Yesterday I started putting together an analysis of Web3, the apparent next stage of the web, for my personal baer.works site. When I got to the end, I realized I had only outlined my criticisms without proposing anything else. So today I started writing what I think a real “Web 3.0,” in the spirit of the original Web, should be. I ended up with 2,000 words after a few hours.
Hope to publish it tomorrow on write.as/matt.
Thoughts? Discuss...
My thinking lately has started drifting to businesses outside of my own.
Thinking about a "main street" for the web.
— Matt Baer (@ilikebeans) August 13, 2021
This “main street” idea is particularly interesting to me, because I think it’s the start of a path that can actually lead to meaningful resistance against the tech-giant-dominated web we live on.
I still dream of the early web days, with less rampant commercialism and more free-flowing humanity and knowledge. That side of the web is still alive and well, and will always be around. But it feels pushed to the fringes, and left out of all the mainstream conversations on today’s privacy violations, “misinformation,” and social ailments caused by the “big web.” I think it’s all pretty ironic when this old, human web holds solutions to all these problems. The answer is right in front of our faces, yet we blindly look past it.
I’m not sure what this all looks like in practice. Somewhere in it, maybe, there are organizations providing funding for small businesses that need it. Perhaps there’s a curated, social marketplace only for small businesses, where everyone in it can get to know each other. Or a federated network of these independent bazaars, naturally powered by communal, open source software. Just thoughts for now.
Thoughts? Discuss...
After last week’s interview, I’m starting to play around with Racket as a new publishing outlet. Here’s a new short clip about building a better web by first giving people a choice — inspired by Team Human, a book I’m about half-way through right now:
Building a better web: first, giving people a choice
Thoughts? Discuss...