~/web3.md

My (not so) first thoughts on web3

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~ "web3 software"

Since this seems to be a sort of trend in the online spaces I inhabit, thought I might join in!

what even is web3?

How I like to think about web3 is in terms of Web 2.0 and Web 1, so what were those?

Web 1

Most people consider the internet to have been invented in 1983, as that is the year that the standard of TCP/IP (Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol) was formalized, creating a standard way of sending data from computer to computer, but that wouldn't be the beginning of the web.

Web 1 starts with Tim Berners-Lee. In 1989 he created HTTP (Hyper Text Transport Protocol), a method of sending documents over the IP stack that we still use today! Because of the rudimentary nature of this protocol, Web 1 was characterized by static, informative content. Now why would people build such a boring internet? Well, they were academics, sooooo.

Web 2.0

Web 2 is considered to have started in the mid to late 90s, when technologies like PHP and MySQL solidified. Web 2 is the "interactive web," where users started creating content instead of just consuming. One of my favorite examples of this is Wikipedia, where users created literally billions of words of content.

and into the future!

Web 3.0 was originally considered to be the "semantic web," that is, an internet where the content itself is machine parseable and easily contextualized. That's a whole bunch of buzzwords for basically "look at this data, this data is related!" The idea was created by the the guy we talked about earlier Tim Berners-Lee, an idea I love, and if you do too, then look into the IndieWeb!

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~ "A whole bunch of IndieWeb protocols"

And then cryptobros came along.

Insert scary sound effects here

Modern web3

web3 (yes it's lowercase, which I will use to separate it from Web 3), is like worse late Web 1. Also it's a terrifying capitalist hell.

"modern" Web 1

web3 is mostly based around cryptocurrencies, I'm not going to say blockchain because blockchain tech itself is amazing, but cryptocurrencies are an ancaps wet dream (that's bad FYI).

Here are some of the base protocols, technologies, and concepts:

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~ "metaverse"

In your average cryptobros mind, these can all come together to make some sort of magical metaverse of happy capitalism wonderland.

Immutable hell

One thing you might notice is that the majority of these protocols are static, immutable, or store the entire history. This seems amazing right now, but with exponentially more users and growth, the storage and compute requirements will also rise exponentially, which makes sense from a Big Tech point of view, how else would you sell more CPUs, more GPUs, more RAM, more SSDs.

A solution: Just stop, like really

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~ "degrowth grafiti"

Theres's a solution that comes to us from the world of economics. It's called Degrowth. With our current situation, quite a few people believe that the solution to our issues with some things like climate change and the hell that is work in our neoliberal economy. The core concept is moving backwards, slowing down, and reversing. We can apply this to web3 as well! We need to stop pushing forwards on things like PoW cryptocurrencies and move back to Web 2 or 1 tech.

What can I do?

I have no clue how to end posts, so enjoy this amazing call to action:

Just go and like, ya know, steal some bitcoin mining GPUs and use them for games.


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