Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the tech are you? Well? I think it's
Speaker 1: time once again to consider the hype cycle, largely because
Speaker 1: we are leading up to south By Southwest and south
Speaker 1: By Southwest has as part of it a big tech
Speaker 1: conference and usually you see a lot of height around
Speaker 1: emerging technologies and that's not always a bad thing, but
Speaker 1: it can frequently lead to overstating the capabilities of technologies
Speaker 1: that have not matured yet, and that in itself can
Speaker 1: end up being dangerous or embarrassing or costly. And so
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the hype cycle, specifically with
Speaker 1: regard to Web three. That's gonna be a topic one
Speaker 1: of many topics of discussion at this year's south By Southwest,
Speaker 1: as will the metaverse and many other related subjects. So
Speaker 1: the hype cycle is a concept that is usually presented
Speaker 1: as a little line chart. If you were to look
Speaker 1: at one, you would see kind of like an X
Speaker 1: Y axis and a line would be emerging from the
Speaker 1: center that's going out to the right, and then it
Speaker 1: quickly climbs up, peaks, drops off into a valley, and
Speaker 1: then slowly rises out of that valley to hit a
Speaker 1: kind of flat section. And the purpose of this is
Speaker 1: to kind of describe not the evolution of a technology specifically,
Speaker 1: but rather how people react to and receive certain technologies.
Speaker 1: And there's no hard set timeline that the hype cycle
Speaker 1: has to adhere to. It's really more of a description
Speaker 1: of the stages that the public reception of a technology
Speaker 1: will go through. It's kind of similar to the stages
Speaker 1: of grief. So you've probably heard of the stages of grief.
Speaker 1: Those are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then acceptance. And
Speaker 1: again there's no specific amount of time that's assigned to
Speaker 1: every stage. Every person will experience the stages of grief
Speaker 1: on their own timeline, and in fact, the same person
Speaker 1: might have to go through the grieving process multiple times
Speaker 1: throughout their lives, and that timeline could be different from
Speaker 1: instance to instance, so there's not like a set uh
Speaker 1: length of time for each of these. It's more like
Speaker 1: this is generally the the process that you go through. Well,
Speaker 1: in the hype cycle, everything begins with what is called
Speaker 1: a technology trigger. Typically the trigger is when a technology
Speaker 1: has been announced or covered by the media early early
Speaker 1: on while it's still in development, So the tech is
Speaker 1: not in its final form, it hasn't matured. It may
Speaker 1: still just be a lot of possibilities and potential, so
Speaker 1: we know more about what the tech could possibly do
Speaker 1: rather than what it actually can do. Now, I would
Speaker 1: argue that Web three falls into this stage where we
Speaker 1: are between the technology trigger and that peak I was
Speaker 1: talking about. There are a lot of ideas about what
Speaker 1: Web three will eventually be, and we'll talk about those
Speaker 1: later in this episode, but the truth of the matter
Speaker 1: is it's still something that is coalescing, and so it's really,
Speaker 1: I would argue, impossible to say what Web three will
Speaker 1: be because it ain't a thing yet. It's still being developed,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of similar are concepts, but
Speaker 1: they're going about it in slightly different ways. There's no
Speaker 1: consensus as to what Web three ultimately is going to be. Now,
Speaker 1: in this early phase in the hype cycle, you end
Speaker 1: up hearing a lot of buzz about the technology, and
Speaker 1: this is fed by the media, right the media gets
Speaker 1: really excited starting to cover the stuff, and that in
Speaker 1: turn feeds back into people's enthusiasm about the the evolving tech,
Speaker 1: so people start to imagine potential versions of this technology,
Speaker 1: like what it will ultimately turn into and what it
Speaker 1: might be capable of in the future. So, as an example,
Speaker 1: just recently, I talked about invisibility tech on this very
Speaker 1: podcast and how through the use of meta materials and
Speaker 1: some other techniques, researchers have been able to redirect certain
Speaker 1: bands of electromagnetic radiation to turn a solid object quote
Speaker 1: unquote invisible, but only invisible two specific small ranges of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic frequencies. So you might be able to turn something
Speaker 1: quote unquote invisible to microwaves, but it would still remain
Speaker 1: visible in the visible light spectrum. So in other words,
Speaker 1: you as a human being would see that there's an
Speaker 1: object there, but a device that was using microwaves to
Speaker 1: detect an object would not see it. They would the
Speaker 1: microwaves would bend around the object and continue forward as
Speaker 1: if nothing were there, and so to the microwave detector,
Speaker 1: there's nothing there, but you would still be able to
Speaker 1: see the object because it's not invisible to the visible
Speaker 1: light spectrum. Well, as media outlets started to cover stories
Speaker 1: about meta materials and these experiments with stuff like microwaves.
Speaker 1: Then this naturally prompted a lot of what if scenarios
Speaker 1: projecting into the future, saying, oh, if we can make
Speaker 1: something invisible to microwaves, then what if you can make
Speaker 1: a meta material that could redirect all visible eight the
Speaker 1: same way this microwave experiment is doing with microwaves, Then
Speaker 1: you would have the equivalent of Wonder Woman's invisible jet,
Speaker 1: but for real, and that would be a phenomenal method
Speaker 1: of camouflage. Right you could say, Wow, that's amazing, That's
Speaker 1: the stuff of science fiction, and people began to get
Speaker 1: excited about this idea. Meanwhile, you had some researchers who
Speaker 1: are trying to say stuff like, we are nowhere close
Speaker 1: to being able to do that, and in fact, we
Speaker 1: might never be able to cover the entire spectrum of
Speaker 1: visible light and make something totally invisible to human sight
Speaker 1: because we may not have a method that works across
Speaker 1: that spectrum of frequencies. We might be able to cover
Speaker 1: some of it, but not all of it, which means
Speaker 1: it would still be visible. It would just appear to
Speaker 1: be a specific kind of color based upon whatever frequencies
Speaker 1: were reflecting off of it. But that didn't stop the hype.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of people who are really excited
Speaker 1: about it. Now we were heading to the next age
Speaker 1: of the cycle. This is what Gardner calls the peak
Speaker 1: of inflated expectations. So this is where we top out
Speaker 1: where futurists are predicting incredible results based on young, immature,
Speaker 1: still developing technologies. So they're starting to draw conclusions that
Speaker 1: don't have enough foundation to be reliable, and investors at
Speaker 1: this stage might be pouring a ton of money into
Speaker 1: startups that are developing the technology or looking to exploit
Speaker 1: the technology in some way. And keep in mind the
Speaker 1: technology itself it's still not mature, so people are talking
Speaker 1: about ways they're going to use or exploit the technology
Speaker 1: before the technology has even been proven to be able
Speaker 1: to do those things. So this could be so early
Speaker 1: on in the development of a technology that there's really
Speaker 1: not much to talk about on a technical level. You're
Speaker 1: just thinking about the possibilities if that tech chnology comes
Speaker 1: to pass. So Paraos was definitely in this stage before
Speaker 1: it all came crashing down with an expose. You had
Speaker 1: this technology that reportedly was going to be able to
Speaker 1: run hundreds of different medical tests on a micro drop
Speaker 1: of blood, a single micro drop, and people were still
Speaker 1: really jazzed about that and excited and enthusiastic and believing
Speaker 1: that this was a possibility when the expose showed that
Speaker 1: things were not as they seemed at the company, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it had been drastically overpromising what was possible.
Speaker 1: Next up in the hype cycle, people start to lose
Speaker 1: confidence in a technology. This can be because the tech
Speaker 1: is taking longer than people want for it to mature
Speaker 1: and become a capable tech, or it may be that
Speaker 1: it is maturing but it doesn't actually have all the
Speaker 1: features that folks were excited about earlier on the hype cycle,
Speaker 1: where they find out, oh, it works, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: work as well as I hoped, or it doesn't do
Speaker 1: the thing I was hoping it would do. So in short,
Speaker 1: the reality of this technology is falling short, sometimes fall
Speaker 1: far short of what the promise was. So when normal
Speaker 1: folks like like yours truly first got a chance to
Speaker 1: use virtual reality technology once VR had emerged, and prematurely,
Speaker 1: some would argue, out of research labs, the results were
Speaker 1: far more modest than what pop culture had been imagining
Speaker 1: right in the media, VR was going to be this
Speaker 1: thing that would would almost literally transport you into the
Speaker 1: computer world, but the actual experience of using VR was
Speaker 1: far more limited than that. I would argue that the
Speaker 1: technology was truly impressive. I mean, having head tracking technology
Speaker 1: alone blew my mind, and I thought it was super
Speaker 1: exciting showing what the capabilities were. It's just that the
Speaker 1: actual implementations were pretty limited. But that didn't discourage me.
Speaker 1: I just thought, Wow, this technology has so much promise. However,
Speaker 1: a lot of other people just felt like disappointed and
Speaker 1: let down that it wasn't the knockout hit right out
Speaker 1: of the gate that they were expecting, and as a result,
Speaker 1: they kind of turned on the technology. They dismissed it
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and that led to the next stage
Speaker 1: of the hype cycle, which is the trough of disillusionment.
Speaker 1: This stage is where people have become disenchanted with the
Speaker 1: technology because it failed to live up to their expectations.
Speaker 1: Often at this stage, investors will stop supporting companies that
Speaker 1: are involved in this technology. Ledgling companies that got into
Speaker 1: the sector often fail at the stage. They just ceased
Speaker 1: to exist, and technology itself can die at this stage
Speaker 1: if it's still in the maturation process and has not
Speaker 1: fully been developed. The technology it's could just lose enough
Speaker 1: support that there's no one left to develop it. But
Speaker 1: often you'll have a few holdout companies and organizations that
Speaker 1: will continue to work on it and keep enough people
Speaker 1: interested and happy for the cycle to continue development, and
Speaker 1: VR very nearly died out after the public became disenchanted
Speaker 1: with it. In the nineties, funding for VR dropped significantly,
Speaker 1: and research institutions and universities found themselves struggling to support
Speaker 1: further development. In fact, at this stage, a lot of
Speaker 1: researchers who are hoping to use VR for some really
Speaker 1: innovative use cases like treating phobias, for example, they found
Speaker 1: themselves developing tools by repurposing other technologies. They were looking
Speaker 1: at game systems like the Wii or the Sony Move
Speaker 1: controller system and they converted those into VR tools. Or
Speaker 1: they looked at Microsoft Connect the peripheral for the Xbox,
Speaker 1: and they took that and repurposed that. Researchers they lacked
Speaker 1: the resources that they needed to build hardware for themselves,
Speaker 1: so they were doing their best by repurposing existing hardware
Speaker 1: that was intended for other uses. And so the work
Speaker 1: was able to continue, but it was at a pace
Speaker 1: that was way way slower than earlier on in the
Speaker 1: hype cycle. So VR could have just died right then
Speaker 1: and there, but it lived to VR another day. Now.
Speaker 1: Next up in the hype cycle is the slope of enlightenment.
Speaker 1: This stage happens as people come to terms with what
Speaker 1: a technology can actually do, as opposed to all those
Speaker 1: nebulous potentials that we were dreaming about earlier on in
Speaker 1: the cycle. Now it may turn out that the tech
Speaker 1: isn't an incredible solution to all the world's problems, but
Speaker 1: maybe it turns out to do certain things really well,
Speaker 1: and as a result, people support the technology more. At
Speaker 1: this stage, we have a better understanding of what the
Speaker 1: tech can do, and while it might not enjoy the
Speaker 1: monumental success everyone was hoping for earlier in the cycle,
Speaker 1: when everyone had just dollar signs in their eyes, it
Speaker 1: can have a healthy place in the space. Now we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break. When we come back, i'll
Speaker 1: finish up talking about the hype cycle. Then we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus specifically on Web three. But first these messages. Okay,
Speaker 1: when we were leaving off, before the messages, we had
Speaker 1: the slope of enlightenment in the hype cycle. You could
Speaker 1: actually argue that VR is currently in the slope of enlightenment,
Speaker 1: that while it survived the trough due to the emergence
Speaker 1: of the oculus in general, like really the oculus particularly
Speaker 1: helped a lot, that VR was able to make a
Speaker 1: recovery and start moving on the slope of enlightenment. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you might say that, all right, well, maybe it's
Speaker 1: still on in the slope of enlightenment because while it's
Speaker 1: more popular than it was in the nineties, it has
Speaker 1: not achieved mainstream adoption. The VR market is still a
Speaker 1: fairly niche market. And we see that not just in
Speaker 1: the sales of VR headsets and and trust me, there
Speaker 1: have been really good sales, like lots of people have
Speaker 1: bought them, but we also see it because it's not
Speaker 1: like we're seeing a ton of really innovative development in
Speaker 1: VR in the commercial space. The reason for that is
Speaker 1: a developer is not going to spend the resources needed
Speaker 1: to create VR experiences if there's not enough of a
Speaker 1: market out there to make it make business sense to
Speaker 1: do so, right, You're not gonna make something like it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make any sense for you to set up a
Speaker 1: lemonade stand and sell lemonade for twenty five cents of glass.
Speaker 1: If it turned out that it cost you fifty cents
Speaker 1: of glass to make a right, you wouldn't You wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that. You would either mark up the elimonade or
Speaker 1: you'd say, no, I'm not getting into that racket. I'm
Speaker 1: doing something else. So that's kind of where VR is now.
Speaker 1: If it's in the slope of enlightenment, we can still
Speaker 1: see adoption over time as the technology continues to reach
Speaker 1: its mature level. And maybe that's where VR is at
Speaker 1: this moment. It at least is where everyone who's working
Speaker 1: on the metaverse concept is hoping VR and mixed reality
Speaker 1: or X are is, because if it is in the
Speaker 1: slope of enlightenment, it's still moving toward mainstream adoption because
Speaker 1: the last phase in the cycle is called the plateau
Speaker 1: of productivity. Plateau tells you people's expectations are not going
Speaker 1: to really increase from here, right. They pretty much feel
Speaker 1: that the technology is where it needs to be. It
Speaker 1: does what it it does, and maybe it's good enough
Speaker 1: so that it's a really popular technology, or maybe it
Speaker 1: just ever emerged from a niche market. So this is
Speaker 1: where we would expect the technology to evolve over time,
Speaker 1: but those evolutions will be small, Right, You're not going
Speaker 1: to see a dramatic change generation to generation. It'll just
Speaker 1: be improving along with other technologies, but not to such
Speaker 1: a dramatic point that it becomes almost like it's a
Speaker 1: new tech. I would say the smartphone is definitely in
Speaker 1: the plateau of productivity phase. Uh. This might be to
Speaker 1: the chagrin of some Apple fans. There was a time
Speaker 1: early on in the iPhones life where everyone would wait
Speaker 1: anxiously each year for the next model's release, because the
Speaker 1: improvements in generation to generation were fairly significant and easy
Speaker 1: to understand and see. But the technology reached a mature
Speaker 1: stage several years back. There are still some Apple fans
Speaker 1: who expressed disappointment when they go and look at the
Speaker 1: events where there there's an unveiling of a new model
Speaker 1: of iPhone, and it's not because the new iPhone models
Speaker 1: aren't good. Instead, it's because they aren't different enough from
Speaker 1: earlier ones to feel like a huge leap forward. And
Speaker 1: early on that wasn't the case, like it felt like
Speaker 1: every iPhone was a big leap over the past one,
Speaker 1: but you eventually reach a maturity where those big leaps
Speaker 1: just aren't gonna come anymore. They'll improve, but not in
Speaker 1: the same span that you would see in earlier versions.
Speaker 1: That is the mark of a truly mature technology. Each
Speaker 1: generation of iPhone has at least some improvements over previous generations,
Speaker 1: though some design changes may also disappointment you know a
Speaker 1: subset of users. So, for example, my wife doesn't like
Speaker 1: facial recognition tech, and so she's still upset that the
Speaker 1: iPhone ditched the fingerprints since their several generations back. In fact,
Speaker 1: she resisted buying a new iPhone for a long time,
Speaker 1: specifically because the newer ones didn't have the finger and sensor.
Speaker 1: Eventually she gave in, but it was hard fought battle.
Speaker 1: Now at this plateau, there is a clear understanding of
Speaker 1: the relevance of the technology. There's an established market for
Speaker 1: the tech. Adoption of the technology has likely reached close
Speaker 1: to a saturation point, meaning all the folks who are
Speaker 1: interested in this technology have bought in, and the folks
Speaker 1: who are not interested in the technology are not likely
Speaker 1: to change their minds very easily. VR and XR companies
Speaker 1: really hope the VR hasn't reached this point of the
Speaker 1: hype cycle, because if this is where VR is now,
Speaker 1: then we may never see a mainstream adoption of virtual reality,
Speaker 1: which in turn would mean that the most visions of
Speaker 1: the metaverse are built upon a shaky foundation, because if
Speaker 1: a company's vision of the metaverse incorporates mixed reality in
Speaker 1: any significant way, well, then it stands to reason that
Speaker 1: mixed reality itself has to be pretty mainstream, you know,
Speaker 1: something on the level of smartphones. Like smartphones definitely change
Speaker 1: the web. The mobile experience with the Web is very
Speaker 1: different from the desktop and laptop experience, and the metaverse
Speaker 1: proponents are really hoping that VR will enable the metaverse
Speaker 1: to have that same kind of transformational effect on how
Speaker 1: we interact with the online world. But for the metaverse
Speaker 1: to be more than just an online community for a subset,
Speaker 1: a small subset of the overall online population, mixed reality
Speaker 1: needs to be a big thing among the mainstream, and
Speaker 1: it just isn't yet. All the companies that hope to
Speaker 1: cash in on the metaverse, whether by providing virtual infrastructure
Speaker 1: or creating ways to conduct business within the metaverse itself,
Speaker 1: they can find themselves over extended. If the basic technology
Speaker 1: needed to access the metaverse never actually takes off, and
Speaker 1: that is a risk, and some risks end up paying
Speaker 1: off and others don't. And we don't know which way
Speaker 1: this one's going to go yet. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of very smart people who think in the end the
Speaker 1: metaverse is going to be a big winner, specifically a
Speaker 1: metaverse that incorporates mixed reality, that it's going to be
Speaker 1: the way of the future, And you know, they very well.
Speaker 1: Maybe right now, I say that because I am extremely
Speaker 1: skeptical that the metaverse, at least that vision of the metaverse,
Speaker 1: will be the next big thing. But I have also
Speaker 1: famously been really wrong about prediction stuff in the past,
Speaker 1: so just counted as skepticism. But that doesn't mean I'm right.
Speaker 1: I will say that so far I'm right because mixed
Speaker 1: reality has not become a mainstream technology. It's popular, but
Speaker 1: not popular enough to be considered even close to as
Speaker 1: mainstream as cell phones and smartphones. And the reason again
Speaker 1: that I'm talking about this psycho, which I've done many
Speaker 1: times on this show, is to emphasize how critical thinking
Speaker 1: is key to navigating the stages of hype. It is
Speaker 1: important to ask questions even uncomfortable hard questions as hype
Speaker 1: ramps up. Those questions can help you avoid disaster, and
Speaker 1: they can also help shape the path of a technology
Speaker 1: so that it has the best chance of turning out well.
Speaker 1: So I want to re emphasize that point too. I'm
Speaker 1: not just advocating critical thinking because I want people to
Speaker 1: avoid scams or you know, schemes that end up being
Speaker 1: based on faulty premises. That is important. I do not
Speaker 1: want you to get fleeced. That is way up there.
Speaker 1: But also through being critical, you can give any process
Speaker 1: the best chance of addressing your concerns, and thus the
Speaker 1: end product ends up being better because you address the
Speaker 1: concerns early on instead of having to fix something after
Speaker 1: it's already been baked in. And if we don't ask
Speaker 1: the tough questions, then that baking process may go all
Speaker 1: sorts of wrong, and then the thing we end up
Speaker 1: with ends up not being as useful or ends up
Speaker 1: not benefiting the right people, and we just have ourselves
Speaker 1: to blame because we didn't ask those tough questions. That
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to do now with Web three,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be straight with all y'all. Web three
Speaker 1: still puzzles me. I mean, I understand the big picture
Speaker 1: stuff about Web three, but I feel we're in that
Speaker 1: initial part of the hype cycle where we haven't really
Speaker 1: hit the peak of inflated expectations yet and that we're
Speaker 1: still headed to the trough of disillusionment. But let me explain,
Speaker 1: all right, So first, how do we define Web three.
Speaker 1: There's actually a really big problem here, and part of
Speaker 1: that problem is that, you know, folks are still working
Speaker 1: to create what will be Web three, so we don't
Speaker 1: have a finished thing we can talk about. So again
Speaker 1: we're dealing with probabilities and possibilities and potential and blue
Speaker 1: sky dreaming and hype, and it becomes difficult to draw
Speaker 1: any firm conclusions. Generally speaking, proponents of Web three tend
Speaker 1: to describe it as the next phase of how we
Speaker 1: experience the online world. And the easiest way for me
Speaker 1: to do this is to walk through what Web one
Speaker 1: and Web two are. So Web one point, oh, the
Speaker 1: initial version of the web was a worldwide web filled
Speaker 1: with static web pages, and you would go to a
Speaker 1: web page you type in the U r L, or
Speaker 1: maybe you would find it in a in an early
Speaker 1: search engine, or a link or whatever. You go to
Speaker 1: this web page, you would read what was written on
Speaker 1: the web page. Then you would bounce, and there was
Speaker 1: no real way to interact with the material, and the
Speaker 1: material itself wouldn't typically change because making changes to a
Speaker 1: web page was a hassle. You know, you would actually
Speaker 1: have to go into the HTML code and then change
Speaker 1: the layout in the text in there, and then you
Speaker 1: would have to save it and publish it again. There's
Speaker 1: just a lot of work if you wanted to make
Speaker 1: changes to a web page, Like if your web page
Speaker 1: was I don't know about the birth of the British Navy.
Speaker 1: That was actually one of the first web pages I
Speaker 1: made when I was fresh out of college. So you
Speaker 1: could think of this era as the web being in
Speaker 1: read only mode. You can't make changes to it if
Speaker 1: you're a user, like you're not the web page administrator,
Speaker 1: you're just a visitor. You can't do anything that actually
Speaker 1: changes the web page. You can just read it. That's it.
Speaker 1: Web two point I would introduce interactivity and user generated content,
Speaker 1: as well as dynamic elements on the web pages themselves.
Speaker 1: So now a web page could become a living document.
Speaker 1: It's one that could actually evolve over time, instead of
Speaker 1: just being the same page day in and day out.
Speaker 1: People also developed ways to swap out elements on web
Speaker 1: pages more easily, so you could update stuff more frequently
Speaker 1: and with a little less hassle. And sites began to
Speaker 1: include ways for users to leave their own input, so
Speaker 1: you can have message boards, you could have user reviews,
Speaker 1: you could have social network sites. Now the web became
Speaker 1: read right instead of read only, because now you could
Speaker 1: actually go to a web page and influence it. You
Speaker 1: could type stuff in, You could leave a comment on
Speaker 1: a video, or leave a review for a product, or
Speaker 1: create a web journal that people could comment on. This
Speaker 1: was a more interactive web. But something else was also
Speaker 1: happening during this phase. So in web one point a
Speaker 1: web pages were these little independent islands. You know. They
Speaker 1: were hosted on servers, and those servers were all over
Speaker 1: the place. A single server might host tons of web
Speaker 1: pages that had no real connection between them other than
Speaker 1: the fact that they all ultimately quote unquote lived on
Speaker 1: the same machine. So the web was decentralized, it wasn't
Speaker 1: concentrated into little like areas. However, with Web two point oh,
Speaker 1: we saw the emergence of companies that would become monoliths
Speaker 1: on the web, companies like Google, Amazon, and Facebook slash meta.
Speaker 1: These companies began to consolidate power and influence, and importantly,
Speaker 1: they also began to trade in the personal data of
Speaker 1: folks like us. As we visited various sites, these companies
Speaker 1: learned more and more about us and our habits and
Speaker 1: our likes and dislikes, and they use that information in
Speaker 1: various ways. They used it to sell more effective advertising
Speaker 1: to their own clients, and they would also buy and
Speaker 1: sell our data, turning our personal information into a commodity
Speaker 1: that could be traded. And the Web became a little
Speaker 1: more centralized around these monoliths. Not necessarily from a technology standpoint,
Speaker 1: though you do have companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft
Speaker 1: that do big business with cloud based platforms that lots
Speaker 1: of other services depend upon, But definitely from a market perspective,
Speaker 1: it became more centralized, and within the context of where
Speaker 1: our personal information ends up, it became more centralized. Then
Speaker 1: we finally get to the concept of web three, which
Speaker 1: some have framed as read right own O W n
Speaker 1: as and I own that, and that ownership concept extends
Speaker 1: both to the systems that would make up web three.
Speaker 1: The organizations that make up Web three as well as
Speaker 1: our own personal data. So the era of Web three
Speaker 1: would ideally mean that users would regain control over their
Speaker 1: own information. Again, that this would not be the commodity
Speaker 1: for other companies to buy and sell, that transactions across
Speaker 1: Web three would not include handing over your personal data
Speaker 1: to some other entity that could exploit it for their
Speaker 1: own gain at our expense, and that we would actually
Speaker 1: own a piece of all this through the participation of it. Well,
Speaker 1: how is that possible? I'll explain when we come back
Speaker 1: after this break. Okay, So what is it about Web
Speaker 1: three that enables this ability to own our own information
Speaker 1: and also to own the systems that make up Web three?
Speaker 1: While the underlying technology that most Web three proponents point
Speaker 1: to is the blockchain, and of course that was made
Speaker 1: famous by bitcoin, and in fact, a lot of Web
Speaker 1: three talk revolves around cryptocurrencies in general and blockchain in particular,
Speaker 1: though not all Web three talk includes blockchain, because again
Speaker 1: we're talking about something that ain't a thing yet, and
Speaker 1: and some weathere implementations blockchain doesn't really play apart, but
Speaker 1: in most of them it does. So with blockchain, you
Speaker 1: typically have blocks of data blocks of information. Each block
Speaker 1: actually will only hold a certain amount of information, and
Speaker 1: once it fills up, that block is done. The blockchain
Speaker 1: system has to confirm or verify the data that's within
Speaker 1: that block, and then once verified, that block joins the
Speaker 1: end of a chain of earlier blocks of data. So
Speaker 1: with Bitcoin, each block's identity is tied to the blocks
Speaker 1: that came before it, and that means you can't go
Speaker 1: into the history of bitcoin transactions and change something that
Speaker 1: happened in the past, because if you make a change,
Speaker 1: then there's a ripple effect that goes all the way
Speaker 1: down the chain and every block subsequently added to the
Speaker 1: chain chain ages as well, and the system would immediately
Speaker 1: be alerted that something hainky is going on and it
Speaker 1: could be stopped and reversed. The reason for that is
Speaker 1: without this protection, where the blocks identity depends upon all
Speaker 1: the blocks that came before it, well, you could spend
Speaker 1: a bitcoin and then wait a certain amount of time,
Speaker 1: then go in and tweak the chain of of data
Speaker 1: blocks so that you it looks like you didn't spend
Speaker 1: that bitcoin and that the bitcoin is still in your wallet,
Speaker 1: and then you could spend it again. So by tying
Speaker 1: the data all the way through the chain. It prevents
Speaker 1: you from being able to do those sorts of things.
Speaker 1: At least theoretically. It gets a little more complicated, but
Speaker 1: we're not going to dive into all of that. So
Speaker 1: another important element in bitcoins blockchain is that this this
Speaker 1: chain of data is publicly viewable by any computer system
Speaker 1: that's part of this Bitcoin network, and it serves as
Speaker 1: a ledger of transactions, a record of every transaction made
Speaker 1: across bitcoin. And because everyone can see the ledger, everyone
Speaker 1: in the system that is, can see the ledger that
Speaker 1: keeps things safe, at least in theory. In practice, again,
Speaker 1: sometimes it doesn't quite play out that way all right.
Speaker 1: So a Web three system would consist of a computer network,
Speaker 1: sort of like a peer to peer network, where all
Speaker 1: the computers are connected with each other through this Web
Speaker 1: three interface, and they would participate in the operation of
Speaker 1: a blockchain, perhaps a blockchain that's specific to this Web
Speaker 1: three based application or organization. This system could meant its
Speaker 1: own tokens, similar to cryptocurrency or even similar to n
Speaker 1: f t s, but these are tokens that represent ownership
Speaker 1: of this particular system. The tokens can be used to
Speaker 1: reward people, or really reward computers for completing certain tasks,
Speaker 1: such as verifying a block of data. That's how bitcoin works.
Speaker 1: That's what bitcoin mining is, is you verify a block
Speaker 1: of transactions. If you're a computer is the first one
Speaker 1: to do this by solving an arbitrarily difficult computer problem,
Speaker 1: then you are awarded a certain number of bitcoin, and
Speaker 1: it's an incentive to participate in the system and therefore
Speaker 1: verify transactions. It's this self perpetuating process as long as
Speaker 1: people find value in the currency. So these tokens can
Speaker 1: also represent voting power within these Web three organizations. So
Speaker 1: let me give you a hypothetical. Let's say that you
Speaker 1: are an investor, and let's say you've got a million
Speaker 1: dollars to burn and you decide to invest it in
Speaker 1: a Web three startup. This startup has its own blockchain
Speaker 1: and it's menting its own tokens on that block chain,
Speaker 1: and in return for your monetary investment in the Web
Speaker 1: three startup, the company issues you one hundred thousand tokens
Speaker 1: on this blockchain to represent that investment. We'll just call
Speaker 1: them techy tokens. It's the tech stuff currency. So these
Speaker 1: tokens represent not just your investment, they also represent your
Speaker 1: voting power within the organization itself. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: buying shares in a publicly traded company. The more shares
Speaker 1: you buy, the more voting power you have. So now
Speaker 1: when it comes time to make a decision for the
Speaker 1: direction of the organization, let's say you've get yourself one
Speaker 1: hundred thousand votes. Because we're just simplifying this, we're saying
Speaker 1: one token grants you one vote in the system, you
Speaker 1: have a hundred thousand tokens, so you have a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand votes. But this is just for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this example. So let's say there's someone else who's joined
Speaker 1: this network, but they have earned their tokens organically. They
Speaker 1: haven't poured a million dollars of investments in. They've just
Speaker 1: and participating. Maybe they've verified some transactions, They've got a
Speaker 1: couple of tokens have been awarded to them, so they
Speaker 1: have one or two votes. You have a hundred thousand votes.
Speaker 1: This is where some Web three critics jump in. They
Speaker 1: point out that venture capitalists, by investing into these systems,
Speaker 1: are effectively making themselves into the monoliths that companies like
Speaker 1: Google and Meta serve as in the Web two point
Speaker 1: O world. That sure, in theory, everyone who participates within
Speaker 1: a given Web three system is partly an owner of
Speaker 1: that system. But some folks are going to own such
Speaker 1: a large number of tokens that effectively they dictate the
Speaker 1: decision making process for the overall organization, and everybody else
Speaker 1: doesn't have any real power. So it doesn't become decentralized.
Speaker 1: It is centralized. It's just centralized with different people. These
Speaker 1: organizations also have a name. The thing we call these organizations,
Speaker 1: these Web three based ones. Typically we call them dowels.
Speaker 1: Now I'm not talking about DOW as in the Dow
Speaker 1: Jones Industrial Average, that's d o W. I'm talking d
Speaker 1: a O. That stands for decentralized autonomous organization. It is decentralized,
Speaker 1: though perhaps to an arbitrary degree, because ownership spreads across
Speaker 1: the members of the organization, as opposed to there being
Speaker 1: say a CEO. Right, you don't have a clearly defined
Speaker 1: leader of this organization. Though again, in practice, if there's
Speaker 1: an investor who has essentially bought their their powerful way
Speaker 1: through by acquiring more tokens than anyone else, than effectively
Speaker 1: you're in the same position, but at least conceptually, it's decentralized.
Speaker 1: It's autonomous because it operates based off rules that have
Speaker 1: been encoded as computer processes. And it's an organization because
Speaker 1: because it's organized. But wait, if a doll runs off
Speaker 1: computer rules, then where does voting come into play? What
Speaker 1: does that mean? Well, the voting power determines what those
Speaker 1: computer processes actually are doing, so essentially you decide what
Speaker 1: the rules are through voting. And there are some serious
Speaker 1: challenges with this kind of organization. So, for one, if
Speaker 1: members are inactive, if you've got a lot of people
Speaker 1: who own tokens but they're not actively voting, it can
Speaker 1: become difficult or even impossible to pass a vote with
Speaker 1: the needed amount of support to enact change just because
Speaker 1: the people who own the votes aren't voting. If you've
Speaker 1: got a whale or two in the system, people who
Speaker 1: have accumulated way more votes than the rest of the
Speaker 1: community collectively, then they effectively can dictate whatever the dowel
Speaker 1: does or doesn't do, without regard of whatever the rest
Speaker 1: of the community wants. And you might be thinking, all
Speaker 1: this sounds pretty vague, like I'm getting the general idea,
Speaker 1: but you're you're not being specific, and you are right.
Speaker 1: That's one of my biggest frustrations when I read about
Speaker 1: Web three stuff, or whenever I watch explainer videos on it,
Speaker 1: because I've watched a lot, I kept thinking, I'm not
Speaker 1: getting it, there's something I'm missing. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of conversation around these ideas, along with other blockchain related
Speaker 1: stuff like n f t s, but there are very
Speaker 1: few explainers that include specifics. At most, you might get
Speaker 1: something like you pay an artist with some tokens for
Speaker 1: some digital art and you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: your data being shared. I'm like, well, that's okay, But
Speaker 1: I could do a lot of stuff on the web.
Speaker 1: There's so much I can do on the web. How
Speaker 1: does that work in a Web three environment? How is
Speaker 1: that manifested on Web three? What does that look like?
Speaker 1: And it's hard to find really good examples of how
Speaker 1: a Web three implementation would play out in the real world,
Speaker 1: probably because we are in that nebulous phase where Web
Speaker 1: three is not a full thing yet, and I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot from the hype side. I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: from the technical side of how stuff works at a
Speaker 1: code level, with concepts like smart contracts, but getting beyond that,
Speaker 1: to get to like specific give me real world examples
Speaker 1: of how this would play out and be useful, how
Speaker 1: it would be a benefit and better than the way
Speaker 1: it works now. Then it gets really hard to find
Speaker 1: specific examples. I think a lot of people, including myself,
Speaker 1: ultimately just want to know what using Web three really
Speaker 1: would mean in a day to day life and how
Speaker 1: it would play out and why it would be better.
Speaker 1: One question that also has to be answered is will
Speaker 1: the blockchain approach be a scalable one? And if it is,
Speaker 1: then that's great, but it's There are a lot of
Speaker 1: questions about this, like will building things all around blockchain
Speaker 1: technology still work once you have grown beyond a niche community.
Speaker 1: The cryptocurrency community is huge, but is not as huge
Speaker 1: as like the general population of folks who are using
Speaker 1: the Internet, and some transactions on certain blockchains like bitcoins,
Speaker 1: for example, they take a while to verify and thus
Speaker 1: they take a while to resolve the transaction, and due
Speaker 1: to volatility in cryptocurrency value, a transaction can actually take
Speaker 1: long enough to resolve that the amount of bitcoin that
Speaker 1: you've spent can have a drastically different value in say
Speaker 1: US dollars than it did when you initiated that transaction.
Speaker 1: So let's put that in a real world example, as
Speaker 1: if you were just using your regular currency. I'm going
Speaker 1: to use US dollars because I'm an American citizen. So
Speaker 1: I say, imagine you walk into a coffee shop and
Speaker 1: on the wall you see that a cup of coffee
Speaker 1: is three dollars, and you had three dollars over to
Speaker 1: the cashier to buy you a cup of coffee, and
Speaker 1: you buy your coffee. However, in the process of this,
Speaker 1: as you are buying your coffee, there is a spike
Speaker 1: in inflation, and the three dollars that you handed over
Speaker 1: now has less buying power. It's still three dollar bills,
Speaker 1: but it can buy less than what it used to.
Speaker 1: Maybe now it's worth about a dollar in pre inflation money.
Speaker 1: That would be really bad news for the coffee shop,
Speaker 1: right because they just got one third of the value
Speaker 1: in buying power than what they wanted for They would
Speaker 1: mark their prices up. But this has happened too fast.
Speaker 1: It happened when the price was set at three dollars,
Speaker 1: but they got one dollar of value out of that
Speaker 1: transaction because of inflation. And you would I think the
Speaker 1: value of the coffee itself hasn't changed, right, The coffee
Speaker 1: didn't get worse, didn't get better. It's the same coffee.
Speaker 1: It's worth three dollars of pre inflation, and we can
Speaker 1: say that because you are willing to spend three dollars
Speaker 1: to get it. That's what tells us it was worth
Speaker 1: that much because you were willing to pay it. But
Speaker 1: the value of the currency has changed. This is an
Speaker 1: immediate term problem for the coffee shop. And the next
Speaker 1: time you go and you might look and say, oh,
Speaker 1: now a cup of coffee is nine dollars because a
Speaker 1: dollar is worth a third of what it used to be.
Speaker 1: Now that's a trivial example, it's not realistic for US dollars.
Speaker 1: But that sort of stuff does happen with cryptocurrencies that
Speaker 1: are depending upon the amount of time it takes for
Speaker 1: a transaction to get verified. With bitcoin, you're talking like
Speaker 1: ten minutes, and the value of bitcoin can actually change
Speaker 1: fairly significantly within ten minutes depending upon what is going on.
Speaker 1: So this is one of the reasons why bitcoin doesn't
Speaker 1: work so well as a as a currency, because you
Speaker 1: almost feel punished for for spending it. If if the
Speaker 1: bitcoin is suddenly worth way more than what it was
Speaker 1: when you started the transaction. Then you're like, well, now
Speaker 1: I'm throwing money away because this thing wasn't worth as
Speaker 1: much as what the bitcoin is now worth. Or the
Speaker 1: flip side, if you're selling something and the value of
Speaker 1: bitcoin drops, then suddenly the value of what you're getting
Speaker 1: for selling that thing is different. My whole point here
Speaker 1: is that by building a web on top of the blockchain,
Speaker 1: there are challenges associated with scaling this operation up to
Speaker 1: support a global user base, as well as making sure
Speaker 1: that the transaction process is fast enough so that people
Speaker 1: aren't faced with a system that is very slow to respond.
Speaker 1: That doesn't even get into the challenges that come with
Speaker 1: larger organizations that have to contend with millions of participants,
Speaker 1: all of whom have voting power for the direction of
Speaker 1: the organization itself. Like if these dowels grow truly enormous,
Speaker 1: then the governance is going to become a nightmare. Everyone
Speaker 1: gets a vote, some people have more votes than others,
Speaker 1: and man, it can be really hard to reach consensus.
Speaker 1: Beyond all that, we then have the bad actors out
Speaker 1: there who are using the hype around cryptocurrencies and n
Speaker 1: f t s and Web three and related things to
Speaker 1: to run scams and steal money and try to cash
Speaker 1: in on excitement and enthusiasm with no real intent to
Speaker 1: follow through on that. And these groups are doing more
Speaker 1: than just fleecing people, which is already bad enough, right
Speaker 1: Stealing money is already bad. But what they're also doing
Speaker 1: is damaging the image of these technologies, and if the
Speaker 1: images get damaged enough, folks will withdraw support and then
Speaker 1: stuff will fizzle out, kind of like VR, and then
Speaker 1: maybe find themselves on a much more modest path toward
Speaker 1: maturation if they managed to stick around at all. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I think there are some interesting concepts at play with
Speaker 1: Web three. I think there is value in the concept
Speaker 1: of Web three, But I also think we're still in
Speaker 1: the early hype cycle, and that while there's no law
Speaker 1: that an emerging technology has to go through these various
Speaker 1: phases that Gardner has identified, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: other technologies that have followed that specific path. So we've
Speaker 1: had a lot of precedents, and I think we that
Speaker 1: if we're to see Web three even accomplish a fraction
Speaker 1: of the promises that we've been told as people have
Speaker 1: hyped up Web three. It's going to require a ton
Speaker 1: of work. Not just a lot of work, but that
Speaker 1: we're going to have to approach this work in a
Speaker 1: very methodical way that holds the people and organizations that
Speaker 1: are building these things accountable. We have to we have
Speaker 1: to also acknowledge the challenges and the pitfalls around us,
Speaker 1: and only then will we have a chance of building
Speaker 1: something that could have an overall benefit for everyone, as
Speaker 1: opposed to just finding a new way to benefit a
Speaker 1: select few at the expense of the many, which is
Speaker 1: where I think we're going. But we could avoid that
Speaker 1: if we're super careful. I just don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of confidence that that is going to happen. And I'm
Speaker 1: skeptical we're going to see a truly useful, beneficial Web three.
Speaker 1: Not that we won't see a Web three at all,
Speaker 1: but that will see a good one. I remain skeptical
Speaker 1: of that. However, I think it's possible that it could happen.
Speaker 1: It's just hard to do, and in my opinion, it
Speaker 1: will be impossible to do unless we continue to ask
Speaker 1: hard questions and rely on critical thinking. That is always
Speaker 1: going to be key. So hope for the best, prepare
Speaker 1: for the worst and question everything is what it comes
Speaker 1: down to, and be compassionate along the way. Some people
Speaker 1: are definitely out there to scam you, but not everyone is.
Speaker 1: And I don't think you should necessarily start off with
Speaker 1: the base assumption that everyone's out to get me and
Speaker 1: I just got to figure out what their angle is.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's necessary. Really the right approach either
Speaker 1: use a little compassion at least until someone proves that
Speaker 1: they aren't they are deserving of that compassion, and then
Speaker 1: I don't know, go a hole hog, knock yourself out.
Speaker 1: All right. That's it for this, And it was top
Speaker 1: of my mind again because south By Southwest is coming up.
Speaker 1: I am going to south By Southwest. I will be there.
Speaker 1: I will talk more about it as we get closer,
Speaker 1: because I you know, details are still being worked out,
Speaker 1: so I want to make sure that those details are
Speaker 1: hammered out and figured out before I mentioned anything, because
Speaker 1: I'd hate to tell folks when and where I'm going
Speaker 1: to be someplace and then it falls through. But once
Speaker 1: those are solidified, I will share them. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about yet. If it's Web three,
Speaker 1: you'll probably here and you're there you'll probably hear something
Speaker 1: very similar to what I said now, except much shorter,
Speaker 1: because I'll be one of several people, and uh, I'll
Speaker 1: try to be more concise. You know me. That's never
Speaker 1: gonna happen. They'll just turn my mic off. It'll be fine,
Speaker 1: all right. If you have suggestions for future topics for
Speaker 1: tech Stuff, reach out to me let me know. You
Speaker 1: can do that on Twitter. Just send a message to
Speaker 1: text stuff hs W. That's the handle we use for
Speaker 1: this show, let me know, or you can download the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app. It is free to download. It's
Speaker 1: free to use if you navigate over to tech Stuff
Speaker 1: by typing it into the search bar. You will see
Speaker 1: on the tech stuff page there's this little microphone icon.
Speaker 1: Click on that. You can leave a voice message up
Speaker 1: to thirty seconds and link Let me know what you
Speaker 1: would like to hear in the future, and I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again really soon. Text Stuff is an I
Speaker 1: heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.