HACKER Q&A
📣 jusonchan81

Are things like Web3 holding back innovation?


I think it’s cool that such a huge community is behind things like Web3, NFTs etc. That also means a ton of talent and investments is being directed into this.

But is this stealing the focus from things that could make a bigger impact to human life? Are there other better things we could be doing instead with the amount of energy spent in these areas?

  👤 latexr Accepted Answer ✓
> Are there other better things we could be doing instead with the amount of energy spent in these areas?

Yes, including literally nothing. We could stop wasting all that power on reinventing worse versions of what we already have and breathing new life into old scams.

👤 smt88
Yes, but adtech (Google and Facebook) is much, much worse. Many of the most talented programmers work ultimately toward adtech, not making society better.
👤 jsiaajdsdaa
It isn't necessarily. Sometimes fools are parted with their money and the recipients go on to do things beneficial to society.

The scary realization though is that the problems that really need solving in our world are hard.

👤 SMVS
Web3 and blockchain are both an ideological and technological framework. Rather than holding anything back, they're originating and introducing a new way of looking at both personal data and how it's ingested and interpreted by web services.

All the crypto criticisms, the scams and rugs and mlm schemes; these are all characteristics of capitalism first, technologically implemented.

Where Web3 works, in the DAOs and decentralised governance systems, in the melding of decentralised tech and decentralised authority over it, that's where Web3 will flourish.

As humanity takes on the task of redressing the effects of capitalism, this ideological framework will guide our social development in the same way the blockchain is now reinventing software development.