Thread by @jeffjarvis

I've been thinking about @photomatt's response to @brian_armstrong's response to @moxie's excellent post about Web 3. Some responses in return. tl;dr: I think @photomatt + WordPress provide much of the model @moxie seeks in the end. 1/

https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1479998907123863554

First, let me say I don't give a rat's rump what is Web 1, 2,or 3. They are all hubristic labels based on the ego of the present tense. This is web .000002. As I say often, it's 1475 in Gutenberg (Johannes, not WordPress) years. 2/
buzzmachine.com/2019/02/10/sco…

A key lesson I came to writing my book (still seeking publisher) on the (Johannes) Gutenberg Parenthesis is that it took a century and a half before groundbreaking innovation came *with* print: the newspaper, the modern novel, the essay (Montaigne), a market for printed plays. 3/

So what interests me about Web N is not what goes *into* it in terms of technological innovation--that will come--but more so what comes from invention *with* the technology, once the tech becomes easy, assumed, boring. 4/

What strikes me (finally) is that WordPress is a *with* not an *into* institution because it allows people to create WTF they want. It makes the technology easy & boring. It allows creators to surprise us with their creations for their own sake, not technology's. 5/

Right there is a model for @moxie's Web 3: ease. Creating NFTs: not easy, not cheap. Creating on WP: easy, cheap, thus fast and open. 6/

Of course, WordPress *is* a creation tool. There are others. But what sets it apart--what set it apart when it won out over Movable Type--is its open-source architecture decreed by @photomatt: The underlying code is open; anybody, including Matt, can build services atop it. 7/

I remember when a Polaris VC scratching his head over Matt's open-source architecture called me to ask whether it was insane to invest. No! I said. I explained why WP would win over MT because of it. The software would spread & improve at the same time. 8/

In this structure, Matt merely has a first-mover advantage in building his services. This is why I am also excited by @jack's proposals for @bluesky, making the speech layer a commodity so innovators can build value-added layers we need (e.g., recommendation, authentication). 9/

So now (at last) to the point re @Moxie: In the end, the post calls for 1) "We should accept the premise that people will not run their own servers by designing systems that can distribute trust without having to distribute infrastructure." 10/

moxie.org/2022/01/07/web…

In a sense, doesn't WordPress at least display a model for meeting criterion #1 through open source: multiple instances create a sort of distributed architecture? 11/

.@moxie's 2): "We should try to reduce the burden of building software."
Here, too, doesn't @photomatt WP at least demonstrate a model through its object/block-oriented creation tools (not of software, but of creation *with* software)? 12/

All this is to say that we're not making a clean progression from Web 1-2-3 but instead trying to clean up what was done in Web .0000012. We return to Web 1 to deplatform it through a worldview that is already well proven: open source. I *know* that's simplistic. 13/

My point is that it's just as dangerous to think that Web 3 is an advance on Web 1 & 2 as it is to think that Medieval years were Dark Ages and that the Renaissance was progress and that we are modern. That's the greatest hubris of all. Perspective matters. 14/

In writing about the Gutenberg Parenthesis, I learned the dangers of periodization, for in dismissing what came before, we lose the opportunity to build upon it. This is why I despise journalism's conceit of the "first draft of history," thus ignoring history. (from the MS:) 15/

The reason I'm thinking so much about this is that I'm teaching a course in Designing the Internet next month with @rushkoff. I'd love to assign the post that launched 1K threads, though I fear the technology might be intimidating to students.... 16/
buzzmachine.com/2021/10/31/stu…

Then I see that's @moxie's point: People don't want to run servers. They don't want to become fluent in something called Web 3. They want to build *atop* (not *in* (that is, not in a walled platform). Making tech complex as a prereq is the equivalent of having to run servers. 17/

So I might well assign the post but also assign @photomatt's thread because it brings historical perspective on the building of the web and demonstrates the whole point of the course: that students have the agency & responsibility to build the future of the net. 18/

Of course, @photomatt sums it all up better than I can: 19/

https://twitter.com/photomatt/status/1480005950413041670