FT on Web3: “Web3 is a tech utopia. It envisages a world of decentralised collaboration that would end the supremacy of major companies by wiping out lucrative markets for data collection and digital advertising. Yet building that world would require exactly the sort of investment that only Big Tech can provide. Hitting the refresh button on the internet looks tempting after years of disinformation and data hacks. First came the web — a scattered collection of open-source information. Then came Web 2.0, in which companies such as Google organised information and helped users to interact online while building walls around data. Tech giants amassed trillions of dollars of market value and now dominate the US stock market. Just five companies account for over a fifth of the S&P 500 index by market capitalisation. Web3 provides the backlash to this concentration of power.”
WSJ: “Since the dawn of civilization, humans have had only one world in which to live: the real one. But tech visionaries say we’ll soon have an alternative: a virtual world where our digital avatars and those of people in our communities and around the globe come together to work, shop, attend classes, pursue hobbies, enjoy social gatherings and more. Immersive videogames and virtual concerts have given us a taste of this world. But visionaries say the metaverse, as this world has been dubbed, will be far more engaging and robust, not only mirroring the real world in all its three-dimensional complexity but also extending it to allow us to be and do what previously could only be imagined. Walk on the moon in your pajamas? Watch a baseball game from the pitcher’s mound? Frolic in a field of unicorns—or be a unicorn yourself? In the metaverse, tech visionaries say, just about anything will be possible.” From The Economist: “The metaverse is already here. It’s just not evenly distributed.”
NYT: “Imagination helps you perceive reality, try on other realities, predict possible futures, experience other viewpoints. And yet how much do schools prioritize the cultivation of this essential ability? What happens to a society that lets so much of its imaginative capacity lie fallow? Perhaps you wind up in a society in which people are strangers to one another and themselves.”
