The magic of human abstraction shapes our lives profoundly, and I’ve been thinking about how it will shape our digital future. As I watch my children grow up, I dream of a world where technology amplifies freedom rather than constrains it. They deserve a digital landscape built on privacy, accountability, transparency, and hope. Open source protocols and software enable this vision, while walled gardens offer a much darker path.
This isn’t just idealistic thinking. From the moment we’re born, we’re engaged in a battle of ideas, a kind of memetic warfare that shapes our perceptions and beliefs. As humans, we’re uniquely equipped for this challenge through our mirror neurons and, more importantly, our extraordinary capacity for abstraction.
When we allow centralized, top-down systems to prevail, a small group profits at the expense of the many. In contrast, open systems create a future where innovation flows like water, finding every crack and crevice of possibility. It’s the difference between a garden with walls that keep people out and a commons that grows richer with every contributor. This is how we ensure technology serves everyone, not just a privileged few. A rising tide lifts all ships.
This ability to abstract, to represent complex ideas through symbols, makes us truly remarkable. It’s the foundation of everything that defines human civilization: our languages, our tools, our planning abilities, even our money. But perhaps the most mind-bending example is happening right now as you read this: I’m pressing keys that represent thoughts, which get converted into binary code (mere 0s and 1s), transmitted across vast networks, and then reassembled into meaning in your mind. And yet most of us never even stop to smell the roses and let that sink in.
The very act of you reading these words demonstrates multiple layers of abstraction working in perfect harmony. I’m sitting here, typing on my keyboard, and through the miracle of abstraction, my thoughts are traveling across space and time to connect with you over this medium (pun intended). F***, THAT IS AMAZING!!!
This is why platforms like Nostr matter. They represent humanity’s grand tradition of using abstraction to create freedom. At its core, Nostr is elegantly simple: a protocol that lets people communicate freely across the internet using cryptographic keys. It’d like having a digital signature that’s uniquely yours. Through a network of relays, messages can be broadcast publicly, like in a town square, or privately like a whispered conversation but in someones DMs.
As digital spaces increasingly shape our reality, we must choose platforms and technologies that respect this duality our need to speak freely in public while maintaining the right to private conversation. Nostr embodies this balance between connection and sovereignty because anyone can run a relay and you don’t have to rely on someone’s else machine to connect with others if you don’t want to.
Every time I contemplate this cascade of abstractions that makes modern communication possible, it still blows my mind. It should blow yours too because understanding this power is the first step toward using it wisely.
Now let’s talk about money. Traditional banking isn’t just complex it’s a system where your money’s movement depends on political whims and shifting alliances.
Bitcoin offers something different: a neutral network where code, not politics, sets the rules. Where families can support each other without asking for permission. Where your savings can’t be diluted by printing presses working overtime.
We need financial systems that answer to mathematics, not mandates. Where rules are transparent, not subject to closed-door decisions.
When governments turn money into a weapon, they don’t just attack wealth, they attack human connection itself.
What if instead of letting politicians decide who can send what to whom, we embraced a protocol where rules are clear, supply is fixed, and access is universal? That would be much better for all of humanity.
If we combine Bitcoin and Nostr to make more permissionless ways to spend, send, communicate, and enjoy each other, well as I said earlier a rising tide lefts all ships.
2/12/25
Conor Jay Chepe
