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Are we wrong about Web3?

terminusdb.com

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Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#31

Post by mcdonje »

danielvaughn wrote: post #16
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you are expecting your business to be around in 2023 you should shut up about "Web3". If you want to have good people for customers, if you want to hire good employees, if you want to have good vendors, shut up about "Web3". Don't take good free software like "Git" and slander it by associating it with platforms that charge fees on top of fees on top of fees; platforms that charge you fees to pay your fees that ma…

Yep. My first job in tech was with a platform that promised a "Web 2.0" experience that was centered around drag-and-drop. Take a wild guess as to whether they're still around...

There was a lot of web 2.0 hype around the late 90s / early aughts. Lots of companies that tried to cash in on a trend without a solid business model. That said, the situation was appreciably different to now.

Web 2.0, as I understand it, was about increasing interactivity so websites aren't all static, which has the possibility of being beneficial to end users. Web 3.0, as I understand it, is crypto-nonsense.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#32

Post by na85 »

I have a new personal policy:

I don't read anything that refers to "blockchain" the way Apple refers to "iPhone". I don't know what the term for it is but they always do it. "With iPhone, you can enjoy being smug and superior in 8K!"

Anyways as soon as I see that sort of corporate newspeak I immediately close the tab.

It makes me a lot happier.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#33

Post by PaulHoule »

eterm wrote: post #23
PaulHoule wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The payments are fundamental to it. Ted Nelson described the Xanadu system in the 1970s which anticipated the web, he recognized a need for creators to get paid and planned to have a micropayments system built in. Practically the web got advertising instead and then the patron and subscription models but somebody could make the case we need something better. Web3 has the particular horror that simple calculations tha…

The horrible reality is that even if the web had effective and popular micropayments infrastructure it would have micropayments and adverts on top . Just look at how advertising is creeping into premium streaming services.

Subscriptions and ads have gone together like peanut butter and jelly since the print age.

If you subscribe to The New York Times or Cosmopolitan you have qualified yourself as being interested in the subject, attached to the brand, and not hopelessly penurious. An advertiser would rather pay to get a message in front of a paid subscriber rather than anyone else.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#34

Post by jrm4 »

Genuine question: How stoppable is "Web3?" Which may be to say -- what is more likely: All the big money idiots come to their senses, or "Web3" definitely happens in some form that has some, but not all, of the stupid weeded out of it?

This is probably a million dollar question, no?

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#35

Post by bartread »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

If you are expecting your business to be around in 2023 you should shut up about "Web3". If you want to have good people for customers, if you want to hire good employees, if you want to have good vendors, shut up about "Web3". Don't take good free software like "Git" and slander it by associating it with platforms that charge fees on top of fees on top of fees; platforms that charge you fees to pay your fees that ma…

I get your frustration: this piece is a bit "corporate gonzo", to say the least, and I got pretty bored because I prefer hard information and a higher density of it as well. Moreover, if I want gonzo, there are people who do it a whole lot better and more entertainingly[0].

Anyway, beyond the fact that it's a cheap and incoherent attempt to capitalise on the Web3 hype train, I'm also vaguely irked that they confuse Web3, with Web 3.0 - the latter being Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the next iteration of the web (worth searching for if you're interested).

I don't know that I'd say Terminusdb should fire the author, but they should probably take the post down because, honestly, it's not useful and is just contributing to the already deafening noise about Web3.

[0] Actually, now that I think about it, it's incoherent enough that I wonder if it was perhaps generated by GPT-3 or a similar AI, which would possibly mean the whole thing is intended as some sort of joke. Obviously just a hypothesis.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#36

Post by mtkhaos »

onion2k wrote: post #14

web3 definitely could be as successful as git if you remove the payments side of it. Without payments web3 starts to look like an interesting and useful idea. Ownership of content, federation between platforms, trustless publishing, etc are concepts the web lacks, and that could definitely be interesting to layer on top of the web. Adding payments into the mix kills it like every other microtransaction protocol thoug…

How do you get around supplying content without ads or some other metric to pay for network usage?

It would be nice if everything was free, but right now everything has a cost associated with it. Whether that's your attention, your data, or outright paying for the service.

To me the better question in regards to Web3, is it necessary to have so many middlemen? That's my issue with it.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#38

Post by PaulHoule »

trynewideas wrote: post #19
eatonphil wrote: post #3

This is a very oddly formatted post coming from a company. It's pretty hard to read or follow, with lots of memes and screenshots interspersed. I'm not exactly sure what they're saying at all.

On the contrary, this is exactly the kind of post I'd expect from a web3 company.

The sad thing is they are not a web3 company.

Someday the last post on their blog might be "we are proud to admit that we got acqui-hired" and it will all be because their customers, employers and investors left because of this blog post and the thinking behind it.

The management team should stop what they are doing now, remove this post from their blog and make a public apology to all their stakeholders.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#39

Post by teucris »

agentdrtran wrote: post #29

Remove the bad stuff and only keep the good stuff of something? Why haven't we thought of this before, it's genius!

And yet, we keep forgetting to do it and instead denigrate the people who remind us that this could be an approach to a divisive new technology.

Re: Are we wrong about Web3?

#40

Post by kajaktum »

PaulHoule wrote: post #20
onion2k wrote: post #14

web3 definitely could be as successful as git if you remove the payments side of it. Without payments web3 starts to look like an interesting and useful idea. Ownership of content, federation between platforms, trustless publishing, etc are concepts the web lacks, and that could definitely be interesting to layer on top of the web. Adding payments into the mix kills it like every other microtransaction protocol thoug…

The payments are fundamental to it. Ted Nelson described the Xanadu system in the 1970s which anticipated the web, he recognized a need for creators to get paid and planned to have a micropayments system built in. Practically the web got advertising instead and then the patron and subscription models but somebody could make the case we need something better. Web3 has the particular horror that simple calculations tha…

There's even a HTTP status code for Payment Required. I wonder what happened to that. I think we need to go back to one time purchase model.
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