When new things come along, most recently web3, it seems like there's a bunch of people who are like "this is going to bring back the same joyful and uncommercial aspect the web had early on." (And that's quickly followed by "we're going to make heaps of money getting in to a new technology first!" but perhaps that's not germane?)
It seems like we're expecting the technology itself to magically birth an environment that leads to more kindness, curiosity, and community.
And I am wondering, if these are values that actually matter, why aren't we working to find ways that better reflect them rather than trying to simply come up with new technologies and hope that by virtue of them being new, it will attract creative, interesting people?
Maybe I am just missing something, but it does feel like a disconnect, especially since there doesn't seem to be a ton of dialogue between people who study and understand what leads to good communities and people who are building the technical scaffolding around our relationships.
Linux: democratizing Unix, sticking to Sun/IBM/Microsoft... now totally captured by big tech.
The web (1.0, blogging): democratizing publishing + the media, everyone can self publish, sticking it to the news media, book publishers, peer reviewed journals with "gatekeepers"... now totally dominated by a handful of mega sites, with much more and worse gatekeeping than print ever had.
bitcoin: sticking it to banks and wall street... totally captured by a handful of entities with massive conflicts of interest.
airbnb: sticking it to hotels and city planners, can stay in trendy neighborhoods instead of homogenous hotel rooms and help real people pay their rent... totally dominated by professional hosts who have exploited and destroyed the neighborhoods around them.
spotify: cool indie bands sticking it to those record labels...
youtube: ...
etsy: ....
There are inevitable market forces, economies of scale and consolidation at work, so spare me the "democratizing" narrative of these "movements", it always ends up as a winner takes all, or an oligopoly at best.