This series of short essays is designed to orient the reader to THE IDEA of Web 3. What do I suggest we mean by the term, what are the evolutionary forces (and events) that bring it into being, and what, if anything, might we be doing in relation to it? This will be our journey.
First, the disclaimers:
I am not a software programmer, nor engineer, nor hedge fund manager, nor crypto analyst, I am a techno-literate Internet native earthling with a care and interest for the evolutionary journey of the biosphere, the views that flow through me may not be always technically refined, but they are in good faith and generally considered before reaching these pages.
I will attempt to appreciate the various aspects of the story, AND I will introduce elements of my own opinion on the way through.
This piece began as a basic “explainer“ of NFTs for the purpose of introducing the board of a local patient empowerment group to the topic and to point out the relevance of the technology in that work.
Of course, as this was an audience of fiduciaries, the explanation would have to go deeper than simply “unique and persistent digital units.” Thusly, the piece began to wend its way into the territory of “Blockchain,” with efforts to unpack and clarify, in basic terms, the nature of that technology…
Yet, one does not simply come upon cryptographically secured network protocols such as blockchain without recognizing and understanding Bitcoin and bitcoins, as if NFT were not themselves a subject with enough confusion and social charge.
“Buy the ticket, take the ride." So of course then… Bitcoin.
On the journey to demystify and inspect that suite of technology with a neutral lens in efforts to tease apart the various mythologies surrounding “Magic Internet Money,” I found my way into more historical accounts of accounting, banking, cryptography, network technology, and Internet culture, in addition to Bitcoin itself.
This “basic explainer,” was starting to get very complicated…
More so, as my investigation continued, the phrase “Web 3” started to pop up more and more. Looking at the history of the application of communications technologies this narrative of iterating thresholds of the web started to make sense to me.
So it is that NFTs are not “the thing,” nor is Bitcoin, nor (and perhaps especially) is blockchain. All of these are currents in a flowing river of technological (and social) evolution. Trying to tell the story of why any one of these elements might be important to a modern initiative, WITHOUT a much broader context of the nature of the river itself and what might be coming up around the next bend begins to lose the forest for the trees…
And so, this piece, in whatever form it may take (began as a PowerPoint, leaned towards YouTube video, currently a stack of digital index cards rearranging themselves into something akin to a longform essay,) is not a sophisticated technical exposé, nor is it a pitch deck for Web 3.0, and it is most definitely not a sales pitch for JPEG’s.
What follows is simply a point of view intended to educate, to engage, and to invite a humble inquiry as the tide of this evolutionary wave of communications technology rolls in…
Continue reading, Web 3 is the Internet of the future: