you’ve probably heard of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. you may have heard about NFTs or blockchains. how do they work? what are they? don’t worry, i’m not going to tackle any of those questions here. but i need to bring them up, because, in short, they are the future of everything.
web 1.0
do you remember the first websites? the birth of the World Wide Web allowed us to look up information from afar. it was a monologue from those with the access and resources to speak, one-way publishing.
here’s my business and contact info. here’s the history of Vikings. here’s what a rhododendron looks like.
the early web was like the first build of a computer or piece of software. it showed us all what was possible, but we knew there would be more to come. web 1.0 is this classic web, the initial release.
web 2.0
social media is the biggest, most visible product of web 2.0 (or web2). the Internet moved from monologue to dialogue — sharing, selling, posting, having a profile, connecting with other users, direct messaging.
publishing power shifted from larger entities to the individual as we all created content for the platforms we loved. our friends were there, or maybe we found the friends we always needed.
but phenomena like the Network Effect and the cost of resources needed to maintain servers and infrastructure necessitated centralized control by a few big players — Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc.
the Internet went from decentralized to centralized, and lately we’ve all felt at the mercy of Twitter’s usage policies or Instagram’s algorithms or Amazon’s recommendations.
it’s been a dialogue, but on their terms — the terms of a handful of big businesses we’ve grown weary of trusting with our data, our content, our speech.
web 3.0
web 3.0 (or web3) moves us back to de-centralizing.
the core technology that makes this possible is blockchain. blockchain is a database that, instead of being on one server owned by one company or person, exists on many computers owned by many people. the blockchain for Bitcoin, for instance, exists on so many computers, it is currently impossible to hack it. you’d have to do simultaneous, successful cyber attacks on thousand of computers at once. one day this may be possible, but it is safe for now. if one or a few computers are hacked or otherwise maliciously manipulated, the rest of the participating systems step in and say “no, no, that’s not it. this is it.”
by decentralizing everything across participating computers, no one is in charge. Bitcoin, established by a whitepaper in the beginning, has unchanging rules. Ethereum, another crypto blockchain, can be changed and developed by votes from the users. anyone can establish a digital certificate for their digital art, permissionlessly, 24/7, no matter the country they live in (if they have access). these currencies, ownership ledgers, and software systems can grow and develop and be used without any one overseeing entity denying access to someone. even when national governments shut down access, users always find a way to circumvent the gatekeepers and participate in the biggest global free market in the history of the world.
but more pragmatically, web3 will improve every aspect of our lives as it moves us from dialogue to actual relationship.
when i buy a piece of art, i create a relationship with an artist. when i sell art i’ve collected, the original artist gets a piece of that sale. when i buy from a startup, i invest longterm in the business. when i create smart contracts with cast and crew, i give them participation in the success of the project we’ve created.
web3 is barely in its infancy, but soon it will be so second-nature to the way we live, we won’t even think about it (the way we don’t ask how email or notifications or cell phones work now).
must-read article by Greg Isenberg
one of the best short articles i’ve read painting this picture is this recent post by Greg Isenberg:
The year is 2030. You live in rural Montana in a cabin with your spouse and 3 children.
You wake up, pour yourself a cup of hot coffee, and check your social networks to see what your favorite creators are up to. Your favorite funk band has launched a new NFT project -- limited edition album art-- to raise money for their upcoming album. You buy one, helping them rent a recording studio in SoHo, and earning a stake in their global streaming royalties and ticket sales. This is displayed in your crypto wallet (it’s just called a wallet now), so all of your friends can see the cool bands you support. Win-win….
please read the whole article; it’s maybe a 2-minute read max.
wby?
have you stepped into web3 yet? maybe you’ve invested in some cryptocurrency. maybe you’ve sold a piece of digital art. maybe, like me, you’re mostly just watching and learning for now.
i’d love to hear what you think is coming.
personally, i think this will be huge for the film industry. i imagine a world where a user watches a short clip of one of my films, and when she does, a small percentage of digital coin is sent from her wallet to the wallets of everyone who worked on the film. we’re a long way off from that, but the infrastructure is being built, and i want to be among the first to get there.
who’s with me?