Readers may wish to begin reading at the first post of this series:
Understanding Web 3, like most hyperobjects these days requires not just a linear evolutionary perspective from one state to another, nor something so simply granular as “why this new tech is so cool and, look what it can do!”
Context, as always, is an important portion of the view to be taken. In considering the “Why,” for Web 3, as this is a global* network, we must consider our global conditions.
An assumption I will be bringing to this inquiry is that any evolutionary creative response arises as an emergent condition of an existing tension.
Returning to the metaphor of the nervous system, while there are still countless human beings blocked from participation in a direct way with this “nervous system,” either due to access issues with materials, or literacy, there are few objects of our environment that don’t wend their way, in one sort or another into this meshwork of information and expression.
Whether climate change, threats of nuclear war, or the price of tea in China, web 3, by pushing access (and insight) further out to the edges, will bring increasing granularity to the sensitivity of this system.
Web 3 can be thought of as a school of architecture. Individual builders, designers, and engineers will apply their own interpretations of this “evolutionary response” in bringing new (cryptographically enabled) technologies to bear on our current environment.
But what is that environment?…
Problems with the State of Things —
The world is, on balance, in a state of decomposition. While this is natural, it is not necessarily optimum for humanity, nor the biosphere at this time.
In certain spans of time, we can see cycles of death and rebirth, the turning of the seasons, and the regeneration of things in a healthy process of decay and nascence.
In other stretches of time, we can see (or at least imagine) life flourishing on a planet for a time and then terminating, leaving only a “dead rock,” and inorganic matter in its wake.
This earth, our home, the very stuff we are made of, is in a time of transition. It seems worthy to note that which of these “cycles of time” may come to pass in this turning is, perhaps, yet unwritten.
Our case is particularly interesting given the fact that human activity (our decisions individually and collectively, and our actions – both conscientious and somnambulatory) may indeed play a substantial role in determining the course of Earth’s near future across this spectrum.
Of course we have the possibility that we will survive this period of decomposition (founded largely on the affairs of humanity) and continue the Human Project, perhaps more equitably, into the future.
Alternately, we may create the conditions for our own extinction, leaving behind life to flourish again.
We could also self terminate in more dramatic fashion, taking with us the entire atmosphere and in which case, ending all life potential on the planet for many megaannum to come.
If we wish to tip the scales towards the former of the three, and more importantly – a version of that not fraught with a few centuries of resource wars and dystopian landscapes, we are going to have to better understand how we got here and what tools we may need to find our way through.
In essence, Algorithmic Capitalism is Eating the Biosphere.
For the last 400 years, an incredible amount of human activity has been directed to the service of profit – perhaps the most impactful (and dangerous) abstraction in our history as a species.
This pursuit of profit (GDP, etc.) may be argued as the premier defining element of the modern age. Despite the bold statement above, I by no means intend for this to stand as a critique of modernity, only to contextualize ourselves more pointedly today.
The pursuit of a centralized ideology, in this case “Profit,” inherently pushes undesired artifacts of the process to the periphery, and when possible, “Out of the boundaries” of the system of desired outcomes.
In finance economics, these elements are known as “externalities,” in social politics, these are “they” (think ghettos, economic disparity, challenges to social mobility, and the like,) and in religious contexts, these are “sinners,” and other unfortunate infidels.
In all contexts, these undesired artifacts are sent, or considered to be, “away;” but they will inevitably return, often at much greater cost to the initial system on the other side.
Today the signs of this state of the world’s decomposition can be seen in environmental degradation, climate change, social disharmony and decay, rising authoritarianism, failing trust in institutions of authority, one another, and even loss of faith in ourselves. Those bills are due.
These are the natural signs of the decline and subsequent decomposition of the modern age. What is next? It seems a new age or oblivion.
This is an evolutionary moment, and the very tools we require to navigate our way through are in a very poor state of upkeep indeed. Here, I am referring to our information ecology, our ability to discern, understand and communicate effectively with one another. This leads to a diseased agreements ecology, weakening the bonds of social and cultural cohesion through time.
This ecology, rather than flourishing in a diverse ecosystem of creative endeavor, success, failure, compost, and repeat, is characterized by silo structures, massive instances of centralization, subject to the whims of the relative few, and ideologically driven in nearly all cases, strictly for an increasingly narrow band of profit.
In the face of a complex of global crisis, novel social and cultural coherence will need to be formed to bring us safely through the other side of this chrysalis. But do we have the tools, let alone a basic grammar? What would that even look like?
In response to the felt sensations of these systemic decomposition, the creative impulse is springing to life. The levels of dysfunction in nearly all of our critical systems match the ideological aspirations of no one. This gap between felt experience and ideological aspiration, regardless of brand, is stimulating and inspiring millions to prototype technological response that builds on Nakamoto’s initial innovation.
Whether by distribution of farming techniques and intelligence, by streamlining efficiencies in material flows, by increasing access to solace and some sense of connection, to the further revelation of the real depths of our suffering, by allowing value to flow freely rather than constricted through centralized structures, web 3.0 is a growth response to the winter of our well-being.