AI is an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.
Blockchain was an unasked for tech looking for a problem to solve. It uses an incredible amount of energy.
Pursuit of endless growth is pursuit of a cancer.
Moore's Law is dead and we have reached a happy plateau. We dont need more computing power. We can do so much now. If you need something to chew on, work on making it more efficient. Make the code smaller and faster and lighter.
New Review Essay on @lmesseri tremendous new book, ethnography & tech, social hopes, & false dreams of tech solutionism. Also discussing work of Andrew Brock, Zeynep Tufekci & Kelsie Nabben on Black Twitter, Twitter & ethnographies of DAOs.
I had such a great chat with @mike on his Dot Social podcast, where we talked about the future of the web and why I'm a web optimist, why everyone should be a blogger, digital ownership, and decentralized social media.
In the recently resurfaced debate about #solarpunk (or lunarpunk) aspects of #web3 and #blockchain I'm intrigued by one aspect:
Why do we accept being given a solution without outlining the problem in the first place?
Why do we listen to #DAO pitches instead of asking ourselves how we want to run our communities, how do we want to make decisions, vote, discuss things?
Just stating the problem first would make it very clear that there are multiple technical solutions, not just the Web3.
"The reality is you can't build a $100b industry around techn that's kind of useful, mostly in mundane ways, and that boasts perhaps small increases in productivity if and only if the people who use it fully understand its limitations.You certainly can't justify the kind of exploitation, extraction, and environmental cost the industry has been mostly getting away with, in part because people have believed lofty promises of someday changing the world."
Kickstarter's bizarre blockchain announcement in December 2021 makes so much more sense now that we know Andreessen Horowitz secretly promised them $100 million to pivot to a blockchain-based product built on the also-a16z-backed Celo blockchain.
At the time, I wondered why COO Sean Leow was so insistent on the move despite being apparently very confused about the whole concept.
Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet by Chris Dixon
A potent exploration of the power of blockchains to reshape the future of the internet—and how that affects us all—from influential technology entrepreneur and startup investor Chris Dixon
The company I work for is part of an Innovation Network. In the year 2024 they start out with an event titled "New economy - will #Blockchain and cryptography make intermediaries redundant?" and for job reasons I can't just answer "No. And 2021 wants its false narratives back."
Review: In "Read Write Own", the Andreessen Horowitz general partner and web3 superfan Chris Dixon lays out an unconvincing argument that blockchains are what it will take to fix the web.