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| 1 … | +--- |
| 2 … | +title: World Web III |
| 3 … | +date: 2016-11-11 |
| 4 … | +layout: post.jade |
| 5 … | +collection: blog |
| 6 … | +--- |
| 7 … | + |
| 8 … | +<img src="/scuttlepubhola.png" class="profile full"> |
| 9 … | + |
| 10 … | +> [E]very object should have a URL, because, what the heck are they if they aren't these things, and I believe that every object on the Internet should have an IP [address], because that represents, much better, what the actual abstractions are of physical hardware to the bits [Alan Kay, The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet, OOPSLA 1997 -- text](http://blog.moryton.net/2007/12/computer-revolution-hasnt-happened-yet.html) [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY) -- the talk was inspiration for cyphernet, which was inspiration for scuttlebot, which was the first iteration of what became [secure scuttlebot](/dt-interview) |
| 11 … | + |
| 12 … | +Today it's cold (according to this [handy little site](http://windy.tv) it is a mere 9 degrees celcius and 48 degrees farenheit, which is a full TWO DEGREES COLDER THAN NYC) and raining so I bought a scarf. It was hand-made here in Mexico. It's warm, grey and black. Good neutral colors. I paid 190 pesos for it. The first time I bought it was from an art fair that happens once every few months in the city. Today I sought out, found and bought from a little shop that carries all sorts of goods made here in Mexico. Not all of it practical, but these two pieces I own are both practical and pretty. |
| 13 … | + |
| 14 … | +In both instances there were multiple vendors representing a wide range of things hand-made here in Mexico. It's the quintessence of a distributed shop. It's also a representation of the web at its best. Lots of vendors, wide variety, high quality (some of it). An element of it is temporary, you don't know if it will be there tomorrow, all of it is one-of-a-kind but I've noticed that the shop I buy from does approximate repeats of the things they sell out of. |
| 15 … | + |
| 16 … | +If you think about it, it's how the best experiences work. The best experiences are one-of-a-kind, high quality, unique (without being obtrusive, unless that's what you're going for). Pretty. Durable, because distributed. At its best the same is true of the web. |
| 17 … | + |
| 18 … | +### The Web Tea Leaves |
| 19 … | + |
| 20 … | +There's been talk of [the center falling out](http://www.yeatsvision.com/secondnotes.html), things going further to hell in a handbasket, worse breaking out somewhere in the world. I don't know what will happen _mañana_ but I am interested in World Web III. |
| 21 … | + |
| 22 … | +Let me tell you what I read on the proverbial tea leaves. I read: |
| 23 … | + |
| 24 … | ++ it's the end of the one-size-fits-all web |
| 25 … | ++ there is an upheaval of sorts happening |
| 26 … | ++ the upheaval may cause pain for people who don't want to see the old social blocs demolished |
| 27 … | + |
| 28 … | +World Web III is a web as it was in the early days, but better now, because we have the computing power to assign everything a cryptographic hash, which is what forefathers such as Alan Kay (see links at top) previewed back in the day. |
| 29 … | + |
| 30 … | +### Pop Up Pubs and Distributed Conversations |
| 31 … | + |
| 32 … | +The reason third spaces (cafes, airports and pubs) are great for having private conversations is they're transient. They're similar to the walks Jobs and the president of other major tech companies used to take. Want to talk proprietary talk, take a walk. Keep it moving, distributed talk. |
| 33 … | + |
| 34 … | +I host the digital equivalent-to-the-degree-it's-possible. It's a pop-up pub called [Scuttlepub](https://scuttlepub.com). People I send an invite to visit and we have quiet conversations and it's cryptographically secure, powered down at the end of 24 hours and it's pretty. It's a distributed database built on secure scuttlebot but it doesn't sync up with the main event. It's running the same stack alongside, but not inside, sbot. The one I host at scuttlepub features a different network key than the main network. |
| 35 … | + |
| 36 … | +### Mourn the Loss |
| 37 … | + |
| 38 … | +It's not easy, moving out of social web/web 2.0 thinking and into the giant future ahead of us that is World Web III. Here's why it's hard. |
| 39 … | + |
| 40 … | +The big box brand name companies have done the job of convincing billions of people they're having a unique experience. It's striking, really. A lot of psychologists were, and are, paid a lot of money to convince people addicted to social sites that the experience they're having is one-of-a-kind. That nobody else is having the same experience. When I see people whip out their phones (it's rarer all the time, by the way) to check a blue box social site, they call it 'my' as in 'I have to check my yadda ya'-- though calling it 'my' when it's no more theirs than the public toilet they used yesterday at the restaurant they visited. |
| 41 … | + |
| 42 … | +They used the same toilet as everyone else in that restaurant that day. Do they say, 'I have to use my bathroom'? |
| 43 … | + |
| 44 … | +Nope, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that. |
| 45 … | + |
| 46 … | +Perhaps it's time to take the 'my' out of the things that are not ours. Yadda Ya Incorporated is most decidedly the owner of that application people use/using people. |
| 47 … | + |
| 48 … | +Mourning the loss might mean holding still and feeling the feelings that accompany deleting something that was never yours to begin with. I know. It sucks. I've done it. But there's an upshot: you're free. |
| 49 … | + |
| 50 … | +### Celebrate, Too |
| 51 … | + |
| 52 … | +Part of mourning the loss is celebrating what once was. |
| 53 … | + |
| 54 … | +Just because a relationship ends doesn't mean you can't acknowledge there was some good to it. Put another way, it's over now and maybe there was some good if you look deep/enough. Of course, maybe there was no good to it, but that's often the pain of the loss talking. |
| 55 … | + |
| 56 … | +I'm not saying you're going to gleefully power down all your centralized accounts that belong to someone other than you. Which is to say, all of them. Since all of them belong to someone other than you. The more years of your life you've spent working to prop up someone else's stock price, the harder I'm guessint it'll be to power down. I'm saying it'll suck but you can acknowledge what was good before/while/after deleting. |
| 57 … | + |
| 58 … | +If you need something bigger to celebrate, we now have a functioning distributed social web, what I'm calling World Web III in the absence of a better handle, and it's not just being built. It's live even as it's in production. |
| 59 … | + |
| 60 … | +### What's Now |
| 61 … | + |
| 62 … | +I wrote about this on one example of the distributed web, sbot, and I'll give it to you brief here. I had a pair of sneakers I wore almost daily. Zippered on the sides. I wore them for three years, walked all over cities in them. They started falling apart so I glued them together, tied them up with dental floss to hold them together for a few days while the glue dried. And. Still. They fell apart. Just, slam fell apart. |
| 63 … | + |
| 64 … | +I'll have to replace them one day but for now I wear boots. |
| 65 … | + |
| 66 … | +Shoes wear out. Social networks wear out. |
| 67 … | + |
| 68 … | +You can try and glue them together and tie them up with string. But if. If in the morning you're looking at it/them and still you aren't getting any good, let alone brilliant interactions, out of your time there, perhaps the time is right to let the worn thing go. |
| 69 … | + |
| 70 … | +It's hard. I still miss those shoes some days. Especially the zippers on the sides. |
| 71 … | + |
| 72 … | +But you know what? They were good while they lasted, I tried hard to make it work long after it was over, and I'm over it now. |
| 73 … | + |
| 74 … | +More or less. |
| 75 … | + |
| 76 … | +If the pain of upkeep outweighs the growth of releasing it, letting go is an option. World Web III. Think about what the focus on what's broken is causing you to miss of what's here, what's working, what's growing, what's now. |
