How Blockchain is Impacting Learning and Future Of Work

Over the years, technology has become a form of pedagogy, influencing the way we learn and work. This decade, we saw hyped adoption of blockchain technology across industries and people -?yes, from tracking of goods in a supply chain to cryptocurrencies, and to education. Blockchain is known for fostering a trusted ecosystem by creating decentralized business models leveraging peer-to-peer transactions. This article evaluates how industries blockchain adoption is impacting our work life and personal life.

Impact on Industry: Blockchain is seen as a potential innovation driver creating new business models that could impact organizational efficiencies in various ways and lead to higher productivity. For example, Trust Your Supplier – a blockchain global network that provides a trusted digital passport for suppliers to work with buyers is known to cut down onboarding costs by more than 50%. Increased transparency and provenance create a new form of trust not known until now. As an example, the IBM Food Trust ecosystem of producers, suppliers, manufacturers, retailers, transporters, and others creates a smarter, safer, more sustainable food system for all. Novel applications including secure and immediate transfer of value are creating new economic models.

On the negative side, industries continue to create unclear hype around use cases that cause heavy financial losses for investors. The Initial Coin Offering (ICO) scams in 2018 are examples of these scams.?Regulatory compliance for many blockchain applications is still evolving and challenging. Real estate tokenization is a promising domain, where regulations are yet to catch up.?Technology challenges including scalability and maturity of the platform continue to concern businesses.

Impact on Work-Life:?Increased efficiency and reduction of routine work is increasing the need for skilled labor while reducing the need for routine labor. Improved transparency and sharing of data with control can create a greater sense of data security for employees’ records - a trusted source of truth for employers for verifying and delivering credentials such as career history, educational background, and accreditations.?Individuals can use a designated digital credential wallet app on their local device to connect with credential issuers to claim and later share their career-related records. This increased control will reduce employment record fraud, improves the transparency of records, and enable faster and lower-cost transcript sharing among universities.

Micro Certification is another result of such refined verifiable credential sharing technology. This non-traditional learning allows students to gain skill sets in a specific subject, receive a credential, and get hired immediately unlike wait until a multi-year program is completed. This allows students to take only the classes that are required immediately and push off other classes until needed.

Impact on Private Life: One of the great advantages of blockchain technology known as democratization - the ability to enable secure collaboration among multiple parties from a set of decentralized data without individuals giving out control of data. Democratization creates newer ways of doing business with improved data privacy for citizens.?Similarly, tokenizing ownership rights creates access to larger financial markets for savvy citizens, and improved traceability will reduce fraud. On the negative side, the digital gap will continue to widen, and potential financial losses may occur due to newer scams.

The World Economic Forum report estimates 10% of global GDP will be stored on blockchains by 2027. Many industry leaders see blockchain as a “blueprint for a new economy.” Dan Tapscott mentions it as a “revolution.” Blockchain will take years to transform business, education, and the workplace, but the journey has already begun.