Thread by @atareh

The future of work came early, when many companies like @Shopify went fully remote in 2020. But that's just the beginning.

The next evolution of work, is what @balajis calls the "pseudonymous economy".

and web3 is leading the charge in this

🧵

1/ Let's wind the clock back. It's 2002, we're just past the dot-com bubble, and the internet is starting to be more integrated with society.

There were about half a billion people using it regularly, and 95% used internet explorer to access it

2/ What we forget now about internet back then, because it's so common place is: putting your real name on the internet was seen as risky.

We all used a pseudonym back then, even if we didn't call it that. Your username or gamertag was never your IRL identity.

3/ But something started to change in the years that followed . It started with myspace and was really cemented with facebook.

Social media normalized putting your real name on the internet

4/ Facebook was how you connected with others you knew IRL, and Linkedin is where you found professional opportunities.

You couldn't do that without your real name, a real photo.

So we all did it.

5/ We posted our lives to our facebook and instagram feeds without thinking. Every professional milestone and set back was put on Linkedin.

For some, it went a bit too far - spawning memes in the early 2010's like

6/ Throughout this time, posting your life to social media was seen as normal.

But normal is relative to the times, and the normal we were given was never for us, really.

As the past decade and a half revealed, we were always the product.

7/ Whatever benefit we got from freely giving our information to these platforms, paled in comparison to what they got.

Execs at these companies became millionaires and billionaires - on the backs of our data.

8/ and that would never have happened, if putting our real names and pictures on the internet wasn't normalized.

But norms are shifting, once again. and web3 is ground zero for it.

9/ Web3 has showed us that, you can achieve financial success, you can work, you can grow your network, without anyone knowing your name or what you look like.

This is the pseudonymous economy.

10/ In the pseudonymous economy, your IRL identity and your online identity remain separate.

Online, you have a pseudonym (that you pick, like we did as kids with our gamer tags, usernames).

And instead of a picture of you, you'll represent yourself with an NFT.

11/ Instead of your government name being a store of your reputation, your pseudonym and NFT becomes that.

Pseudonymity gives you all the advantage of building online, with complete privacy IRL.

12/ The pseudonymous approach is more equitable.

Your name and race doesn't matter in this world.

What matters is your reputation and the work you've done (or, your proof of work).

https://twitter.com/jackbutcher/status/1333925352738000903?s=20

13/ Working pseudonymously also means you're paid in stateless, borderless cryptocurrency - so you can work from where ever you want, irrespective of your "legal status"

13/ In a funny way, blockchain and crypto has really allowed this new economy to become viable.

And the person that started this, was also pseudonymous. The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of blockchain and bitcoin, remains unknown

13/ Like I said at the beginning, the future of work is in part already here, with online, remote work, accessible to anyone with an internet connection.

In the coming years, we'll see more and more people choose to be pseudonymous online.

14/ And if this seems far off to you, don't be mistaken, it's already happening today.

The @BoredApeYC founders are pseudonymous. We know them only as @CryptoGarga , @GordonGoner, @TomatoBAYC, and @SassBAYC.

Despite that, they've built an NFT community that's worth billions

15/ and if this future scares you, then take solace in that, at one point in time, we were afraid of putting our real names and faces online.

Social norms will once again change - and this new future will prove to be more equitable, fair, and distributed.

16/ This was always the original vision of the internet.

A leveller of the playing field.

It often reminds of this quote by @Snowden, describing this.

17/ The future of work is pseudonymous, which is why you I go by the name atareh (.eth)

I'm excited to do my part in building this new internet with all you degens. Pseudonymous or not.

If you like this thread, click follow, and check out my other work.

Like this one about BAYC becoming the decentralized Supreme

https://twitter.com/atareh/status/1458858405146284033?s=20