|
5-minute read - Resistance to new technology - Public response to innovation - Innovation as a delayed tsunami - State of Web 3.0 / Digital Ownership  Image taken from ARK's "Big Ideas" 2022 Report Ever heard of the luddites? Their fate may be treated like prophecy in the modern day.
In the early 19th century the world was blessed with the invention of the mechanized loom. Before this production was reliant on a group of trained artisans. When they realized this new machinery threatened their source of income they resorted to destroying textile machines and burning their factories to the ground. They named themselves the "Luddites" after a man named Ned Ludd who the locals said had destroyed a textile factory The fate of the luddite has been seen with television, phones, the internet, social media, virtual currency and even video games. Things always happen similarly; We are blessed with a new technology that isn't quite matured, then a majority writes off this technology in its entirety. In a way, we can’t blame them. Once we saw innovation of hardware like no other; Now we live in a jungle of software applications which scale in increasing complexity daily. This complexity brings endless new challenges from removing violent material on video streaming services to the methodical manipulation of emails to scam unsuspecting users. When a new application or piece of hardware is created it will always bring new challenges. When we create something we are stepping into the frontier by pushing the boundaries of our technological limitations. How else will we learn not to step in the same pit twice? We are seeing this story happen with Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) due to a majority of the users of Web 3.0 being overtly and borderline obsessively focused with short-term profits. This can be seen everywhere from its roots within the culture of crypto to the seemingly endless bad actors which permeate various blockchains to mint their scams. We saw an immense amount of scams in the early days of email and content creation until these actors developed a reputation and the collective community got smarter. Now we educate new users on the dangers of suspicious links and its implications within digital literacy. We cannot blame those who are cynical of NFTs until we seriously get this under control through active education and the development of a stronger and more robust system of support. This can be viewed as the “pioneer” stage of a technology’s development. Then things get really quiet... the developers are scaling in relative silence. They're programming the platform day after day completely unbeknownst to the skeptics and the cynics. In the eye of the public and viral relevancy this technology has “fallen off” as if it was just a fad after all... The skeptics will look and still see nothing but complex lines, numbers, statistics and programs. Meanwhile the developers have solved a problem; They release it to internal testing and subsequently to the entire world through the interconnected metaverse, also known as the internet. The users discover new capabilities, which they benefit from with higher levels of efficiency, access, productivity and ease of communication. Users rise in quantity and people talk. Now the ball is rolling… Mass adoption happens day-by-day over a long period of time instead of all at once as many expect. Think of the amount of people who are just now discovering the internet, logging onto YouTube and utilizing these programs for their day to day lives. Suddenly the skeptics are a little less convicted in their criticism; It’s almost as their problems had been resolved by the developers years ago, yet the skeptics still live in the old snapshot of their past perspective Next we see innovation and code built upon these previous developments fuel an even higher level of productivity Ripples of change and impact are sent across the interconnected world. The skeptics are now surrounded by users of the very same program which they had originally dismissed Change has arrived…. Developers are the architects of the metaverse The decentralization of communication (Web 2.0) is merging with the decentralization of finance (Web 3.0) This is then merging with Augmented & Virtual Reality capabilities; Which is all slowly merging with AI and DAOs We're on the precipice of a new wave of social change which skeptics continually doubt; We are about to see a mass empowerment of the individual with increased ownership across the entire interconnected metaverse We are about to unlock a whole new level of productivity and insight... The world will never be the same.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |