How grifters and JPEG's pushed us further into a cyberpunk dystopia. (A quick chat about Web 3)

Web 3 is a very perplexing phenomenon.

It's main promises are practically tailor made for today's users and the demands we face on an ever increasingly connected existence and yet it seems to be faced with a very widespread rejection from the public.

Before diving in...

My understanding of Web 3 is not very deep. I know as much about it as I know about cars. I can tell you how a car looks, what it does and what it needs to work, but I'm not able to put one together or fix it.

So whatever I write about in the following paragraphs will stay on a very general concept level, which can be entertaining and informative for the average reader and hopefully entertaining for serious mathematicians and security experts.

Moving on...

I have to confess, before I got the chance to collaborate on some small projects that made me go deeper into what Web 3 is all about, I was only aware of blockchains, crypto currencies, exchanges and miners.

One could argue that those elements are basically the backbone of Web 3. My issue was that I focused very much on use cases and that distracted me from learning what made these technologies so attractive.

Get to the dystopian part already!

Think about all the tech related services that we use on our day to day. You can probably track most of them to three or four major companies. Initially this all seems pretty convenient, until we're reminded of episodes like Twitter limiting the number of daily views or YouTube changing terms and affecting videos that had been uploaded several years ago.

Large tech companies hold a lot of power by owning these services, they essentially have control over the flow on information and users are completely at the mercy of the people in charge of them and the decisions they deem to be "best for us".

Also, with so many companies and organizations pushing for Big Data efforts, we get asked to hand out our personal information for pretty much every service that we use or sign up to. 

Just a couple of days ago, our ISP was asking for my wife's government issued ID and biometric data. 

I cannot imagine a case in which that information is necessary for them to have, but I can definitely envision a scenario where, due to deficient security, they lose that data and the biometrics and ID's of all their customers are available for malicious actors to use to access financial and medical services.

If we put all of these elements together, the large monopolistic companies and the trivialization of individuals' privacy, it starts to sound very similar to a cyberpunk dystopian fiction, albeit with less neon lights and cyber augmentations, (so far, at least).

 

Our dystopia is decidedly less neon colored...

 

Fair point, but how do grifters and JPEG's fit into the picture? 

As discussed near the start of this writing, a lot of people are only aware of Web 3 because of a few projects that create enough buzz around them in order to be noticed by the general public. It's safe to say that some people may not even be aware of the term "Web 3". 

Case in point, my mum knows about bitcoin and blockchain but does not recognize "Web 3".

Anyway, when a Web 3 project becomes widely known, it's highly likely someone is promoting it. 

Which is the case with a lot of useless and fraudulent crypto currencies and NFT projects. Quick disclaimer, I actually like both cryptos and the technology behind NFT's, but I think images were a terrible way to showcase it's capabilities.

The frauds have been frequent enough that people have acquired a general distaste for anything related to these technologies making the complicated task of explaining how they work and the benefits they have even more difficult since now you're faced with a heavy negative bias from the beginning.

How is Web 3 helpful against all this?

The reason I think Web 3 is so exciting is the prospect of decentralization as well as having a safe and private way to provide sensitive data without revealing it.

Decentralization is a great way of putting the power of technology back into the hands of the people.   In short, it is a way in which the technology infrastructure is not maintained by any one single entity. Instead it is distributed among all of it's users and each user node can help verify that the exchanges of data are real and the information generated is consistent.

The Mastodon social network is an example of a better known decentralized project, and also highlights one of the biggest hurdles in Web 3. 

The tech barrier is still not very accessible and more importantly, users are not still completely willing to actually put in the necessary work in order to get their own service up and running.

 

Base requirements to work in Web 3 (jk)

Closing thoughts

I think Web 3 holds the answer for many of the safety and privacy concerns that currently plague the internet. It is also an incredible source for technologies that prevent a single entity from creating a monopoly over the transmission of information. 

One of the main challenges I see is making all of this tech more readily available and simpler for the average user to take advantage of. This point is especially exciting for me given that I'm not a developer or a very technical person, but as a user oriented designer, there is still a great deal of contribution that can be done to assist in bringing new developments closer to the general public.

Web 3 is a very exciting and extensive topic so I will likely write about it again. I did leave out a personal point of interest from this writing after all, but the final piece would be way too long if I kept on going.

If you reached this point, I sincerely thank you for taking time out of your day to read my thoughts, be sure to reach out if I can offer any help or insight!

Let's keep creating!