At the turn of the century I plunged into social isolation. In the years before that I glued together children’s newspapers. My father – a journalist – distributed it on his newspaper editors. But when I was fourteen I heard about a kind of virtual newspaper. A website’. After that revelation, I traded my social life for the promise of the World Wide Web. No more playing with friends, but building sites. No lunch breaks in the schoolyard, but ‘surfing’ in the media library.
The internet seemed to be at my teenage feet. My sites attracted visitors, with them advertisers and I was soon able to quit my part-time job.
I had kind of forgotten the excitement that the online opportunity field brought to me. Until I recently heard about the ‘new internet’: Web3.
The web of my teenage years was version one. Publishing online was complex, but not so difficult that a student couldn’t handle it. Around 2006, services like Facebook came up with ‘Web 2.0’ and publishing became dead simple.
En masse we started sharing photos, stories and videos. We laid the foundations for a new attention economy, because advertisers could place us in very precise target groups. Molochs like Google are now making billions from us. We also get something in return for all that published… a few likes.
Fortunately, Web3 is coming to distribute everything more fairly. It’s not a handful of companies who own what we create online, but ourselves. You and me!
When I first read that, I recognized the jitters from 2000. Just like then, I saw a new field of opportunities arise and I spent every evening with the laptop on the couch.
I learned that Web3 runs on blockchains and that therefore everyone can share in the new platforms. If you create value for a new equivalent of Facebook, you get a ‘token’ in return. That is a kind of tradable share with voting rights. As a result, users of a platform are also owners, so that their interests are central, and not those of advertisers. All users also share in the economic value – instead of just a club of shareholders.
But I left my childish naivety in the media library.
Because the first web and Web 2.0 also promised democratization. Twice that promise was not fulfilled. On the contrary.
There are bad omens. The greatest Web3 evangelists are the same people who make millions from Web 2.0. Moreover, there are many libertarians among them, who hope that Web3 decentralizes everything so that we no longer need governments. Not to mention the environmental impact of some blockchains.
So now I’m torn behind my laptop. One minute I think ‘libertarians, yuck’. The next minute I exclaim, “But how wonderful is it when we share in the value we create online?”
Notice: You are going to be a part of that struggle here from now on.
Because it is still much too early in the technological development of Web3 to make a final judgment. I promise to share my discoveries with you here as faithfully as I used to update my sites during the break.
Ernst-Jan Pfauth writes a column here every other week.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 7, 2022