Readers may wish to begin reading at the first post of this series:
While the term “Web 3” finds itself currently awash in jargon, buzz, and memetic dilution, do not be confused, we are on the threshold of the third major revolution in the evolution of The Internet.
The Internet has become so ubiquitous in the operation of modern society, that it is easy to overlook its influence on, and being influenced by, nearly every aspect of human culture. Indeed, it may even be the battlefield of World War III!
It is not a stretch to consider the Internet metaphorically as the nervous system of the Modern worldview. This worldview represents the primary embodied cognitive model influencing the state of the biosphere (and noosphere) today.
It is then no surprise that, “as above, so below;” the real biological/ecological concerns we see all around us in the physical world, echo also in the domain of our global sociological communications technology.
Much as we must meet the emerging demands of climate change with changes in behavior, we must also meet the demands of informational, democratic, and social decay with changes, not only in consciousness, but also to its mechanisms of deployment.
While the primary purchase of this “Web 3 Explainer,” is to do just that (explain web 3 for the lay reader,) it will necessarily involve an exploration and explication of the larger context of which this basic communications technology is a part.
Given our current global complex of crisis, change is upon us and the World Wide Web is, inevitably, a part of this.
What we are calling Web 3 marks not only the third major revolution of this new application of communications technologies, but is most likely the first major evolution of that technology since its conception when Mr. Licklider first envisioned the Intergalactic Computer Network in the early 1960s, an Internet of Everything.
With everything up for grabs in our modern milieu, there is a vast (and growing) population of technology sophisticates (some might even call them Shadowy Super Coders) busily rewriting the software of this network.
Moved by ideology, concern for privacy from increasingly ubiquitous surveillance, and the healthy decentralization and distribution of power, authority, and intelligence, the advent of these new technologies are a virtual certainty. All that remains is how we decide to apply them, and what care we may take to manage the inevitable social impacts and regulatory governance concerns.
Neither of those two questions should be taken lightly and it is incumbent on us to develop our understanding of these influences in positive, negative, and neutral terms. Like most of the work of the world before us today, our approach should be both well considered, and certain, which is to say confident in its method of execution.
Let us begin with, “Why this?” and “Why now?”…
Next installment :