The Chicken Machine🐔: ~Revisited!~

"Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything."
- George Lois -

I had a pleasant surprise yesterday.

Steemian @ausbitbank alerted me to the fact that one of my older Steemit articles had just shown up on Hacker News. You can find the Hacker News submission here.

I wrote the article a couple of years ago. It is, of course, still on Steemit. You can see it here:

"How I Made A Chicken Play Tic-Tac-Toe🐔 - A True Story"

It's a pretty cool story in its own right, and I am grateful that a few more people have now had a chance to read it.

BTW, if you aren't already familiar with @ausbitbank's SteemVis "ViewSource" utility, I can't recommend it enough. It is one of my "go-to" Steemit tools.

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A Chicken? Seriously? ~ Image courtesy of Idella Maeland

In that Hacker News thread,

contributor Simon_says began a discussion of Steemit as follows:

"I can't believe steemit is still a thing."

Well, that took me off guard, and as I continued to read it became clear to me that the author was laboring under some severe misunderstandings of the value of Steemit and what it is all about.

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Don't Stop The Carnival... ~ Image courtesy of Tim Gouw

What was he confused about?

I'll let him tell you in his own words.

"1) When I looked at it closely a couple years ago, all of the stories and all of the discussion were about proselytizing steemit. I would love to see a non-censorious version of reddit, but that place is so boring and self-referential. I took a brief look just now and my complaints are just as valid today. It's not a healthy ecosystem if everyone is just there for the money."

"2) The business model seems nuts. I could never figure out how value was created or where the money came from other than suckers buying in, and there's going to be a limited supply of those. It just seems like a ponzi scheme with more steps. (Note, I don't necessarily feel this way about all cryptocurrencies; steemit's business model is just particularly nonsensical.)"

Can you see what I mean?

Hacker News contributor Simon_says had to be missing some rather important facts about Steemit. Maybe he was only checking the trending page? Or listening to FUD about Steemit from others on the web?

I responded in strong defense of Steemit:

A quick glance at the Steemit "front page" today (https://steempeak.com/) pretty strongly counters this assertion. Lots of art, photos, travel, music, etc.

Not at all what I would classify as "self-referential."

Perhaps you were only looking at the "Trending" page?
It's far better to see Steemit raw. Steempeak is a nice interface.

To understand the business model for any functional currency (STEEM, BTS, Bitcoin, etc.) you need to understand that the true source of wealth is not something external.

Wealth derives from the human soul. Jesus said "What would a man give in exchange for his soul?" Much later, R. Buckminster Fuller observed that wealth is our ability to "live into the future" and it is entirely based on the application of human thought/ingenuity to raw material resources.

Steemit (as any other viable, useful currency) is a "wealth magnet" that transfers existing human capital out of corrupt, inflationary fiat currencies (e.g. $USD) because it is a superior store of value and medium of exchange.

One of STEEM's greatest claims to fame is that it is a (reasonably) stable currency that is free to use and frictionless. Built on a Graphene blockchain, STEEM enables any holder to transfer wealth anywhere in the world, in a matter seconds, with no fees, no hoops to jump through, no questions asked. What other financial instruments can claim as much? And STEEM is tradable on major exchanges, decentralized and otherwise.

Furthermore, as a social media platform, Steemit provides a potentially perpetual free internet archive for content creators. You don't have to secure a domain name; you don't have to pay perpetual fees to maintain your work. The fact that the blockchain not only holds your content, but is the basis for a financial ecosystem, makes its self-perpetuation far more likely than your "average" public site (think Geocities, etc.).

BTW, I am the author of the Chicken article and I would be happy to address any specific questions about the machine and how I created it. Furthermore, you can see an example of what I mean by the archival nature of Steemit by visiting my Steemit Library:

@creatr/b

That my Chicken Machine article is still around two years after I wrote it, at no expense to me, is testimony to the value of the platform in my eyes.

I hope this helps explain the present and ongoing value of Steemit. It most assuredly may not be trivially dismissed as a nonsensical "Ponzi scheme" that "suckers" buy into."

Where does this FUD come from?

Obviously, we need to set people straight any time such baloney is propagated.

_FIN

The Chicken Machine In Action ~ Courtesy of clockworkmonkey

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P.S. If you have an "in" with anybody at Steemit, Inc. - Would you please ask them to get rid of these damn, extremely annoying "off-website" arrow/boxes? The have, overnight, made Steemit ugly. There are much better solutions.

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Thanks for your time and attention.
You are why I'm here on Steemit!
I have very eclectic interests and hope, over time, to write about them all.