WSJ on Web3: “New technologies like blockchain present the opportunity to loosen the centralized stranglehold that companies and governments have over everything from internet platforms to intellectual property to the creation and distribution of money. These technologies operate by spreading responsibility or ownership among a group of users, who, for example, use their computing power to electronically fabricate—or “mine”—cryptocurrency, or record transactions for digital art. These technologies represent an evolution of cryptocurrency beyond bitcoin—which some in crypto communities now deride as mere “digital gold.” In addition to monetary value, the “tokens” that make up these systems are each also encoded with information that has some other use, whether it’s membership in a club, the right to vote on how a company conducts itself, or even just data. The blockchains that underlie all this are just ledgers of information stored on many different computers at once. This lets any given blockchain be resistant to control by a government or corporation, and lets people exchange tokens on that blockchain securely and transparently.”
George Will: “The invention of the individual, Oakeshott wrote, entailed the idea of the private — a zone of personal sovereignty independent of communal arrangements. Hence the American Revolution: Government exists to protect the individual’s right to the pursuit of happiness as the individual defines it, not the pursuit of the good life as government defines it. Government must be powerful enough to protect (in Oakeshott’s formulation) “the order without which the aspirations of individuality could not be realized” — security of person and property — but not powerful enough to threaten individuality.”
JK Rowling: “There can be a strange magic in human-made things. Not in all of them: not in plastic bottles or Q-Tips or batteries; but in those that are interwoven with our pasts, with our homes, with our great loves. These are things that have been mysteriously imbued with humanity — our own or other people’s. The magic of “things” often goes unnoticed until they break or are lost. We have favorite mugs and tea towels, comforting in their familiarity and utility; we treasure the lopsided objects our children made for us in nursery school, and we may still own those toys that soothed us when we were tiny.”
