This article is an iteration of a break-out session my friend Lilly Rothschild and I facilitated titled “Communal Space During the Web 3 Revolution: building social capital in the age of decentralization.” Our work was auxiliary research to our concentrations; however, when crypto clicks you get obsessed. Lilly discovered the opportunity to speak at the Student Global Leadership Conference in London, and within a FaceTime, we chose the prompt compassion and pragmatism.
This session is about strengthening user trust on a digital landscape and in practicality on a community level. Trust is hard to obtain in new settings. When exploring social capital across the physical and digital realms, there is a disconnect between trust and interaction within communities. How can we bring the familiarity of local communities as we emerge into decentralization? Can Universities begin to bridge this disconnect? Learning objectives:
Our session will help to destigmatize and refine how younger communities, specifically in an educational setting, can effectively approach topics related to the decentralization of technology with more purpose, trust, and compassion; by providing anecdotal evidence and community-driven examples.
Define social capital in different landscapes: physical, Web 2, and Web 3, and how this will differ in individual, local, and global communities. This will further a discussion surrounding trust in decentralized tech.
Ultimately the session closed with “Let’s Make a DAO” — we split the room into small groups and gave them an example fictional DAO and broke it into 5 building blocks. Professors struggled to see the value without materialism and challenged our thesis; however, the students were eager to experiment. One student discussed a current project he was working on that minted Greek artifacts as NFTs in partnership with the Greek Government.
As human beings, we are all fueled by interaction — between each other, nature, objects, and everything in between. We construct standards of interaction based on our surroundings. Erecting skyscrapers for (in-person) office space and passing innovation-friendly policies and grants, cities can amplify current/capture future interaction to develop and bolster a financial or business district: former Wall Street, Silicone Valley, Luxembourg, and you can even throw in Delaware with their tax filing policy. Interaction is at the root of knowledge, and growth is how that interaction changes. If you can’t tell, we are gonna get esoteric af. *searches for edibles*
Interaction is measured as social capital. Social capital is a highly contentious, ambiguous, and under-researched economic growth indicator making it a perfect value of measurement in this article. Putnam, Coleman, and Bourdieu lead different schools of social capital thought:
1. Putnam emphasized civic engagement through foils like social organizations and social institutions.
2. Coleman viewed social capital as finite and distributed unevenly.
3. Bourdieu believed that spaces themselves embedded opportunities for social capital.
For this article’s use just think interaction = engagement = social capital, constrained to the environment of the subject.
1. Ego — how one’s self influences their surroundings. How wide is your network? What’s the balance of attention demand and attention supplied? How does this influence vary based on space?
2. Community — symbolizes a physical space of diverse individuals interacting within the area. What are the participation levels across organizations? What events or community spaces encourage civic engagement? How can egos positively or adversely affect the community? How common can controversial discussions happen civilly? What is the severity of engagement segregation?
3. Institution — signifies how the engagement of identifying individuals continues to interact with each other outside the institution's confined communal space. Are you still a proud Shark or Jet outside of Manhattan? Does the institution connect individuals beyond the space provided? Is this institution a cold call connection?
Today, interaction is no longer confined to the physical world. We are connected to more digital spaces than the physical places they supplement. For every platform, each organization needs to create a media presence to continue member engagement. And users have bespoke profiles to assimilate to the culture of each platform.
The interaction of digital spaces can be easier perceived through a variety of metrics. Kim Kardashian contentiously holds one of the most significant social media presences on the internet. Followed by millions, Kim K, like second nature, connects her lifestyle with consumers spreading her influence faster than the printing press could Jesus. But she herself doesn’t follow many on social media. She might follow Pete Davidson; whom I hear is pretty well known these days. Kim influences millions and those she interacts with influence additional millions — how connected are Kim’s connections (or eigenvector centrality). She embodies strong ego-centric digital social capital, yet she does nothing to create a space to engage and increase fan intra-engagement. A user who creates a Reddit page discussing Kim K’s latest trends creates interaction, formulates opinions, discussions, and stories, and ultimately creates communal digital social capital. Reddit, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook (Meta), and many more all successfully built forums of conversation bolstering their growing daily active users.
These platforms have monopolized this user data — or measurements of community social capital. Using algorithms optimized for monetization, not utility, we see scandals like Cambridge Analytica and the radicalization of ideas to increase screen time. As users, we rarely have the autonomy nor the authority over our data. The data we produce with every Instagram post, like, upvote, search, and comment is withheld, analyzed, optimized, and monetized. Aspects of our behavior that would traditionally be kept to ourselves are being abused for corporate profit. That is the internet of today. The current atrocity we call digital interaction is surveillance capital’s facade.
You're gonna hate me when I say crypto, but it’s what makes crypto possible — web 3. A decentralized and transparent internet is an internet dedicated to user data autonomy. Web 3 is built on blockchains coded by smart-contracts — and that’s another article in itself. Yet, just as your memory validates itself by the last time you remembered said moment, blockchains track interactions through similar validation structures (connecting to higher interaction = higher social capital). Now as users we may see how our digital assets, or the production of our data, are used. We have the authority to dictate where that data goes, and with the transparency of blockchains, we can easily address where that data is shared.
If social capital is going to be implemented and used on the internet, power and governance should not be within close-minded platform operators (i.e. Zuck). Data will always be accessible to some, but how can it be to all? We live in a world where knowledge is power. Education has been the root of success, but is the future root of success through data?
Questions we should be asking in regards to web 3 potential: How can we strengthen this current form of social capital on web 3? How can platforms allow NFTs to interact with each other? What is the purpose of the asset? What interaction is it attempting to produce? What is the utility?
Venture assets will become digitized through DAO treasuries. These treasuries will fund the future centralized open-source platforms that will allow NFTs to finally, have utility. I believe that utility is derived from interaction and engagement. Social capital is the measurement of an ego, community, or institution's engagement levels. Strong social capital, therefore, leads to strong utility of the assets, in turn, increasing the value of the assets themselves.
Scarcity, transparency, trust, and engagement that is the future of social capital on the internet.
Link to the original slide deck.