The Truth Machine

The Blockchain and the Future of Everything

By: Michael J Casey, Paul Vigna

Narrated by: Sean Runnette

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

"Views differ on bitcoin, but few doubt the transformative potential of Blockchain technology. The Truth Machine is the best book so far on what has happened and what may come along. It demands the attention of anyone concerned with our economic future." (Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus at Harvard, former Treasury Secretary)

From Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna, the authors of The Age of Cryptocurrency, comes the definitive audiobook on the Internet’s Next Big Thing: The Blockchain.

Big banks have grown bigger and more entrenched. Privacy exists only until the next hack. Credit card fraud is a fact of life. Many of the “legacy systems” once designed to make our lives easier and our economy more efficient are no longer up to the task. Yet there is a way past all this - a new kind of operating system with the potential to revolutionize vast swaths of our economy: the blockchain.

In The Truth Machine, Michael J. Casey and Paul Vigna demystify the blockchain and explain why it can restore personal control over our data, assets, and identities; grant billions of excluded people access to the global economy; and shift the balance of power to revive society’s faith in itself. They reveal the disruption it promises for industries including finance, tech, legal, and shipping. Casey and Vigna expose the challenge of replacing trusted (and not-so-trusted) institutions on which we’ve relied for centuries with a radical model that bypasses them.

The Truth Machine reveals the empowerment possible when self-interested middlemen give way to the transparency of the blockchain, while highlighting the job losses, assertion of special interests, and threat to social cohesion that will accompany this shift. With the same balanced perspective they brought to The Age of Cryptocurrency, Casey and Vigna show why listeners must care about the path that blockchain technology takes - moving humanity forward, not backward.

©2018 Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey (P)2018 Macmillan Audio

Informative and inspiring.

From start to finish, I am inspired. History through opportunity this book was a perfect launch pad.

Very interesting but sprinkled with politics

An extremely interesting book about this new technology but unfortunately it's sprinkled with left wing politics, and I don't appreciate it. 3 minutes into the 10th chapter I had to turn it off. I would recommend it if you can get passed the point of view of the authors.

Wouldn't shut up about Trump = "Fake News"

I'm sick of listening to the authors bellyaching over Trump (who I didn't vote for).


Voting
Hashgraph/blockchain could impact this which is why Hashgraph is funding a free and fair voting initiative.

As someone who studied microprocessor (computer) design in college... I don't trust the current electronic voting machines or any machine that there is central access by "officials". I've heard enough evidence to believe that both machines and officials are compromised. Still, there is a limit before it becomes undeniable that fraud is occurring.

My observations (as a neutral observer) was that if anything, there was Democratic voter fraud in large counties like Miami-Dade and states like Michigan - but not enough to overcome Trump's lead.

The proof is the difference in social media videos of Trump and Hillary rallies vs. the mainstream news footage. The media refused to pan the news cameras at Trump rallies with the exception of one time when Trump publically challenged the camera operator to do it.


Legacy Mainstream Media
The author's have a faith in legacy mainstream media that borders on delusion. They don't seem to understand that complexity and diversity of news sources make it MORE likely that Truth well be DISCOVERABLE. Truth will ALWAYS be a minority position. Most people HATE the truth and still actively avoid it. If the author's vision of filtering out the "mess" and only allowing official sources becomes reality, then we might as well go back to the Dark Ages.


Hashgraph
The authors didn't mention Swirlds/Hedera Hashgraph which in my opinion solved all the issues that the other Distributed Ledger/Blockchain efforts are years away from solving (if ever).

Note: Swirlds (for "Shared Worlds") may not have publicly announced Hashgraph at the time of publication so the authors may not have been aware of Hashgraph. Swirlds was focused on working with permissioned customers like the Credit Unions (they beat IBM's HyperLedger).

Swirlds' approach is focused on the Enterprise and reminds me of Microsoft vs. Linux in the 1990s. Swirlds patented their consensus layer algorithm and formed the Hedera governance organization which amongst other duties will legally fight to protect the public open and source-code-reviewable Hashgraph network from forking with copycats. Hedera operates like a Trust Layer to the Internet.

Thoroughly researched. Full of information.

I sought out this book hoping to learn more about how blockchain technology works. The author did a good job of expounding on the opportunities this technology offers. I have a much clearer understanding of how blockchain works and some of the drawbacks. The author has a vast knowledge of the history and current state of blockchain and I really appreciated getting an insider’s viewpoint.

This book was exhaustively researched and has a huge amount of information in it. I was mightily impressed with his thoroughness.

I especially enjoyed his discussion of how blockchain could be used to keep any information (not just currency) safe. The potential for uncrackable privacy is exciting. I’m really hopeful that the world may have found a solution that will help reduce theft and disruption through dispersal of information. It’s an ingenious solution: make the data so hard to find and collect that it becomes cost prohibitive to steal.

There are so many uses for this technology and I was mightily impressed with the author’s thorough research of all the players and all the different incubator projects and companies working in the blockchain world. He really plumbed the depths of all the work going on right now.

Casey did a fine job of showing all the many different ways blockchain could be implemented. I never knew there were so many uses for this technology or that it is being utilized for non-financial purposes in industries such as shipping, manufacturing, construction, retail, government and dozens of other sectors. He waxes on endlessly about how blockchain technology is the cure for all that ails the world. It gets a bit tiring at times, but I do find his pie-eyed enthusiasm somewhat endearing.

I particularly enjoyed his discussion on how blockchain could be used to improve the problem of personal identification. This is a huge problem in the developing world and there are some fascinating new ideas for detaching the system of identification from governments and big business.

There was so much good about this book, but unfortunately, the author is such a fanboy that he tends to gloss over criticisms of the technology. He continually makes summary judgments on the nefariousness of the major institutions of the world: all governments are out to control us, all corporations are evil, all those with power are greedy, etc. There are good and bad things about these entities and his heavy-handed dismissal of these institutions got a bit tiring.

I can appreciate his libertarian mindset but it tends to blind him to the finer points of the opportunities and drawbacks of blockchain. The characters and institutions in the book tend to be portrayed as either heroes or villains. Casey pays less attention to the gray areas that are the most interesting components of this debate.

Case in point: he dismisses the entire advertising industry as a greedy manipulator hellbent on mind control. Sure, there’s a lot of annoying advertising, but that advertising bankrolls free access to content. He’s so busy blasting authority that he neglects to explain how average people will pay for content if advertising goes away.

He touched on this briefly, but I wish he had spent more time explaining the downside of blockchain, for example: crime. It seems as though cryptocurrency has been a catalyst for scammers, drug dealers, oligarchs and all the evildoers in the world.

Blockchain cuts out middlemen, distributes power and increases efficiency. This is fantastic as long as the people using the system have upright intentions. But what happens when those with nefarious purposes are given an uncrackable, highly flexible tool that can effortlessly move funds and resources across borders without a trace? It’s going to bring a whole new level of creativity and efficiency to activities such as extortion, bribery, corruption, drugs and a spate of other crimes.

Our current financial system has a lot of downside, but it does attempt to curtail the villains of the world. I was hoping for a more balanced discussion of this issue. His rose-colored glasses kept him from a frank analysis of some very thorny problems we’ll need to work out. I get it, free markets are great, but there’s a real downside to them too. I felt as though a deeper understanding of this issue conflicted with his worldview.

Unfortunately, the reader's performance was quite wooden. I think this book would have been better had a different reader been used.

I’m really glad I read this book. It was a bit tedious to get through, but I learned so much.

This book is a good overview of blockshains.

The author says it is a libertarian view of blockshains and crypto currencies but it is actually a very liberal political view and that was unnecessary. The performer sounds like he is pissed off all through the book.

Decent blockchain book

This a was a decent follow up book to the authors previous blockchain book. The authors are clearly Bitcoin Maximalists so they repeatedly point to Bitcoin Lightning Network as a solution for all. Unfortunately, the authors couldn’t stop bringing up politics and their anti-Trump leanings.

Political Bias knocking President Trump

The authors’ smug negative evaluation of the President throughout the book was annoying and unnecessary

No denying the future

Okay so I firmly believe we are headed in a direction at a lot fast pace now than ever in human history and the blockchain is the vessel to guide us there. With or without this book there is no denying this fact after wrapping your mind around it. Some amazing some dark, that comes with every invention. But this can be of great honest use between us and machine.

Great book

loved it. read it twice. I need another one like it. the truth machine. thanks

Got it, Trump bad.

can't wait for the next book that also dives into how Biden & Hillary are liars without providing any comment on the validity of the claim. Got it Trump bad. lol.