Web3: Voodoo or Vector for Future?

WebWhat? There’s a buzzword that tech, crypto, and venture capitalists have recently been obsessed with. It’s now sprinkled throughout conversations, and you’re not serious about the future until you include it in your Twitter bio: Web3. It’s a catch-all word for a variety of concepts aimed at cutting out the large middlemen on the internet. Navigating the web in this new era no longer entails signing up for Facebook, Google, or Twitter. Web 1.0 was the first version of the Internet in the 1990s. The web was considered as a tool to democratize information access, but there were few good ways to navigate it beyond visiting a friend’s GeoCities page. It was a bit chaotic and overpowering. Then, starting in the mid-2000s, came Web 2.0. Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter were created to provide order to the Internet by making it simple to connect and transact online. Critics claim that these corporations have accumulated too much influence over time. The goal of Web3 is to reclaim some of the power. People in a Web3 world control their own data and use a single personalized account to go from social media to email to shopping, generating a public record of all of their activities on the blockchain. The Good, the Bad, and the Unknown All of this appears to be intriguing. But if Web2 has taught us anything, it’s that even the most exciting technology has drawbacks and unanticipated consequences. At first glance, Twitter appeared ...