New Educational Book “Blockchain for Babies,” Releases But It Isn’t What You Think

The ways that parents have worked to occupy their children over the years has evolved. Back in the 19^th century, mothers in Birmingham without someone to watch their children would bring their children to work and use specially-made garments to hang them up on hooks that kept them away from trouble. They would even use “soothing medications,” which were basically another form of heroin, to keep them quiet and calm. However, Chris Ferrie, a faculty member at Sydney University’s Centre for Quantum Software in 2019, believes that there is a chance of teaching them about blockchain in the process.

The idea is admittedly strange. However, the concept is no falsehood, titled Blockchain for Babies. The 12-page book is available in hardback for $7.66, using language that is understandable at that level to describe the necessary details that people need to know about the technology.

Speaking to Decrypt, Ferrie said,

“The intention isn’t that the child comes away from the book and runs an ICO.”

Instead, they are meant to be part of the collection of similar books that Ferrie has already written, like Quantum Physics for Babies, General Relativity for Babies, Rocket Science for Babies, and Newtonian Physics for Babies.

To figure out what part of the whole industry that he would settle in on, Ferrie went for the “Merkle-tree ledger,” which is essentially the whole data structure that makes the transactions into blocks. Describing the book, the Decrypt writer named Ben Munster described his view of the book, from the position of an adult instead of a newborn.

Munster said,

“It starts with a picture of a ball, which I get. Then it says the ball can be bought for a coin, which I also get. Then it says the coin is now “invisible,” which I take to mean it’s On the Blockchain, but I only get that because I write about this stuff every day, unlike the majority of babies. Then it explains how blocks of transactions slot together like jigsaw puzzles, with fraudulent transactions unable to fit, which is a nice conceit.”

This book is not quite satire, but it is clearly meant for the average consumer that wants to understand blockchain at a different level from a perspective they normally would not see. There probably will not be any baby Einstein’s developing the next crypto platform or partnering with the likes of IBM, but maybe we’ll have at least a few people prepared for blockchain’s progress in 20 years.