Thread by @jeffjarvis

Long before Web3 was a zygote in a VC's wet dream I conceived of a framework for recording & rewarding creative contributions: Creditright. It would be perfect for the blockchain: Web3 as a solution to a problem rather than a solution hunting for one. 1/
medium.com/geeks-bearing-…

Many of the Web3 problems @pkafka catalogs are, well, branding: overpromising things that don't exist; overcomplicating how it's are done; association with bro's who aren't as cool as they wish; history. All this gives technology with promise cooties. 2/
vox.com/recode/2290707…

I can imagine many uses for the 'chain and creativity. I feel guilty buying used books out of print, wishing I could benefit the author. Digital contracts could do something like that. 3/

I am terribly excited by @jack's vision for @bluesky: a commodity layer of speech with a value-added layer of listening (recommendation, authentication, community, etc.). Distributed architectures can enable that. 4/

A problem with the Web3 debate is that no one knows what they're debating about other than emotions: liking a yet-unproven techno McGuffin or disliking technologists, but not dealing in the real opportunities and problem-solving that could result. 5/

In a time of moral panic in media about technology (which media consider their competitors, though they never acknowledge the conflict of interest), cultist neckbeards obnoxiously promoting overly complex tech to do things people don't need is not what the future needs. 6/

I wish the discussion about Web3 would be more about applications in people's lives than about the technology itself: people who use it to do useful or creative or new things. 7/

NFTs are not that. NFTs only realize people's worst assumptions about internet technologists and investors and rich bro's. And they're ugly. No, NFTs are a shitty proof of concept that blow back on the tech that makes them. 8/

Gutenberg's movable type was hella complex; I'm writing a book on that. Once it became boring, great waves of creativity crested: creation of newspapers, the modern novel & essay. I wish Web3 to be a boring, greased cog in a machine. I care what the resulting machine can do. 9/

I wish for the day when Web3 Inside is as much as shrug as Intel Inside or kerosene v. whale oil inside. I wish for creators who can do useful things with it to be the technology's best representatives. 10/

Last night, I started teaching a course in (re)Designing the Internet. Maybe one of our students can be that practitioner who starts with a need, an opportunity, a problem, an idea and then, oh, by the way, happens to use something someone else calls Web3 to conceive of it. 11/