gonna share my users with Mark and Kevin that’s okay right investor guys so there’s interoperability has I mean it’s a Grand Vision to have this like Grand Central Station where All Tech comes into it’s like the smart cities you know having one interface for

48:48 all these things to come into you but we’re a little way we’re a little way off I think absolutely in the end it’s a political issue right um companies need to agree to some kind of standard and every standard has advantages and disadvantages and yeah just by Nature blockchain has certain standards that the centralized world not necessarily has and that’s the reason why some people refer to it as as use case but yeah absolutely with you awesome well

49:20 this uh this has been a great discussion I’m I I can’t wait to dig in uh more into the content that you’re doing with coding for kids and blockchain and and storytelling driven uh technology instruction I think it’s I think it’s awesome um Mark any closing thoughts before we wrap up no just let everyone know that I’ll be doing a full write up um on thinking on paper. XYZ after this with some show notes and links apologies if some people

49:49 are watching this on replay we had a problem with LinkedIn and the timing issue so um the irony of an emerging Tech podcast having problems with tech is not lost on us so apologies for that

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50:02 but we’ll do our best to make sure you get the full show afterwards 100% yeah also a quick quick shout out to our friends at Ripple again w r i p p if you got a fourth quarter budget uh opening up you know some stuff left over you got some tasks some new initiatives you can lean on those guys for quick and effective uh marketing help those guys are great send them a note at client team at ripple.com with a W it’s been

50:28 great Kevin thanks for joining us yes one more Mark go ahead I got one question sorry completely forgot so you can’t see it but in front of me there is a wall and that’s where I practice my handstands so at some point Kevin in the next few days can can we just have like a LinkedIn chat about what I’m doing wrong and what I’m doing right with my handstands and how I get better thank you let’s just do a hand push-up off

50:50 I’ll go on the wall back here I’m not joking I’m not joking I’m good 15 I think maybe that’s good that’s very good sure yeah that’s a follow-up show my friend thank you so much for joining us thank you for joining out there in the our disruptors and curious minds you can always find us at www. thinking onp paper. XYZ we’re up on YouTube and this will be on Spotify as well thanks for joining us see you next time see you

51:20 next time thank you thank you