# Hello World By [luciusj](https://paragraph.com/@luciusj) · 2022-01-19 --- Hello world. This is my first blog post on this platform. **Who am I?** I think that I will be staying anonymous for the time being. I have never much enjoyed “being visible” anyhow. And I guess that this is one of the perks of so-called “web3”. I can be mostly anonymous if I like. My work can be visible, without the need for me to be so visible myself. Sounds like a good deal to me. With this said, I am also not obsessively committed with being anonymous. The idea is simply to have a bit of a buffer to share things without having to feel _so_ connected to it. One pitfall of anonymity is that it strips personal background and identity markers that can matter a lot in allowing others and ourselves to understand our biases. Positionality matters. So who am I? I’m a pretty standard privileged well-off straight white guy who is interested in technology and the internet. I went to good schools, never had to worry about rent, and had access to a lot of good networks and opportunities and whatnot. In my real life (identity teaser!), I am a social scientist broadly interested in understanding digital technology and how it shapes (and is shaped by) society and economy. I have professional/intellectual background across a couple of different fields including data science / statistics, economics, science & technology studies (STS), and philosophy of technology, which I hope to bring to bear in my writing here. I like writing code and doing math stuff; but I also like reading and writing. **What am I planning to do here?** I am planning to write things (duh), probably mostly about the internet, web3, and society from my mix of perspectives. What I am certainly _not_ hoping to be is a web3 acolyte / promoter or general tech-solutionist type. I’ve worked in Silicon Valley before (more teaser!), and was always turned off by the blind faith and certitude in the value/potential of technological “progress”, often bolstered by hype and herd mentality. I think everyone agrees that there is _tons_ of this naive tech progressivism in the tech world in general and the web3 space in particular. Part of my purpose here is to make sense of (and likely critique) the narratives bolstering that hype. With that said, I am also not here to be a thoroughgoing “tech skeptic” type. As alluded above, I think that much of the Silicon Valley tech world -- and the narratives and products it produces -- are deserving and in need of deep critical attention. The web3 world obviously inherits (and perhaps amplifies) most of the same blind spots. Still, the skeptic identity has its own set of pitfalls in my view, and I generally find myself wanting to criticize the overconfident tech critics just as much as the overconfident technologists themselves. Technology often _does_ have real effects on the world which are good for some and bad for others. As much as naive tech progressivism may be worthy of critique and ridicule, it also is the case that technology _is_ one of the central modes by which we regulate the world (see [e.g.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_dot_theory) for one articulation of this idea) for good or bad. For me, the aim in thinking about technology and society always comes back to governance. How are we making decisions about the direction and consequences of technological development? Who is in charge, how, and on what terms? What imaginaries shape and inform these choices? And once they _are_ made, how can we understand what are the consequences? Who benefits and who is harmed, and how? And how does that link back to the initial governance decision itself? So with that introduction, let us see what comes from this… Yours, L --- *Originally published on [luciusj](https://paragraph.com/@luciusj/hello-world)*