Read Write Own … What will the internet of the future look like? …. Web3, and how blockchain networks have begun to democratise ownership, returning power and economic benefit to all who use the internet
February 20, 2024
The internet of today is a far cry from its early promise of a democratic network of unbridled innovation. In the last decade, it has fallen under the control of a small number of monopolistic companies like Apple, Google and Facebook; companies that limit the creative potential of the internet while seizing its proceeds for themselves.
There is an alternative. Chris Dixon, a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has long advocated for a technology that can revive the dream of an open, entrepreneurial internet: blockchain networks. Often dismissed, sometimes vilified, these networks have until recently been dominated by amoral speculators and get-rich-quick schemes. But, more quietly, a group of visionaries have been using them to build the future.
In Read Write Own, Dixon draws on 25 years at the vanguard of tech innovation to explore how blockchains will change the internet. He starts by introducing the three eras of the web. First came the ‘read’ era, in which the earliest networks democratized information – creating an anarchic playground for bloggers, coders and artists. Next came the ‘read-write’ era, in which sprawling corporations democratized publishing – turning us all into small-time content creators but offering us few of the rewards.
We are now entering the ‘read-write-own’ era, sometimes called web3, in which blockchain networks have begun to democratize ownership – returning power and economic benefit to all who use the internet. And it is an internet we can all help create. Lucid and practical, Read Write Own offers both a vision of a better internet and a playbook for how to realise it.
Excerpts from the book
1. The nature of permission
In business, permission seeking is not like asking your parents or teachers for permission, where you get a simple yes or no answer. Nor is it like traffic lights setting the rules of the road. In business, permission becomes a pretense for tyranny. Dominant tech businesses leverage the power of permission to thwart competition, desolate markets, and extract rents. (p. xvi)
2. Software as art
Software is so expressive that it is better thought of not as engineering but as an art form. The plasticity and flexibility of code offer an immensely rich design space, far closer in the breadth of possibilities to creative activities like sculpting and fiction writing than engineering activities like bridge building. As with other art forms, practitioners regularly develop new genres and movements that fundamentally shift what’s possible. (p. xx)
3. The problems blockchains solve
The ability for blockchains to make strong commitments about how they will behave in the future allows new networks to be created. Blockchain networks solve problems that plague earlier network architectures. They can connect people in social networks while empowering users over corporate interests. They can underpin marketplaces and payment networks that facilitate commerce, but with persistently lower take rates. They can enable new forms of monetizable media, interoperable and immersive digital worlds, and artificial intelligence products that compensate — rather than cannibalize — creators…. Asking “What problems do blockchains solve?” is like asking “What problems does steel solve over, say, wood?” You can make a building or railway out of either. But steel gave us taller buildings, stronger railways, and more ambitious public works at the outset of the Industrial Revolution. With blockchains we can create networks that are fairer, more durable, and more resilient than the networks of today. (pp. xxiii–xxiv)
4. A new internet era
The decisions we make now will determine the internet’s future: who builds, owns, and uses it; where innovation happens; and what the experience will be for everyone. Blockchains, and the networks they enable, unlock the extraordinary power of software as an art form, with the internet as its canvas. The movement has an opportunity to change the course of history, to remake humanity’s relationship to the digital, to reimagine what’s possible…. This is a chance to create the internet you want, not the internet you inherited. (p. xxviii)
5. The supremacy of networks
Network design is destiny.Networks are the organizing framework that enables billions of people to intelligibly interact. They decide the world’s winners and losers. Their algorithms decide where money and attention will flow. The structure of a network guides how that network will evolve and where wealth and power accumulate. Given the scale of the internet today, software design decisions up front, regardless of how seemingly small, can have cascading downstream consequences. Who controls a given network is the central question when analyzing power on the internet. (p. 3)
6. Protocols vs. corporations
The difference between a protocol network like email and a corporate network like Twitter is that email’s network effect accrues to a community instead of a company. No company owns or controls email and anyone can access it through software created by independent developers that supports the underlying protocol. It’s up to developers and consumers to decide what to build and use. Decisions that affect the community are made by the community. (p. 18)
7. The impact of new technologies
People use new technologies in one of two ways: (1) to do something they could already do but can now do faster, cheaper, easier, or higher quality; or (2) to do something brand-new that they simply couldn’t do before. Early in the development of new technologies, the first category of activities tends to be more popular, but it’s the second set that has more lasting effects on the world. (p. 27)
8. The corporate-controlled internet
Corporate networks have a simple structure. In the middle, a company controls centralized services that power the network. This company has complete control. It can rewrite its terms of service, determine who has access, and redirect how money flows, at any time, for any reason. Corporate networks are centralized because there is ultimately one person, usually the chief executive officer, who makes all the rules. (p. 31)
9. Blockchains as non-consensus bet
Blockchains are different. They’re a non-consensus bet. While plenty of people recognize their potential — including me — much of the establishment disregards them. In fact, a prevailing view in the tech industry assumes that the only vectors of technological improvement that matter are the ones incumbents are already focused on: bigger databases, faster processors, larger neural networks, smaller devices. The view is myopic. (p. 52)
10. How hobbies fuel future industries
Outside-in technologies arrive, in contrast, on the fringes. Hobbyists, enthusiasts, open-source developers, and startup founders hatch them outside the mainstream. The work usually involves less capital and formal training, which helps level the playing field with insiders. A lower bar also causes insiders to take these technologies and their proponents less seriously…. Hobbies fuel future industries…. Hobbies are what the smartest people spend time on when they aren’t constrained by near-term financial goals. I like to say that what the smartest people do on the weekends is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years. (pp. 53–54)
11. The simplicity of tokens
What tokens are matters less than what they do.Tokens can represent the ownership of anything digital, including money, art, photos, music, text, code, game items, voting power, access, or whatever people come up with next. Using some additional building blocks, they can also represent real-world things, like physical goods, real estate, or dollars in a bank account. Anything that can be represented in code can be wrapped inside a token to be bought, sold, used, stored, embedded, transferred, or whatever else a person might want to do with it. If that sounds so simple as to seem trivial, that’s by design. Simplicity is a virtue. (p. 72)
12. Owners vs. users
The concept of ownership is so deeply embedded in our lives that it’s difficult to imagine how the world would look if that were taken away. Imagine if the clothes you bought could be worn only in the venue you bought them in. What if you couldn’t resell or reinvest in your house or car? Or what if you had to change your name wherever you went? This is the digital world of corporate networks. (p. 80)
13. Blockchains as cities
Blockchain functions have neat analogues in urban planning. Starting a blockchain network is like building a new city on undeveloped land. The city designer constructs some initial buildings and then designs a system of land grants and tax incentives for residents and developers. Property rights — ownership — play a key role, providing strong commitments that property owners will get to keep what they own and can feel comfortable investing in it. As the city grows, so does the tax base. Taxes are reinvested into public projects like streets and parks, more land is given away, and the city grows. (p. 97)
14. Restoring community through tokens
Blockchain networks bake community ownership into their core design. It’s in their DNA. While memecoin mutations, like Dogecoin, may seem like a joke, they show how users are embracing all sorts of tokens — some silly, some serious — in search of community, to fill the void left by corporate networks. The internet was originally envisioned as a decentralized network owned and controlled by its participants. Tokens restore that vision. (p. 140)
15. Blockchains as network constitutions
Network designers can use blockchains to create formal rules that are enforced by code. These rules are like constitutions for networks. What these constitutions say is subject to debate, contention, and experimentation, but their very existence, the ability to enshrine rules in immutable software, is a meaningful advance that was not possible in previous network designs. (p. 167)
16. Crypto’s two cultures
Two distinct cultures are interested in blockchains. The first sees blockchains as a way to build new networks…. I call this culture the computer because, at its core, it’s about blockchains powering a new computing movement. … The other culture is mainly interested in speculation and money-making. Those of this mindset see blockchains solely as a way to create new tokens for trading. I call this culture the casino because, at its core, it’s really just about gambling. … The casino should not hold the computer down. (pp. 171, 181)
17. The good old days
Blockchains are at the computing frontier, as PCs were in the 1980s, the internet was in the 1990s, and mobile phones were in the 2010s. People look back today on classic moments in computing and wonder what it was like to be there. Noyce and Moore. Jobs and Wozniak. Page and Brin. Hobbyists dabbling, debating, driving forward. Tinkerers hacking away on nights and weekends.What seems late is actually early. Now is the time to reimagine what networks can be and what they can do. Software is an un- beatable playground for ingenuity. You don’t have to accept the internet as you found it. You can make something better . . . as a builder, as a creator, as a user, and, most important, as an owner.You are here now. These are the good old days. (p. 230)
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