Retro Revival
"What on Earth is this?", the boss yelled, as he stormed into the office clutching a pencil that had a metre of paper tape trailing from it, a paper clip, and then another metre of paper tape trailing from that.
"It's the result of your demanding we introduce blockchain to our systems"
"Eh?"
"The only practical application was in procurement, so they might better track the company's assets"
"Yes, yes, but that still doesn't explain the tidal wave of bunting that is hanging off of everything I see"
"Well, to implement blockchain in any meaningful manner, we had to be able to identify each element individually and also encode its entire history into its identifier. And that identifier is printed onto the paper tape. I'll show you. Let me have the pencil."
"Gladly, here."
"I'll just run it through the reader and..... and .... hey presto, That pencil was bought from Pencils r Us under the PO number 451225425 on 12/07/16. Authorised by Mrs Simms and delivered on 18/07/16 as part of a consignment of 1000 pencils. It was stored in "goods in" until 30/09/16 until it was...."
"Yes, yes" the boss wearily interrupted "I see, and what of the other length of paper tape, what's that for?"
"Well the paper tape is equally an asset and so it too requires a blockchain identifier, which we cleverly managed to incorporate the asset of the paperclip and itself into, to prevent mindless iteration"
"In what possible sense can we justify this?"
"Well, seeing as every asset carries its own history we have removed the need to store that information on the servers, however that cost saving is dwarfed by the processor upgrades required to generate the blockchain code"
As his hunched over form shuffled toward the door I quickly stopped him in his tracks. "Hold on boss, you need this" and I handed him another length of paper tape.
"What?"
"It's the new blockchain for the pencil, with the latest status update encoded in"
As he disappeared down the corridor I turned to smile at the PFY, who was already grinning ear to ear.
"I think our recently formed company might get dissolved very soon" I knowingly murmured.
"Yes, Punched Paper Tape r Us seems to have had its day once more, but what a gloriously enriching revival it was."
"The only question now is, do we put the profits into Bitcoin or a good old fashioned offshore tax haven?"
Biting the hand that feeds IT
