Read Write Own

Revisiting web3 in light of generative AI

Chris Dixon, an investor and one of the loudest proponents of crypto / blockchain / web3, wrote a book recently called Read Write Own. I started it today.

A big reason to revisit web3 is that generative AI makes ownership of information on the internet a lot more important and complicated (see the NY Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using their articles as training data), and web3 technologies may help solve some of these issues.

So far, Dixon’s points are

• The internet started as a free and open place for people to share information

• This is less true today, because big tech companies own proprietary networks which capture most internet traffic & value (e.g. app stores, Facebook, LinkedIn)

• Users of the networks get very little value, even though they generate a lot of it. For example, Instagram doesn’t pay me for my fire posts, even though they get some ad revenue from my being on the platform.

• This has led to a huge concentration of wealth and power in the hands of big tech, and discourages innovation (for example, you can’t build a startup on top of LinkedIn’s network; they won’t let you do it).

• web3 technologies offer a way to build networks that lead to better societal outcomes: more distributed value and power, more innovation

All of these things make sense to me and seem compelling in theory.

The main questions I have as I go into this book, which I’ve had since I first started learning about blockchain in ~2018 are as follows:

• Can a decentralized web3 app actually mobilize people to build a service good enough to compete with centralized apps owned by corporations? My naive feeling is that decentralized apps like mastodon below are confusing to use and not polished enough to be adopted broadly.

  

• What time scale is reasonable to expect this stuff to show real value? Dixon references the founding protocols of the internet, which was a good reminder that the internet took at least a couple of decades to actually be widely used and commercialized.

It seems like the most advantageous times to invest in something (whether that be investing time or money) are when it is out of fashion and so I’m hoping to get a better understanding of web3 now while it doesn’t feel like popular thing to be reading about.