A series by daography.eth and irtimid.eth
About you:
If you want your half baked views about Web3 to be challenged, this series may be for you.
If you think that the “financialisation-of-everything” is a castrating viewpoint, this series may be for you.
If you like longform shit-posting, this series may be for you.
About us:
We have been dabbling in the world of “crypto” for ten years, initially attracted by the anarcho-libertarian innovative ethos of the early Bitcoin community (not unlike Web1 circa 1993), we stayed on for the effervescent tinkering spirit of what is now the Web3 fam.
While we have personally (modestly) benefited from the hyper-financialisation of the blockchain world, we think finance is to Web3 what porn was to Web1 -the fuel which drives initial adoption- we want here to broaden the discussion.
This series of articles/papers will attempt to clarify for ourselves and the community the question:
What is Web3?
Web3 is a catch-all term for concerted efforts to make the Internet more decentralized by enabling applications to run on public blockchains.
The definition is elusive, but the term builds on the view that there has been a distinctive evolution in the types of websites, applications, content and social interactions on the Web, from its early days (Web1) through when its usage became widespread, commercial, dynamic, and gave use User Generated Content platforms like Facebook and YouTube (Web2).
Introduction
Web3 is brimming with energy and creativity. Whether that is for the right reasons and is positive for our digital societies is up for us to decide. The ship has not yet sailed.
Understanding what fuels this enthusiasm and what the current and potential effects of Web3 are, is the subject of this series of articles. The articles focus mainly on exploring the techno-social system at the heart of the Web3 movement – Ethereum. It looks at the complex interactions between humans, technology and their environment in the context of the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond.
Web3 is starting to influence the way we think about money, global coordination of people and resources, energy consumption and waste, software development and applied cryptography, privacy, Internet culture, digital ownership and identity. Each of these will be explored in the upcoming articles. The series is composed of multiple articles each part of one of four chapters, namely:
Values of Web3: trying to remain a bazaar.
On finance: pooling together.
On coordination: Internet-enabled global coordination games.
On digital ownership: data integrity and public visibility.
The main goal of these articles, beyond providing a descriptive analysis of Web3, is to show that the space is rich but still in flux. As a family of technologies and as a movement, Web3 can still –in fact ought to– be shaped in a number of ways to ensure that its potential for social good is maximized and that the risks it introduces are understood and minimised.
It is during those “generative moments” at the birth and early development of technologies, that we can see different paths. Paths with different opportunities and challenges that begin with the acknowledgment of existing problems in our societies.
Building the right thing
Web3 started as a movement to address a number of wicked problems, that is problems that seem intractable due to the complex (often socio-cultural) interdependencies that they entail. Economic inequality is one example of such problems.
With each attempt at solving a wicked problem we risk creating or discovering newer problems, or exacerbating other interconnected problems, or simply failing to create a solution that stands the test of time. However, that does not mean we should abandon all efforts to address them nor should we accept every risk in our quest to address –if not solve– these problems.
A great many valid criticisms have been directed at Web3, including about the environmental impact of Proof-of-Work blockchains, the complexity of building Web3 applications (or DApp), and the many cases of fraud that have flooded the space. Some of the most ardent criticisms have come from prominent individuals in the technology industry and academia that have lived through enough technological trends and supposed “new paradigms” to be skeptical of new ones.
However, many of these criticisms have the particularity of being used to reject the space as a whole and to argue that there is nothing redeeming about either the technical or techno-social experiments and developments occurring within Web3. This absolutist position, best captured in the recent Letter in Support of Responsible Fintech Policy, rejects blockchains as a valuable technology that people can use in pursuit of pro-social motivations.
This rejection can be interpreted in many ways but it will be assumed here that it stems from the long history of technological solutionism and its harms. That is, whereby technologists seek to resolve all problems through technical thinking and creating the right technology for them.
However, technological solutions have often created a whole array of new problems which are too often perpetuating or reinforcing existing social problems. As such, it seems wise to conclude this first article with the 6 questions formulated by the media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman, to ask new technologies or those building them:
“What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”
“Whose problem is it?”
“Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
“What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”
“What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
“What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”
Drawing by Adam Sacks https://instagram.com/adamsackstoons/