Not This Snake Oil Again …
Stop giving the Web self-serving version numbers and pushing snake oil on the world. It’s not helping. This is what got us into this mess in the first place.
As a longtime internet user, I feel that it is my job to speak out against anyone who puts work into aggressive displays of logos and claims ownership over some vision of the future with their startup.
That’s what this article does. It claims “the technology [of the blockchain] will facilitate the decentralization of the World Wide Web, thereby equalizing control and ownership back from the grasp of profit hungry corporations.”
There are likely people working on this, but they’re actually doing the hard work of actually creating this technology, not spending hundreds of hours grabbing every single logo they can find off of Google Images, organizing them into some aggressive vision that claims that every part of your technological experience will be killed by the power of the blockchain, something that, conveniently, the technology being promoted by the author will make possible.
I was here during Web 2.0. Displays of hundreds of logos, put into place to bolster a visionary argument? That was literally the Worst Thing about Web 2.0. We should not put up with it again. It diminishes the work of all the people who work for those companies, the people who are building the small innovations that make the internet better.
I think we can all agree that small numbers of large companies have all the power right now. But I think we owe it to be skeptical of anyone who aggressively comes around with an amazing solution to anything. By doing this, they show their hands. They want to be the next Zuckerberg, the next Ellison, the next kingmaker.
We should not allow them to make any kings. In fact, we should resist their influence on a movement that would exist whether or not they wrote their post.
I’m not worried about Web 3.0. I’m worried about people who act like they have all of the solutions gaining any sort of power. They represent everything that’s wrong with the nature of the open internet, because it pushes an overtly bold vision that you will never be able to cash.
We’re not going to get the decentralized internet of yore back unless we resist the singular visionaries and focus on the power of the collective whole—the large number of innovative people who have lots of creative, innovative ideas to share with the world. The collective whole is what makes the internet great. Not buzzword-heavy blog posts.
If someone is selling you Web 3.0, throw the bottle out. It’s a trap.
