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So web3, the alleged fundamental reorganisation of the internet as we know it and the future of how we interact and communicate is put at risk because two dudes

So web3, the alleged fundamental reorganisation of the internet as we know it and the future of how we interact and communicate is put at risk because two dudes have a spat on twitter? Do China and India exist in this scenario? Does everyone in the world just go "well Marc and Jack are pissed off, so we might as well bin the thing" Imagine someone picks up a heated Hackernews conversation and goes "well these two guys put functional programming at risk". It says a lot about what people truly think web3 actually is.

dredmorbius 5y ago
In fairness, spats have changed the course of computing. The UNIX wars of the early 1990s, pitting AT&T against BSD (1-800-ITS-UNIX), the QDOS / MSDOS episode, and the Traitorous Eight all come to mind. As Frank Herbert wrote, "a beginning is a very delicate time".
rektide 5y ago
> put at risk because two dudes have a spat on twitter? Computing is largely faith/belief by tribes. The eco-protests against cryptoshit has been high & loud & I think effective: it's obviously a colossally inefficient system, the most unimaginable conflagration of computing resources imaginable. But Jack has honed in on a more purist argumentation, one that is less rooted in the hard fact of cryptoshit scorching the planet, & far more insightful about the hypocracy & ineffectuality of the beast. There are few benevolent factors about in crypto-coin shit, it's a world dominated by self-interest first & mistrust second. They are systems ruled by concensus-of-the-powerful, & most folks need deeply deeply deeply intermediated experiences to have the most remote hope of getting anywhere at all. In short, Jack's one of the first critics to highlight just how perverse the profit motive has been here. Cryptocoinshit is free to become good, to show a light side, to enable real genuine capabilities, any day any time. But it's a highly highly costly environment to innovate in. There's a lot of pick axes folks need, is what Jack has highlighted. And the costs of working the medium, of sticking your pick in, are absurdly high, fantastically expensive. I don't see this as a specific threat of person versus person, but a battle for the soul of a young, interesting technology, one that has had less & less enobling, user-empowering potentials, and more and more been a dis-empowering, deeply intermediated, finnicky & costly boondogle. The particular personages here are proxy combatants, whose contest has provided a bit better televisable experience of what the real battle-lines & conflicts are.
- bobberkarl 5y ago
  Commenting just to say that I appreciate your writing.

dredmorbius 5y ago

In fairness, spats have changed the course of computing. The UNIX wars of the early 1990s, pitting AT&T against BSD (1-800-ITS-UNIX), the QDOS / MSDOS episode, and the Traitorous Eight all come to mind. As Frank Herbert wrote, "a beginning is a very delicate time".

rektide 5y ago

> put at risk because two dudes have a spat on twitter? Computing is largely faith/belief by tribes. The eco-protests against cryptoshit has been high & loud & I think effective: it's obviously a colossally inefficient system, the most unimaginable conflagration of computing resources imaginable. But Jack has honed in on a more purist argumentation, one that is less rooted in the hard fact of cryptoshit scorching the planet, & far more insightful about the hypocracy & ineffectuality of the beast. There are few benevolent factors about in crypto-coin shit, it's a world dominated by self-interest first & mistrust second. They are systems ruled by concensus-of-the-powerful, & most folks need deeply deeply deeply intermediated experiences to have the most remote hope of getting anywhere at all. In short, Jack's one of the first critics to highlight just how perverse the profit motive has been here. Cryptocoinshit is free to become good, to show a light side, to enable real genuine capabilities, any day any time. But it's a highly highly costly environment to innovate in. There's a lot of pick axes folks need, is what Jack has highlighted. And the costs of working the medium, of sticking your pick in, are absurdly high, fantastically expensive. I don't see this as a specific threat of person versus person, but a battle for the soul of a young, interesting technology, one that has had less & less enobling, user-empowering potentials, and more and more been a dis-empowering, deeply intermediated, finnicky & costly boondogle. The particular personages here are proxy combatants, whose contest has provided a bit better televisable experience of what the real battle-lines & conflicts are.

bobberkarl 5y ago
Commenting just to say that I appreciate your writing.