THE STATE OF THE NET: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

MARCH 7TH, 2022

Illustration by: Kristel Jaago.

A new internet is coming. Web 2.0 is the longest iteration of the internet in its short history, and there’s a movement on the rise to usher in a new generation. They call themselves web3, a term coined by a crypto CEO, and they want the whole internet to be blockchained. 

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WEB

We can trace the internet back through a myriad of precursor technologies but the concept of the world wide web began in the late 1980s. Public access to the internet, however, would not come about until the 1990s. The web in this state would later be known as Web1.0. 

These sites bear little resemblance to the internet of today, with static, text-heavy pages more akin to the pages of a textbook. This reflects the goals of the internet in this era: the transmission of information. 

This led to Web2.0, the era we live into this day. The start of Web 2.0 is difficult to decipher, and no definitive year is agreed on. The most definitive benchmark (at least to me) was the launch of YouTube in 2005, so the web has been in the 2.0 era for 18 years running. 

This is the internet as we recognise it, with emphasis on user-generated content and interaction between creators and viewers. If a theme for this era is clear, it’s the interconnection of people and the social dynamics which ensue. 

WEB3

If you believe the crypto pundits and NFT grifters, a new dawn for the internet is on the rise: web3. 

Unlike the previous eras of the internet, web3 is not an analysis of trends or practices, but an ideological sentiment. The ideology behind it is promising, calling for a decentralisation of the internet, in the face of Google, Facebook (sorry, ‘Meta’) and other big tech companies.

This ideology is nothing but smoke and mirrors. A lot of what I’m about to talk about is better described in Folding Ideas’ video: “Line Goes Up — The Problem With NFTs”, which I cannot recommend enough. 

The central conceit of what web3 will be is making the blockchain the new basis of the internet. How? A multitude of ways, including new institutions, integration of blockchain technology into existing institutions and the replacement of the open sharing concept which defined the web until now.

BLOCKCHAIN AND A CATCH 22 OF TERMS

“What is a blockchain?”, I (somehow) hear you ask. Basically, blockchain is a way of recording information that is very difficult to change, hack or cheat, because the data itself is distributed amongst all those who use it. It’s a type of data you can trust because everyone has the same data. 

Think of a dictionary. You can change a definition in your own copy using tipp-ex and a bic, but this change won’t stand up to comparison to other dictionaries. So, if you go to your friends with your fake definition shouting “See! Printer isn’t a real word!”, your friends can take out their dictionaries and disprove you with ease. The information in the dictionary is distributed among its users, the data of blockchain is much the same.

And I know some Wolf of Wall Street wannabe will read my dictionary example and wax unpoetically about how I don’t get it. But frankly, I don’t think you do either, because blockchain technology is a dense computer science field that is constantly changing, and the only people who fully ‘get it’ are those programming it. Not investor-pundits who swallow what shoddy salesmen ‘taught’ them about blockchain only to regurgitate it back to me after a few vodka shots (you know who you are).

Here we come across one of the major problems with discussions about web3 and the technology of NFTs. The terms are obtuse and the explanations require foreknowledge of other terms.

It’s a catch 22: you want to know what ‘blockchain’ is? Well, you better know what a ‘chunk’ is. Do you want to know what a ‘chunk’ is? Well, that’s easy, it’s part of the blockchain.

This makes writing about crypto needlessly convoluted, and learning about it has such a barrier to entry that the act of learning is in itself an investment. This creates a ‘sunk-cost’ commitment, where the resources already committed are so great that backing out becomes less and less appealing.

THE DREAM OF A CRYPTO-BASED WEB

A brief interlude to discuss what crypto advocates think they are achieving. To hear them tell it, through the use of cryptocurrency, the influence and power of massive corporations (and the select few who control them) can be curbed. 

They claim that using the technological systems of cryptocurrency can create new systems not bound to existing power structures. In their ideal world, anyone can gather cryptocurrency, buy, sell and trade them for goods, services etc. 

I also want to say that I don’t hate crypto-bros outright. It may be a red flag, but you aren’t defined by what you invest in or what you try to sell to others. I see your goals, I see your intimate knowledge of a complicated technology and I say good on you. 

But I have serious doubts about how this future you envision can be brought about by this technology. Yes, the system we have is broken. Yes, blockchain and the tech it creates offers something new, but new isn’t always better, and chasing the ‘new’ simply for its novelty can quickly make things a whole lot worse.

THE PROBLEMS WITH A CRYPTO-BASED WEB

This is a worthy endeavour but ignores the simple fact that as of right now; cryptocurrency and the machines used to mine them are bought with dollars. This allows the crypto-inclined wealthy to up and purchase influence, not destroying the controlling wealthy class, just replacing them with a new one.

The ideology of web3 outwardly advocates for the ‘decentralisation’ of the internet. This is a lie. Crypto is not decentralised, it is centralised on those with the most money invested into crypto. 

The solution to this proposed by web3 promoters are DAOs, ‘decentralised autonomous organisations’. These are organisations where voting power is tied directly to crypto ownership. In order to vote, you have to pay entry with cryptocurrency: in these organisations, those rich in cryptocurrency have all of the power. 

This ‘decentralises’ the organisation from any board of directors (or appropriate parallel), instead directly centralising power to the wealthy. Not elected representatives, nor companies beholden to their users, but concentrated power to the money-hungry.

Okay, so we don’t replace existing institutions with DAOs. Interestingly, web3 pundits don’t suggest replacing these profit-driven spy companies anyway, instead, arguing for the integration of NFTs into existing platforms. For an example of this, Twitter recently adopted a system of verifying an NFT being used as a profile picture.

This can have dystopian outcomes in terms of strict exclusion. Imagine that in a digital space, you need an NFT to enter a certain room or website, not a new concept, since passwords and access codes do that already. 

The difference with NFTs is that they are bound to an account until sold, so a website owner can just deny access to those who have certain NFTs. Let’s say you have an NFT minted by your chosen political party, or that is associated with a movement like BLM, someone with opposing views can now easily deny access to you based on what you own. A concentrated, pure form of classism.

THE DEATH OF THE OPEN INTERNET

Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and other blockchain products revolve around ownership. Basing the newest era of the internet on ownership is itself a slap in the face to the ideals that the internet was founded upon, and what makes it such a powerful cultural force. 

The internet is meant to be free! Perhaps not free monetarily (á la our capitalist society) but an open service connecting people and information. With blockchain integration, this concept is dead.

Imagine a world where you have to pay royalties on sending a gif to your friends, a world where pieces of internet culture (which is now simply ‘culture’) lost because the owner of it decided they wanted their property to themselves. This has already happened, one of the first viral videos “Charlie bit my finger”, has been taken down by its new NFT owner. 

Berners-Lee’s Boy

Whenever I see what NFT grifters and Crypto conmen peddle for the new internet, I imagine Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the internet, reacting in much the same way as the above gif. His announcement of the World Wide Web explained the concept as an “information retrieval initiative aiming to give access to a large universe of documents”. 

Now, those who want to ‘progress’ the internet are intent on denying sections of that universe to others for profit.