WEBVTT - Web3: A more humane, egalitarian, and decentralized internet? 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.320 Hey, folks, I want to take a minute to ask 0:00:02.360 --> 0:00:05.600 for your help. This show is a labor of love 0:00:05.680 --> 0:00:08.560 for all of us here on the team at calling BS. 0:00:08.800 --> 0:00:13.560 We debate which organizations to investigate. We carefully consider how 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.479 to best tell these stories. Our goal is to create 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:19.759 a show that exposes purpose washing and the real harm 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:22.400 it does in the world. But we also want to 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:24.800 create a show that's fun to listen to and serves 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:28.520 as a practical guide for entrepreneurs and leadership teams about 0:00:28.520 --> 0:00:32.199 how to do purpose right. We're really proud of what 0:00:32.240 --> 0:00:35.680 we've made so far, and we're super excited about getting 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:37.839 season three into production so we can share it with 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.560 all of you now to the help we need. So far, 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:46.720 we are self funded. We need a sponsor or sponsors 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:49.800 to help us with the cost of production. But, and 0:00:49.880 --> 0:00:53.200 this is important, we feel like it would be disingenuous 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:55.800 given the theme of the show to accept money from 0:00:55.840 --> 0:00:58.920 just anybody. It's important to us that the sponsors of 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:03.120 this show shared shows values. We're looking for partners who 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:07.360 are purpose lead themselves, Companies or organizations that truly walk 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:11.040 their talk. Companies who understand the harm that purpose washing 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:14.200 does and who understand how important it is for all 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.560 of us that more companies embrace the path to purpose. 0:01:18.920 --> 0:01:21.319 If you're a part of an organization like that, or 0:01:21.400 --> 0:01:23.920 you know one that seems like a good fit, don't 0:01:23.959 --> 0:01:26.480 hesitate to drop us a line. You can reach me 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:30.840 directly at Team Montague at Calling Bullshit podcast dot com. 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:33.080 Thanks for listening, and let's get on with the show. 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:43.000 The best case scenario for Web three is that it 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.800 brings about a golden age for the creator. The concept 0:01:46.800 --> 0:01:50.200 of Web three is fairly elastic. What is the Web 0:01:50.240 --> 0:01:52.960 going to evolve into? I think that there's a lot 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:57.920 of potential there. Web three overall is less about blockchains 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:02.120 per se than it is about the idea of innovating 0:02:02.240 --> 0:02:08.919 new mechanisms of consensus building in social cooperation using digital tools. 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:15.280 Web three the third version of the Internet. It's often 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:19.200 described as a potential utopia guided by the promise of 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:25.000 decentralization and Internet where your attention and data belong to 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:31.720 you and you alone. But is the current manifestation of 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:34.760 Web three a reflection of this promise or is it 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:42.040 just a bunch of bs? Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:46.359 podcast about purpose washing. The gap between what an organization 0:02:46.520 --> 0:02:49.960 says they stand for, and what they actually do, and 0:02:50.000 --> 0:02:52.680 what they would need to change to practice what they preach. 0:02:53.320 --> 0:02:55.760 I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.639 a decade helping organizations define what they stand for, their 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:02.560 perp this and then help them to use that purpose 0:03:02.600 --> 0:03:07.600 to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:11.240 of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between 0:03:11.320 --> 0:03:15.600 word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But, 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:18.840 and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a 0:03:18.880 --> 0:03:23.560 treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up, we're 0:03:23.600 --> 0:03:27.840 going to explore everything the organization should do to fix it. 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:43.440 What is Web three? When I started digging into that question, 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:48.400 I found myself suffocated by jargon and acronyms, and once 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:50.760 I finally got up to speed on the language, I 0:03:50.840 --> 0:03:54.480 was confronted with a lot of competing ideas. There are 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:57.800 as many definitions for Web three as there are people 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.280 working to build it. It's hard to put your finger 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:05.160 on something that doesn't fully exist. Yet, I had a 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:08.920 feeling I wasn't alone in my confusion, so I asked 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.840 calling BS producer Hailey Pascalites to get out there and 0:04:12.880 --> 0:04:15.240 see what new Yorkers had to say on the topic, 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:22.000 We're doing an episode on web three on what web three? 0:04:22.880 --> 0:04:26.159 Web three? What's Web three? I do know it is. 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:28.440 I think it's all hype. I think a lot of 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:30.279 it's going to go away, and I think a small 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.119 part of it will stay and be actually valuable for 0:04:33.520 --> 0:04:37.479 the future. What part do you think will stay? I 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:42.440 think the parts that are have actual practical applications rather 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:48.280 than trying to hype and sell something. I mean, I 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.080 never really had to term it before. I've literally never 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:54.560 heard of it in my life. I just think of 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.760 like new tech, crypto, like these are all words that 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.560 come to mind. The reason all these words come to 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.680 mind is because these technologies are all components of a 0:05:05.800 --> 0:05:09.520 larger but still nascent system and have gotten most of 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.800 the media attention to date. But for the purposes of 0:05:12.800 --> 0:05:15.800 this episode, you don't have to know that blockchains are giant, 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:19.479 open stoce databases where data can be created but never destroyed, 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.400 and you don't have to appreciate the way that cryptocurrencies 0:05:23.440 --> 0:05:27.159 allow money to operate outside the confines of government. Nor 0:05:27.440 --> 0:05:29.160 do you need to understand that n f t s 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:33.240 are non fungible tokens unique digital items that act just 0:05:33.480 --> 0:05:36.640 like items in the real world. What you do need 0:05:36.680 --> 0:05:39.760 to know is that Web three combines the ideals of 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:44.520 the original Internet, open democratic access to knowledge with the 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:54.520 most exciting aspects of some very new technologies. These technologies, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:57.839 and n f t s are powerful tools for codifying 0:05:57.880 --> 0:06:01.000 that aspiration into the very fat brick of Web three, 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:06.960 because they are themselves open source, anti authority, and decentralized. 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:13.200 This is why Web three promises decentralization and data sovereignty. 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.400 It could be a version of the Internet where everybody 0:06:16.480 --> 0:06:20.120 has custody over their own data, a platform where your 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:24.760 digital self might reflect who you actually are, an Internet 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:32.360 where participation in democracy thrives. Another way to understand what 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:35.400 Web three might evolve into is by looking at what 0:06:35.480 --> 0:06:40.760 it has evolved from. Mark Andresen, founder of Netscape and 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:45.000 co founder of venture capital firm A sixteen Z, says 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.440 the three different phases of the Internet can be understood 0:06:48.480 --> 0:06:54.880 as read, write, and own. Web one allowed users to 0:06:55.000 --> 0:06:59.080 intake content or read. The big breakthrough was you go online. 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:00.680 You can read stuff, you could see stuff, you can 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.960 do searches. Web two, the version we all know and 0:07:04.000 --> 0:07:08.159 love is read right. It's the digital world of user 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:12.840 generated content and Internet funded by the attention economy, where 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:17.800 user data is ultimately controlled by a handful of giant companies, 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.720 sort of the social networking, blogging, video YouTube, you know 0:07:21.840 --> 0:07:26.280 kind of user generated content era. Web three is read right. 0:07:26.960 --> 0:07:30.360 Own own means you can own value, right, you can 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.040 own money, you can own digital assets. It's basically have 0:07:33.160 --> 0:07:36.480 a trust layer of money layer and an ownership layer 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.240 that rides on top of the sort of untrusted, unowned 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:42.120 you know kind of space has been the Internet so far. 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.040 This individual ownership part gets a ton of press because 0:07:48.240 --> 0:07:51.960 digital assets can now be uniquely tagged and monetized, meaning 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:54.120 that n f t s and crypto are subject to 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.000 insane wild westing and speculation. So if you own a 0:07:58.000 --> 0:08:00.880 bitcoin today, you will be a millionaire. Jack Dorsey's first 0:08:00.880 --> 0:08:04.040 tweet sounding for nearly three million dollars. The art world 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:08.040 just turned upside down with the sale of this digital collage. 0:08:08.360 --> 0:08:12.000 It sold Thursday in an auction for sixty nine point 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:16.480 three million dollars. And while crypto has become a volatile 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.520 market all its own, Sam Bankman Freed built ft x 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.200 into a huge crypto exchange valued at thirty two billion 0:08:23.240 --> 0:08:25.880 dollars over just three years. Will last week get imploded, 0:08:26.280 --> 0:08:31.840 sending aftershocks throughout the industry. It has also enabled the 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.600 movement of money in entirely new ways. In some cases 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:39.800 this is super positive, Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation saying 0:08:39.880 --> 0:08:43.480 they have raised over sixty eight million dollars through more 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:47.440 than hundred and twenty thousand crypto donations. In other cases 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:52.679 not so much. Bad actors took advantage of the ethereum 0:08:52.679 --> 0:08:56.320 merge to make millions of dollars. One point nine billion 0:08:56.600 --> 0:09:00.920 dollars worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen, people thinking that 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:03.720 they're buying one of a kind digital pieces of artwork 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:07.000 or songs, believing that they're investing in what's the next 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.320 big thing. I can't call the police, there's no bank. 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:13.120 You've just lost all your money and there's not much 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:17.200 you can do about it. Web three and all its 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:20.800 current aspects currencies that aren't backed by government's art, that 0:09:20.880 --> 0:09:24.520 only exists in digital form. These might have started as 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:29.280 fringe concepts, but they are now fully mainstream. Have you 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.960 ever heard of the term web three? Web three? No? 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:36.000 I have no idea what that is? Oh, dear God, 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:39.559 I have no clue. All right, So maybe Web three 0:09:39.679 --> 0:09:42.920 isn't fully mainstream, but it's certainly popular if you're a 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:48.760 coder and investor, or just techno curious. Venture capitalists like 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:53.480 Mark Andreesen spent a combined thirty billion dollars on the 0:09:53.480 --> 0:09:57.800 crypto space last year alone. Many of these investors A 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:02.800 sixteen Z included are the very same firms that helped 0:10:02.840 --> 0:10:06.959 create the monopolies that control our current version of the web. 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:12.520 These giants of Web two have optimized for popularity, attention, 0:10:12.640 --> 0:10:17.559 and convenience. This is their business model, and the ramifications 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.800 for that underlying philosophy have affected all aspects of public 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:27.200 and private life. We know that algorithms shape behavior, so 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.200 it's not hard to see how the future of Web 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:33.400 three will fundamentally affect all of us. With the promise 0:10:33.440 --> 0:10:38.600 of a more humane, egalitarian, and decentralized Internet, Web three 0:10:38.679 --> 0:10:42.600 represents an opportunity for a different kind of system, but 0:10:42.720 --> 0:10:48.120 it's still a very young industry. So what will the 0:10:48.240 --> 0:10:52.040 underlying philosophy of Web three b Will it be true 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:55.760 to the ideals of the promise, or by using the 0:10:55.840 --> 0:11:00.520 same venture capital, will it succumb to the pitfalls of two. 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:07.520 The answer is wrapped up in some fundamental philosophical questions 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:13.680 what is each person's responsibility to society and what does 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:17.760 it mean to be an individual? But before we get 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:21.440 into this cryptic hash puzzle, let's take a quick break. 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.440 At this point, you may be wondering how the answers 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.880 to a few semi vague philosophical questions create the scaffolding 0:11:38.920 --> 0:11:42.839 that holds up Web three. Well, luckily, my guest today, 0:11:42.920 --> 0:11:47.600 Glenn Wile, is here to explain everything. He's a former 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:51.640 economist who now focuses on reimagining the future future of 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:57.240 social organization, economies, politics, etcetera. He's a big picture thinker. 0:11:57.720 --> 0:12:01.520 He co authored the paper de central Life Society, Finding 0:12:01.640 --> 0:12:06.079 Web three Soul with Ethereum founder Vitalic Buterin, where they 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:10.000 make the case for Web three based identity tokens, and 0:12:10.120 --> 0:12:14.000 his book Radical Markets helped shift the discourse of Web 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:18.600 three away from an exclusive focus on blockchains and towards 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:23.439 something much broader and brighter. So to start out with, 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.720 in preparing for this conversation, I learned that you actually 0:12:25.760 --> 0:12:30.400 prefer the term decentralized social technologies to the term Web three. 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.320 Can you talk a little bit about why you like 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:37.200 describing it that way. Well, I mean Web three is 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:43.559 a little bit limiting and has a focus that makes 0:12:43.559 --> 0:12:48.280 you think in financial terms. It makes you think of 0:12:50.120 --> 0:12:55.600 an evolution of the Internet rather than the applications that 0:12:55.720 --> 0:12:59.960 run on the Internet. And so I think decentralized as 0:13:00.120 --> 0:13:04.239 technology to me captures the notion that what we're creating 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.600 our technologies, but they also are technologies that are about 0:13:07.640 --> 0:13:11.160 how people organize and relate to each other. It captures 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:14.120 the focus that I think that we should have on 0:13:14.800 --> 0:13:20.640 social structures and social impact rather than just financial speculation. Um, 0:13:20.720 --> 0:13:24.880 I think Web three overall is less about blockchains per 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:29.880 se than it is about the idea of innovating new 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:36.200 mechanisms of consensus building and social cooperation using digital tools. 0:13:37.080 --> 0:13:40.840 Just to get specific for folks who may not have 0:13:41.480 --> 0:13:47.120 your background, I've heard a couple of attempts to define 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:51.160 the term web three. One is to build a more humane, egalitarian, 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:55.160 and decentralized Internet where every individual has complete custody of 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:59.319 their data. So that's a theme that that seems to 0:13:59.400 --> 0:14:02.400 run through a lot of definitions. Is this idea of 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:06.960 democratization of power. Power has become centralized in Web two 0:14:07.280 --> 0:14:10.719 to corporations, and the promise of Web three is to 0:14:10.800 --> 0:14:14.560 kind of redistribute that power to individuals, which, by the way, 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.560 was one of the promises of Web one, I think, right, 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:21.800 Just to be clear, I I think that the individual 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.920 focus is one interpretation. The focus I would take is 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:33.160 a diversity of communities, not individuals, And this is an 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:38.360 important tension in the discourse around Web three. Some people 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:42.480 imagine it more in terms of some kind of small 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:48.840 d democratic network based you know, collective self governance, and 0:14:48.880 --> 0:14:51.880 other people imagine it in terms of you know, anarcho 0:14:52.080 --> 0:15:00.600 capitalist every person for themselves, ownership, property, etcetera. The concept 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.840 of Web three is fairly elastic, so it's it's a 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:09.880 contested space, right right, Okay, I want to pivot a 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:13.360 little bit to a couple of specific questions about aspects 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:17.200 of Web three that I've heard talked about. One is 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:20.840 this idea of owning our own data and benefiting from 0:15:20.920 --> 0:15:24.680 it from selling it in some cases seems to have 0:15:24.720 --> 0:15:26.640 been a central idea in the space, and I've seen 0:15:26.680 --> 0:15:31.120 that you have expressed skept skepticism about that idea. Um, 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.680 why is that, Well, it's it's funny because Jarren Linier, 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.080 who's one of my closest collaborators, and to a lesser extent, 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:42.760 I I think we're pretty central to kind of originating 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:49.280 that mean. And yet, as as often happens, we think 0:15:49.320 --> 0:15:55.120 it's been very misapplied and misunderstood. In particular straighten us out, Glenn. 0:15:57.240 --> 0:16:01.200 A lot of people when they think about you benefiting 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:06.320 financially from the value created by data that pertains to you, 0:16:07.040 --> 0:16:10.840 they want to think of private property as their image 0:16:10.840 --> 0:16:16.760 and model. But that's not a great metaphor here. And 0:16:16.800 --> 0:16:20.960 the reason is that most data pertain to multiple people. 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:24.440 So is this call that you and I are having 0:16:24.480 --> 0:16:31.040 my data or your data? Right? Um? Is my social 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:36.880 network my data? Well, actually not really. It's like it's 0:16:36.920 --> 0:16:42.000 the data of me crossed, Like each link that constitutes 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.280 that social graph belongs to at least two people in 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:50.240 that group, right and so? And in fact, I would 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:54.240 contend that that's true of virtually all data. So data 0:16:54.320 --> 0:17:00.280 is relational almost always. It represents things in a social contact. 0:17:01.040 --> 0:17:06.440 It does not represent abstracted things that are the property 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:11.480 of a single person. So if we want to think 0:17:11.520 --> 0:17:16.200 about data empowerment and data dignity, we can't think about 0:17:16.240 --> 0:17:20.199 it in in terms of private property. We have to 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:25.040 think about it in terms of some structure of diverse 0:17:25.160 --> 0:17:30.199 but collective self government. You know, a union is a 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:36.840 better image to have in your mind than is a house. Um, 0:17:37.800 --> 0:17:42.880 the basic rhetoric of the space is wrong and broken, 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:45.159 and if we pursue that direction, I think we're going 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:47.760 to end up back in the outcome that we started in, 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.160 because there will be a race to the bottom where 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:52.840 everyone will know that someone who's part of that data 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:55.199 will sell it, and so you might as well be 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.240 the one to sell it first and cheaper. That's really 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.080 interesting that had never occurred to me. Let me let 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.359 me push on that a little bit though, because you know, 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:06.480 one of the big problems in the world I think 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:11.359 is created by social media, and specifically the business model 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:15.800 behind most social media companies, which is attention based, right, 0:18:15.880 --> 0:18:19.120 and that attention is a personal thing, and you don't 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:23.960 benefit from that at all, And I guess I wonder 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:27.040 if there's a way for people to be compensated for 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:30.400 paying attention to things. I mean, so, first of all, 0:18:31.440 --> 0:18:33.600 just to be clear, I'm a huge advocate of the 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:37.720 notion that the value that's currently being captured by large 0:18:37.760 --> 0:18:43.000 platforms rightfully belongs to the communities of people who are 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:46.800 actually creating that value it on form So I'm getting 0:18:46.840 --> 0:18:50.960 complete agreement on that. That being said, UM, I think 0:18:51.040 --> 0:18:54.919 many of the simplistic ways of formulating what you just 0:18:54.960 --> 0:18:58.600 said wouldn't really get us away from the bad outcomes 0:18:58.640 --> 0:19:04.480 that we're facing. So UM, take the example of the 0:19:04.520 --> 0:19:09.600 social media platforms. I don't think simply giving people a 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:17.000 check in an undifferentiated way for their attention is going 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.879 to get us past the polarization and so forth. But 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:24.760 I do think that there are changes to the business 0:19:24.800 --> 0:19:27.480 model that really could get us past it. So like 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:32.600 the product that Facebook claims to be selling is connection. 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.680 But but connection and the social network and the graph, 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:40.840 these are not things that are valuable to individuals. There 0:19:40.840 --> 0:19:43.680 are things that are valuable to the society that those 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:47.200 individuals together constitute. UM. And of course there's no one 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:51.320 society that There's churches, and there's nations, and there's local 0:19:51.920 --> 0:19:55.080 you know, units, and all of these care about cohesion 0:19:55.920 --> 0:20:02.840 and dynamism within their communities. And at present, these systems 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:07.600 are accomplishing the opposite of that. They're reinforcing divisions. And 0:20:08.760 --> 0:20:14.080 if those organizations were you know, to replace the advertisers 0:20:14.760 --> 0:20:19.960 as the customers of Facebook, and to pay for algorithms 0:20:20.040 --> 0:20:24.240 and curation that built community and solidarity that did what 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.399 what Facebook claims to be trying to do in the 0:20:26.440 --> 0:20:28.639 first place. Well, yeah, and even if Facebook wanted to 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:33.720 do it, it's business model is misaligned with its mission, 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:38.520 and so it can't accomplish its goals without changing how 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:43.680 it thinks about its financing approach. Another concept that gets 0:20:43.680 --> 0:20:47.520 talked a lot about that's sort of related, but but 0:20:47.680 --> 0:20:50.640 I think different in some important ways is the concept 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:54.640 of digital identity or digital personhood that seems to be 0:20:54.680 --> 0:20:57.840 important in the space. And I've read that there are 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:02.720 lots of competing views here and some riffs between various 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.280 groups about the right way to handle digital identity or 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:10.800 digital personhood. Is there a right way in your view? 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:16.480 So I'm a big believer in a theory that was 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.199 put forward by a guy named George Zimmel. He was 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:23.760 one of the founders of sociology, and he had a 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:28.479 I think very brilliant observation, which is that there is 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.200 no such thing as a lot of political philosophy imagines 0:21:32.520 --> 0:21:36.080 as sort of the pre social individual that you can 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:39.920 then liberate humans have throughout their entire history survived only 0:21:39.920 --> 0:21:43.160 to the extent that they've lived in groups. And so 0:21:43.359 --> 0:21:48.200 actually what happens with modernity is not the rediscovery of individuality, 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:52.160 but rather that society becomes more complex. So it used 0:21:52.160 --> 0:21:56.080 to be that you would worship and mate and work 0:21:56.720 --> 0:22:00.360 and eat all with the same people, and they were 0:22:00.359 --> 0:22:05.800 your tribe. But as we get into more complex cities, 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:10.000 and in fact all the terms around democracy are connected 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:12.680 to city citizen as someone who lives in a city. Right, 0:22:12.920 --> 0:22:15.520 So that the reason why this notion of a individual 0:22:15.560 --> 0:22:19.399 citizen emerges is because now all those different social functions 0:22:19.440 --> 0:22:23.800 separate out, and you become an individual because you're the 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:28.679 neat unique intersection of those different social groups that you're 0:22:28.720 --> 0:22:33.160 a part of. And I'm a big believer that systems 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:39.040 of identity need to mirror that structure. The way that 0:22:39.119 --> 0:22:43.440 you preserve privacy and still allow all the functions of 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:49.720 identity is by fragmenting the aspects of your identity among 0:22:49.960 --> 0:22:53.760 the different things that constitute you in your life, and 0:22:54.200 --> 0:22:58.520 you know, defending the noess of those different spheres. And 0:22:58.920 --> 0:23:02.040 you know, this returns to the data union example. I 0:23:02.040 --> 0:23:04.000 imagine data union but every person might be part of 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:07.480 several data unions that represent the different ways in which 0:23:07.520 --> 0:23:11.199 they participate. And I and I see data, you know, 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.199 identity being handled in in a very similar way. Like 0:23:14.640 --> 0:23:16.879 I'd love to see a future where rather than us 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.399 having like one driver's license that represent us, where we 0:23:20.440 --> 0:23:24.240 have many different digital tokens, one coming from our work, 0:23:24.320 --> 0:23:28.080 one coming from like a distributed autonomous organization that we 0:23:28.160 --> 0:23:32.400 participated in, one coming from some political affiliation, and all 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.600 of these together knowing various aspects of ourselves that we 0:23:35.720 --> 0:23:42.679 can present or reveal in appropriate social contexts. Right, you 0:23:42.800 --> 0:23:45.280 sort of waived at this as you went by, but 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:48.960 just for listeners, like the danger of a single identity, 0:23:49.040 --> 0:23:54.080 a single digital identity is security essentially, Is that right? 0:23:54.280 --> 0:24:00.840 Or I mean security or privacy? Yeah, I mean so 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:05.040 there's there's ways to express it differently. So from a 0:24:05.080 --> 0:24:08.520 security perspective, you're very reliant in that case on a 0:24:08.560 --> 0:24:11.720 single point of failure, whatever institution issues that thing, getting 0:24:11.760 --> 0:24:14.920 things right. And in fact, that's the reason why if 0:24:14.960 --> 0:24:18.359 you go an interview for an n essay, uh, you 0:24:18.400 --> 0:24:20.720 know job, they're not going to care much about your passport, 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:22.720 like they know that that doesn't really work very well. 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:25.119 They're gonna go and look for all your different social 0:24:25.160 --> 0:24:27.520 relationships to figure out who you actually are. You know, 0:24:28.280 --> 0:24:33.520 um so so like Yes, security absolutely, but it's also 0:24:35.160 --> 0:24:39.399 it's absurd that for so many different contexts in our lives, 0:24:39.560 --> 0:24:42.200 we're presenting this one social security number that can link 0:24:42.280 --> 0:24:46.000 us across all the different contexts. Most of the times 0:24:46.000 --> 0:24:47.760 you give your social security a number of nothing to 0:24:47.760 --> 0:24:52.640 do with social security, and so by not planning explicitly 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:58.240 for pluralistic identity systems, we end up with these totally 0:24:58.280 --> 0:25:05.239 inappropriate cross cut identity systems. Yeah, very interesting. Um, I 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:08.119 think this is related. You wrote a white paper about 0:25:08.160 --> 0:25:12.480 something called soul bound tokens where you talk about them 0:25:12.480 --> 0:25:15.200 as a way of encoding trust into the system. Can 0:25:15.240 --> 0:25:19.280 you explain, first of all, what a soul bound token is. So, 0:25:19.400 --> 0:25:22.919 soul bound tokens are non transferable and f t s 0:25:23.000 --> 0:25:28.960 their statements that are made by one digital signifier wallet 0:25:29.359 --> 0:25:34.280 about another, and they can represent a sort of network 0:25:34.320 --> 0:25:37.960 of social relations. But the potential of these is that 0:25:38.000 --> 0:25:44.280 it makes it much easier for a wide range of organizations, individuals, 0:25:44.359 --> 0:25:49.080 groups to issue credentials to each other, and therefore for 0:25:49.119 --> 0:25:53.280 you to have a intersecting set of you know, credentials 0:25:53.320 --> 0:25:57.960 that together can constitute an identity in a context specific way, 0:25:58.200 --> 0:26:01.919 rather than having to rely on a singular institution to 0:26:02.000 --> 0:26:05.960 give you one thing that you use everywhere. So a 0:26:06.040 --> 0:26:09.200 soul bound token might be the thing that I used 0:26:09.240 --> 0:26:12.760 to join one of the unions that you talk about. Yeah, 0:26:12.800 --> 0:26:15.840 for example, like you, you you might get one from your university, 0:26:15.880 --> 0:26:20.919 one from your employer, one from uh, maybe every podcast 0:26:20.960 --> 0:26:23.720 that you do. We issue each other a soul bound 0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:27.920 token saying that we did it together, right, and that 0:26:27.920 --> 0:26:30.439 that's like a CV, But unlike a CV, it's not 0:26:30.520 --> 0:26:32.040 something that you have to send in a PDF and 0:26:32.080 --> 0:26:33.480 so want us to read and then maybe o c 0:26:33.720 --> 0:26:36.720 R and then verify whether it's right. There's like a 0:26:36.760 --> 0:26:40.480 cryptographic signature indicating that for every one of those things, 0:26:40.680 --> 0:26:43.520 the counterparty to that has said that they did this 0:26:43.560 --> 0:26:49.680 thing with you, So it's inherently reliable UM, and that 0:26:49.720 --> 0:26:54.320 can then be the basis of you getting admitted to 0:26:54.800 --> 0:26:57.400 all kinds of different things. It can be a reputation 0:26:57.480 --> 0:27:01.800 effectively that you can stick not a single dimensional reputation score, 0:27:02.200 --> 0:27:07.400 but a multidimensional representation of your self that you can 0:27:07.600 --> 0:27:14.440 use as the foundation for accessing some social system. Well, 0:27:14.600 --> 0:27:17.240 I see, so you have many of these. This isn't 0:27:17.240 --> 0:27:21.800 a one thing that you you have. All right, let's 0:27:21.800 --> 0:27:25.320 pivot to the peril a bit. Um. What what do 0:27:25.359 --> 0:27:29.320 you see as the biggest threats to the potential of 0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:33.960 of Web three or or distributed social technologies. Well, so, 0:27:34.440 --> 0:27:39.080 I think there's a long term ideological danger and there's 0:27:39.080 --> 0:27:41.440 a bunch of near term harms that are being caused 0:27:41.440 --> 0:27:45.600 by the system. There are groups of people such as 0:27:45.960 --> 0:27:50.440 Peter theold Abology Screenavas and this guy Mensious mold Bug 0:27:50.480 --> 0:27:55.560 courtesy Arvan, who view all these technologies as a way 0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:59.920 to undermine the authority, legitimacy, or even ability to colle 0:28:00.280 --> 0:28:06.240