(I'm kidding, but I'm sure someone has a pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startup 
    about to disrupt topography using either AI, blockchain, or both.)

Well, there was that plan to use scores of nuclear bombs to alter the geography of Egypt in such a way that the Mediterranean could be drained into the Qattara Basin [1]. I think the story is somewhat well-known now, but it proves, at least, that pie-in-the-sky geoengineering startups are not a phenomenon unique to the 21st century. And given that nuclear bombs essentially were the blockchain of the 1950s, that is altogether unsurprising.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qattara_Depression_Project#Fri...