Is Web3... Evil?
The ignore, laugh, and then fight you. NFTs launched web3 into the mainstream, and now critics are pushing back. Is web3 a net positive? Or can it be turned to evil.
Two different items hit my feed today.
First, developer advocate Kelsey Hightower
Next, a long, detailed video titled The Problem With NFTs.
I have some thoughts on this. The TL;DR? Tech is neutral, implementation is not.
Longer version? In grad school, I was disenfranchised by how much research was funded by intelligence agencies, defense contracts, and pharmaceutical companies. Research anything related to those, and you had a healthy supply of grants. Otherwise, your advisor might spend 10 months of the year creating proposals for a diminishing supply of funds general research.
I’ve long said that whenever a new tech breakthrough happens, some asshole in the defense industry will try to find a way to militarize it. Technology, after all, is neutral. A gun used for self protection is a net positive while a gun used for a mass murder is a net negative.
web3 will face the same soul searching at every corner. Are NFTs just the world’s biggest slot machines? Or will we abandon the dopamine-fueled gambling and use NFTs as secure property rights for contracts and securities? It may be somewhere in the middle, or both simultaneously.
The point is, web3 itself is not a tool for good or evil. But how we use it, will dictate how the court of public opinion will view (and therefore adopt or not).