Intro / Preface / Extra Words

We assume that by now you've been able to read all of the content we sent out a couple months ago. It was a lot, and we wanted to give you ample time to process, ya know. Going silent for a couple weeks or months is totally our style, and we know it's one of your favorite things about us.

For this issue, Calvin will be playing the role of enthusiastic and optimistic early-adopter-type nerd, and Brian will be playing the role of nostalgic and pessimistic old man yelling at clouds. We're going to talk about Web 3.0.

Calvin and Brian

Definitions

Someone wrote a two-part essay explaining Web 3.0: here and here. For the sake of the rest of this issue being mildly coherent, I'll briefly summarize here.

The first couple 'versions' of the Internet were basically limited by technological infrastructure and our imagination. We spent time exploring, and now we're trying some new things as a response to most of our Internet lives being owned and controlled by a handful of giant tech companies.

The key words and phrases to know are:

  • The metaverse is actually a thing and not just a really fun word, and loosely refers to all the different services, games, and applications that can be connected to one another without being centrally owned and controlled by a single entity.
  • The blockchain allows the new fancy metaverse things to exist because it helps keep track of all the activity without being a total privacy nightmare like the rest of our lives.
  • There is currency used to facilitate the transactions that occur on the blockchain, and that currency is cryptocurrency.
  • You store your currency in a crypto wallet, which follows you around so you have an ID and money to use in the metaverse

There's your very basic starter kit to understanding the rest of this newsletter.

Calvin

TravelMASity

You Fancy, Huh


I love technology (and science)

_______ is not real life


All Geek To Me

Rear View Mirror

Outro

Network effects sort of mean that a specific connection based technology is pretty worthless unless everyone is using it. Somehow we've surrendered one of the greatest achievements of mankind with unlimited potential for innovation and progress to the dopamine merchants of social media who have alchemized our brain chemicals and addiction to infinite scrolling into enormous wads of cash they continuously stuff into their comically extended clown pants. We could stop it at any time by all just... stopping.

We could write blogs and send out email newsletters and snail mail wax sealed parchments to each other. Honestly at this point I'd settle for a search engine that actually searched the web instead of just showing me a million sponsored links from the same leering money-panted-clowns who won't get off my lawn. -Brian

Stay tuned for another issue dedicated to Brian's search for a search engine and Calvin's super dope Decentraland avatar gear.

And if any of you, dear readers, have some related content you think we need to see, just reply back and share.

Thanks as always for reading! -C