Will the Internet get better? Geek Spirit and Web 3

"I don't see a lot of Web 3 stuff, but a world where no one cares about Web 3 scares me even more."

Special author of Wen 丨 Wang Hanyang

What is a better Internet?

Many people will answer: Web 3.

The concept is too hot to hide. But when we talk about Web 3, it shouldn't just be about the heat. It's because there's something really worth exploring. I hope this article helps you understand what is Web 3? Why is it happening now? and the criticism that Web 3 has faced.

Regarding what Web 3 is, US cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase wrote in an article: "Web 3 is a trustless, permissionless and decentralized Internet that leverages blockchain technology. The defining feature of Web 3 is ownership. The first iteration of the commercial Internet (Web 1) was read-only for most users, while Web 2 allowed users to read and write on centralized platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.), and Web 3 gave users full ownership of their content, data, and assets through blockchain. It gives the user the power to read-write- to own."

There is nothing wrong with this description. Under this narrative, however, web 3 we're talking about is more like some kind of new blockchain-based invention. But web 3 didn't just come out of thin air. The narrative and ideas behind it have a long history. It could even be argued that the kind of "Internet" that Web 3 wants to shape is exactly similar to the one that the Internet pioneers hoped to create decades ago. So to understand Web 3, you must start with why there is now the Internet.

The original Internet

Today, around the computer and the Internet, there are "open source movements" and "hacker spirit" and other trends of thought. Pioneers believed that the Internet could build a decentralized, equal, harmonious, and free society. However, at the beginning of the invention of the computer, before the birth of the Internet, computer technology had a completely different meaning for the society of the time.

The early image of the computer was not good. After all, its development and war are closely related. Researchers in the early days of the Cold War believed that computers were likely to become tools for governments and big capitalists. They fear that computers are likely to be used by the most powerful people in society to fully automate various institutions.

Beginning in the late 1950s, many scientists and thinkers began to oppose the "automated processes" that computers represent. Lewis Mumford (1895-1990), the most popular anti-automationist of the '60s, wrote in his 1967 book The Myth of the Machine: "With this massive new technology, the dominant minority can create a unified, all-encompassing super-Earth structure for the purpose of automated domination." Unlike the independent personality that acts actively, man will become a passive, aimless, machine-bound animal. Like the role of man as described by technologists today, the normal function of man is either purely to satisfy the needs of the machine or to be severely restricted and monitored to protect the interests of the collective apparatus, which is missing from humanity."

Young people in the Cold War era live in the "shadow of nuclear power," and world wars can be fought at any time. If a person has to think every day about whether he will be killed by a nuclear bomb, he will definitely begin to reflect on the meaning of life. At the same time, it was a time of intense alienation, when young people felt like bloated institutions. Their lives have been disciplined by society to look all the way to the end: get married, buy a house, have children, and have a dog. In order to get rid of such a mediocre life, some people decide to break with this closed screw society. As a result, the "frolic movement" of the anti-mainstream began to rise. Some of them are eager to create an equal community. Group de-neutralization of governance organizations appeared at the same time. They went far from the cities and created thousands, even tens of thousands of communes. Communities are formed according to different beliefs, political orientations, and sexual orientations. The contemporary American writer Fred Turner referred to this group as the "New Communalists."

The inhabitants of these communes were far from the cities, but that did not mean that they were abandoning modern life. They aspired to turn themselves back into producers, creators, to establish a convenient everyday environment in the Commune. They find a variety of tools to build communities. Due to the heavy use of "tools", they are not as averse to technology – at least, not as much as other participants in social movements. Not only that, but "building communities from scratch" requires intensive collaboration. It also made them realize that the collaboration that computer automation brings may be exactly what they need. If the computer is used rationally, it can change from a prop controlled by a few people to a tool in everyone's hand.

Discussions of tools became popular. "How people use tools to accomplish the right tasks" became the focus of their attention. To better share this information, Stewart Brand (1938-) founded the Global Survey (1968-1972). He ran the magazine in a way that resembled open source software and made the accounts public. He recommended various tools to the people of different communes and exchanged various kinds of information. Take, for example, a 20-pound hammer: One reader said, "Today I walked into the bathroom with a newly purchased 20-ounce hammer in my hand, and I suddenly understood what the Global Survey calls a 'tool.'" I've always thought of tools as objects, things: screwdrivers, wrenches, axes, hoes. Now I understand that tools are a process: getting the job done in the most efficient way with objects, both large and small and shaped."

During the same period, computers began to miniaturize. It can only be accommodated in one room, and it can be put down on a table. Many participants in the commune movement began to think about whether computers could help individual applications and create production. As a result, the term "personal computer" appeared in the early 1970s.

The narrative about computers is changing, from being used as a tool for big institutions to being a weapon for everyone.

In June 1971, Brand prepared to hold a party for the Global Survey. At the party, he gave twenty thousand dollars to the host. The host said: This is also the "tool" of the Global Survey. Then we invited everyone to discuss what the money should be for. Participants proposed more than fifty proposals, but no consensus was reached. After the party, the rest of the money went to Frederick L. Moore (1941–1997). In the spring of 1975, Moore founded the Homebrew Computer Club.

The Homebrew Computer Club was called "the melting pot of the entire computer age" by Time magazine. The club spawned the Apple computer founded by Steve Jobs (1955-2011) and Steve Wozniak (1950-). So it was only natural that the 1984 Apple Macintosh computer used to smash bureaucracy and achieve freedom—after all, Jobs himself was influenced by the main participants in the New Commune movement.

The wave of ideas in these pioneers in the pursuit of equality, freedom, empowerment of the individual, and the use of tools profoundly influenced the birth of the Internet. In a 1995 special issue of Time magazine, Brand said that "the personal computer revolution and the development of the Internet originated directly from the counterculture movement" and "forget the anti-war protests, forget Woodstock, forget the long hair." The real legacy of the 1960s was the computer revolution." In the eyes of these people, the transformation of computers from large machines locked in rooms to tools that can be owned by individuals is a huge victory.

At this moment, the narrative about computers has changed completely. It belongs to the individual.

So when we look at the origins of all kinds of computer and Internet ideas, it's easy to find them—a bunch of hippies who live in the shadow of nuclear war, who resent the bureaucracy, who live in the communes, and who are influenced by them. Their goal is to make our society more equal by reconstructing a part of the world, where information flows freely, and where everyone can realize their value. It is a decentralized, individual-to-individual utopia. Man is here for an end, not a means.

Although these goals were never really achieved, they became the beginning of every trend of thought after the information revolution. Each upgrade claims to be a more "empowering individual", and then, by the way, the last one does not benefit the individual. Tracing back to the roots, they maintain considerable ideological continuity with the original goals. It was a dream that had been going on for years.

The Internet changed by Web 2.0

The invention and promotion of the Internet (Web) may be the most influential product of the personal computer, and it is also the most highly anticipated creation. An entire generation of technology pioneers believed that the Internet could achieve the ideal digital utopia. Information begins to move from the world of atoms to the world of bits. In 1992, a librarian invented a word to describe it: Surfing the Internet. Only the constant flow of information can become waves.

At this moment, however, the Internet is more like a one-dimensional source. Very few users have the ability to set up their own personal sites. For the vast majority of people who have never been exposed to the Internet, it seems to be just another kind of newspaper. At the end of the day, the Internet in its early years was only an Internet of a handful of people; just as any idealism could not hide that the majority of the new Communalists were mostly middle-class white Americans.

So the concept of Web 2.0 was proposed: ordinary users can also produce content compared to passively browsing content. People and people can interact more online. My exposure to the Internet began before the first dot-com bubble burst (I didn't understand the concept of "bubble" at the time). The first time I projected a portion of my life online was in the days leading up to Web 2.0. The first time I learned about Web 2.0 was in an article in a print magazine. For me, how natural and natural this concept is, it will and is destined to come. Aside from being online, hiding behind that nickname, who can seriously listen to one of my children? It was also one of the sources of my initial fondness for the internet. Once the idea was turned on, I began to wonder why the internet hadn't been like this before.

Of course, my understanding is still too shallow. I just want to communicate online with people thousands of miles away. O'Reilly Media, the agency that proposed the concept of Web 2.0, believes that it is characterized by the use of the web as an application platform, a more democratic network, and a more diverse distribution of information. Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator (1964-), summed up Web 2.0 as three characteristics: Ajax technology for interaction, more democratic, and no disgusting users.

It is clear to realize that this democratization of ordinary users is essentially what the people who invented the Internet tried to do. But in the age of 2.0, another narrative is established: the Internet is no longer just made up of individuals, it is calling for service providers as platforms. And these service providers, it is best not to disgust users. These platforms want to create a space for ordinary people to create content.

At that time, no one thought that there would be any problems with the platform; on the contrary, the platform might be better for the average user. The infrastructure of the Democratization of the Internet is a more convenient interactive experience. The Bible of Internet products at the time was Don't Make Me Think (2000), Chinese translated as "Turning Stones into Gold: Visitor-First Web Design Tips" (2006). Until the wave of entrepreneurship in 2015, this book will still be recommended as a must-read for entrepreneurs. Users don't need to worry about anything, just leave it to the platform.

Someone else accidentally opened Pandora's box, and we personally summoned the contents of the box.

The big Internet platform uses user data to form a network effect and monopolize our online life. Although we use their products at mostly without spending money, there is a saying that goes like this: "Free products, users are products - products sold to advertisers." Using data, platforms can better deliver targeted ads to our eyes and even (in some cases) manipulate our ideas. This user-platform-advertiser relationship is the triangle trade of our time.

More critically, creators who contribute to the Internet are not treated fairly. They create so much and get so little in return. Creators are like second-class citizens: the platform's own demands, advertisers' demands, and product managers' needs are all more important than the creators. Even some platforms license the attribution of user-created content to companies "permanently globally and irrevocably" in their agreements. Aaron Hillel Swartz (1986-2013), inventor of RSS and Markdown, paid with his life.

The ideal of Web 2.0 is as shattered as what happened in Web 1.0. Platforms do help users get online and interact more easily, but they take more than they give. Those users in the early years of the Internet were like Prometheus who stole the fire, and the platform stole the fire of Prometheus and said that he violated the user agreement.

Who exactly does the user's data belong to? How exactly should the revenue be distributed for the content created? Is a giant platform too big to fall reasonable?

These questions are some of the most basic questions about today's Internet technology. The most common comment about this skepticism today is that technology is a double-edged sword, and the key is to see how we use it. This is misleading. If a pancake fruit is not delicious, it should not be considered that the way diners eat it is wrong. We need to admit that the Internet is great technology, but not all of its way forward is appropriate.

If you're also interested in talking about these issues, we're talking about a so-called Web 3 thing together.

A new narrative called Web 3

As with any newly born concept, it is full of specious conclusions and all sorts of whimsical ideas. Web 3 can be discussed in a complex way, or it can capture its core: data, ownership, and user relationships.

Who should own users' data and the value they create? How should the identity of the data owner be defined? If the data is owned by individuals, who will own the platform that uses the data? If the platform is also owned by everyone, how can they manage it? In what currency is the settlement used?

This is the question that Web 3 is trying to answer.

Web 3 hopes to better tie users and user-created data, content and revenue through blockchain technology. Any platform can only access its data with the user's permission, and the content created by the user can share the benefits with the platform; the platform itself can also be owned by the user. Users, employees, and investors can not only be a community of interests, but also a person's different identities. Because users own the data, it's easier to migrate between platforms. Then decentralization also seems to be easier to achieve than before. And blockchain's old strength, cryptocurrencies, makes it all tied directly to revenue.

Opponents can say that the specific solutions to Web 3 are not necessarily correct, but they cannot say that the problems raised by Web 3 are not important.

However, the social problems brought about by technology cannot be solved by another new technology. Human habits are inert. New technologies must explain themselves why they are better and more worthy of being trusted. Part of what Web 3 is really doing is technology-related and part of it is reconstructing the narrative system of the Internet. Web 3 evangelists may not realize it themselves that what they preach is never technology—it's the "why" to choose it. Technology cannot speak for itself, it must be represented. It's about the system of discourse of narrative.

Today we live not only in the world of Web 2.0, but also in the world under the Web 2.0 narrative system. Do you agree with the idea that entrepreneurship needs to maintain "lean principles", "rapid iteration", and then achieve "network effects" as soon as possible and become a "platform company"? In this process, "measuring data can improve data", every employee must have a "product manager mentality", agree that "data is the oil of the new era", and "algorithm recommendation" can help content distribution?

This narrative system, which we call "Internet thinking", may not all be invented by Web 2.0, but it has been carried forward by Web 2.0 and its era, becoming the golden rule of the Internet. I'm not saying this kind of thinking is wrong, but it becomes an "axiom" that cannot be discussed in the Internet world.

No founder or investor will say that they don't want "network effects", no developer will not promote "rapid iteration", and no one will question the importance of data. This narrative is like the ideological stamp of the Internet. Some people will say that users have become slaves to the big platform, but as Lu Xun said at the time: slaves and slave owners are not free.

Until the narrative that was carried forward by Web 2.0 was cracked. Web 3 is like Perry's black ship, opening a port for the world of Web 2.0. It forces everyone who is used to the Web 2.0 narrative to reflect on whether their habits are correct. In this process, all the things that are used to need to be re-examined.

Does the Internet have to pursue network effects?

Do Internet companies only have two ways out to become a platform or to rely on a certain platform?

Can the user only have the right to use the product, not ownership?

The more data the better, but is this good for the platform or for the user?

At the break of the Web 2.0 narrative, new ideas for the Internet began to emerge. By revisiting the concepts we take for granted, the imagination of the Internet is reviving. Narrative in the context of Web 3 is exactly what it revolutionized Web 2.0. Even using Web 3 instead of Web 3.0 is a narrative in itself: Web 3 is not an upgraded version of the Web 2.0 platform, and it should be something different.

Web 3 is not just a technical problem, it is a big problem of ideas and technologies. Should we care about distributed storage, NFTs, decentralization, or how do we get a better Internet? The former is a technical problem, the latter is an ideological problem. But unlike technology, thinking triggered by technology always has a considerable lag. Many times it's only when technology has a problem that we start to really think about what problems we need technology to help us solve. In this series of problems brought about by technology, the value ranking of which one we choose to solve and which one not to solve first is itself a problem of thought. Technology brings about a change of ideas, and the change of ideas in turn will drive the progress of technology, which is a cycle, and there are many examples in history.

Reference: The origin of copyright

The problems caused by technology can often not be solved by technological progress alone. Technology needs to change along with ideas in order to bring about real change. This has happened again and again throughout history. Copyright, for example, which is often discussed with Web 3, is a good example. Copyright is the result of the ideological change promoted by the advancement of printing technology, which resulted in the "author" becoming a profession and the "content creation" being protected.

Perhaps because the concept of copyright is so common, many people don't realize it's a modern concept. In other words, this is a concept that only began to emerge gradually after human beings entered the modern era.

The modern copyright system originated in the United Kingdom. Before the widespread spread of Gutenberg printing (1440) in Europe, books generally existed in manuscript form. The owner of the manuscript has the right to authorize others to make copies of the manuscript. The core difference between this right and modern copyright is that copyright is a right to content, while the right to reproduce manuscripts is a right to a physical manuscript. This means that it does not matter who the original author of the manuscript is, what matters is who owns the manuscript.

After the invention of Gutenberg printing, books went from manuscripts in the hands of a few people to reproductions that could be mass-produced. And the cost of this kind of production is naturally much greater than that of hand-copied a book. Publishers need to confirm that they can recover their costs before they are produced, so they need some rights to protect them. In the era when printing technology was just becoming widespread, much of the discussion in the field of publishing revolved around the regulatory regime and the monopoly of printing technology concessions. These publishers are like the big Internet platforms today, making money from content that they don't create themselves. Just as YouTube would consider playing the Soviet anthem to be infringing, some publishers even wanted to permanently monopolize the work of people who had been dead for a hundred years.

Modern corporations monopolized data, when British publishers formed publishing guilds to try to monopolize the book trade. Publishers' societies advocate copyright for the purpose of protecting themselves. Therefore, copyright law at this stage has always been based on protecting the publisher's right to publish the work, rather than protecting the work itself. There is no author's thing here. The commercial monopoly of the publishing guilds led to more discussion; and with the rise of liberalism, the concept of the "author" began to change. In fact, one of the key figures driving change in the copyright system was John Locke (1632-1704), who is widely regarded as the father of liberalism.

In 1693, Locke began writing against what he called the monopoly of the book trade by "ignorant and lazy publishers", as well as against the publishing control system that emerged in England after the spread of printing technology. Many of the people involved in the discussion were themselves authors. Also providing theoretical ground for this camp were Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe, and John Milton (1608-1674), author of Paradise Lost and On the Freedom of the Press. The people who created the words began to try to regain their rights.

In Locke's narrative, "the labor of a man and the fruits of his use of his hands, we can say, should rightly belong to himself." Therefore, as long as he has taken anything out of the state which nature has arranged, from the state in which it was, it means that he has integrated himself into his own labour, and has taken into these things something of his own, and thus made it his property."

From their discussion, the idea of "property rights arising from the labor of the author" was born from liberal theory. The importance of the author was gradually increased. Defoe wrote, "Why do we have laws to sanction house destroyers, road robbers, pickpockets, rapists, and all those who commit adultery in public?" He called on the British Parliament to legislate to guarantee the author's property rights.

Ironically, trying to monopolize the market entirely is simply too hard (Meta probably agrees). Publishers of the London Publishing Guild were often helpless in the face of piracy by Scottish publishers. As a result, publishers have found that copyright systems that support authors help stop piracy. Driven by commercial interests, they began to work with authors to make appeals for the protection of copyrights belonging to authors.

In 1710, the Queen Anne Decree was introduced with the consent of the Royal Family. This was the first decree to protect the copyright of authors. This means that copyright in the legal sense is "the author's copyright" and not the "publisher's copyright". People who convey ideas don't need to know how books are printed. The copyright system also began to be separated from the regulatory system and became a property right. After writing books for a better income, the author became a professional identity. The protection of rights allows people to start writing full-time. Today, we think that doing full-time content online and writing books are different careers. There may not be as many differences between them as you might think.

But the Queen Anne Decree was only the beginning of the modern copyright system. It left a lot of questions that were unanswered at the time: Should copyright be permanent? How is the copyright of a translated work defined? How to distinguish originality? These questions were discussed by British authors and publishers for decades, until they were gradually sorted out at the end of the eighteenth century. However, the copyright debate has never stopped and has continued until now. Today we still complain that big companies and big platforms advertise with our content without giving us a penny.

From this we need to realize that "copyright is not a moral idea that transcends the mundane, but a modern product of the combination of printing technology, the market economy, and the classical liberal culture characterized by possessive individualism." Today, we don't know which of Gutenberg's minds, the printing technology itself and the Gutenberg Bible (1454-1455), was his most important creation—technology and ideas transmitted through technology were always intertwined. But we can be sure that Gutenberg could never have imagined the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Age of Enlightenment that followed the advent of printing technology; nor could it have imagined a modern copyright system hundreds of years later. Technology is always inadvertently driving a change of mind.

The dramatic shift in human thought triggered by leaps and bounds of technological advances is not unique to printing technology. The cycle of technological change and ideological revolution is the modern history of human society.

After the First Industrial Revolution, feudalism gradually disappeared and capitalism arose. The old classes faded, and the new bourgeoisie and the proletariat began to diverge. Karl Marx (1818-1883) appeared in the era when he was supposed to be. After the Second Industrial Revolution, more ideas emerged. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900) foreshadowed that "revaluation of all values" became the main discussion of human social thought in the last century.

From the perspective of human history, the interval between the two industrial revolutions is not long. But it makes the world feel "changed".

For modern people, the world is shrinking and fast-moving. Man is no longer the creator, but merely a cog on the assembly line; man, no longer the yardstick by which all things are measured, measures the progress of production of all things in the world; man also establishes the "instrumental rationality" of the pursuit of goals, success, and efficiency in the pursuit of moral, aesthetic, and religious value reason.

Advocating industry, secularity and rationality, this is our modern society. It is the daily life of all readers who can read this article today. The flame of technological change will surely ignite the lead of the ideological revolution. And what exactly will this lead detonate? I am afraid that it is not something that the person who creates technology can imagine and control.

So what will the Third Industrial Revolution, the Information Revolution, bring? Today, the changes in our thinking brought about by computers and the Internet are more focused on lean entrepreneurship, rapid iteration, network effects and other relatively technical practical ideas. Such changes in thinking are more appropriately written into business textbooks than in intellectual histories.

But this will only be temporary, as Gutenberg was destined to bring about when he thought about how to print better Bibles; the first gear of the information revolution has been turned by technology, and the question now is what kind of intellectual engine will it drive? The narrative changes brought about by Web 3 may be one answer to this question.

But that doesn't mean everything under the new web 3 narrative is true.

Web 3 criticism

I 100% agree with the vision of Web 3 evangelists, but with a little cold water: the problems caused by technological change cannot be solved by technological updates alone. It is believed that since all the data on the platform is causing the problem, it is possible to solve the problem by letting the individual own the data. If we can solve the problems caused by old technology by relying on new technologies, it is a superstition of technological omnipotence.

Because there is a problem with centralization, we need a decentralized internet.

There is a problem with platform-owned data, so we need individuals to own the data.

Big platforms bully the interests of creators, so we let creators directly own the management of the platform.

Traditionally, we call this solution: headache cure, foot pain heals foot pain. Doesn't Web 2.0 think the same way? Since user interaction is difficult, it is better for us to make it an easy-to-use platform. What do we get as a result?

Second, technological progress is not the same as advances in thinking. Suppose that all humans today drive electric vehicles, but the understanding of the environment is still stuck in the 18th century. Talking about any environmental protection is a fantasy. Using advanced technology is not the same as having progressive ideas. Give the Internet to a feudal lord who may only want to go online to find out how to collect more rent. Technology may even make our minds more closed. The National Public Radio (NPR) survey found far-right misinformation rampant on Facebook during the U.S. election. Advances in algorithms have "fed" people in echo chambers that believe only what they want to believe: American Rust Belt workers believe that Lao Wang in Shenyang's Tiexi District is the culprit who caused his American dream to be shattered.

Allowing users to own content on the blockchain, how to solve the problem of network extremes caused by algorithms? Web 3 projects have a passionate belief in community, but community is not a positive word, it is a neutral word. If Web 3 projects can more easily access community funding through cryptocurrencies, the extreme community has more die-hard supporters and may be able to raise capital faster than normal communities. There's a paradox here: What should community managers do if an apparently false rumor spreads on a massive scale? Laissez-faire will only strengthen the polarization effect; but if it is written, what is the difference between it and the previous platform-based large companies?

It's not a joke: there's a group of people who believe the earth is flat, and government agencies have modified satellite imagery to trick us. After the Middle Ages, the pseudoscientific horizon theory, which few people believed in, was revived with the blessing of the Internet.

We cannot, on the one hand, think that several problems such as data and decentralization are important, and ignore other problems brought about by the Internet on the other hand. In a narrative system, choosing not to discuss anything is just as important as actively discussing what. What is worrying is that the current narrative system of Web 3 is too strong in financial attributes. Any direction of development will become xxFi - SocialFi, GameFi, DeFi... Everything can be + (financial) finance. The push for new technologies does require money, but not everything has to be fully financed depending on whether finance is lubricant or gas in your philosophy. Tulips are also good-looking, but how to evaluate Tulip Fi? This discussion, which is too much in the same direction, makes Web 3 sometimes look more like patched Web 2.1.

To use decentralization as an example, all of humanity's technological revolutions have focused on only one thing: efficiency. The efficiency of production, the efficiency of movement, the efficiency of calculation. Even in the non-technological revolution, efficiency has always played a key role. In analyzing the French Revolution, Tocqueville argued that the problem of fiscal efficiency was an important factor leading to the revolution.

Then if we choose efficiency, we cannot praise "the craftsmanship of others, a knife made for a year, more soulful than assembly line production." This praise is useless because we chose efficiency. The Internet addresses the efficiency of the flow of information, and centralization is best at efficiency. Centralized is best at efficiency, it has nothing to do with online and offline. The warm-hearted mom-and-pop shop at the entrance of the community can't compete with the 24-hour convenience store downstairs; the pyrotechnic fly restaurant has to give way to the pre-made vegetable factory and the central kitchen in the matter of making money - even barbecue, which can be delivered to the centralization with electric grilling + cold chain. Aren't Mammoth and Wordpress not enough to represent decentralization other than blockchain? But it's better than Twitter and Medium. Without him, high efficiency is king.

Another problem is that although Web 3 advocates open source, most of the so-called distributed applications are still encapsulated like traditional apps. Consumers don't really understand the logic in it. How many people have actually studied the principles of Ethereum? OpenSSL in the pre-blockchain era was also open source, and how many people actually looked at the code carefully before it went wrong? Then, with the blessing of financial attributes, some believers' confidence in Web 3 is similar to that of investors in the bubble period.

When people with iPhones talk about decentralization, players whose main incomes rely on fast-forward and fast-out cryptocurrencies claim that this is their belief, a picture of late capitalism that monetizes everything unfolds. There is so much to talk about Web 3, but so little meaningful information. Web 3 has thousands of roads, and the first way to make money.

This was accompanied by offline people with ambiguous identities chanting "All in Crypto/Web 3" in virtual chat rooms. Although they still say GM/GN (Good Morning/Good Night) based on their physical location, in their mouths, offline is not important. In the future everything will be chained, and we may even live in the metaverse. There is no real world that is separated from the Internet, and there is no Internet that is separated from the real world. Online and offline can be more integrated, but thinking that Web 3 can be cut off from the real world is just an illusory ideal. Real-world problems will eventually map to the online world, and even intensify. We need to be prepared for this.

If the Internet and computers were born at the height of the global left-wing movement, the overall social climate tended to empower individuals; the freedom of these two technologies in the early years also came from not being targeted by big business and governments except for enthusiasts. But Web 3 is just under the attention of capital, giants and governments, how to make them sincerely accept the new rules?

Advances in technology can certainly give us more means to solve problems, but every time we believe that technology can solve all problems, it is like drowning in the same river repeatedly. Successive upgrades of personal computers and Internet technology have many reasons to be similar. Religious fundamentalism is criticized, but when people shout "Let's restore the earliest ideals of the Internet!" These years have gone wrong!" But no one thought it was problematic. History dances in rhyme.

Technology requires a change in thinking to bring about more fundamental change. In "Why We Need Web 3.0," widely considered the beginning of Web 3, co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood, he said that "centralization is not sustainable in society for long, and the government's ability to solve problems is too poor." It's a great article, but I'd like to add that Gavin's somewhat clumsy government, the modern government of a sovereign state, didn't come about by one or two industrial revolutions. Its cornerstones are ideas such as The Social Contract, The Theory of Government, Capital, and The Federalist Papers. The Westernization Movement showed that the revolution brought about by technology cannot exist apart from ideas. So if the Internet, as a revolutionary technology, is it ready to bring ideas belonging to this era? We can repeat it again: At the break of the Web 2.0 narrative, new ideas for the Internet emerge.

It's not too wordy: the problems caused by technological changes cannot be solved solely by technological updates. It also requires a change of mind.

In an environment where many people think that "I am nobody, privacy is not important", Web 3 has no way to achieve its ideals. What needs to be done now is to think about what users think are common sense thirty or forty years from now, but not necessarily today.

To obtain acceptance of concepts such as ownership confirmation and decentralization of personal data through loss of efficiency violates human instinct to a certain extent. But this is realistic. If you want everyone to go against their instincts, you need a change of thinking. It is as if the capitalists of America's Gilded Age thought monopoly was their right, but no one today will agree with them. Monopolies are more efficient at making money, but our societies reject this efficiency.

Finally, we should care about how the internet can help us become better people. Whether it's the world of Web 2.0 or Web 3, users are looking for more likes, more retweets, and more followers. Is the goal of being an individual simply to aspire to be a KOL? A better Internet depends not only on thinking, but also on self-practice. Reading my article doesn't mean building a better Internet.

Faced with Web 3, on the surface, there are two choices: be a bystander or a participant. But in fact there is only one real choice, active or passive to become a participant. Because either make the Internet better, or continue to watch the Internet run wild on the road now. There is never an option to stay out of the way. History never leaves a place for the onlookers, and we all swing with history.

At this very beginning, the most important thing to do is to reject binary opposition: Web 3 fans can't describe all opponents as "don't understand"; dismissive people need to realize that Web 3 is really trying to solve some problems. Blocking a person is not the same as solving a problem.

The ideal Internet never existed. But people are persistent species, with the insistence on pursuing an ideal future. Although the "ideal Internet" in our minds may be nothing more than an illusion, the illusion is more powerful than reality. The ideal phantom is our weapon to face the rift of reality. The way to wield this weapon is to truly incorporate the ideal of the Internet into your own heart and become a part of yourself.

When we raise our weapons, it is the most glorious moment for the builders of the Internet.

This is the first in a series of articles by the authors of this article on the Internet and Web 3. I'll delve into the Internet in a series of articles. Stay tuned.

If you think this article has some value, thank you Xie Yixuan, Dizzarz, and Wang Dada for helping with this article; if you think that this text is worthless and a waste of your time, then all criticism is borne by the author (there is no need for decentralization here).

About the author: Web 3 says to protect creators, and I think I'm the kind of creator that Web 3 wants to protect. @Hanyangwang open DM anchor of "Late Talk"