Everybody lies?

For the craved Dr. House there was no doubt. And technological innovations seem to prove him right. If you study the blockchain technology applications that are disrupting the business world, all seem oriented to answer the different lies or deceptions established and specific to each economic sector.

It all started with the cryptocurrencies that emerged as a defensive reaction to the financial institutions trickery that led to the 2008 crisis. Independently of the final success of one virtual currency or another, they have undoubtedly given the kiss of death to the world’s second–oldest profession (allegedly).

And every day we discover blockchain proposals and solutions presented to protect us from many other lies: inaccurate sales figures, faulty polls, phony university diplomas, invented professional experiences, authentic spare parts that are not original, expensive drugs that are falsified, garments and accessories of exclusive brands but smuggled, the Rioja bottle filled with an adulterated wine, untruthful claims to collect compensation, fake but verified masterpieces, new second-hand cars with odometer rigged and a missing accidents history, food quality products of a dubious origin, cooked identity documents, statistics or accounting entries …, to name only a few.

In those cases, the figures used to support the blockchain development and the disruption of these industries are amazing. Perhaps not everybody lies, but deception reaches considerable proportions and there is no way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Encrypted information and distributed on thousands of servers and the automatically executed “smarts contracts” commanded by inviolable lines of code seem bound to become the new law enforcement authority.

Those of us working with this technology do not hesitate to consider it exciting given the geniality of the concept. It is also true that no professionals or economic industries can ignore it without risking being left behind or marginalized. But it is somewhat disturbing to replace trust in personal relationships and handshakes by the reliability of a programming language.

It is scary to imaging a society in which the commitment to the given word is never assumed anymore.