Blockchain — The Holy Grail for Information Transmission over both Time and Space.

In his excellent essay The Tyranny of Now, @roughtype investigates the work of Canadian media theorist Harold Innis and how it relates to us today.

What Innis saw is that some media are particularly good at transporting information across space, while others are particularly good at transporting it through time. Some are space-biased while others are time-biased. Each medium’s temporal or spatial emphasis stems from its material qualities. Time-biased media tend to be heavy and durable. They last a long time, but they are not easy to move around.

Up until now, time optimisation and space optimisation have always been a zero sum tradeoff. However, measuring Blockchain along both of these opposing axes reveals something very revolutionary about blockchain.

Space Bias of Blockchain

Space-biased media, according to Innis, are well-suited for transmitting information across large distances but tend to be ephemeral. They are easily distributed and support administrative or imperial expansion. Examples include radio, television, and print.

Blockchain strongly embodies this space bias:

• It is decentralized and borderless, allowing information (transactions, contracts, data) to propagate across vast distances instantly.
• The internet and cryptographic protocols enable nodes worldwide to verify and share the same ledger in real time.
• It resists central control, much like highly effective space-biased media that enable widespread coordination.

Time Bias of Blockchain

Time-biased media are durable, preserving information across generations but often lacking ease of distribution. Examples include stone inscriptions and religious manuscripts.

Blockchain also excels here:

• The immutability of blockchain ensures that once data is recorded, it remains accessible indefinitely (as long as the network persists).
• Cryptographic integrity and decentralization protect it from tampering, making it a robust tool for historical record-keeping.
• The incentive structures (such as mining/staking) reinforce its long-term sustainability.

The Holy Grail: Mastering Both Dimensions

Blockchain’s ability to combine space-bias and time-bias is indeed remarkable. Traditionally, media tend to lean toward one or the other — fast but ephemeral (radio, social media) or slow but enduring (hieroglyphs, manuscripts). Blockchain, however, achieves the paradox of being both:

• It is as widely distributable and immediate as any digital medium.
• It is as permanent and resilient as the most durable time-biased media.

This duality makes blockchain unprecedented. An evolution beyond the time/space dichotomy — a technology that fuses information durability with global accessibility.