If you haven't already seen the classic movie "The Wizard of Oz," I highly recommend it. It's entertaining and instructive. Its lessons remain applicable today -- they can even teach us about the amazing Blockchain technology that is poised to transform so many industries, solve so many long-intractable problems, and that is attracting such massive attention and investment.
The Movie
Dorothy, along with her dog Toto, you may recall, is swept up from her home in Kansas by a tornado, and eventually comes to earth in the land of Oz.(Credit.)
It's quite a place, populated by witches and munchkins, among others. The good witch of the North, Glinda, tells Dorothy that the wonderful wizard of Oz may be able to help her get home, so she sets out on the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, where he presides. Along the way she meets the Scarecrow who needs a brain, the Tin Woodman who desires a heart and the Cowardly Lion who needs courage. The four of them join forces to ask the wonderful Wizard's help.
The Wizard promises to help them all -- but only if they bring him the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West. So off they go and confront the Witch.
Eventually they defeat the Witch and bring her Broomstick back to the Wizard's palace. They walk down the intimidating hall
Until they reach the Wizard's throne.
Gathering up their courage, they present the broomstick to the terrifying Wizard...
and ask that he fulfill his promise to them.
The Wizard stalls. Meanwhile, Toto the dog, noticing something, pulls aside a curtain and reveals a man talking into a microphone. It's the real Wizard: the Great and Awful Wizard of Oz is just an ordinary man!
Dorothy confronts him. He admits he's just an ordinary man, and a humbug at that.
He gives the Scarecrow a diploma, the Lion a medal and the Tin Man a heart-shaped ticking watch, helping them see that the attributes they sought were already within them. He offers to take Dorothy and Toto home in his hot air balloon. Then there's a mishap, and he leaves without her!
The story ends happily, because the good witch intervenes, and shows Dorothy how to return home under her own power, repeating three times "There's no place like home."
Blockchain
What can the Wizard of Oz possibly have to do with the marvelous emerging technology of Blockchain, which is set fo transform so many domains that are badly in need of help?
The movie has amazing lessons for us. I can't spell them all out in a single blog post. Here's a start:
Dorothy is stranded in a strange place and doesn't know how to get home. People who run financial systems have problems like lengthy settlement times that aren't getting solved.
Dorothy meets other people in the strange place who also have serious problems. People in other domains, like healthcare, have long-standing problems like EMR interchange that aren't getting solved.
The Good Witch tells Dorothy that the Wizard of Oz can help her get home. Authoritative people tell us that Blockchain can solve those problems.
Dorothy travels a long way to the Emerald City with her friends to ask the Wizard's help. After lots of work, people commit to the money and effort of a Blockchain trial.
The Wizard tells Dorothy that she has to bring the Wicked Witch's broomstick before he'll help them. Blockchain experts explain all the work we have to go through to get a test that has a reasonable chance of success.
Dorothy and her friends go through battles to get the broomstick, finally killing the Wicked Witch to get it. After lots of money and time and experts, a trial is finally underway.
Dorothy and her friends approach the Wizard and ask him to do what he promised. The sponsors of the blockchain project insist on results.
Toto pulls back the curtain, and reveals that, far from having amazing powers, the great and awful Wizard is just an ordinary man, and a humbug at that. The sponsors finally see that Blockchain solves no problems and is worse in every way than a normal DBMS.
The Wizard makes nice words that make her friends feel better, and after promising to solve Dorothy's problem, abandons her. Blockchain can't do much of anything, outside the context of Bitcoin, and when it appears to "work," the results are awful.
Glinda the Witch tells Dorothy to close her eyes, tap her heels and say the words three times. She wakes up in her bed in Kansas. Her relatives think she's had a dream. The Blockchain executives quietly let the project fade away. They do their best to calm their minds, refuse to admit defeat, and go back to their normal lives.
Conclusion
The world of Blockchain is indeed like the Wizard of Oz. While you're "in" the movie, you're convinced it's real, and so is everyone around you. When you wake up, you're back in normal life and understandably reluctant to think the amazing experiences you've had were "just a dream." But everyone else knows that's all it was. A dream that seemed good at the time, but turned out to be, yes, a bad dream. See this for a fact-based dissection of the bad dream.
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