TCP/IP, HTTP, the browser, search, social, mobile, and blockchains.
I know that it's got something to do with Bitcoin, but have no idea what a blockchain is. Wikipedia only references it in a link to blockchain.info, which talks about blocks but not blockchains. Nobody I've asked can explain it to me either.
If it's such a massive innovation (is it?), what is it, and why isn't it easy to discover what it is?
"Integral to Bitcoin is a sequential record of all transactions known as the block chain. There is only one block chain, and it records bitcoin ownership both present and at all points in the past. By keeping a record of all transactions, the block chain mitigates double-spending, a core design challenge of digital currency. Approximately every ten minutes a new bundle of transactions, called a block, is added to the block chain."
If you need a more in depth explanation, which also covers how this relates to a famous problem in distributed systems (the Byzantine Generals Problem), see: http://expectedpayoff.com/blog/2013/03/22/bitcoin-and-the-by...
Computers all over the world are competing to extend the block chain by solving a problem involving cryptographic hashes. The reward for solving the problem is that a wallet controlled by the machine that does it can claim a Bitcoin reward. The reward is currently, I believe, 25btc --- but it's scheduled to drop over time; eventually to zero, at which point, miners will have to be compensated by claiming transaction fees.
The upshot is that Bitcoin has a system for maintaining a single, global log which is consistent across all connected Bitcoin clients. And while Bitcoin itself uses this as a transaction ledger, there are plenty of other things you might want to use this construct for once you have it. Namecoin, for instance, uses a Bitcoin-like block chain to manage a DNS-like naming scheme.
(There are some weaknesses to the design: most notably, if a single party has more than half the mining compute capacity, they're able to pull off all sorts of chicanery against the community as a whole...)
I'd say that JavaScript should be on that list -- not that I like JavaScript, but a scripting language in support of DOM was an important piece of work.
Other trends are big data, deep learning.. i bet deep learning will me much more revolutionary.. But you know SV have a love affair with hypes
1: https://www.namecoin.org/ 2: https://www.ethereum.org/ 3: http://protoshares.net/