At the same time, there was a small but growing movement of developers and founders who were excited about the idea that the internet could be more than a read-only medium – that it could allow anyone to create and publish, to not only read but also write, as we said back then. This movement became known as web 2. The runner up name was read-write web. (These are not after-the-fact terms: there were prominent publications and conferences that used them.)

The key web 2 concepts were: letting users publish whatever they want (“user generated content” was a buzzword), social graphs, APIs and mashups (what we'd call composability today), defaulting profiles and photos to public vs private, and tagging over hierarchical navigation, among other things. There were also technical innovations. A seemingly simple but important one was web pages that updated dynamically without reloading the page, what was usually called Ajax and is now just the way people expect web apps to work. There were mobile devices that could access the open web but they were extremely niche (I was an avid Sidekick user).

One striking thing about that period was the contrast between what smart founders and engineers talked about at dinner and on weekends and what the mainstream tech world took seriously during work days. For example, one popular mainstream trend was enterprise security appliances, which were basically servers preloaded with security software. Many of the very same people would go to work and talk about the “serious” products, and then go to dinner, or hang out on the weekends, and talk about consumer internet products and web 2. It was the most interesting thing happening in tech. But generally, the view was, web 2 products were toys that couldn't be real businesses. They were hobbies, and not something you would take seriously during the workday.

One lesson for me, which took me some time to learn, and that eventually led to some blog posts I wrote, including “The next thing big thing will start out looking like a toy” and “What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years,” is that there's a strong correlation between rich product design spaces and what smart people find interesting. Web 2 was captivating, and led to so many dinner and weekend conversations, because there were so many novel product design possibilities. What if you took this feature and that feature and combined them? What if you applied this design pattern to a different context? What original product concepts would be invented next? This is what got people so excited. In contrast, the “serious stuff,” security appliances and such, seemed much more limited in their possibilities.

Another striking thing about that period was how small and passionate the web 2 community was. I remember in 2004 going to what I think might have been the first New York Tech meetup. The whole group fit in a small room in Meetup’s headquarters. People demoed software they had created and talked late into the evening. I still have friends from that period. Sometimes I get asked how I first met old friends like Fred Wilson and Alexis Ohanian. The simple answer is there just weren't that many people, especially on the east coast, who were interested in these topics. We all knew each other. It was a real community. I have one old friend Alex Rampell (who now works with me at a16z) who I met in 2003 because a friend of mine was at a dinner party and afterwards said “Hey, I met someone else who's interested in consumer internet.” It was that rare. But people were very focused and excited. The feeling was that a revolution was brewing. We knew a secret and the rest of the world hadn't figured it out yet.

As for me, I was working on my own web 2 startup called SiteAdvisor. Around 2003, when my co-founders and I started developing the concept, web security threats were spiraling out of control. Most people used PCs with Internet Explorer, and problems like phishing and spyware were widespread. The idea for SiteAdvisor was that we’d start off with a tool that would warn users about security threats like phishing and spyware, and then, over time, applying web 2 concepts like user-generated reviews, layer on more subjective judgements (similar to what TrustPilot seems to do today). This staged approach was common at the time, a strategy I later characterized as “Come for the tool, stay for the network.” We built APIs and encouraged mashups and did most of our marketing through SEO.

2005 was a big year for web 2 because of two acquisitions, Flickr and Delicious, both by Yahoo. The dollar values were small by today’s standards, something like $30M each, but it was an important signal. The assumption up until then was that web 2 was a fun hobby, a way to build cool stuff, but not something that would produce real businesses. Yahoo was considered a savvy company, and said they were making web 2 a core part of their strategy.

As I recall, that was the point when web 2 started transitioning from a niche cult movement into mainstream tech. Some of the early web 2 founders successfully made the transition. In other cases new entrepreneurs came along who built on the work of the early enthusiasts. The basis of competition switched from creative idea generation to disciplined execution. You had to decide whether you wanted to be the idealistic band at the indy bar or be pragmatic — potentially making compromises — and play in stadiums.

By 2007, things were looking up for web 2. Among other things, Facebook passed 10M users, Twitter was growing and had just gotten VC funded, and Google acquired YouTube. Then the 2008 financial crisis hit, which was a gut check for entrepreneurs. Tech funding dried up, and a lot of smart people said we were on the verge of another great depression.

The financial downturn was a difficult time for many people. But from a startup perspective, the 2008-11 era turned out to be a golden age. Apple released the iPhone app store in 2008 and by 2009 talented founders were pouring in. The mobile app revolution was in full swing. Almost all of today’s top mobile apps were created by companies founded between 2009 and 2011, including Uber, Venmo, Snap, and Instagram. In retrospect, there was a convergence of three powerful trends: social media (by then that word was replacing web 2), cloud computing (which would enable the apps to scale server side), and the rise of smartphones. Independent product design spaces are multiplicative: even if social, cloud, and mobile each improved linearly, the combination could improve exponentially.

I made the chart below to summarize how I've come to think about product and financial cycles. The key idea is that product and financial cycles evolve mostly independently. The top of the chart shows the Nasdaq index as a rough proxy for financial sentiment. Financial sentiment fluctuates unpredictably and sometimes wildly.

The next row shows the years that iconic startups or products were created. The timing is mostly dictated by product cycles, which are shown in the bottom row. Product cycles follow their own internal logic and tend to be more predictable than financial cycles. They begin with the incubation phase when enthusiasts explore ideas on nights and weekends and build products that are mostly used by other enthusiasts. The growth phase arrives when the right mix of technology, talent, and community knowledge comes together to enable the products to go mainstream. (I show the biggest tech cycles in the chart, but smaller, offshoot tech cycles happen as well, including web 2 in the 2000s, and things like fintech and SaaS in the 2010s.)

Tech is very different today than in the 2000s. A handful of tech incumbents dominate the internet, exerting vast economic and cultural influence. In the 2000s, web 2 was mostly ignored or dismissed as techies talking about trivialities. Today, entrenched interests aggressively respond to new movements that might someday threaten them. But the same creative patterns that happened in the 2000s live on today, driven by enthusiasts who see possibilities where others don’t. You just need to know where to look. My belief is that the best place to look is crypto and web 3.

From my vantage point, today’s negative financial sentiment most closely resembles 2008. If we are headed for a prolonged downturn, there are some tactical lessons from the 2008 era, namely preserving capital and staying focused on your long-term vision. The strategic lesson is to keep your eyes squarely focused on the product cycle. Things that look interesting to smart people usually do so because they are rich with product possibilities. These possibilities eventually become reality. Toys become must-have tools. Weekend hobbies become mainstream activities. Cynics sound smart but optimists build the future.

I recently had the chance to meet some great web2 founders considering moving into web3.

Web3 is trendy now, so it’s important to cut through the noise and highlight the right long-term reasons to start a web3 project.

Here are some good reasons to build a web3 project:

Product

Wikipedia is simply a better encyclopedia than traditional encyclopedias because it harnesses the knowledge and creativity of its community.

DAOs are novel web3 constructs that supercharge online communities by providing more sophisticated coordination methods and control over internet-native financial resources.

In the past year, thousands of DAOs have been created across a broad range of categories including financial services, investing, content creation, games, social clubs, and more.

That said, we are still early in the exploration of the DAO design space.

There will likely be opportunities to apply DAOs to novel areas and create breakthrough products.

Economics

Web3 changes the economics of internet services by removing layers of intermediaries and dramatically reducing take rates (fees charged by intermediaries).

This provides an opportunity for startups to attract and foster communities by providing superior economics to creators, developers, and other network participants.

For example, social networks like Instagram and Twitter don’t share any revenue with the creators who made them popular.

In web3, creators can go direct to their audiences by selling things like NFTs, earning 90% or more of the revenue they generate.

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

1/ Topic: Going from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”

5,106

9:30 PM • Aug 11, 2021

Web2 social networks were built by convincing people to give away their creative work for free.

This will stop working once creators realize there are credible alternatives.

Overall NFT sales volumes have been averaging billions of dollars a month.

At current trends, web3 creator payouts will soon surpass web2 creator payouts.

https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea

Marketing

Web3 unlocks powerful new marketing techniques.

First, web3 enables projects to offer token incentives to users in the early phase when the native network effects are weak.

This helps overcome the bootstrap problem that has defeated so many promising early-stage startups in the past.

A great example of this is Helium, which has used token incentives to build a nationwide grassroots telecom service to take on the telecom incumbents.

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

The Web 3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new networks.

3,308

5:50 PM • Oct 1, 2021

Second, in web3 tokens are self-marketing. When someone genuinely owns something and feels skin in the game, they want to evangelize it.

https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1463573466217521159 

Instead of building your service on top of incumbent platforms or using paid advertising, web3 lets you build it via the enthusiasm of users.

This dramatically lowers the cost of customer acquisition, and lets you build much higher-quality communities.

Ecosystem

The vast majority of software running in the world is open source, created by communities of developers.

This is because smart people with relevant expertise are everywhere.

As Bill Joy famously said: “no matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

Web3 projects can tap into a vastly larger talent pool by creating and nurturing a developer ecosystem.

Developers want to know they are building on a credibly neutral platform where the rules won’t change.

Web1 protocols like HTTP and SMTP did this very well, leading to an explosion of innovation.

Web2 tried to make developer commitments via  promises (“don’t be evil”).

This didn’t work, as we’ve seen over the years. Web2 platforms routinely deprecate APIs and change terms of service with little regard for third-party developers.

In web3, promises to developers are baked into the system via immutable, open source code (“can’t be evil”).

This means developers can count on credible neutrality, the way they could in web1.

This will lead to a new wave of widespread, permissionless innovation.

Ethos

Finally, and most importantly, is the web3 ethos.

The internet has become increasingly dominated by a handful of incumbent tech companies.

web3 takes us back to the internet’s original vision: a decentralized network governed by open protocols, where power and money flow to the edges instead of centralized intermediaries.

I wrote more about why web3 matters here:

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

Why Web 3 matters

29.9K

1:57 PM • Sep 26, 2021

===

Originally published on March 6, 2022

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

He specifically used these tactics against web1 protocols/standards and open source software.

Of course the modern equivalent would be web3.

It was a far cleverer tactic than trying to dismiss the tech. He saw the momentum and knew it would be smarter to try to co-opt it vs fight it.

Plan for internet

“Phase 1 (Embrace): all participants need to establish a solid understanding of the infostructure and the community—determine the needs and the trends of the user base. Only then can we effectively enable Microsoft system products to be great Internet systems”

“Phase 2 (Extend): establish relationships with the appropriate organizations and corporations with goals similar to ours. Offer well-integrated tools and services compatible with established and popular standards that have been developed in the Internet community.”

“Phase 3 (Innovate): move into a leadership role with new Internet standards as appropriate, enable standard off-the-shelf titles with Internet awareness. Change the rules: Windows become the next-generation Internet tool of the future.”

===

Originally published on February 19, 2022

This criticism is based on a mistaken understanding of what web3 advocates mean by decentralization. I’ll try to explain.

There will be centralized services in web3 just as there were in web1. The key question in web3 is whether the network effects accrue as private goods (as they did in web2) or public goods (as they did in web1).

Network effects are the main source of user and developer lock-in. If I try to leave Twitter, I lose the followers I built up over the years. That’s because in web2 the network effects accrued to private companies like Twitter.

But I can leave my web hosting provider and still keep my inbound links, search rankings, etc by switching my DNS record.

That’s because in web1 the network effects accrued as a public resource thanks to open protocols like HTTP and SMTP and community-owned services like DNS.

The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks. Marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb are networks.

Network effects are what enable the corporate-owned networks like Facebook and Twitter to accrue dominant positions and command very high take rates (web2 take rates range from 30%-100%).

Blockchains provide a powerful new way to build networks where the network effects accrue as public goods, as they did in web1.

For example, Ethereum NFTs can be viewed as a network where users and NFTs interoperate and form connections. This network is built on the Ethereum blockchain. Users have full control of their data.

There are a variety of centralized services that let you access this network including OpenSea, Zora, LooksRare, etc.

But the network effect doesn’t accrue to these service, as I explain here

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

How web3 data portability reduces the power of centralized services

1,343

2:59 PM • Jan 8, 2022

There will be centralized services in web3. Indeed, as we saw in web1, publicly-owned networks unlock a massive wave of innovation and entrepreneurship around them.

Entrepreneurs and investors in the 90s knew they could freely build and invest without fear that the network would change their economics or deprecate their access, as happens regularly with privately-owned networks.

A public park in a city attracts passersby which in turn helps nearby restaurants and other businesses. In the same way, publicly-owned networks unlock entrepreneurship and opportunity that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

Web2 is dominated by incumbents who spend vast sums of money extracting data and money from the networks they control. There is a serious risk the internet turns out like, say, broadcast TV with a few dominant corporate-owned services, and no room for startups and new ideas.

The good news is we are still early in the development of the internet and there will likely be many new networks built in the coming decades.

web3 provides a new way to build networks that combines the publicly-owned network effects of web1 with the advanced functionality of web2.

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

Why Web 3 matters

29.9K

1:57 PM • Sep 26, 2021

(I was referring to Zora’s website above; note that Zora is also a decentralized protocol).

Side note: DNS is the unsung hero of web1. A mapping between network layer (domain name) and physical layer (IP), controlled fully by users, enabling them to keep centralized services in check with a credible ability to exit.

What’s interesting is how little was actually kept (in web3 terms) “on-chain.” Possible architectural insight for web3 builders (?).

DNS was asked to step up one more time during the RSS vs closed social wars (circa 2007-9), but asking users to purchase and setup a domain didn’t work against ultra low friction web2 social networks.

===

Originally published on January 23, 2022

For people new to web3, one thing that can be confusing is looking at user profiles on services like OpenSea. For example, here is my OpenSea profile https://opensea.io/cdixon.eth

If you are used to web2, you might think OpenSea holds the data and NFTs displayed on my profile page.

In fact, the data and NFTs are held by me, and OpenSea is just providing a view into that data.

You can easily confirm this by going to other services and viewing my profile.

Rainbow - https://rainbow.me/cdixon.eth

Showtime - https://showtime.io/cdixon.eth

More technical people can view the data directly on the Ethereum blockchain.

In these examples, you'll see mostly art and game objects (and my .eth name), but down the road NFTs will hold robust data sets including full social graphs

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

Seven types of NFTs

6,879

12:21 PM • Dec 11, 2021

Why is data portability important?

It means that users can easily switch services if those services start charging too much, inserting ads and algorithmic feeds, throttling their traffic, or mistreating them in other ways.

This is similar to how web1 worked. For example, I host http://cdixon.org at a web hosting provider. If the host starts misbehaving, I can easily move my data to another host and switch my DNS records so http://cdixon.org points there.

And I can make this switch without losing the audience I’ve built up over time via inbound links, SEO, email subscribers, and so on.

Compare this to web2. Many people spend years building an audience on web2 services, but if those services decide to reduce your organic reach or otherwise misbehave it's basically impossible to switch.

web3 works like web1 did. There will be centralized services built in web3 — and many will be quite useful — but their economic power and overall control will be limited by the lower switching costs due to data portability.

This is why web3 take rates are dramatically lower than web2 take rates. OpenSea, for example, charges 2.5% on transactions.

Compare this to web2 take rates. FB, Twitter, & Instagram take 100% of revenue. YouTube takes 45% of revenue. Apple and Google app stores take 30%.

The lower take rates will make web3 services especially appealing to creators who are unable to build sustainable businesses on web2 platforms.

web2's take rate is web3's opportunity

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

1/ Topic: Going from Web 2 to Web 3 - “Your take rate is my opportunity”

5,106

9:30 PM • Aug 11, 2021

Corollary to this:

wrong question: are there centralized services involved?

right question: are there centralized services *with high switching costs* involved?

===

Originally published on January 8, 2022

Many critics of NFTs claim the opposite — that NFTs restrict access to creative content.

This is not a critique of NFTs. This is a critique of a fictional caricature of NFTs dreamt up by critics.

NFTs add a new layer of value — digital ownership — that didn’t exist in a credible way before NFTs.

This concept of ownership independent of copyright is widely understood in the offline world.

There can be many copies of a work of art or other cultural artifact.

As depictions of the original are more widely shared, owning the original becomes more valuable.

The most forward-thinking NFT projects make the content itself public domain.

The more you copy and share the content, the more popular the project becomes, increasing the likelihood of the NFTs becoming valuable.

The internet is a giant meme-propagation machine.

NFTs work with the internet instead of fighting it, increasing the abundance of creative works while also allowing creators to get properly paid for their work.

Also, although short term it’s frustrating, long term it’s a massively positive signal that the main criticisms of NFTs is based on false premises. Eventually the truth will propagate out.

===

Originally published on January 1, 2022

You pay some performance overhead for this property.

If someone says something like “blockchains are slower than traditional computers” — yes that is true.

It’s a trade off between performance and making long term commitments to users and developers.

The performance delta between computers that can make commitments (=blockchains) and computers that can’t (=Google/AWS servers) will shrink over time.

An awesome feature of blockchains is that anyone can join permissionlessly and become part of the network as miners/validators.

But we also need some system for screening participants to avoid spam/ attacks.

Hence proof-of-work and proof-of-stake.

If someone wants to debate the trade offs here of this design— great :)

Notice, in practice, all the counter arguments are ad hominem and don’t answer the core argument.

That’s because their arguments aren’t sound and they need to try to make personal insults to try to win.

I’ve seen many arguments against web3 (and me and my friends) over the last few months, from people ranging from Google execs to Berkeley professors to Facebook/web2 security execs.

All the attacks I’ve seen have been ad hominem.

We’d be very happy to engage on the issues.

An interesting question: how do you create a computing network that is open to anyone and openly democratic but not easily spamable/DDOS-able?

This is what is known as Sybil resistance.

Proof-of-work and proof-of-stake are the best known methods for doing this democratically.

The other method is the web2 way— you need to be an exclusively named access person.

Is it surprising that senior Google/FB execs wouldn’t understand the value of computing networks that are not run by Google/FB execs?

===

Originally published on December 17, 2021

NFTs are new digital primitives, similar in flexibility and generality to past digital primitives like the website.

NFTs are a simple set of blockchain standards that enable genuine ownership in a way that is interoperable, re-mixable, and secure.

For the first time, users can now genuinely own digital objects.

We are starting to see different varieties of NFTs emerge. Here are 7 types of NFTs I’m excited about.

■ Art. These can be part of a collection like Punks and Bored Apes, or 1/1 art like you find on sites like Foundation and SuperRare.

People like collecting digital art for the same reason people like physical art, fashion, baseball cards etc – a mix of aesthetics, patronage, status, collecting, and socializing.

■ Music. Music is a particularly important area for NFTs because web2 pays out very little to musicians.

A bunch of new music NFT projects have launched recently, including http://arpeggi.io, http://Sound.xyz, and http://royal.io.

Here is a fully on-chain song NFT that was created using Arpeggi’s composing tool.

https://opensea.io/assets/0xd614e3b775b94794ea16a7843f31a56c36edcb09/551

http://Sound.xyz is doing NFT song drops where the NFT is a collectible and also let’s you join a small audience of super fans.

https://www.sound.xyz/marianhill/remember-me 

■ Access. NFTs make tickets low friction and widely interoperable.

You can use them to replace traditional tickets, lowering friction and making them more interoperable.

A more native use case is digital access, like a private discord server or video lessons.

■ Game objects. Web2 gamers spend about $40B/year on virtual goods. But users don’t really own those objects, the company does. And the objects cannot interoperate and compose across games.

As we’ve seen again and again in the history of tech, interoperability and composability dramatically accelerate innovation.

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

Composability is to software as compounding interest is to finance

1,694

7:12 PM • Oct 22, 2021

NFTs allow users to genuinely own the objects, flipping the polarity: games build around user-owned objects instead of users having to depend on the game.

Pioneering games like Axie Infinity and Top Shot kicked off a wave of new web3 game development. Many of these projects should launch next year.

■ Redeemables. Unisocks was a whimsical pioneer of the model where a token could be redeemed for a physical good. This mechanism can be applied to lots of offline goods.

For example, many high-end collectors of physical goods keep their collections in a vault. You could create a digital token representing them, letting them be showcased and traded digitally, reducing friction and intermediaries, and expanding the UX possibilities.

■ Identity. The web2 way of handling personal information has failed. Your sensitive personal information has been hacked many times. Handling passwords is a mess. Long privacy policies and terms of service get changed on a whim.

Contrary to what you might think from reading the news, blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have never been hacked.

In web3, users are in charge: there is no centralized database to hack or sell.

Today this means a better way to login (http://login.xyz) & identify yourself in an interoperable way using systems like ENS.

Later, you might store and selectively reveal other aspects of your identity using NFTs for things like records, credentials, and reputation.

■ Web2 databases. Using cryptographic methods and decentralized data stores, you can extend NFTs to anything stored in a centralized web2 database today.

This could be something simple like your viewing preferences or much more advanced things like your entire social graph.

This would allow you to switch from one service to another seamlessly – and have full control of your own data, a key part of the web3 vision.

This year we’ve seen an explosion of innovation around NFTs. This will likely continue for many years as it’s still extremely early in the evolution of web3.

===

Originally published on December 11, 2021

Ben Thompson provides an excellent articulation of this view (as he often does) stratechery.com/2020/the-end-o…

In my experience, this view is tacitly held by most of the establishment: institutional investors, tech execs, policymakers, media, etc. It affects valuations, corporate behavior, media coverage, and policy making.

I believe there are at least 3 major reasons why this view is wrong: plasticity of software and the internet, new vectors of computing improvement, and generational desire for new frontiers. I'll explain these below.

1. Plasticity of software and the internet.

The core of most of these arguments are analogies to past industries. Ben cites the auto industry. Other writers cite past information networks like broadcast TV and radio.

But it’s a mistake to analogize software to hardware. Software has a much richer design space — closer in the breadth of possibilities to creative activities like fiction writing than traditional engineering.

Moreover, the internet was specifically designed to embrace this plasticity.

The internet is the ultimate software-based network, consisting of a relatively simple core layer connecting billions of fully programmable computers at the edge.

Computers connected to the internet are, by and large, free to run whatever software their owners choose. Whatever can be dreamt up, with the right set of incentives, can quickly propagate across the internet.

2. New vectors of computing improvement

Ben argued that one reason the software industry is mature is that it has reached its logical endpoint.

The assumption is that the only vectors of improvement that matter are the ones the tech industry has traditionally focused on: greater data availability, better computing performance, smaller devices, and so on.

People with this mindset look at a blockchain and see a slow database. (And while blockchains performance is improving rapidly, running a consensus mechanism will always have some performance overhead.)

Blockchains offer to improve computers along different vectors. Specifically, they allow computers to make credible commitments that in turn unlock new classes of applications.

Those applications can have a profound impact on how power and money is distributed across the internet.

Thinking about computing improvements along economic and political vectors is very foreign to the traditional tech mindset.

Framed this way, we are nowhere near the logical endpoint of the internet's evolution.

3. Generational desire for new frontiers

A lot of what I do in my job is talk to people moving into web3, either as founders or as employees in companies I work with. Many are coming from big tech companies.

The story is the same every time: they don’t want to spend their lives optimizing ad clicks; they want to work on the frontier and help shape a new industry.

They want an internet of their own, that reflects their values and culture and lets them feel like genuine participants as users and builders.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men and women to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

There are a lot of smart, industrious people yearning for the sea. Betting that the internet is mature is betting against them.

Also, I specifically said “institutional investors” above because, in my view, retail investors have been especially prescient over the last decade — and continue to lead the way on long-term vision.

Retail investors sometimes lack the resources to correctly choose between companies within categories (micro) but are much better at big picture vision (macro). Institutions the reverse.

===

Originally published on November 26, 2021

Something I find useful is mapping out the typical economic loop from start to finish, and then considering the startup’s position within that loop.

I’ll explain by looking at the current internet landscape and the strategic position of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple. (I’ll adapt this to web3 in a future thread.)

Consider the path of a typical internet session, from the user to some revenue-generating action, and then (in some cases) back again to the user.

(I wrote more about this here cdixon.org/2016/03/13/the…)

Suppose you are Google and a user clicks on an ad which leads to a $1 purchase. The strategic question is how Google positions itself to get the most of that $1 vs the complements and substitutes in this chart, now and in the future.

Note on complements: people usually think of substitutes when they think about competition, but with internet businesses complements are often a bigger threat & opportunity.

Hamburgers and hotdogs are substitutes. You generally choose one or the other. Examples in tech: AT&T vs Verizon, iPhone vs Android phone.

Hotdogs and hotdog buns are complements. Examples in tech: an internet provider and a search engine, a browser and a social network.

Many fiercest battles in the history of the internet have been between complements, going back to Microsoft vs Netscape.

Think of the economic loop pictured above as a model train track. Positions in front of you can redirect traffic around you. Positions after you can build new tracks that bypass you.

New technologies come along (which often look toy-like and unthreatening at first) that create entirely new tracks that render the previous tracks obsolete.

A big reason big tech companies invest in open source software is to “commoditize the complement” (see this classic Joel Spolsky post on the topic joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/str…).

Strategy Letter V

When I was in college I took two intro economics courses: macroeconomics and microeconomics. Macro was full of theories like "low unemployment causes inflation" that never quite stood up to reality. But the micro stuff was both cool and useful. It was full of interesting concepts about the relationships between supply and demand that really...

https://www.joelonsoftware.com

It’s much better to have complements be open source and free vs controlled by a competitor. This is why, for example, the biggest contributor to Linux is Intel.

Looking at this chart, it should be clear why most of the big tech companies have efforts in almost all positions in the loop.

Amazon’s strength is its logistics network. Google and Apple are strongest at the device, OS and app layer. Facebook’s strategic position is the weakest but is making bold bets on next-gen devices. All four are trying to either commoditize or own adjacent layers.

Now of course what makes these strategic questions more art than science is you need to consider not just the loop today but in the near- and long-term future.

Predicting this is a complex and fascinating mix of technology, markets, psychology, culture, and strategy.

Ok web3 addendum (can’t help it 😂). Viewing internet services through the strategy lens is also one thing that makes “computers that can make commitments” so interesting. You can now commit various layers to permanent policies, which changes the whole surrounding chess board.

The strategy lens also helps contextualize what an incredibly visionary move of Google to buy Android in 2005 and then —maybe more impressively—giving it away for free and (partially) open sourcing it when conventional wisdom was still to charge for the OS (see Microsoft).

===

Originally published on November 25, 2021

For every important computing resource in history demand has outpaced supply. This includes CPUs, GPUs, memory, storage, and both wired and wireless bandwidth.

The core dynamic of computing movements is a mutually reinforcing feedback loop between applications and infrastructure.

Consider a modern smartphone. The phone itself is much better than a decade ago, and so are the apps. The apps drove the popularity of the phones which gave manufacturers more money to reinvest. Improved phones increased the app design space, and the cycle repeated.

In the 2000s, when broadband penetration reached minimally viable levels, entrepreneurs created video-sharing sites like YouTube, which spurred broadband demand even more, making video steaming work even better, in a reinforcing loop.

As GPUs got better, game developers invested in higher fidelity graphics and experiences, which grew the video games market, giving GPU makers more money to reinvest in chips, and so on.

This pattern happens over and over, and is one of the main reasons computers have become ubiquitous and so important in our lives.

Now let's talk about blockchains. Programmable blockchains are computers: you can write (near) Turing-complete code for them, store information in them, and so on.

It's very likely that similar to other important computing resources of the past, demand for blockchains will consistently outpace supply.

This is already true for Ethereum itself, and will likely also be the case for L2s, side chains, and other L1s.

Today, Ethereum has roughly 10M monthly users, which is roughly 0.2% of all internet users. Over the 2020s, usage will hopefully grow significantly both in terms of number of users and in terms of the number and frequency of transactions per user.

Many of the apps that will drive this growth probably haven’t even been launched yet. It’s possible they haven’t even been imagined yet.

The more blockchain infrastructure projects, the better. For one thing, it's important to fully explore the design space, including different approaches to scaling, security, governance, developer and user experience, etc.

Some of the designs will fail. Others will make fundamental trade offs.

For example it’s plausible to imagine a world where frequent-use, low-value transactions happen on blockchains that trade security for performance.

Assets that increase in value can then be moved to other blockchains that prioritize security over performance.

It's also important to have many blockchain infrastructure projects because when exponential growth kicks in, we will likely have a consistent shortage of high-quality infrastructure.

Computing movements are positive-sum games. There can be many winners at both the infrastructure and application layer.

It's important to run a variety of experiments — and stay focused on the bigger goal of bringing blockchains and web3 mainstream.

===

Originally published on November 21, 2021

Relying on ads and monetizing at low CPMs, the incentive is to add ever more intrusive ads to increase click rates.

User experience degrades, requiring more intrusive ads, in a downward cycle.

News sites, cooking sites, games, music, Q&A, travel, and many other web2 categories that didn’t figure out subscriptions or high-CPM business models fall into this trap.

This isn’t the fault of the sites or the people behind them. They are generally hard working, creative people. The problem is that, until recently, ads were their only option.

This can be fixed by web3 and NFTs. Imagine NFTs that are some combination of collectibles, patronage, social status, and access.

Creators can develop deep, meaningful relationships, with their fans, instead of the transient, transactional interactions they have today.

Creators can get paid appropriately for their work, and users can enjoy a clean, modern experience that doesn’t compromise their privacy with intrusive ads.

We’ve already funded a series of game companies working in this area, and would love to fund teams in other categories.

Lack of genuine ownership and the reliance on ads was the original sin of the internet. We now have the tools to fix this.

===

Originally published on November 8, 2021

First, where are we today? Let’s start with some anecdotes.

We have an awesome games team led by @Tocelot that invests in founders out of top game studios like Riot, Epic, Blizzard etc. Almost 100% of founders they've met with recently are exploring NFTs in some way, or are already building NFTs into their games

I get regular emails like this from web2 founders (this is verbatim the other day from a top web2 founder) “Hey Chris, hope all is well. I’m going deeper on crypto and now understand why it’s so exciting.” I expect others in web3 are seeing a similar wave of new talent entering.

Last week I tweeted out this half-joking tweet that led to over 250 web2-to-web3 job applications.

Our portfolio companies report a similar uptick in resumes from people who want to migrate from web2 to web3.

Now some numbers. Coinbase has 68 million verified users coinbase.com/about.

They recently announced a new NFT product and already have 2.4M users on the waitlist.

Axie Infinity reported 1.8M daily active users in August and generated $2.6B in total sales volume since launch, despite being blocked by all the web2 app stores including Google and Apple mobile stores. coindesk.com/business/2021/…

Axie Infinity Nears 2M Daily Active Users as Creator Raises $152M Series B

The popular play-to-earn game has generated close to $2.3 billion in total sales volume since it was launched in 2018.

https://www.coindesk.com

MetaMask, the popular Ethereum wallet, has over 10M monthly active users. markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencie…

DeFi wallet MetaMask sees user count surge 1,800% in a year to top 10 million as ethereum booms

MetaMask is the most commonly used crypto wallet in the world of decentralized finance, which has boomed in 2021.

https://markets.businessinsider.com

OpenSea has generated over $9B in GMV selling NFTs this year dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea

https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea

For context, YouTube paid out $30B total over the last 3 years to all creators on their platform.

blog.youtube/inside-youtube…

Letter from Susan: Our 2021 Priorities

CEO Susan Wojcicki addresses YouTube's priorities for 2021: growing the creator economy, living up to our responsibilities, helping people learn new skills, building for the future of YouTube, and working with governments around the world as we face increasingly complicated regulatory issues.

https://blog.youtube

Other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram don’t share revenue with creators. You do get hearts though :)

Adam Sacks

@AdamSacks

Look, NFTs are a scam, but websites that get you to post your hard work for free in exchange for hearts? That's the real stuff.

26.8K

12:57 PM • Oct 19, 2021

So what's next for web3?

Expect many NFT-based games to launch, developed by founders with backgrounds at top game studios. Some of these will launch as soon as next month, others will take longer.

Expect many more creators to embrace NFTs in their own communities as they discover how much better they can monetize by selling digital goods directly to their fans vs banner ads and other web2 monetization methods.

New web3 users who earn tokens through games and NFTs will likely choose to save those tokens in DeFi protocols vs tradfi banks given the better rates and user experience, growing the number of DeFi users.

Web3 infrastructure will continue to improve, with the continued improvement and growth of non-Ethereum L1s and Ethereum L2s. The Ethereum merge will hopefully happen in Q1 22. This will improve performance and also remove the environmental objection to using Ethereum.

Expect many more experiments with DAOs, social tokens, decentralized social networks, web3 media, and other emerging categories. Some of these might break out the way NFTs and web3 games did earlier this year.

It’s an exciting time to be in web3. If you want to get involved, there are many job openings at web3 companies. Email us at web3-jobs@a16z.com

(Disclosure: none of the above should be taken as investment advice and a16z portfolio companies are referenced; see http://a16z.com/disclosures for more info)

===

Originally published on October 23, 2021

A very high percentage of the software in the world is open source. Most datacenter software is open source, mobile phones OSs make heavy use of open source, most next-gen devices like self-driving cars, drones, and embedded computers run mostly open source software.

Open source began as a fringe political movement in the 80s and remained mostly a curiosity through the 90s, but started growing exponentially in the 2000s and after.

Why? Because open source unlocked the power composability.

Composability is the ability to mix and match software components like lego bricks. Paraphrasing @naval, it means every software component only needs to be written once, and can thereafter simply be reused.

Naval

@naval

Open source means each problem only has to be solved once.

16.3K

1:20 PM • Oct 2, 2021

One of the most exciting aspects of web3 is the composability of protocols and tokens. We see this is in DeFi when protocols build on top of each other the way composite protocols like Yearn or Element do.

People are beginning to explore composability using NFTs, with Loot and the ecosystem around it being a really interesting example.

dom hofmann

@dhof

LOOT

- randomized adventurer gear
- no images or stats. intentionally omitted for others to interpret
- no fee, just gas
- 8000 bags total

opensea: opensea.io/collection/loo…
etherscan: etherscan.io/address/0xff9c…

available via contract only. not audited. mint at your own risk

967

1:04 PM • Aug 27, 2021

There are various exponential forces in the world to look out for, as they can be indicators of rapid future growth.

In hardware, the most powerful exponential force is Moore’s Law. In finance, it's compounding interest. In software, it's composability.

===

Originally published on October 22, 2021

As @alexismadrigal wrote in this excellent essay, back in 2007 it looked like open services would dominate the internet going forward: theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

But with the launch of the iPhone and the rise of smartphones, proprietary networks quickly won out:

In other words

twitter.com/cdixon

closed, controlled by centralized company

Beat out:

cdixon.org/rss

open, controlled by the user

(I got this framing from somewhere but can’t find the source- please @ me and I’ll add a citation :))

Why did closed, proprietary services win out?

We had the building blocks for open social networks back in 2007, including RSS and lesser known, related protocols.

But these protocols relied on outside parties to store data. For users who wanted to publish a social feed while controlling their data, this usually meant registering a domain name and signing up for a hosting provider.

Anyone who builds consumer software will tell you that an onboarding experience that requires more than a few, simple steps is ngmi.

So then services like Twitter came along that adopted the best features of open protocols but made it extremely easy to onboard and use.

The catch: you were using their database and code, handing full control over to a centralized organization.

You can see from these Google Trends charts of RSS vs Twitter what happened next.

(I wrote more about this topic back in 2017 here cdixon.org/2017/05/27/cry…)

Today, we have programmable blockchains like Ethereum. Programmable blockchains are virtual computers that run code and keep state.

When you deploy code to Ethereum, the code runs autonomously and perpetually. The author of the code can choose to have the code (and the data it operates on) controlled by a community, a person, or no one at all.

In Web 3, almost all projects choose to have the code run fully autonomously (controlled by no one) or controlled by a community.

(For those who didn’t realize that modern blockchains are fully developed, near Turing-complete computers, there are in-depth materials on the topic here

Crypto Canon - a16z crypto

Here's a list of crypto readings and resources (2018-2019). It's organized from building blocks and basics; foundations (& history); and key concepts - followed by specific topics such as governance; privacy and security; scaling; consensus and governance; cryptoeconomics, cryptoassets, and investing; fundraising and token distribution; decentralized exchanges; stablecoins; and cryptoeconomic primitives and crypto goods (non-fungible...

https://a16zcrypto.com

This means that in Web 3 you can now build advanced protocols that are open like RSS but also store things like usernames, social graphs, and posts in a credibly neutral way.

Combined with the right front-end clients, open services can now match the advanced functionality and streamlined onboarding of centralized services.

We’re about to see a wave of new consumer apps including social networks that take advantage of this.

This will hopefully unlock a new wave of innovation. Open services support composability— the ability to remix open services the way you can currently remix open source software.

The power of open source software is, as @naval says, that the world only has to solve each problem once

Naval

@naval

Open source means each problem only has to be solved once.

16.3K

1:20 PM • Oct 2, 2021

Web 3 extends this power beyond software to  services, making it possible to build an open internet that doesn't compromise on features or user experience.

===

Originally published on October 2, 2021

The killer app of the internet is networks. The web and email are networks. Social apps like Instagram and Twitter are networks. Marketplaces like Uber and Airbnb are networks.

Networks get more valuable with more participants, which is great when they are at scale, but cuts the other way when starting out. This is the bootstrapping problem.

In the Web 2 era, overcoming the bootstrapping problem meant heroic entrepreneurial efforts, plus in many cases spending lots of money on sales and marketing.

Because bootstrapping networks is so hard, it’s likely that there are many networks that should exist—that would improve our collective well-being— but don’t because no one has figured out how to bootstrap them.

Web 3 introduces a powerful new tool for bootstrapping networks: token incentives.

The basic idea is: early on during the bootstrapping phase when network effects haven’t kicked in, provide users with financial utility via token rewards to make up for the lack of native utility.

(This chart comes from a longer blog post I wrote on the topic back in 2017: cdixon.org/2017/05/27/cry…)

Crypto Tokens: A Breakthrough in Open Network Design

Chris Dixon's blog.

https://cdixon.org

Over time, as the network effect and native utility grows, the token incentives taper off and eventually go to zero, and the world is left with a new, scaled network.

There are lots of intricacies about how to design the token schedule and keep out spammers and scammers, which I won’t go into here but is a very interesting topic.

Let’s look at some examples. Helium is trying to create a grassroots competitor to big telecom companies by incentivizing individuals to install networking equipment in their home.

(Btw the idea of a grassroots, bottoms-up telecom to take on the entrenched incumbents is a perennial techie fantasy, and there have been many noble attempts to build it including early Fon and early Meraki/Roofnet. Web 3 might finally make it happen.)

The core problem is how do you get enough equipment installed to get broad coverage while also building out the demand side. It’s a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

Helium uses the power of token incentives to bootstrap the supply side. It’s worked well so far. The network has over 200,000 nodes worldwide. Here’s a coverage map of the US and another zoomed into the Bay Area. (Here’s the full network explorer explorer.helium.com/hotspots)

Another network that’s been bootstrapped with token incentives is Arweave, a decentralized storage network. The Arweave network has grown roughly 12x in the last year. Here’s the growth over the last 2 years. (Full network explorer here viewblock.io/arweave/)

Token incentives are effective, but also far fairer than the centralized Web 2 model. Shouldn’t the people who helped build a network get to own a meaningful piece of it?

I’ve worked in Web 3 and crypto since 2013 and have never worked with a project that spent meaningful money on sales and marketing. You don’t need to spend money on marketing when users are genuine owners, love what they do, and love telling other people about it.

Web 3 allows the users and builders who create networks to own a meaningful piece of them, while also unlocking powerful new tools for entrepreneurs.

**a16z is an investor in Helium and Arweave. None of the above should be taken as investment advice; see a16z.com/disclosures for more info.

===

Originally published on October 1, 2021

==Addendum==

A key point missed by many web3 critics:

Token incentives are temporary, used to overcome the hardest part of creating new networks: getting through the “bootstrap” phase.

source

Crypto Tokens: A Breakthrough in Open Network Design

Chris Dixon's blog.

https://cdixon.org

The end state of many of these networks will be:

A network that provides utility like any other online network (Twitter, FB, Lyft, Airbnb)

but

50% or more (typically) of the network owned by users who built it

and

Strong incentives to keep the network open and neutral.

Longer thread on the topic (using Helium as case study)

Chris Dixon

@cdixon

The Web 3 playbook: using token incentives to bootstrap new networks.

3,308

5:50 PM • Oct 1, 2021

Helium is a great case study because there is a 20-year history (maybe more) of entrepreneurs trying to build a “bottoms up / grassroots telecom”

eg this how the Meraki team originally got started

There were many other attempts. It’s a big idea that ambitious founders consistently gravitate toward. But in the past the bootstrap phase was just too tough to overcome.

Incumbents like Verizon solve this problem with capital- they invest tens of billions building out the network before there is demand, and then turn to the demand side after.

The result is we were left with a handful of giant incumbents and no real possibility of new entrants challenging them.

As Helium is showing, web3 provides a powerful new set of tools to overcome the bootstrap problem and level the playing field for startups.

===

Originally published on February 19, 2022

Web 1 (roughly 1990-2005) was about open protocols that were decentralized and community-governed. Most of the value accrued to the edges of the network — users and builders.

Web 2 (roughly 2005-2020) was about siloed, centralized services run by corporations. Most of the value accrued to a handful of companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook.

We are now at the beginning of the Web 3 era, which combines the decentralized, community-governed ethos of Web 1 with the advanced, modern functionality of Web 2.

Web 3 is the internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens.

(Thanks to @packyM for this definition.)

Why does Web 3 matter?

First, let’s look at the problems with centralized platforms. (I wrote more about this back in 2018 here cdixon.org/2018/02/18/why…)

Why decentralization matters

Chris Dixon's blog.

https://cdixon.org

Centralized platforms follow a predictable life cycle. At first, they do everything they can to recruit users and 3rd-party complements like creators, developers, and businesses.

They do this to strengthen their network effect. As platforms move up the adoption S-curve, their power over users and 3rd parties steadily grows.

When they hit the top of the S-curve, their relationships with network participants change from positive-sum to zero-sum. To continue growing requires extracting data from users and competing with (former) partners.

Famous examples of this are Microsoft vs. Netscape, Google vs. Yelp, Facebook vs. Zynga,  Twitter vs. its 3rd-party clients, and Epic vs Apple.

For 3rd parties, the transition from cooperation to competition feels like a bait-and-switch. Over time, the best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have learned to not build on top of centralized platforms. This has stifled innovation.

Now let’s talk about Web 3. In Web 3, ownership and control is decentralized. Users and builders can own pieces of internet services by owning tokens, both non-fungible (NFTs) and fungible.

Tokens give users property rights: the ability to own a piece of the internet.

NFTs give users the ability to own objects, which can be art, photos, code, music, text, game objects, credentials, governance rights, access passes, and whatever else people dream up next.

NFTs exist on top of blockchains like Ethereum. Ethereum is a decentralized global computer that is owned and operated by its users.

Blockchains are special computers that anyone can access but no one owns.

Ethereum is powered by a fungible token, ETH, which is used to incentivize the physical computers that underlie the system. ETH is also the system’s native currency for transactions, like NFT purchases.

There are many ways for users to acquire fungible and non-fungible tokens. You can buy them, but there are also ways to earn them.

Uniswap famously retroactively airdropped 15% of its governance tokens to early users of the protocol. Community grants like this have become common in Web 3 as a way to build goodwill and incentivize adoption.

You can also earn tokens through creative and entrepreneurial activities. For example, people are earning roughly $100M worth of ETH per day selling NFTs.

Tokens align network participants to work together toward a common goal — the growth of the network and the appreciation of the token.

This fixes the core problem of centralized networks, where the value is accumulated by one company, and the company ends up fighting its own users and partners.

Before Web 3, users and builders had to choose between the limited functionality of Web 1 or the corporate, centralized model of Web 2.

Web 3 offers a new way that combines the best aspects of the previous eras. It’s very early in this movement and a great time to get involved.

===

Originally published on September 26, 2021

2/ Let’s start with this fascinating chart (from https://matthewball.vc) which raises the question: why has the video game industry grown alongside new technologies, while the music industry has not?

3/ For a long time, video games and music had the same, straightforward business model: charge money for a perpetual license to the base content — the game or music itself.

4/ When the internet came along, video games responded by embracing new genres like MMOs and battle royale, new business models like free-to-play and virtual goods, and new complementary behaviors like streaming.

5/ The music industry responded by spending decades filing lawsuits against innovators, and eventually accepting the incremental improvement of allowing users to subscribe to bundled content via streaming platforms.

6/ Meanwhile, the video game industry discovered something radical: if they made the thing they previously charged for — the game itself, the sole source of revenue for the industry — entirely free, they could make even more money.

7/ Game makers looked at their product expansively, as a bundle that included software, services, and add-ons, and then ran experiments to discover the optimal balance between free features that maximized viral marketing and paid features that maximized revenue.

8/ Today the most sophisticated games -- Fortnite, League of Legends, Clash Royale -- give away the game itself and charge for virtual goods.

9/ Think about that: virtual goods barely existed a decade or so ago. Now they are the primary source of revenue for the most successful products in the fastest growing media category.

10/ Now to the main topic. The internet pioneer John Gilmore famously said that the internet treats censorship as a defect and routes around it. The internet does the same thing to bad business models.

11/ A classic example is open source vs proprietary software in the 90s/00s. Proprietary software vendors stuck to dated, closed source models despite strong opposition. Grassroots open source communities routed around them with entirely new software stacks.

12/ NFTs are an important recent example of the internet routing around broken business models. Like open source, NFTs are a grassroots movement, led by creators extending the video game virtual goods model to their own fields.

13/ Even if publishers and studios, along with web 2 incumbents, resist the new model, individual creators can route around them, going direct to their fans.

14/ A musician can now choose to give away new music to maximize distribution and charge for scarce complementary NFTs like digital album art, behind-the-scenes passes, and proof of fandom. The musician 3LAU made $11.6M with a recent NFT drop. https://nft.3lau.com

15/ A filmmaker or writer can sell NFTs to crowdfund their creations instead of pitching traditional financing sources. Recently, a novelist raised $50K this way https://emily.mirror.xyz and a documentary film raised $2M https://ethereumfilm.mirror.xyz

16/ There is nothing magical about video games that makes them more monetizable than other forms of media. People love video games, but people also love music, books, films, podcasts, and digital art.

17/ Creators can now choose to route around institutions that have been holding them back, embracing the forward progression of technology — as video games did— instead of fighting it — as the music industry did.

To predict how they’ll develop, it’s important to dig deeper. Here are a few common ways new technologies can be misunderstood.

2/ “It’s just a toy.”

This was the mistake made early on about breakthrough technologies like the telephone, personal computers, and social media.

The next big thing will start out looking like a toy

Chris Dixon's blog.

https://cdixon.org

3/ When the telephone was first invented, incumbents like Western Union dismissed it, as the sound quality was poor and it only worked at short distances. They failed to imagine how quickly those things would be improved.

4/ Early on, blogs and services like Twitter were mostly used to discuss niche tech topics and share mundane personal details. A lot of people dismissed them as toys or passing fads. Today billions of people rely on social media as their primary news source.

5/ Social media was a technology for creating global media networks that arrived disguised as a way to share what you had for lunch.

6/ “It’s too expensive.”

We hear this today about electric vehicles, space travel, virtual reality headsets, and more. Hardware almost always starts out expensive. Over time, the costs drop rapidly as manufacturing know-how and economies of scale kick in.

7/ In addition to getting cheaper, hardware gets better. A modern iPhone has over 12 billion transistors, roughly 3500 times more than a 1995 Pentium PC. Today over 80% of adults worldwide have internet-connected supercomputers, aka smartphones, in their pockets.

8/ Sequencing a human genome went from costing $100 million twenty years ago to under $1,000 today, making it broadly accessible. As Larry Page said: “Hardware prices eventually approach the cost of the commodity material inputs.”

9/ “What problem does it solve?”

Many breakthrough technologies, especially those involving computers, don’t directly solve problems. Instead, they unlock new capabilities, which in turn enable users, developers, creators to solve problems.

10/ Early on, personal computers were used mainly by enthusiasts to make games and hack around. They seemed like overpriced toys. But later, some of those early enthusiasts developed the word processor, the spreadsheet, the web browser, etc.

11/ Steve Jobs called the computer a bicycle for the mind. As the bicycle amplifies the efficiency of our locomotion, the computer amplifies our intelligence and creativity.

12/ The Web was a momentous invention, but, as Sep Kamvar said, if you asked people in 1989 what they needed to make their life better, it was unlikely that they would have said a decentralized network of information nodes that are linked using hypertext.

The Farmer & Farmer Review . Mastery and Mimicry . The Heart of the Builder

Essays about humans and technology

https://farmerandfarmer.org

13/ In summary, it’s important to ask questions about new technologies that go beyond first impressions.

“Looks like a toy” → How fast will it improve?

“Too expensive”→ How fast will the price come down?

“Doesn’t solve a problem” → Does it provide new capabilities?

***

Originally published 7/27/21 on Twitter.