Mark as Read - Issue 77

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.

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.

TravelMASity

Decentraland

Decentraland is a blockchain world that allows you to purchase digital real estate. This reminds me of back when everyone rushed to purchase awesome domain names, except this is way more expensive and a little more complicated.

They've written decent documentation about getting started, but there's a better overview here, as well as many more links to get distracted by.

I missed out on the land auctions and can't afford any now, but I'm playing around a little to see how I like designing digital assets and avatar wearables since their builder seems very straightforward. -C

You Fancy, Huh

CryptoPunks explained: 10 things about the first NFTs

If you want to convince anyone we are in an inflationary environment just show them that these Non Fungible Tokens are selling for thousands of dollars online. Wait... Calvin aren't you an artist? Can you make jpegs we can sell for cash money online? -Brian

I have been racking my brain trying to figure out what silly drawings I made in college could become digital and self-replicating and profitable, hold plz. -C

Lets finally talk about how NFTs are a giant scam.

Finally! -Brian

My take: NFTs are portable nonfinite baseball cards that you don't have to meticulously care for. The fun is in the collection, and the craze is inevitable but not the main point. There's plenty of signaling involved but it's not that conceptually different than art being on permanent loan to a museum. -C

I love technology (and science)

Kids who grew up with search engines could change STEM education forever

Kids who grew up with search engines apparently don't know how to use a file tree because they just search a giant virtual space full of ALL THE FILES and the algorithm magically retrieves what they need which they use then just throw back into the mystery space.

Relatedly: Calvin you should show everyone a picture of your computer desktop and the millions of files piled up on top of each other. I'll show them a picture of my clean desktop and file storage system that makes it easy to navigate to anything you need. I promise this is a judgment free zone.

Less Relatedly: I'm in a fantasy football league with a bunch of whippersnappers and we use an app they love called Sleeper that has zero logic or structure and it makes me want to throw my phone across the room. Nothing is linear and random swipes in random directions send you to different chat rooms and hashtags and blockchains or something. What was wrong with Yahoo (says the guy who makes fun of people with AOL emails)?

Is all this similar to the aliens in Star Wars (e.g. Admiral Ackbar) who were from aquatic planets and so were uniquely evolved to win space battles because of their intuitive grasp of the 3rd dimension? -B

K, here's my desktop. It's fine. I never see it because Alfred finds everything for me. 😝 -C

_______ is not real life

How Twitter ruined everything

H/T Joe D.

Regardless of whether you think it was a good idea or a bad idea you have to acknowledge that we basically elected the president of twitter-town to be the president of the country... so that's a thing we did....

-B

We could probably spend an entire issue trying to figure out why we both still use Twitter. I probably tweet at least as often as I read content about how Twitter is awful. Also worth a click is the link in the article to a Pew Research study of Twitterers. May Web 3.0 will usher in the sunset of Twitter... -C

All Geek To Me

Odysee Launches Out of Beta, Enabling Creators to Reclaim Power and Monetization

I'm not 100% sure I understand what Web 3.0 is. I remember Windows 3.0 which was pretty great and I'm fairly confident that's a different thing.

Calvin- is Odysee part of Web 3.0? -B

Yep, see, you've got it now! Another big feature of Web 3.0 is the decentralization of everything, which is probably more a response to the newsworthy deplatforming trend we saw in 2020. -C

Rear View Mirror

Maybe You Missed It, but the Internet ‘Died’ Five Years Ago

This is almost as good as the conspiracy theory we shared a while back that birds aren't real. -B

Dead-internet theory suggests that the internet has been almost entirely taken over by artificial intelligence.

Theory rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ -C

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

Issue 77 November 2nd 2021